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More "Impromptu" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Richard, you'll wait a long time," his mother observed grimly. "He called up a while ago, and said he had been invited to an impromptu studio party that he couldn't get away from, and that he would be home in two or three hours. But I know Richard. If he gets interested in anything like that he ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... the fortifications he came to the senate-house while it was still night, and after greeting us (so far as a man might approach him in the midst of such a jostling throng) he said in an impromptu way: "I have been named emperor by the soldiers; however, I don't desire the office and am going to resign it this very day because of my age and health and the unpleasant condition of affairs." This was no sooner said than we gave the selection our genuine approbation and chose him in very ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio
... vigour that he cannons against a potman, upsetting him and the measure of scalding liquor he carries over another angry, blaspheming sailor man; another sea worthy, snoring drunk, has converted his quart pot into an impromptu pillow, his own recumbent form serving the purposes of a footstool to a companion. The females are a combination of the styles of Gillray and Cruikshank, and, with one exception, are old, ugly, and preposterously fat. A comical illustration in the same book is called, Paying off a Jew ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... prayed aloud, raising hands and eyes to Heaven, hoping thereby to show the heathen where the true God lived. Drake then read the Bible and all the Englishmen sang Psalms, the Indians, 'observing the end of every pause, with one voice still cried Oh! greatly rejoicing in our exercises.' As this impromptu service ended the Indians gave back all the presents Drake had given them and retired in attitudes ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... any possibility of being understood by any of them, to endure stifling heat and provoking uncertainty, much aggravated by the want of food, for another three hours. At last, when very nearly famished, and when my doubts as to the wisdom of this novel and impromptu expedition had become very serious indeed, a European boat appeared, moving with the long steady stroke of a man-of-war's boat, rowed by six native policemen, with a frank-looking bearded countryman ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... second tale was done, and I was now entrancing Messer Ramiro with some impromptu verses upon the divorce of Giovanni Sforza, a theme set me by himself, when I was interrupted by the arrival of a soldier, ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... carried sleeping mats for us to wrap ourselves in at night, with a small kettle for boiling our tea, and a pot for cooking our meat or soup. When resting at night we quickly formed an impromptu hut of boughs. I could not help wishing that my sister and Grace had been with us, to admire the beautiful forests and magnificent birds we saw. Rising in the morning, we witnessed another dance of the birds of paradise in some trees close ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... her distinguished guests speedily displayed itself in a very plentiful, if not very dainty repast. To the duckling, peas, and other delicacies, intended for Mr. Kneebone's special consumption, she added a few impromptu dishes, tossed off in her best style; such as lamb chops, broiled kidneys, fried ham and eggs, and toasted cheese. Side by side with the cheese (its never-failing accompaniment, in all seasons, at the carpenter's board) came a tankard of swig, and a toast. Besides ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... were, and a tall sapling stripped of its boughs to serve as a flagstaff. On this he hoisted the Union Jack which he had carried with him. A record of their arrival, contained in an air-tight case, was then buried at the foot of the impromptu staff, and Stuart cut his initials on the largest tree he could find. The tree has since been found and recognised, but the buried memorial has not been discovered. More fortunate than the ill-fated Burke, Stuart surveyed the open sea from his point of contact with the ocean, instead of having to ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... immediately engaged in a fierce struggle, in which poor Harry learned, when too late, that his wounded shoulder was almost powerless. Meanwhile, the Canadian having been assaulted by three Indians at once, floored one at the outset, and immediately began an impromptu war-dance round the other two, dealing them occasionally a kick or a blow, which would speedily have rendered them hors de combat, had they not succeeded in closing upon him, when all three fell heavily to the ground. Jacques and Charley having succeeded in overcoming their respective opponents, ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... slang—Burschen, Bargee, Parisian, Irish, Cockney, and English provincialisms—was awful and wonderful. Nothing was better than to get our uncle on his 'genteel behaviour,' which, of course, meant exactly the opposite, and brought forth inimitable stories, scraps of old songs and impromptu conversations, the choicest of which were between children, Irishwomen, or cockneys. He was the only man, I believe, who ever knew by heart the famous Irish Court Scenes—naughtiest and most humorous of tales—unpublished, of course, ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... taken this comedy for truth? Did you think this theatrical performance was a reality? You have forgotten what I told you a month since in Paris, that I had a native talent for acting. You would contest the matter with me, and I bet you that I could introduce an impromptu scene in my house, with such artistic skill, that ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... spotty career, he had started the store. He had also meant to do general repair work in the backroom shop. But in recent years it had degenerated into an impromptu club hall, funk hole, griping-arguing-and-planning pit, extracurricular study lab and project site for an indefinite horde of interplanetary enthusiasts who were thought of in Jarviston as either young adults of the most resourceful kind—for whom the country should do much ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... entertained on board the galleon to an impromptu luncheon, which, as it was prepared by the Spanish cook, released from the limbo of below for the occasion, and as the viands and wines were drawn from the ship's stores, was done ample justice to. Then George, accompanied by Basset, went ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... in his eyes either meant some mischievous design, or a strong desire to "make music." But this evening he was long in coming to the point. He began by pelting the Tenor with roses through the window, and then he entered and danced an impromptu breakdown in the middle of the room; but these preliminaries might have been an introduction to anything, and it seemed as if his programme were not complete, for he next subsided into his accustomed ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... it at camp, and to get over the uneven ground, with the detentions of first dropping, then picking up the articles dropped, will add to the excitement of the sport. An entertaining variation of this will be to have those taking part in the race appear in impromptu costumes (worn over the ordinary dress) which they must remove piece by piece as they run and put the things all on again while returning over the course. Such hastily adjusted costumes ...
— On the Trail - An Outdoor Book for Girls • Lina Beard and Adelia Belle Beard
... that "his halo didn't fit," or said in her quick way, when the plainness of a lady's dress was commended, "Why, I didn't suppose that anybody could go to heaven now-a-days without an overskirt," or wrote her sparkling impromptu rhymes for our children's games, her mirth was all in harmony with her earnest life. Her quick perceptions, her droll comparisons, her readiness of expression, united with her rare and tender sympathies, made her the most fascinating of companions to both young and old. Our ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... acts of M. Sidney Benson's newest musical comedy, "Marjory from Marguery's," and commented with enthusiasm on the song hit of the show—"My Bleriot Maid." A number of the more gifted even whistled the melody, skipping the hard part and proceeding by impromptu and conventional modulation to the refrain, which had been expressly designed by its composer, Milton Jassy, so as to present no technical difficulties to ...
— Elkan Lubliner, American • Montague Glass
... part in the hostilities. There won't be any conscription; it's a free fight that will be open to everybody." She folded the paper she had been reading from and put it in her lap, in default of a pocket. She went on impromptu: ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... of these verses, my friends? Is that piece an impromptu? said my landlady's daughter. (Aet. 19. Tender-eyed blonde. Long ringlets. Cameo pin. Gold pencil-case on a chain. Locket. Bracelet. Album. Autograph book. Accordeon. Reads Byron, Tupper, and Sylvanus Cobb, junior, while her mother makes the puddings. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... pony races, and a general cry of "The race!—the race!—the race!" rose among them. It was echoed by others, both ladies and gentlemen, and all the ponies, and horses, and, we may say, four-legged animals the party could muster, were brought forth. As the race was entirely impromptu, no arrangements had before been made. It was first settled that everything was to run. The larger riding-horses were to have a longer distance to run, and were not to start so soon as the others; the carriage-horses came next, ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... charming unconsciousness of the unconventionality of her situation. A European girl, brought up in the strictest ignorance of the world, would still have had intuitions to make her either painfully embarrassed or secretly delighted with this impromptu visit to a young bachelor; but Lydia, who had been allowed to read "everything" and the only compromise to whose youth had been fitful attempts of the family to remember "not to talk too much about things before Lydia," was clad in that unearthly ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... of his impromptu meal. He seemed anxious to put an end to his housekeeper's affectionate interest in himself and his health, and to get her out of the room. She had nursed him nearly thirty years before, and the ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... impresi. Impress (print) presi. Impression (printing) presajxo. Impression impreso. Impressionable impresebla. Impressive impresa. Imprison malliberigi. Improbable neversxajna. Improper nedeca. Impropriety nedececo. Impromptu senprepara. Improve plibonigi. Improvement plibonigo. Improvident malspxarema. Improvise improvizi. Imprudent nesingardema. Impudent senhonta. Impulse pusxo. Impure malpura. Impurity malpureco. Impute alkalkuli. In en. In front ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... lingering in convicts? or because it is feared that convicts taught to act in unison by military drill would combine more readily for mutiny? But order does not naturally lead to disorder but away from it, and mutinies are mostly impromptu affairs, contemplating revenge rather than escape. As for the other argument, a lie is not a sound basis to build on, and it is a lie that convicts are not human. To admit this ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... In this amazing, impromptu, new, and hurried machine civilization which we have been piling up around us for a hundred years we have made machines out of everything, and our one consummate and glaring failure in the machines we have made is the machine we ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... doing it?" asked Pilar, thoughtfully. "Maria purisima! It isn't as if he were an impulsive or hospitable man, fond of getting up impromptu entertainments. This is done in a hurry. What can be his object? for he always ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Hamlet's speech to the Players gives us good reason to believe that Shakspere must have been an excellent trainer, however modest may have been his own native gifts as an actor. Moliere, like Shakspere in so many ways, was like him in being author and actor and manager; and in the 'Impromptu de Versailles' he has left us a most instructive record of his own methods of rehearsing ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... another, all leading to one point, which was constantly kept in view to the audience; and, although every thing seemed a kind of new political philosophy, yet it was all to the purpose and well-connected, so as to produce the effect; and that he admired your last speech the more as it was impromptu. I thought he was describing to me a Greek orator, whose select orations I had translated four times when I first went to the university, and therefore marked the traits of this character. It was impossible for me ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... Breaking into impromptu careless rhymes, Burley threw off a rude but spirited translation of that divine lyric. "O materialist!" cried the boy, with his bright eyes suffused. "Schiller calls on the gods to take him to their heaven with them; and you would debase the ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... battle began to rage with determined fury, and the entire force of cavalry was engaged in an obstinate fight with the advancing enemy. It was a bitter and savage affair. The men charged; dismounted and fought behind impromptu breastworks of rails; fell back only when they were pushed by the weight of the great column rolling forward; and for hours the whole field was a hurly-burly of dust, smoke, blood, uproar, carbine shots, musket shots, and the long threatening roar ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... this man was the owner of several square miles of land, of which nearly every acre would produce corn, and, with a little trouble, all the common vegetables. The evening was spent in smoking, with a little impromptu singing, accompanied by the guitar. The signoritas all sat together in one corner of the room, and did not sup ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... ma'am," said Adelaide; "and I suspect it is some one for us. You know we never venture on impromptu visits, except to you, and our people know ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... small impromptu theatre, packed to suffocation by a most wonderfully sympathetic audience, but as the play was very representative, we give a slight ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... Additional illustrations, which will repay study are the following: the Allegretto of Beethoven's Sixth Sonata; the Schubert Impromptu, op. 90, No. 4; Brahms's Intermezzo, op. 117, No. 1 and the Ballade in G minor, op. 118, No. 3, and for orchestra—in extended treatment—Debussy's Prelude a l'apres-midi ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... Eastern city. As we came up they broke into a cheer at the news that the American wrestler had defeated his foreign opponent. There was a discussion as to what constituted the "toe-hold," three boys ran an impromptu foot-race, there was some talk on the poor condition of the range, and the ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... and cold as the reflection of steel, threw into relief the two masses of armed men who formed a narrow passageway. At the end of this impromptu lane there was a post planted in the ground and beyond that, a dark van drawn by two horses, and various ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... jest, as it was her pride to make Lord Colambre laugh in spite of his better feelings and principles. This he saw, and this seemed to him to be her sole object; but there he was mistaken. OFF-HANDED as she pretended to be, none dealt more in the IMPROMPTU FAIT A LOISIR; and mentally short-sighted as she affected to be, none had more LONGANIMITY ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... pleasure to get your last letter, for these little impromptu effusions are the genuine letters. I rejoice that man and nature seem harmonious to you, and that the heart beats in unison with the voices of Spring. May all that is manly, sincere, and pure, in your wishes, be realized! Obliged to live myself without ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... wholly impromptu and happy way the day was opened. The band, laboriously trained for years by the local jeweler—said to be able to blow a candle through an inch board with his South Bend B flat cornet—now formed in marching order, the grimed ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... great pianist, and sat perplexed and wondering. There was a girl next to him who sobbed, and Thyrsis watched her as he might have watched a house on fire. Only once the pianist pleased him—when he played a pretty little piece called somebody's "impromptu", in which he got a gleam of a "tune." Poor Thyrsis went and got that piece, and took it home to study it, with the help of the mandolin; but, alas, in the maze of notes he could not ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... was beating time with one finger, and within the room, to an impromptu accompaniment invented by Juliette, ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... the result of such an experiment would be. I, to whom nature had denied the impromptu faculty; who, in public, was by nature a cypher; whose time of mental activity, even when alone, was not under the meridian sun; who needed the fresh silence of morning, or the recluse peace of evening, ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... California graduate, his companion along the cocktail route, recognized him; immediately, he was riding shoulder high. His bearers broke for the sidewalk, and down Market Street he went, a blue-and-gold serpentine dancing behind him. There was his first Jinks at the Bohemian club—an impromptu affair, thrown in between the revelling Christmas Jinks in the clubhouse and the formally artistic Midsummer High Jinks in the Russian River Grove. The Sire, noting his smile and figure, impressed him into service for a small part. This brought a fortnight of rehearsal which ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... trust," he added, with that peculiar smile at the corner of his lips, "that I have not in any way tried to come the heavy father? I can even command a certain amount of respect, Margaret, for a young man who is able to inaugurate his engagement by an impromptu meal of such perfection. I wish you both good morning. Any invitation which Margaret extends, Ledsam, please consider as ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... hopes which might perhaps have been realized It was just after one of these unlucky Carnivals—almost before the strict fast-days were past, when a certain Nicolo Musso opened a theatre outside the Porta del Popolo, where he stated his intention of putting nothing but light impromptu comic sketches on the boards. The advertisement was drawn up in an ingenious and witty style, and consequently the Romans formed a favourable preconception of Musso's enterprise; but independently of this they would in their ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... the foremost of the little ring the area is gradually enlarged: first one other couple and then another are moved to follow the example, and they in their turn assist in bumping out the limits of the ring till it has become some twenty feet or so in diameter. These impromptu ball-rooms rarely much exceed that size, but dozens of them may be found in the course of one's peregrinations around the large piazza. The occupants of some of them will be found to consist of town-bred Romans, and those of others of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... a continuation, when other experiments may be introduced with better prospects of success. It may be well not to insist on following the exact course pursued by Professor Zoellner, but leave it open to original or impromptu suggestions that may be adopted without previous consideration, which, if successful, would be of equal value as evidence of its genuineness, at the same time give greater breadth to the experiments. In conclusion, allow ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... who could fling off such an apt impromptu, and how many more mute inglorious writers have we not who might do anything they chose if they would only choose to do anything at all? Some one else had written on an ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler
... breakfast, a few days since, a distinguished member of Parliament, who has been much in America, remarked, with emphasis, that he had formerly entertained a high opinion of 'JUDGE LYNCH,' looking with much favor upon that species of impromptu jurisprudence known as 'Lynch law,' but since it failed to hang FLOYD, COBB and THOMPSON, of BUCHANAN'S cabinet, he had ignored and was disgusted with ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... the ruined hamlet seemed to the casual eye, it was at present a vacation-resort—and a decidedly welcome one—to no less than three thousand tired men. The wrecked church was an impromptu hospital beneath whose shattered roof dozens of these men lay ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... anything new that came out in the world of Art. For months Schlesinger sent me with this object all sorts of novelties, among which, however, I could not find anything that seemed to me deserving of praise, until at last, when I was at the Lake of Como, Schumann's "Impromptu" in C major (properly variations), the "Etudes symphoniques," and the "Concert sans orchestre" [Concerto without orchestra] (published later, in the second edition, under the more suitable title Sonata in F minor) came into my hands. ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... passage as waiters on the ship to Nome, where they intended to leave it. Three evenings in the week these musicians, with the help of several singers on board, gave concerts in the dining salon, which, though impromptu, were very enjoyable. ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... through, both policemen joining their energies to make a free passage for it. In front walked the policeman carrying the little girl, a child apparently of about twelve years old. Her right foot lay stiffly across his arm, held straight and still in an impromptu splint of umbrellas and handkerchiefs. Immediately behind came the lady whom George had caught sight of, holding the other girl's hand in hers. She was bareheaded and in evening dress. Her opera-cloak, with its heavy sable collar, showed beneath it a dress ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... world of trouble in making the island; as they approached, Willis, who had made a speaking-trumpet by joining his hands round his mouth, was roaring out alternately, "starboard," "larboard," "hard-a-port," just as if these terms had not been Hebrew to the impromptu mariners. ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... athletic graces he should have cultivated in his younger days. He rode every morning; he practised every day at tennis and croquet; every evening he bowled; and every time some one sat at the piano and played dance music and the young people fell into impromptu waltzes and two-steps on the porch, he joined them and danced religiously with whomsoever he found to hand; usually Miss ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester
... audience, his expressive young countenance contorted into a grimace of unholy glee, the listener flung aloft his arms and blithely executed a few noiseless steps of an impromptu war-dance. ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... an extraordinary, incredible mother as Mrs. "Bal" MacDonald: a good plan for the girl's sake, and for everybody's sake, because it was arranged to start for Scotland the day after to-morrow. Still, Barrie's impromptu ode to the heather moon had for a moment irradiated his mind with a light such as had not shone for Somerled on land or sea since he had become rich enough to afford the most expensive lighting. Then as quickly it had ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... and walked to a place well toward the front, and he entered unobserved. The street before the hall was full of arguing, gesticulating men. Inside were other loudly talking knots, sweltering in the closeness of the place. In corners, small impromptu meetings were listening to harangues not on the evening's program. Already half the seats were taken by the less emotional, more stolid men, who were content to wait in silence for the real business of the meeting. There was an air of suspense, of tenseness, of excitement. ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... on my return, that there was some sport of a rare kind on foot; and we adjourned, Maignan, followed by four pages bearing lights, leading the way to that end of the terrace which abuts on the linden avenue. Here, a score of grooms holding torches aloft had been arranged in a circle so that the impromptu theater thus formed, which Maignan had ordered with much taste, was as light as in the day. On a sloping bank at one end seats had been placed for those who had supped at my table, while the rest of the company found such places ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... summer night on the great unbroken bush-land. In such dryad-like resorts we were tempted to dawdle so long that the big hours of the evening frequently found us still on the breast of the river. I was wont to recline on an impromptu couch of rugs in the bottom of the well-built craft identified with our excursions, where I could feign to be asleep. At first Dawn suspected me of only pretending, but I was so emphatic in declaring ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... Comic Vocalist and impromptu "Vamper" (gentleman born) of several years' experience in best London Society, is anxious to meet with bold and speculative Manager who will offer him a first engagement. Can sing—omitting a few high notes—various popular melodies, comprising, "Aunt Sarah's Back-hair," "The Twopenny ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 19, 1890 • Various
... this speech from the Court, and the district attorney added his own tribute, while Silvia was given an impromptu reception by jurors, court officers and spectators. When this was over, and the throng that had surrounded her and her client went their way on the quest of new sensations, she found herself standing alone with him before the bench, in almost the identical ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... doorway, looking in spite of the autumn sun and the walk up from the corn-field, deliriously cool. She fanned herself with a broad rhubarb-leaf—an impromptu fan plucked by the way. She sat down on the ledge of the upper step of Ralph's study, as she often did when she worked or rested. Ralph was again within, reclining on a window-seat, while the pack of reckless banditti ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... swell when they perceived me and my victim. Of course, I and my two friends were well received in the wigwam, though the chief was absent upon an expedition, and when he returned a few days after, a great feast was given, during which some of the young men sang a little impromptu poem, on the subject of ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... happy to join in these impromptu musical assemblies, when occasion offered, although performing music was one of the few things which he never succeeded in doing well. He invariably played the viola on these occasions,—perhaps, as Schindler hints ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... thing rather tame. In the whole hour and a-half there was not so much savage fighting, not so much damage done, as a couple of earnest, but unscientific men, who have no time to waste, will frequently crowd into an impromptu affair not exceeding ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... comes rain! The sky grows dark, —Was that the roll of thunder? Hark! The shop affords a safe retreat, A chair extends its welcome seat, The tradesman has a civil look (I've paid, impromptu, for my book), The clouds portend a sudden shower, I'll read ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... declamations on hypothetical cases which might serve either for (3) or (4); and The Hall, The Fly, Dipsas, and perhaps Demosthenes, suggest (4). A common form of exhibition was for a sophist to appear before an audience and let them propose subjects, of which he must choose one and deliver an impromptu oration ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... affection for him personally, as almost for no other foreigner. I want this word to go to the old man at Farringford as conveying no more than the simple truth; and that truth (a little Christmas gift) no slight one either. I have written impromptu, and shall let it all go at that. The readers of more than fifty millions of people in the New World not only owe to him some of their most agreeable and harmless and healthy hours, but he has enter'd into the formative influences of character here, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... 27. Liszt's "Rhapsodie Hongroise" (number 1); Schubert's "Impromptu" in C minor; and Schumann's "Bilder aus Osten"; and on the 28th, Schubert's "Teufel's Lustschloss" given by Theodore ...
— Annals of Music in America - A Chronological Record of Significant Musical Events • Henry Charles Lahee
... never read did not people talk about them, and generally follow for three long months a time-table of "enjoyment" which very few of them really enjoy. In the meanwhile, the only affairs which give them pleasure are the little impromptu ones arranged on the spur of ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... Pelerinage received much attention. Among the pieces played were, Les Cloches, Chasse Neige, Eclogue, Cloches de Geneva, Eroica, Feux Follets and Mazeppa. Also the big Polonaise in E, the two Etudes, Waldesrauschen and Gnomenreigen; the Mazourka, Valse Impromptu, and the first Etude, of which last he remarked: "You can all play this; thirty years have passed since it was composed and people are only just finding out how fine it is. Such is the case with many of Liszt's works. We wonder how they ever could have ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... arte." In Italy the commedia del arte was the continuation or revival of the mimus. The speeches were impromptu; the characters and roles were stereotyped. The action and speeches must have grown by the contributions of talented men who played the parts from generation to generation. The characters have become ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... disparities from which wisdom and moralising never deduct a grain! Vaudemont felt this as he saw her glide towards the beggar; but when she came bounding back to him, she had forgotten his dislike to her songs, and was chaunting, in the glee of the heart that a kind act had made glad, one of her own impromptu melodies. ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... tells an impromptu story," said the Mistress of the House. "But, my dear Professor," and she turned to the old gentleman, "we are all friends here, and I should so like you to tell us how you got your wife. You once told it to me, and I should like to know what this company ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... Richard, glancing in the direction of his impromptu Webster's Unabridged. "Mr. Slocum does not propose to split the difference. The wages in every department are to be just what they are,—neither more nor less. If anybody wishes to make a remark," ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... matter is clearly explained. He does not refer to the delay at Chew's house as the cause of failure. Panic struck as the British were, they would have been defeated, notwithstanding the delay at that impromptu fortress, if the fog had not occasioned the American soldiers to believe that the firing on their own side proceeded from the enemy, and that they were about to be surrounded. Hence the recoil and retreat. It was apparently a great misfortune, but it was the destiny of Washington to achieve ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... the impromptu breakfast together. The placer sluices outside were neglected. Nobody wished to shovel sand for gold when marvelous tales might be exchanged concerning the wind storm that had raged across the hills ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... voices exclaimed that it certainly would; the young girls adding that they could crowd a little closer together without feeling it any inconvenience, and the captain saying laughingly that impromptu beds would have to be provided in the saloon for Chester and Frank, and he would join them there, so leaving a vacant place for her with his wife; and with a little more persuasion Annis accepted the invitation, knowing ...
