"Amusingly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... strong. A first-classman—cadet officers are selected from this class—looks down upon lower grade men, while second-class cadets view their juniors with something nearly allied to contempt, and third-class men are amusingly patronizing in their treatment of 'plebes' or new-comers. For the first year of their Academy life the 'plebes' have rather a hard time of it; but no sooner do they emerge from their chrysalis state than they are as hard upon their unfortunate successors as the third-class ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... Blair smiled, frankly pleased. "Not that I'm a bit of an Anglo-maniac," she hastened to affirm, "but, do you know," she leaned toward Danvers in an amusingly confidential way, "I've always felt mortified over my throaty voice—that ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... the shrimps had long since amused Lady Martin's large circle of acquaintances; and although no one had ventured to breathe a word before either Owen Rose or his wife, it was hardly surprising that Toni came to be considered rather amusingly unsophisticated; so that the slightest gaucherie into which the unconscious Toni was betrayed during those first weeks of her introduction into the society of the district was eagerly noted and joyfully magnified ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... recollections of Rochester and Chatham are amusingly confused, or rather, in defiance of all known regulations. Thus, at the Ball, we find Colonel Bulder as "head of the garrison"—one would think at so important a quarter, where there was a large garrison, a General at least ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... her own way. Binet, who remained in the room and took notes, recounts with playful humor how the teachers were unavoidably compelled to resort to the much-abused test method, although their attempts at using it were sometimes, from the psychologist's point of view, amusingly clumsy. ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... who maintain a current of personal interest in their adventures, or in the selecting from their private experience, he is the most learned; whilst of learned guides he is, in the sense explained, the most amusingly personal. ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... hardly one now of the American naturalists of my generation whom Agassiz did not train. Nay, more; he said to every one that a year or two of natural history, studied as he understood it, would give the best training for any kind of mental work. Sometimes he was amusingly naif in this regard, as when he offered to put his whole Museum at the disposition of the Emperor of Brazil if he would but come and labor there. And I well remember how certain officials of the Brazilian empire smiled at the cordiality with which he pressed upon them a similar ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... [Footnote 8: Often amusingly illustrated, M.E., p. 390. A translation into Japanese of Goethe's Reynard the Fox is among the popular works of the day. "Strange to say, however, the Japanese lose much of the exquisite humor of this satire in their sympathy with ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... death, just preceded mine. 'I must speak,' he said to me, 'on those damned Special Reservists;' and speak he did for a good, well-sustained half-hour, going out as soon as he had finished." He had been with us at Dockett. He and Sir Charles sparred continually and amusingly, both equally aggressive, imperious, stentorian, iterative, each insistent on his own declamation and inattentive to ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... should see. His talk was an odd mixture of almost boyish garrulity and of the reserve and discretion of the man of the world, and he seemed to Newman, as afterwards young members of the Latin races often seemed to him, now amusingly juvenile and now appallingly mature. In America, Newman reflected, lads of twenty-five and thirty have old heads and young hearts, or at least young morals; here they have young heads and very aged hearts, morals the ...
— The American • Henry James
... Lagune's face lingered amusingly in Lewisham's mind as he returned to Clapham. But after a time that amusement passed away. He declined upon the extraordinary fact that Chaffery was his father-in-law, Mrs. Chaffery his mother-in-law, that these two and Ethel constituted his family, his clan, and that grimy graceless house ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... administered to an absent foe through the medium of an old coat which is imagined to cover him. The principle involved here is one which is doubtless familiar to most children, and is closely akin to that which Irving so amusingly illustrates in his doughty general who struts through a field of cabbages or corn-stalks, smiting them to earth with his cane, and imagining himself a hero of chivalry conquering single-handed a host of caitiff ruffians. Of like origin are the ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... time, she found herself close to a Frenchman without feeling either uncomfortably or amusingly aware of a steady, unwinking stare. It was quite an odd sensation to find ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... Anthony Wood is amusingly illustrated in two passages from his notice of Earle. "John Earle received his first being in this vain and transitory world within the city of York.... His elegy on Beaumont was printed at the end of the quarto edition of Beaumont's poems—put out with a poetical epistle ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... say he looked extremely handsome and very amusingly like the marble statue with its nose in the air to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Jack, my horse, quite converted, my wife rides him now, and he is as steady as a doctor's cob; Tifaga Jack, a circus horse, my mother's piebald, bought from a passing circus; Belle's mare, now in childbed or next door, confound the slut! Musu—amusingly translated the other day "don't want to," literally cross, but always in the sense of stubbornness and resistance—my wife's little dark-brown mare, with a white star on her forehead, whom I have been riding of late to steady her—she has no vices, but is unused, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... passage of vehicles and keep an open thoroughfare. Thousands of country peasants poured into the city, the boys of whom were seen in all directions, blowing distressingly through hollow ox-horns. Altogether, the spirit of nonsense which animated the crowd, displayed itself very amusingly. ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... was deposed by Warren Hastings on account of his refusal to comply with the demands of the British Government. In Macaulay's famous Essay on Warren Hastings there is a long narrative of this contest, which is amusingly at variance with the narrative given by Warren Hastings himself. This building is still called Cheit-Singh's Palace, but since his day it has been the property of the British Government, and has been for ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... that to the best of his remembrance he had never but once seen this before.