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More "Mirth" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... rive and rend. Nay, if this Night be anything at all, Sure she is daughter of the sun and earth; This holds, the other spreads that shadowy pall. Howbeit they err who praise this gloomy birth, So frail and desolate and void of mirth That one poor firefly can her ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... Hester was by nature a very quiet-mannered girl, but she became nearly as lively now as Annie; she laughed, and joked, and danced, and skipped until Mrs. Martin, who watched her from the nursery window, began to shake her head gravely, and to say that such mirth was not "fey" as she expressed it, and that it surely forbode a season of ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade
... into this great realm?' if the answer could be sincerely made, 'I have made men laugh,' it would be the surest passport to a welcome entrance. We have here to-night one who has made millions laugh—not the loud laughter that bespeaks the vacant mind, but the laugh of intelligent mirth that helps the human heart and the human mind. I refer, of course, to Doctor Clemens. I was going to say Mark Twain, his literary title, which is a household phrase in more homes than that of any other man, and you know him best ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... greensward, which indicated the standpoint of extinct jam pots—where are those jam pots now? But, while the outside of the book spoke thus, as it were, by innuendo and suggestion, the inside seemed to shout with joyous laughter or chuckle with irreverent mirth; or murmured, in tones lower perhaps, but certainly not less distinct, of things which ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... of this nature, little as they are akin to mirth, the following letter of Richardson will show that these brother wits contrived to infuse ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... passed in and out like an eel in water. Nothing clung to him of all the filth in which he trod. He drank, but was not less the master of himself; he jested, but his laughter was the mirth of the pure in heart, without harshness in it, and they made him way and listened when he spoke; and even the gross, hot-eyed women dulled their terrible speech when he stood before them. The eyes of Emmanuel, propped in his bed, his blankets wet with the wine ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... been obliged to sell two pieces of land from the Frithelstoke estate, called Choldysoke and Meryfield; and Philippa Basset sent Isoult word that it was well Meryfield was sold, seeing that all mirth had ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... all that are about them. Sometimes you have a Set of Whisperers, who lay their Heads together in order to sacrifice every Body within their Observation; sometimes a Set of Laughers, that keep up an insipid Mirth in their own Corner, and by their Noise and Gestures shew they have no Respect for the rest of the Company. You frequently meet with these Sets at the Opera, the Play, the Water-works, [4] and other publick Meetings, where their whole Business is to draw off the Attention of ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... back her head; amazement, question, relief struggled over her sensitive face, and finally melted into irrepressible mirth under the fine amusement of ...
— The Flying Mercury • Eleanor M. Ingram
... day resounded with roars of laughter; and the only thoroughly grave man on the ground was he who occasioned the mirth of all ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... Pudding-burn House, he found to his dismay that the two Armstrongs who had stolen his cows, Johnie and Willie, had stopped there, on their way home, with all their men-at-arms, and, from the sounds of feasting and mirth which he heard as he approached, he suspected that one, at least, of his three cows had been killed to provide ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... silence, in dreams' projections, While the world of gain and appearance and mirth goes on, So soon what is over forgotten, and waves wash the imprints off the sand, In nature's reverie sad, with hinged knees returning, I enter the doors—(while for you up there, Whoever you are, follow me without noise, ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... embroidered with her favorite flower—a wondrous thing secured by correspondence with the American consul at Kobe: a pair of Siamese kittens which he named Cat-Nip and Cat-Nap: a sandal-wood fan out of India; and a little, triple-chinned, ebony god of Mirth, its impish eyes rolled back in merriment, mouth wrinkled with ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... Doctor, in a voice slightly husky with feeling, "he gives us glowing descriptions of his winter circles of friends, where mirth and wine, music and beauty, charm away the hours, and of summer-day recreations beneath the vine-wedded elms of the Tiber or on the breezy slopes of Soracte; yet I seldom read them without a feeling of sadness. A low wail of inappeasable sorrow, an undertone of dirges, mingles with ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... society unless you make up your mind to be sympathetic, unselfish, animating, as well as animated. Society does not require mirth, but it does demand cheerfulness and unselfishness, and you must help to make and sustain cheerful conversation. The manner of conversation is ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... striking and beautiful, mixed up with much that was trifling, fantastic, and absurd. In our mood, at the moment, it was only with these latter qualities that either Lord Byron or I felt disposed to indulge ourselves; and, in turning over the pages, we found, it must be owned, abundant matter for mirth. In vain did Mr. Rogers, in justice to the author, endeavour to direct our attention to some of the beauties of the work:—it suited better our purpose (as is too often the case with more deliberate critics) to pounce only on such passages as ministered ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... that what you say is true?" said Hussein-ul-Mulk, in such piteous accents that Brett was moved to further mirth. ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... Mongol—an artist's dream of all the most delicate vegetables in the world mingled together as the clouds are mingled, the tensity in the air seemed to break and shatter about them in showers of brilliant, artificial mirth, which presently, because they were all young and fond of one another and their group had the habit of intimacy, became less and ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... was horseplay, pure and simple, and yet audiences go into paroxysms of mirth over much the same things. The love of slap-stick comedy has not all died out, and the ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Snowbound - Or, The Proof on the Film • Laura Lee Hope
... seen her looking more lovely. He was sure that she had never been more gracious to him. The touch of her hand was pleasant to his arm, and even he had sufficient spirit of fun about him to enjoy something of the mirth of her little grimaces. When he told her what her father had said about Mr. Groschut, even he laughed at her face of assumed disgust. "Papa doesn't hate him half as much as I do," she said. "Papa always does forgive at last, but I never can ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... countryside by the imported "navvies," if our Western name may be applied to men who in figure and dress look so little like the big fellows who do the same kind of work in England. Although these navvies were a rough lot and our ancient basha (a kind of four-wheeled covered carriage) was a thing for mirth, we met with no incivility as we picked our way among them for a mile or two. I was a witness indeed of a creditable incident. A handcart full of earth was being taken along the edge of the roadway, with one man in the shafts and another pushing behind. ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... Cognet and his spouse had managed to buy their present house. La Cognette, a woman of forty, tall and plump, with the nose of a Roxelane, a swarthy skin, jet-black hair, brown eyes that were round and lively, and a general air of mirth and intelligence, was selected by Maxence Gilet, on account of her character and her talent for cookery, as the Leonarde of the Order. Pere Cognet might be about fifty-six years old; he was thick-set, very much under his wife's rule, and, ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... out of sight of the sleigh than, weighted though I was, I felt my spirits rising rapidly. The freedom of movement and the exhilarating air gave my mind a new sense of liberty, and Jacqueline, who had been watching me anxiously, seeing the gloom disappear from my face, tried, first to tempt me to mirth, and then to match me in it. Sometimes we would run a little way, and then we would fall back into our steady, ambling plod ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... laugh of my dear old grandmother brought me up, and I said no more; colouring, I believe, a little, at my own folly. Even uncle Ro joined in the mirth, though I could see he wished Mary Warren even safely translated along with her father, and that the latter was Archbishop of Canterbury. I must acknowledge that I felt a good deal ashamed of the ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... glad of it!" cried Dick, with a new access of mirth. "The old rascal! Giving my wife jewels! Why, Lena, you couldn't wear his stuff anyway, after all this fracas. It will do to trim a ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... company. This was another damsel, of lower stature and plumper figure, dressed full as prettily as Barbara herself, and laughing with most merry lips and under eyes that half hid themselves in an eclipse of mirth. When Barbara saw me, she did not, as her custom was, feign not to see me till I thrust my presence on her, but ran to me at once, crying very indignantly, "Simon, who is this girl? She has dared to tell me ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... Certain it is, he very much resented this repulse, and behaved with unusual arrogance towards some of his adversaries who were joyful at his defeat, telling them, that all this was but a false, sardonic mirth, as they little knew how much his actions ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... very good luck. Nay, I have had some omens: I got out of bed backwards too this morning, without premeditation; pretty good that too; but then I stumbled coming down stairs, and met a weasel; bad omens those: some bad, some good, our lives are chequered. Mirth and sorrow, want and plenty, night and day, make up our time. But in troth I am pleased at my stocking; very well pleased at my stocking. Oh, here's my niece! Sirrah, go tell Sir Sampson Legend I'll wait on him if ...
— Love for Love • William Congreve
... with renewed mirth and the finest sense, between the puffs of her cigarette, of the drollery of things, appeared to find their conversation highly delightful. "Yes, it ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... for pleasure and amusement. But such a spectacle would be to me more revolting than the scene I had just witnessed; the delirium of their frightful disease would be less shocking in my eyes than the madness of their mirth. The struggling gleams of sense and memory in these unhappy people reminded me a beautiful ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... that was sought wherever he went," said Bill Sewall. "There are men who have the faculty of pleasing and creating mirth and he was ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... tranquil bower, He stretches idle limbs at ease until The blessed peace about him calms his will And hidden thoughts, expanding into flower, Amaze him with their beauty, and the sour Sharp voice of Care, that sounds far off and shrill, Moves him to gentle mirth that men can be So strangely foolish as to heed her call, Regardless of their true felicity.... Avoid the place, ye bores. Aroint ye all! Afflict not one to this dear haven fled, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 28, 1919. • Various
... pleasant memory in the background, and all were glad to find themselves in the same company again. It seemed to Kendal that Miss Bretherton was looking rather thin and pale, but she would not admit it, and chattered from her corner to Forbes and himself with the mirth and abandon of a child on its holiday. At last the 'dreaming spires' of Oxford rose from the green, river-threaded plain, and they were at their journey's end. A few more minutes saw them alighting at the gate of the new Balliol, where stood Herbert Sartoris looking out for ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Shadow's slow subacid speech, I knew, Foreboded more than mirth. Downward we drew, Silent, and all un-noted, O'er sleeping Shopdom. Sleeping? Closer quest Might prove it one vast Valley of Unrest ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 January 11, 1890 • Various
... father's corporation to develop coal fields, to run a line for the little railroad which Bob had just characterized as "dinky," and otherwise to put into practice college experiences not included in its curriculum—chumming with this new child of nature, threw them again into peals of mirth. ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... passed without incident. Napoleon's health and appetite were on the whole excellent, and he suffered less than the rest from sea-sickness. The delicate Las Cases, who had donned his naval uniform, was in such distress as to move the mirth of the crew, whereupon Napoleon sharply bade him appear in plain clothes so as not to disgrace the French navy. For the great man himself the crew soon felt a very real regard, witness the final confession of one of them to Maitland: "Well, they may abuse that man as much ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... sighs thy absence to bemoan, And grave with faithful epitaphs thy stone. If e'er from me thy lov'd memorial part, May shame afflict this alienated heart; Of thee forgetful if I form a song, My lyre be broken, and untun'd my tongue. My grief be doubled from thy image free, And mirth a torment, unchastis'd by thee. Oft let me range the gloomy aisles alone, Sad luxury! to vulgar minds unknown, Along the walls, where speaking marbles show What worthies form the hallow'd mould below; Proud names who once the reins of ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... is a wise child," she replied. Her eyes were dancing with mirth, a scarlet signal burned on either cheek, and her parted lips were crimson. She seemed lovelier ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... appeared indifference, frivolity, and mirth; this being considered, especially by the females, as conducive to health. Seldom was the body followed by even ten or twelve attendants; and instead of the usual bearers and sextons, hirelings of the lowest of the populace undertook the office for the sake of gain; and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... of Art. Now I've given you something real to patronize. Don't you dare fail me." Suddenly the speaker gave herself over to an access of mirth. "Heaven help that young man when ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... thee, wherein thou shalt feel thyself a traveller and a stranger. My child, there is very much merriment which hath nought to do with happiness, and very much happiness which hath nought to do with mirth. 'Tis one thing to shut ourselves from God's world which He made, and quite another to keep our feet away from Satan's world which he hath ruined. When God saith, 'Love not the world,' He means not, Love not flowers, and song-birds, and ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... big belly under the lion's skin, let slip his serpent skin headdress, and let the battle axe that was his symbol of office drop from his hand as he shook with mirth at the great and thumping lie told ...
— The Sun King • Gaston Derreaux
... forward now as grown men, hardly recognisable, but much pleased at being remembered. He returned his sisters' caresses, begged his uncle's forgiveness for the trouble he had given in his boyhood, recalling with mirth the various corrections received. He mentioned also an Augustinian monk who had taught him to read, and another reverend father, a Capuchin, whose irregular conduct had caused much scandal in the neighbourhood. In short, notwithstanding ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARTIN GUERRE • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... before us to reconnoitre the ground, made his appearance above. When he saw me stumbling and twisting about, falling now on my side, and now on my knees, toiling to advance a single step, my companion burst into a fit of laughter. I had then neither time nor will to do as he did, and his ill-timed mirth vexed me. At last I caught hold of the stake, bruised and exhausted, and ready to wish there was no such thing as travelling. Sumichrast told us that we had scarcely three hundred feet more to ascend, and shouldered the basket himself. Now that I was a mere ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... grown to be a man, or that the word of the Lord dwelleth in vanity? Prophesy, and interpret thy vision, if so be that thou art able to interpret it. Come, let us depart, for the king is at hand, and the night shall be given over for a space to the rioters and the mirth-makers, with whom our portion is not. Verily I also have dreamed a ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... Miss Naylor, "the carpet!" Fresh moans of mirth shook the table; for having tasted the wine of laughter, all wanted as much more as they could get. When Scruff and his traces were effaced, Herr Paul took a ladle ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... remembrance of the comic attitude which Rumple had struck. He was a queer-looking boy at the best, and then he always went in for the most extraordinary gestures, so it was not wonderful that people found food for mirth ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant
... those very old national airs which the children of the people were singing in a loud, free voice, but distance softened and mellowed and poetized the voices as they traversed the tranquil silence; strangely enough I had been soothed by the noisy mirth and overflowing joyousness of these beings who, during their fleeting youth, are so much more artless than we, ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... Cantourne was shown into a drawing-room where there were no flowers, made his preparations accordingly. The flowers were set out with that masculine ignorance of such matters which brings a smile—not wholly of mirth—to a woman's face. The little-used drawing-room was brought under the notice of the housekeeper for that woman's touch which makes a drawing-room what it is. It was always ready—this room, though Sir John never sat in it. But for Lady ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... blushing manager apologizing to deserted benches, and the show abruptly terminated. Exactly WHAT had happened never appeared in the public papers, nor in the published apology of the manager. It afforded a few days' mirth for wicked San Francisco, and it was epigrammatically summed up in the remark that "no woman could be found in San Francisco who was at that performance, and no man who was not." Yet it was alleged even by John's worst detractors that he was innocent of any intended ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... slender trunk, and so Effi may be the ivy destined to twine about it." At these words the betrothed couple looked at each other somewhat embarrassed, Effi's face showing at the same time an expression of childlike mirth, but Mrs. von Briest said: "Say what you like, Briest, and formulate your toasts to suit your own taste, but if you will allow me one request, avoid poetic imagery; it is beyond your sphere." These silencing words were received by von Briest with more assent than dissent. "It is possible that ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... might gain assurance of victory by the looking ahead to all conceivable moves against him, and providing a counter-play that would achieve the game. It was borne in upon him that Tamada had resources he could not fathom. The Oriental gave a swift smile, that held no mirth, no friendship, rather, a sardonic appreciation of ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... green, but stripped of every gem;—whilst still some russet warbler may be heard chirping in sorrow and distress, and heavy looking clouds anxious to screen the cheering ray, which now and then bursts forth with sickly smile, that seems like ill-timed mirth amongst the dead. ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley
... Sardonic mirth overcame me. So three separate people seem to be under the impression that they have paid this gambler's debts! Each apparently unaware that there was anyone else in the running! It looks as if "Bobby" had wolfed the lot! Does Alathea know, ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn
... to kindred hearts and home, To pleasure, joy, and mirth, A fitter foot than mine to roam Could scarcely tread the earth; For they are now so few indeed (Not more than three in all), Who e'er will think of me or heed ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... of this suggestion, and consulted with Ramsay, who strongly urged the suggestion being acted upon. The men were summoned, and the affair explained to them, and the consequence was, that there was a scene of mirth and laughter, which ended with every man being fitted with woman's attire. The only one who remained in the dress of a man was a woman, Wilhelmina Krause, but she was to remain in the cave with the other women, and take no part in the ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... Daily Tocsin of the following morning "ventured the assertion" upon its front page that "the scene at the Pike Mansion was one of unalloyed festivity, music, and mirth; a fairy bower of airy figures wafting here and there to the throb of waltz-strains; a veritable Temple of Terpsichore, shining forth with a myriad of lights, which, together with the generous profusion of floral decorations and the ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... which already fell in warm patches on the pavements. Claude was conscious of a gay awakening in the huge resonant markets—indeed, all over the neighbourhood—crowded with piles of food. It was like the joy that comes after cure, the mirth of folks who are at last relieved of a heavy weight which has been pulling them down. He saw La Sarriette displaying a gold chain and singing amidst her plums and strawberries, while she playfully pulled the moustaches of Monsieur Jules, who was arrayed in a velvet jacket. He also caught ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... and brandy, blood-boltered figures, erect corpses, with the sickening signs of violence in every conceivable form, used to come and blast his sight and arrest the glass on its way to his lips, and make his songs and the boisterous attempts at mirth of his withered heart die in a quaver and a shiver of fear and despair. And at this period of our tale these horrors had made room for a phantom more horrible still to such a creature as Crawley. The air would seem to thicken into sulfurous smoke, and ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... life to me, his death the greater payne: His life in Christ so surelie set, doth glad my hearte agayne: His life so good, his death better, do mingle mirth with care, My spirit with ioye, my flesh with grief, so deare a frend to spare. Thus God the good, while they be good, doth take, and leaues vs ill, That we should mend our sinfull life, in life to tary still. Thus, we well left, be better rest, in heauen to take his place, That by like life, ...
— The Schoolmaster • Roger Ascham
... occurrences. But if Boccaccio cannot boast of being the inventor of all, or even any of these tales, he is still the father of this class of modern Italian literature, since he was the first to transplant into the world of letters what had hitherto been only the subject of social mirth. These tales have in their turn been repeated anew in almost every language of Europe, and have afforded reputations to numerous imitators. One of the most beautiful and unexceptionable tales in the Decameron is that of "Griselda," the last in the collection. It is to be regretted ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... "illegal and dishonorable methods" by which the vote was taken away from the women while Washington was a Territory.[62] Mrs. John Moore of Tacoma read a powerful scene from The Spanish Gypsy by George Eliot. After a lively collection speech by Mrs. Upton, Dr. Shaw closed the evening with a mirth-provoking ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... tribes at his fort. The visitors were welcomed with imposing ceremonies; there was the usual interchange of compliments and speeches by the chiefs and captains, presents from the king were distributed and the inevitable banquet followed with its mirth and revelry. It was agreed at this conference to organize a great war party. Couriers were dispatched to summon all the tribes of Acadia and the response was general. The site of what is now the village of Gibson, opposite Fredericton, ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... interest in it, ma'am? You are afraid of being brought in contact with the iron pots, eh? You might crack or go to pieces, who knows, and what would become of me, a wretched widower." Mr. Copperhead himself laughed loudly at this joke, which did not excite any mirth from the others, and then he repeated his question, "How about ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... products, livestock, poultry, needlework, pickles, preserves and art objects; in the afternoons, on the half-mile track out at the fair grounds, trotting, pacing and running events; in the evenings the carnival spirit running high and free, with opportunities for innocent mirth, merriment and entertainment afforded ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... fair creature who had extorted this involuntary tribute, and myself, who knew Dirck's character too well not to understand how very much he must be in earnest thus to lay bare the most cherished secret of his heart. The mirth continued some time, Herman Mordaunt appearing to be particularly pleased, and applauding his kinsman's directness with several 'bravos' very distinctly uttered. As for Anneke, I saw she looked touched, while she looked concerned, and as if she would be glad to have ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... between sacred cheerfulness and solemn thought, or to explain any appearance of contradiction between passages in which (as above in Chap. V.) I have had to oppose sacred pensiveness to unholy mirth, and those in which I have to oppose ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... From Orkney to Tweed, Let the wits of all Scotland come running to read. Not in vain hath he lived, who by innocent mirth Hath lightened the frowns and the furrows of earth: Not in vain hath he lived, who will never let die The humours of good times for ever gone by: Not in vain hath he lived, who hath laboured to give In himself the best proof how ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... seen a piece of my friend's private life at Epsom. Nothing could have been farther removed from misery. A light-hearted gaiety reigned in his face and ruled his every gesture. His companions seemed to bow to him, as to their leading humorist and mirth-maker. I was stimulated by the collapse of my elaborate illusion to make inquiries about him. I found that he had been born almost on the stage, and had taken part in stage-life from his earliest years. He never had any ambition: so ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 15, 1893 • Various
... them the voice of the chieftain, a loud voice, but clear and with mirth mingled with anger in it, and he said: "What do these fools of the Ravagers cumbering the floor of the feast-hall, and shaking weapons when there is no foeman anigh? Are they dreaming-drunk before the wine is poured? Why ...
— The Story of the Glittering Plain - or the Land of Living Men • William Morris
... until it might abate. Some of the party adhered to the bottle, some resorted to a book, and some to cards, to wile away the time. The lady requested to be conducted to a private apartment, wherein to pass with her dear child (remote from the noisy mirth of her companions, so little according with her then feelings) the time, until the diligence might again be ready to start. But half an hour had scarce elapsed from the formation of this arrangement ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 10, No. 283, 17 Nov 1827 • Various
... humour:—"One of the greatest complaints made by the ladies against the first volume of our collection, and, indeed, the only one which has reached my ears, is the want of merry songs. I believe I may give a pretty good guess at what they call mirth in such pieces as These, and shall endeavour to satisfy them." Prose Works, vol. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... crooked. It is curious to observe that the search for slight deformity is so constant as to make use, for its purposes, not of action only, but of perspective foreshortening. With us it is to the youngest child only that there would appear to be mirth in the drawing of a man who, stooping violently forward, would seem to have his head "beneath his shoulders." The European child would not see fun in the living man so presented, but—unused to the same effect "in the flat"—he thinks it prodigiously humorous in a drawing. But so only ...
— The Colour of Life • Alice Meynell
... hour afterwards, the young ladies assembled in the inner drawing-room to drink tea. Helen, however, remained in the outer drawing-room, practising her music, regardless of the sounds of mirth that proceeded from the other room, until Elizabeth ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... on account of such an abandoned and depraved conduct, he left them in a fit of anger and remorse, and became a thoughtless and unhappy wanderer; in this situation falling one evening into a company whose mirth and gaiety greatly delighted him, and whose genteel appearance led him to suppose they were gentlemen, though in reality they were no other than highwaymen, he was prevailed on in an unguarded moment, when heated with liquor, to make ...
— Vice in its Proper Shape • Anonymous
... slices of bread and butter were piled one upon the other, like deals in a timber-yard. The company were seated on a form, which, with a view both to security and comfort, was placed against a neighbouring wall. Two young men, whose uproarious mirth and disordered dress bespoke the conviviality of the preceding evening, were treating three 'ladies' and an Irish labourer. A little sweep was standing at a short distance, casting a longing eye at the tempting ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... Spring in Killingworth, In fabulous days, some hundred years ago; And thrifty farmers, as they tilled the earth, Heard with alarm the cawing of the crow, That mingled with the universal mirth, Cassandra-like, prognosticating woe; They shook their heads, and doomed with dreadful words To swift destruction the ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... all night. That place is full of recruits, and a lot of them are unwilling ones, I can tell you. But they are under lock and key. They can't escape. All the air they get even is from that crack in the door. A fly couldn't get out there." He was a fat sentry, and he laughed. Zaidos joined his mirth. ...
— Shelled by an Unseen Foe • James Fiske
... I'm the only one!" came the quick retort, and the young chap in the shade of the adobe shook with silent mirth. ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... and his trousers failed to conceal his huge feet. His long, sinewy neck emerged from a white collar, drawn over a black tie. Altogether, his appearance bordered upon the grotesque, and would have provoked mirth in any other than an Illinois audience, which knew and respected the man too well to mark his costume. Douglas, on the contrary, presented a well-groomed figure. He wore a well-fitting suit of broadcloth; his linen was immaculate; and altogether he had the appearance ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... grave seniors of the Court, there is full proof that Prince Hal ever kept free from the gross vices which a later age has fancied inseparably connected with his frolics; and though always in disgrace, the vexation of the Court, and a by-word for mirth, he was true to the grand ideal he was waiting to accomplish, and never dimmed the purity and loftiness of his aim. That little band of princely youths, who sported, studied, laughed, sang, and schemed in the glades ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the line of battle, seen from a distance, is a red horizon, ominous and threatening, fringing a land of broken homes, ruined villages, and blazing funeral pyres. There the mirth of yesteryear lives only in a soldier's dreams, and the harvest of last autumn rots with withering men on the field ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... said the latter. "For, if I say 'ay,' that shall be to own myself to be good; and if 'no,' then were it to speak evil of my sister. She is brighter and cheerier than I, and loveth laughter and mirth. Most folks judge her to be the fairer and sweeter ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt
... the theatre will disperse itself, and the Christmas pantomime will be a pleasant memory the whole year through. Thousands on thousands of people are having their midriffs tickled at this moment; in fancy I see their lighted faces, in memory I hear their mirth. ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... as he looked up at me innocently, in surprise at my mirth, and I went and sat at the other end of the bin; "had one better kill poor people out of their misery than preserve them to look like that?" and I pointed down at the ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... Spaniard, she thought, and pleased herself with this picturesque figure till a traitorous smile about the young man's mouth betrayed that he was not unconscious of her regard. She colored as she met the glance of mingled mirth and admiration that he gave her, and hastily began to pull off the weedy decorations which she had forgotten. But she paused presently, for she heard a surprised ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... melancholy. One day he was walking with a lady, who was also subject to depression of spirits, and he said to her: "Tell me why I am like a Jew?" She could not answer and he replied: "Because I am sad-you-see" Tears and mirth dwelt very closely together in his keen, fervid, sensitive spirit. It is remarkable that one who devoted himself so assiduously to his exacting profession should have been able to master such an immense amount of miscellaneous reading, and to have ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... at once the ribald clown. And check with an indignant frown The scurrilous backbiter; But speed good-humour as it runs, Be even tolerant of puns, And every mirth-exciter. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 335 - Vol. 12, No. 335, October 11, 1828 • Various
... her fault should chance t' abide the light 50 Their loves might cover or extenuate it, And high in her worst fate make pity sit. She married them; and in the banquet came, Borne by the virgins. Hero striv'd to frame Her thoughts to mirth: ay me! but hard it is To imitate a false and forced bliss; Ill may a sad mind forge a merry face, Nor hath constrained laughter any grace. Then laid she wine on cares to make them sink: Who fears the threats of Fortune, let him drink.[94] 60 To these quick nuptials enter'd suddenly ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... it be enacted further still That all our people strict observe our will; Five days and a half shall men, and women, too, Attend their bus'ness and their mirth pursue, But after that no man without a fine Shall walk the streets or at a tavern dine. One day and half 'tis requisite to rest From toilsome labor and a tempting feast. Henceforth let none on peril of their lives Attempt a journey or embrace their wives; No barber, ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... you indulge in this unseemly mirth in the presence of your commanding officer? Have you no sense of ...
— Press Cuttings • George Bernard Shaw
... his successors did precisely the thing that he had reprobated, that is, degrade "the humour" into an oddity of speech, an eccentricity of manner, of dress, or cut of beard. There was an anonymous play called "Every Woman in Her Humour." Chapman wrote "A Humourous Day's Mirth," Day, "Humour Out of Breath," Fletcher later, "The Humourous Lieutenant," and Jonson, besides "Every Man Out of His Humour," returned to the title in closing the cycle of his comedies in "The Magnetic Lady ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... so merry, all these little Nipponese dolls! Rather a forced mirth, it is true, studied, and at times with a false ring; nevertheless ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... but she, Your other sister and my other soul, She shall again be mine; And I shall drink her from a silver bowl, A chilly thin green wine, Not bitter to the taste, Not sweet, Not of your press, oh, restless, clamorous nine,— To foam beneath the frantic hoofs of mirth— But savoring faintly of the acid earth, And trod by pensive feet From perfect clusters ripened without haste Out of the urgent heat In some clear glimmering vaulted ...
— Second April • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... drew on toward noon, I lost my patience. To say the truth, I had promised myself to break my fast in the pavilion, and hunger began to prick me sharply. It was a pity to let the opportunity go by without some cause for mirth; but the grosser appetite prevailed, and I relinquished my jest with regret, and ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... Algiers, and afterwards ransomed. Having "nothing better to do" (says our author) "I confess I furnished him with somewhat more wine than was exactly consistent with propriety"; with so liberal a quantity, indeed, that the coastguard became quite "obstreperous in his mirth"; whereupon Ramage hops on his mule and leaves him to his fate. Here, then, we have a young fellow deliberately leading an old man astray. And why? Because he has "nothing better to do." [13] It is not remarkably edifying. True, he afterwards makes a kind of apology for "causing ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... in brightness rise— When wit and pleasure round thee play, When mirth sits smiling in thine eyes, Who but admires their sprightly ray? But when thro' pity's flood they gleam, Who but must love their ...
— Oriental Literature - The Literature of Arabia • Anonymous
... suits him better than his taylor: active in the world without disquiet, and careful without misery; yet neither ingulphed in his pleasures, nor a seeker of business, but has his hour for both. A man that seldom laughs violently, but his mirth is a cheerful look: of a composed and settled countenance, not set, nor much alterable with sadness or joy. He affects nothing so wholly, that he must be a miserable man when he loses it; but fore-thinks what will come hereafter, and spares fortune his thanks and ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... judge put down his pen, threw himself back in his chair, and laughed until he shook like a piece of blancmange. As soon as he could recover himself, he asked, in tones tremulous with suppressed mirth, "Are you satisfied, Mr. M.?" Mr. M. was completely nonplussed; could make no defence; tried to "rub it off" by delivering himself of a homily upon the degradation it was to the Bar of England that some of its members should be capable of ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... all was ready. The workmen were done; And awaiting the jollity, mirth, and frivolity, The games and the dancing, the feasting and fun, The old hall was empty,—save only for one,— The Lady Lorraine, who surveyed it with pride, And said, "It is worthy of Lord Cecil's bride!" Then a bright smile illumined her happy young face, Her roguish eyes twinkled, ...
— The Jingle Book • Carolyn Wells
... very late hour, for he was taken by surprise at the novelty and artistic perfection of the performance. His usual calm had quite broken down under it; he had laughed as if he might crumble to pieces, his face wearing an expression of absolute pain; indeed, the scene was so strange that it was mirth-provoking to those who were near. But when we returned home he questioned and pondered much upon Dickens himself. Finally he said: "I am afraid he has too much talent for his genius; it is a fearful locomotive to which he is bound, and he can never be freed from it nor set at rest. You see him ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... sort of thing!' she cried with an explosion of mirth which confirmed Lyon's declaration. ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... discussed. Nothing can be in worse taste than to speak in an unknown tongue, to laugh and joke in a language which leaves the rest of the company in ignorance whether they themselves may not be the subjects of your remarks or mirth. ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... society, and his nearest kin. But with the demand and response of real cash the jovial frivolity of the scene departed. A lurid colour seemed to fill the tent, and change the aspect of all therein. The mirth-wrinkles left the listeners' faces, and they waited with ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... inimitable description of the memorable banquet given at the Devil Tavern, near Temple Bar, in the spring of 1751, to celebrate the publication of Mrs. Charlotte Lennox's first novel. What delightful revelry! what innocent mirth! prolonged though it was till long after dawn. Poor Mrs. Lennox died in distress in 1804, at the age of eighty-three. Could Johnson but have lived he would have lent her his helping hand. He was no fair-weather friend, but shares ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... late, (but wherefore I know not), lost all my mirth, foregone all custom of exercises; and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition, that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy the air, look ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... world, I think, conspires to vex me, yet I will not torment my self: some sprightful mirth must banish the rage and melancholy which hath almost choak'd me; t' a knowing man 'tis Physick, and 'tis thought on; one merry hour I'll have in spight of Fortune, to chear my heart, and this is that appointed; this night I'll ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher - Vol. 2 of 10: Introduction to The Elder Brother • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... rather obscure in the MSS., and we have adopted the reading suggested by M. Frank. M. Lacroix, however, was of opinion that the sentence should run, "Yes, for mirth's sake."—M. ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. IV. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... himself to-day; or was it that he was more like himself? He seemed in a boyish mood; he made fun out of nothing, and laughed with such young fresh laughter, that even August, the grave blue-spectacled driver, was moved to mirth. As for Bernardine, she had to look at Robert Allitsen several times to be sure that he was the same Robert Allitsen she had known two hours ago in Petershof. But she made no remark, and showed no surprise, but met his ...
— Ships That Pass In The Night • Beatrice Harraden
... I was once in a mixed assembly that was full of noise and mirth, when on a sudden an old woman unluckily observed there were thirteen of us in company. This remark struck a panic terror into several who were present, insomuch that one or two of the ladies were going to leave the room; but a friend of mine taking notice that one of our female companions ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... great surprise his visitor sat down suddenly and began to laugh. Tears of honest mirth suffused his eyes and dimmed his glasses. Mr. Smith, regarding him with an air of kindly interest, began to laugh to keep ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... had been fairly choking with stifled mirth in a dark corner of the room. He now came forward, trying hard to assume an expression ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... lies Tom Thumb, King Arthur's knight, Who died by a spider's cruel bite. He was well known in Arthur's court, Where he afforded gallant sport; He rode at tilt and tournament, And on a mouse a-hunting went. Alive he fill'd the court with mirth, His death to sorrow soon gave birth. Wipe, wipe your eyes, and shake your head, And cry, 'Alas! Tom Thumb ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... when they saw what their fool did to that other fool, they roared with laughter so that some of them rolled down upon the ground and lay grovelling there for pure mirth. But others of them called out to Sir Tristram, "Let be, or thou wilt drown that man"; and therewith Sir Tristram let Sir Dagonet go, and Sir Dagonet ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle
... since the fateful night His chosen comrade passed from human sight, Save only once, forgetting he was by And half forgetting too her care and woes, Unto her lips some idle jest arose. "Winona," said the Raven, in a tone Of stern reproof that on the instant froze All thought of mirth, and when she met his eye, As by a serpent's charm it fixed her own; The hate and anger of a soul intense Were all compressed in that remorseless glance, The coldly cruel meaning of whose sense Smote down the ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... Victorian Age. It has two chief faults,—diffuseness, which continually leads De Quincey away from his object, and triviality, which often makes him halt in the midst of a marvelous paragraph to make some light jest or witticism that has some humor but no mirth in it. Notwithstanding these faults, De Quincey's prose is still among the few supreme examples of style in our language. Though he was profoundly influenced by the seventeenth- century writers, he attempted definitely to create ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... then to be seen but parties of pleasure, hunting, fishing, dancing, mirth, and feasting. Nobody went to bed, but all passed the night in rallying and joking with each other. In short, everything succeeded so well that the youngest daughter began to think the master of the house ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... be only an occasional element; habitually indulged and artificially introduced, it becomes as nauseous as sweetmeats mixed with bread and cheese. To the more serious person, much of the popular literature of the day suggests Solomon's words: 'I said of laughter, it is mad; and of mirth what doeth it?' So the talk of progress seems to him to express the ideal of a moral 'lubberland.' Six thousand years of trial and suffering, according to these prophets, are to result in a 'perpetual succession of comfortable shopkeepers.' The supposition is 'so revolting to ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... approached a veritable carnival spirit seemed to deepen around us. The face of this little man with the elaborate black mustache was violent with suppressed good will and mirth. He beamed, bowed, shook hands and sat down. We drank one another's health and, as politely as we could, pressed him to tell us the cause for his celebration and good spirits. He ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... with two characteristic qualities which were not imitation,—his "Empfindsamkeit" and "Laune"—and that by the former his works breathe a tender, delicate beneficence, acharacter of noble humanity, while by the latter a spirit of fairest mirth is spread over his pages, so that one may never open them without a pleasant smile. "The investigation of sources," he says, "serves as explanation and does not mean depreciation of an otherwise ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... as the laughter And mirth grew higher, "Give me rest and shelter Beside your fire, And I will give ...
— Legends and Lyrics: Second Series • Adelaide Anne Procter
... of our selues. Therefore our sometimes Sister, now our Queen, Th'Imperiall Ioyntresse of this warlike State, [Sidenote: to this] Haue we, as 'twere, with a defeated ioy, With one Auspicious, and one Dropping eye, [Sidenote: an auspitious and a] With mirth in Funerall, and with Dirge in Marriage, In equall Scale weighing Delight and Dole[1] Taken to Wife; nor haue we heerein barr'd[2] Your better Wisedomes, which haue freely gone With this affaire along, for all our Thankes. ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... for the serious side of this business; and now for the ludicrous side. Even in our mirth, however, there is sadness; for it is no light thing that he who represents the British nation in India should be a jest to the people of India. We have sometimes sent them governors whom they loved, and sometimes governors whom they feared; but they never before had a governor ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... aureole Day left the earth, Faded, a twilight soul, Memory, had birth: Young were her sister souls, Sorrow and Mirth. ...
— Songs, Sonnets & Miscellaneous Poems • Thomas Runciman
... there being a little, proud, ugly, talking lady there, that was much crying up the Queene-Mother's Court at Somerset House above our own Queene's; there being before her no allowance of laughing and the mirth that is at the other's; and indeed it is observed that the greatest Court now-a-days is there. Thence to White Hall, where I carried my wife to see the Queene in her presence-chamber; and the maydes of honour and the young Duke of Monmouth playing at cards. Some of them, and ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... Donatello break into a dance and all the people who are wandering in the gardens join with them? The author meant this to be a burst of wild maenad gaiety. As such I do not recall a more dismal failure. It is cold at the heart of it. It has no mirth, but is like a dance without music: like a dance of deaf mutes that I witnessed once, pretending to keep time to the inaudible scrapings of a ...
— Four Americans - Roosevelt, Hawthorne, Emerson, Whitman • Henry A. Beers
... the middle of the square, groups of children were arranged—some standing up to be inspected, others sitting down. These ranged from five years and upwards, but there was not one that betrayed the slightest tendency to mirth, and Disco came to the conclusion that negro children do not play, but afterwards discovered his mistake, finding that their exuberant jollity "at home" was not less than that of the children of other lands. These little slaves had long ago been terrified, ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... Courage, Kindness, Mirth, There is no measure upon earth. Nay, they wither, root and stem, If an end ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... different, so are their dispositions—these rather contrasting. Crozier is of a serious, sedate turn and, though anything but morose, rarely given to mirth; while, from the countenance of Cadwallader the laugh is scarce ever absent, and the dimple on his cheek—to employ a printer's phrase—appears stereotyped. With the young Welshman a joke might be carried ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... which you pretty well know—the pang of disappointment, the sting of pride, with some wandering stabs of remorse, which never fail to settle on my vitals like vultures, when attention is not called away by the calls of society, or the vagaries of the muse. Even in the hour of social mirth, my gaiety is the madness of an intoxicated criminal under the hands of the executioner. All these reasons urge me to go abroad, and to all these reasons I have only one answer—the feelings of a father. This, in the ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... of our electric exhibitions produce mirth. For instance, the effect of electricity on the monkeys in Montalluyah—who are very sagacious, having faces white like a human being, and talking like parrots—is ludicrous in the extreme. When engaged in chewing and eating their favourite nuts, they find themselves, in spite of their cunning, ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... shore, some of the natives began to play on four flutes, in four several tones, making good music; on which the general caused the trumpets to be sounded, and the natives danced with our people. Thus the day passed in mirth and feasting, and in purchasing their oxen and sheep. On Sunday a still greater number of the natives came down to the shore, having several women among them, and bringing a number of oxen for sale. After the sale of one of the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... the original, was charged upon some innocent mate, and punishment inflicted which she merited. They enjoyed her antics so fully that any of them would suffer wrongfully to keep open the avenues of mirth. She would venture far be- yond propriety, thus ...
— Our Nig • Harriet E. Wilson
... glimmering, about to leave us to the light of the moon and stars. There it is trimmed again—and the sudden increase of lustre cheers the heart within us like a festal strain. And To-Morrow—To-Morrow is Merry Christmas; and when its night descends there will be mirth and music, and the light sound of the merry-twinkling feet within these now so melancholy walls—and sleep, now reigning over all the house save this one room, will be banished far over the sea—and ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... and disgusting imprecations. There are other inconveniences which, though keenly felt during the day's journey, are speedily forgotten when stretched out in the encampment before a large fire, you enjoy the social mirth of your companions who usually pass the evening in recounting their former feats in travelling. At this time the Canadians are always cheerful and merry and the only bar to their comfort arises from the frequent interruption occasioned by ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... consists in easy scapes and sallies of levity, which make sport, but raise no envy. It must be observed, that he is stained with no enormous or sanguinary crimes, so that his licentiousness is not so offensive but that it may be borne for his mirth. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... Yule, the old name for Christmas, which festival took its place when the Scandinavians became Christians. Their festival was in honor of the sun, and was held with sacrifices, feasting, and great mirth. The second festival was in spring, in honor of the earth, to supplicate fruitful crops. The third was also in the spring, in honor of Odin. The sacrifices were of fruits, afterward animals, and ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... cold and proud, Because her lip and brow Amid the mirthful crowd No kindred mirth avowed; Alas! nor look nor language e'er reveal How much the sad can ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... the All. Regarding (thee) a friend whatever hath been said by me carelessly, such as—"O Krishna, O Yadava, O friend,"—not knowing this thy greatness from want of judgement or from love either, whatever disrespect hath been shown thee for purpose of mirth, on occasions of play, lying, sitting, (or) at meals, while alone or in the presence of others, O undeteriorating one, I beg thy pardon for it, that art immeasurable. Thou art the father of this universe of mobiles and immobiles. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... festival days of their sacredness; by God, they are deprived of their joy fulness. The prophet, in order to intimate that he announces the cessation of the festival days as days of gladness, premises "all her mirth," to which all that follows stands in the relation of species to genus. [Hebrew: mwvw] does not here denote "joyful time:" it might, indeed, according to its formation, have this signification: but it ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... situation. This was the last we saw of the natives in Adam Bay, and the meeting is likely to be long remembered by some and not without pleasant recollections, for although at the time it was justly looked upon as a serious affair, it afterwards proved a great source of mirth. No one could recall to mind, without laughing, the ludicrous figure necessarily cut by our shipmates, when to amuse the natives they figured on the light fantastic toe; they literally danced for ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... easy to learn, than the Latin."—Bucke's Classical Gram., p. 25. "I have not been able to make out a solitary instance of such being the fact."—Liberator, x, 40. "An angel's forming the appearance of a hand, and writing the king's condemnation on the wall, checked their mirth, and filled them with terror."—Wood's Dict., w. Belshazzar. "The prisoners' having attempted to escape, aroused the keepers."—O. B. Peirce's Gram., p. 357. "I doubt not, in the least, of this having been ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... gave a queer screech, and began to imitate John's own laughter so exactly that the Prince shook with mirth. At this the raven stood upon one leg gravely, and began to sidle along the footboard of the bed. Presently he spied some fruit carved on the wooden uprights, and making a dart began to peck at the pears and peaches. Then, discovering his mistake, once more he began to chuckle, this time so ...
— John of the Woods • Abbie Farwell Brown
... part which is left of Aristophanes. I will not say, with Frischlinus, that Plutarch seems in this to contradict himself, and, in reality, commends the poet when he accuses him of having adapted his language to the stage; by the stage, in this place, he meant the theatre of farces, on which low mirth and buffoonery was exhibited. This plea of Frischlinus is a mere cavil; and though the poet had obtained his end, which was to divert a corrupted populace, he would not have been less a bad man, nor less a despicable poet, notwithstanding the excuse of his ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... of the relative and respective charms of Mirth and Melancholy, Miss Faith?—I mean their charms to inward ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... mere jest. It brought out the extraordinary capacities of the book which have exercised so many minds. For "The Pickwick Examination," he says, "was not altogether a burlesque of a college examination; it was a very real and searching examination in a book which, brimful as it is of merriment, mirth, and wit, is just as intensely human as a book can be. The characters are not puppets in a farce, stuck up only to be knocked down: they are men and women. Page after page, they show their true characters and reveal themselves; they are consistent; even ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... his comely air, his politeness, and a certain peculiar happiness in the turn of his conversation, had spent the evening till eleven o'clock with the monarch, in pleasant familiarity; and had given a loose, with the utmost mirth, to the sallies of his imagination. The monarch felt some remorse, and being touched with a kind of compassion, bid him, two or three times, not to go home, but lie in the Louvre. The count said, he must go ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... sin remains On this saddened earth, Humbly walk my ways! For my garments are as chains; And I fear to praise My frame with careless mirth. ...
— Rose and Roof-Tree - Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... against dark forebodings and pessimism. The grotesque and the ludicrous find in him a joyous patron. Where others count and bewail their woes, he sees only sunshine. Gloom and sorrow melt away at his approach, while his features are ever radiant with mirth and joy. His head is up and erect with every sense attuned to the bright, and dead to the doleful. He thanks God that the lot apportioned him is fashioned by infallible wisdom, while he munches with contentment the humble crust that honest toil has brought him. Malevolence towards his fellow men ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... they {114} laughed came the tears. With a rear sweep, the rafts headed about and escorted the newcomers to the fortress, where they were locked for the night. After all, a welcome to exile was a sardonic sort of mirth. ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... medicine," says a wise writer; "everybody ought to bathe in it. Grim care, moroseness, anxiety—all the rust of life, ought to be scoured off by the oil of mirth." It is better than emery. Every man ought to rub himself with it. A man without mirth is like a wagon without springs, in which one is caused disagreeably to jolt by every pebble over which it runs. A man with mirth is like a chariot with springs, in which ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... next time you find yourself using ridicule or sarcasm to provoke mirth remember you are toying with a habit-forming practice that is likely to get the best of you unless you stop ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... negroes laughed heartily, manifesting so little care to suppress their mirth, that Rose trembled lest their noise should awaken Spike. Accustomed sounds, however, seldom produce this effect on the ears of the sleeper, and the heavy breathing from the state-room, succeeded the merriment of the blacks, as soon as the latter ceased. Jack now ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... "Simple!" Mrs. Oldham's mirth was high and satiric. "Isn't that like a man? Simple is the last word to be applied to Marcia's frocks, Mr. Hayden. It's a good thing, as I often tell her, that her father left us ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... that us away led in captivitee, Requir'd of us a song, & thus askt mirth: us waste who laid, sing us among a Sion's song, unto us then ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... beaming state of moderate company that had taken no more than was wholesome for them, and had served to develop their best qualities. Sprinkling dewy drops about them on the ground, they seemed profuse of innocent and sparkling mirth, that did good where it lighted, softening neglected corners which the steady rain could seldom reach, and ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens
... and shook his fat sides with suppressed mirth; and it was plain the principal had a very doubtful ally in the person of the deputy sheriff. And the ill-mated pair walked towards the landing, where we saw them embark, and leave ...
— Breaking Away - or The Fortunes of a Student • Oliver Optic
... of the competition between idiots and the court of noses make us smile; but the normal competitions between our children are not matters for mirth. The healthy children who, when side by side with the deaf, the sickly, and the deficient are only conscious of their superiority; the fortunate children who have the help of educated mothers and are brought into contact with poor, unhappy, neglected ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... and sputtering; indeed, he was ultimately forced to sit upon the ground, so exhausting was the mirth to which he now gave way. Penrod's composure was somewhat affected and ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... he had reprobated, that is, degrade "the humour: into an oddity of speech, an eccentricity of manner, of dress, or cut of beard." There was an anonymous play called "Every Woman in Her Humour." Chapman wrote "A Humourous Day's Mirth," Day, "Humour Out of Breath," Fletcher later, "The Humourous Lieutenant," and Jonson, besides "Every Man Out of His Humour," returned to the title in closing the cycle of his comedies in "The Magnetic Lady or ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... fresh spring-clouds across all earth their glistening pearls profuse now sow; The flowers, too, all appearing, forth the radiance of their beauty show; Of mirth and joy 'tis now the time, the hour, to wander to and fro; The palm-tree o'er the fair ones' pic-nic gay its grateful ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... grace, nor by any solemn providence, but in a manner illustrating the force of scripture, and the sovereignty of that gracious Spirit by whom it was originally inspired, and is still savingly applied. Being present at a party where the evening was spent in festivity and worldly mirth, she was invited to join in the dance. This she had often done, for she was of a lively disposition, and her parents were gratified by her mixing in the gaieties of life; but in the present instance she felt herself unable to maintain the hilarity of her ...
— The Baptist Magazine, Vol. 27, January, 1835 • Various
... daughter, Born between the storm and sun; Coy as nymph ere Pan hath caught her,— Thou then, April, Iris' daughter. Now are light, and rustling water; Now are mirth, and nests begun. ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... Pontgrave and Champlain, with the rest of the colony, had set sail for France a few days previously, in two small vessels which they had built themselves. But there was no time to spend in vain regrets. Poutrincourt opened a hogshead of wine, and the fort was soon the scene of mirth and festivity. Poutrincourt set energetically to improve the condition of things, by making additions to the buildings, and clearing the surrounding land, which is exceedingly rich. The fort stood on the north bank of the river—on what ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... mind was engaged with Mrs. Hardy and Conward, and, unintentionally, he allowed his eyes to embrace them both in his remark. One more astute than Mrs. Hardy might have had a glimmer of the absurdity which had provoked Dave's untimely mirth, but she was a woman who took herself with much seriousness. If Conward guessed anything he concealed his intuition behind ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... young ladies, with flying draperies and countenances of mingled mirth and dismay, might have been seen precipitating themselves into a respectable mansion with unbecoming haste; but the squirrels were the only witnesses of this "vision of sudden flight," and, being used to ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... and wonder. There, where the unseen could move freely and the invisible manifest itself on the perpetual rocks, the towering trees, the still green fields, and the vast acres of the sea, one could hear the dreaming prophet proclaim the burden of the Lord; and the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, the sound of the mill-stones and the light of the candle mattered not. But the kingdom of all the worlds—the worlds and habitations not made with hands—rose up as the real theatre of man's ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... poor streets, on the degraded, hopeless faces, the dull eyes, the languid bearing of those who appeared to have lost interest in, and respect for, themselves. She believed it wholly sad. Standing on the outside, she knew nothing of the homely joys, the gleams of mirth, the draughts of happiness possible to the very poor. She thought their laughter, when it fell sometimes upon her ears, more dreadful than their tears. So she slipped silently about among them, quite unnoticed, looking on with large sad eyes, and almost ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... brown jug which was among our stores, removed the corn-cob which served as a cork, and having wetted his great heart with a draught which I have no doubt measured a full pint, fell, entirely regardless of the day, to performing his most spirited hoe-down, while the most of us looked on with a mirth that knew ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... crest and crowning of all good, Life's final star, is Brotherhood; For it will bring again to Earth Her long-lost Poesy and Mirth; Will send new light on every face, A kingly power upon the race. And till it comes we men are slaves, And travel downward to the ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... his den—(Ah, my bachelor chum!) I have sat with him there in the gloom, When the laugh of his lips died away to become But a phantom of mirth in the room! And to look on him there you would love him, for all His ridiculous ways, and be dumb As the little girl-face that smiles down from the wall On the tears of my ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... rage mean, and therefore I cannot conceive how they should countenance a practice which entirely ignores and defies honor, and which not a single redeeming feature. It has neither wisdom nor wit, no spirit, no genius, no impulsiveness, scarcely boyish mirth. A narrow range of stale practical jokes, lighted up by no gleam of originality, seems to be transmitted from year to year with as much fidelity as the Hebrew Bible, and not half the latitude allowed to clergymen of the English Established Church. But besides its platitude, ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... sorrowful I am, without mirth, without light, but only sadness and grief and long dying; your harp used to be sweet to me, it wakened my heart to gladness. Now my courage is fallen down, I not to hear you but to be always remembering your ways. Och! my grief is going ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... august De Castro that during the remainder of the evening's entertainment she should occupy herself more with her neighbors than with the opera. She aroused M. Renard to a secret ecstasy of mirth by the sharp steadiness of her observation of the inmates of the box opposite to them. She talked about them, too, in a tone not too well modulated, criticising the beautifully dressed little woman, her hair, her eyes, her Greek nose and mouth, and, more than all, her indifferent expression ...
— "Le Monsieur De La Petite Dame" • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... angrily; but the next moment the remark presented such a ludicrous side that he began to laugh, and then, possibly from exhaustion and the result of the exciting passages he had gone through, his mirth grew at once almost hysterical, so that he ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... the multitude took the handle of raising a tumult: and if Archelaus could thus requite his dead father, who had bestowed such benefits upon him, and bequeathed such great things to him, by pretending to shed tears for him in the day time, like an actor on the stage, but every night making mirth for having gotten the government, he would appear to be the same Archelaus with regard to Caesar, if he granted him the kingdom, which he hath been to his father; since he had then dancing and singing, as though an enemy ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... patches on the pavements. Claude was conscious of a gay awakening in the huge resonant markets—indeed, all over the neighbourhood—crowded with piles of food. It was like the joy that comes after cure, the mirth of folks who are at last relieved of a heavy weight which has been pulling them down. He saw La Sarriette displaying a gold chain and singing amidst her plums and strawberries, while she playfully pulled ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... several cases in which the partial similarity in spelling and identity in sound of the Hebrew words for 'not' and 'to it,' have led to a mistaken reading. The joy is described in words which dance and sing, like the gladness of which they tell. The mirth of the harvest-field, when labour is crowned with success, and the sterner joy of the victors as they part the booty, with which mingles the consciousness of foes overcome and dangers averted, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... the eye of a bridle-cull, and gives as much real happiness to his fancy, as that of as many thousands to the statesman; and doth not the former lay out his acquisitions in whores and fiddles with much greater joy and mirth than the latter in palaces and pictures? What are the flattery, the false compliments of his gang to the statesman, when he himself must condemn his own blunders, and is obliged against his will to give fortune the whole honour of success? What is the pride ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... of mind I was joined by Flora. She laid her hand on my arm, and we walked up and down together. She was serious, almost sad, and she viewed the English hills with a pensiveness which became her better than mirth. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... goat-legged buyers throng. I see not plain:- My meaning is, it must not be again. Great God! the maddest gambler throws his heart. If any state be enviable on earth, 'Tis yon born idiot's, who, as days go by, Still rubs his hands before him, like a fly, In a queer sort of meditative mirth. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... bleak-fac'd Hallowmass returns, They get the jovial, rantin kirns, When rural life, of ev'ry station, Unite in common recreation; Love blinks, Wit slaps, an' social Mirth Forgets there's ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... their tails coming behind them instead of before them tickled the risibilities of the sympathizing friends, and for a few moments the woods echoed to their responsive mirth. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 34, November 19, 1870 • Various
... while he was in the house. She brought Jenny's high chair to the table in order that the adorable infant might breakfast with her father; she kept Harry up an hour later at night so that he might add the gaiety of his innocent mirth to their otherwise long and silent evenings. Though she would have given anything to drop into bed as soon as the babies were undressed, she forced herself to sit up without yawning until Oliver turned out the lights, bolted the door, and remarked irritably that she ought to have ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... of the yearly Christmas play at court has been settled; the Master of the Revels has chosen from the rich stores of his manuscripts "The Midsummer Night's Dream", graciously adding that "for wit and mirth it is like to please her Majesty exceedingly." A high honor, indeed, for its author. For, not then, as now, were plays written primarily for the recreation and approval of the audience of the theatre. ...
— Shakespeare's Christmas Gift to Queen Bess • Anna Benneson McMahan
... which deals mostly with the Treaty Money, I guess, and there's that other which should be mine. You see, he left them in my care. And so there's a big account to be squared between him and me. Best let me handle the whole rotten thing." Then with a sound that was a laugh without the least mirth: "It's a doctor's job to hand out unpleasant dope to a patient. It's a policeman's job to act unpleasant. Guess the act isn't needed, but the dope is. Yes, it's mine, Belton. ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... warns the wearer of old breeches to sit down with deliberation and grace, rather than with rash haste, and to make no uselessly quick movements whereby an old sewing may rip open, or the silk or cloth itself may split and gape in an unseemly manner, furnishing a cause for mirth in better-clad men. ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... Rev. Pantheist calls one of Spiritualism's 'splendid arguments,' and splendidly absurd it certainly is; quite equal, considered as a provocative of mirth, to Robert Owen's sublimest effusions about that very mysterious and thoroughly incomprehensible power which 'directs the atom and controuls the aggregate of nature.' But the argument though 'splendid,' is false. Who is ignorant that resistance is not a power at all, though we ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... objects shown to them, they liked pieces of iron and looking-glasses best, amusing themselves with making grimaces in the latter of such absurdity as to keep the crew in fits of laughter. Their general appearance, too, was very provocative of mirth. Their jet black complexions, blue feathers, and faces streaked with parallel red and white lines, like tick, made up a whole of the greatest absurdity, and many were the hearty laughs the English enjoyed at their expense. Presently disgusted at receiving nothing more than the ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... spent by Brahms in directing orchestra and chorus at Detmold and elsewhere, and in Switzerland, which has always had great attraction for him. In 1859 he played in Leipsic his first great pianoforte concerto; most of the criticisms thereon were, however, such as now excite mirth. Lately he has played in Leipsic again, conducted several of his works, and was greeted with the reverence and enthusiasm due the greatest living representative of the art of music. In 1862 Brahms located in Vienna, where he has almost ever ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... back of his mind was an impulse of mirth—there was a touch of humorous blasphemy in the conception of the Almighty as managing director of "Fish Palaces, Limited"—but the nominal earthly managing director saw not the slightest humour in ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... world; I've cried my fill Many and many a time by my own fire: Now why, I'll ask you, should it comfort me And ease my heart when, pitiful and sweet, One sings of other souls and how they mourned? A body would have thought that did not know Songs must be merry, full of feast and mirth. Or else would all folk flee ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... and he took out his handkerchief to wipe his eyes. Just as he was returning it to his pocket, the lady suddenly pointed a finger at him. She was in the center of the stage, fully fifteen feet away from the subject, but the moment the gesture was made, his countenance fell, his mirth stopped, while that of his companions redoubled, and the change was so obvious that the audience shared in the laughter—but the subject neither saw nor heard. His eyes assumed the same expression that had been noticed in his companion's. He, too, arose in the same attitude, as if his ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... their mistress was not in the humor for laughter and mirth, and would rather talk quietly with her chief friend and adviser, the attendants gradually left them, and gathered in a ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty
... three characters who excited most mirth or fear amongst the spell-bound spectators were, first and foremost, the kitchen cat; second, the timorous mongrel dog; and third, the lion with his mighty mane and terrible roar. The mongrel dog gave faint yelps and howls of anguish whenever he was approached ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... prominent nose, with its primitive shape modestly concealed beneath a luxuriant growth of pimples, half red, half violet, gave a funny expression to a perfectly beardless face; while a large mouth, with thick lips turning their insides outwards, added to the air of mirth and jollity which beamed from his large gray eyes, set ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... 'n' I'll tell you no lies,' is an awful good motto," chuckled Jabe, with a new explosion of mirth that stretched his mouth to an alarming extent. "Oh, there, I can't hold in 'nother minute. I shall bust if I don' tell somebody! Set down on that nail kag, Samanthy, 'n' I'll let you hev a leetle slice ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... herd] It is not without pity and indignation that the reader of this great poet meets so often with this low jest, which is too much a favourite to be left out of either mirth or fury. ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... have th' expressions of her thoughts be such, She might not seem reserved, nor talk too much: That shows a want of judgment and of sense; More than enough is but impertinence. Her conduct regular, her mirth refined; Civil to strangers, to her neighbours kind; Averse to vanity, revenge, and pride; In all the methods of deceit untried; So faithful to her friend, and good to all, No censure might upon her actions fall: Then would e'en ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... sevenfold notes are there, And triple measure,(57) wrought with care With melody and tone and time, And flavours(58) that enhance the rime; Heroic might has ample place, And loathing of the false and base, With anger, mirth, and terror, blent With tenderness, surprise, content. When, half the hermit's grace to gain, And half because they loved the strain, The youth within their hearts had stored The poem that his lips outpoured, Valmiki kissed them on the head, As at his feet they bowed, and said; "Recite ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... field in tragedy rather than in comedy. Colombe's Birthday has a joyous ending, but the joy is very grave and earnest, and the body of the play is made up of serious pleadings and serious hopes and fears. There is no light-hearted mirth, no real gaiety of temper anywhere in the dramas of Browning. Pippa's gladness in her holiday from the task of silk-winding is touched with pathos in the thought that what is so bright is also so brief, and it is encompassed, even within delightful Asolo, by the sins and sorrows of the ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... replied, repressing my mirth; "true as the tale of Timothy. I knew him when he was a mere boy. But I don't give you that as a proof, for he might have become all things to all men since. Ask Miss Trevor; or Miss Thorn; she knows the other man, the bicycle man, and has seen them ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... peopled with phantasms and realities undistinguishably confused and intermingled—here illuminated with dazzling splendour, there dim with melancholy mists,—or it may be shrouded in impenetrable darkness. To bring, visibly and distinctly before our memory, on the one hand, all our hours of mirth and joy, and hope and exultation,—and, on the other, all our perplexities, and fears and sorrows, and despair and agony,— (and who has been so uniformly wretched as not to have been often blest?—who so uniformly blest as not ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... who served in the Garrison during that Memorable Winter. The Company, consisting of upwards of two hundred and thirty Ladies and Gentlemen, made a grand and brilliant appearance, and nothing but mirth and good humour reigned all night long. About half-past six, His Excellency, Sir Guy Carleton, Knight of the Bath, our worthy Governor and Successful General, dressed in the militia uniform, (which added lustre to the Ribbon and Star) as were ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... boys were young and full of mirth and fun which was continually overflowing. They seemed to think they were to be on a sort of every day picnic and bound to make life as merry and happy as it could be. One of the boys was Ed Doty who was a sort of model traveler in this line. A camp life suited him; he could drive an ox team, ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... Irish! Always witty! Always sparkling, paradoxical, brilliant! I shall tell the Prime Minister what you say. He'll enjoy it. What should we do without you Irish? Life would be dull indeed. What is it the poet says? Wordsworth, I think. 'Turning to mirth, All things of earth, As only boyhood can.' You are all boys. That is why we love you. Your freshness. Your delightful capacity for the absurd. I feel that in choosing you for this delicate mission we have chosen the right man. Only an Irishman could hope ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... been found dead in his dressing-room. The good old man had been full of years, and there was nothing frightful in his death but its suddenness. But sudden death is always frightful. Overnight he had been talking to his daughter with his usual quiet, very quiet, mirth; and in the morning she was woke with the news that his spirit had fled. His mirth for this world was over. His worldly duties were done. He had received his daughter's last kiss, had closed for the last time the book which had been his life's guide, had whispered to heaven his ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... the necessity of being solitary and inactive, while her companions sported on the grass, without fear of incommoding themselves. The pleasure she had lately taken in viewing her fine slip and shoes was, at this moment, but a poor compensation for the mirth ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin
... pleasures a new-married wife most part enjoys; yet they are but toys in respect, easily to be endured, if conferred to those frequent encumbrances of marriage. Solitariness may be otherwise avoided with mirth, music, good company, business, employment; in a word, [5808]Gaudebit minus, et minus dolebit; for their good nights, he shall have good days. And methinks some time or other, amongst so many rich bachelors, a benefactor should be found to build a monastical college for old, decayed, deformed, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... to smile(862)—yes, yes: at times I should have laughed too, if I could have dragged my muscles at once from the zenith of horror to the nadir of contempt: but their abominations leave one leisure enough to leap from indignation to mirth. I abhor war and bloodshed as much as you do; but unless the earth is purged of such monsters, peace and morality will never return. This is not a war of nation and nation; it is the cause of every thing dear and sacred to civilized man, against the unbounded licentiousness of ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... first at this unusual mirth; but recollecting what Jackson had told me about his intemperance, I presumed that this mirth which it produced was the cause why he indulged so much in it; and I felt less inclined to blame him. At all events, I was much pleased ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat
... public-house where he goes to play billiards," said Patty with scornful mirth; "a great fat woman! Oh! And he's going to turn publican. And my aunt and me will have to ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing
... from yon stately ranks what laughter rings, Mingling wild mirth with war's stern minstrelsy, His jest while each blithe comrade round him flings, And moves to death with military glee: Boast, Erin, boast them! tameless, frank, and free, In kindness warm, and fierce in danger known, Rough Nature's children, humorous as she: And HE, yon Chieftain—strike ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... feet again, but Allen coaxed her into her seat once more, while the court squelched the mirth of the house. Then the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the citizens, their encomiums on his own energetic and valorous conduct—all these were a pleasant relief to the ennui of a barrack life and, during the several days' visit of "los barbaros," the Comandante and his captain were never without a theme for mirth and laughter. ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... young people, and there was, as usual, plenty of mirth and chatter. Jenny felt utterly out of tune for it, and slipped out of the back door into the lane. She went slowly up, feeling very low-spirited, and wondering what God was going to do with her. When she came to the gate of the bean-field—the ...
— The Gold that Glitters - The Mistakes of Jenny Lavender • Emily Sarah Holt
... the sunshine and bobolinks and buttercups of the merry May-day world, to the sad strains that chanted of "this barren land," this "vale of tears," this "wilderness" of distress and woe. It let us light-hearted children too quickly down from the higher key of mirth to which our careless thoughts were pitched. We knew that we were happy, and sorrow to us was unreal. But somehow we did often get the impression that it was our duty to try to be sorrowful; and that we could not be entirely good, without being ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... finished and was followed by a mirth-provoking comedy at which the entire audience laughed heartily. Then came a reel of current events from various portions of ...
— The Rover Boys at Colby Hall - or The Struggles of the Young Cadets • Arthur M. Winfield
... mirth and light-heartedness are very far from being characteristics of the Scottish ballads. Of ballad themes in general, it has been said that they concern themselves mainly with the tragedy and the pathos of the life of feudal and early times; while, on the other hand, the folk-song ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... by meanness the favour which he had forfeited by presumption. His epitaph, written by himself, still informs all who pass through Westminster Abbey that he lived and died a sceptic in religion; and we learn from the memoirs which he wrote that one of his favourite subjects of mirth was the Romish superstition. Yet he began, as soon as James was on the throne, to express a strong inclination towards Popery, and at length in private affected to be a convert. This abject hypocrisy had been rewarded by a place in ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... fevers of the flesh, the upheavals of personal fortune, were events a robust man might face with calm valiancy if he could be spared the cheering influence of the homely scene or the unchanged presence of his familiars and friends. I have sat in companies and put on an affected mirth, and laughed and sung with the most buoyant of all around, and yet ever and anon I chilled at the intruding ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... number of common women on board our ships considerably increased, since we had begun to deal in red feathers. Their mirth was often extravagant and noisy; and sometimes their ideas were so original as to give great amusement. We had a very weak scorbutic patient when we arrived at Otaheite; this man being somewhat recovered by means of fresh vegetable food, and animated by the example of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... same folly as Jonathan had done before, and Jonathan was again installed, resolving in his own mind to lead his former life, and have nothing more to do with ladies'-maids. But from habit Jonathan still carried himself as a mute on all ordinary occasions—never indulging in an approximation to mirth, except when he perceived that his master was in high spirits, and then rather from a sense of duty than from ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... observed that the party displayed varying emotions. It afterward transpired that the hunters had spent most of the afternoon in her ladyship's distant lodge playing bridge for rather high stakes. Little Miss Folsom was pitifully unresponsive to the mirth of Mr. Odwell. She could ill afford to lose six hundred dollars. Lady Bazelhurst was in a frightful mood. Her guests had so far forgotten themselves as to win more than a thousand dollars of the Banks ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth centuries, give the idea of a man of unaffected humility and simple piety, of a happy, kindly disposition, and full of spirit and innocent mirth. Though he could not take the oaths, he regularly communicated at the parish church.[15] Controversy he abhorred; it seemed to him, he said to Kettlewell, as if the one thing needful were scarcely heard, amidst the din and clashings of pros ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... Venice, and carrying back the silks of Bengal and the furs of Siberia to the palaces of Milan. With peculiar pleasure, every cultivated mind must repose on the fair, the happy, the glorious Florence, the halls which rang with the mirth of Pulci, the cell where twinkled the midnight lamp of Politian, the statues on which the young eye of Michael Angelo glared with the frenzy of a kindred inspiration, the gardens in which Lorenzo meditated ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... who was leaning over the footlights, and declaiming his woes with a directness of appeal to the audience which alone would have marked the nationality of the robust actor, who was creating so much mirth out of the extremely hackneyed situation. He had got into the wrong bathing-machine (Lightmark seemed to find it intensely amusing) and the trousers of the rightful occupant only came down to his knees. Rainham at first was disconcerted, ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... adroitly turned them into an argument for woman suffrage. A beautiful poem was read, entitled "Pioneers," dedicated to Miss Anthony by her old friend John M. Thayer, of Rochester. Col. D. R. Anthony created great mirth by telling among other stories that eighty years ago his father had a cotton mill of twenty-six looms; one day all of them suddenly stopped and, rushing out to ascertain the cause, he found that his wife, in rinsing her mop in the stream, had stopped the power which moved the ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... ill, young 'uns," he said. "But them Indians 'ud be pretty sick if they knowed what they run from. That there object cavortin' round that there bonfire is old Sanchez, and he's drunk. Oh, Lord!" And once more Hill gave way to mirth. ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton
... know not of dearth Nor lie for their fruit's sake fallow Laugh large in the depth of their mirth But inshore here in the shallow, Embroiled with encumbrance of earth, Their skirts ...
— Studies in Song • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... friend to Cecilia: but now, in consequence either of the wear and tear of London life, or of a disappointment in love or matrimony, she had lost the fresh plumpness of youth; and gone too was that spirit of mirth, if not of good humour, which used to enliven her countenance. Thin and sallow, the sharp features remained, and the sarcastic without the arch expression; still she had a very fashionable air. Her pretensions to youth, as ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... Swallowtail sat and watched her. Presently he smiled grimly and Nan never noticed the expression. Perhaps, had she done so, she would have demanded an explanation. He rarely smiled, and certainly his daughter's disclosures were not calculated to excite mirth, or even ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)
... were warmly attached. Having been brought up together, they loved each other as sisters—all the more, perhaps, that in character they were somewhat opposed. Hilda was grave, thoughtful, almost pensive. Ada was full of vivacity and mirth, fond of fun, and by no means averse to a little of what she ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... it tightly upon a fistful of Nigel's yellow curls. The groan that came forth was enough to convince him that it was indeed a man who lurked within. At the same time his eyes fell upon the hole in the mail corselet which had served the Squire as a visor, and he burst into deep-chested mirth. The King, the Prince and Chandos, who had watched the scene from a distance, too much amused by it to explain or interfere, rode up weary with laughter, ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... depending. He hailed them with "horse patrole!" in his natural voice; they recognised him and laughed heartily, upon which he entreated them to stop at the Mother Red Cap, a well known public-house, till he joined them. He soon made his appearance in his proper dress, and gave way to mirth and good fellowship. On another occasion he paid a parishioner, who was drawn for constable, to be permitted to serve in his place, he billeted soldiers during the day, and presided in the constable's chair ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... Hawkins' inimitable description of the memorable banquet given at the Devil Tavern, near Temple Bar, in the spring of 1751, to celebrate the publication of Mrs. Charlotte Lennox's first novel. What delightful revelry! what innocent mirth! prolonged though it was till long after dawn. Poor Mrs. Lennox died in distress in 1804, at the age of eighty-three. Could Johnson but have lived he would have lent her his helping hand. He was no fair-weather friend, but shares with Charles Lamb the honour of being ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... touched. The water welled to his eyes, yet at the same time the grisly humour of the situation and circumstances so undermined his gravity that it was all he could do to keep some sign of his inward mirth from showing outside. To be suddenly hoisted, naked and gory, from the common stocks to the Alpine altitude and splendour of an Earldom, seemed to him the last possibility in the line of the grotesque. He said to himself, "Now am I finely tinselled, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... thus circumstanced without a shudder that makes the very marrow in his bones to quiver in him like a shaken jelly. Yet habit —strange thing! what cannot habit accomplish? —Gayer sallies, more merry mirth, better jokes, and brighter repartees, you never heard over your mahogany, than you will hear over the half-inch white cedar of the whale-boat, when thus hung in hangman's nooses; and, like the six burghers of Calais before King Edward, the six men composing the crew pull ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... Mandeville, was surrendered in mid-winter. Here, in the month of February, 1317, the new King of Ireland had the gratification of welcoming his brother of Scotland, at the head of a powerful auxiliary force, and here, according to Barbour's Chronicle, they feasted for three days, in mirth and jollity, before entering on the third campaign ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... his horse to the man-at-arms and walked into the house; in the hall he found a drunken company and much ugly mirth. He surveyed the scene awhile in disgust, for they cried out at first for him to join them, till it came upon them who it was that looked upon them; so they stumbled to their feet and did him obeisance, and slunk out one by one upon some pretence of business, ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... laughter was heard; and all the company were in convulsions of mirth at the grey, dirty, and hoary head of Madame de Charlus, and the Archbishop's omelette; above all, at the fury and abuse of Madame de Charlus, who thought she had been affronted, and who was a long time before she would understand the cause, irritated at finding herself thus treated ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... the candle we surveyed each other, and we were objects for mirth. Hotchkiss was taking off his sodden shoes and preparing to make himself comfortable, while I hung my muddy raincoat over the ghost in the corner. Thus habited, he presented a rakish but distinctly ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... dissatisfied with our proceedings, as will soon appear. Their moroseness was a prelude to what was to follow. We were, in a short time, forbidden to pass along the common gangway, and every attempt to do so was repelled by the bayonet. Although thus incommoded our mirth still continued. Songs were still sung, accompanied by occasional cheers. Things thus proceeded until about four o'clock; when the guards were ordered out, and we received orders to descend between decks, where we were immediately ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... his quick mirth and then laughed outright—the throaty, infectious laugh of his race. The coronel's eyes twinkled. And when Tim fished a damp cigarette from his shirt, nonchalantly scraped a match on his host's table, blew a cloud of smoke, and sprawled back with ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... a bookseller in Edinburgh: David Ramsay, printer of the Evening Courant: William Dunbar, an advocate, and president of a club of Edinburgh wits; and Alexander Cunningham, a jeweller, who loved mirth ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... volunteer porters swarmed into the van, which drove off in the direction of the nearest reliable public-house. Gideon closed the door on their departure, and turned to Julia; their eyes met; the most uncontrollable mirth seized upon them both, and they made the house ring with their laughter. Then curiosity awoke in Julia's mind, and she went and examined the box, and more ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Anglia, came day by day into the town with their followings, taking up their quarters either in the better houses of the place or else pitching bright-coloured tents and pavilions on the hillside meadows beyond the stockades. Many brought their ladies with them, and all day long was feasting and mirth at one place or another, as friend met with friend. Never had I seen such a gay sight as the marketplace was at midday, when the young thanes and their men met there and matched their followers at all sorts of sports. The English nobles are far more fond of gay dress and jewels ...
— Havelok The Dane - A Legend of Old Grimsby and Lincoln • Charles Whistler
... grief, my dear colonel, we must away; the half-hour has just chimed, and we must be within 'the gates' before twelve. The truth is, the superior has been making himself very troublesome about our 'carnal amusements' as he calls our innocent mirth, and we must therefore ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... without a fear, Of danger darkly lurking near, The weary laborer left his plough, The milkmaid carolled by her cow; From cottage door and household hearth Rose songs of praise, or tones of mirth. ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... somewhat of the student, and somewhat of the college professor in his appearance. But he is a very sincere man; has neither show nor fussiness in him; and practices his duties with a strict, quiet regularity. He may have moods of mirth and high moments of sparkling glee, but he looks as if he had never only laughed right out about once in his life, and had repented of it directly afterwards. If he had more dash and less shyness in him, less learned coolness ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... fire, Cheerful in its glow; Twenty summers back— Twenty years ago! If the days were days of toil Wherefore should we mourn; There were shadows near the shine, Flowers with the thorn? And we still can recollect Evenings spent in mirth— Fragments of a broken life, Sitting round the hearth: Sitting by the fire, Cheerful in its glow, Twenty summers ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... Truthfulness, equability, and grief or joy of soul, And birth and death, and fearfulness, and fearlessness, and shame, And honour, and sweet harmlessness,[FN17] and peace which is the same Whate'er befalls, and mirth, and tears, and piety, and thrift, And wish to give, and will to help,—all cometh of My gift! The Seven Chief Saints, the Elders Four, the Lordly Manus set— Sharing My work—to rule the worlds, these too ...
— The Bhagavad-Gita • Sir Edwin Arnold
... of those Great Days when we marched the Long Trail together; shared the same sorrows, the same mirth;—and now the same memories, far away, indistinct; laughter merged with the tears. A. STANLEY ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... up town beside a driver of one of the wagons on the Harlem route. He was in the uniform of the Wingfield light cavalry, having obtained a cap with embroidered initials on the front. The driver was like to burst from inward mirth, and Jack was regarding the ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... as they roll cut all our pleasures short; Our pleasant mirth, our loves, our wine, our sport, And then they stretch their power, and crush at last Even the power ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... legitimate occasion for mirth, so the men laughed, and Mr Wilkins looked pleased and the ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... armour is being weakened. With thy shafts reduced, and without quivers, with thy driver and steeds fatigued, and thyself mangled by foes with weapons, when thou wilt approach Partha, O son of Radha, thou wilt be an object of derision and mirth." Though thus addressed by the ruler of the Madras, Karna still, filled with rage, continued to assail Yudhishthira in battle. And he continued to pierce the two sons of Madri by Pandu with many keen arrows. Smiling the while, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... lordship," replied Pillichody, "lest it should spoil your mirth; but he broke out of his chamber a few hours ago, and has not been discovered since. Most likely, he will be found in the plague-pit or the Thames in the morning, for he was in such an infuriated state, that it is the opinion of his attendants he would certainly destroy ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... world which allow of no description, and of such things a true Roman carnival is one. You might as well seek to analyze champagne, or expound the mystery of melody, or tell why a woman pleases you. The strange web of colour, beauty, mirth, wit, and folly, is tangled so together that common hands cannot unravel it. To paint a carnival without blotching, to touch it without destroying, is an art given unto few, I almost might say to none, save to our own wondrous word- wizard, who ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... fearful sneering mirth, which was never excited in his breast, but by things perilous and terrible and hateful. In a moment, however, he repressed his ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... murmur in the sand, And fringe the edge on either hand With myrtle rich in shadow; The shepherds and the sheep rejoice, In joy and mirth you hear their voice Sound from ...
— Paul Gerhardt's Spiritual Songs - Translated by John Kelly • Paul Gerhardt
... a little as he stretched his hand out to the girl, but the light which shone back at him from her eyes was softer than that of mirth. ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... the 'friends' or companions 'of the bridegroom.' According to the Jewish wedding ceremonial it was their business to conduct the bride to the home of her husband, and there to spend seven days in festivity and rejoicing, which were to be so entirely devoted to mirth and feasting that the companions of the bridegroom were by the Talmudic ritual absolved even from prayer and from worship, and had for their ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... Mix, her mirth quite beyond control, as she gave various futile little tugs and twitches at the trap. "That's the trouble! The key never has had the slightest effect. Oh, I will NOT laugh this way!" she upbraided herself sternly. "Bu—bu—but you did look so—" She abruptly turned her back upon ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... you think I ought to help you with the rent when you are wasting money on excursions and shows?" Miss Margery frowned on Peggy's mirth. ...
— Honey-Sweet • Edna Turpin
... restaurant, the waits are long; and there comes an awful moment when the host mentions that he has got six stalls for the ——. Generally there is some friend present who knows the true position, and exhibits a smile of fiendish mirth. ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... later entrance, which Cartel cut, but it necessitated the mention of her name, whereupon the monster mirth was loosed again. ...
— The Cricket • Marjorie Cooke
... death And fill the fields and fire the woods with thee And seaward hollows where my feet would be When heaven shall hear the word that April saith To change the cold heart of the weary time, To stir and soften all the time to tears, Tears joyfuller than mirth; As even to May's clear height the young days climb With feet not swifter than those fair first years Whose flowers revive not ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... into a belief that we have no other intention than the amusement of a thoughtless crowd, and the collection of pence. We have a higher object. Few of the admirers of our prototype, merry Master PUNCH, have looked upon his vagaries but as the practical outpourings of a rude and boisterous mirth. We have considered him as a teacher of no mean pretensions, and have, therefore, adopted him as the sponsor for our weekly sheet of pleasant instruction. When we have seen him parading in the glories of his motley, flourishing his baton (like ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 1, July 17, 1841 • Various
... checkered year; One summer month, of sunlight, moonlight, mirth With not a hint of shadows lurking near, ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... only tossed her head a little higher out of the water, and again he saw, or fancied he saw, mirth dancing ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... and died. She was alone for a few days afterwards. Ian Belward came to her. Of that miserable, heart-rending, cruel time,—the life-sorrow of a defenceless girl,— Gaston heard with a hard sort of coldness. The promised marriage was a matter for the man's mirth a week later. They came across three young artists from Paris—Bagshot, Fancourt, and another—who camped one night beside them. It was then she fully realised the deep shame of her position. The next night she ran away and joined a travelling menagerie. The rest he knew. When she had ended there ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... once removed. We just began to talk, here in the boat, and the water went away and left us." Then she laughed, and Mark laughed too, and Carnaby's look of unutterable scorn seemed to have no effect upon them. They might almost have been laughing at him, their mirth was so senseless, viewed in ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... too late to overtake a liberating idea once it gets free. Tolstoi tells of Batenkoff, the Russian nihilist, that after he was seized and confined in his cell he was heard to laugh loudly; and, when they asked him the cause of his mirth, he said that he could not fail to be amused at the absurdity of the situation. "They have caught me," he said, "and shut me up here; but my ideas are out yonder in the streets and in the fields, absolutely free. They cannot overtake them." It was ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... Major laughed, though more in sympathy than in mirth; and Mrs. Cranceford simply smiled as if with loathness she recognized that there was cause for merriment, but when she had quitted the room and gone to her own apartment, she sat down, and with the picture in her ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... this apple tree, The winter stars are quivering bright, The winds go howling through the night, Girls, whose young eyes o'erflow with mirth, Shall peel its fruit by cottage hearth, And guests in prouder homes shall see, Heaped with the grape of Cintra's vine, And golden orange of the line, The fruit of ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... merry-makings take place on these occasions, and drinking, drumming, and dancing continue day and night, till the beer is gone. In crossing the hills we sometimes found whole villages enjoying this kind of mirth. The veteran traveller of the party remarked, that he had not seen so much drunkenness during all the sixteen years he had spent in Africa. As we entered a village one afternoon, not a man was to be seen; but some women were drinking ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... into thy bosom, Earth, This joyous, May-eyed morrow, The gentlest child that ever Mirth Gave to be rear'd by Sorrow. 'Tis hard—while rays half green, half gold, Through vernal bowers are burning, And streams their diamond-mirrors hold To Summer's face returning— To say, We're thankful that His sleep Shall never more be lighter, In whose sweet-tongued companionship Stream, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... you had but trumped that diamond, ma'am!" "Bless me, sir, it was the best heart!" And somehow or other, both the laughter and the exclamations affected him alike with what then was called "the spleen,"—for the one reminded him of his own young days of joyless, careless mirth, of which his mechanical gayety now was but a mocking ghost; and the other seemed a satire, a parody, on the fierce but noiseless rapture of gaming, through which his passions had passed, when thousands had slipped away with a bland smile, provoking not one of those natural ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to make her my wife, knowing that she would be a counsellor of good things, and a comfort in cares and grief. For her conversation hath no bitterness; and to live with her hath no sorrow, but mirth and joy."—Wisdom ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... of the United States? She noticed that Flossy seemed unduly at her ease as though the importance of the ceremony was lost on her, and that they group of people with whom Flossy had been talking and who stood a little apart were obviously indulging in quiet mirth at the expense of some of those in ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... register at the last election, but because I come from Colorado I am considered an authority on woman suffrage, and when I say it's no good, and swell out my chest and look gloomy, it has great weight, great weight!" He leaned back in his chair and gave way to unseemly mirth as he recalled some occasion on which he had ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... enter many a home—some joyous with the mirth of children, the hopefulness of youth, the serene happiness of useful and contented men and women;—some shadowed by recent sorrow, where perhaps patriots, as in the olden time, learn to endure for the sake of a beloved country;—or others, perchance, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... of laughter arose from the boys at this, and the black turned sharply to give them a self-satisfied nod, as if to say, "She can't get at me now," while the mirth increased as Aunt Georgie ...
— The Dingo Boys - The Squatters of Wallaby Range • G. Manville Fenn
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