— Elsie at the World's Fair • Martha Finley
... in a better dress, which I should not have thought would have made so much difference in your eyes, though it makes all the difference between man and man in the eyes of the stupid vulgar. My genius has broken through the clouds of misfortune of late. A few happy impromptu verses I made on the Count de Flora's fall from his horse attracted attention. The count patronizes me. I am here now to learn the fate of an ode I have just composed for his lady's birthday. My ode was to have ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... scientific discourse is limited. In order to pursue a safer, easier course, these persons will present along with their ideas the perceptions and separate cases to which they relate, and they leave it to the understanding of the reader to form a proper conception impromptu. Accordingly, the faculty of imagination is much more mixed up with a popular discourse, but only to reproduce, to renew previously received representations, and not to produce, to express its own self-creating power. Those ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... something," they had decided, and then he would marry Dolly, and they would all enjoy the attendant festivities. And in the mean time they allowed the two to be happy, and made Griffith welcome, inviting him to their little impromptu suppers, and taking care never to be de trop on the ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... conversation that the sayings can scarce be quoted with their full effect beyond the circle of common friends. To have their proper weight they should appear in a biography, and with the portrait of the speaker. Good talk is dramatic; it is like an impromptu piece of acting where each should represent himself to the greatest advantage; and that is the best kind of talk where each speaker is most fully and candidly himself, and where, if you were to shift ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... well now if instead of some of the provisions that are sent, cooking utensils should arrive. Fifty stoves arrived from Pittsburgh this morning, and it is said more are coming. At both the depots where the supplies are received and stored a big rope line encloses them in an impromptu yard so as to give room to those having the supplies in charge to walk around and see what they have got. On the inside of this line, too, stalk back and forth the soldiers with their rifles on their shoulders, and ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... man of fastidious tastes and with ample means to gratify them, proved a delightful host. In his earlier days he had been a constant diner-out; he understood the ordering of impromptu meals, and he had that decision and air which inspires respect even in a head-waiter. He marshalled his little party to the table reserved for them, waved away the table d'hote card, and ordered his dishes and wine with excellent judgment and consideration for the tastes of his guests. It ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... arms in the air; she swooped down on Chrissie's work and threw it wildly to the ceiling; she thrust her face into Elsie's and went off into a peal of maniacal laughter, which sent that nervous young person flying to the farthest corner. She seized a bundle of ribbons and danced an impromptu skirt dance, flourishing them to and fro, while he onlookers scuttled together like rabbits, and felt that their lives trembled in the balance. Finally, after succeeding in turning the room topsy-turvy, and raising the most powerful doubts as to her own ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... but turned her head to look back. In the distant boats they had fallen to singing glees. In this they obeyed tradition: for there is one accomplishment which all Trojans possess—of fitting impromptu harmonies to the most difficult air. And still in the pauses of the music ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... from camp, was very much pleased with the results of this impromptu hunt. "Plenty fat meat now," said he. "That's nice young caribou, heem." He fell rapidly to work in his experienced fashion, and in a short time he and George had packed the meat down to the camp and loaded it in the two boats, both of which ...
— The Young Alaskans in the Rockies • Emerson Hough
... much—the thing Is hardly novel to your life; And, sans the feast and marriage ring, You make a good impromptu wife. ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... you boys are back," said Mr. Ringold a little later at the impromptu feast, at which C. C. ate as much as anyone and with seemingly as good an appetite. "Yes," went on the theatrical manager, "I shall need you and Mr. Hadley right along, now. I am going to produce a ...
— The Moving Picture Boys on the Coast • Victor Appleton
... interesting or remarkable localities, with which we became acquainted. He had already christened the little island on which we had first landed, "Palm-Islet," and the spot upon the opposite shore, abounding in brilliant shells, had, from that circumstance, received the impromptu name of "Pearl-shell Beach." He now proposed to call the point, "Cape Desolation," from its waste and forbidding aspect; but finally fixed upon "Sea-bird's Point," as being more appropriate, the birds having, in fact, taken possession of nearly its entire area, which, judging ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... herself could see only the humor of it. She was fascinated by the social niceties and the surroundings of the set she had drifted into. The little dinners, the impromptu teas, the light chatter and general atmosphere of luxury more than counterbalanced any other lack. She wanted only to play, and she was prepared to seize avidly on any form of pleasure, no matter if in last analysis it were utterly frivolous. She could smile at the mental vacuity ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Course in Public Speaking Mail Course in Practical English How to Speak Without Notes Something to Say: How to Say It Successful Methods of Public Speaking Model Speeches for Practise The Training of a Public Speaker How to Sell Through Speech Impromptu Speeches: How to Make Them Word-Power: How to Develop It Christ: The Master Speaker Vital English for Speakers ...
— Successful Methods of Public Speaking • Grenville Kleiser
... pockets; he jangled a great gold watch chain; and he never turned up except dressed just too much like a gentleman to be one. He was no fool though, though a futile idler; he was curiously clever at all kinds of things that couldn't be the slightest use; a sort of impromptu conjuring; making fifteen matches set fire to each other like a regular firework; or cutting a banana or some such thing into a dancing doll. His name was Isidore Smythe; and I can see him still, with his little dark face, ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... he asked. Edward looked at him. Mr. Beecher's face was tense. After a few moments he said: "That's generally the way with extemporaneous remarks: they are always dangerous. The best impromptu speeches and remarks are the carefully ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... a toast to their young hostess, which was drunk standing, and then the guests repaired to the drawing room, where impromptu stunts were in order. Every one was obliged to do something, if only to make a remark appropriate to the occasion. Nora sang, Anne recited, Grace and Miriam did a Spanish dance that they had practised during vacation with ...
— Grace Harlowe's Junior Year at High School - Or, Fast Friends in the Sororities • Jessie Graham Flower
... For impromptu evening affairs any cold left-over meat may be utilized in a salad. Beef, mutton and tongue are usually served with French dressing, seasoned with tomato catsup. Cut the meat into dice, season with salt and pepper, dish them on lettuce, or they may be mixed in the ...
— Ice Creams, Water Ices, Frozen Puddings Together with - Refreshments for all Social Affairs • Mrs. S. T. Rorer
... chop-house until their little tables overflow on to the grass and side- walks, and even into the middle of the streets. Later in the evening the open-air concerts and theatres are packed, and every little square organizes its impromptu ball, the musicians mounted on tables, and the crowd dancing gayly on the wooden pavement ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... naturally to be divided, and is set down before you in uncovered dishes. Of course, when you arrive at the last, it retains scarcely a memory of the fire. I saw some of the indigenes obviate the inconvenience, by taking fish, flesh, and fowl on their plate at one and the same time, consuming the impromptu "olla" with a rapid impartial voracity; but so bold an innovation on old-world customs would hardly suit a stranger. All liquors are rather high in price and lower in quality than one would expect, considering the place and season; but the sum charged for unstinted board and a tolerable ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... evening impromptu concerts were held, at one of which, on the fo'c'sle decks the pipers played "The 5th H.L.I.'s Farewell to Aboukir," composed by Pipe Major Thomson. Can its plaintive harmonies still be heard, or did they perish with him when he fell just ten ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... having suggested the deed, Agesilaus openly declared himself to be on Phoebidas's side, and said that the only thing to be considered was, whether it was advantageous to Sparta or not; for it was always lawful to render good service to the state, even impromptu and without previous orders. Yet in his talk Agesilaus always set a high value upon justice, calling it the first of all virtues; for he argued that courage would be useless without justice; while if all men were just, there would be no need of courage. When he was informed, ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... and ineffective. The interior navy-yards had, moreover, to be guarded against surprises by the enemy's cavalry; and as men were so scarce, it was generally arranged that the navy-yard should follow the army lines. Constantly shifting position—caused by the rapid movements of the enemy, left these impromptu ship-yards unprotected; and then a small party of raiders would either burn them, or force their builders to do so. It was not until the appropriation was nearly spent—although not one efficient gunboat of this class was ever finished—that the system was abandoned as ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... there with bated breath, being quite certain that this impromptu pursuit had something to do with Tommy's disappearance. Their sea sled was fast and Matthews was adept at handling it. To their dismay they saw the distance between Matthews and the other boat widening. The pace of Matthews' boat slowed; ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... answers were satisfactory, to allow him to revisit the scenes of his earthly life in order to repair any little omissions that he might have made in the hurry of departure. Unfortunately the leading case was a bad example of suicide. It had not been deliberate; he had simply killed himself impromptu in a tight corner to avoid arrest for ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 22, 1920 • Various
... anxious to see the play, and doesn't mind not being seen at it, he could get some idea of the treatment next Friday if he cares to come to the dress rehearsal. You know we arranged to run right through it for the first time. We thought of a small impromptu dance after the rehearsal, so if Mr. Holroyd would like to come a little earlier I shall be charmed ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... morning we were up with the first streak of dawn. It was with some curiosity that I looked round at our impromptu dwelling and its surroundings, upon which we had descended in total obscurity the night before. The position of our camping-place was not badly chosen; we were just within the girdle of forest above which rises the grassy Alpen. About forty yards to the left or north-east ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... though he seems to have had little to do with it, with the past paternity of a condemned play."[15] Another incident, recorded by Professor Courthope, further angered Pope: "While he was still sore at the mishap, Colley Cibber, playing in 'The Rehearsal,' happened to make an impromptu allusion to the unlucky farce, saying that he had intended to introduce the two kings of Brentford, 'one of them in the shape of a mummy, and t'other in that of a crocodile.' The audience laughed, but Pope, who was in the house, ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... Douglas, and Henry. They then sat down and gazed at each other in strained and unnatural silence. They could find nothing to say to each other. Ordinary topics seemed to be precluded by their festive appearance and the formal nature of the occasion. Their informal meetings were usually celebrated by impromptu wrestling matches. This being debarred, a stiff, unnatural atmosphere descended upon them. William was a "host," they were "guests"; they had all listened to final maternal admonitions in which the word "manners" and "politeness" recurred at frequent ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton
... this Bill shone as an entertainer, a mental uplift that was really welcome, so spontaneous and keen were his talks and comments on people and things. Gus, though having little practice, held his own at tennis and golf; in swimming races and other impromptu sports he greatly excelled; and when a young fellow who bore the reputation of an all-round athlete came for the week-end from the city, Gus put on the gloves with him and punched the newcomer all over an imaginary ring on the lawn to ...
— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron
... to keep up what at a little distance might be taken for mere humming, but what was really intelligent singing, simultaneous with the most active work of her hands. It might begin with a hymn, but would glide on beyond into her own words of praise or prayer in impromptu music. This free, original singing was the settled habit of her most driving business hours, and was not annoying to others. But how those black eyes would sparkle and those florid cheeks glow with heavenly light as her whole soul seemed absorbed in this spontaneous ...
— Elizabeth: The Disinherited Daugheter • E. Ben Ez-er
... four times. Carried originally by a mixed force from Savaii and Tuamasanga, the victors, instead of completing fresh defences or pursuing their advantage, fell to eat and smoke and celebrate their victory with impromptu songs. In this humour a rally of the Tamaseses smote them, drove them out pell-mell, and tumbled them into the ravine, where many broke their heads and legs. Again the work was taken, again lost. Ammunition failed the belligerents; and they fought hand to hand ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... audience while the procession was still on its way up the aisle she noticed the amused glances directed toward Judy's head. It took only a second glance to assure herself of what Judy had done and she frowned and compressed her lips. When the service was over, she made a little impromptu address to the students. College, she said, was a place for serious work and not for frivolity. Of course there were no objections to innocent fun, but absurdities would not be tolerated. All the time she was speaking she was looking straight ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed
... made Irish bulls, and gave Irish anecdotes; the amateur occasionally gave a song or a stanza impromptu; the player spouted, recited, and took off several of his brother performers, by exhibiting their defects ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... Communion of Saints, a figure of Christ surmounting a crowd of all ages and stations, among whom were not only Dante, Petrarca, Giotto, etc., etc., but Plato, Cicero, and best of all, Arius. I said to the guide, in a tone of expostulation, "Heretico!" (a word of impromptu manufacture). Whereupon he nodded, smiled and was positively radiant with the latitudinarianism of the old Italian painter. It was interesting for it was a fresh proof that even the early Church united had a period of thought and tolerance ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... the enemy made no movement, and the weather also holding up for a time, some sport was inaugurated in the camp. The men might be seen amusing themselves at various games, while the officers actually got up an impromptu horse-race. ...
— A Narrative Of The Siege Of Delhi - With An Account Of The Mutiny At Ferozepore In 1857 • Charles John Griffiths
... ignorance and innocence were pitiful. This impromptu court was trying him there in the open beside the cabin, and he knew that its verdict would be a speedy one. He started to run the gamut of appeal, denial, and anger; but his hearers were inflexible. They silenced ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... of the aiming-posts. Absolute accuracy being essential, the aiming-posts are specially designed and are of a settled pattern. Judge of the two colonels' astonishment then when they perceived Dumble's impromptu contrivance. ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... galled him. Why had this blatant, obtrusive, unpolished man of windmills been selected by Fate instead of himself to discover the sensational apple? He could have made of the act a scene, a function, a setting for some impromptu, fanciful discourse or piece of comedy—and have retained the role of cynosure. Actually, the lady passenger was regarding this ridiculous Dunboddy or Woodbundy with an admiring smile, as if the fellow had performed ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... the last time we had seen Mr. Tooly made the present occasion seem opportune. An impromptu "court" was organized: judge, sheriff and deputies; and these, with a few chosen men of the company, went to the trading post to convene an afternoon session. The members of this "court" dropped in quietly, one or two at a time, looked over the place, asked questions—about ...
— Crossing the Plains, Days of '57 - A Narrative of Early Emigrant Tavel to California by the Ox-team Method • William Audley Maxwell
... impromptu of his moved the town to laughter. At some dinner party it appeared the ladies sat a little too long; Oscar wanted to smoke. Suddenly the hostess drew his attention to a lamp the shade of ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... their skates and dragged Tess and Dot to school. Almost all the older scholars who attended school that day went on steel. At recess and after the session the Parade was the scene of races and impromptu games ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... all the professors, and some dozen of Russia's celebrated musicians and writers. The meal over, Anton Rubinstein, originator of the plan, and Zaremba, his able co-adjutor, made brief speeches. There were one or two impromptu replies; a little discreet cheering; the customary toasts to the Czar and the persons and the subject in hand; and then Ivan, carried out of his usual shyness, proposed the health of the sister Conservatoire of St. Petersburg, which was loyally drank. ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... Nancy had written a merry little story that caused great laughter and applause in the youthful audience. Gilbert had taken part in a debate and covered himself with glory, and Kathleen closed the impromptu programme ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the garden-door. Though years and years have passed away since, I still remember the joy-inspiring laughter that burst from my father at this unexpected sight, as, advancing towards his old friend, with a face beaming with delight, and with extended hands, he broke forth in the following impromptu: ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... Ingred, sitting with her head in her hands, considering. "On the whole, it doesn't matter. Sometimes a quite impromptu thing goes off best. It's largely a question of what costumes we can ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... outside and pile neatly at the blind end of the building all the boards, boxes and other debris littering up the room, swept it, and selected two packing cases and nailed them up into a convenient impromptu desk, manufactured a bench seat out of some loose boards, set his pen, ink and paper in order, and ...
— Bart Stirling's Road to Success - Or; The Young Express Agent • Allen Chapman
... us full of Glenlivet whisky. We commenced dragging the kid up the stream, as before; but, having walked more than a mile without getting a bite, we were getting rather disheartened, and sat down to rest, struck a light, and smoked a cheroot. Hall laid down, having manufactured an impromptu easy chair out of his coil of rope, with the inflated goat-skin placed above it. My brother was not long in imitating his example, and I laid down under the shade of some reeds, near to the water's edge. The heat was oppressive, and we ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... the people who only found out the jokes some two or three minutes after they were made, and who then laughed apparently at some grave statements of fact. Reduced to paper, the showman's jokes are certainly not brilliant; almost their whole effect lies in their seemingly impromptu character. They are carefully led up to, of course; but they are uttered as if they are mere afterthoughts, of which the speaker is hardly sure." Herein the writer in the Standard hits the most marked peculiarity of Artemus Ward's style of lecturing. His affectation of not knowing what he ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... she was known ever after. Many graceful compliments paid to her by the courtly earl testify to his admiration of her beauty and accomplishments. On seeing her wear an orange lily on the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne he addressed her in the following impromptu: ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... comers, there was nothing strange in it. The others were too wrapped up in what was going to take place to see anything quaint in their every-day surroundings. There was no theatre in the camp. The little impromptu ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... Crevel without a word; and Crevel could not help smiling at the child's astonishment when threatened with this impromptu tubbing. ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... The masters in our public schools are far from blameless in this respect, and you may gauge the quality of many of these gentlemen pretty precisely by their disposition towards the "school pulpit" line of business. Half an hour's "straight talk to the boys," impromptu vague sentimentality about Earnestness, Thoroughness, True Patriotism, and so forth, seems to assuage the conscience as nothing else could do, for weeks of ill- prepared, ill-planned teaching, and years of preoccupation ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... of this auspicious moment, Mr. Guppy presents his friend under the impromptu name of Mr. Weevle and states the object of their visit. Krook, with his bottle under his arm (he never gets beyond a certain point of either drunkenness or sobriety), takes time to survey his proposed lodger and seems to ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... human effort, the power and skill to conduct and maintain a long-continued mental conflict, to pursue and examine witnesses, answer questions as well as ask them, make and meet objections, make impromptu speeches and argue difficult propositions, and, finally, to deliver off-hand, an address of hours in length, full of argument, illustration, sometimes interspersed with humor, wit, and pathos, and sometimes really eloquent, is by them always regarded, and not without reason, as ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... treated with the greatest indulgence by the ladies, and my high soprano flourished and positively reached unknown altitudes under the beneficent sunshine of their applause. (For all that I never attempted Chopin's "Impromptu.") ...
— In Bohemia with Du Maurier - The First Of A Series Of Reminiscences • Felix Moscheles
... with blades and gimlets enough to make a man at home on a desert island. He had hardly returned from the marquee with the prize in his hand, when it began to be understood that Wiry Ben proposed to amuse the company, before the gentry went to dinner, with an impromptu and gratuitous performance—namely, a hornpipe, the main idea of which was doubtless borrowed; but this was to be developed by the dancer in so peculiar and complex a manner that no one could deny him ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... the next day Leon came into the cabin to look at his tiny charge, for whom an impromptu cradle had been made with some pillows in an easy chair, and who seemed to have the happy knack of adapting herself to circumstances, for she slept quietly on, with a smile on her little face, all unconscious of the waves from which a few planks ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 354, October 9, 1886 • Various
... merrily, and I made the tea—cocoa, I should say, for the menu was changed in deference to our visitor's tastes. 'This is fun!' she said. And by common consent we abandoned ourselves, three youthful, hungry mariners, to the enjoyment of this impromptu picnic. Such a chance might never occur ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... same fervid abundance, that links the Spanish tradition to ours of the present day is the strangely impromptu character of much Spanish art production. The slightly ridiculous proverb that genius consists of an infinite capacity for taking pains is well controverted. The creative flow of Spanish artists has always been so strong, so full of vitality, that there has ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... them with his three-cornered laced hat on the side-table; he was already cosily, as of wont, seated upon the widow's little fubsy sofa, with the lady by his side, and he had just taken her hand and was about to renew his suit, to pour forth the impromptu effusions of his heart, concocted on the quarter-deck of the Yungfrau, when who should bolt into the ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... born at Arezzo, was the son of Benedetto Accolti. Known in his own day as l'Unico Aretino, he acquired great fame as a reciter of impromptu verse. He was listened to by large crowds, composed of the most learned men and the most distinguished prelates of the age. Among others, Cardinal Bombo has left on record a testimony to his extraordinary talent. His high reputation with his contemporaries ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... ways of making pleasant entertainments out of these informal gatherings. Such an evening may last from nine to twelve o'clock. Where impromptu dancing is resorted to, as it so often is, another hour is sometimes added. If dancing be excluded, games, music, cards, or recitations should take its place. If neither card-playing, nor dancing is permitted, the supper usually becomes ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... still tied up like a mummy, still looking the Image of Misery, as if he and repose had known nothing of each other since we had parted from him. He was, however, very anxious for our welfare, and hoped we had slept well on our impromptu couches. ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... she talked incessantly about going back to St. Ebbe's, where, however, she was not yet due. A longer leave of absence had been granted to her, in consideration of the fact that her holiday had been mainly spent in hard work in the impromptu hospital at Redcross. She would not have accepted the additional grant apart from the circumstance that Harry Ironside was in London. Annie admitted to herself, in the secret recesses of her heart, that now it had come to this, she would fain have passed these ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... Constance her chance. At an impromptu luncheon at the Knowle Hotel, before the intended dinner party at Valley House, she referred to the interest Society would begin to take in ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... of an admiring group, tested the impromptu platform. He accepted a short riding whip handed up to him by Alf Warren with a truly professional flourish. Andy stood easy and erect, one hand on his hip. All that seemed lacking was the sawdust ring ...
— Andy the Acrobat • Peter T. Harkness
... a pulpit, who can silence keep? A maid, who would not dream her ta'en to wife? Men looking down from some sheer dizzy steep Have (quite impromptu) leapt, and ended life. ...
— Songs for a Little House • Christopher Morley
... She, that she would accept a modest entertainment, this news spread lively joy throughout this city. This proof of the Empress's kindness, accompanied by the gracious memory she wished to testify for the people of Strassburg, made the preparations for this impromptu event easy, and in spite of the brief time between the announcement and the arrival of Her Majesty, a numerous and brilliant company was soon assembled at the Prefecture. The hall was elegantly decorated; the emblems and mottoes recalled the object of the festivity. After ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... once he received a nasty little snap in the arm. But these were unnoticed in the heat of the combat. His eyes were "seeing red," as the Westerners say. He had no nerves to feel with; only muscles to fight with. And all the time the impromptu club was in action—sometimes swinging like a flail, at other times being gripped for a no less effective thrust ...
— The Fiery Totem - A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian North-West • Argyll Saxby
... everything impromptu, no system, all bad enough, but I have no doubt the best that can be done; all the wounds pretty bad, some frightful, the men in their old clothes, unclean and bloody. Some of the wounded are rebel officers, prisoners. One, a Mississippian,—a captain,—hit badly in leg, I talked with some ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... nuts till Paul came to her with a hatful of late flowers and, standing by her, held the impromptu basket while she made up a bouquet to ...
— The Mysterious Key And What It Opened • Louisa May Alcott
... you an old maid, my dear," denied the impromptu poet pertly. "I merely said, or meant to say, that the idea you expressed might better be expected from an old maid, although I doubt if many old maids could have expressed it as ...
— Campfire Girls in the Allegheny Mountains - or, A Christmas Success against Odds • Stella M. Francis
... wandered along the river-bank. The men lit cigarettes and threw the matches into the water, watching these make large circles on the surface of the stream. Lida, with arms a-kimbo, tripped along, singing softly as she went, and her pretty little feet in dainty yellow shoes now and again executed an impromptu dance. Lialia picked flowers, which she flung at Riasantzeff, caressing him with ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... would be well to consult the Lambs on so important a subject, which necessitated an impromptu meeting in the "Angels' Retreat." The tea bell had ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... that these things were given to them for having fed King. Some old clothes were then put on some of the men and women, and the affair ended in several of our party and several of the black fellows having an impromptu "corroboree," to the intense delight of the natives, and I must say, very much to our amusement. They left, making signs expressive of friendship, carrying their presents with them. The men all wore a net girdle; and of the women some wore one of leaves, others of feathers. I feel confident ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... the end," he said with a creditable impromptu. "The wife said—'No, you're mistaken. Your Festival's only beginning. You get no supper. It's the commencement of ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... a wonderful command of the resources of the keyboard. For encore she dashed off a brilliant morceau by Herr Klug, entitled "Echoes de Seraglio." This was very difficult, but for the fair debutante it was child's play. She got five recalls, and after the concert held an impromptu reception in her dressing-room, her happy parents being warmly congratulated by their fellow townsmen. We predict a great career for Irene Murray. Among those present ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... we stayed on the wharf till she left, singing college songs, giving an impromptu athletic exhibition, etc., to the intense delight of about fifty small boys (I can't conceive where they all came from), and the two or three hundred servant girls going home to P.E.I. for ...
— Bowdoin Boys in Labrador • Jonathan Prince (Jr.) Cilley
... venison, and a thousand other things, mingled in inextricable confusion. In the wide fire-place, which was supplied with stones for and-irons, a portion of the lately slaughtered deer was broiling on an impromptu and primitive species of gridiron, which would have disgusted Soyer and astonished Vatel. This had caused the smoke; and as Verty entered, the old woman had been turning the slices. Longears and Wolf were already stretched before the fire, their ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... like a happily-adapted recollection than the actual impromptu of a boy of nine. But another, in which, after a painful silence, he replied to the brutal enquiry of a ne'er-do-well relative as to when he meant to grow handsome, by saying that he would do so when the speaker grew good,—is characteristic ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... calculation as to how to cut up three cakes into nineteen exactly even portions, while Katherine waited with the penknife ready. Even the hitherto irreproachable Maudie Heywood and Cynthia Greene were occupied with scissors, making plates out of sheets of exercise paper. Beds drawn up alongside the impromptu table served for seats, and the girls crowded together as closely as they could. Raymonde and Morvyth, by virtue of their expedition to the shops, were voted mistresses of the ceremonies, and dispensed ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... was helping to set the little table. Laurie looked at her with shining eyes. One of her rapid changes of mood had taken place, and she was entering into the spirit of the impromptu supper as cheerfully as if it were a new game and she a child. She had become a wholly different personality from the tragic-eyed girl who less than ten minutes ago had somberly announced that she was making her last stand in life. Again, as often ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan
... the business rest there and went up with Locke again to enjoy the brilliant moonlight and listen to the impromptu concert which the crew had begun with a mouth organ and ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore
... taken to preserve the natural outline, not to leave jagged edges. Attention to this matter results in the lengthening of the lashes. Dyeing them is another expedient often resorted to for increasing their effect. A good permanent black is all that is needed, and for this use Indian ink. As an impromptu expedient to serve for one night, a hairpin held for a few seconds in the flame of a candle, and drawn through the lashes, will serve to color them well, and with sufficient durability. It need scarcely be added that the hairpin must be suffered to grow cold before it is used, or ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... broad porch at Forked River, smoking and enjoying the cool, fragrant breath of the cedar swamp, when somehow the chat drifted to the subject of assaying and refining the precious metals. That was just where one of the party, Mr. D.W. Baker, of Newark, was at home, and in the course of an impromptu lecture he told the party more about the topic under discussion, and especially the platinum branch of it, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 458, October 11, 1884 • Various
... operation was with comb, scissors, and brush; going round and round, smoothing a curl here, clipping an unruly whisker-hair there, giving a graceful sweep to the temple-lock, with other impromptu touches evincing the hand of a master; while, like any resigned gentleman in barber's hands, Don Benito bore all, much less uneasily, at least than he had done the razoring; indeed, he sat so pale and rigid now, that the negro seemed a Nubian sculptor ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... day, a meal much too long drawn out for Lanyard's liking, and marked to boot by the consumption of much too much champagne, he left the main saloon the arena of an impromptu poker party, repaired to the quarterdeck, and finding a wicker lounge chair by the taffrail subsided into it with a sigh of gratitude for this fragrant solitude of night, ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... years previous. After lunch the men took themselves off to the rifle range, while Selina, Trina, and the other two women put away the dishes. An hour later the men joined them in great spirits. Ryer had won the impromptu match which they had arranged, making quite a wonderful score, which included three clean bulls' eyes, while McTeague had not been able even to ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... experienced the first flow of the menses which in the female constitution are a natural discharge, her father believed himself under the obligation of atoning for her supposedly sinful condition by a small impromptu distribution of clothes among the natives. This periodical state of women was considered as one of legal impurity fateful both to the man who happened to have any intercourse, however indirect, with her, and to the woman herself who failed in scrupulously observing all the rites prescribed by ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... the rebellion of 1837 in Lower Canada as no less a fiasco than its counterpart in Upper Canada. There is no doubt that it was hopeless from the outset. {102} It was an impromptu movement, based upon a sudden resolution rather than on a well-reasoned plan of action. Most of the leaders—Wolfred Nelson, Thomas Storrow Brown, Robert Bouchette, and Amury Girod—were strangers to the men under their command; and none of them, save Chenier, ...