[1091] During the next reign the custom was more common, but was looked upon as a decided mark of High Churchmanship. There is an expressive, and amusingly inconsequential 'though' in the following note from Thoresby's Diary for June 17, 1722: 'Mr. Rhodes preached well (though in his surplice).'[1092] In villages, however, it was very frequently worn, not ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... as they entered their room, called to John's recollection the Italian's account of how he had once bought a tarpaulin hat and a cottonade shirt of the pattern called a "jumper," and had worked as a deck-hand in loading and unloading steam-boats. It was so amusingly sensible to put on the proper badge for the kind of work sought. Richling mused. Many a dollar he might have earned the past summer, had he been as ingeniously ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... those exquisitely finished pieces of mimicry, the "Condensed Novelists" of the Californian Harte, would feel its want of fidelity to the method and style of the author burlesqued. Yet the essential absurdities of "Griffith Gaunt" are most amusingly brought out in "Liffith Lank"; and as the little work makes the reader laugh at the great one, he has no right, perhaps, to ask more of it, or to complain that it trusts too much to the facile pun for its effects, which are ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... the French side of the stream. About a hundred and fifty of the Old Guard ran into a street, of which the further end was barricaded. Mr Grattan, whose account of the affair is a graphic and interesting piece of military narrative, is amusingly cool and naif in referring to this incident. "Mistakes of this kind," he says, "will sometimes occur, and when they do, the result is easily imagined.... In the present instance, every man was put to death; but our soldiers, as soon as they had leisure, paid the enemy that respect ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... perfectly uneumoirous week among my friends and social acquaintances. I had stood godfather to my sister Agatha's fifth child, taking upon myself obligations which I shall never be able to perform; I had dined amusingly at my sister Jane's; I had shot pheasants at Farfax Glenn's place in Hampshire; and I had paid a long-promised charming country-house visit to ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... time that this young man should be described. He was the type usually called healthy and "clean-minded." He loved all sports and all kinds of exercise, particularly walking, and he could talk about these out-of-door occupations fairly amusingly. He was fair, blue-eyed, clean-shaven, and healthy-looking, and he believed in the possibility of being a "pal" to a girl,—particularly if she happened to be a flapper. His age ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... of that amusingly inconsistent, however well-meant, scene in Coningsby, in which Mr. Lyle is represented as trying to restore 'the independent order of peasantry,' by making them the receivers of public alms at his own gate, as if they had been middle-age serfs or vagabonds, and ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... under restraint also, and the burden of the talk fell upon Congdon, who proceeded in his amusingly hit-or-miss way to detail the important or humorous happenings, of the town, and so they rolled along up the wide avenue to the big stone steps before the looming, lamp-lit ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... which originated with a Richmond paper." Governor Marcy used to joke Mr. Mason a good deal on the forwardness of the Old Dominion, the mother of Presidents, in urging the claims of her children for Federal office—a propensity which was amusingly illustrated at a private dinner where they were both in attendance. "How strange it is, Mason," said he, "that out of the thousands of fat appointments we have had to make, there is not one that Virginia does not furnish a candidate ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... efforts to be concrete they will make their creeds amusingly simian. Consider the simian amorousness of Jupiter, and the brawls on Olympus. Again, in the old Jewish Bible, what tempts the first pair? The Tree of Knowledge, of course. It appealed to the curiosity of their nature, and ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day
... these active little troops, we took local volunteers, whom we found a very poor substitute. On more than one occasion when we came upon the brigands in a farm, they thought themselves sufficiently strong to hold it against us, and once the cowardice of the volunteers was amusingly illustrated. The band was estimated at about 200, and we had 100 volunteers and a detachment of 50 cavalry. On coming under the fire of the brigands, the cavalry captain, who was in command, ordered the volunteers to charge, intending when they had dislodged the enemy to ride him down ...
— Fashionable Philosophy - and Other Sketches • Laurence Oliphant
... other hand, my supposed safeguard of drudgery has been cut off at the meter by that amusingly short-sighted old Conspirator, it will be only fair to notify him that his age and experience, even his captivating habits and well-known hospitality, will be treated with scorn, rather than respect, in the paragraphs which he virtually forces me to write; and he is hereby invited to view his ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... the most exquisite books of the present year is Mr. Henry Blackburn's volume, "The Pyrenees;" it is brightly, amusingly, and intelligently written.'—Daily News. ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... Repetto came in alone. Her husband was at Mr. Keytel's; but she said she was not going to forsake old friends. She generally talks very amusingly. This time she informed us "Mr. Keytel was a cunning rat," which she intended as a compliment to his discernment. She loves to talk about her children, and told an amusing story of one of her little boys. ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow
... leave his bank in New York—in fact, the moment he had retired from business—he had realised his dream and come to live in London. And Harry seemed to him the incarnation of everything delightfully, amusingly English. He had a real hero-worship for Harry, who was so astonishingly clever as well. Van Buren was not a snobbish Anglomaniac, at least his snobbishness was not of the common quality nor about ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... same time congenial company. Because he was completely sincere and unaffected, his friends felt no self-consciousness in the presence of "the cloth." They in turn could be candid with him. This fact was once amusingly demonstrated when the music at Christ Church was not at its customary high standard, and Mr. Nelson, happening to meet a parishioner who had not been in church for some time, asked her why, and enjoyed a good chuckle over her reply: "Oh! I ...
