"Farce" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... your cards. I tell you I will no longer submit to this miserable farce we are playing here. I will no longer call myself your daughter, nor will I be dragged into the maze ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... This little farce is repeated in some shape every day. I am very idle. I smoke a great deal, and lounge about all day, with my hands in my pockets. I am free from that ineffable weariness of ceaseless giving which I experienced six ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... farce." Nora rose. "Monsieur, permit me to wish you good day. For my part, I shall pursue this matter to the end. I believe this gentleman guilty, and I shall do my best to prove it. I am a woman, and all alone. ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... fanatika. Fanaticism fanatikeco. Fanciful imaga. Fancy imagi. Fanfaronade fanfaronado. Fang kojna dento. Fantastical strangega. Fantasy fantazio. Far malproksima. Far off (adv.) malproksime. Farce sxerco. Fare, bill of mangxokarto. Farewell adiaux. Farm farmi. Farm farmo. Farmhouse farmodomo. Farmer farma mastro. Farrier forgxisto. Fascinate ensorcxi. Fascination ensorcxo. Fashion (to form) formi. Fashion (manner) maniero. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... would have joined the Spaniards against England. Lord Rawdon spoke on the same side; hinting a suspicion that our fleet had been destined for the Baltic, while we were bullying Spain, which had not offered any insult to this country; and that this farce had been carried on until the King of Sweden had made peace with Russia. The convention was defended by Lord Grenville, and the address was carried by a majority of forty-three. Another debate took place ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... hear me call a spade a spade. Your office is a farce. In the two years you've been mayor you've never arrested one rustler. Strange, when Linrock's a nest for rustlers! You've never sent a prisoner to Del Rio, let alone to ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... Italy would drown the opposition of his own State to its dismemberment? It has often been asked, Why did he not allow the cession to wear the honest colour of surrender to force? Why, "against his conviction," as he confessed in private, did he declare that Nice was not Italian? Why go through the farce of plebiscites so "arranged" that the result was a foregone conclusion? The answer, satisfactory or not, is easily found: Nice was stated to be not Italian to leave intact the theory of nationality for future use; the plebiscites were resorted to that ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... the occurrence of my dream, which, though a dream, was true in spirit. More speeches, writings, and actions of humanity have their result in morbid impulse than we have an idea of. Their territory stretches from the broadest farce to the deepest tragedy. I remember spending an evening at Mrs. Cantaloupe's, and being seized with an impulse to say a very insolent thing. Mrs. Cantaloupe is the daughter of a small pork butcher, who, having married the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... literature had become extinct. The entertainments, which had now taken the place of comedy and tragedy, were termed mimes. These were laughable imitations of manners and persons, combining the features of comedy and farce, for comedy represents the characters of a class, farce those of individuals. Their essence was that of the modern pantomime, and their coarseness, and even indecency, gratified the love of broad humor which characterized the Roman people. After a time, when they became established as ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... Travers. "The man wouldn't be above plundering the natives. . . ." He sat down heavily on the chest. "A most appropriate costume for this farce," he continued. "But do you mean to wear it in open ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... it,' said the Doctor, imprinting his upon them; 'and many happy returns of the - the idea! - of the day. The notion of wishing happy returns in such a farce as this,' said the Doctor to himself, 'is good! Ha! ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens
... is no truth in the report that Mr. JAMES WELCH intends renaming his successful farce (now moved to the New ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 4, 1914 • Various
... a false alarm, as Billy and the others will tell you," answered Bostwick, referring to McCoppet's chosen prospectors. "The rush will prove a farce." ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... conception, his complexion of a brownish-yellow, and his nose scarcely smaller than the rest of him together. The fellow's mouth was slit almost from ear to ear, and he showed his teeth with a grinning smile of idiot courtesy, while he overwhelmed me with bows and scrapes innumerable. The farce now becoming excessively irksome, I thanked him in the fewest words I could well use, turned about my still trembling charger, and purposed either to seek another adventure, or, should I meet with none, to take my way back ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... wood-lice. The physician of Charles I. and II. prescribed abominations not to be named. Barbarism, as bad as that of Congo or Ashantee. Traces of this barbarism linger even in the greatly improved medical science of our century. So while the solemn farce of over-drugging is going on, the world over, the harlequin pseudo-science jumps on to the stage, whip in hand, with half-a-dozen somersets, and ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... what it was. But we were, in fact, disappointed and chagrined. The mountain-top had been selected for many reasons. Principal among them were these: Public meetings in Ireland had actually become a farce. We determined to hold one from which all senseless and idle brawlers would be excluded. The difficulty of ascending the hill would, we thought, sufficiently test the courage and sincerity of our followers. ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... newspapers were so friendly. Some labeled the gathering "a Tomfoolery convention" of "Aunt Nancy men and brawling women"; others called it "the farce at Syracuse,"[37] but for Susan it marked a milestone. Never before had she heard so many earnest, intelligent women plead so convincingly for property rights, civil rights, and the ballot. Never before had she seen so clearly that in a republic women as well as men should ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... with a less obtrusive policy, might, who knows? have got the length of half a crown. A man who prides himself upon persuasion should learn the persuasive faculty of silence, above all as to his own misdeeds. It is only in the farce and for dramatic purposes that Scapin enlarges on his peculiar talents to the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... at the Manhattan Beach Hotel, and as our hero had resolved to move very slowly and take notes as he went along he led Cad to a table and ordered a dinner, and during the meal the same amusing farce was kept up, and the thieves passed and repassed the table where their selected ...