— The 'Patriotes' of '37 - A Chronicle of the Lower Canada Rebellion • Alfred D. Decelles
... honest," was Mr. Gryce's first thought. "He is going to show us the bow and confess to what was undoubtedly an accident." But Mr. Gryce felt more or less ready to modify this impromptu conclusion when, on passing through the arch himself he came upon the young man still standing in Section VI, with his eyes on the opposite gallery and his whole ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... be doin' up this way? He'd be more apt to strike for Mexico, wouldn't he? Still, long as I'd let Plummer put me on the committee, it was up to me to answer any calls. Might be entertainin' to see who he'd mistaken for an enemy alien this time. And if all I was expected to do was spill a little impromptu strategy—well, maybe I could, and then again maybe I couldn't. I'd take ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... largest stockholders of the enterprise; together with all the professors, and some dozen of Russia's celebrated musicians and writers. The meal over, Anton Rubinstein, originator of the plan, and Zaremba, his able co-adjutor, made brief speeches. There were one or two impromptu replies; a little discreet cheering; the customary toasts to the Czar and the persons and the subject in hand; and then Ivan, carried out of his usual shyness, proposed the health of the sister Conservatoire of St. ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... the cafes, the theatre, the Luxembourg gardens, in grisettes' rooms, even in the law schools—anywhere rather than in their horrible rooms—horrible for purposes of study, delightful as soon as they were used for gossiping and smoking in. Put a cloth on the table, and the impromptu dinner sent in from the best eating-house in the neighborhood—places for four—two of them in petticoats—show a lithograph of this "Interior" to the veriest bigot, and she will be bound ...
— Z. Marcas • Honore de Balzac
... very sad, for the Atlantic is a big thing and cannot be ignored, particularly in love affairs. It would have been better for the poet if he had accepted the bourgeois' invitation to dinner; friends, as I suggested, might have come in, an impromptu dance might have been arranged, or the rain might have begun again; something would certainly have happened to make them miss the train; and they would have been asked to stay the night. The widow did ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... to the heaving of the anchor, or for hoisting in cargo. Everyone was in romping spirits, and notwithstanding the cheery Captain's signs of fatigue and worn looks, which he evidently strove to conceal, the evening had all the freshness and spirit of an impromptu pleasure. ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... the little iron table in the corner of the saloon hiccoughed, and lifted a crimson, puffy face, with bleary eyes in it that were startlingly blue. He drew back the great arms that had been hanging over the edge of his impromptu pillow, and heaved up his massive stooping shoulders, and got slowly upon his feet. Then, lurching in his walk, but not stumbling, he moved across the little space of saw-dusted, hard-beaten earth that divided him from W. ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... John Hunter and Lightbody, and that Miss Hunter was made use of against her. Having a most contemptible opinion of her Albina's understanding, and knowing that her young friend had too little capacity to be able to deceive her, or to invent a plausible excuse impromptu, Mrs. Beaumont turned quick, and exclaimed, "My dear, what could Lightbody be saying to you when I came up?—for I remember he stopped short, and you both ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... preserved of the bitter and unwise words he used in country coteries; how he proposed Washington's health as an amendment to Pitt's, gave as a toast "the last verse of the last chapter of Kings," and celebrated Dumouriez in a doggrel impromptu full of ridicule and hate. Now his sympathies would inspire him with SCOTS, WHA HAE; now involve him in a drunken broil with a loyal officer, and consequent apologies and explanations, hard to offer for a man of Burns's stomach. ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... some two or three minutes after they were made, and who then laughed apparently at some grave statements of fact. Reduced to paper, the showman's jokes are certainly not brilliant; almost their whole effect lies in their seemingly impromptu character. They are carefully led up to, of course; but they are uttered as if they are mere afterthoughts, of which the speaker is hardly sure." Herein the writer in the Standard hits the most marked peculiarity of Artemus Ward's style of lecturing. His affectation of not knowing what he ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... by a sheet of verses which have been sold and resold, doubtless in perfect good faith, as being those to which the writer alludes. But Miss Browning has recognized them as her father's own impromptu epigrams, well remembered in the family, together with the occasion on which they were written. The substitution may, from the first, ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... poem, "Pussy's Class," which some of my young readers may have read. The "meou" and the "sptzz" were capital, and when the "fond mamma rubbed her nose," the children shouted, for Miss Bab made a paw of her hand and ended with an impromptu purr, which was considered the best imitation ever presented to an appreciative public. Betty bashfully murmurred "Little White Lily," swaying to and fro as regularly as if in no other way could the rhymes be ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... he received a nasty little snap in the arm. But these were unnoticed in the heat of the combat. His eyes were "seeing red," as the Westerners say. He had no nerves to feel with; only muscles to fight with. And all the time the impromptu club was in action—sometimes swinging like a flail, at other times being gripped for a no less effective ...
— The Fiery Totem - A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian North-West • Argyll Saxby
... here, like a visitation from heaven, three attractive young ladies descend upon us, traveling through our domain, and having discovered their presence we instantly decided to take advantage of the opportunity and invite them to an impromptu ball. There's no use refusing us, for we insist on carrying out our plan. If you men, perhaps the fathers of the young ladies, behave reasonably, we will entertain you royally and send you on your way rejoicing. ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne
... there will be sketching from the cast, and on another an impromptu sketch projet, to be completed in an hour. In addition to these there will be competed for three of the larger and more important regular projets, such as were made last season by the Club, and for which two prizes are offered to those obtaining the first ...
— The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration, Vol. 1, No. 10, October 1895. - French Farmhouses. • Various
... bell-like returns upon themselves, their music of triangle and cymbal, gave him quite a new pleasure. In some of them poetry seemed to approach the nearest possible to bird-song—to unconscious seeming through most conscious art, imitating the carelessness and impromptu of warblings as old as the existence of birds, and as new as every fresh individual joy; for each new generation grows its own feathers, and sings its own song, yet always the feathers of its kind, and the song of ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... leading contributor to a fashionable ladies' magazine, besides being the authoress of "Confessions of a Voluptuous Young Lady of High Rank," and also the editress of the last edition of the "Memoirs of Miss Frances Hill?" Well, I entertained my aged admirer with a pretty little impromptu "romance," "got up expressly for the occasion," as the playbills have it; and he religiously believed every word of it—though, of course, it contained not one single word of truth in it. I told him that my brother and myself—ha, ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... the cayuse, and Andy could keep him in peace and have a mighty good cow-pony, as he had schemed. He smoked a cigarette while Chip was having the horses corralled, and then led the way willingly, with twenty-five men following expectantly at his heels. Unlike Andy, they fully expected an impromptu exhibition of fancy riding. Not all of them had seen Andy atop a bad horse, and the Diamond G men, in particular, were eager to witness a sample ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... watched the spectacle for a while, and on resuming his work, his accuracy of aim was momentarily at fault. The Emperor rebuked him for having made an unwarranted boast and handed him over to the monono-be for execution. After the unfortunate man had been led away, one of his comrades chanted an impromptu couplet lamenting his fate, whereat the Emperor, relenting, bade a messenger gallop off on "a black horse of Kai" to stay the execution. The mandate of mercy arrived just in time, and when Mane's bonds were loosed, he, too, improvised ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... disposed to resent the action of the sailors in thus cutting off their means of ascent. The fact that it was high tide at the time, and the tall sides of the ship towered above the wharf, constituted a further grievance in the boys' minds. They held an impromptu indignation meeting forthwith. But, although they were unanimous in condemning the conduct of the foreigners, who evidently did not know any better, they were still ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... Lusty cheers rose from all sides, helmets were tossed into the air, rifles were stacked, and impromptu cake walks and fox trots staged ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy
... prove that it is to your interest as an epicure that you should go to the play. I have simply pointed out the other interest, and allowed it to stand on its merits. In ethical theories of a certain type, and in much impromptu moralizing, it is assumed that there is no legitimate appeal except in behalf of interests that are at the instant already alive. This is as absurd as to suppose that in order to bring you to the truth in any purely theoretical matter, I must confine myself to evidence that you already ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... Piccadilly and Bermondsey, in Blackwall and Oxford Street, were gathered bundles of hilarity, lingering near the scenes of their recent splendours. A thousand sounds, now of revelry, now of complaint, disturbed the brooding calm of the sky. A thousand impromptu concerts were given, and a thousand insults grew precociously to blows. A thousand old friendships were shattered, and a thousand new vows of eternal comradeship and blood-brotherhood were registered. A thousand wives were waiting, sullen and ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... such as he could remember,—no copy being at hand,—and then improvised several others, equally, if not more difficult, to the surprise both of Sterkel and his friends. "What raised our surprise to real astonishment," said Ries, as he related the story, "was, that the impromptu variations were in precisely that graceful, pleasing style which he had just heard ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... lady having expressed a desire to meet him the following season, he replied, "Ah, by that time I shall have gone farther and fared worse!" Sometimes, when we were all in a particularly merry mood, Landor would indulge in impromptu doggerel "to please Giallo"! Absurd couplets would come thick and fast,—so fast that it was impossible ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... a fair chance of success, it must be almost impromptu: projected at twelve o'clock at night at the earliest, executed at twelve o'clock on the following day at the latest; and even then the odds are fearfully against it. The climate of England is not remarkable ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... in turn; said couplets being necessarily original and relevant locally. The accompaniment—an easy change of chords—was played on the piano colla voce. And no one minded in the least a foot, more or less, at the end of a verse. The joke was the thing with the Madigans, and the impromptu rhyme that brought down the house was the ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... promised the Princess Amelia to improvise upon any subject she should select, and he relied upon his cunning to incline her choice in such a direction as to make the poem he was now writing appropriate and seem impromptu. ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... that they understood that these things were given to them for having fed King. Some old clothes were then put on some of the men and women, and the affair ended in several of our party and several of the black fellows having an impromptu "corroboree," to the intense delight of the natives, and I must say, very much to our amusement. They left, making signs expressive of friendship, carrying their presents with them. The men all wore a net girdle; and of the women some wore one of leaves, others ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... tanned us the color of mahogany, and our legs and feet were swollen and blistered from being so much in the salt water, and the action of the hot sun on them made them excessively painful. Fortunately, but little exertion was now necessary, and our only relief was in lying still, with an impromptu awning over us. General Breckinridge took charge of the water and rum, doling it out at regular intervals, a tot at a time, determined to make it last as long ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... a small room on the right of the hall—a room in which the remains of a cold, evidently impromptu supper lay on a table lighted by a shaded lamp. Two men had been partaking of that supper, but Levendale was alone. He gave his visitor another queer smile, and pointed, first to a chair and ...
— The Orange-Yellow Diamond • J. S. Fletcher
... of anything more to add, and I felt relieved when, with a warning shriek, the train dashed into a tunnel. By the time we had emerged again into the sunlight and the solitude of the open landscape I had ready an impromptu which I had been working at in the darkness. I looked straight at ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... Mr. Meighen for the cordiality with which he greeted me, as the inventive Canadian press had added impromptu reflections of their own to what I had said of him. I sat next to Mr. MacKenzie King, but as we had no opportunity of private conversation, he invited me to go to his house for supper after ...
— My Impresssions of America • Margot Asquith
... Speaker, received the smallest intimation that I could be called upon to speak this evening...." [PATRICIA controls a smile, and he goes on with overwhelming enthusiasm.] Well, conjurers are just the same. It takes some time to prepare an impromptu. A man like that walks about the woods and fields doing all his tricks beforehand, and talking all sorts of gibberish because he thinks he is alone. One evening this man found he was not alone. He found a very beautiful ...
— Magic - A Fantastic Comedy • G.K. Chesterton
... remarkably fine poets. Her concluding observations as to the Countess, in particular, I consider to have been an example of sustained invective such as one rarely encounters in this degenerate age. Well, her next essay in creative composition is my supper, which will be an equally spirited impromptu. To-morrow she will darn and sew me an epic; and her desserts will continue to be in the richest lyric vein. Such, sir, are the poems of Lisa, all addressed to me, who came so near to gallivanting ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... to mind and sometimes they were not, but the laws of hospitality held good in the woods as in the house, and they were welcomed civilly at least. Once or twice, when particular friends of his came on sap-boiling days, Davie ventured on an impromptu sugaring-off on his own responsibility. He made use of a small kettle for the purpose, so that the important matter of boiling down the sap need not be interfered with. He told himself that he was not ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson
... imitative immediately immigration impromptu imminent incidentally incidents incredulous independence indispensable induce influence infinite instance instant intellectual intelligence intentionally intercede irresistible ...
— The Century Handbook of Writing • Garland Greever
... except dressed just too much like a gentleman to be one. He was no fool though, though a futile idler; he was curiously clever at all kinds of things that couldn't be the slightest use; a sort of impromptu conjuring; making fifteen matches set fire to each other like a regular firework; or cutting a banana or some such thing into a dancing doll. His name was Isidore Smythe; and I can see him still, with his little dark face, just coming up to the counter, making a jumping kangaroo ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... will remind her of her own notable description of 'sorrow,' whence she was once called upon to distinguish wherein 'sorrow, grief,' and 'melancholy,' differed from each other; which she did 'impromptu,' by their 'effects,' in a truly admirable manner, to the high satisfaction of every one: I myself could not, by 'study,' have distinguished 'better,' nor more 'concisely'—SORROW, said she, 'wears'; ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... tracts! An' yet some'ow I didn't." Mr. Pyecroft nodded his head wonderingly. "Our old man was quite right—so was 'Op—so was I. 'Ere, Glass!" He kicked the Marine. "Here's our Antonio 'as written a impromptu book! He was a spy ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... Written impromptu, on reading the following passage in Mr. Capel Lofft's beautiful and interesting Preface to Nathaniel Bloomfield's Poems, just published:—"It has a mixture of the sportive, which deepens the impression of its melancholy close. I could have wished, as I have said in a short ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... Album of the Lady of Counsellor D. Pollock The Heliotrope Sonnet On seeing a Young Lady I had previously known, confined in a Madhouse Prometheus Rosa's Grave The Sibyl. A Sketch Love On a delightful Drawing in my Album Stanzas Shakspeare Impromptu. To Oriana, on attending with her, as Sponsors, at a Christening To my Spaniel Fanny Widowed Love Written to the Lady of Dr. George Birkbeck The Chain-pier, Brighton. A Sketch Sonnet. Morning. On the Death of Dr. Abel Sonnet. Night. Constancy. To ——— Epistle to a Friend ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... Coverley, that "much could be said on both sides of the question," might now fairly be urged; for, according to the march of events, it is but too probable that the melodrama now enacting before our eyes has not been an impromptu; and it is quite clear that the ordonnances have furnished the occasion, and the excuse (if such ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... sound silly and incomprehensible, like an impromptu lecture on the sins of strong drink. His eyes wandered over her, resting on one white arm ...
— The Man Who Wins • Robert Herrick
... Port Said. The Khedive's dominion, a Government and business point, with many consular residences. It was the first sight of the "old flag" since leaving Marseilles. It is a new baptism of patriotism for one to see the national banner so far from home, and impromptu he sings, "long may it wave," for "with all thy ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... time of enactment. When in the early eighteenth century legislation was resumed in regard to negroes, it took the form of a slave code much like that of Connecticut but with an added act, borrowed perhaps from a Southern colony, providing that slaves charged with theft be tried by impromptu courts consisting of two or more justices of the peace or town officers, and that appeal might be taken to a court of regular session only at the master's request and upon his giving bond for its prosecution. Some of the towns, furthermore, added by-laws of their own for more thorough police. ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... inconvenient, even for practice games; while the old fair grounds in the southeastern part of the city were not under University control, besides being ill-adapted to college games. The streets and Campus were popular for impromptu games, although the arm of the law was unduly active in the spring, and "the batting of balls" was conspicuously forbidden on a sign which long decorated the south wall of the Museum. The Regents recognized this need of a great ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... party in some of its tergiversations, and insisting that if he persisted in doing as he had threatened, he would soon find himself standing alone. She promised the gentleman that she would repeat to her husband what he had said, and as soon as he had gone seized her pencil and wrote the following impromptu, which serves well to illustrate her firm persistence in any course she believes right, as well as the ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... use of force. The provision for arbitration contemplates the formation of a permanent tribunal before which disputed cases may be brought for settlement by the mutual consent of the litigants in each separate case. The advantages of such a permanent tribunal over impromptu commissions of arbitration are conceived to be the actual existence of a competent court, prepared to administer justice, the greater economy resulting from a well-devised system, and the accumulated judicial skill and experience which such ...
— Messages and Papers of William McKinley V.2. • William McKinley
... heaven except that "his halo didn't fit," or said in her quick way, when the plainness of a lady's dress was commended, "Why, I didn't suppose that anybody could go to heaven now-a-days without an overskirt," or wrote her sparkling impromptu rhymes for our children's games, her mirth was all in harmony with her earnest life. Her quick perceptions, her droll comparisons, her readiness of expression, united with her rare and tender sympathies, made her the most fascinating of companions to both young and old. Our little Saturday tear, ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... "Impromptu, you know; but they expressed my feelings. That is one of the best things the war has done for us. It has permitted us to express our emotions more openly. I thought it a beautiful sight to see the noble tears coursing down your father's furrowed cheeks. Those few words of ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... still the servants at the other end continued to carry in the succession of dishes to the feast; if you wish to count the courses there is still the portly kitchen record. Here rang out the joyous conversation, interspersed with the Latin epithalamium of some impromptu poet, or the fescennine verses of a German minnesinger. At one side, the married women had their pleasure; young mothers whose children became restless withdrew here to quiet them; another table in an ...
— Peter the Priest • Mr Jkai
... of his meal with military dispatch, proceeded doorward, smote the grinning army of Remate de Males a buffet on the shoulder, and vanished into the night. A moment later his stentorian voice rolled back through the nocturnal racket in an impromptu paraphrase of an old ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... career, he had started the store. He had also meant to do general repair work in the backroom shop. But in recent years it had degenerated into an impromptu club hall, funk hole, griping-arguing-and-planning pit, extracurricular study lab and project site for an indefinite horde of interplanetary enthusiasts who were thought of in Jarviston as either young adults of the most resourceful kind—for ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... joined by the faithful Titus, and the two went to Breslau, where they spent four days, going to the theatre and listening to music. Chopin played quite impromptu two movements of his E minor concerto, supplanting a tremulous amateur. In Dresden where they arrived November 10, they enjoyed themselves with music. Chopin went to a soiree at Dr. Kreyssig's and was overwhelmed at the sight of a circle of dames ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... Symphony" I have not yet received. My last number of the Zeitschrift is that of July 6th. I am glad that Stade does not disapprove of these Faust-things.— Schondorf's Polonaise, Impromptu, etc., which Kahnt has sent me, I have read through with pleasure and interest. With the next sending to Rome please enclose the "Petrus" Oratorio by Meinardus (the pianoforte score). In case the pianoforte score has not appeared, then let me have ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... carriage set off at a trot, reached the Boulevards, and took the direction of the Bastille. It had gotten opposite the Porte Saint-Martin, and Fougas, with his head at the window, was continuing the composition of his impromptu speech, when an open carriage drawn by a pair of superb chestnuts passed, so to speak, under his very nose. A portly man with a gray moustache turned ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... garret on some Saturday afternoon while our century was not far advanced in its second score of years, he might have found three boys in cloaks and doublets and plumed hats, heroes and bandits, enacting more or less impromptu melodramas. In one of the boys he would have seen the embryo dramatist of a nation's life history, John Lothrop Motley; in the second, a famous talker and wit who has spilled more good things on the wasteful air in conversation than would carry a "diner-out" through half a dozen London seasons, ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... canals proposed by the department on highways; and the discussion involved millions! On the other, journalists, pandering to the banker's self-love, were talking about the session of the day before, and the impromptu speech of the great man. In the course of two long hours Birotteau saw the banker three times, as he accompanied certain persons of importance three steps from the door of his study. But Francois Keller went to the door of the antechamber with the last, ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... violin from which he could extract the most wonderful music, and, lastly, I had learned to tootle fairly well upon the flute; therefore whenever we had visitors we were generally required to organise an impromptu concert for their benefit, as was the case on the evening in question. But at length the instruments fell silent, my mother and Nell bade us good night and retired to their rooms, and, a table under the veranda having been set out with decanters, glasses, cigars, and tobacco, we males ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... Yet this man was the owner of several square miles of land, of which nearly every acre would produce corn, and, with a little trouble, all the common vegetables. The evening was spent in smoking, with a little impromptu singing, accompanied by the guitar. The signoritas all sat together in one corner of the room, and did not sup with ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... motions of going through the performance a second time. The joke never staled. It always got a hand, no matter how often it was repeated. At each encore the Utes stamped their flatfooted way round the room in a kind of impromptu and mirthful dance. The baptismal jest never ceased ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... caricatures—for he had talent with his pencil—and his brilliant conversation, rather than to apply himself to routine work. His comrades used to lock him into a room to make him work, and even then he would outwit them by dashing off a witty parody or a bit of impromptu verse. Among his literary jeux d'esprit was an examination paper on 'Pickwick,' prepared as a Christmas joke in exact imitation of a genuine "exam." The prizes, two first editions of Pickwick, were won by W. W. Skeat, now famous as a philologist, and Walter Besant, known to the public ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... advice, she spent the first day's lessons in questioning the different classes as to their past work, and so turned the hour into an impromptu conversation class. The ugly English accents made her wince, and she winced a second time as she realised the unpleasant fact that just as her pupils would have to prepare for her, so would she be obliged to prepare for them! Forgotten rules of grammar must be looked up and memorised, ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... revolutionary intent. Not long after this congress was brought up to the point of assuming the responsibility and control of the military operations which New England had commenced by laying siege to Boston, in which town General Gage and his troops were caged, and before which lay an impromptu New England army of 15,000 men which the battle of Lexington had immediately brought together. Urged by the New England delegates, congress agreed to assume the expense of maintaining this army. John Adams was the first to propose the name of George Washington for the chief commander; his ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... to make a sort of smoking concert. The bashful and bewildered Arthur Inglewood almost struggled against his own growing importance. He felt as if, in spite of him, his photographs were turning into a picture gallery, and his bicycle into a gymkhana. But no one had any time to criticize these impromptu estates and offices, for they followed each other in wild succession like the ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... with his companions was a great day in the annals of the Mustang Valley, and Major Hope resolved to celebrate it by an impromptu festival at the old block-house; for many hearts in the valley had been made glad that day, and he knew full well that, under such circumstances, some safety-valve must be devised for the ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... at one of his impromptu tea parties. We all took it for granted that his wife knew we were coming, and that her preparations were already made. Surrounded by half a dozen children, she was performing the last act in the opera of Lullaby, wholly unconscious of the invasion ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... a most interesting occasion. We had a hearty reception, several impromptu "addresses" being presented to the President, who in turn spoke to the burghers with much fire and enthusiasm. They were already in the best of spirits, as they might well be, for their General had but recently won victories over Von Donop and ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... (1625, in-8), but he contrived to effect his escape. He was ultimately captured in Picardy, and put in a dungeon. He was banished from the kingdom by order of the Parliament. In his old age he found an asylum in the house of the Duke of Montmorency. The poet's real surname was Viaud. The following impromptu is attributed to Thophile, who was asked by a foolish person whether all poets ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... immediately, he was riding shoulder high. His bearers broke for the sidewalk, and down Market Street he went, a blue-and-gold serpentine dancing behind him. There was his first Jinks at the Bohemian club—an impromptu affair, thrown in between the revelling Christmas Jinks in the clubhouse and the formally artistic Midsummer High Jinks in the Russian River Grove. The Sire, noting his smile and figure, impressed him into service for a ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... about like that—an impressionist water-color. Between the one picture and the other there were twelve or fifteen of the bric-a-brac things already mentioned; also an oil-painting by Elihu Vedder, "The Young Medusa." Every now and then the children required me to construct a romance—always impromptu—not a moment's preparation permitted—and into that romance I had to get all that bric-a-brac and the three pictures. I had to start always with the cat and finish with Emmeline. I was never allowed the ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... centre of an admiring group, tested the impromptu platform. He accepted a short riding whip handed up to him by Alf Warren with a truly professional flourish. Andy stood easy and erect, one hand on his hip. All that seemed lacking was the sawdust ...