— Frank H. Nelson of Cincinnati • Warren C. Herrick
... joining Bud Jessup and trying while helping him to get a chance to discuss some of the things he had learned from Bemis. But somehow he found himself working beside McCabe, and when the fence had been put up again and they started home, it was Slim who rode beside him, chatting volubly and amusingly, ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... heard incessantly; and he was leaping about with the utmost activity, multiplying himself, after the manner of great commanders, as if his universal presence and supervision were of the last necessity. His commands were rather amusingly inconsistent; for when he saw that the men would not do as he told them, he wisely accommodated himself to circumstances, and with the utmost vehemence ordered them to do precisely that which they were at the time engaged upon, ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... put an audience in such a good humor that the somewhat trivial play itself seemed better than it really was. Certainly no European playwright could have seen the ludicrous possibilities of evening dress as amusingly as Mr. Armstrong did. Perchance Mr. Bernard Shaw might have done so, but his cynicism would have marred the prospect. There was no "pose" in the ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... ROACH, the droll of the Irish bar, sent an amusingly equivocal invitation to an Irish nobleman of his acquaintance: "I hope, my Lord, if ever you come within a mile of my house, that you'll stay there all night." When he was suffering from an attack of gout, ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... from his revery by the voice of Faria, who, having also been visited by his jailer, had come to invite his fellow-sufferer to share his supper. The reputation of being out of his mind, though harmlessly and even amusingly so, had procured for the abbe unusual privileges. He was supplied with bread of a finer, whiter quality than the usual prison fare, and even regaled each Sunday with a small quantity of wine. Now this was a Sunday, and the abbe had come to ask his young companion ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... during this debate is worthy of record here; Mr. Bernard Osborne "grew amusingly sarcastic at the expense of the government, though he paid at the same time a great compliment to Mr. Gladstone. He likened the Cabinet to a museum of curiosities, in which there were some birds of rare and noble plumage, both alive and stuffed. There had been a difficulty, unfortunately, ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... and nobody who knows the character of the people will attempt to do it. Unquestionably there is no such country in the world for anomalies of all kinds. Cosas de Espana! as Captain Widdrington amusingly enough says, when he meets with some huge piece of inconsistency that astonishes even him, accustomed though he be to the most contradictory vagaries on the part of his Iberian friends. And it is exactly what intelligent Spaniards themselves say, when similar absurdities on the part of their ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... dance a short time after this took place in honour of those who had been killed in the late fight. The dancers were grotesquely got up, and are amusingly described by Mr Baker. "Each man had about a dozen huge ostrich feathers in his helmet, a leopard or monkey-skin hung from his shoulders, while a large iron bell was strapped to his loins like a woman's bustle. This ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... well satisfied with her work, and completed preparations for the Whole World's Temperance Convention, which was held in New York, September 1 and 2. Her zeal is amusingly illustrated by her proposal to invite Victor Hugo and Harriet Martineau to speak. It was a splendid assemblage, addressed by the leading men and women of the day, the large hall packed at every session, ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... coffee, just prepared for our benefit. Of these good things we ate almost immoderately, for it was the only warm meal we had made for several days. While preparing it, and after dinner, Lincoln entertained them, and they entertained us for a couple of hours very amusingly." Kindly human companionship was a luxury in that green wilderness, and was readily ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... displayed shortly after by the government obliged the university to give up this scheme, and was probably the cause of Pierre d'Ailly's temporary retirement to Noyon, where he held a canonry. There he continued the struggle for his side in a humorous work, in which the partisans of the council are amusingly taken to task by the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... few pretentious incapables who, instead of conquering predominance, as they who deserve it always do, like men, are whimpering like babies after dearly coveted but utterly unattainable enjoyments—to be had at the expense of the interests of the Negroes whom they, rather amusingly, affect to despise. When Mr. Froude shall have become able to present for the world's contemplation a question respecting which the Anglo-Saxon family, in its grand world-wide predominance, and the African family, in its yet feeble, albeit promising, incipience of self-adjustment, ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... laughing eyes. Who can tell how a girl first becomes conscious of the fact that a young man loves her? The Comtesse also welcomed Neal. She set herself to please and flatter him. At dinner she talked brightly and amusingly. It seemed to Neal that she talked brilliantly. She told stories of the old French life. She related her recent experiences of English society. She rallied Lord Dunseveric on his grave dignity of manner. She drew laughter again and again from Una ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... more amusingly than he wrote," explained Joan. "Get Boswell's Life of him. Or I'll lend you mine," she added, "if you'll be careful of it. You'll find all the passages marked that are best worth remembering. At least, ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... from which we had just escaped, and at the hands of the Ferrarese, into which we were rushing (at the rate of five miles scant an hour), that I was almost minded to stop between the nests of those brigands and pass the rest of my days at Rovigo, where the honest man lived. His talk was amusingly instructive, and went to illustrate the strong municipal spirit which still dominates all Italy, and which is more inimical to an effectual unity among Italians than Pope or Kaiser has ever been. Our honest man of Rovigo was a foreigner at Padua, ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... fresh from a Western home, who is suddenly dropped into the turmoil of his opening year at a great Eastern college. From the moment that "Mamma left for home" right up to Class Day, the author chronicles minutely and most amusingly the experiences ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... ironical. I am not saying that every one of the thirty-seven chapters is on the same high level. "Befriending Her Ladyship," for instance, a story that tells how a cottage-dweller repaid in kind the interfering house-inspection of the lady from the Hall, though amusingly told, is neither original in idea nor quite fair in execution. Throughout I found indeed that Mr. LYONS'S natural good-humour and sympathy were severely tried when they came in contact with squires and the ruling classes; and that now and then he was ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 26, 1916 • Various