— Cad Metti, The Female Detective Strategist - Dudie Dunne Again in the Field • Harlan Page Halsey
... history of this scene is not a tragedy, but a farce. For two weeks or more Coronado had been watching his uncle day and night, and at last had found in his trunk a paper of powder which he suspected to be arsenic. A blunderer would have destroyed or hidden it, ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... what are rocky rapids now. Just think what coming down over that ridge above Boko Boko will be like! I do not fancy however it would ever be possible to get up the river, when it is at its height, with so small a crew as we were when we went and played our knock-about farce, before King Death, in his amphitheatre in the ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... in what waters it pleases. If our shells fall upon New York on the day when your warships are sighted off the Californian coast, do you suppose that America could resist? With her seaboard, her fleet is contemptible. For her wealth, her army is a farce. She has neglected for a great many years to pay her national insurance. She is the one country in the world who can be bled for the ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... not come here any more. They begin to think it a farce already. I say you must come no more. There—don't be angry with me;" and she jumped up, pressed his hand, and looked anxiously at him. "It is necessary. It is best for both ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... life-blood of the unhappy old woman whom his mismade prescription sent in agony to the tomb! Pah! I have no patience with her! She and her grief and her seclusion and her sympathetic cat, indeed! It all is a tragedy of indiscretion—that shapes itself as a revolting farce!" ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... "nothing can make the town so fond of a man as a successful play."[121] The historian who had to record such strange events, following close on each other, as an author publishing a book of piety, and then a farce, could never have discovered the secret motive of the versatile writer, had not that writer possessed the ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... were laboring in opera for the development of deep expression, those of another class were working no less effectually for making the music merely shallow and pleasing. Light operas dealing with shallow situations—comedy, farce, expressed by means of light and pleasing music—came to occupy more and more the operatic stage, where, after all, the question of amusement ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... magistrate, collector, or military commander of a populous province, without any other counsellor than his own crude understanding, or any other guide than his passion. Such a metamorphosis would excite laughter in a comedy or farce; but, realized in the theatre of human life, it must give rise to sensations of a very different nature. Who is there that does not feel horror-struck, and tremble for the innocent, when he sees a being ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... touched a spring—and there he was at the door himself, rushing back. He, too, had remembered. It was almost a collision, and nothing but their good Southern breeding, the way they took it, saved it from being like a rowdy farce. ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... times. One can not now wear his sentiments on his sleeve. Everything is show; payment is made in airs, demonstrations, signs. Everybody is playing a comedy, and men have had excellent reasons for keeping up the farce. They have discovered the fact that nobody can gain anything by telling the actual truth about women. There is a general agreement to substitute for this sincerity a collection of contrary phrases. And this custom has proved contagious in cases ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... thinking of what you were, and again I do not laugh. Then what is it that the world outside must have laughed with a very self-conscious wisdom? Its laughter was nothing to us then, and to-day is to me as nothing. Is it not always ready to weep at a farce and laugh ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... felt sure of it. Why had she been so hopeless, so despairing? There was no real cause for it. Perhaps, after all, he had looked upon the whole affair, not as a solemn engagement, but as a childish farce. Perhaps he had never really thought of her as his wife; but there would be an end to that thoughtlessness now. What had passed on the previous day would arouse his attention, he could never ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)
... at Kioto, as there are numerous theatres where farce, tragedy, and comedy are duly represented after the crude fashion of the country. These theatres open at early morning and the play lasts until midnight, with the briefest intermissions. The spectators ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... Peaceful progress, I believe, is the only thing that can carry on the world to a fitness for self-government. I have no idea that the Hungarians are fit for it. See what France has done with her free constitution! Oh! was there ever such a solemn farce, before Heaven, as that voting,—those congratulations to ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... my dear,' said Mr. Kendal; 'but she is too independent, and your mamma thinks she would consider it as a mere farce to call her little Albinia's governess, but if ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... leaving his friends to bemoan his cowardice. As for Arthur, the crowd gave him a cheer and condemned his opponent's conduct in no measured terms. They were terribly disappointed by Big Bill's defection, for while not especially bloodthirsty they hated to see the impending tragedy turn out a farce. ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation • Edith Van Dyne
... many months since she had felt so important and so sure of herself. Her self-esteem had received more than one blow of late. Bowman had attempted to persuade her to take "The Bad Little Lady" on the road; Magsie had indignantly declined. He had then offered her a poor part in a summer farce; about this Magsie had not yet ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... moment he could not say anything. "Look here," he faltered at last, "you thought him a great match, a rise in the world for you and yours; but he ain't a great match any longer. What's the use then of keeping up the farce? You and me understand each other. You've nothing to do but to let him off; you're young and pretty, you'll easily find some one else. Fools are plenty in this world," he added, unable to refrain from that one fling. "Let ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... finance committee laughed and answered: "That old joke is still alive. She writes me now and then and tells me what she is doing in the way of preparation. It's really a foolish little farce we have been playing in—a kind of courtship to avoid marriage. We have gone too far ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... "'Bring me,' (said Elisha), 'a minstrel'; and it came to pass, when the minstrel played, that the hand of the Lord came upon him." Here is the farce of the conjurer. Now for the prophecy: "And Elisha said, [singing most probably to the tune he was playing], Thus saith the Lord, Make this valley full of ditches;" which was just telling them what every countryman could have told them without either fiddle ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... or rather the people, with their vainglory and empty pomp, are particularly