— Andy the Acrobat • Peter T. Harkness
... recent anniversary of the Atlanta University, the meeting of the Alumni, (May 28th), was made pleasant and memorable by the presentation to Mrs. Ware of a large portrait of herself. It was wholly unexpected to her, and her impromptu acknowledgment of the gift was made in the vein of her characteristic vivacity and kindness. Among the addresses made at the presentation, was one by Mrs. Chase, herself one of our earliest and most honored laborers. ...
— The American Missionary, Volume XLII. No. 7. July 1888 • Various
... for us to wrap ourselves in at night, with a small kettle for boiling our tea, and a pot for cooking our meat or soup. When resting at night we quickly formed an impromptu hut of boughs. I could not help wishing that my sister and Grace had been with us, to admire the beautiful forests and magnificent birds we saw. Rising in the morning, we witnessed another dance of the birds of paradise in some trees close to us, ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... built every night, where singing, storytelling, and open air amusements of an impromptu nature are indulged in to one's heart's content, though visitors are all expected to remember the rights of others and ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... Major, on'y got mo' meat to 'em. But you got to know 'em fust to eat 'em. Now dis yer shell is de hot plate, an' ye do all yo' eatin' right inside it," said Chad, dropping a spoonful of butter, the juice of a lemon, and a pinch of salt into the impromptu dish. ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith
... mused and mused over this impromptu synopsis, in my vain attempt to reach some fresh clue to a proper understanding of the inconsistencies in Miss Tuttle's conduct by means of my theory of her strong but mistaken devotion to Mr. Jeffrey, a light suddenly broke upon me from an entirely unexpected quarter. It was a faint ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... stanzas, is composed of alternate lines sung by the two competitors. The verse is of the homeliest; indeed it is only a rollicking indifference to its own inanity that saves it from sheer puerility and gives it a careless and as it were impromptu charm of its own. Even in an age of experiment it must have needed some self-confidence to write the dialect of the Calender; it must have required nothing less than assurance to put forth such verses as ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... jovial he looks! He is the life and soul of every party, and his impromptu singing after supper will make you die of laughing. He is meditating an impromptu now, and at the same time thinking about a bill that is coming ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... different way through the town again, which we entered just as the cathedral bell and the bells of all the churches were pealing the Ave Maria. On our return we found a fire lighted and everything illuminated, and by half-past eight we had a capital impromptu dinner served. Chinese Tommy, who waited on us, had decorated the table most tastefully with flowers. Macao is a favourite resort for the European residents of Hongkong who are addicted to gambling. The gentlemen of our party went to observe the proceedings, ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... "he is only getting up from his seat. How wonderful he is! I never heard anything more impressive in my life. After all, unpremeditated art is the greatest art. Such an effect as that could never have been produced except impromptu." ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... rested in the shade of a tree and had written two poems. One of these was the serenade which he would have roared out on the night air on a very recent occasion if he had had time to prepare it. It was, in his opinion, far superior to the impromptu verses of which he had been obliged to make use, and it pleased him to think that if things should go well with him after the interview to which he was looking forward, he would read that serenade to its object, and ask her to substitute it in her ...
— The Captain's Toll-Gate • Frank R. Stockton
... handing out gifts, and when I saw Mrs. Allen buying a whole wheelbarrow-load of golden-looking doughnuts, brought by a woman of the village close by, I wondered with some apprehension if she were meaning to reward us for our excessive virtue. But they were an impromptu treat for the soldiers standing in the yard—some already lined up to march—and the way they disappeared down those brown throats made me feel ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... an emu's egg in a quart-pot?" the man from Beyanst asked, "lending a hand" with another piece of fencing wire, using it as a fork to turn the steak on the impromptu gridiron. "It goes in all right, but when it's cooked it won't come out, and you have to use the quart-pot for an egg-cup ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... of the joint caucus he escorted Madeleine to the council-chamber, where the new Governor was holding his impromptu reception. There were no shadows on the faces which pressed closely around him. All the politicians of the State were there, eager to be the first to congratulate him. Their fears had been somewhat allayed. In political ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... later was six o'clock, and Perry had lost all resemblance to the young man in the liniment advertisement. He looked like a rough draft for a riotous cartoon. They were singing—an impromptu song ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... suspended in their favor; or that a man, who had seldom leisure to talk to his children, must sit up an extra hour to talk to them. And yet, amidst the pressure of overwhelming toil, his vivacity seldom flagged, and his politeness never. Perhaps the severest thing he ever said was an impromptu on a shallow-pated student who was unfolding a scheme for flying ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... affair was impromptu; the children had spent the morning getting it up, and now were going to devote the afternoon ...
— Marjorie's Maytime • Carolyn Wells
... turn to something more cheerful," resumed Dr. Dubbe; and seating himself at the piano he played the Schubert C minor impromptu. "On the second page," he said, "where the key becomes A flat major, occurs a harmony which looks and sounds like a foreign chord. Treated harmonically it is a second dominant formation, and should read C flat, ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... her couplets—Phil's impromptu verses always embarrassed him—and demanded the particulars. He chuckled as she described the meeting. He cross-examined her to be sure that she omitted nothing. Her report of his brother-in-law's tirade gave him the greatest delight. As they talked, they heard ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... work of his impromptu meal. He seemed anxious to put an end to his housekeeper's affectionate interest in himself and his health, and to get her out of the room. She had nursed him nearly thirty years before, and the recollection that she had been very familiar with him when he was a handsome black-eyed ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... French coast is lanets; they are netted bags on a circular wooden frame, at the end of a long pole. Alphonsine, still smiling, was happy to lend them. Then she helped the two ladies to make an impromptu change of toilet, so as not to spoil their dresses. She offered them skirts, coarse worsted stockings and hemp shoes. The men took off their socks and went to the shoemaker's to ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... had been covered, the bar was reversed, the travelers holding an impromptu ceremony as the great vessel spun around its center through an angle of one hundred and eighty degrees. A few days later the observers began to recognize some of the fixed stars in familiar constellations and knew that the yellowish-white star directly ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... was the derisive, incredulous look on the young medical man's face which stung him into adding: "If I understand rightly"—he turned to Varick—"something very like what I should call an impromptu materialization took place in the ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
... grown very hot. There was scarcely a stir in the air, and the sun beat down on the sand-hills in no gentle manner. The perspiration ran down the men's faces as they carried, and the flies were beginning to come. After lunch Job set up two impromptu wigwams, stringing a tarpaulin over each, and under these shelters the men rested till 4 P.M. By camping time the outfit had been moved up over the portage about a mile, and I had learned something more about what ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... to describe with great zest and a wonderful richness of local colour, the impromptu fetes in which he bore a part; his raids upon the cherry and plum orchards—for the neighbourhood of Agen is rich in plum-trees, and prunes are one of the principal articles of commerce in the district. Playing at soldiers ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... joint caucus he escorted Madeleine to the council-chamber, where the new Governor was holding his impromptu reception. There were no shadows on the faces which pressed closely around him. All the politicians of the State were there, eager to be the first to congratulate him. Their fears had been somewhat ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... Andy gasped at length, in a whisper. "Best I ever saw in m'life, impromptu on the spot, like that. I saw you had the makings in you, soon as I caught your eye. And the whole, blame bunch fell for it—woo-oof!" He laid his face down again upon his folded arms and shook in all the long ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... schools are far from blameless in this respect, and you may gauge the quality of many of these gentlemen pretty precisely by their disposition towards the "school pulpit" line of business. Half an hour's "straight talk to the boys," impromptu vague sentimentality about Earnestness, Thoroughness, True Patriotism, and so forth, seems to assuage the conscience as nothing else could do, for weeks of ill- prepared, ill-planned teaching, and years of preoccupation with rowing- boats and cricket. The more extreme examples ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... boxes, and available conveyances of the invited guests—parties of which the aim seems to be, to collect in one favoured spot in the country, all the luxuries, and airs, and graces of the town—but little impromptu efforts in the same direction in which Mrs Grove had all the trouble, and her guests all the pleasure. Very charming little fetes her guests generally pronounced them to be. Arthur enjoyed them vastly, and all the more that it never entered into his head, that he was in a measure the occasion of ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... that Boyd, being called upon, instantly contrived some impromptu verses amid general approbation—for his intelligence was as lithe and graceful as his body was agile. And our foppish Ensign, who was no dolt by a long shot either, made a most deft rondeau in flattery of the ladies, turning it so neatly and unexpectedly that we all ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... those from which the Germans had been driven, there were flags and decorations which were brought up to the front by the soldiers. In the villages back of the line there were impromptu celebrations and the civilians in holiday spirit saluted the Americans, shouting "the war ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... Pollock The Heliotrope Sonnet On seeing a Young Lady I had previously known, confined in a Madhouse Prometheus Rosa's Grave The Sibyl. A Sketch Love On a delightful Drawing in my Album Stanzas Shakspeare Impromptu. To Oriana, on attending with her, as Sponsors, at a Christening To my Spaniel Fanny Widowed Love Written to the Lady of Dr. George Birkbeck The Chain-pier, Brighton. A Sketch Sonnet. Morning. On the Death of Dr. Abel Sonnet. Night. Constancy. To ——— Epistle ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... gallantry of her bearing were irresistible. Whatever she did was done well. Her high spirits never failed, her strength never seemed to tire. She could ride all day and dance all night. She could answer Gaspare Visconti's verses in impromptu rhymes, and keep up animated literary controversies with Niccolo da Correggio and Messer Galeaz, or discuss grave political questions with the duke in the wisest and most sagacious manner. "As usual," ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... Green Isle, Corrie and Alice were married, and on the same day Bumpus and Susan were also united. There was great rejoicing on the occasion; Ole Thorwald and Dick Price distinguished themselves by dancing an impromptu and maniacal pas de deux at ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... other claims on his time and energy, to the cause so closely associated historically with his family. But it was his work in the Convention that first convinced Ulstermen of his capacity as well as his zeal. Several of Lord Londonderry's speeches, and especially one in which he made an impromptu reply to Mr. Redmond, impressed the Convention with his debating power and his general ability; and it gave the greatest satisfaction in Ulster when it was realised that the son of the leader whose loss ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... exceptionally unscrupulous in appealing to those baser motives that turn a meeting of citizens into a mob of barbarians, he should yet have won his case before a jury of the people. Mr. Lincoln was as far as possible from an impromptu politician. His wisdom was made up of a knowledge of things as well as of men; his sagacity resulted from a clear perception and honest acknowledgment of difficulties, which enabled him to see that the only durable triumph of political opinion ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... suburban innocence, and pink and white propriety; to stand facing her audience for a second of time, motionless and in perfect gravity—it was a trick that, though Poppy never varied it, had a more killing effect than the most ingenious impromptu. ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... them; but the two Tobies, who were the essence of good nature, coached her so well and so vigorously that before long she was a capital player; and when once Toni realized that Owen wished her to be as hospitable as she could possibly desire to be, she rejoiced in giving little impromptu tea-parties on the lawn, under the shade of one of the noble elms which ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... the puncher made motions of going through the performance a second time. The joke never staled. It always got a hand, no matter how often it was repeated. At each encore the Utes stamped their flatfooted way round the room in a kind of impromptu and mirthful dance. The baptismal jest never ceased ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... of Georgino's tempo this week," she said, "for Peppino and I have quite settled we must give a little after dinner party next Saturday, and I want you to help me to arrange some impromptu tableaux. Everything impromptu must just be sketched out first, and I daresay Miss Bracely worked a great deal at her dance last night and I wish I had seen more of it. She was a little awkward in the management of her draperies I thought, but I daresay she does not know much about ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... by no one; and she therefore determined that, as it was St. John's eve, the maid-servants of Pepita should be to-night released from all their occupations, and should go to amuse themselves at the farm-house, where, in union with the rustic laborers, they might get up impromptu amusements, to consist of fandangos, the recitation of pretty verses, playing ...
— Pepita Ximenez • Juan Valera
... evening, which we spent in rowing, walking, and later at a little impromptu supper, I was interested in observing the puzzling behavior of Beth and my chum. I had expected that he would avoid her as much as possible and speak to her only when common politeness made conversation obligatory, and that she, a born coquette, would seek to add his scalp to her ...
— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... this impromptu trip to the Centennial proved to be one of the most timely acts of his life. On the following Sunday after-noon the judges were to make a special tour of inspection, and Mr. Hubbard, after much trouble, had obtained a promise that they would spend a few minutes examining Bell's ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... periodical who speaks, or (if that were not impossible) the taciturn Englishman who accompanies me; and Huysmans, without looking up, and without taking the trouble to speak very distinctly, picks up the phrase, transforms it, more likely transpierces it, in a perfectly turned sentence, a phrase of impromptu elaboration. Perhaps it is only a stupid book that some one has mentioned, or a stupid woman; as he speaks, the book looms up before one, becomes monstrous in its dulness, a masterpiece and miracle of imbecility; ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... downcast eyes she sank backward before her guest. Another knock was heard, and when the names of three more of the garrison officers were announced, Miss Elliott whispered to Billy a hasty message to some of her fair friends in the neighborhood to come in and help her entertain them. These impromptu parties were quite common, and in a little while the room was sparkling with beauty, gallantry and wit. It may seem strange that the patriotic belles of the day, the fair Brewtons and Pinckneys and Rutledges, the Ravenels ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... them. It was echoed by others, both ladies and gentlemen, and all the ponies, and horses, and, we may say, four-legged animals the party could muster, were brought forth. As the race was entirely impromptu, no arrangements had before been made. It was first settled that everything was to run. The larger riding-horses were to have a longer distance to run, and were not to start so soon as the others; the carriage-horses came ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... long and wandering impromptu prayer by somebody, a prayer which "Shirley" found disagreeable (since she herself was a churchwoman, and missed the burial service), the procession, containing twenty men and three ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... girls of the party had cried until their faces were swollen out of shape. The crowd outside wept and wailed; some clasped their hands over their heads with an upward look to heaven, some pressed them on their hearts, some rocked and moaned, some prayed aloud—not set prayers, but impromptu utterances wrung out by grief. The agony was so infectious that before I knew what I was about ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... and one or two of the largest stockholders of the enterprise; together with all the professors, and some dozen of Russia's celebrated musicians and writers. The meal over, Anton Rubinstein, originator of the plan, and Zaremba, his able co-adjutor, made brief speeches. There were one or two impromptu replies; a little discreet cheering; the customary toasts to the Czar and the persons and the subject in hand; and then Ivan, carried out of his usual shyness, proposed the health of the sister Conservatoire of St. Petersburg, which was loyally drank. Afterwards, ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... might have opened by an impromptu bye-battle between the indignant cockney and the gentleman from Bristol, but a prolonged roar of applause broke in upon their altercation. It was caused by the appearance in the ring of Crab Wilson, followed by Dutch Sam and Mendoza carrying ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the swell when they perceived me and my victim. Of course, I and my two friends were well received in the wigwam, though the chief was absent upon an expedition, and when he returned a few days after, a great feast was given, during which some of the young men sang a little impromptu poem, on the subject ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... recognized their aunt; they had been too busy with each other before to look about. They stood silently by, Oscar grinning and Edmund frowning, while she apologized for their conduct. Then she turned to them and led them to an impromptu court of justice behind the wheel-house. The proceedings were brief. Oscar told his story. As usual, he related a perfectly plain, uncolored tale, making ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... suspended to a pillar in the hall. Each of the company in succession then threw some salt into his goblet, and, placing himself under these symbols of the brotherhood, repeated a jingling distich, produced impromptu ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... and get them for me, and then we can share the profits of my search." I consented, and he soon went, and was gone for at least two hours before he returned loaded with his findings, having taken his shirt off and tied the sleeves and collar up, and then filled his impromptu sack quite full. He had evidently carried his burden no small distance, for on his return the perspiration was running down as big as peas. "Tare an' 'ounds," poor Paddy said, for he was an Irishman, "I've got a fine lot of flour, but ...
— The Autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence - A Hero of the Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns • William Lawrence
... how the railroad has been pushed through this unwatered wilderness and haunt of savage tribes; how at each stage of the construction roaring, impromptu cities, full of gold and lust and death, sprang up and then died away again, and are now but wayside stations in the desert; how in these uncouth places Chinese pirates worked side by side with border ruffians and broken men from Europe, gambling, drinking, quarreling, and murdering ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... house party began to settle into its stride, he made occasion, aping the other servants, to peep in at a door of the great ballroom, where an impromptu dance had been organized; and was rewarded by sight of the Princess Sofia circling the floor in the arms of a boldly good-looking young man whose taste was as poor in flirtation ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... a blighting effect these multitudinous preparations and ceremonies have upon the pleasures they profess to subserve. Who, on calling to mind the occasions of his highest social enjoyments, does not find them to have been wholly informal, perhaps impromptu? How delightful a picnic of friends, who forget all observances save those dictated by good nature! How pleasant the little unpretended gatherings of book-societies, and the like; or those purely accidental meetings of a few people well known to each other! Then, indeed, we may ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... the soldiers. They were promptly overpowered, disarmed, and their muskets used in disarming their friends who were panic stricken by the vigorous onslaught, and soon succumbed to Jack's bellicose persuasiveness. It then became an easy task to carry out the impromptu plan of campaign of putting each soldier into his sentry-box and casting both him and the box into the running stream. The call for help was unavailing; none came, and soon no voices were heard, but the following day the funeral knell was sounded by the roar of the cannon from the gunboats, splashing ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... interest, a mouth-watering interest, a wistful and pathetic interest; a minority of nineteen couples gazed at it tenderly, lovingly, proprietarily, and the male half of this minority kept saying over to themselves the moving little impromptu speeches of thankfulness for the audience's applause and congratulations which they were presently going to get up and deliver. Every now and then one of these got a piece of paper out of his vest pocket and privately glanced at ...
— The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg • Mark Twain
... the other hand, inferior, in all respects, to Hamilton when the pen was in his hand; the latter was, however, though reserved in a large society, particularly agreeable in a more select one. Some of his letters remain, in which he alludes to his want of that facility at impromptu which gave such brilliancy to the conversation of some of his brother wits and contemporaries. But, while we admit the truth of this, let it be remembered, at the same time, that when he wrote this, he was by no means young; that he criticised ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... in St. George's Fields." It was a wanton fire on an unarmed populace that was protected against; and the protest was by men who involuntarily shrank from mob-law as they would from the hell of anarchy. They apprehended an impromptu collision between the people and the troops; they knew that an illegal and wanton fire on the people would produce such collision; the danger of this result formed, undoubtedly, a large portion of the common talk; and the frequency ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... his coat, stripped his arm, and while I went in search of an impromptu lancet, Adele ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... rush of visitors last night! One would imagine they had all come by appointment, expressly to have an impromptu dance, which they certainly enjoyed, by the way. There was little Captain C——, the Susceptible and Simple, who so innocently says "I seen" and "I done it," without the faintest suspicion of the peculiarity, and looks so sweet, and guileless, and amiable, and ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... of the war were ultimately decided, a small, slender soldier fighting in the ranks, in General Johnson's division, was struck by a shell which tore away the left arm and stretched the young hero lifeless on the ground. A comrade in pity twisted a handkerchief around the wounded limb as an impromptu tourniquet, and thus having staunched the flowing blood, placed the slender form of the unfortunate soldier under a tree and passed on. Here half an hour after he was found by the ambulance men and brought to the hospital, where the surgeon ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... vexata quaestio I am not to give a decided opinion, though the verse, as a literary composition, is hardly up to the level of Hamlet, and it would perhaps have been preferable if the poet, instead of attempting an impromptu, had looked out some suitable quotation from his earlier works. For, when an author is occupied in shuffling off his mortal coil, it is unreasonable to expect him to produce poetry that is ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... an impromptu of his moved the town to laughter. At some dinner party it appeared the ladies sat a little too long; Oscar wanted to smoke. Suddenly the hostess drew his attention to a lamp the shade of ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... little Pat woke up, several times, and made things unpleasant by his wails. On the first two occasions, I got up and walked him about, singing impromptu lines to the tune of "weak and wounded," but the third time, Euphemia herself arose, and declaring that that doleful tune was a great deal worse than the baby's crying, silenced him herself, and arranging his couch more comfortably, he troubled ...
— Rudder Grange • Frank R. Stockton
... am so glad, nobody could be more glad," said Lucy. Little Tom had been brought in, too, in his nurse's arms, and crowed and clapped his fat little baby hands for his father; and when his mother took him and stepped out upon the balcony, from which her husband was speaking an impromptu address to his new constituents, with the child in her arms, not suspecting that she would be seen, the cheers and outcries ran into an uproar of applause. "Three cheers for my lady and the baby," the crowd shouted at the top ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... times adverted to the subject of epigrams. A clever impromptu of this class has been recorded as given by a judge's lady in reply to one made by the witty Henry Erskine at a dinner party at Lord Armadale's. When a bottle of claret was called for, port was brought in by mistake. A second time claret was sent for, and a second time the same mistake occurred. ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... by means of coloured curtains of cotton cloth. This constitutes the penetralia, and is sacred to the bello sexo and the babies. The more luxurious ladies bring down their neatly-curtained beds, and make no mean show of elegance in the interior arrangements of their impromptu dwellings. Outside, and something after the fashion of their permanent residences, is a kind of broad and open shed, which bears a very distant relation to the corridor. Here hammocks are swung, the families dine, the ladies receive visitors, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 439 - Volume 17, New Series, May 29, 1852 • Various
... present occasion Anthony, challenged to combat with his coat and cuffs on, and wielding the more awkward weapon of the two impromptu foils, found himself distinctly at a disadvantage. Moreover, he was at the moment not precisely in the mood for fun, and he began to defend himself with a somewhat lazy indifference. After a minute or two, however, he discovered that his adversary's slightly ...
— The Indifference of Juliet • Grace S. Richmond
... and the public approval of the National Irish Players had not proved sufficient to propitiate that iron-hearted monster, Financial Success. The company went into bankruptcy before they had played half their bookings. Their final curtain went down on a bit of serio-comic drama staged, impromptu, on a North River dock, with barely enough cash in hand to pay the company's home passage. On this occasion Patsy had missed her cue for the first time. She had been left in the wings, so to speak; and that night she filled the ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... clever, calculating thing that, at fifteen, he thought it. Her one simple idea was to be happy and, as a means to that end, to have people happy about her. His father, or Anne's father, could have told him that all her ideas were simple as feelings and impromptu. Impulse moved her, one moment, to seize on the faithful, defiant little heart of Anne, the next, to get up out of the sun. Anne's tears spoiled her bright world; but not for long. Coolness was now the important thing, not Anne and not Anne's mother. As for Eliot's disapproval, ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... great pleasure to get your last letter, for these little impromptu effusions are the genuine letters. I rejoice that man and nature seem harmonious to you, and that the heart beats in unison with the voices of Spring. May all that is manly, sincere, and pure, in your wishes, be realized! Obliged to live myself without the sanctuary of the central relations, yet ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... a marked peculiarity, and innumerable stories are told of his dancing pirouettes, singing impromptu songs, and rhyming a whole company to their infinite amusement. Each one of his personal friends, in talking of him, says, "But if you could only have heard him" at such a time; but of course no one can repeat such unpremeditated jests, and the flavor is gone from ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... grim joy parlor; rough old floor, bristly with splinters, few windows, no plank walk, no stage, no partitions, no lighting. We hung tin reflectored lanterns on a few of the posts,—thicker near the stage end,—and opened the season with an impromptu opera of the Brontes'." To Professor Charlotte F. Roberts, Wellesley '80, the Barn Swallows owe ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... contrived to effect his escape. He was ultimately captured in Picardy, and put in a dungeon. He was banished from the kingdom by order of the Parliament. In his old age he found an asylum in the house of the Duke of Montmorency. The poet's real surname was Viaud. The following impromptu is attributed to Thophile, who was asked by a foolish person whether ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... John Andr['e], met him near Stony Point on the night of the 21st of Sept. In the meantime, the man-of-war, "Vulture," upon which Andr['e] had arrived, was forced to move farther downstream to avoid an impromptu bombardment by American patriots. As a result Andr['e] had to start back to N.Y. by land. He bore a pass issued by Arnold, but he made the fatal mistake of changing to civilian clothes. Technically, therefore, he was a spy. At Tarrytown he was challenged by three Continentals; ...