... had it possessed any, might have been repeated pat. But it was evident that the boy was putting a devastating strain upon an unexuberant and tardy wit when he endeavoured to ascribe to it a literary rendering. His hesitancy and contradictions were at least amusingly ingenuous. ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... and frightful exception darkly demanded by the gods. History says nothing; and legends all say that the earth was kinder in its earliest time. There is no tradition of progress; but the whole human race has a tradition of the Fall. Amusingly enough, indeed, the very dissemination of this idea is used against its authenticity. Learned men literally say that this pre-historic calamity cannot be true because every race of mankind remembers it. I cannot keep pace with ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... known as college spirit. His whole figure was expressive of a benign goodness, illuminated most humanly by the worldly wisdom of an old diplomat. His ability to deal with those who came to him on various errands was remarkable. This is amusingly illustrated by the experience of one man who went to him to present his claims for an increase in salary. His memories of the interview were most delightful but exceedingly hazy as to the matter in question. ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... party of malcontents, of which number Dampier was one, went off on their own account in a launch and two canoes from the Island of Plate, made famous by Drake, and landed on the mainland near Cape San Lorenzo. The march across the Isthmus of Darien has been amusingly recounted by the surgeon of the party, Lionel Wafer, in his book entitled "A New Voyage and Description of the Isthmus of America," ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... be sent out to the country-house on purpose for him. The two companions went to the Kalitines' together, and spent the evening there, but not quite so pleasantly as on the previous occasion. Panshine was there, talking a great deal about his journey, and very amusingly mimicking the various proprietors he had met, and parodying their conversation. Lavretsky laughed, but Lemm refused to come out of his corner, where he remained in silence, noiselessly working his limbs like a spider, and wearing a dull and sulky look. It was ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... preeminence over all others, this untitled gentleman from a new, almost unknown, country, was easily and quickly one of the most brilliant members. Utterly unawed by the splendid company in which he found himself, he valued it at its true worth and was keenly and amusingly observant of its pretensions, its shams, its flippancy, its instability, its charm. Soon he had become as great a favorite as Mr. Jefferson himself, though winning his enviable position by qualities the very opposite of that gentleman's. Mr. Morris ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... at his gentle craft all day - "No doubt you mean his Cal-craft," you amusingly will say - But, no—he didn't operate with common bits of string, He was a Public Headsman, ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... course understand that these facts are not by any means inconsistent with that very sparing use of pronouns so amusingly discussed in Percival Lowell's "Soul of the Far East." In societies where subjection is extreme "there is an avoidance of the use of personal pronouns," though, as Herbert Spencer points out in illustrating this law, it is just among such societies ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... such experiment, and that factor, forgotten by philosophers of this kind, is human nature. Mr. Frankfort Moore years ago wrote a pleasant story, called "The Marriage Lease," in which doctrinaire legislation of a somewhat similar kind was described, and its inevitable failure most amusingly depicted. The war disposes of another of the President's maxims (S., p. 10), that the decline in the birth-rate of a country is nothing to be grieved about, and that "the slightest acquaintance with biology" shows that ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... at it, well, in that case, the king will be humiliated before the whole court; and what a delightful story it will be, too, for him to whom I am really attached, in fact part of my dowry for my husband, to have the adventure to relate of the monarch who was so amusingly deceived by ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... not hold his tongue easily. He certainly does not, and when it wags it wags foolishly, and, as he admits, maliciously, albeit sometimes amusingly, and with superficial brilliance. He says the Irish do not consider England their country yet. Of course they do not. Why should the Irish consider themselves English? Neither do the Scots, nor the Welsh, nor the Canadians, nor will they ever so think. But they are all ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... by some good covering help wonderfully to keep voices pitched low. I have seen this illustrated almost amusingly in Newark, where frequent visits of large classes were made from the schools to the public library. The tramp of forty or fifty pairs of feet in the marble corridors made such a noise that the legitimate questions and answers of ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... condemning the principle that Christians are tied to the O.T. canon, rather amusingly supposes: "Wenn Jemand sich bei den Juden jetzt als Prophet geltend machen und ein Buch schreiben würdem so müsste es nach diesem Grundsatz von den Protestanten als kanonisch wohl anerkannt werden" (Esther und Susanna, Würzburg, 1892, p. 140). But such argument ...
— The Three Additions to Daniel, A Study • William Heaford Daubney
... provoking discussion. So earnestly and logically (for he was a good dialectician) would he carry on the discussion that it was difficult to believe that he did not really hold the opinions for which he so pertinaciously contended. Sometimes this habit of mind reacted very amusingly upon himself, as the following will show. The subject fixed one Friday evening for debate in the discussion class was, "Have animals souls?" Though fully accepting the common belief that they have not, Gilmour, purely for the sake of argument, took the affirmative, and with ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... is called throughout The Ring), the use of which Siegfried now learns for the first time. It is of course part of the bargain that Gunther shall give his sister to Siegfried in marriage. On that they swear blood-brotherhood; and at this opportunity the old operatic leaven breaks out amusingly in Wagner. With tremendous exordium of brass, the tenor and baritone go at it with a will, showing off the power of their voices, following each other in canonic imitation, singing together in thirds and sixths, and finishing with a lurid unison, quite in the manner of Ruy Gomez and Ernani, or ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... extremis who persuades his attractive nurse into a death-bed marriage, treatment that the slightest experience of fiction should have warned her to be invariably curative. Perhaps the best of the tales is "Jane," which tells very amusingly the results of a hospital strike that in actual life would, I imagine, have provided little humorous relief. By this time you may have gathered that what matters about Mrs. RINEHART is not what she says but the way ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 14th, 1920 • Various
... who was in many respects very different from all the others. I think her age must have been at least thirty-five. I did not ask if it were so; and as she never mentioned it herself, that circumstance was hint enough for me to remain silent. I never could understand why so many women are so amusingly anxious to conceal their age, sometimes becoming quite affronted when even a conjecture is hazarded on the subject. This lady was unmarried; perhaps that may have been one reason for her unwillingness to speak of her age. But was not I unmarried, and what ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... fishing places, there were only about a dozen men and boys and rather more women and girls with an extra sprinkling of lively and healthy-looking babies. Most were characterized by an air of independence amusingly illustrated at the close by the oldest man, who asked aloud when the visitor from London was going ...