adapted to be victimised by impostors and are easy preys to them. Some of the tricks that have been played upon them do not lack humour. Take, for instance, the pretty farce of the Compagnie generale pour l'eclairage et le chauffage en Perse, which undertook to light the city of Teheran with no less than one thousand gas lights. Machinery was really imported at great expense from Europe for the manufacture of the gas—many ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... genuine Irish raciness that gives it a perennial freshness. He is a man gaily in love with life, and with a quick eye for all the varied humours of it. "Handy Andy" is one of the most amusing books ever written; a roaring farce, written by a man who combined the liveliest sense of fun with a painter's gift of portraying real character in a few vivid touches. Samuel Lover died on July ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... had known that my pursuer was Dr. Grey, I would not have troubled myself to play the ghost farce, for of course I could not expect to frighten you off; but I hoped you were one of the servants, who would not very diligently chase a spectre. I did not suppose that you could be coaxed or driven thus far from your arm-chair beside the bed where ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... the poor minor seemed to have lost both his love and his property. But how can I touch off my feelings, when, in the fourth act; the villain was detected; and all ended as it should! And, oh! Tibbie, mommy enjoyed it nearly as much as I, though the farce at the end vastly shocked her—and, indeed, Tibbie, 't was most indelicate, and made me blush a scarlet, and all the more that Sir William whispered that he enjoyed the broad parts through my cheeks—and she says if dadda insists, we'll go ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... trying to kill each other came out of opposite trenches and fraternised. They took photographs of mixed groups of Germans and English, arm-in-arm. They exchanged cigarettes, and patted each other on the shoulder, and cursed the war.... The war had become the most tragic farce in the world. The frightful senselessness of it was apparent when the enemies of two nations fighting to the death stood in the grey mist together and liked each other. They did not want to kill each other, these Saxons of the same race and blood, ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... were sent to them, and not long afterwards they were again marched up to the court-house. The same farce as on the previous day was gone through, and no interpreter appearing, the judge and his assistants left the court as wise as they entered it, while the prisoners were unable to make out of what crime they were accused. ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... circle to my aunt's, it must be pretty widespread. I was angry with Aunt Cynthia, and a little with every one I had met that evening. They were so cheerful, so content with things as they were, finding all the world such a screaming farce.... I sometimes get my family on my nerves, when I go there straight from Covent Garden and its slum babies, and see them spending and squandering and being irresponsible and dissolute and not caring twopence for the way two-thirds of the world live. There was Wycombe to-night, with a long story ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... how many of them know that that was where Mrs. Lirriper had her immortal lodgings? The Notebooks of Samuel Butler, just to give her a little intellectual jazz. The Wrong Box, because it's the best farce in the language. Travels with a Donkey, to show her what good writing is like. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse to give her a sense of pity for human woes—wait a minute, though: that's a pretty broad book ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... created in the university and in the whole city. By these theses it was shown that the power to grant the pardon of sin, and to remit its penalty, had never been committed to the pope or to any other man. The whole scheme was a farce,—an artifice to extort money by playing upon the superstitions of the people,—a device of Satan to destroy the souls of all who should trust to its lying pretensions. It was also clearly shown that the gospel of ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... avail that the piece itself be unexceptionable, if it is to be interlarded with lewd songs or dances, and tagged at the conclusion with a ludicrous and beastly farce? I cannot therefore, in conscience, give youth any other advice than to avoid such diversions as cannot be indulged without the utmost danger of perverting their taste, and ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... same letter Charles adds his scene in the farce: "La Plessis said to Rahuel (he was the concierge) yesterday that she had been gratified at dinner to find that Madame had turned the child out of her seat and put herself in the place of honour. And Rahuel, in his Breton way: 'Nay, Miss, there's no wonder. 'Tis an honour to your years, naturally. ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... with his friend. He learned that the list of prisoners was being taken, now, more in the order in which they stood. The farce of a trial had been gone through, in the case of Jean's wife, and she had of course been condemned. She stood a good deal lower on the list than his father. There was not much chance of the day of her execution being settled ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty
... "This farce, says Delta, composed at Quebec by J. Galt, and performed there before the Earl of Dalhousie (then Governor-General), was named "The Visitors, or a Trip to Quebec," and was meant as a good humoured satire on some of the particular usages of the place. An American family ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... that at any other time we might have fallen into conversation and speculated on the good old-fashioned simile which likens life to a comedy, or a tragedy, or a farce. But the moment was ill-chosen, and we were both silent, being much preoccupied with the ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... default. Coralie, his mistress, ignorant of the whole matter, imagined that Lucien had obliged his brother-in-law, and handed him all the documents together—too late. An actress sees so much of bailiffs, duns, and writs, upon the stage, that she looks on all stamped paper as a farce. ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... beautiful," she went on softly, "but, helas, they are not the Schoenbrunn. Nor is Chapultepec more than a feeble miniature of the Hofburg. Oh, the wretched farce! The wretched farce, sire, in your pretension to—to honor me! A wooer from the throne, indeed? A straw throne—no, no, I ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... we hope for more. May they enjoy thy thoughts!—Let not the stage The idlest moment of thy hours engage; Each year that place some wondrous monster breeds, And the wits' garden is o'errun with weeds. There, Farce is Comedy; bombast called strong; Soft words, with nothing in them, make a song. 10 'Tis hard to say they steal them now-a-days; For sure the ancients never wrote such plays. These scribbling insects have ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... action. The Fenians imagining that a formidable army had arrived, became panic-stricken and fled, headed by their leaders, at quick march over the Border Line, where the "Fenian Tragedy" was magnificently concluded by the ludicrous farce of the Great O'Neill making a hasty exit as a "State prisoner," under the ...
— The Black-Sealed Letter - Or, The Misfortunes of a Canadian Cockney. • Andrew Learmont Spedon
... last no human being can tell what he is after, where he is going, what he is talking about, or what he means to say. He will tell you the whole story of the Second Punic War, speaking of a sentimental comedy played at the Gymnase Theatre, and a low farce of the Palais Royal Theatre will furnish him the pretext to quote ten lines of Xenophon in the original Greek. Monsieur Jules Janin is, notwithstanding all this, an excellent fellow, and a man of ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... intelligence as to Moran and his gang. Our town and treasure were thus left undefended for forty-eight hours, while a daring criminal and his associates mingled unsuspected with all classes. We have always regarded the present system—facetiously called police protection—as a farce. This latter fiasco will probably confirm the idea with the public at large. We, unlike a contemporary, have no morbid sympathy with crime—embroidered or otherwise; our wishes, as loyal subjects, are confined to a short shrift and a high gallows for all who ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... to read the play to him; and that play was, "The Merchant of Venice." I will not dwell upon the effect. I had already become fond of such theatrical spectacles as were considered suitable for children—pantomime and broad farce—and like a child I gazed upon the glitter, and enjoyed the bustle; but now, seated in a corner, all quiet about me, and nothing to interfere with the mental world, I drank a cup of intoxication under which my brain reeled for ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... clumsy English, after their own fashion," said Queen Mary, among her ladies. "It was the unpremeditated grace and innocent audacity of the little ones that gave the charm. Now it will be a mere broad farce, worthy of Bess of Hardwicke. Mais que ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the Board," said Jim, "I'm not going to tell you anything that you don't know about yourselves. You are simply making a farce of the matter of hiring a teacher for this school. It is not as if any of you had a theory that the teaching methods of one of these teachers would be any better than or much different from those of the others. You know, and I know, that whichever is finally engaged, or even if your silly deadlock ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick
... Cherubina. In this farcical romance it is clearly Barrett's intention to make so vigorous an onslaught that "the Selinas, Evelinas, and Malvinas who faint and blush and weep through four half-bound octavos" shall be, like Catherine Morland, "humbled to the dust." Sometimes, indeed, his farce verges on brutality. To expose the follies of Cherubina it was hardly necessary to thrust her good-humoured father into a madhouse, and this grim incident sounds an incongruous, jarring note in a rollicking high-spirited ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... you to take Mrs. Harley into the fresh sunshine and clear air this afternoon. I have been telling her to forget this trial. It's a farce, anyhow. Nothing will come of it. Take her out to the Homes—take and cheer ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... the farce end!" said she, with frowning eyebrows. "Before I came on board this yacht I had some pity for you. I thought you were at least a man, and had a man's generosity. Now I find you ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... stepped from the carriage, Coquenil was on the point of seizing him and stopping this farce forthwith. What would he gain by waiting? Yet, after all, what would he lose? With four trained men to guard the house there was no chance of the fellow escaping, and it was possible his visit here might reveal something. Besides, a detective has the sportsman's ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... trial was a farce, stripped of all dignity and justice by the fact that the judge upon the bench, the prosecuting attorneys, and other officials were personally interested, each holding New York grants for many thousand ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... that it may not be lost, which destroys the soothing and satisfactory symmetry of an unexceptionable dinner. We have detected the same duck through many unprincipled disguises, playing a different part in the farce of domestic economy, with a versatility hardly to have been expected in one of the most generally despised of the web-footed tribe. When travelling at one's own sweet will, one feeds at a different inn every meal; and, except when the coincidence of circumstances is against you, there is an agreeable ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... "All for Love," Booth's dignified action and forcible elocution, in the part of Antony, attracted the public to that heavy, though, in many parts, well written play, six night's successively, without the assistance of pantomime, or farce, which, at that time, was esteemed something extraordinary.—But, indeed, he was well supported by an Oldfield, in his Cleopatra, who, to a most harmonious and powerful voice, and fine person, added grace ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... asking the usual questions concerning his name, age, etc., in a courteous, kindly tone, wholly devoid of sternness, which filled Panna with vehement rage. This was not the terrible personification of the fell punishment of crime, but a smooth farce, acted amid universal satisfaction. ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... work of this noble, faithful Toulan. He went through a whole farce in order to get the people out of here, and to make them swear that they never would smoke after this in the anteroom. Oh, I shall never be able to repay him for what he has done for us at the ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... desired to treat in a new way the same subjects that had been dealt with by the great men of ancient Greece, and so far as possible to conceive them in the same spirit. Therefore he wrote tragedies, comedies, "satiric dramas" (a kind of farce in which secondary deities were characterised), lyric and elegiac poems after the manner of Alcaeus or Sappho, a familiar epopee, a romance in verse, which was perhaps a novel type, but more probably imitated from certain poems of ancient Greece which we no longer possess. To us his poetry ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... vivisection will announce willingness to accede to the public demnad, provided the vivisector may himself appoint the investigators, and define the limitations of the inquiry. It needs but little discernment to foresee that an inquiry so conducted may be no better than a farce, and conduce to no real change in the present obscurity. To be of any value the commission of inquiry regarding vivisection must be so intelligent regarding all phases of the practice that it shall know ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... a brilliant repartee, snatch up their hats, make their bows, and leave you in the middle of a laugh. But another adventure was in store for them, which had not entered into their calculations at all. The play-bills show us that after a tragedy there generally comes a farce: the case was reversed with them, for they had enjoyed their farce, and had laughed over it heartily—and now there was danger of its ending in a tragedy. When their preparations were nearly complete for a sudden and inexplicable disappearance, our astrologers were horrified by the ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... that he was appointed with the hearty suffrages of the fraternity, he was elected at the recommendation of the "king," a very significant term in those days of despotic rule, at which choice became a mere farce. "Out of the fulness of the heart the mouth speaketh;" and the monks soon began to perceive with regret and trembling the worldly ways of the new abbot, which he could not hide even under his abbatical robes. In a place dedicated to ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... pleased with Colonel Peard's telegraphic feats at Eboli, that he sent him on to Salerno to repeat the farce. Peard's despatches determined the departure of the Court, and it was to him (in the belief that he was Garibaldi) that Liborio Romano, three hours before the King embarked, addressed the celebrated telegram invoking the 'most desired presence' of the Dictator in Naples. ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... an amusing game. He held the reins of power so firmly that he could safely enact a transparent farce. He refused the sceptre. The grandees and the people begged him to accept it, and he took refuge from their solicitations in a monastery. This comedy, which even Caesar had not long played, Boris kept up for over a month. Yet from his cell he moved ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... of Tiberius that he laid no claim to imperial honours was met by the grave pretence that the needs of the state forbade his refusal of them, however reluctant he might be. His mother, Livia Augusta, was the object of a like sycophancy. But the world was not deceived by the solemn farce. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... had been giving performances with his company in the more southern States, got permission to build a theatre on the site of this old place, and the house was opened in September with a play, "The Conscious Lovers," followed by a ballad farce, "Damon and Phillida." ...