— The Greatest Highway in the World • Anonymous
... had the honor of his acquaintance, but when I do meet him I shall say something jocose. I know I shall. I have it. My plan will be to inveigle him into going over a ferry to "see a man." As we pass up the slip on the other side, I shall draw out my flask, impromptu-like, with the invitation, "Mark, my dear fellow, won't you take something?" He will decline, of course, or else he isn't the humorist I take him for. I shall then consider it my duty to urge him. Fixing my eye steadily upon him, so he can understand that I am terribly in earnest, I ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... dancers gave way to a chorus of singers. For interminable hours, so it seemed, they chanted a high, shrill recitative, carried in fugue by deeper voices. The burden of the song was evidently an impromptu. Occasionally some peculiarly apt or pleasing phrase was caught up for endless repetition. And in the background, against the farther background of the undistinguished masses, those who had formerly carried on their performances ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... we have had next to no refusals. But if he's only anxious to see the play, and doesn't mind not being seen at it, he could get some idea of the treatment next Friday if he cares to come to the dress rehearsal. You know we arranged to run right through it for the first time. We thought of a small impromptu dance after the rehearsal, so if Mr. Holroyd would like to come a little earlier I shall ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... arranged the rug over her knees, and took the seat beside her. She thanked me, laid her cheek upon the impromptu pillow, and closed her eyes. The train sped on, the carriage swaying as we rounded the curves, the jolting increasing as we neared the great tunnel. Settling myself in my seat, I drew my traveling-cap ...
— A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others • F. Hopkinson Smith
... eating he ordered one of the pilaus, of which he had partaken, to be carried to Mirza Ahmak, his host, by a servant in waiting. As this is considered a mark of peculiar honour, the mirza was obliged to give a present in money to the bearer. A similar distinction was conferred upon the poet for his impromptu, and he also made a suitable present. His majesty also sent one of the messes, of which he had freely partaken, to the doctor's wife, who liberally rewarded the bearer. And in this manner he contrived to reward two persons, the one who received the present, and the other who ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... with their own tastes. But even here there was often a feeling of irksome restraint. The white preacher in fear of committing an indiscretion in the hearing of the negroes must watch his words though that were fatal to his impromptu eloquence; the whites in the congregation must maintain their dignity when dignity was in conflict with exaltation; the blacks must repress their own manifestations the most severely of all, to escape rebuke for unseemly conduct.[54] An obvious means of relief lay in the founding ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... Miss Judy emphatically. "He thought that mouse funeral was the best impromptu stunt we've pulled off yet. That kind of thing was just what camp needed today. The novelty of it got everybody stirred up and made them hilarious. That funeral oration of yours was the funniest thing I ever heard. Miss Amesbury thought so too. ...
— The Campfire Girls at Camp Keewaydin • Hildegard G. Frey
... talk with her again for several days. He called in state, but remained only a few moments. His officers went to several impromptu dances at the Presidio and Mission, but he pleaded fatigue, natural in the damaged state of his constitution, and left the ship only for a gallop over the hills or down the coast with ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... the visitors were entertained on board the galleon to an impromptu luncheon, which, as it was prepared by the Spanish cook, released from the limbo of below for the occasion, and as the viands and wines were drawn from the ship's stores, was done ample justice to. Then George, ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... she would take with her round white arm stretched to the handrail, the sleeve turned carelessly back. She had ready her countenances, a sleepy indifference, then a pleased surprise, and a climax of delight. She carried it all out, this little bit of impromptu acting, as well as though she had rehearsed ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... firing as we ran. The order to fire at will was seldom given, the men waiting patiently for the officers' signal, and then answering in volleys. Some of the men who were twice Day's age begged him to let them take the enemy's impromptu fort on the run, but he answered them tolerantly like spoiled children, and held them down until there was a lull in the enemy's fire, when he would lead them forward, always taking the advance himself. By the ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis
... They could find nothing to say to each other. Ordinary topics seemed to be precluded by their festive appearance and the formal nature of the occasion. Their informal meetings were usually celebrated by impromptu wrestling matches. This being debarred, a stiff, unnatural atmosphere descended upon them. William was a "host," they were "guests"; they had all listened to final maternal admonitions in which the word "manners" and "politeness" ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton
... equal, in grasp upon an audience, in dramatic presentation, in striking at the pith of an ethical question, and in single [signal] illustrations and examples." Another writes, in reference to the impromptu speech delivered at the meeting at Rochester on the death of Lincoln: "I have heard Webster and Clay in their best moments, Channing and Beecher in their highest inspirations. I never heard truer eloquence. I never ...
— Frederick Douglass - A Biography • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... his remarks within the smallest possible limits. Furthermore, Lincoln was not a reader speaker and rarely did himself justice without careful preparation. Writers on Lincoln have failed to note the severe criticisms upon Lincoln's impromptu remarks that appeared in the opposition press and in the English newspapers. Even as late as 1863 newspaper writers not opposed to him did not hesitate to refer to the plainness of the President's ...
— Lincoln's Inaugurals, Addresses and Letters (Selections) • Abraham Lincoln
... on against her by Sir John Hunter and Lightbody, and that Miss Hunter was made use of against her. Having a most contemptible opinion of her Albina's understanding, and knowing that her young friend had too little capacity to be able to deceive her, or to invent a plausible excuse impromptu, Mrs. Beaumont turned quick, and exclaimed, "My dear, what could Lightbody be saying to you when I came up?—for I remember he stopped short, and you both ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... Harlan, his colleague, possessed a vigor and grasp of mind which I think the public never fully accorded him. Lane of Indiana was full of patriotic ardor, and like Baker of Oregon, had the rare gift of eloquent impromptu speech. Henry Wilson earned the gratitude of his country by his unswerving loyalty to freedom, and his great labors and invaluable services as chairman of the Military Committee. Howard ranked among the first lawyers and most faithful men in the body, ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... Parisian, Irish, Cockney, and English provincialisms—was awful and wonderful. Nothing was better than to get our uncle on his 'genteel behaviour,' which, of course, meant exactly the opposite, and brought forth inimitable stories, scraps of old songs and impromptu conversations, the choicest of which were between children, Irishwomen, or cockneys. He was the only man, I believe, who ever knew by heart the famous Irish Court Scenes—naughtiest and most humorous of tales—unpublished, of course, but handed down from generation to generation ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... since those Twelfth Night theatricals. The Dragon has long been dissolved into his component scales, and we never have impromptu performances now. The passing fame which a terrible railway accident gave to our insignificant station has also faded. But it set a seal on our good resolutions which I may honestly say has not ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... for the purpose to-day in Egypt. The country houses are low and mostly thatched, the roof being often covered with soil, and are not infrequently rendered attractive with blooming heather and little blue and pink blossoms planted by Nature's hand,—the hieroglyphics in which she writes her impromptu poetry. In the meadows between the hills are sprinkled harebells, as blue as the azure veins on a delicate face; while here and there patches of large red clover-heads are seen nodding heavily with their wealth of golden sweets. Further away, in solitary ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... as he paced the garden, "Had I, Mr. Speaker, received the smallest intimation that I could be called upon to speak this evening...." [PATRICIA controls a smile, and he goes on with overwhelming enthusiasm.] Well, conjurers are just the same. It takes some time to prepare an impromptu. A man like that walks about the woods and fields doing all his tricks beforehand, and talking all sorts of gibberish because he thinks he is alone. One evening this man found he was not alone. He found a very beautiful child ...
— Magic - A Fantastic Comedy • G.K. Chesterton
... met a party of Eesa girls, who derided my colour and doubted the fact of my being a Moslem. The Arabs declared me to be a Shaykh of Shaykhs, and translated to the prettiest of the party an impromptu proposal of marriage. She showed but little coyness, and stated her price to be an Audulli or necklace [26], a couple of Tobes,—she asked one too many—a few handfuls of beads, [27] and a small present for her papa. She promised, naively enough, to call ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... driven from the homes in which they had believed themselves settled for life. The man Redgrave—he of the six feet two who had presented the address to Mutimer—was a powerful agent of ill-feeling; during the first few days he was constantly gathering impromptu meetings in New Wanley and haranguing them violently on the principles of Socialism. But in less than a week he had taken his departure, and the main trouble seemed at ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... with a toast to their young hostess, which was drunk standing, and then the guests repaired to the drawing room, where impromptu stunts were in order. Every one was obliged to do something, if only to make a remark appropriate to the occasion. Nora sang, Anne recited, Grace and Miriam did a Spanish dance that they had practised during vacation with remarkable spirit and effect. Jessica was then detailed to play, and ...
— Grace Harlowe's Junior Year at High School - Or, Fast Friends in the Sororities • Jessie Graham Flower
... ejaculation, stepped back and rested his fat hands on his fat hips. As he surveyed the impromptu butler, a shade of perplexity spread over his oily face. He smoothed his imperial and frowned. This groom certainly looked right, but there was something lacking in his make-up, that indefinable something which is always found in the true servant—servility. There was no humility ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... automobile, an open one, and we just tore along for miles as fast as we could, and though he was driving himself, he managed to say all sorts of charming things; and when we got back to Kitty's more people came, and we had an impromptu dance and then supper, and all the servants had gone to bed, so we had to forage for things in the pantry, and altogether I have never had such fun in my life, and ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... the rallying she had provoked, she talked incessantly about going back to St. Ebbe's, where, however, she was not yet due. A longer leave of absence had been granted to her, in consideration of the fact that her holiday had been mainly spent in hard work in the impromptu hospital at Redcross. She would not have accepted the additional grant apart from the circumstance that Harry Ironside was in London. Annie admitted to herself, in the secret recesses of her heart, that now it had come to this, she would fain have passed these last precious weeks near ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... twelve or fifteen of the bric-a-brac things already mentioned; also an oil-painting by Elihu Vedder, "The Young Medusa." Every now and then the children required me to construct a romance—always impromptu—not a moment's preparation permitted—and into that romance I had to get all that bric-a-brac and the three pictures. I had to start always with the cat and finish with Emmeline. I was never allowed the refreshment of a change, end-for-end. It was not permissible to introduce a bric-a-brac ornament ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... rather clever at making up impromptu stories, and he now proceeded to relate a tale with ...
— The Palace Beautiful - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... shut up; lectures, religious concerts, even the social meetings of the Young Men's Christian Association, were rigorously put a stop to. There was, of course, great popular indignation and uproar, and the impromptu performances got up in the streets, while the police looked on sympathetically, are said to have been far more outrageous than any entertainment indoors could possibly ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... guess I always have an everlasting grin on. Had to live up to my name, you see, in spite of my naturally cantankerous disposition; But come this way, ma'am, I can see the hunger sticking out of those youngsters' eyes. We'll have a sort of impromptu picnic here and now, I'll tell my housekeeper to ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... pray." The whole school knelt, the ladies bowed their heads upon the desk, and Eliab offered an appropriate prayer, in which the strangers were not forgotten, but were each kindly and fitly commended to the Divine care. Then there was an impromptu examination of the school. Each of the teachers heard a class recite, there was more singing, with other agreeable exercises, and it was noon before the visitors thought of departing. Then they were invited to dine with ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... W. L. Mackenzie carry on this warfare. He at once saw what would be the effect of the new departure. And so promptly and energetically did he denounce the "arch-apostate Egerton, alias Arnold, Ryerson" as a deserter, that he secured with little difficulty an impromptu verdict from the public against him. This he the more readily accomplished, by the aid of at least half a dozen editors of newspapers in various parts of the province, while Dr. Ryerson was single-handed. Not only did these editors join with great vigour in the hue and cry against Dr. Ryerson (for ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... chairs, rented from I.O.O.F. hall in Bonneville, heaped themselves in an apparently hopeless entanglement on the ground; while at the far extremity of the barn a couple of carpenters clattered about the impromptu staging which was to ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... to look frightfully nervous and uncomfortable, a wonderful and beautiful expression came into her face, and her eyes lighted, and seemed to grow larger and darker all at the same time. And if there were any present who had regarded the impromptu wedding as something of a joke, these now had their minds changed for them in the quickest kind of a jiffy. And if there were any present who doubted of the beauty and dignity of love, these had ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... tin vessels, bridles, dried venison, and a thousand other things, mingled in inextricable confusion. In the wide fire-place, which was supplied with stones for and-irons, a portion of the lately slaughtered deer was broiling on an impromptu and primitive species of gridiron, which would have disgusted Soyer and astonished Vatel. This had caused the smoke; and as Verty entered, the old woman had been turning the slices. Longears and Wolf were already stretched ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... was only a sign of rejoicing on that auspicious anniversary. By degrees they became assured that there was no thought of taking an unfair advantage of them, and at the conclusion of the ceremony they were made happy by a present of sheep. In the afternoon an impromptu rifle meeting was got up. The matchlock men could not hold their own against our good shots armed with Martini-Henry rifles, a fact which evidently greatly impressed the tribesmen, some of whom then and there came forward and promised that ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... finger on the strongest and heartiest. But one night the word went round that daylight would see them back on Canadian soil, and the lagging spirit of the travellers was revived. Someone struck up an impromptu song, parodied from a well-known hymn; men, and children joined in the chorus as they caught the words, and rolled it forth with a vigour that vibrated every timber ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead
... recalled. A flight of oratory may also be offered. A committee of three appointed on the spot promises to report on the winners at the close of the evening. If preferred, a program of poems and short, comic, exaggerated stories may be prepared beforehand, and fill in this space with apparent impromptu. ...
— Entertaining Made Easy • Emily Rose Burt
... carry outside and pile neatly at the blind end of the building all the boards, boxes and other debris littering up the room, swept it, and selected two packing cases and nailed them up into a convenient impromptu desk, manufactured a bench seat out of some loose boards, set his pen, ink and paper in order, and felt ...
— Bart Stirling's Road to Success - Or; The Young Express Agent • Allen Chapman
... in a complimentary 'Jenny-'ave-another-cup-o' tea' style, an' the crew was strictly ordered not to rupture 'emselves with unnecessary exertion. This isn't our custom in the Navy when we're in puris naturalibus, as you might say. But we wasn't so then. We was impromptu. An' Antonio was busy fetchin' splits for the old man, and the old man was wastin' 'em down the ventilators. There must 'ave been four inches in the bilges, I ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... tumult and an impromptu indignation meeting. Stanning had gone to work scientifically. From the moment that, ducking under the guard of a sturdy town youth, he had caught sight of Sheen retreating from the fray, he had grasped the fact that here, ready-made, was his chance of working off his grudge against him. ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse
... the savage forms of sport which stimulate the blood of more apathetic or more brutal races. Neither prize-fighting nor bull-fighting is of the soil in France, and Frenchmen do not settle their private differences impromptu with their fists: they do it, logically and with deliberation, on the duelling-ground. But when a national danger threatens, they instantly become what they proudly and justly call themselves—"a warlike nation"—and apply to the business in hand the ardour, the imagination, the perseverance ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... surprises by the enemy's cavalry; and as men were so scarce, it was generally arranged that the navy-yard should follow the army lines. Constantly shifting position—caused by the rapid movements of the enemy, left these impromptu ship-yards unprotected; and then a small party of raiders would either burn them, or force their builders to do so. It was not until the appropriation was nearly spent—although not one efficient gunboat of this class ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... few days since, a distinguished member of Parliament, who has been much in America, remarked, with emphasis, that he had formerly entertained a high opinion of 'JUDGE LYNCH,' looking with much favor upon that species of impromptu jurisprudence known as 'Lynch law,' but since it failed to hang FLOYD, COBB and THOMPSON, of BUCHANAN'S cabinet, he had ignored and ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... the rock, and wandering for some time among the impromptu camps in the streets, John returned to a group of boys whom he had noticed, leaning against the low wall with a carelessness, as to the danger of a fall over the precipice, which proved that they must be natives ...
— For the Temple - A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem • G. A. Henty
... she talked like a married woman, was critical, yet easy; and having guanoed her mind by reading French novels, had a variety of conclusions on all social topics, which she threw forth with unfaltering promptness, and with the well-arranged air of an impromptu. These were all new to Tancred, and startling. He was attracted by the brilliancy, though he often regretted the tone, which he ascribed to the surrounding corruption from which he intended to escape, and almost wished ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... nothin' to what you've just said." He idly kicked the gray dust that was mounded at his feet, standing loose and inert, as though he cared little what might be the outcome of this impromptu interview. And then, suddenly, his blue eyes twinkled humorously as he raised ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... strange. They originally lived in a large subterranean village hollowed out under the ground on the borders of a lake. A vine, however, struck its roots so deeply in the earth as to reach their habitations, and some of them ascended to the surface by the aid of this impromptu ladder. The descriptions given by them on their return of the vast hunting-grounds, rich in game and fruit, which they had seen, led the rest of the tribe to resolve to reach so favoured a land. Half of them had gained the surface, when the vine, bending ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... merry game of Pope Joan, Mr. Murray presented each of the company with a pocket-book as a New Year's gift. A special bowl of punch was brewed for the occasion, and, while it was being prepared, Mr. Isaac D'Israeli took up Crofton Croker's pocket-book, and with his pencil wrote the following impromptu words: ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... uproarious crowd that quickly invades every restaurant, cafe, or chop-house until their little tables overflow on to the grass and side- walks, and even into the middle of the streets. Later in the evening the open-air concerts and theatres are packed, and every little square organizes its impromptu ball, the musicians mounted on tables, and the crowd dancing gayly on ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... some kind where their own servants join in to make up a side; or, and well I remember it, half a dozen youths of about fifty playing cricket with one stump and a broom-handle for an hour one hot afternoon, amid tumbles and shouts of laughter, and a shower of impromptu nicknames, and one or two of them bore names known all over the English-speaking world. Nobody loses any dignity, any importance; but there is an unconquerable stiffness in Germany that makes me laugh almost as I make this suggestion. We have only ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... in the course of a week I do mean to conduct a series of essays in that paper which may be of public utility. So much for myself, except that I long to be out of London; and that my Xstmas Carol is a quaint performance, and, in as strict a sense as is possible, an Impromptu, and, had I done all I had planned, that "Ode to the Duchess" would have been a better thing than it is—it being somewhat dullish, etc. I have bought the "Beauties of the Anti-jacobin," and attorneys and counsellors ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... could help it, after last winter,' said that lady, and an impromptu kiss passed between the two mothers, much to the astonishment of the Marquis, who had never seen his lady so ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... no longer spoke to a lawyer named Peat; to which he replied, "I choose to give up his acquaintance—I have common of turbary, and have a right to cut peat!" An impromptu of his on a learned serjeant who was holding the Court of Common Pleas with his glittering eye, ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... guided by wisdom. Many stories are preserved of the bitter and unwise words he used in country coteries; how he proposed Washington's health as an amendment to Pitt's, gave as a toast "the last verse of the last chapter of Kings," and celebrated Dumouriez in a doggerel impromptu full of ridicule and hate. Now his sympathies would inspire him with "Scots wha hae"; now involve him in a drunken broil with a loyal officer, and consequent apologies and explanations, hard to offer ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the baggage stand. She turned on all the lights, swung the closed suitcase up to the table, shoved the table against the wall, up-ended the suitcase so that its leather side presented a smooth surface, and propped a firm sheet of white cardboard against the impromptu rack. She brought her chair up close, fumbled in her bag for the pens she had just purchased. Her eyes were on the blank white surface of the paper. The table was the kind that has a sub-shelf. It prevented Fanny from ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... and his sister Christina, and, even then, he attained to such proficiency, in the mere mechanism of sonnet structure, that he could sometimes dash off a sonnet in ten minutes—rivalling, in this particular, the impromptu productions of Hartley Coleridge. It is hardly necessary to say that the poems produced, under such conditions of time and other tests, were rarely, if ever, adjudged worthy of publication, by the side of work to which he gave adequate deliberation. But several of the sonnets on pictures—as, ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... the fruit, fold over the empty half, pinch well together around the edges, and fry in deep fat, blazing hot, to a rich quick brown on both sides. Drain on paper napkins, sprinkling lightly with sugar. Serve hot or cold. Most excellent for impromptu luncheons or very late suppers—withal wholesome. A famous doctor said often of them, "You would be only the better for eating an acre ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... the name implies, the principal occupation for the time, and where literary people are gathered together, or those engrossed in scientific matters, the sole one. For parties of young people, however, the conversazione admits of music and impromptu dances. ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... to two in the morning was the halberdier's hours. He got two meals with us help and a dollar a night. I eat with him at the table. He liked me. He never told his name. He was travelling impromptu, like kings, I guess. The first time at supper I says to him: 'Have some more of the spuds, Mr. Frelinghuysen.' 'Oh, don't be so formal and offish, Eighteen,' says he. 'Call me Hal—that's short for halberdier.' 'Oh, don't think I wanted ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... Honourable Timothy arose to say good-by. He reiterated his praise of the singing and reading, the blackboard work and the moral tone. An awkward pause ensued, during which the Principal engaged the young Gonorowskys in impromptu conversation. The Honourable Tim crossed over to Miss Bailey's side and steadied ...
— Little Citizens • Myra Kelly
... store there were a dozen leather-decked cow-boys, and Scylla felt quite like a queen as each one scrambled up to her, and with his broad sombrero in one hand took her tiny fingers in the other as he turned red and tried to say something polite. Nor did her impromptu court end with that. After the introductions were over, all the visitors sat down on the porch or the grass before it, while Martha exhibited her pets to her friend. Gitter, the calf, was put through all his tricks, the ...
— Southern Stories - Retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... its conclusion, and we all returned together, on the foreign plan, to coffee and cigars in the drawing-room. The women smoked, and drank liqueurs as well as coffee, with the men. One of them went to the piano, and a little impromptu ball followed, the ladies dancing with their cigarettes in their mouths. Keeping my eyes and ears on the alert, I saw an innocent-looking table, with a surface of rosewood, suddenly develop a substance of green cloth. At the same time, a ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... in his Souvenirs, to describe with great zest and a wonderful richness of local colour, the impromptu fetes in which he bore a part; his raids upon the cherry and plum orchards—for the neighbourhood of Agen is rich in plum-trees, and prunes are one of the principal articles of commerce in the district. Playing at soldiers was one of Jasmin's favourite ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... to Mr. Meighen for the cordiality with which he greeted me, as the inventive Canadian press had added impromptu reflections of their own to what I had said of him. I sat next to Mr. MacKenzie King, but as we had no opportunity of private conversation, he invited me to go to his house for supper after ...
— My Impresssions of America • Margot Asquith
... where would the caricaturists be? The reputation of a politician is steadily built up nowadays, not by consistency, certainly; not by brilliant rhetoric; not even by the unscrupulous exercise of a faculty for organizing impromptu "scenes," but by the wearing of a necktie, or a boot, or a waistcoat that is susceptible of caricature. A very ordinary young man has before now been lifted into fame by the twists of his mustache, and another of less than mediocre ability ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... what you've just said." He idly kicked the gray dust that was mounded at his feet, standing loose and inert, as though he cared little what might be the outcome of this impromptu interview. And then, suddenly, his blue eyes twinkled humorously as he raised them to ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... Donation Visit Lines on the death of Miss Mary Hayes Lines on the death of Miss Eleanora Henderson Lines on the death of Mrs. Burnite Stanzas read at the Seventy-second Anniversary of the birthday of Joseph Steele To Mary Impromptu to Mrs. Anna C. Baker Lament for the year 1877 Verses presented to my Daughter Lines on the death of a young lady of Wilmington Youthful Reminiscences Stanzas to a little girl on her birthday To Miss Mary Bain Stanzas ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... returned the little maiden, and going to the piano she dashed off a wild, impassioned, mixed-up impromptu, resembling now the soft notes of the lute or the plaintive sob of the winter wind, and then swelling into a full, rich, harmonious melody, which made the blood chill in Edith's veins, and caused both Richard and ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... boldly proposed to Mr. Shorter that I would join Mr. Ruskin's class. To tell the whole truth, I thought the experiment would be well worth making, if I only gained by it a single personal interview with the Oxford graduate, though I was doubtful about the quality of my impromptu skies. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... eyes shone under the droop of those long white lids. She grew confidential with the young noble, and was easily led by the cool, versatile man, into conversation that she would have stubbornly avoided earlier in the evening. In one of her bold snatches of song she rounded off with a rollicking impromptu, which carried all the richness and force of her voice with it. This threw the whole company into a tumult of applause, but Hilton sat quietly and looked on, with a smile of supreme contempt quivering about ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... rules of etiquette both in speech and behavior. But the former entertainment is by far the most interesting. The Japanese love and taste for fine scenery is shown in the settings and surroundings. To this picturesque outlook, recitals of romance and impromptu poetry add intellectual ...