— With the Harmony to Labrador - Notes Of A Visit To The Moravian Mission Stations On The North-East - Coast Of Labrador • Benjamin La Trobe
... dead birds, &c, &c. On the 3rd, the present Lord Chancellor born in 1825—the name of GIFFARD entombed in Hals-bury. A little obscure this, but, if carefully worked out, will amply repay time and attention. On the 9th THOMAS WATTS (who may be amusingly called "Watts-his-name"), died in 1869. Not much in this, but may possibly fill up an awkward pause during the reading of a will, or the arrival of fresh hot water at a newly-married lady's initial hospitality at ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., January 3, 1891. • Various
... to know how I got on with her peasant sister and all I could say in return for that inquiry was that the peasant sister was in her own way amiable. At this she clicked her tongue amusingly and repeated a remark she had made before: "She likes young men. The younger the better." The mere thought of those two women being sisters aroused one's wonder. Physically they were altogether of different design. It ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... house was in commotion. Messages went forth for nurses and medicines and the paraphernalia of a luxurious sick-chamber, and-the lady of the house being absurdly anxious—for a great London specialist, whose fee, in Dr. Fuller's quiet eyes, would be amusingly fantastic. ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... Australian nationality. Mr. Jebb, in his "Colonial Nationalism," gives an interesting account of this movement and of its organ, the widely circulated Sydney Bulletin, with its furiously anti-British views, its Radicalism, its Republicanism, and what not. He shows amusingly how entirely harmless the propaganda really was, and what a healthy effect it actually had in promoting an independence of feeling and national self-respect among Australians, to such a degree that when the South African War broke out, there was a universal outburst ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... streets did not cut this block of houses into too disproportionate slices. The forty-two colleges were scattered about in a fairly equal manner, and there were some everywhere. The amusingly varied crests of these beautiful edifices were the product of the same art as the simple roofs which they overshot, and were, actually, only a multiplication of the square or the cube of the same geometrical figure. Hence ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... Arezzo, the friar who is kindly but fears the world and all the busy-bodies of this provincial town. Arezzo, its characters and indwellers, stand in clear light. The most vivid of these sketches is Dominus Hyacinthus, the lawyer who defends Guido. I do not know anything better done, and more amusingly, than this man and his household—a paternal creature, full of his boys and their studies, making us, in his garrulous pleasure, at home with them and his fat wife. Browning was so fond of this sketch that he drew him and his boys over ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... to examine was an identification folder done up in oiled fabric. Thanks to German thoroughness it was amusingly complete. On the first page appeared what I soon discovered to be pedigree for four generations back. The printed form on which all this was minutely filled out made very clear statements from which I determined that my father ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... of the young poet must often have been regarded as self-conscious attitudinizing by his neighbours—especially by the "stupid stout woman" who lived in the villa next to his father's, and who, as he amusingly ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... of interesting things here. Come into what I call my study—although," continued he, with a laugh, "I am afraid I don't get through much study. I am too busy to write, you know," he rambled on in a voice and manner that was amusingly reminiscent of "Walker London." So into the study we went, encountering on our way a big Australian black bird, which was wandering about the house in an aimless and irresponsible fashion, crooning to itself ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... against me you can pull me for it," he said insolently: "that's your business. As to the profession I followed before I started on that career of crime which brought me into contact with the crude representatives of what is amusingly called 'the law,' is entirely ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... all sporting books ever written, Campbell's 'Old Forest Ranger,' there is an amusingly-told bit with reference to this habit of cub-carrying which I am sure my readers will forgive me for extracting. Old Dr. Jock M'Phee had been knocked over by a she-bear, and is relating his grievances ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... trips is amusingly set forth in one of the most lively and characteristic of his Epistles—the fifteenth of the first book. In this he inquires of a friend what sort of winter weather is to be found at Velia and ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 429 - Volume 17, New Series, March 20, 1852 • Various
... thicket; the watercourses teemed with beaver, otter, and muskrat, as well as with shad and other delicious fish. Panthers, wildcats, and wolves overran the country; and the veracious Brother Joseph, while near the present Wilkesboro, amusingly records: "The wolves wh. are not like those in Germany, Poland and Lifland (because they fear men and don't easily come near) give us such music of six different cornets the like of wh. I have never heard in my life." So plentiful was the game that the wild ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... perverseness of some minds is amusingly illustrated by Southey, in his History of Brazil. After referring to Amerigo Vespucci's statements regarding the lascivious practices of the aboriginals, he exclaims, in a footnote: "This is false! Man has never yet been discovered in such a state of depravity!" What the navigators wrote regarding ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... know the why, or when, or where, but at last we see the lights of heaven looming on our horizon and are at the haven where we would be. Then we realize that all the time He was guiding us by ways that we knew not! In the evening we heard an auction amusingly carried on, though I did not approve of the gambling connected with it; and then Mr. Barrett gave a short account of apparitions, and there was ...
— The British Association's visit to Montreal, 1884: Letters • Clara Rayleigh
... Hohenloe, himself, perform a miracle more cleverly; for she bounced almost as high as the ceiling, and flounced about the room, as well and as actively as ever she did, with a countenance in which shame, anger, and a great portion of natural humour were so amusingly blended, that I was tempted to provoke her still further by a salute. Having thus satisfied the mother that I had been the means of restoring her daughter to her usual state of health, she thought it prudent to put the best face upon it, and, therefore, invited me to partake of their family dinner; ...
— Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands - from 1809 to 1815 • Captain J. Kincaid
... then be reduced almost wholly to vowel sounds, and from the lips of some speakers it is really no more consonantal than if it came from the beaks of birds. They do not lisp the soft c or the z, as the Castilians do, but hiss them, and lisp the s instead, as the reader will find amusingly noted in the Sevillian chapters of The Sister of San Sulpice, which are the most charming chapters of that most charming novel. At the stations there were sometimes girls and sometimes boys with water for sale from stone bottles, who walked by the cars crying it; and there were bits ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... Thence he went to the Edinburgh Academy, where he was the classmate of Tait and Clerk Maxwell, bore away many prizes, and was once unjustly flogged by Rector Williams. He used to insist that all his bad schoolfellows had died early, a belief amusingly characteristic of the man's consistent optimism. In 1846 the mother and son proceeded to Frankfort-on-the-Main, where they were soon joined by the father, now reduced to inaction and to play something like third fiddle in his narrow household. The emancipation of the slaves had deprived them ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... outside. It is a great consumer of fuel, and radiates but little heat. By dint of constant wooding I contrived to warm mine; but my Italian friends always avoided its vicinity when they came to see me, and most amusingly regarded my determination to be comfortable as part of the eccentricity inseparable from ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... have been of the haziest character imaginable. As it was, they were able to take their departure through the main entrance with some show of dignity, and not in a less imposing manner (as the Committee—Cook's Gallery near the Dining-rooms—ho! ho! ho! ha! ha! ha!—would probably and amusingly ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 100, May 9, 1891 • Various
... has kept throughout such rigid terms with his model that the result is literally uninhabitable to degenerate moderns. It is simply a massive facsimile, an elegant museum of archaic images, mainly but most amusingly counterfeit, perched on a spur of the Apennines. The place is most politely shown. There is a charming cloister, painted with extremely clever "quaint" frescoes, celebrating the deeds of the founders of the castle—a ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... short but successful Italian campaign. The paper was referred to the proper authorities, and, a fortnight later, its writer received peremptory orders to join his corps in the west. What could be more amusingly characteristic of this persistent man than to read, in a letter to Joseph under date of the following day, August twentieth: "I am attached at this moment to the topographical bureau of the Committee of Safety for the direction of the armies in Carnot's ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... judgment of the requirements of a profession is oftentimes most amusingly erroneous. We remember a father who told us that he was quite certain that his son was born to be a ruler of men. When we asked why, he told us in all seriousness that from early childhood his boy's ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... Amusingly enough, I didn't actually know at the time that it meant "What's the matter?" I had an idea it was a liberal translation of "Who's looney now?" And that seemed ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... his dinner party, himself included, should not fall below the number of the Graces—nor exceed that of the Muses. In the whole economy of his household arrangements, and especially of his dinner parties, there was something peculiar and amusingly opposed to the usual conventional restraints of society; not, however, that there was any neglect of decorum, such as sometimes occurs in houses where there are no ladies to impress a better tone upon the manners. The invariable routine was this: The moment ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... and England. Hence, in condemning General Jackson, Mr. Clay was again in opposition to the administration; and the General of course concluded, that the Speaker designed, in ruining him, merely to further his own political schemes. How he boiled with fury against Mr. Clay, his published letters amusingly attest. "The hypocrisy and baseness of Clay," wrote the General, "in pretending friendship to me, and endeavoring to crush the Executive through me, makes ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... height, aged—: but we cannot state his age, any more than his nationality. Besides, it matters little; let it suffice that he was a strange personage, impetuous and hot-blooded, a regular oddity out of one of Hoffmann's volumes, and one who contrasted amusingly enough with the good people of Quiquendone. He had an imperturbable confidence both in himself and in his doctrines. Always smiling, walking with head erect and shoulders thrown back in a free and unconstrained ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... that a biography should make no difference to our estimate of the man who lives and has his being in his published works, we reply that it shifts the emphasis. An amusingly wrong-headed book about Homer is a peccadillo; ten years of life lavished upon it is something a good deal more serious. And even The Way of all Flesh, which as an experimental novel is a very considerable ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... indeed possessed of not a little shrewdness in his dealings with his buyers (often exhibiting that rarest quality of the successful trader, the art of linking one transaction with another), he was sometimes amusingly deficient in what is known as common sense. In later life he used to tell with infinite zest a story of a blunder of earlier years which might easily have led to serious if not fatal results. He had been suffering from nervous exhaustion ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... exquisitely beautiful, where these excavations took place, and the melancholy but enchanting serenity of the end of summer, gave a rare charm to our little dream of adventure. We were, however, most amusingly secret and mysterious in regard to our discovery; we considered it a tribal secret, and we ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... the heroical romances did not wait, however, till the eighteenth century to assert itself in England; it set in early and very amusingly: but it remained powerless. As the evil had chiefly come from France, so did the remedy; but the remedy in France proved sufficient for a cure. In that country at all times the tale had flourished, and at all times in the ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... what one might call random and sudden quotation was amusingly hit off by a friend of mine, Fry, son of the late Lord Justice Sir Edward Fry. In a neat little verse after the manner of Beeching's and Mackail's celebrated verses on the Balliol Dons—verse modelled, it may be noted, on ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... How amusingly does Mr Waterton show his attachment to the extinct Stuarts in his essays. Go where he may, "a Hanover rat" pops up before him. In his charming autobiography appended to the three series of his graphic essays, whether ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... times. This was published in Paris and the French government, tendered him the decoration of the legion of honor which, however, he refused very politely, explaining that he never wore a frock coat! The episode ends amusingly with the publisher, a Swede, receiving the decoration instead. In 1884 the first volume of his famous short stories, called "Marriages" appeared. It was aimed at the cult that had sprung up from Ibsen's "A Doll's House," ...
— Plays: The Father; Countess Julie; The Outlaw; The Stronger • August Strindberg
... Mr. Andrew Lang says amusingly that he has left out of his special versions "all the pieces that are suitable only for Arabs and old gentlemen," and we have done the same; but we have taken no undue liberties. We have removed no genies nor magicians, however terrible; have cut out no base deed of Vizier nor ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... de Pourtales, the Marquis and Marquise de Gallifet, the Duc and Duchesse de Mouchy, the Princesse de Sagan, the Marquis de Caux (who afterward married Adelina Patti), the Princesse de Metternich,—indeed, the elite of cosmopolis,—appeared upon the stage, and in clever verse and epigrammatic song amusingly dealt with the gossip ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... too—since his wound was to that extent open—he winced at hearing the author of it branded. He hadn't so much minded the epithets Mrs. Folliott had applied, for they were to the appropriator of her securities. As the appropriator of his own he didn't so much want to brand him as—just more "amusingly" even, if one would.—to make out, perhaps, with intelligent help, how such a man, in such a relation, could come to tread such a path: which was exactly the interesting light that Winch's curiosity and sympathy ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... f(1) Aristophanes amusingly mixes up real birds with people and individuals, whom he represents in the form of birds; he is personifying the ...