— Annals of Music in America - A Chronological Record of Significant Musical Events • Henry Charles Lahee
... rescuing their cities, their States and the federal government, including the federal judiciary, from absolute control of corporate monopoly. How to restore the voice of the citizen in the government of his country; and how to put an end to those proceedings in some of the higher courts which are farce and mockery on one side, and a criminal usurpation and oppression on ...
— Practical Argumentation • George K. Pattee
... mentioned had expired, we had reached a depth of five feet, and yet no signs of any treasure became manifest. A general pause ensued, and I began to hope that the farce was at an end. Legrand, however, although evidently much disconcerted, wiped his brow thoughtfully and recommenced. We had excavated the entire circle of four feet diameter, and now we slightly enlarged the limit, and went to the farther depth of two ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... concern which Marjorie alone knew to be false. Privately Mary's deceitful attitude was a sore trial to her. Honest to the core, she felt that she would rather her chum had maintained open hostility than a farce of good will which was dropped the moment they chanced to be alone. Still she resolved to bear it and look forward to a happier ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... with laughter. "No, no," said he, "such a farce is beyond belief! It's the finest smack given to justice and common-sense that I know of. Ah! if the marriage can also be annulled by the civil courts, and if my friend whom you see yonder be only willing, we shall amuse ourselves in Rome! Yes, indeed, I'd marry her at Santa Maria Maggiore ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... When this farce is well under way, they prepare to go in search of the cabbage. They bring a hand-barrow, on which the paien is placed, armed with a spade, a rope, and a great basket. Four strong men carry him ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... course, be the patron and associate of murder also, the judge who sat upon the case, and the murderer who was on trial for his life before him, were boon-companions together, eating and drinking at the same table throughout the trial. Then came the conclusion of the farce—the uproar round the court-house during the trial, drowning the voice of the prosecutor while pleading, without the least attempt by the court to put it down—then the charge of the judge to the jury, and their unanimous verdict of acquittal—then the rush ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... scenery and the season, if the army had dreamed that the administration, which had launched it so recklessly into circumstances of such privation and danger, was about to turn its labors and sufferings into a farce, and to claim the approval of the country for an act of mistaken clemency, which was, in reality, a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... fully understand his feeling about it, which was that with the soiled experience of her marriage another ceremony with him would be a mere legal farce. To the pure idealism of his nature it seemed cleaner, nobler for them to take this step without any attempt to regularize it in the eyes of Society. To him she was justified in doing what she had done, in leaving her husband for him, and that would have ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... not graciously, but sourly. "Come, come, sir, that is a farce you and I have worn out this ten years. This is the London workman himself, come to excuse himself to Mary and Co., for not applying to them before: and the long and the short is, he offers the Handlers the same as he has the Smiths, fifteen down, and to pay his ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... keep off the constantly-recurring idea that something must be done to entertain himself. He shuddered to think where and what he should have been been, had not these gentlemen so providentially arrived. As for again repeating the farce of last year, he felt that it would no longer raise a smile. Yorkshire he shunned. Doncaster made him tremble. A week with the Duke of Burlington at Marringworth; a fortnight with the Fitz-pompeys at Malthorpe; a month with the Graftons at Cleve; and ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... is insufficient for the part. Furthermore, traditions have sprung up. The comic element has been suppressed and the piece has been denatured by this change. In Germany they conceived the idea of playing this farce seriously ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... one payment in full. That was denied me. God, or whoever was responsible, had my eyes knocked out, and made it impossible for ever. He or somebody must be enjoying the farce." ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... but true-hearted Yankee was regarded as one of the finest pieces of acting ever witnessed on the American stage, and drew crowded houses wherever he went. His range of characters included the most refined comedy and the broadest farce, but each delineation bore evidence of close and careful study, and was marked by great originality and delicacy. There was in his performances a freshness, a distinctiveness, and, above all, an entire freedom from any thing coarse or offensive, which charmed his audiences from the first. ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... it went 'los'; the farce quickened to drama. A couple of idle soldiers, rifle-less and armed only with the bayonets at their belts, had edged near the door; others had disappeared behind the house; Judas, mincing on his feet like a soubrette, moved briskly away; and the corporal, tossing the wreck of his onion from ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... came home on a vacation to-day, and was sitting up to watch father's melon-patch for the pure fun of it, expecting to catch some small boys, and when I caught you, I couldn't resist the temptation of a little farce. As for Amy, that only occurred to me at the last; and if you think it unfair, you ...
— Hooking Watermelons - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... farce," I exclaimed, harshly. "It shames humanity. Acknowledge yourself at once the faithful agent of a tyrant and felon, or a pair of them, and I shall respect you more. Confess that it was the voice of Basil ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... is dead." I had not the heart to talk of Spirits again; so we took to writing poetry together, every alternate line falling to my lot. It made an odd jingle, the sentimental first line being turned to broad farce by my absurd ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... did not find the joy of it. Vauxhall is a little better; for the garden is pleasanter, and one goes by water. Our operas are almost over; there were but three-and-forty people last night in the pit and boxes. There is a little simple farce at Drury Lane, called "Miss Lucy in Town," in which Mrs. Clive mimics the Muscovita admirably, and Beard, Amorevoli tolerably. But all the run is now after Garrick, a wine-merchant, who is turned player, at Goodman's fields. He plays all parts, ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... now! You seem to me quite sensible, Christine. You know what you are doing ... And meanwhile Mamma Valerius lies waiting for you at home and appealing to your 'good genius!' ... Explain yourself, Christine, I beg of you! Any one might have been deceived as I was. What is this farce?" ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... her and that's all—deeply and infernally sorry. I was a fool to have let her into it. My only excuse for being so blind was that damned fever that left me so weak. At any other time I would have seen what a farce it was. I wasn't booked for a life like that. It doesn't fit in with this job of mine." He smiled a little bitterly. "I used to say," he continued, "that if I had time I'd like to do something yellow enough so that ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... "jump in with me, and go back to the Captain's and assist me to back out, beg the pardon of Miss Figgles and her father, and terminate this unpleasant farce." ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... "If this farce continues longer than an hour and a half, I shall throw down my harp and go away," said Carlo, in a tone of severity. "I swear it to you by the spirit of my mother! Remember it; I shall show you the time every quarter of ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... he who is yet employed in groping for his premises, should keep his mind fluent and sensitive, keen to mark flaws, and willing to surrender untenable positions. He should keep himself teachable, or cease the expensive farce of being taught. It is to further this docile spirit that we desire to press the claims of debating societies. It is as a means of melting down this museum of premature petrifactions into living and impressionable soul that ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... head back, and was singing jubilantly at the top of her voice. The appositeness of the song had cheered her up. It seemed somehow to make her forebodings rather ridiculous, to reduce them to absurdity, to turn into farce the gathering tragedy which had ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... home at once. Dick has announced his engagement to an actress—a soubrette, too, in a farce-comedy. If it had been a woman who played Shakespeare, it would have been bad enough, but a girl who sings and dances and does all sorts of things, including wearing her dresses up-side down, as it were—that is, too high at the bottom and too low at the top—well, this is a little too ...
— The Smart Set - Correspondence & Conversations • Clyde Fitch
... be deeper and deeper." Mr. Tilley showed the great advantages which would accrue to New Brunswick eventually in consequence of confederation. He combated the statement made by Mr. Smith that after confederation the provincial legislature would become a mere farce, showing that of all the Acts passed during the previous two years there were only seven which would have come under the control of the general legislature. Mr. Tilley closed by dwelling on the impression of power which union would have on ...
— Wilmot and Tilley • James Hannay
... instead of which he sent some of his principal nobles, who said the king was apprehensive of being shot during the conference. Cortes engaged by the most solemn oaths that no injury should be offered, but all to no purpose. At this time two of these nobles played a most ridiculous farce: They took out from a sack a fowl, some bread, and a quantity of cherries, which they began to eat deliberately, as if to impress us with the belief that they had abundance of provisions. When Cortes found that the proposed conference was only ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... frontier. To march, not through peaceful lanes, but with all the care and precautions which a semi-hostile region necessitated; to encamp, not on the quiet village green where sentry-go might appear an unmeaning farce, but in close contact with a vigilant and active race of hard fighters, especially skilled in the arts of surprises and night-attacks; to be ready, always ready, with the readiness of those who meet difficulties half way,—such were the precepts which the hardy recruits ...
— The Story of the Guides • G. J. Younghusband
... exports. The subject is really one for knowledge, not for politicians. With great ceremony at intervals, they go through the highly superfluous performance of calling each other liars, as who should say that Queen Anne is dead: and while this tragical farce continues the question of vital imports and exports is ignored. Within it there lies the key to the Irish question, for instance, since no nation can be saved which persistently exports the best of its life. And in this question also lies the key to a great part of the woman question ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... Dick told in as dramatic a manner as possible how he had chased across the point upon hearing those shrill screams, she waited in real suspense until he described what really met his view upon bursting forth, and the change from impending tragedy to a farce was so great that Mrs. Morrison sank back in her chair, smiling, but looking a ...
— Dick the Bank Boy - Or, A Missing Fortune • Frank V. Webster
... some of the less-known departments of Greek literature by a well-preserved papyrus, which contains on one side a prose mime in two scenes, a work of the school of Sophron, having points of resemblance to the fifth mime of Herondas; while on the other side is an amusing farce, partly in prose, partly in verse. The scene is laid on the shores of the Indian Ocean, and the plot turns upon the rescue of a Greek maiden from the hands of barbarians, who speak a non-Greek language with elements apparently ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... any of your readers inform me who Newburgh Hamilton was? He wrote two pieces in my library, viz. (1.) Petticoat Plotter, a farce in two acts; acted at Drury Lane and Lincoln's Inn Fields, London, 1720, 12mo. This has been mutilated by Henry Ward, a York comedian, and actually printed by him as his own production, in the collection of plays and poems going under his name, published in 1745, 8vo., a copy of which ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 68, February 15, 1851 • Various
... the same month, President Lincoln, introducing his farce "of combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings," called forth the military of the several States to the number of seventy-five thousand, and commanded ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... these influences, mazed and confused by the subtleties and partial statements of the lawyers, these twelve honest but ignorant men were called upon to decide between physicians offering precisely opposite opinions. It is well when this so-called administration of justice ends as a monstrous farce ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... power of description, Chaucer's best quality is his humor, a humor which is hard to phrase, since it runs from the keenest wit to the broadest farce, yet is always kindly and human. A mendicant friar comes in out of the cold, glances about the snug kitchen ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... the farce "The Repulse of Vicksburg" into a tragedy for the Copperheads, taking that stronghold on July 4th, and Captain Winslow, with the Union man-of-war Kearsarge, meeting the Confederate privateer Alabama, off the coast of France, near Cherbourg, fought the famous ship to a finish and sunk her. ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... edicts; thus reducing the ancient legislative and consultative bodies to nullity, and substituting the will of an individual for a constitutional fabric. To criticise the expenses of government or to attempt interference with the increase of taxation became a sorry farce. The forms remained in certain provinces after the life had long since fled. Only in Arragon had the ancient privileges seemed to defy the absolute authority of the monarch; and it was reserved for Antonio Perez to be the cause of their final extirpation. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... this? I have heard of your shame, of your dishonour—of the disgraceful way in which you have entrapped my poor boy. But what is this farce enacted here? How dare you enter the House of God and forge this ridiculous statement? Where is my son, whom you have ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... the officers of the ship and of the artillery, and went off in high style, applauded, as it deserved to be applauded, with the loudest acclamations. The quarter-deck of a British line-of-battle ship has often enough been a stage for the exhibition of bloody tragedies; but to witness a comedy and a farce upon that stage, and in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, was delightful from its very singularity. When the performance came to an end, the stage was knocked down, the seats removed, and everything cleared for dancing. ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... respects than one, having at the time a powerful hold upon the popular imagination. We have had the Mikado's kingdom with its sunshine and flowers, its romantic chivalry, its geishas and continent and incontinent morals upon the stage before,—in the spoken drama, in comic operetta, in musical farce, and in serious musical drama. Messrs. Gilbert and Sullivan used its external motives for one of their finest satirical skits, an incomparable model in its way; but the parallel in serious opera was that created by ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... Fun is like cant, like humour, a word which is untranslatable. Fun is to farce what pepper is to salt. To get into a house and break a valuable mirror, slash the family portraits, poison the dog, put the cat in the aviary, is called "cutting a bit of fun." To give bad news which is untrue, whereby people put on mourning by mistake, is fun. It was fun to cut a square hole ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... all, my good man... What more do you want? The farce is over. I will only ask you to take this little note to Master Prasville, your employer. Clemence, please show Mr. Polonius out. And, if ever he calls again, fling open the doors wide to him. Pray look upon this as your home, Mr. Polonius. Your ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... who had listened, and observed with his usual acuteness, interrupted the farce at that moment by springing to the boat, and placing his fore paws in it, he gently seized the blanket in his mouth, and pulled it from her unresisting shoulders. A bark of pleasure succeeded this exploit, as he laid his ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... deadly tired of the farce. From first to last France had treated him with the blackest injustice. If he had wished to be rich, he could long ago have accumulated wealth by casting in his lot with the dishonest rulers of Quebec. In England a strong clique, headed by ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... everybody in the dining-room to hear. It's rich, I tell you, and if I didn't love you so devotedly, Edith, I'd be on my way at this very instant. There! I feel better. 'On my way' is the first American line I've had in the farce since we left Stuttgart. By the way, Edith, I'm afraid I'll have to punch Odell-Carney's confounded head before long. He's getting to be so friendly to me as Roxbury Medcroft that I can't endure ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... hearts! Every titled rascallion lied to his mistress; every noble blackguard professed to be a Darby for constancy and was a Jonathan Wild by instinct. If her ideals were raised so high, the worse for her; if a farce of a ceremony was regarded as tying an indissoluble knot—let her take example by the lady who thought herself the king's spouse; pish! there are ceremonies and ceremonies, and wives and wives; those of the hedge-concealed cottage and those ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... This piteous farce went on for forty-eight hours or more until at last the wretched Japhet, who was quite demoralized and in no mood for acting, betrayed us, exactly how I cannot remember. After this Maqueda would ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... lay rulers of Nepal judged more strictly; and as they knew that whatever proofs they might bring would produce no conviction, they probably deemed it quite unnecessary to put the parties to any trouble, or to go through the farce of a trial, where the measure to be adopted was predetermined; nor are the chiefs of Nepal men against whom any complaints of injustice are made by those under ...
— An Account of The Kingdom of Nepal • Fancis Buchanan Hamilton
... huge Monsieur Mollot, clerk of the court; "otherwise what is here taking place would be a mere farce; we should not be free in our action, in which case we might as well continue to do the will of Monsieur ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... him at the palace. The Spanish ambassador, De Silva, met him there at dinner. He talked freely of where he had been and of what he had done, only keeping back the gentle violence which he had used. He regarded this as a mere farce, since there had been no one hurt on either side. He boasted of having given the greatest satisfaction to the Spaniards who had dealt with him. De Silva could but bow, report to his master, and ask instructions ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... of St James's and Whitehall were exempted from the operation of this statute, so long as the sovereign was actually resident within them—which last clause probably showed that the entire Draconian enactment was but a farce. It is quite certain that it was inoperative, and that it did no more than express the conscience of the legislature—in deference to ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... at once it was presenting to them a barrier which preserved the besieged from their blows. Three or four went off to find instruments with which to break it down and meanwhile the rest of the attacking farce kept ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - KARL-LUDWIG SAND—1819 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... his mother miserable, almost commanding her to use her authority, declaring that it would be her fault if this farce went on,—this disreputable farce he called it; while poor Mrs. Warrender, now as much opposed to it as he, had to bear the brunt of his objurgations until she was driven to make a stand upon the very arguments which she most disapproved. In the midst of all this ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... is full of apes, which have Their own gods and worship; how ghastly, this!— That demons (for it must be so) should build, In mockery of man's upward faith, the souls Of monkeys, those lewd mammets of mankind, Into a dreadful farce of adoration! And flies! a land of flies! where the hot soil Foul with ceaseless decay steams into flies! So thick they pile themselves in the air above Their meal of filth, they seem like breathing heaps Of formless life mounded upon the earth; And buzzing always like ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... once enact a bag-limit law that will do some good, instead of the statutory farce now on the books. Make it fifteen birds per day of waterfowl, all species combined, and ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... of this picture are not charged. To assert that all these cases are common would be an exaggeration, but to say that an unfeeling landlord will do all this with impunity, is to keep strictly to truth: and what is liberty but a farce and a jest, if its blessings are received as the favour of kindness and humanity, instead of ...
— A Tour in Ireland - 1776-1779 • Arthur Young
... the farce of state and public business, the emperor Diocletian resigned the imperial diadem, and was succeeded by Constantius and Galerius; the former a prince of the most mild and humane disposition and the latter equally remarkable for his cruelty and tyranny. These divided the empire ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... was upon the brink of ruin. Beautru and Nogent acted the part of buffoons, and to please the Queen, personated old Broussel's nurse (for he was eighty years of age), stirring up the people to sedition, though both of them knew well enough that their farce might perhaps soon end in ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... and sea air, for an instant, all the tropical terrors of his own idle tale surrounded and suffocated him. It seemed indeed some demon tree of the swamps; a vegetable serpent that fed on men. Even the hideous farce in the fancy of digesting a whole man with the exception of his hat, seemed only to simplify the nightmare. And he found himself gazing dully at one leaf of the tree, which happened to be turned toward ...
— The Trees of Pride • G.K. Chesterton
... still, were utterly estranged from each other. Some few score of years afterwards, when all the parties represented are grown old, what bitter satire there is in those flaunting childish family-portraits, with their farce of sentiment and smiling lies, and innocence so self-conscious and self-satisfied. Osborne's own state portrait, with that of his great silver inkstand and arm-chair, had taken the place of honour in the dining-room, ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... January he called upon me one morning before I was up, and, on my entering the room, I recognized my old acquaintance, dressed in a rusty, full-trimmed black suit, with his pockets full of papers, which instantly reminded me of the poet in Garrick's farce of Lethe. After we had finished our breakfast he drew from his pocket part of a tragedy, which he said he had brought for my correction. In vain I pleaded inability, when he began to read; and every part on which I expressed a doubt as to the propriety was immediately blotted out. ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... was performed, at the Theatre, Dorset Garden, her play. The False Count, or a New Way to Play an Old Game. The prologue attacks the Whigs most furiously, and the epilogue, spoken by Mrs. Barry, is very indecent. The plot of this play, or rather farce, is very improbable, and the language is more than free. Julia, in love with Don Carlos, afterwards Governor of Cadiz, was forced by her father to marry Francisco, a rich old man, formerly a leather-seller; ...
— The Pretentious Young Ladies • Moliere
... reply. Here was one cause of his disinclination to meet his wife—having to keep up the farce of Dr. Ashton's action. It seemed, however, that there would no longer be any farce to keep up. Had it exploded? He said nothing. Maude gazing at him from the sofa on which she sat, her dark eyes looking larger than of yore, ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... strict limitations, and that the Emperor was to resume the government so soon as his health would allow. The Bishop of Arras and Don Juan de Manrique had both assured him, he said, that Charles would not, on any account, definitely abdicate. Manrique even asserted that it was a mere farce to believe in any such intention. The Emperor ought to remain to protect his son, by the resources of the Empire, against France, the Turks, and the heretics. His very shadow was terrible to the Lutherans, and ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... learned to love him one summer, when he made them a visit. That was before Trix caught him; and when she heard that piece of news, Polly could n't unlove him all at once, though she tried very hard, as was her duty. That engagement was such a farce, that she never had much faith in it, so she put her love away in a corner of her heart, and tried to forget it, hoping it would either die, or have a right to live. It did n't make her very miserable, because patience, work, and common-sense lent her a hand, and ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... winced and Margaret blushed, but Rita continued her direct gaze at her uncle and gave no sign,—"and to pass (by a way that has not yet been discovered) to and from the White Rooms. I intended to keep up this little farce for a few weeks only, but somehow the time has slipped by, and each day has brought you some new occupation which I was loath to interrupt. Lately, I confess, there has been a new incentive to secrecy, and perhaps—Rita—perhaps I may have been boy enough, old as I am, to enjoy ...
— Three Margarets • Laura E. Richards
... ready their pistols, while in their rear, marines and pikemen, musket and rifle armed, snap their pieces, and pour into an imaginary foe a vast volley of imaginary balls; then pierce the air with savage bayonet thrusts. The farce, and yet a most useful farce, is gone through with. The retreat is ordered to be beat, and all retire; refill the armory with their deadly rifles and side arms, and then return to their respective watches, work, or recreation—some gathering round a canvas checker board; some polishing ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... the sun at noonday. Acquitted. The jury said, 'Not guilty'; and the man went quietly home. The administration of justice with a weak judge, or with a strong judge who feels a weak Government behind him, is a farce in Ireland. ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... exercised your imagination quite sufficiently. Then you intend to keep up this farce ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... Duvall remarked, indifferently, then turned to the doctor. "Now, monsieur, let us have done with this farce as quickly as possible. I have ...
— The Ivory Snuff Box • Arnold Fredericks |