— The Little Tea Book • Arthur Gray
... the daughter was called up on the 'phone by one of her girl friends and asked to make one of the party, who were arranging an impromptu dance at a private house. The girl friend and her brother would stop for her in their car and ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... obligation on any one to take part in the hostilities. There won't be any conscription; it's a free fight that will be open to everybody." She folded the paper she had been reading from and put it in her lap, in default of a pocket. She went on impromptu: ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Montague Anacreon, Ode Ninth Lines Written in Ridicule of certain Poems published in 1777 Parody of a Translation from the 'Medea' of Euripides Burlesque on the Modern Versification of Ancient Legendary Tales: an Impromptu Epitaph for Mr Hogarth Translation of the Two First Stanzas of the Song 'Rio Verde, Rio Verde', printed in Bishop Percy's 'Reliques of Ancient English Poetry': an Impromptu To Mrs Thrale, on her Completing her Thirty-Fifth Year: a Impromptu Impromptu ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... tried to prove that it is to your interest as an epicure that you should go to the play. I have simply pointed out the other interest, and allowed it to stand on its merits. In ethical theories of a certain type, and in much impromptu moralizing, it is assumed that there is no legitimate appeal except in behalf of interests that are at the instant already alive. This is as absurd as to suppose that in order to bring you to the truth in any purely theoretical matter, I must confine myself to evidence ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... soul, Tom, nothing but a few little bachelor contrivances! the sort of impromptu arrangements that might have suggested themselves to Philip Quarll or Robinson Crusoe, that's all. What do you ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... In that impromptu arena two men stood face to face under the full glare of the gas-lamps—one was Guy Livingstone; the other a denizen of the Potteries, yclept "Burn's Big 'un," who had selected B—— as his training quarters, in preparation for his fight to come off in the ensuing week with the ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... which were giving place to the white radiance of the moon slowly climbing the warm heights of heaven. It was so quiet that the sound of waves and insects seemed like the softest whispers of nature. Rose and Edward had rowed down the bay for Helene, who usually accompanied them on their impromptu excursions by lake and wood. Seen in the pale brilliance of sky and water her loveliness had an almost unearthly quality, perfectly akin to the night, but giving her a strange effect of soft remoteness from her friends. The light from a brazier, fitted into a stanchion in the prow of the boat, ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... physiognomical outlines of sneaks' noses on a slate; and silence prevailed till the church clock struck the half-hour, when Clement got up, and taking the slate, where he had been solacing himself with imitating Edgar's caricatures, he was about to make it an impromptu dust-pan, and went down on his knees to sweep up Fulbert's malicious litter, but was rewarded with a vicious kick on the cheek. It was under the table, out of sight; and Clement, like a true son of his mother, made no sign, but went off to bed ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... more respectful, more sincere. Supposing the impossible were to happen—supposing he were to ask her to be his wife? For all she knew, the proposal might come that very evening. It might be part of the plan of this sudden impromptu dinner. What would she say to him? Did she love him? Frankly she did not—yet. Could she ever love him? The answer to that was in the future. Ought a girl to marry a man whom she knew in her heart she did not love? He was rich, the marriage was in every way desirable. ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... and our legs and feet were swollen and blistered from being so much in the salt water, and the action of the hot sun on them made them excessively painful. Fortunately, but little exertion was now necessary, and our only relief was in lying still, with an impromptu awning over us. General Breckinridge took charge of the water and rum, doling it out at regular intervals, a tot at a time, determined to make it last as ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... prayer. When she received the Venetian ambassadors, the grace and gallantry of her bearing were irresistible. Whatever she did was done well. Her high spirits never failed, her strength never seemed to tire. She could ride all day and dance all night. She could answer Gaspare Visconti's verses in impromptu rhymes, and keep up animated literary controversies with Niccolo da Correggio and Messer Galeaz, or discuss grave political questions with the duke in the wisest and most sagacious manner. "As usual," wrote her secretary Capilupi, "Madonna's gracious ways and lively ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... les femmes. Upon which ground the balayeur in this case—a well-knit keen-eyed agile man, with a sense of humour and sharp perception of men, women and things in particular and in general—was called before the bar of an impromptu court, held by M. le Surveillant in The Enormous Room after the promenade. I shall not enter in detail into the nature of the charges pressed in certain cases, but confine myself to quoting the close of a peroration which ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... the chalky pallor of the buildings was somewhat uncanny; but it proved to be only what sleep can do for a village with railroad influences one hundred miles away. We entered boldly the adobe before which we had been dropped, and found a genial landlord in an impromptu costume justified by the hour, an inn-album of quite cosmopolitan range of inscriptions, and a breakfast for which a week of traveller's fare had amply fortified ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... and my victim. Of course, I and my two friends were well received in the wigwam, though the chief was absent upon an expedition, and when he returned a few days after, a great feast was given, during which some of the young men sang a little impromptu poem, on the subject of my ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... also invited by the Republican Club of Philadelphia to make a speech ratifying the nomination of Lincoln and Hamlin and spoke at a meeting held May 28, 1860. My address was entirely impromptu, and was far better, both in manner and matter, than the speech in New York, and was received with great applause. Since that time, I have never attempted to make a popular address from manuscript. Every speaker should know the substance of what he intends to say, but ought to rely for his ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... Maggie only in the plain dark suit which she had worn to her daily business of selling cigarettes at the Ritzmore; and once, on the night of his return from Sing Sing, in that stage gypsy costume, which though effective was cheap and impromptu and did not at all lift her out of the environment of the Duchess's ancient and grimy house. But Larry was so startled by this changed Maggie that for the moment he could not have moved from the door even had he so desired. She was accoutered in the smartest of filmy ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... came along and commenced to toss fruit, apples and pears, over their heads to the prisoners; the next thing was they allowed the people of the neighborhood to enter the lines, so that in a short time the camp was swarming with impromptu merchants, men and women, offering for sale bread, wine, cigars, even. Those who had money had no trouble in supplying their needs so far as eating, drinking, and smoking were concerned. A bustling animation prevailed in the dim ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... The mutation of Augustine Contra Ac. III. 33 makes it probable that quemnam was the original reading here. Zumpt on Verr. qu. Quint. IX. 2, 61, Plin. Epist. I. 20, who both mention this trick of style, and laud it for its likeness to impromptu. Nobilitatis: this is to be explained by referring to 73—75 (imitari numquam nisi clarum, nisi nobilem), where Cic. protests against being compared to a demagogue, and claims to follow the aristocracy of philosophy. The attempts of the commentators to show that Democr. ...
— Academica • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... But just when everybody was beginning to fear the worst, and to look frightfully nervous and uncomfortable, a wonderful and beautiful expression came into her face, and her eyes lighted, and seemed to grow larger and darker all at the same time. And if there were any present who had regarded the impromptu wedding as something of a joke, these now had their minds changed for them in the quickest kind of a jiffy. And if there were any present who doubted of the beauty and dignity of love, these had their minds ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... restraint of the trousers, were seen prowling about with shirts tied round their waists by the sleeves, and pants twisted turban-wise about their heads. Tui was called, and requested to inform them that they must dress properly, after the fashion of the white man, for that any impromptu improvements upon our method of clothes-wearing could not be permitted. As they were gentle, tractable fellows, they readily obeyed, and, though they must have suffered considerably, there were no further grounds for complaint on the score ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... find nothing to complain of in heaven except that "his halo didn't fit," or said in her quick way, when the plainness of a lady's dress was commended, "Why, I didn't suppose that anybody could go to heaven now-a-days without an overskirt," or wrote her sparkling impromptu rhymes for our children's games, her mirth was all in harmony with her earnest life. Her quick perceptions, her droll comparisons, her readiness of expression, united with her rare and tender sympathies, made ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... hubbub downstairs started the four Rover boys were up in their adjoining bedrooms partly undressed and in the midst of a couple of impromptu boxing matches, one taking place between Andy and Jack and the other ...
— The Rover Boys at Colby Hall - or The Struggles of the Young Cadets • Arthur M. Winfield
... propped his head on his hands and stared at the boards. Allan seated himself on a box beside the fire. Tullius took from a flat, heated stone a battered tin coffee-pot, poured into an earthenware cup some smoking mixture, and brought it to the scout. "Hit ain't moh'n half chicory, sah," From an impromptu cupboard he brought a plate of small round cakes. "Mis' Miriam, she done mek 'em ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... usual, veered completely round, and John Todhunter was esteemed a shrewd, sensible man—only not brilliant; that he was brilliant could not be said of him. In fact, the man could hardly talk, and it was a fortunate provision that no impromptu deliveries were required of him in ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... coached her so well and so vigorously that before long she was a capital player; and when once Toni realized that Owen wished her to be as hospitable as she could possibly desire to be, she rejoiced in giving little impromptu tea-parties on the lawn, under the shade of one of the noble elms which were ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... fond of any kind of impromptu excursion or picnic, and took part in them rather as grown-up people take part in children's games, with an air of kindly, but rather wearied, friendliness. He took interest in everything else, however. He discussed with Darya Mihailovna her plans for the estate, ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... cavalry; and as men were so scarce, it was generally arranged that the navy-yard should follow the army lines. Constantly shifting position—caused by the rapid movements of the enemy, left these impromptu ship-yards unprotected; and then a small party of raiders would either burn them, or force their builders to do so. It was not until the appropriation was nearly spent—although not one efficient gunboat of this class was ever finished—that the system ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... room had been occupied by many an important personage. The walls were covered with names. Above some of them impromptu verses had been scribbled; others had perpetuated their profiles; and still others had drawn caricatures of those who had been the means of lodging them here. The guillotine ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... of the fire our impromptu links cast an adequate light. The sheets of rain became suddenly visible as they entered the circle of illumination. By careful scrutiny of the footing I gained the entrance to our cave without mishap. I looked back. Here and there ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... M. Cazotte, a litterateur of the category "light," an ingenieux ecrivain, distinguished for "gaiety, delicacy, wit and Attic elegance," and favorably known for (inter alia) his poem "Olivier," his "Diable Amoureux," "The Lord Impromptu," and a travesty of The Nights called "The Thousand and One Fopperies." The two agreed to collaborate, the Syrian translating the Arabic into French, and the Parisian metamorphosing the manner and matter to "the style and taste of the day"; ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... professional manner, taking in the lie of the land, the outstanding features of the position. As judge and manager he was in his element, and each suggestion of an event was altered and amended with a lordly superiority. It is somewhat difficult to introduce much variety into a programme of impromptu sports, but one or two of this afternoon's events had the advantage of novelty. A flower-gathering race, for instance, the object of which was to see how many varieties of wild flowers each competitor could gather in a given ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... think of these verses my friends?—Is that piece an impromptu? said my landlady's daughter. (Aet. 19 . Tender-eyed blonde. Long ringlets. Cameo pin. Gold pencil-case on a chain. Locket. Bracelet. Album. Autograph book. Accordeon. Reads Byron, Tupper, and Sylvanus Cobb, junior, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... reply on behalf of the States. Her Majesty and her counsellors therefore, knowing that the same envoy was on his way to England with a similar errand, may be supposed to have had leisure to prepare the famous impromptu. Moreover, it is difficult to understand, on the presumption that these classic utterances were purely extemporaneous, how they have kept their place in all chronicles and histories from that day to the present, without change of a word in the text. Surely there was no stenographer present ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... complimentary seats, and eats the better half of our dinner. This incident is a source of pride to ourself beyond any thing experienced by any urchin besides. We boast of it frequently, and, being disliked therefor, commit several impromptu scalpings on ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... end of a semester. On the evening of Friday, the closing day, Roble gave an impromptu dance. Katharine made Pellams come; it would be final evidence in their joke, since he was known to dislike dances. He agreed to attend, adding his own emphasis to the reason as stated. Katharine filled out his card for him, allowing him three dances with herself. The evening began ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... without having accomplished any thing worthy the promise of his earlier years—another instance of Life's reversing the judgment of College. As a writer of agreeable trifles for the amusement of the drawing-room, he has had few superiors, and it is said that a large number of his impromptu effusions are still in the possession of his friends unpublished. Two editions of his poems have appeared in New York, one by Langley in 1844, and another by Redfield a few ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... a grain! Vaudemont felt this as he saw her glide towards the beggar; but when she came bounding back to him, she had forgotten his dislike to her songs, and was chaunting, in the glee of the heart that a kind act had made glad, one of her own impromptu melodies. ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 4 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... result of such an experiment would be. I, to whom nature had denied the impromptu faculty; who, in public, was by nature a cypher; whose time of mental activity, even when alone, was not under the meridian sun; who needed the fresh silence of morning, or the recluse peace of evening, to win from the Creative Impulse one evidence of his presence, ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... standing at the rail and bowing, flourishing his arm as though he were snapping the long whip lash he took into the ring with him, "this little exciting episode—this epicurean taste of the thrills to follow in the big tent—although of an impromptu nature, merely goes to show the versatility of Twomley and Sorber's Herculean Circus and Menagerie, and our ability, when the unexpected happens, to grapple with circumstances and throw them, sir—throw them! That is what we did in this present ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill
... which begat these memorable stanzas was enacted at a banquet at Carlton House, February 22, 1812. On March 6 the following quatrain, entitled, "Impromptu on a Recent Incident," appeared ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... was thought he was joking, but when at last, in his calm and dreamy look, they saw he meant what he said, they arose and carried him round the room on a chair, making impromptu songs as they travelled. They toasted Billy Rufus again and again, some of them laughing till they cried at the thought of Averdoopoy going to the Arctic regions. But an uneasy seriousness fell upon these "beautiful, bountiful, brilliant ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... assaulted him, en masse, he seized a chair, and swung it flail-like about his head. For a few moments, there was a crashing of glass and china, and a clatter of furniture and a chaos of struggle. At its center, he stood wielding his impromptu weapon, and, when two of his assailants had fallen under its sweeping blows, and Farbish stood weakly supporting himself against the table and gasping for the breath which had been choked out of him, the mountaineer hurled aside his chair, and plunged for the sole remaining ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... created—one little drop in the incredible wave which has rolled with gathering strength from, end to end of this island of ours during the past six months, and now hangs ready to crash upon the gates of our enemies—what manner of man has it produced? What is he like, this impromptu Thomas Atkins? ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... that paper which may be of public utility. So much for myself, except that I long to be out of London; and that my Xstmas Carol is a quaint performance, and, in as strict a sense as is possible, an Impromptu, and, had I done all I had planned, that "Ode to the Duchess" would have been a better thing than it is—it being somewhat dullish, etc. I have bought the "Beauties of the Anti-jacobin," and attorneys and counsellors advise me to prosecute, ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... happily-adapted recollection than the actual impromptu of a boy of nine. But another, in which, after a painful silence, he replied to the brutal enquiry of a ne'er-do-well relative as to when he meant to grow handsome, by saying that he would do so when the speaker grew good,—is ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... respects, to Hamilton when the pen was in his hand; the latter was, however, though reserved in a large society, particularly agreeable in a more select one. Some of his letters remain, in which he alludes to his want of that facility at impromptu which gave such brilliancy to the conversation of some of his brother wits and contemporaries. But, while we admit the truth of this, let it be remembered, at the same time, that when he wrote this, he was by no ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... of impulse. In the excitement of the moment he forgot danger, and the dastardly nature of the crimes gave him more than his usual amount of courage. He rushed at the chimney, and, regardless of soot and darkness, began an impromptu ascent. ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... case. Mrs. Cardew would welcome any girl introduced to her daughters through her dear friend Mr. Tristram. She sent a further invitation for the three young people to remain to an impromptu supper, which was pleasanter than late dinner in such hot weather, and asked if Mr. and Mrs. Tristram would join ...
— The School Queens • L. T. Meade
... in our presence, or by us, he invariably came off triumphant. Whether in deciding the pitch or component parts of chords the most difficult and dissonant; whether in repeating with correctness and precision any pieces, written or impromptu, played to him for the first and only time; whether in his improvisations, or performances of compositions by Thalberg, Gottschalk, Verdi, and others; in fact, under every form of musical examination,—and ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... his excuse for being particularly "grizzly" with the pretty Agnes, and at the afternoon rehearsal he nearly went through the big gilt picture frame, in which the illustrations were posed, when he attempted to introduce a little impromptu "business" in ...
— Dorothy Dale's Queer Holidays • Margaret Penrose
... several times adverted to the subject of epigrams. A clever impromptu of this class has been recorded as given by a judge's lady in reply to one made by the witty Henry Erskine at a dinner party at Lord Armadale's. When a bottle of claret was called for, port was brought in ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... visitation from heaven, three attractive young ladies descend upon us, traveling through our domain, and having discovered their presence we instantly decided to take advantage of the opportunity and invite them to an impromptu ball. There's no use refusing us, for we insist on carrying out our plan. If you men, perhaps the fathers of the young ladies, behave reasonably, we will entertain you royally and send you on your ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne
... Gods Sonnet Sleeping in the Snow With the Rain Ode, on the Death of a Friend Lines: to a Young Lady who had jilted her Lover Vicarious Martyrs: to a Hen-pecked Schoolmaster Stanzas: on seeing Lady Noel Byron To Louisa The Orator and the Cask The Maid of the War Impromptu: on being asked by a Lady to write a Verse in her Album Mary: a Monody On the Marriage of Miss Nicholl Carne Impromptu: on the Death of Mr. Thomas Kneath, a well-known Teacher of Navigation, at Swansea EXTRACTS FROM UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPT: Humility Oppressed Upward Strivings Truthfulness ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... dress, which I should not have thought would have made so much difference in your eyes, though it makes all the difference between man and man in the eyes of the stupid vulgar. My genius has broken through the clouds of misfortune of late. A few happy impromptu verses I made on the Count de Flora's fall from his horse attracted attention. The count patronizes me. I am here now to learn the fate of an ode I have just composed for his lady's birthday. My ode was to ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... during the next day Leon came into the cabin to look at his tiny charge, for whom an impromptu cradle had been made with some pillows in an easy chair, and who seemed to have the happy knack of adapting herself to circumstances, for she slept quietly on, with a smile on her little face, all unconscious of the waves from which ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 354, October 9, 1886 • Various
... tempted to transcribe it at length: "The Double PP. A Papist in Arms. Bearing Ten several Shields. Encountered by the Protestant. At Ten several Weapons. A Jesuit Marching before them. Cominus and Eminus." There are a few other vigorous and pointed verses in this little patriotic impromptu, but the greater part of it is merely ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... in his pockets; he jangled a great gold watch chain; and he never turned up except dressed just too much like a gentleman to be one. He was no fool though, though a futile idler; he was curiously clever at all kinds of things that couldn't be the slightest use; a sort of impromptu conjuring; making fifteen matches set fire to each other like a regular firework; or cutting a banana or some such thing into a dancing doll. His name was Isidore Smythe; and I can see him still, with his little dark face, ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... of himself in time to be one of the first to enter. Mackay held back, but the fire chief, the promoter, Kennedy, and myself fashioned impromptu gasmasks of wet handkerchiefs and braved the ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... later we started across the snow in a direction parallel with the lines. Behind an embankment we came across a little group of Australians at an impromptu dressing-station. Some of them were wounded and the others were binding up their wounds. We watched them for a while and started on again. We had gone about fifty yards when a shell screeched overhead. ...
— Life in a Tank • Richard Haigh
... think of these verses, my friends? Is that piece an impromptu? said my landlady's daughter. (Aet. 19. Tender-eyed blonde. Long ringlets. Cameo pin. Gold pencil-case on a chain. Locket. Bracelet. Album. Autograph book. Accordeon. Reads Byron, Tupper, and Sylvanus Cobb, junior, while ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... darkness. In honour of its being Christmas Day, an impromptu concert had been announced; and the men began to gather round a rough stage which had been erected under the trees, and which was lit up with lamps and the glare ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... effect these multitudinous preparations and ceremonies have upon the pleasures they profess to subserve. Who, on calling to mind the occasions of his highest social enjoyments, does not find them to have been wholly informal, perhaps impromptu? How delightful a picnic of friends, who forget all observances save those dictated by good nature! How pleasant the little unpretended gatherings of book-societies, and the like; or those purely accidental meetings of a few people well known ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... say that?" he asked. Edward looked at him. Mr. Beecher's face was tense. After a few moments he said: "That's generally the way with extemporaneous remarks: they are always dangerous. The best impromptu speeches and remarks are the carefully ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... returning home by a different way through the town again, which we entered just as the cathedral bell and the bells of all the churches were pealing the Ave Maria. On our return we found a fire lighted and everything illuminated, and by half-past eight we had a capital impromptu dinner served. Chinese Tommy, who waited on us, had decorated the table most tastefully with flowers. Macao is a favourite resort for the European residents of Hongkong who are addicted to gambling. The gentlemen of our party went to observe the ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... in public, and whenever he did appear he confined his remarks within the smallest possible limits. Furthermore, Lincoln was not a reader speaker and rarely did himself justice without careful preparation. Writers on Lincoln have failed to note the severe criticisms upon Lincoln's impromptu remarks that appeared in the opposition press and in the English newspapers. Even as late as 1863 newspaper writers not opposed to him did not hesitate to refer to the plainness of ...
— Lincoln's Inaugurals, Addresses and Letters (Selections) • Abraham Lincoln
... which to the young people afforded a cheerful break in the dullness and monotony of their usual life; for owing to the absence of almost all the young men with the army, there had been a long cessation of the pleasant interchange of visits, impromptu parties, and social gatherings that had formed a feature in the ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... glancing in the direction of his impromptu Webster's Unabridged. "Mr. Slocum does not propose to split the difference. The wages in every department are to be just what they are,—neither more nor less. If anybody wishes to make a remark," he added, observing a restlessness in several ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... the thought of appearing before the examiners in public. He had always suffered from shyness: in class he would blush and choke when he had to speak: at first he could hardly do more than answer his name. And it was much more easy for him to reply impromptu than when he knew that he was going to be questioned: the thought of it made him ill: his mind rushed ahead picturing every detail of the ordeal as it would happen: and the longer he had to wait, the more he was obsessed by it. It might be said that he passed every examination at ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... find criticism at sea, and even appreciation—I tell you everything is to be found on salt water—criticism generally impromptu, and always viva voce, which is the outward, obvious difference from the literary operation of that kind, with consequent freshness and vigour which may be lacking in the printed word. With appreciation, which comes at the end, when the critic and the criticised ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... persistently dancing up against the foremost of the little ring the area is gradually enlarged: first one other couple and then another are moved to follow the example, and they in their turn assist in bumping out the limits of the ring till it has become some twenty feet or so in diameter. These impromptu ball-rooms rarely much exceed that size, but dozens of them may be found in the course of one's peregrinations around the large piazza. The occupants of some of them will be found to consist of town-bred Romans, and those of others of people from the country. There is ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... had gotten back his composure he did a wise thing; for he followed Joan's advice: he made no more attempts at sham impromptu oratory, but read his speech straight from his "book." In the speech he compressed the Twelve Articles into six, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... coming with relivening confidence; the unspeakable loveliness and grandeur of the prospect; the thousand varied incidents of the too-brief journey; the short, sharp excitement of the landing; the awe and curiosity of the impromptu crowd invariably on the ground before the balloon, and reluctantly leaving it only when the last whiff of gas is rolled out of it and the last rope thrown into the wagon; the moonlight ride to the station with the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... came near leaving a royal birthday unsung,—an omission scarcely pardonable with one of George the Third's methodical habits. An impromptu appointment had to be made. It was made before the Laureate was buried. Thomas Warton, the Professor of Poetry at Oxford, received the patent on the 30th of April, and his ode, married to fitting music, was duly forthcoming on the 24th of May. The selection of Warton was faultless. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... and in a jiffy were rolling over the line to Sydney. Song and story helped to cheer the long and somewhat tiring journey. During a sort of lull in the proceedings Claud looked up and said: "Here, Bill, can't you recite us some of that impromptu sort of doggerel that you get into the Sydney weeklies now ...
— The Kangaroo Marines • R. W. Campbell
... Impromptu charades are frequently organized at friendly parties. Unless you have really some talent for acting and some readiness of speech, you should remember that you only put others out and expose your own inability by taking part in these entertainments. Of course, if your ...
— Routledge's Manual of Etiquette • George Routledge
... keep him in peace and have a mighty good cow-pony, as he had schemed. He smoked a cigarette while Chip was having the horses corralled, and then led the way willingly, with twenty-five men following expectantly at his heels. Unlike Andy, they fully expected an impromptu exhibition of fancy riding. Not all of them had seen Andy atop a bad horse, and the Diamond G men, in particular, were eager to witness ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... all my own way," said the Rector. "I always felt sure that Proctor would make a mess of any parish he took in hand, but I did not imagine he would have left it to anybody who pleased to work it. You may imagine what my feelings were to-day, when I came upon a kind of impromptu chapel in that wretched district near the canal. I thought it a Little Bethel, you know, of course; but instead of that, I find young Wentworth goes there Wednesdays and Fridays to do duty, and that ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... later, as gaily as if she had known them both all her life, she introduced them to Pa. Pa, whose youngest daughter was just now in high favour, was mildly pleased with the invasion. This impromptu hospitality smacked of prosperity, of worldliness. He went stiffly into the study with John, to bore the poet with an old volume about California: "From the Padres to ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... whereof I have schoolboy copies not worth notice; besides divers metrical translations of Horace, AEschylus, Virgil; and a few songs and album verses for young lady friends, one being set by a Mr. Sala (perhaps G.A.S. had a musical relative) with an impromptu or two, whereof the following "On a shell sounding like the sea" is a fair specimen ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... understood, he said to be original on the spur of the moment. Why they put tables upside down at night, I mean chairs upside down, on the tables in cafes. To which impromptu the neverfailing Bloom replied without a moment's ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... river-bank. The men lit cigarettes and threw the matches into the water, watching these make large circles on the surface of the stream. Lida, with arms a-kimbo, tripped along, singing softly as she went, and her pretty little feet in dainty yellow shoes now and again executed an impromptu dance. Lialia picked flowers, which she flung at Riasantzeff, ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... consider what to say or do, her refuge was always in the impromptu, and she was far more bent on forcing Mr. Prendergast to smile, and distracting herself from her one aching desire that the Irish journey had never been, than of forming any plan of action. In walking to the cabstand they met Robert, and exchanged greetings; ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... prearrangement went further than that certain friendly interrogators had discussed the topics with him so as to be familiar with his views. Every lawyer does this with his witnesses. Nor can it be supposed that the admirable replies which he made to the enemies of America were otherwise than strictly impromptu. He had thorough knowledge of the subject; he was in perfect control of his head and his temper; his extraordinary faculty for clear and pithy statement never showed to better advantage; he was, as always, moderate and reasonable; ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... have tumbled to William as well, for he increased the revolutions to one hundred and forty per minute and broke into a shrill lullaby of his own impromptu composition:— ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 26, 1917 • Various
... arrival with his companions was a great day in the annals of the Mustang Valley, and Major Hope resolved to celebrate it by an impromptu festival at the old block-house; for many hearts in the valley had been made glad that day, and he knew full well that, under such circumstances, some safety-valve must be devised for the escape of ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... have done it better. He was a poet, which Lever was not, and had an easy command of versification and language. His songs, while they show no high poetic qualities, are excellent of their kind, and his facility in turning an impromptu verse is shown in this scrap from the book before us in praise of a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... The impromptu tragedian recited several lines in a declamatory tone accompanied by gestures to match. Delsarte listened without a sign of praise or blame. Then he rose, struck an attitude appropriate to the text, but perfectly natural, and, in ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... band of shouters in an impromptu war-dance back of the grandstand, their frenzied shouts of joy at the splendid play sounding loud above ...
— The Boys of Columbia High on the Gridiron • Graham B. Forbes
... this it would almost seem that these comedians owed their fame and advancement to their skill and inventiveness in the matter of gagging. No doubt these early actors bore some relation to the jesters who were established members of noble households, and of whom impromptu jokes and witticisms were looked for upon all occasions. Moreover, at this time, as Mr. Payne Collier judges, "extemporal plays," in the nature of the Italian Commedie al improviso, were often presented upon ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... corner of his lips, "that I have not in any way tried to come the heavy father? I can even command a certain amount of respect, Margaret, for a young man who is able to inaugurate his engagement by an impromptu meal of such perfection. I wish you both good morning. Any invitation which Margaret extends, Ledsam, please ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... had drawn The Landing of the Pilgrims on the largest of the blackboards, and Nancy had written a merry little story that caused great laughter and applause in the youthful audience. Gilbert had taken part in a debate and covered himself with glory, and Kathleen closed the impromptu programme by ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... I knew you would! So, now, dear father," she said, turning to Mr. Force, "you need not go in person, nor send a servant on such a very delicate errand as an impromptu invitation!" ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... very mild case, and in him there is not only an element of romance, but also a fine element of irony which warns us against taking all this elegance too seriously. Above all, he shows his sense in not making his noblemen so incredibly equipped with impromptu repartee. This habit of insisting on the wit of the wealthier classes is the last and most servile of all the servilities. It is, as I have said, immeasurably more contemptible than the snobbishness of the novelette ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... guests. It was little more than a closet and was not even furnished. A cot had been put in that very afternoon, but only to meet a special emergency. A long-impending conference was going to be held between him and his employers subsequent to closing up time, and he had planned this impromptu refuge to save himself a late walk to the stable. At his offer to pass the same over to the Demarests, the difficulty of the moment vanished. Miss Demarest was shown to the one empty room in front, and the mother—as being the one less likely to be governed ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... institutions have in the last few years become familiar to everybody. We do not, however, as a rule make quite such a business of the schooling as is usual where the term is short, and study is the sole object. One regular lecture a day for four days a week is the rule, but impromptu lectures or debates in the evenings, got up amongst the guests, are customary. Moreover, frequent conferences on special subjects are held, either by allied bodies, such as the Committee for the Prevention of ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... them. They installed Neil on the train impressively, stowed his luggage around him and then took up positions outside the window, where, to the mingled curiosity and amusement of other travellers, they conducted farewell exercises. These included an entirely impromptu and unsolicited duet by Perry and Han, a much interrupted speech by Joe, and, finally, as the train moved out of the station, a hearty Dexter cheer with three "Neils!" on the end. In such manner the Adventurer ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour
... at that height, by Mr. Potter's voice melodiously belling a flourish of laughter on the other side of a closed door bearing his card. It was rich laughter, cadenced and deep and loud, but so musically modulated that, though it might never seem impromptu, even old Carson Tinker had once declared that he liked to listen to it almost as much ...
— Harlequin and Columbine • Booth Tarkington
... faces were swollen out of shape. The crowd outside wept and wailed; some clasped their hands over their heads with an upward look to heaven, some pressed them on their hearts, some rocked and moaned, some prayed aloud—not set prayers, but impromptu utterances wrung out by grief. The agony was so infectious that before I knew what I was about I was crying ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... doin' up this way? He'd be more apt to strike for Mexico, wouldn't he? Still, long as I'd let Plummer put me on the committee, it was up to me to answer any calls. Might be entertainin' to see who he'd mistaken for an enemy alien this time. And if all I was expected to do was spill a little impromptu strategy—well, maybe I could, and then again maybe I couldn't. ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... was indeed a marked peculiarity, and innumerable stories are told of his dancing pirouettes, singing impromptu songs, and rhyming a whole company to their infinite amusement. Each one of his personal friends, in talking of him, says, "But if you could only have heard him" at such a time; but of course no one can repeat such unpremeditated ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... expression and imagery, that firmness of outline he had always relished so much in the composition of [115] Flavian. Yes! a firmness like that of some master of noble metal-work, manipulating tenacious bronze or gold. Even now that haunting refrain, with its impromptu variations, from the throats of those strong young men, came floating through ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... always acting—often beginning breakfast with a "stunt." The Madame sang well, and her little impromptu arias pleased her thin little lover immensely and he would improvise and answer in kind, and then take the part of an audience and applaud, calling loudly, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... interested in one of the pieces, took up some waste paper, and scribbling the lines proceeded to write a melody. This was the so-called "Shakespeare Serenade," "Hark, Hark, the Lark." The "Serenade," in D minor, is said to have been conceived in a similarly impromptu manner. In 1816 the great tenor, Vogl, made Schubert's acquaintance, having been brought by one of Schubert's admirers. At first the songs did not make much impression upon him; later they grew upon him, and he introduced them among ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... cultivated in his younger days. He rode every morning; he practised every day at tennis and croquet; every evening he bowled; and every time some one sat at the piano and played dance music and the young people fell into impromptu waltzes and two-steps on the porch, he joined them and danced religiously with whomsoever he found to hand; usually ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester
... the children with the simplest kind of costuming and stage-setting. These can well be made in the school as a part of the manual training and sewing work. In giving the play, it will generally be better not to have pupils memorize the exact words of the book, but to depend upon the impromptu rendering of their parts. This method will contribute more largely to the training ...
— Children's Classics in Dramatic Form - Book Two • Augusta Stevenson
... explanation, I fancy, may be stated thus. We can all remember it in the case of the really inspiriting parties and fooleries of our youth. The only real fun is to have limited materials and a good idea. This explains the perennial popularity of impromptu private theatricals. These fascinate because they give such a scope for invention and variety with the most domestic restriction of machinery. A tea-cosy may have to do for an Admiral's cocked hat; it all depends ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... Donna Susanna Torrebianca?" She tried the name on her tongue. "Yes, for an impromptu, Torrebianca is n't bad. It's picturesque, and high-sounding, and yet not—not invraisemblable. You don't think it invraisemblable? So here 's luck to that bold adventuress, that ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... feet and conversation was general in both languages. My last and most vivid impression is of such a scene—the President and the Prime Minister as the center of a surging mob and a babel of sound, a welter of eager, impromptu compromises and counter-compromises, all sound and fury signifying nothing, on what was an unreal question anyhow, the great issues of the morning's meeting forgotten and neglected; and Clemenceau silent and aloof on the outskirts—for nothing which touched ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes
... stranger, and Sala, made one of those marvellous speeches which he was capable of making. I think no man talked so fast as Sala did. One did not need wine while he was making a speech. The rapidity of his utterance made a man drunk in a minute. An incomparable speech was that, an impromptu speech, and—an impromptu speech is a seldom thing, and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... little maiden, and going to the piano she dashed off a wild, impassioned, mixed-up impromptu, resembling now the soft notes of the lute or the plaintive sob of the winter wind, and then swelling into a full, rich, harmonious melody, which made the blood chill in Edith's veins, and caused both Richard and Arthur to hold ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... still looking the Image of Misery, as if he and repose had known nothing of each other since we had parted from him. He was, however, very anxious for our welfare, and hoped we had slept well on our impromptu couches. ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... the charred timbers and the ashes of his home, and in the course of a week he may possibly spin a few rhymes about it. Or suppose he was making an offer of his hand and heart, do you think he would declaim a versified proposal to his Amanda, or perhaps write an impromptu on the back of his hat ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... provincialisms—was awful and wonderful. Nothing was better than to get our uncle on his 'genteel behaviour,' which, of course, meant exactly the opposite, and brought forth inimitable stories, scraps of old songs and impromptu conversations, the choicest of which were between children, Irishwomen, or cockneys. He was the only man, I believe, who ever knew by heart the famous Irish Court Scenes—naughtiest and most humorous of tales—unpublished, of course, but handed down from generation to generation of the faithful. ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... which we spent in rowing, walking, and later at a little impromptu supper, I was interested in observing the puzzling behavior of Beth and my chum. I had expected that he would avoid her as much as possible and speak to her only when common politeness made conversation obligatory, and that she, a born coquette, would seek to add his scalp to her collection. ...
— Our Next-Door Neighbors • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... who were the essence of good nature, coached her so well and so vigorously that before long she was a capital player; and when once Toni realized that Owen wished her to be as hospitable as she could possibly desire to be, she rejoiced in giving little impromptu tea-parties on the lawn, under the shade of one of the noble elms which ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... age. Well, he 'made use of an expression' which I did not exactly like. Says I to him, says I, 'What do you mean by that?' 'Why,' says he to me, says he, 'I mean just what I say.' Then I began to burn. There was an impromptu elevation of my personal dandriff, which was unaccountable. I didn't waste words on him; I just took him in this way,' (here the old spooney suited the action to the word, by seizing the collar of my coat, before the assemblage,) 'and says I to him, says I, 'You infernal scoundrel, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... a grassy bank, and ate the food Bart had purchased. Mr. Hardman seemed to be thinking of many things, for he hardly spoke during the impromptu meal, and, when he had eaten a couple of sandwiches he arose from the bank and wandered off a little way into the woods. When he came back ...
— Frank Roscoe's Secret • Allen Chapman
... had always been considered as the most hospitable and pleasant estancia in the district, became more than ever popular, and many were the impromptu dances got up. Sometimes there were more formal affairs, and all the ladies within twenty miles would come in. These were more numerous than would have been expected. The Jamiesons were doing well, and in turn going for a visit to their native country, ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty
... aloud, raising hands and eyes to Heaven, hoping thereby to show the heathen where the true God lived. Drake then read the Bible and all the Englishmen sang Psalms, the Indians, 'observing the end of every pause, with one voice still cried Oh! greatly rejoicing in our exercises.' As this impromptu service ended the Indians gave back all the presents Drake had given them and retired ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... "Faust Symphony" I have not yet received. My last number of the Zeitschrift is that of July 6th. I am glad that Stade does not disapprove of these Faust-things.— Schondorf's Polonaise, Impromptu, etc., which Kahnt has sent me, I have read through with pleasure and interest. With the next sending to Rome please enclose the "Petrus" Oratorio by Meinardus (the pianoforte score). In case the pianoforte score has not appeared, then let me have ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... directors and one or two of the largest stockholders of the enterprise; together with all the professors, and some dozen of Russia's celebrated musicians and writers. The meal over, Anton Rubinstein, originator of the plan, and Zaremba, his able co-adjutor, made brief speeches. There were one or two impromptu replies; a little discreet cheering; the customary toasts to the Czar and the persons and the subject in hand; and then Ivan, carried out of his usual shyness, proposed the health of the sister Conservatoire of St. Petersburg, which was loyally drank. ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... top of the swell when they perceived me and my victim. Of course, I and my two friends were well received in the wigwam, though the chief was absent upon an expedition, and when he returned a few days after, a great feast was given, during which some of the young men sang a little impromptu poem, on the subject of my ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... Amzi ignored her couplets—Phil's impromptu verses always embarrassed him—and demanded the particulars. He chuckled as she described the meeting. He cross-examined her to be sure that she omitted nothing. Her report of his brother-in-law's tirade gave him the greatest delight. As they talked, they ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... after two or three weeks' sinking he died, and was buried at Hartledon by the side of his mother. Hartledon's sister quitted Hartledon House for a change; but the countess-dowager was there still, and disturbed its silence with moans and impromptu lamentations, especially when going up and down the ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... we find here and there impromptu lines which have no connexion with any song. Perhaps the best known are those which 'my lady Bowley' quotes in The Chimes, and which she had 'set to music on ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... every hostelry, in Piccadilly and Bermondsey, in Blackwall and Oxford Street, were gathered bundles of hilarity, lingering near the scenes of their recent splendours. A thousand sounds, now of revelry, now of complaint, disturbed the brooding calm of the sky. A thousand impromptu concerts were given, and a thousand insults grew precociously to blows. A thousand old friendships were shattered, and a thousand new vows of eternal comradeship and blood-brotherhood were registered. A thousand wives were ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... simple as a stranger might have been led to expect. During the winter months, there were few evenings that were not given up to some entertainment; and the little set to which the Burnams and Fishers and Everetts belonged were the gayest of the gay, with dinner parties and impromptu dances following one another in rapid succession. The enjoyment of these festivities was in no wise marred by the fact that one always met exactly the same people. Though the resources of the camp ...
— In Blue Creek Canon • Anna Chapin Ray
... Schlegel and a few other critics of repute have, on no grounds that merit acceptance, detected signs of Shakespeare's genuine work in one of the six, 'The Yorkshire Tragedy;' it is 'a coarse, crude, and vigorous impromptu,' which is clearly by ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... bowed from the window, but a young Hungarian journalist leaned out and without a moment's hesitation poured forth a torrent for fully fifteen minutes with scarce a pause for breath. I told him that such impromptu oratory seemed marvellous, but he dismissed it as nothing. "I'm politiker!" he explained, with a wave of ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... the roof being often covered with soil, and are not infrequently rendered attractive with blooming heather and little blue and pink blossoms planted by Nature's hand,—the hieroglyphics in which she writes her impromptu poetry. In the meadows between the hills are sprinkled harebells, as blue as the azure veins on a delicate face; while here and there patches of large red clover-heads are seen nodding heavily with their wealth of golden sweets. Further away, ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... Mrs. Scott, Miss Percival, the Cure, and Jean were seated round the little vicarage table; then, thanks partly to the impromptu and original nature of the entertainment, partly to the good-humor and perhaps slightly audacious gayety of Bettina, the conversation took a turn of the frankest and most ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... be quoted with their full effect beyond the circle of common friends. To have their proper weight they should appear in a biography, and with the portrait of the speaker. Good talk is dramatic; it is like an impromptu piece of acting where each should represent himself to the greatest advantage; and that is the best kind of talk where each speaker is most fully and candidly himself, and where, if you were to shift the speeches round from one to ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the circle, he threw his horse back on its haunches, so that in a short time the entire band was once more gathered in a group. Alfred and the outlaw knew that this manoeuvre portended a more serious charge than the impromptu affair they had broken with such comparative ease. An Indian is extremely gregarious when it comes to open fighting. He gets a lot of encouragement out of yells, the patter of many ponies' hoofs, and the flutter of an abundance of feathers. ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... appetite helped her to arrive at. Edward was highly elated at his success, and laughed and joked over a dinner they enjoyed with a relish an epicure might covet. There is an old proverb about stolen waters being sweet; certainly their stolen ramble and impromptu dinner had a charm which completely blinded them to their duty to their parents, and even their own safety; for Edward proposed they should take a short ramble on the other side, where they were ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... composer, which he certainly connects with no act of the reason, which he is probably unconscious of connecting with any movement of his feeling, but which nevertheless is the form in sound of an emotional mood. When he reflects upon the melody secreted thus impromptu, he is aware, as we learn from his own lips, that this work has correspondence with emotion. Beethoven calls one symphony Heroic, another Pastoral; of the opening of another he says, 'Fate knocks at the door.' Mozart ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... burglars. The uncontrollable exasperation of the temper obliged me at length to draw the charge from the pistol, through fear of yielding to some sudden impulse of despair. I had also put out of reach my razors, a hammer, and whatever else might serve as an impromptu means of violence. I remember the grim satisfaction with which I looked upon the brass ornaments of the bedroom fire-place, and reflected that, if worse came to worst, I was not wholly without a resource with which to end my sufferings. For nearly ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... Europe, because of the cultivated taste and superior foundries for which that capital is renowned; and it is remarkable that both the great statues there cast from Crawford's models by Mueller inspired those impromptu festivals which give expression to German enthusiasm. The advent of the Beethoven statue was celebrated by the adequate performance, under the auspices of both court and artists, of that peerless composer's grandest music. When, on the evening of his arrival, Crawford ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... to organize an impromptu card-party, but that, also, was a failure; and, although, as a rule, they had a little music after dinner, on this particular evening each one seemed indisposed ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... illustrations, which will repay study are the following: the Allegretto of Beethoven's Sixth Sonata; the Schubert Impromptu, op. 90, No. 4; Brahms's Intermezzo, op. 117, No. 1 and the Ballade in G minor, op. 118, No. 3, and for orchestra—in extended treatment—Debussy's Prelude a l'apres-midi ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... [Greek: Alla mixas panta kata symphonian]. Horum singulis seorsum assumptis, tu expedito: Sic ego tanquam Oraculo jubeo.——Itaque literarum ignarum Coquum, tu cum videris, & qui Democriti scripta omnia non perlegerit, vel potius, impromptu non habeat, eum deride ut futilem: Ac ilium Mercede conducito, qui Epicuri Canonen usu plane didicerit, &c. as it follows in the Gastronomia of Archestratus, Athen. lib. xxiii. Such ...
— Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets • John Evelyn
... it. The bulk of the house gazed at it with a burning interest, a mouth-watering interest, a wistful and pathetic interest; a minority of nineteen couples gazed at it tenderly, lovingly, proprietarily, and the male half of this minority kept saying over to themselves the moving little impromptu speeches of thankfulness for the audience's applause and congratulations which they were presently going to get up and deliver. Every now and then one of these got a piece of paper out of his vest pocket and privately glanced at it ...
— The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg • Mark Twain
... Carriers,[235] as soon as a girl has experienced the first flow of the menses which in the female constitution are a natural discharge, her father believed himself under the obligation of atoning for her supposedly sinful condition by a small impromptu distribution of clothes among the natives. This periodical state of women was considered as one of legal impurity fateful both to the man who happened to have any intercourse, however indirect, with her, and to the woman herself who failed in scrupulously ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... boyhood to self-restraint, calmness, and the nil admirari air, which, as Dallas said, is "the Corinthian ornament of a gentleman" (I may add especially when of Corinthian brass), that his admirable jests, while they gained in clearness and applicability, lost something of that rattle of the impromptu and headlong which renders Irish and Western humour so easy. I recorded the bon mots and merry stories which passed among us all in the sanctum in articles for our weekly newspaper, under the name of "Social Hall Sketches" (a social hall in the West is a steamboat smoking- room). Every ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... other hand, in the country especially, nothing can be more fun or more appropriate than a barn dance, or an impromptu play, or a calico masquerade, with properties and clothes made of any old thing and in a few ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... Lady Harrington's impromptu evening assemblies less celebrated than her perpetual tea-drinkings at Harrington House. The superior quality of this expensive beverage in which the family of Stanhope indulged there, and the frequency with which Lady Harrington presented it to her visitors at all hours of the day, gave rise to ...
— The Letter-Bag of Lady Elizabeth Spencer-Stanhope v. I. • A. M. W. Stirling (compiler)
... I know of Robert Louis Stevenson I have learned from his books, and from one unexpected impromptu letter which he wrote to me years ago in friendly recognition of my own work. I add the testimonies of friends who may have been of less actual service to him than Mr Henley, but who surely loved him better and more lastingly. These do not represent him as the victim of an overweening ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... rendered striking, even to the most casual observer, probably, not only on account of the irregular mounds of moss-covered stones that occupied its intervening spaces, but also, by reason of the masses of wild flowers (great clumps of which were springing up in the crevices of this impromptu wall) that lent to it an appearance half negligent, but wholly and entrancingly picturesque. Here, undoubtedly, was art. That did not astonish the young man. All avenues, in the ordinary sense, are works of art; and the mere excess of art he saw manifested did not ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... dimly lighted by tallow candles, he was unable to read them when he arose to address the court and jury, paying them aside, he depended entirely upon his memory and found it perfect. He made an eloquent plea, produced a marked impression, and won the case. Since then he has always been an impromptu speaker. Formed a partnership later with William Wallace, but in 1860 the latter became clerk of Marion County, and the firm was changed to Harrison & Fishback, which was terminated by the entry of the senior partner into ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison
... impossible,' said Dr. Johnson.) Why all that rapid tossing of handfuls of chords from the middle to the highest octaves, lifting the hand with such conscious appeal to our eyes? To what end all those rapid octave passages? since in the intervals of easy execution, in the seemingly quiet impromptu passages, the music grew so monotonous and commonplace: the same little figure repeated and repeated, after listless pauses, in a way which conveyed no meaning, no sense of musical progress, but only the appearance of ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... between the two boys, encumbered with their dresses, shy and awkward, and rehearsing their lines like a task, was no small contrast to the merry impromptu under the oak, and the gay, ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... course of a week I do mean to conduct a series of essays in that paper which may be of public utility. So much for myself, except that I long to be out of London; and that my Xstmas Carol is a quaint performance, and, in as strict a sense as is possible, an Impromptu, and, had I done all I had planned, that "Ode to the Duchess" would have been a better thing than it is—it being somewhat dullish, etc. I have bought the "Beauties of the Anti-jacobin," and attorneys and counsellors advise me to prosecute, and offer ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... me to tell you his request was refused, that his regiment was even then embarking to cross the Delaware, and that therefore he could not return, whatever his wish. The Twenty-sixth is under orders to follow at daybreak to-morrow, and so we plan an impromptu farewell supper this evening at my quarters. Will you forgive such brief notice and help to cheer our sorrow ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... emboldened her to throw off the most sacred observances of her past. She took up Madame Adelschein, she entertained the James J. Rollivers, she resuscitated Creole dishes, she patronized negro melodists, she abandoned her weekly teas for impromptu afternoon dances, and the prim drawing-room in which dowagers had droned echoed with ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... was delighted to receive his impromptu note, for it left her one less mouth to feed; and William was equally satisfied to be relieved of the role of playing husband without any of ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... lurid than he occasionally employed. William Clowes might have to abandon his practice of repeating a sentence over and over again in animated crescendo. Henry Higginson might be instructed not to lapse into impromptu rhyme in his Camp Meeting addresses. Joseph Spoor might be informed that if he wanted gymnastic exercises he must take them in private, and never by way of standing with one foot on the pulpit seat and the other on the book-board the while he illustrated, by means of a roll ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... ever after. Many graceful compliments paid to her by the courtly earl testify to his admiration of her beauty and accomplishments. On seeing her wear an orange lily on the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne he addressed her in the following impromptu: ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... the other, had neglected to close the street door. The consequence was, that all the cabmen on the stand outside, and all the vagabond night-idlers in the vagabond neighborhood of the Snuggery, poured into the narrow passage, and got up an impromptu riot of their own with the waiters, who tried, too late, to turn them out. Just as the police were forcing their way through the throng below, Zack and the stranger had fought their way out of the throng above, and had ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... hangings, where on high afternoons tea was given to droves of visitors; and there was the culinary corner, with spirit-lamps, gas-rings, kettles, and a bowl or two over which you might spend a couple of arduous hours in ineffectually whipping up a mayonnaise for an impromptu lunch. Artistic operations were carried out in the middle of the studio, not too far from the stove, which never went out from November to May. A large mirror hung paramount on one wall. The remaining spaces of the studio ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... largest share of admiration and attention; and if the untutored girl fell short of the accomplished dame in precision and skill, she made up for the want of them in natural grace and freedom of movement, for the display of which the couranto, with its frequent and impromptu changes, afforded ample opportunity. Even Sir Ralph was struck with her extreme gracefulness, and pointed her out to Mistress Nicholas, who, unenvying and amiable, joined heartily in his praises. Overhearing what ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... had, moreover, to be guarded against surprises by the enemy's cavalry; and as men were so scarce, it was generally arranged that the navy-yard should follow the army lines. Constantly shifting position—caused by the rapid movements of the enemy, left these impromptu ship-yards unprotected; and then a small party of raiders would either burn them, or force their builders to do so. It was not until the appropriation was nearly spent—although not one efficient gunboat of this class was ever finished—that the ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... illustration of Schubert's cleverness in treating the pianoforte, which is already sufficiently evident in the dramatic accompaniments of his larger songs, before mentioned, attention is called to the Impromptu in B-flat—the air and variations known as "The Fair Rosamunde," the title due to the appearance of this melody in his opera of "Rosamunde." At least three of these variations display great finesse in treating ...