— The Birds • Aristophanes
... acquire the latter's confidence, and always paid respect to the Hana no Gosho, as the shogun was called. So close were the relations that for ceremonial purposes at the Bakufu, it was customary to employ Court officials, and witty writers of the time discourse amusingly on the often clumsy efforts made by the courtiers to ape the customs and acquire the dialects of the ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... Kitty went to her mother, and she had hardly time to say a few words to Countess Nordston when Vronsky came up again for the first quadrille. During the quadrille nothing of any significance was said: there was disjointed talk between them of the Korsunskys, husband and wife, whom he described very amusingly, as delightful children at forty, and of the future town theater; and only once the conversation touched her to the quick, when he asked her about Levin, whether he was here, and added that he liked him so much. ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... wearisome occasionally. But to meet Mr. Smithson she came out daily in her Sunday gown; she said no more than was required in answer to his questions; her books and papers were in thorough order, and methodically kept; her statements of matters-of-fact accurate, and to be relied on. She was amusingly conscious of her victory over his contempt of a woman-clerk and his preconceived opinion ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... interrogatory, "May I have the (honor/pleasure) of a dance?" would be conventionally reprobated as discourteous, and is practically impossible. The natural consequence is, that the fair answerer is driven to all manner of distressing—sometimes almost amusingly distressing—shifts and equivocations, merely to escape the necessity of dancing with men whom she doesn't wish to dance with, but who insist on asking her to do so. Sometimes she salves her conscience by the device of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... purpose, and seemed to promise great advantages both to the pupils and to the institute. There was much building and arranging to be accomplished, but means to do so were obtained, and the first pupil described very amusingly the entrance into the new home, the furnishing, the discovery of all the beauties and advantages which we found as an old possession in Keilhau, and the endeavour, so characteristic of Middendorf, to adapt even the less attractive points to his ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... The veteran in an amusingly polite manner arose and bowed. "All right, Bedelia, and if it's all the same to you, you may as well ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... How amusingly Elly had acquired as only a child could acquire an accent, the exact astringent, controlled brevity ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... nor of the clash of nations, did he really know anything that was not inessential and anecdotic. He could not remember the clauses of Magna Charta, but he knew eternally that it was signed at a place amusingly called Runnymede. And the one fact engraved on his memory about the battle of Waterloo was that it ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... a Tragedy for Warm Weather, was originally brought out by Foote in 1767. There had been great disturbances between the master tailors and journeymen about wages at this time; and the author has amusingly worked out the disputes and their consequences in the heroic style of a ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... inspect the hospitals himself, and he directed a daily visit by a captain and by the surgeons of the ships from which patients were sent, thus keeping the sick in touch with those they knew, and who had in them a personal interest. An odd provision, amusingly illustrative of the obverse side of the admiral's character, was that the visiting captain should be accompanied by a boatswain's mate, the functionary charged with administering floggings, and, "if they ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... of Chaucer's poetic temperament ... make him amusingly impatient of epical lengths, abrupt in his transitions, and anxious, with an anxiety usually manifested by readers rather than by writers, to come to the point, 'to the great effect,' as he is wont to call it. 'Men,' he says, 'may overlade a ship or barge, and therefore I will skip at once ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... one expatriated person, whose name I have not heard, was writing a series of prejudiced articles for Fraser, which he signed "A White Republican." I thought him a very dirty white. One or two English travellers at the same time were making amusingly stupid notices of America in some of the second-rate monthlies; and Maxwell, a bustling Irishman, who owns Temple Bar, the Saint James, and Sixpenny Magazine, and some half dozen other serials, was employing a man to invent all varieties of rubbish upon a country ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... Japanese artists and acquired much dexterity in expressing himself in their style, as is shown by one of the illustrations in this book. The popular idea that things occidental are reversed in the Orient was amusingly caricatured in a sketch he made of a German face; by reversing its lines he converted it ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... purchase, and he would afterwards say: "I will go back and get the articles for you for just one-half the price the shop-keeper told you." They hope to sell to Americans for a better price than they ever get from each other. We went to every kind of shop; they are amusingly different from ours. Few things are displayed in the windows or on the shelves, but they are done up in fine parcels and tucked away out of sight. It is the rule to take two or three days to sit at various counters before you attempt to purchase. The seller would much rather ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger
... in this way that my compadre discovered the colony from which the one given to me was taken. I was obliged to keep my pet chained up; it therefore, never became thoroughly familiar. I once saw, however, an individual of the other species (N. felinus) which was most amusingly tame. It was as lively and nimble as the Cebi, but not so mischievous and far more confiding in its disposition, delighting to be caressed by all persons who came into the house. But its owner, the Municipal Judge of Ega, Dr. Carlos ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... receptions; Lord Fleetwood, Lord Brailstone, and the rest. Odd to reflect on—they were the insubstantial but coveted wealth of the woman fallen upon poverty, ignoble poverty! She could not discard her wealth. She wrote amusingly of them, and fully, vivacious descriptions, to Chillon; hardly so much writing to him as entering her heart's barred citadel, where he resided at his ease, heard everything that befell about her. If she dwelt on Lord Fleetwood's ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... several others of less note. The three last quoted answer many singular questions in theology, law, medicine, physics, natural history, popular superstitions, &c., not always very satisfactorily or very intelligently, but still, often amusingly and ingeniously. The British Apollo: containing two thousand Answers to curious Questions in most Arts and Sciences, serious, comical, and humourous, the fourth edition of which I have now before me, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 46, Saturday, September 14, 1850 • Various
... Tom, but she's troublesome to manage. She is so unusually timid, poor creature, so prone to give way to despair when things look bad, yet so sweetly apt to bound into high spirits when things are looking hopeful,—and withal, so amusingly garrulous!" ...