— The Masters and their Music - A series of illustrative programs with biographical, - esthetical, and critical annotations • W. S. B. Mathews
... most irregular answer. Declining to be drawn into impromptu irrelevancies, Mucklewame stuck ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... orders, you go and get them for me, and then we can share the profits of my search." I consented, and he soon went, and was gone for at least two hours before he returned loaded with his findings, having taken his shirt off and tied the sleeves and collar up, and then filled his impromptu sack quite full. He had evidently carried his burden no small distance, for on his return the perspiration was running down as big as peas. "Tare an' 'ounds," poor Paddy said, for he was an Irishman, "I've got a fine lot of flour, but am as tired as a dog, and as hungry as a hunter." "Well ...
— The Autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence - A Hero of the Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns • William Lawrence
... no time, no dialogue had been provided for the friends and neighbors waiting outside, and as time passed and no signal to "draw up," came, they grew somewhat embarrassed. Tom, urged by necessity, spoke impromptu: "He fighteth the wolf!" he cried; "he fighteth fiercely!" Then, in an undertone to his next neighbor, "say something, Will; anything will do." But Will could think of nothing but "He fighteth the wolf!" also; so he ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... of her displeasure, Arline giggled faintly at Grace's impromptu session of court. Ruth's sad little face brightened, while Anne listened to her friend with open admiration. She could have conceived of no surer way to settle the difference that had made ...
— Grace Harlowe's Second Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... himself up. He took his meed of praise and flattery, and he withstood the battery of arch eyes modestly, as became the winner of many fields. But even the reception after the Princeton game paled in comparison with this impromptu dance. ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey
... over this impromptu synopsis, in my vain attempt to reach some fresh clue to a proper understanding of the inconsistencies in Miss Tuttle's conduct by means of my theory of her strong but mistaken devotion to Mr. Jeffrey, ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... born with an abnormal bump of mischief and, by painstaking endeavor, he has won the world's championship as an organizer of impromptu riots. ...
— You Should Worry Says John Henry • George V. Hobart
... ultimately captured in Picardy, and put in a dungeon. He was banished from the kingdom by order of the Parliament. In his old age he found an asylum in the house of the Duke of Montmorency. The poet's real surname was Viaud. The following impromptu is attributed to Thophile, who was asked by a foolish person whether all ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... of one gentleman who lies awake all night after reading it; and Mrs. Inchbald promises a candid opinion, which, however, we do not get. Besides stories and novels, Mrs. Opie was the author of several poems and verses which were much admired. There was an impromptu to Sir James Mackintosh, which brought a long letter in return, and one of her songs was quoted by Sydney Smith in a lecture at the Royal Institution. Mrs. Opie was present, and she used to tell in after times 'how unexpectedly the compliment came upon her, and how she ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... the fire our impromptu links cast an adequate light. The sheets of rain became suddenly visible as they entered the circle of illumination. By careful scrutiny of the footing I gained the entrance to our cave without mishap. I looked back. Here and there irregularly gleamed and spluttered my companions' torches. ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... exceptionally adroit in using popular prejudice and bigotry to his purpose, exceptionally unscrupulous in appealing to those baser motives that turn a meeting of citizens into a mob of barbarians, he should yet have won his case before a jury of the people. Mr. Lincoln was as far as possible from an impromptu politician. His wisdom was made up of a knowledge of things as well as of men; his sagacity resulted from a clear perception and honest acknowledgment of difficulties, which enabled him to see that the only durable triumph of political opinion is based, not on any abstract right, but upon ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... observations as to the Countess, in particular, I consider to have been an example of sustained invective such as one rarely encounters in this degenerate age. Well, her next essay in creative composition is my supper, which will be an equally spirited impromptu. To-morrow she will darn and sew me an epic; and her desserts will continue to be in the richest lyric vein. Such, sir, are the poems of Lisa, all addressed to me, who came so near to ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... as everywhere else, appear to prefer associating with their own countrymen to frequenting the houses of their Spanish friends, even although quite sure of a cordial reception there. The time for visiting is in the evening, when there are numbers of impromptu conversaziones—or tertulias, as they are called—of which the Dons are very fond, and in which very many of their evenings ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... several yards of snow-white muslin—the innocent cause of the disaster; and how, light as a bird, she sprung, merrily laughing, from the room, with the fluttering fragments of her cobweb dress gathered in an impromptu drapery ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... Among the pieces played were, Les Cloches, Chasse Neige, Eclogue, Cloches de Geneva, Eroica, Feux Follets and Mazeppa. Also the big Polonaise in E, the two Etudes, Waldesrauschen and Gnomenreigen; the Mazourka, Valse Impromptu, and the first Etude, of which last he remarked: "You can all play this; thirty years have passed since it was composed and people are only just finding out how fine it is. Such is the case with many of Liszt's works. ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... wonder of the upward rush; the strange exhilaration coming with relivening confidence; the unspeakable loveliness and grandeur of the prospect; the thousand varied incidents of the too-brief journey; the short, sharp excitement of the landing; the awe and curiosity of the impromptu crowd invariably on the ground before the balloon, and reluctantly leaving it only when the last whiff of gas is rolled out of it and the last rope thrown into the wagon; the moonlight ride to the station ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... do for her? He remembered how happy she had been at their impromptu dinners six months before, and he would give her this same pleasure. He would see her happy again, and near her, under her glance, perhaps ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... When the cook discovered his loss the other fellow was gone. These rascals said it was the best dish of ham and eggs they ever ate. Many houses had fine pianos and other musical instruments, and in some instances impromptu dances were on whilst Confederate shells whanged through the house above their heads. It is safe to say that there was little left of valuable bric-a-brac to greet the fugitive people on their return. And it is highly probable that pianos and handsome furniture ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... and were able to run up and join us all for the holiday. Will and I had motored up from our university town, and even Malcolm had put in an appearance. I had advised Edith not to bother to write Ruth about the impromptu reunion. I had understood that she was traveling around somewhere with her prominent suffrage leader, Mrs. Scot-Williams. Ruth is a woman of affairs now, and I try not to disturb her with family ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... over the empty half, pinch well together around the edges, and fry in deep fat, blazing hot, to a rich quick brown on both sides. Drain on paper napkins, sprinkling lightly with sugar. Serve hot or cold. Most excellent for impromptu luncheons or very late suppers—withal wholesome. A famous doctor said often of them, "You would be only the better for eating ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... daughter was called up on the 'phone by one of her girl friends and asked to make one of the party, who were arranging an impromptu dance at a private house. The girl friend and her brother would stop for her in their car ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... had not been aware of what the Colonel intended to say. Indeed, the offensive remarks seem to have been extemporaneous, because, as it was too dark for him to read his prepared speech, he spoke impromptu. In any event, Secretary Garrison had due notice that Roosevelt was to speak, and if he had had any doubts he should have sent word to General Wood to cancel the engagement. The Administration made as much as it could out of this impropriety, but the public saw the humor ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... Saxon (La.) described in an interesting manner Club Life among the Women of the South. Mrs. Blake gave a powerful address on Wife, Mother and Citizen. Miss Shaw closed the meeting with an impromptu speech in which, according to the reporter, she said: "It is declared that women are too emotional to vote; but the morning paper described a pugilistic encounter between two members of Congress which looked as if excitability were not limited to women. ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... an air of authority about our impromptu guide, and the profound reverences bestowed upon him and upon us by the workmen in the printing-house, as well as by all the monks whom we met, prompted me to inquire, as we parted from him, to whom we were indebted for ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... She sang this impromptu nonsense prestissimo as she danced out of the room, leaving the accomplished Dorothy vexed and perplexed at not having understood a ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... centre of the Cyclades to illustrate the range of Greek civilization as it spread over the shores of Asia and Europe. And as in writing a book he was careful first to plan out the scheme of it and the balance of the parts, so, however much his public addresses gave the impression of being largely impromptu, he had always thought out carefully every word he meant to say. "There is," he said, "no greater danger than the so-called inspiration of the moment, which leads you to say something which is not exactly true, or which ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... he no longer spoke to a lawyer named Peat; to which he replied, "I choose to give up his acquaintance—I have common of turbary, and have a right to cut peat!" An impromptu of his on a learned serjeant who was holding the Court of Common Pleas with his glittering eye, is ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... we had been not enough expressive of our pleasure. But our manners both are a little too much on this side of too-much-cordiality. We want presence of mind and presence of heart. What we feel comes too late, like an after thought impromptu. But perhaps you observed nothing of that which we have been painfully conscious of, and are, every day, in our intercourse with those we stand affected to through all the degrees of love. Robinson is on the Circuit. Our Panegyrist I thought had forgotten ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... can be had also from impromptu pantomimes, where the performers enact some story which every one knows, such as "Aladdin" or "Red Riding Hood" or "Cinderella"; or a scene from history proper, or from village or family history. The contrast between the splendor of Cinderella's carriage ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... Hill and joined it. New fair-grounds had then been established in another and more centrally located section of the district. In the old grounds the boys of the neighborhood now went to fly their kites and model airplanes, to hold impromptu bicycle and foot races, and to play tag and hide-and-go-seek in the cavernous sheds and around the ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... happen to be an impromptu luncheon or drinking party at your house, or a dinner party, perhaps— the ordinary thing at resorts like yours—where ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... clever caricatures—for he had talent with his pencil—and his brilliant conversation, rather than to apply himself to routine work. His comrades used to lock him into a room to make him work, and even then he would outwit them by dashing off a witty parody or a bit of impromptu verse. Among his literary jeux d'esprit was an examination paper on 'Pickwick,' prepared as a Christmas joke in exact imitation of a genuine "exam." The prizes, two first editions of Pickwick, were won by W. W. Skeat, now famous as a philologist, and Walter Besant, known ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... waltz right through, then we went to an impromptu shelter which had been rigged up on a balcony. And we talked. There's something sympathetic about Miss Grayling which leads one to talk about one's self,—before I was half aware of it I was telling her of all my plans and projects,—actually telling ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... of Dick's arrival with his companions was a great day in the annals of the Mustang Valley, and Major Hope resolved to celebrate it by an impromptu festival at the old block-house; for many hearts in the valley had been made glad that day, and he knew full well that, under such circumstances, some safety-valve must be devised for the ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... along there. There was no hurry. All appeared to have time to spare. The streets, walks, and lawns were wiggling with little parties, one or two families in each. The men had brought bedding and blankets and they made impromptu shelters to ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... still more acutely than ever that South Africa was by no means an earthly paradise. As he drove on and on this feeling deepened upon him. Huge blocks of stone obstructed the rough road, intersected as it was by deep cart-wheel ruts, down which the rain-water now flowed in impromptu torrents. The Dutch driver, too, anxious to show the mettle of his coarse-limbed steeds, persisted in dashing over the hummocky ground at a break-neck pace, while Guy balanced himself with difficulty on the narrow seat, hanging on to ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... to the collection of Mudie. The man who hits one success by accident is always trying to hit another by preparation. Since that achievement I have thought of nothing but the creation of another impromptu, and I have really prepared a quantity of increments toward it in the various places to which my traveling existence has led me. That I have settled down, since these many years past, at the centre and capital of ideas would prove me, even without the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... "Yes, I guess I always have an everlasting grin on. Had to live up to my name, you see, in spite of my naturally cantankerous disposition; But come this way, ma'am, I can see the hunger sticking out of those youngsters' eyes. We'll have a sort of impromptu picnic here and now, I'll tell my housekeeper to send ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... have accomplished until Vanity Fair had come out. In inquiring about him from those who survive him, and knew him well in those days, I always hear the same account. "If I could only tell you the impromptu lines which fell from him!" "If I had only kept the drawings from his pen, which used to be chucked about as though they were worth nothing!" "If I could only remember the drolleries!" Had they been kept, there might now be many volumes of these sketches, as to which the reviewer says that ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... second call upon Mother two days after our impromptu picnic at Seabury's Pond. I heard all about it when I came home that afternoon. It appeared that she had brought more flowers and a fresh supply of books. She had remained even longer than on her first visit and she and ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... it is because I do not allow myself to speak on any subject until my mind is imbued with it." On one occasion Webster made a remarkable speech before the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Harvard, when a book was presented to him; but after he had gone, his "impromptu" speech, carefully written out, was found in the book which he had forgotten ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... sudden he stopped for want of a word which did not occur to him, and thus put an end to his peroration." In this awkward dilemma, the reputation of the Andalusian rhetoricians was saved by Mundhir Ibn Said, who not only poured forth a torrent of impromptu eloquence, but delivered a long ex-tempore poem, "which to this day stands unequalled; and Abdurrahman was so pleased, that he appointed him preacher and Imam to the great mosque; and some time after, the office of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... it to remain unobserved, owing to its superior size and remarkable black colour. A very large old tree with a considerable cavernlike hole at the bottom should always be carefully examined, as bears are particularly fond of these impromptu dwellings. I knew a man who was thus surprised whilst cutting wood from a large tree, unconscious of the fact that a bear was concealed within the hollow trunk. The blows of the axe disturbed the occupant, which immediately bolted from the hollow, and seized the wood-cutter by the thigh. ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... telegram arrived accepting the invitation, for both the lady and the lion. They would arrive that afternoon, as little preparation was needed for this impromptu journey, the novelty of which was its chief charm to these ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... scene exhibited in St. George's Fields." It was a wanton fire on an unarmed populace that was protected against; and the protest was by men who involuntarily shrank from mob-law as they would from the hell of anarchy. They apprehended an impromptu collision between the people and the troops; they knew that an illegal and wanton fire on the people would produce such collision; the danger of this result formed, undoubtedly, a large portion of the common talk; and the frequency and manner in which the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... de sa naissance! Ivan Matveitch, however, rarely talked of that time; but two or three times a year, addressing himself to the crooked old emigrant whom he had taken into his house, and called for some unknown reason 'M. le Commandeur,' he recited in his deliberate, nasal voice, the impromptu he had once delivered at a soiree of the Duchesse de Polignac. I remember only the first two lines.... It had reference to a comparison between the ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... zeal did Mr. W. L. Mackenzie carry on this warfare. He at once saw what would be the effect of the new departure. And so promptly and energetically did he denounce the "arch-apostate Egerton, alias Arnold, Ryerson" as a deserter, that he secured with little difficulty an impromptu verdict from the public against him. This he the more readily accomplished, by the aid of at least half a dozen editors of newspapers in various parts of the province, while Dr. Ryerson was single-handed. Not only did these editors join with great vigour ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... it," he said. "But it is never too late to begin. I had little more acquaintance with my own late lady ere I married her; which proves," he added, with a grimace, "that these impromptu marriages may often produce an excellent understanding in the long run. As the bridegroom is to have a voice in the matter, I will give him two hours to make up for lost time before we proceed with the ceremony." And he turned toward the ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... General Johnson's division, was struck by a shell which tore away the left arm and stretched the young hero lifeless on the ground. A comrade in pity twisted a handkerchief around the wounded limb as an impromptu tourniquet, and thus having staunched the flowing blood, placed the slender form of the unfortunate soldier under a tree and passed on. Here half an hour after he was found by the ambulance men and brought to the hospital, where the ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... right. It was a low, brown cottage, planted close against the hill, and overhung by the foliage and peeling boughs of a madrona thicket. Within it was full of dead leaves and mountain dust, and rubbish from the mine. But we soon had a good fire brightly blazing, and sat close about it on impromptu seats. Chuchu, the slave of sofa- cushions, whimpered for a softer bed; but the rest of us were greatly revived and comforted by that good creature-fire, which gives us warmth and light and companionable sounds, ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of in heaven except that "his halo didn't fit," or said in her quick way, when the plainness of a lady's dress was commended, "Why, I didn't suppose that anybody could go to heaven now-a-days without an overskirt," or wrote her sparkling impromptu rhymes for our children's games, her mirth was all in harmony with her earnest life. Her quick perceptions, her droll comparisons, her readiness of expression, united with her rare and tender sympathies, made her the most ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... friends to get acquainted with. I was then nearly twenty-one and a pretty good mixer; I liked men and enjoyed mingling with them and learning all I could from what they told me. When they drifted into a saloon I went along for the company. I did not care to drink, so I would join some impromptu quartet and we would sing popular songs while the other fellows cheered us with the best will in the world. A drink of beer or two heightens a man's appreciation of music, and the way the boys applauded my singing makes me rather regret ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... aunt; they had been too busy with each other before to look about. They stood silently by, Oscar grinning and Edmund frowning, while she apologized for their conduct. Then she turned to them and led them to an impromptu court of justice behind the wheel-house. The proceedings were brief. Oscar told his story. As usual, he related a perfectly plain, uncolored tale, making ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... shed—virtuous, honorable, sanctified!" Mr. Bradford, who deeply sympathized with the feelings of Washington, was much affected at the spectacle, and, retiring to his own house, wrote some simple and touching verses, called the "Lament of Washington." They were an impromptu effusion ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... evening were dark, all moving quietly and dropping with Samoan decorum in a wide semicircle on the floor beneath a great lamp that hung from the ceiling. The service began by my son reading a chapter from the Samoan Bible, Tusitala following with a prayer in English, sometimes impromptu, but more often from the notes in this little book, interpolating or changing with the circumstance of the day. Then came the singing of one or more hymns in the native tongue, and the recitation in concert of the Lord's Prayer, also in Samoan. Many of these ...
— A Lowden Sabbath Morn • Robert Louis Stevenson
... with a roar of laughter, cheers and protests, he sat down. Among the speakers I heard that night were Mr Beresford Hope and Sir Wilfrid Lawson, the latter of whom offered to the House quite a sheaf of carefully prepared impromptu. Again I got my guinea, and again I was asked to appear on the following night, and at the end of that week, the defaulting member of the staff not having again put in an appearance, I was formally enrolled for the rest of the session. ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... occupied by many an important personage. The walls were covered with names. Above some of them impromptu verses had been scribbled; others had perpetuated their profiles; and still others had drawn caricatures of those who had been the means of lodging them here. The guillotine also figured among ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... through the performance a second time. The joke never staled. It always got a hand, no matter how often it was repeated. At each encore the Utes stamped their flatfooted way round the room in a kind of impromptu and mirthful dance. The baptismal jest never ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... water served the whole party. Yet this man was the owner of several square miles of land, of which nearly every acre would produce corn, and, with a little trouble, all the common vegetables. The evening was spent in smoking, with a little impromptu singing, accompanied by the guitar. The signoritas all sat together in one corner of the room, and did not sup with ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... Higginson writes thus: "I have hardly heard his equal, in grasp upon an audience, in dramatic presentation, in striking at the pith of an ethical question, and in single [signal] illustrations and examples." Another writes, in reference to the impromptu speech delivered at the meeting at Rochester on the death of Lincoln: "I have heard Webster and Clay in their best moments, Channing and Beecher in their highest inspirations. I never heard truer eloquence. ...
— Frederick Douglass - A Biography • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... and innocence were pitiful. This impromptu court was trying him there in the open beside the cabin, and he knew that its verdict would be a speedy one. He started to run the gamut of appeal, denial, and anger; but his hearers were inflexible. They silenced him ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... This impromptu remark was more amusing to the hearers than helpful to the preacher, I fear; but it was away the dear old brother had of speaking ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... something, and, dismounting, seated himself down upon the ground, young men taking his horse and leading it away. Others, apparently also of rank, came and sat down. Franklin and his friends joined the rude circle of what they were glad to see was meant to be an impromptu council. ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... construction a certain interposing web spun by the brain between the soul and things divine, so Abt Vogler interprets music on the other side—that of immediate inspiration, to which the constructive element—real though slight—is subordinate. In the silence and vacuity which follow the impromptu on his orchestrion, the composer yearns, broods, aspires. Never were a ghostly troop of sounds reanimated and incarnated into industrious life more actually than by Browning's verse. They climb and crowd, they mount and march, and then pass away; but the musician's spirit is borne ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... 'Charades'!" interrupted Francie; "and a jolly good idea too. It isn't everybody who has time to swat at learning parts for the Dramatic. Besides, some girls can do rehearsed acting well, and are no good at impromptu things, and vice versa. ...
— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... at our invitation, to officiate as judge in some impromptu sports, in which, once again, the rival parties proved most evenly matched. Finally, as evening was drawing on, he consented just to witness a hurried display of our joint fireworks, after which, he told us, we must at once take to our boats and ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... warmly as he makes this impromptu confidence. Then he makes up his mind to sit down, after interrogating me ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel
... person must have tumbled to William as well, for he increased the revolutions to one hundred and forty per minute and broke into a shrill lullaby of his own impromptu composition:— ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 26, 1917 • Various
... but, after the burst of enthusiasm in his youth was past, he loved seclusion, and modestly sought the shade. No man was less conscious of his powers, or attached less value to his literary performances.[73] Of his numerous poetical compositions each was the work of a sitting, or had been uttered impromptu; and, unless secured by a friend, they were commonly laid aside never to be recollected. As a clergyman, he retained, during a lengthened incumbency, the respect and affection of his flock, chiefly, it may ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... male society, you see. We get to bore one another terribly. So here, like a visitation from heaven, three attractive young ladies descend upon us, traveling through our domain, and having discovered their presence we instantly decided to take advantage of the opportunity and invite them to an impromptu ball. There's no use refusing us, for we insist on carrying out our plan. If you men, perhaps the fathers of the young ladies, behave reasonably, we will entertain you royally and send you on your way rejoicing. ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne
... say terrified, the dusky crowd of juveniles with jack-o'-lanterns, impromptu giants and brigands, false faces, fire crackers, ventriloquism ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... that I could be called upon to speak this evening...." [PATRICIA controls a smile, and he goes on with overwhelming enthusiasm.] Well, conjurers are just the same. It takes some time to prepare an impromptu. A man like that walks about the woods and fields doing all his tricks beforehand, and talking all sorts of gibberish because he thinks he is alone. One evening this man found he was not alone. He found a very beautiful child ...
— Magic - A Fantastic Comedy • G.K. Chesterton
... (and the best) defence, she reads the whole of the Herakles, which Browning here translates. Aristophanes, naturally, is not convinced; impressed he must have been, to have borne so long a reading without demur: he flings them a snatch of song, finding in his impromptu a hint for a new play, the Frogs, and is gone. And now, a year after, as the couple return to Rhodes from a disgraced and dismantled Athens, Balaustion dictates to Euthukles her recollection of the "adventure," for the double purpose of putting the past ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... twenty minutes he reappeared, bearing on his shoulder a long plank which he had detached from the inclosure of a piece of pasture-land. He threw it across the torrent, secured it as well as he could, crossed this impromptu foot-bridge of his own device, and joined M. Moriaz, who was quite ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... interlocution; improvisation; toast; equivocation, prevarication, quibbling; ambages, pseudology, amphibology, amphiboly, dilogy. Associated Words: extempore, extemporaneous, extemporize, extemporization, impromptu, improvise, improvisation, brogue, aphasia, amnesia, oratory, elocution, rhetoric, oratorical, rhetorical, rhetorician, elocutionary, peroration, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... Players gives us good reason to believe that Shakspere must have been an excellent trainer, however modest may have been his own native gifts as an actor. Moliere, like Shakspere in so many ways, was like him in being author and actor and manager; and in the 'Impromptu de Versailles' he has left us a most instructive record of his own methods ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... The whole story hung upon the great musical talent of the youthful hero. The hero skated to church through the streets, gazed down the long aisle where the worshipers were assembled (presumably in pews), ascended to the organ gallery, sang an impromptu solo with trills and embellishments, was taken in hand by the enraptured organist who had played there for thirty years, and developed into a great composer. Omitting a mass of other absurdities scattered through the book, I will criticise this ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... ornamented, as no lecturer but one loving both his subject and his object could ever make it. After a while the doctor began to come with bits of metal and phials of acids, and delight Faith and astonish Mrs. Derrick by turning her sitting-room into an impromptu laboratory. Such fumes! such gaseous odours! such ominous "reports", were never known in and about Mrs. Derrick's quiet household; nor were her basins and tumblers ever put to such strange, and in her view hideous, uses. But Dr. ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... extraordinary, incredible mother as Mrs. "Bal" MacDonald: a good plan for the girl's sake, and for everybody's sake, because it was arranged to start for Scotland the day after to-morrow. Still, Barrie's impromptu ode to the heather moon had for a moment irradiated his mind with a light such as had not shone for Somerled on land or sea since he had become rich enough to afford the most expensive lighting. Then as quickly it had died down. He saw himself spinning agreeably through Scottish scenes ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... symbol C and a signification A, as if the Unconscious Mind disposed of ready-made symbols of its own. Barring words used in their proper sense, and similar borrowings from waking habit, the so-called symbols in dreams are essentially impromptu fabrications, in which the association is not a direct causal connection between A and C, but a mediate association involving a third element, which psycho-analysts usually leave out ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... the joint caucus he escorted Madeleine to the council-chamber, where the new Governor was holding his impromptu reception. There were no shadows on the faces which pressed closely around him. All the politicians of the State were there, eager to be the first to congratulate him. Their fears had been somewhat allayed. In political circles it was well understood that ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
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