— The Coxswain's Bride - also, Jack Frost and Sons; and, A Double Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... must have gone out somewhere, and would myself introduce the wastrel brother to the tea-table. Mark's absence would not excite any comment, for it would be generally felt—indeed Robert would suggest it—that he had been afraid of meeting his brother. Then Robert would make himself amusingly offensive to the guests, particularly, of course, Miss Norris, until he thought that the joke had ...
— The Red House Mystery • A. A. Milne
... than from any other equal numbers of society. They live in each other's presence like a set of players; congregate in courts like the former in the green room; and break their unpremeditated jests, in the intervals of business, with that sort of undress freedom that contrasts amusingly with the solemn and even tragic seriousness with which they appear in turn upon the boards. They have one face for the public, rife with the saws and learned gravity of the profession, and another for themselves, replete with broad mirth, sprightly wit, and gay thoughtlessness. The intense mental ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... raged among the dependent favourites, the bull-dogs and terriers chopping up the ferrets, the ferrets killing the game-cocks, the game-cocks killing the tame poultry and rabbits, and the rabbits destroying the garden, assisted by the flying reserve of pigeons. It was a sort of Irish retaliation, so amusingly exemplified in ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... way of her own to communicate freely with the inhabitants. In Spanish she only learned si, yet, supplemented with much gay laughter and many expressive gesticulations, that one word went a long way. She writes amusingly of ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... still holding fast to his chere fille. It would require a volume to report the conversation which enlivened the many days' journey down the Ohio and the Mississippi. The doctor chirruped constantly. He knew a little of everything, and talked much of nothing, very amusingly. Often he sang French songs, often played dance tunes on the violin, now and then took an ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... out his hand, but she refused it angrily. She stood, biting her lip, tapping her foot, her head averted, upon the kerb; her attitude of pique was amusingly familiar to him; often it had gained for her the gratification of some petulant desire; but now all that he wanted was to hurry back to the ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... Shakespeare as a barbarian. The heroic couplet, which was the last word in poetical expression in the age of Queen Anne, we consider to-day as little more than a mechanical jingle. Last year's fashions in dress, which seemed at the time to have their merits, are this year amusingly grotesque. In our judgment of beauty, therefore, allowance must be made for standards which merely are imposed upon us from without. It is necessary to distinguish between a formula and the reality. As far as possible we should ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... a great many compliments, he said, from Dr. Warton, of Winchester, where he had lately been quartered with his regiment. He rattled away very amusingly upon the balls and the belles he had seen there, laughing at his own gallantry, and pitying and praising himself alternately for venturing ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... very famous, if not perhaps very felicitous, nickname-classification of "Barbarian-Philistine-Populace" is launched, defended, discussed in a chapter to itself. To do Mr Arnold justice, the three classes are, if not very philosophically defined, very impartially and amusingly rallied, the rallier taking up that part of humble Philistine conscious of his own weaknesses, which, till he made it slightly tiresome by too long a run, was piquant enough. The fourth chapter, "Hebraism and Hellenism," coasts the sands and rocks (on which, as it seems ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... talking of the news of the town, of the arrival of the governor's wife, "with new! topics of conversation," of an opposition party already formed in the club, of how they were all in a hubbub over the new ideas, and how charmingly this suited him, and so on. He talked for a quarter of an hour and so amusingly that I could not tear myself away. Though I could not endure him, yet I must admit he had the gift of making one listen to him, especially when he was very angry at something. This man was, in my opinion, a regular spy from his very nature. At every moment he knew the very latest gossip and all ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... through the indiscriminate volubility of his host who, when his feelings had been injured, was amusingly naive for ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... emperor's motives in annexing the territory, and his opinion of his conquest, are amusingly shown in the following letter to his minister ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... covetous men are always the just objects of derision as well as contempt, and surely covetousness was quite concentrated in the person of Ashaab, a servant of Othman (seventh century), and a native of Medina, whose character has been very amusingly drawn by the scholiast: He never saw a man put his hand into his pocket without hoping and expecting that he would give him something. He never saw a funeral go by, but he was pleased, hoping that the deceased had left him something. He never saw a bride about to be conducted ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... like to hear how it hits the General. I think "Pavilions" (as my Yorkshire Jane used to call civilians!) may get a little mixed, and not care so much for the points. Some who have been rather extra kind about it are—Lady W—— (but yesterday she amusingly insisted that she had lived in camp —— at Wimbledon!!)—the Fursdons and "Stella Austin," author of Stumps, etc.—(literary "civilians" who think it the best thing I have ever done), and two young barristers who have been reading it aloud to each other in the Temple—with tears. And yet I ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... a parson, he had no rivals. He knew not even the pinpricks of jealousy. Peggy liked him. At first she delighted in him as in a new and animated toy. She could pull strings and the figure worked amazingly and amusingly. He proved himself to be a useful toy, too. He was at her beck all day long. He ran on errands, he fetched and carried. Peggy realized blissfully that she owned ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... in his difficulties, and not a menace to the whole order, and a good many others are afraid to go to his aid because of the danger of bringing down the moralists' rage upon themselves. Both of these weaknesses revealed themselves very amusingly in the Dreiser case, and I hope to detail their operations at some length later on, when I describe that cause celebre ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... awkward self-contempt. In the flecked shade of a rude trellis of grapes that sheltered a side door two children of the household fell to work with great parade at a small machine, setting bristles into tooth-brushes for a neighboring factory, but it was amusingly plain that their labor was spasmodic ...
— The Amateur Garden • George W. Cable
... amusingly cheerful than Montaigne, who more amusingly wise, who so well bred and attractive, who knew the world better and took it only as the world? Give me the old volume of Montaigne and a loaf of bread—no Victrola singing to me in the wilderness!—a thermos bottle, and one or two other ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan |
