"Convivial" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Scots Fund in France in these days were what I call the scourings of the Hielan's. There were good and bad among them, of course, but I was there in the entourage of one who was no politician, which was just my own case, and I saw but the convivial of my exiled countrymen in their convivial hours. Politics! In these days I would scunner at the very word, if you know what that means, M. Montaiglon. I was too throng with gaiety to trouble my head about such ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... make a start on the following evening, walking, the first night so as to get out of the dangerous zone, and then training to London. At the prospect his spirits rose, and in a convivial mood he purchased a bottle of red currant wine from the old woman at supper, and ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... hands. Mr. Keeler's hand trembled a little, but that was the only symptom of his recent "vacation" which the youth could notice. Certain vivid remembrances of his father's bad humor on mornings following convivial evenings recurred to him. Was it possible that this odd, precise, dried-up little man had been on a spree for four days? It did not seem possible. He looked more as if he might be expected to rap on the desk and ask the school to ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... Quebec, they formed a kind of commercial aristocracy, living in lordly and hospitable style. Their posts, and the pleasures, dangers, adventures, and mishaps which they had shared together in their wild wood life, had linked them heartily to each other, so that they formed a convivial fraternity. Few travellers that have visited Canada some thirty years since, in the days of the M'Tavishes, the M'Gillivrays, the M'Kenzies, the Frobishers, and the other magnates of the Northwest, when the company was in all its glory, but must remember the round of feasting ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... always been convivial, but Susanna at seventeen had been at once too innocent and too ignorant to judge a man's tendencies truly, or to rate his character at its real worth. As time went on, his earlier leanings grew more definite; he spent on pleasure ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Welshmen, Evans and Edwards, each with a wife and family. The men are as diverse as they can be. "Griff," as Evans is called, is short and small, and is hospitable, careless, reckless, jolly, social, convivial, peppery, good natured, "nobody's enemy but his own." He had the wit and taste to find out Estes Park, where people have found him out, and have induced him to give them food and lodging, and add cabin to cabin to take them in. He is a splendid shot, an expert ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... held to her purpose, seeing that even so she could not win the old man to convivial mirth. Continuing with yet more lavish courtesy her efforts to soothe him, and to heap more honours on the guest, she bade a piper strike up, and started music to melt his unbending rage. For she wanted to unnerve his stubborn nature by means of cunning sounds. ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... Besides these rare convivial accomplishments, his gay and jovial temper rendered him the life of the table. There was no resisting his droll faces, his droll stories, his jokes, his tricks, or his laugh—the most contagious cachination that ever was heard. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, No. - 288, Supplementary Number • Various
... during his long stay at Bergen. He was not accused, and if there had been a chance he would have been accused, of dereliction. No doubt he pushed through the work of the theatre doggedly, but certainly not in a convivial spirit. The Norwegians are a hospitable and festal people, and there is no question that the manager of the theatre would have unusual opportunities of being jolly with his friends. But it does not appear that Ibsen made friends; if so, they were ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... Beggar's Opera. Prior first made himself distinguished by his satire called A City Mouse and a Country Mouse, aimed against Dryden. He was well rewarded by government, and was sent as minister to Paris. Like most of the wits of his time, he was convivial, and not always particular in the choice of his associates. Humor was the natural turn of his mind. Steele was editor of the Spectator and wrote some excellent papers, although vastly inferior to Addison's. He is the ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... with hooks and baits, like fishes caught.) When Questor, to the gods in public halls I was the first who set up festivals. Not with high tastes our appetites did force, But fill'd with conversation and discourse; Which feasts, Convivial Meetings we did name: Not like the ancient Greeks, who to their shame, 480 Call'd it a Compotation, not a feast; Declaring the worst part of it the best. Those entertainments I did then frequent Sometimes with youthful heat and merriment: But now I thank my age, ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... impaired, the clearness and purity of the vocal tones are gone, and instead the voice has become rough and husky. So well known is this result that vocalists, whose fortune is the purity and compass of their tones, are scrupulously careful not to impair these fine qualities by convivial indulgences. ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... sympathetic friend of gentle, unassuming mien. The later traditions brought together by Aubrey depict him as 'very good company, and of a very ready and pleasant smooth wit,' and there is much in other early posthumous references to suggest a genial, if not a convivial, temperament, linked to a quiet turn for good-humoured satire. But Bohemian ideals and modes of life had no genuine attraction for Shakespeare. His extant work attests his 'copious' and continuous industry, {278b} and with his literary power and sociability there clearly went the shrewd ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... difficulty in receiving one set of customers after another and in negotiating within three weeks an infinite amount of business, all of which confirmed those who had the pleasure of an audience with the stuffed dummy that great fortunes were made and retained by reticence and a contempt for convivial weakness. ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... a market-town, in the west of England, some few years since, a regular set of the inhabitants met every evening to smoke their pipes, and pass a convivial hour. The conversation, as is usual at those places, was generally desultory. One evening, the subject introduced was concerning ghosts and apparitions; and many were the dreadful stories then told. A young midshipman, having accidentally dropped in, sat a silent and an attentive ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor
... him stay here, and speak evil of me only to a few, instead of being sent away to ramble about and give me a bad character to all the world." At another time, some persons, when half intoxicated, at a convivial entertainment, had talked very freely in censure of something which Pyrrhus had done. They were called to account for it; and when asked by Pyrrhus whether it was true that they had really said such things, they replied that it was true. "And there is no doubt," they added, "that we ...
— Pyrrhus - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... luxury boasting of the elegance which they owe to the taste of others, relating with rapture the succession of dishes with which their cooks and caterers supply them; and expecting their share of praise with the discoverers of arts and the civilizers of nations. But to shorten the way to convivial happiness, by eating without cost, is a secret hitherto in few hands, but which certainly deserves the curiosity of those whose principal enjoyment is their dinner, and who see the sun rise with no other hope than that they shall fill their bellies ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... she used to give him a small sum whenever he spent his evenings abroad in company with Macready, Laman Blanchard, John Forster, Jerrold, and others, at the Shakespeare Club. He was a little man with a feeble frame, and much addicted to convivial society." He was, indeed, a boon-companion, generous and kind-hearted, and a delightful raconteur—"happy, conversational Meadows," as Blanchard Jerrold calls him—when at the club, and a jovial roystering Bohemian when ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... have seen, was a system that could be employed in any cause and had now come to be used by intriguers of every kind—and not only by intriguers, but by merely convivial bodies, "jolly Brotherhoods of the Bottle," who modelled themselves on masonic associations.[346] But the honest citizens of London who met and feasted at the Goose and Gridiron were clearly not intriguers, they were neither Royalist nor Republican plotters, neither ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... nautches are considered necessary appurtenances of the courts of native Hindu princes, although they are never found in the palaces of Mohammedans. They are brought forward upon all occasions of ceremony, religious, official and convivial. If the viceroy visits the capital of one of the native states he is entertained by their best performances. They have a place on the programme at all celebrations of feast days; they appear at weddings and birthday anniversaries, and are quite as important ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... young persons of both sexes (called Media Nocte) endeavored to draw the prince into its circle at The Hague; but his friend and tutor, the Baron Schulenberg, making him aware of the immoral nature of the society, the prince abruptly left one of their convivial meetings, and resolved immediately to quit The Hague. The Prince of Orange was much surprised at this self-command, and when the prince arrived in the camp before Breda, said to him, "Cousin, your flight is a greater ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... volume of Miscellaneous Poems; and in 1814 The Modern Dunciad, in which he sings the praises of 'old books, old wines, old customs, and old friends.' He continued to write during the whole of his life, and his last work, Love's Last Labour not Lost, was published in 1863. Daniel was fond of convivial society, and numbered Charles Lamb and Robert Bloomfield among his acquaintances, and he was also intimate with many of the principal actors of the day. He died at his son's house, The Grove, Stoke Newington, on the 30th of March 1864. The cause ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... down like a fiddle," was ultimately friendly, and her share of her brother's estate came in due course to Crabbe and his wife. Moreover, the change of tenancy at the Hall was anything but satisfactory to the village generally. Mr. Tovell had been much given to hospitality, and that of a convivial sort. Such of the neighbours as were of kindred tastes had been in the habit of "dropping in" of an evening two or three times a week, when, if a quorum was present, a bowl of punch would be brewed, and sometimes a second and a third. The substitution for all this of the quiet ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... sitting next our host, now came under his special protection. Laying before his guest one of the packages of fish, Marharvai opened it; and commended its contents to his particular regards. But my comrade was one of those who, on convivial occasions, can always take care of themselves. He ate an indefinite number of "Pee-hee Lee Lees" (small fish), his own and next neighbour's bread-fruit; and helped himself, to right and left, with all the ease ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... Greyhound was a much frequented tavern in Roxbury, with the figure of a greyhound upon its sign. It was in this tavern that the repeal of the Stamp Act was celebrated, 1767. Convivial parties were courteously entertained ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... persons of slaves were thus greatly secured in AEgypt, yet there was no place so favourable to them as Athens. They were allowed a greater liberty of speech;[018] they had their convivial meetings, their amours, their hours of relaxation, pleasantry, and mirth; they were treated, in short, with so much humanity in general, as to occasion that observation of Demosthenes, in his second ...
— An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African • Thomas Clarkson
... the township of Loo was rapidly filling with convivial shearers. The sheds were cutting out at Dim Distance, Devil's Bend, and the Emu, and the men were full of money, and ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... think the dignity of the subject, lessened merely by the familiar strain, in which it is written: when they consider, that such seemed most suitable to the occasion, the verses consisting of eleven feet, are to be read, like the Greek Iambics (which were, anciently, much used in convivial festivities) with less solemnity and more rapidity, than the common heroic measure of ten feet ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... a poet, bold as a soldier, adroit as a statesman, the king was, nevertheless, most fitted for the convivial role of host, and no part that he played in his varied repertoire afforded such opportunity for the nice display of his unusual talents. History hath sneered at his rhymes as flat, stale and unprofitable; upon the bloody ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... him. He was small and rotund, with a bay window which his arms would not have gone around. He had rubicund cheeks, long hair very much pomaded, trailing in the back and drawn up in crescents along his temples. He had pink cotton in his ears. He was smooth shaven and looked like a pious but convivial notary. But his quick, calculating eye belied his jovial and sugary mien. One divined in his look the cool, unscrupulous man of affairs, capable, for all his honeyed ways, of doing one a ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... corner there is a convivial meeting; several elderly gentlemen are gathered round a group of very decollete 'ladies' sitting over a glass of wine and cracking jokes which are anything but delicate. 'Who are these three ladies?' 'Ladies! laughs my better-informed companion; well, the one on the right with the ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... was indulging in these reflections, one of the young men observed him; and, as Jalaladdeen was withdrawing, he stepped forward hastily and invited him in a most friendly manner to remain with them during the day, and to pass it in a cheerful and convivial spirit. Jalaladdeen endeavoured to excuse himself by pointing to his mean garb, intimating his inability to mix in such society; but his objections were of no avail. He was conducted to the table in a most courteous manner, and seated with them. The ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... back room in McGowan's hospitable hostelry Handy, Weston, McGowan himself, the members of the company, and a few others were gathered for a little bite and a sup before the players returned to Weston. It was a convivial party—not noisy nor boisterous. Just cheerful, good-natured crowd. All were happy over the night's fun. They showed it in their smiling faces and laughing eyes. Strange as it may appear, the most thoughtful appearing one in the assemblage was the veteran himself. McGowan noticed ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... precocious accomplishments, which, because they consist in an imitation of the vices and follies of maturity, render a boy the favorite plaything of men. He seemed to have received from nature the convivial talents, which, whether natural or acquired, are a most dangerous possession; and, before his twelfth year, he was the welcome associate of all the idle and dissipated of his neighborhood, and especially of those who haunted the tavern of which he had now become the landlord. ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... impression; for those who do not meet the eye at all are scarcely less disagreeable than those who too continually watch you, as was this man's way. I was rather young to be a very careful observer of men's faces, but I did see that Captain Wynne's bore traces of too convivial habits. ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... very little; but, still, thus close to the parlour window, there was room for a small table to be put on the grass-plat, and for a couple of armchairs. Here the Major and the Captain were seated about eight o'clock one evening, with convivial good things within their reach. The good things were gin-and-water and pipes. The two gentlemen had not dressed strictly for dinner. They had spent a great part of the day handling the hounds and the horses, dressing wounds, curing sores, and ministering to canine ailments, ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... curious combination of a Hercules, a Joe Miller, a Bayard, and a Tom Hyer; had a person like the Belgian giants; mountain music in him like a Swiss; a heart plump as Coeur de Lion's. Though born in New England, he exhibited no trace of her character. He was frank, bluff, companionable as a Pagan, convivial, a Roman, hearty as a harvest. His spirit was essentially Western; and herein is his peculiar Americanism; for the Western spirit is, or will yet be (for no other is, or can be), the ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... taciturn humor that nothing could overcome; he respected it scrupulously. I did not reply to his questions and he dropped the subject; he was satisfied that I had forgotten my mistress. Nevertheless, I went to the chase and appeared at the table and was as convivial as the ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... of the life of this King, the Marquis of Lucchesini was frequently of his literary and convivial parties; but he was neither his friend nor his favourite, but his listener. It was first under Frederick William II. that he began his diplomatic career, with an appointment as Minister from Prussia to the late King of Poland. His first act in this post ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... addition to his pay. With noble contempt for so much good fortune, Mr. O'Rourke dropped over the bows of the gun-boat one evening and managed to reach the levee. In the city he fell in with some soldiers, and, being of a convivial nature, caroused with them that night, and next day enlisted ...
— A Rivermouth Romance • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... by an historian that there was an ameer of the land of Egypt, whose mind being one night unusually disturbed, he sent for one of his courtiers, a convivial companion, and said to him, "To-night my bosom, from what cause I know not, is uncommonly restless, and I wish thee to divert me by some amusing narrative." The courtier replied, "To hear is to obey: I will describe an adventure which I encountered ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... and birds of all kinds, chanting melodiously on the shore; and, on the trees, the soft and sweet air fanning the branches on every side, which sent forth a soft, harmonious sound, like the playing on a flute; at the same time we heard a noise, not of riot or tumult, but a kind of joyful and convivial sound, as of some playing on the lute or harp, with others joining in the chorus, and ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian
... understand these things rightly must not confine his observations to palaces and solemn days. He must see ordinary men as they appear in their ordinary business and in their ordinary pleasures. He must mingle in the crowds of the exchange and the coffee-house. He must obtain admittance to the convivial table and the domestic hearth. He must bear with vulgar expressions. He must not shrink from exploring even the retreats of misery. He who wishes to understand the condition of mankind in former ages must ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... and the next; and the weather being fine, we spent the time in rambling on the hills and sailing on the lake; and all the time he manifested a delightful flow of spirits, as well as a kind sincerity of manner, repeating convivial poems and ballads, and always between hands breaking jokes on his nephew, young Coleridge, in whom he seemed to take great delight. He gave me, with the utmost readiness, a poem and ballad of his own, for a work which I then projected. I objected to his going with Coleridge and me, for fear ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19, No. 543, Saturday, April 21, 1832. • Various
... Disraeli, in his work, "Curiosities of Literature," edited by the late Earl of Beaconsfield, thus distinguishes between the Mimi and the Pantomimi of the Ancients. The Mimi were an impudent race of buffoons who excelled in mimicry, and like our domestic fools, were admitted into convivial parties to entertain the guests. Their powers enabled them to perform a more extraordinary office; for they appear to have been introduced into funerals to mimic the person, and even the language of the deceased. Suetonius describes an archimimus accompanying the funeral of Vespasian. ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... the senior lieutenant of each regiment was the chief of the regimental club, and there was a general chief for the whole army. Offenses against good manners, faults of meanness, or oddity of behavior, were discouraged by admonitions, given privately by the chief, or publicly in the convivial meetings of the club. Moral pressure might be carried so far in an aggravated case, as to cause the culprit to resign his commission. The society in fact represented an organized professional spirit; and although not recognized by the regulations, was favored by the superior ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... gurglings in its throat, and to indulge in short vocal snorts, which it checked in the bud, as if it hadn't quite made up its mind yet to be good company. Now it was that after two or three such vain attempts to stifle its convivial sentiments, it threw off all moroseness, all reserve, and burst into a stream of song so cosy and hilarious as never maudlin nightingale yet formed the ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... long benches. Here were sitting a crowd of miners, drinking, when our friends were ushered in through the bar or counter which faced to the street. At the bar they were received by a dirty old woman who said that she was Mrs. Henniker. Then they were told, while the convivial crowd were looking on and listening, that they could have the use of one of the partitions and their 'grub' for 7s. 6d. a-day each. When they asked for a partition apiece, they were told that if they didn't like what was offered to them they might go elsewhere. ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... contributed; and thence was derived the name of the association: "gildan," in Saxon, signifying to pay. With a view to becoming better acquainted with one another, and to draw more closely the bands of friendship, convivial meetings were held at fixed periods, when a vast quantity of beer was quaffed in honour of the living, and to the memory of the dead. In after-times this truly Saxon institution assumed greater proportions, and embraced both ecclesiastical ...
— The Corporation of London: Its Rights and Privileges • William Ferneley Allen
... knives; that grating sound did not at all tend to tranquillize poor Dough-Boy. How could he forget that in his Island days, Queequeg, for one, must certainly have been guilty of some murderous, convivial indiscretions. Alas! Dough-Boy! hard fares the white waiter who waits upon cannibals. Not a napkin should he carry on his arm, but a buckler. in good time, though, to his great delight, the three salt-sea warriors would rise and depart; to his ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... been made in this history of Mr. Garbetts, Principal Tragedian, a promising and athletic young actor, of jovial habits and irregular inclinations, between whom and Mr. Costigan there was a considerable intimacy. They were the chief ornaments of the convivial club held at the Magpie Hotel; they helped each other in various bill transactions in which they had been engaged, with the mutual loan of each other's valuable signatures. They were friends, in fine: although Mr. Garbetts seldom called at Costigan's house, ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... "autogenic reinforcement," which is well exemplified by the ability of a half-intoxicated person to sober up under some shock or strong incentive. When social conditions do not stimulate this reinforcement, but, on the contrary, dull and retard it, as in convivial company, there is reinforcement of the lower, more animal mechanisms of the nervous system, and we have exhibited revolting and foolish reactions to alcohol, which are ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... confess that, up to a recent date, I had not given Spiritualists—qua spiritualists—credit for being a cheerful or convivial people. Though there exist upon the tablets of my memory recollections of certain enjoyable dinners, cosy teas, and charming petits soupers, eaten at the mahogany of believers in the modern mystery, yet these were purely exceptional events, oases in the desert of spiritualistic ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... observed to speak to anyone except the hotel clerk. He seemed, indeed, singularly fond of his own company—or, as the PERSONNEL of the Advance expressed it, "grossly addicted to evil associations." But then it should be said in justice to the stranger that the PERSONNEL was himself of a too convivial disposition fairly to judge one differently gifted, and had, moreover, experienced a slight rebuff in an ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... people taking omens for the whole of the Kenyah contingent, while Juman went on to prepare the people of the Akar. In the course of the day Tama Bulan accompanied us on visits to several neighbouring Kenyah villages situated a little farther up the river. In the evening we had another convivial meeting with great flow of oratory and rice-spirit. On the third day, favourable omens having been observed, sacrifices of pigs and fowls were offered before the altar-posts of the war-god, and the various ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... Knickerbockers improve upon that notion, by taking HOLLAND'S tickets. Remember how, in the early settlement of the country, it was Holland that made New-York, and see that New-York now returns the compliment, and makes HOLLAND. Convivial ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 5, April 30, 1870 • Various
... first: That we have three minutes to catch the train. Second: That, occupying the position we do in America,—you the member of a School Board and I the Honorary President of a Froebel Society,—we cannot be seen drinking lemonade from a bottle, in a public railway carriage; it would be too convivial. Third: You do not understand this gentleman. You have studied the language longer than I, but I have studied it more lately than you, and I am fresher, much fresher than you." (Here Salemina bridled obviously.) "The man is not saying that two francs is the price of the glass. He ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... year or so Lingard, having been brought often in contact with Almayer in the course of business, took a sudden and, to the onlookers, a rather inexplicable fancy to the young man. He sang his praises, late at night, over a convivial glass to his cronies in the Sunda Hotel, and one fine morning electrified Vinck by declaring that he must have "that young fellow for a supercargo. Kind of captain's clerk. Do all my quill-driving for me." Hudig ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... will come into doubtful possession of wealth, but your generosity will draw around you convivial friends, and women will seek to entrance and ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... thousand pounds! He could have cried. But, after all, he was a rich man—a very rich man; not so rich as Oppner, nor even so rich as Hague; but a comfortably wealthy man. Life was very good in his eyes. There were those little convivial evenings—those week-end motoring trips. He would take no chances. Life was worth more ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... brimming cup has this at least in common with the cup that inebriates: its possessor is usually filled with a generous—if sometimes maudlin—anxiety to have others enjoy his own form of beverage. The present writer is a case in point. His reason for making this book lay in a convivial desire to share with as many as possible the contents of a newly acquired brimming cup. Before getting hold of this cup, the writer would have looked with an indifferent and perhaps hostile eye upon the proposition to make such a blessing ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... settling of a forest country was accompanied here as elsewhere by the occasional ravages of strange and destructive pestilences and the constant presence of malaria. Population was soon thick enough for occasional gatherings, convivial or religious, and in either case apt to be wild, but for long it was not thick enough for the life of most settlers to be other than ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... parts of the island; and here too their companies appear to be more mixed, collected from greater distances, and not composed, as with the Rejang people, of a neighbourly assemblage of the old men and women of a few contiguous villages with their sons and daughters, for the sake of convivial mirth, of celebrating a particular domestic event, and promoting attachments and ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... in striking contrast to the essays in tone. Indeed, in the extracts from the newspaper criticisms prefixed to the volume of verse he was in several instances spoken of as the Baudelaire of America. They were alternately morbid and convivial in style, and were concerned largely with death, the rapture of the wine-cup, or the bitterness of unreciprocated attachment. I was inclined to be shocked at the outset, for I had never read anything of the sort before, as ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... neither ungraceful nor unamiable, led Addison into the two most serious faults which can with justice be imputed to him. He found that wine broke the spell which lay on his fine intellect, and was therefore too easily seduced into convivial excess. Such excess was in that age regarded, even by grave men, as the most venial of all peccadilloes, and was so far from being a mark of ill-breeding that it was almost essential to the character of a fine gentleman. But the smallest speck is seen on a white ground; ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... proceeded from the republicans that had appointed to feast at the tavern on the 14th of July; while, on the other hand, it was affirmed by the republicans that it had been written, printed, and distributed by the opposite party for the purpose of disturbing their convivial meeting. It was thought advisable to give up the feast, and notice was given to that effect; but mine host of the tavern represented that he had prepared the viands, and that they might feast without danger if they did not sit too long at the table, and so ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... impatiently, as to an ancient and outworn philosophy. "The business world doesn't take into account the wild oats of a man, General," he had said. "The new game isn't like the old one,—the convivial spirit is not the popular one among men of affairs. And that isn't the worst of it, with Barry's temperament there's danger of a breakdown, moral and physical. If it were not for that, he could come into your office and practice law, as you suggest. But he's got to get away from Washington. He's ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... inability ever to get a rise from the provoking creatures. The dry fly is difficult to use on a loch, as there is no stream to move it, and however gently you draw it it makes a "wake"—a trail behind it. Wet or dry, or "twixt wet and dry," like the convivial person in the song, we could none of us raise them. I did catch a small but beautifully proportioned and pink-fleshed trout with the alder, but everything else, silver sedge and all, everything from midge to May-fly, in the late twilight, was offered ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... is the old moral treatise, its form is new, and it is enlivened by a thin thread of narrative. The hero Euphues is a young man lately come from Athens, which is unmistakeably Oxford, to Naples, which is just as unmistakeably London. Here he soon becomes the centre of a convivial circle, where he is wise enough to distinguish between friend and parasite, to discern the difference between the "faith of Laelius and the flattery of Aristippus." The story thus opens bravely, but the words of the title-page, "most necessary to remember," are ever present ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... her, and this he did not care to do. He had reached an age when a man is mindful of the lime in his bones, and his 'cross-country riding was mostly a matter of memory and imagination, and best done around the convivial table. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... few, by signs, winks, and natural instinct, were drawn towards this convivial circle; but, notwithstanding all her efforts to make herself understood, Mrs. Manly was sadly hampered by the presence of a tub-like old lady who, with a small boy, was ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... off, his friends were no longer ready to move heaven and earth in order to bring him to their parties, though probably had he chosen he might have worked himself back "into society" in a slower but more permanent fashion. This, however, he did not choose, but fell back among the convivial middle class, the undistinguished and over merry, where nobody thought it too great humility to refer to Allan Ramsay and Fergusson as his models. It must be recollected, however, that his second visit to Edinburgh, and what seems in the telling a foolish and almost ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... out rapidly, and as we left we continued to take in the town, strolling by pairs and drinking moderately as we went. Flood had returned in the mean time, and seemed rather convivial and quite willing to enjoy the enforced lay-over with us. While taking a drink in Yellowstone Bob's place, the foreman took occasion to call the attention of The Rebel to a cheap lithograph of General Grant which hung behind the bar. The two discussed the merits of the picture, and Priest, ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... hour later the dormitory presented a convivial scene. An orchestra of five, seated on a hastily cleared dressing-table, were performing music with combs, while the rest of the company waltzed between the beds, with intervals of the fox-trot. Maudie Heywood and Cynthia Greene had accepted the inevitable, and joined the multitude. Apparently ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... chess and draughts; and sang a good song. His face was always smiling and joyous; his brow never wore the cloud of care, the pensive earnest expression of refined thought which was so apparent in his cousin. Godfrey made the room glad with his gay hearty laugh. He was the life and soul of the convivial board, and prince of good fellows. A woman must be happy with such a handsome good-natured husband, and the Captain hoped that his dear Julee would be the wife of ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... audience to take leave, did not omit to call him to account for his behavior to Granvella, and alluded particularly to the livery invented in derision of the cardinal. Egmont protested that the whole affair had originated in a convivial joke, and nothing was further from their meaning than to derogate in the least from the respect that was due to royalty. "If he knew," he said, "that any individual among them had entertained such disloyal ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... King Vortigern, inviting also to it, of course, many other distinguished guests. In the midst of the feast, when the king was in the state of high excitement produced on such temperaments by wine and convivial pleasure, Rowena came in to offer him more wine. Vortigern was powerfully struck, as Hengist had anticipated, with her grace and beauty. Learning that she was Hengist's daughter, he demanded her hand. Hengist at first declined, but, after sufficiently stimulating ...
— King Alfred of England - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... a mild and peaceable demeanor a moment afterwards behind the scenes. A poet, in his inspired moments, repeats his own verses in his garret with all the emphasis and fervour of enthusiasm; but when he comes down to dine with a mixed convivial company, his poetic fury subsides, a new train of ideas takes place in his imagination. As long as he has sufficient command over himself to lay aside his enthusiasm in company, he is considered as a reasonable, sensible man, and the more imagination he ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... But the convivial souls had lost to Dyer the days of their debauch, and until their thirst for recuperative "Pain Killer," "Hinckley" and Jamaica Ginger was appeased, they were not much good. Instead of keeping up to fifty thousand a day, as Radway had figured was necessary, ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... been already said in the notes, concerning the teachers of rhetoric; but it will not be useless to cite one passage more from Petronius, who in literature, as well as convivial pleasure, may be allowed to be arbiter elegantiarum. The rhetoricians, he says, came originally from Asia; they were, however, neither known to Pindar, and the nine lyric poets, nor to Plato, or Demosthenes. They arrived at Athens in evil hour, and imported with them that enormous ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... with a dry joke laughs the wretch to scorn. In company he delights to sit by silent and snug, sneering inwardly at those who are entertaining the company, and committing themselves. He never entertains, and is seldom entertained. His joys are neither convivial nor intellectual; he is gregarious, but not companionable; a hard drinker, but not social. Wine sometimes makes him noisy, but never makes him gay; and, whatever be his excesses, he commits them seemingly ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... interesting, for his face spoke of good living, the red of his complexion was evidently not entirely due to exposure to the sun, and the little sacs under the eyes indicated that he was apt to be the last of a convivial party ...
— Side Show Studies • Francis Metcalfe
... the country to the other, making every pothouse resound with tales of martial glory, and fearful accounts of 'Bony.' Even into remote Helpston the recruiting sergeant penetrated, taking up his quarters at the 'Blue Bell,' and with much political wisdom honouring the convivial meetings at Bachelors' Hall with occasional visits. John Clare's heart was stirred within him when, for the first time, he heard of golden deeds of valour in the field, and how men became great and famous ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... India were communicated to Europe in two ways. First, there was an oral diffusion. In friendly conversation round the family hearth, in the convivial intercourse of the tavern and divan, the wit and wisdom of the East found a home in the West. Having few opportunities of coming into close relations with Christian society, the Jews had only a small share in the oral diffusion of folk-tales. But there was another means of diffusion, namely, ...
— Chapters on Jewish Literature • Israel Abrahams
... regret at leaving it. An author[37] who has written on the subject, says: "To judge properly of the Basque, he should be seen amidst his pleasures and his games; for it is then that he exhibits his brilliant imagination. Often, in the joy of a convivial meeting—when his natural gaiety, excited by wine and good cheer, is arrived at that point of vivacity when man seems united to the chain of existence only by the link of pleasure—one of the guests will feel himself inspired: he rises; the tumult ceases; profound silence is established, ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... pretty well broken up, all except Laura's and Vanderdyke's. Soon after he graduated he was taken into the construction department of the Central Railroad by his uncle, who was a vice-president, and Laura and he were married. As far as I can learn he had been a fellow of convivial habits at college, and about two years after their marriage his wife suddenly became aware of what had long been well known in Williston, that Vanderdyke was paying marked attention to a woman named ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... to present him with a copy.... I arrived half an hour before Lamb, and had time to learn something of his peculiarities. Some family circumstances have tended to depress him of late years, and unless excited by convivial intercourse, he never shows a trace of what he once was. He is excessively given to mystifying his friends, and is never so delighted as when he has persuaded some one into a belief in one of his grave inventions.... There ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... ballads, that he was worthy of such an alliance. In writing, the professor eschewed gas light, and made use of the more classic lamp. A bottle of wine was his companion, and stood at his elbow until exhausted. This will perhaps explain much of the convivial character of the 'Notes.' The old-fashioned quill pen was his preference; and as the hours advanced, and mental excitement waxed in activity, the profuse spattering of ink rattled like rain. As a matter of course, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... poem I sent a short time since to a committee for a certain celebration. I understood that it was to be a festive and convivial occasion, and ordered myself accordingly. It seems the president of the day was what is called a "teetotaller." I received a note from him in the following words, containing the copy subjoined, with the emendations annexed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... passed rescinding at one stroke all Acts passed since 1633. Burnet's phrase about it is, for once, scarcely too strong. "It was a most extravagant Act, and only fit to be concluded after a drunken bout." In that it agreed only too closely with other projects devised by Middleton and his convivial band. Lauderdale protested; and this time, if we are to believe Burnet, Clarendon found himself obliged to side with the Scottish Minister ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... us, timid childhood on the other; respectable, yet somewhat feeble, old age is placed on our front; and all require those acts of politeness which ought to put every degree upon a level at the convivial board. But have we time—we the strong and active of the party—to perform the duties of the table to the more retired and bashful, to whom these little attentions are due? The lady should be pressed ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... can be attributed to no particular motive, must have proceeded from his general habit of secrecy and cunning; he caught an opportunity of a sly trick, and pleased himself with the thought of outwitting Bolingbroke. In familiar or convivial conversation, it does not appear that he excelled. He may be said to have resembled Dryden, as being not one that was distinguished by vivacity in company. It is remarkable that, so near his time, so much should be known of what he has written, and so little of what he has said: traditional memory ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... that the hard life was wearing upon him. Perhaps he was too convivial. There was hard drinking everywhere about him; and he did not abstain. He had supreme confidence in the lasting character of his own vitality. He might be ill for a few days occasionally, but he was soon up and actively ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... Arabs or Fellatahs, who penetrate thither in small numbers; yet they have a great deal of popular poetry. Every great man has bands of singers of both sexes, who constantly attend him, and loudly celebrate his achievements in extemporary poems. The convivial meetings of the people, even their labours and journeys, are cheered by songs composed for the occasion, and chanted ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... long waists, and their heads a good deal on one side, pointed their fans at him, while he washed his hands, with a coquetry irresistible, had their colours only stood, combining entreaty and command; while a jolly old boy in flowing wig, steel breast-plate, and the most convivial of noses, smiled in his face, as who should say, "Audaces Fortuna juvat!—Go in, my hearty, and win if ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... some with bayonets, too,' set out. Mackenzie, his servant, and three friends took a boat at Leith, with provision of wine, brandy, sugar, and lime juice; four more came, as a separate party, from Newhaven; the rest first visited an English man-of-war in the Firth, and then, in a convivial manner, boarded the 'Worcester.' The punch-bowls were produced, liquor was given to the sailors, while the officers of the 'Worcester' drank with the visitors in the cabin. Mackenzie was supposed to be a lord. All ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... show that du Maurier entertained the same sort of notions of "respectability" as his host, though he did things on a less magnificent scale. By temperament he was not quite a Bohemian, although he was convivial. It was the convivial side of the weekly Punch dinner that appealed to him. He abstained from these meetings, or came in late, when a tendency prevailed to make them too much, as he thought, ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... fortunate was our next victim, Mr. Purler, the Port Admiral of Mangerton-on-the-Mud, and the convivial host of the Metropolitan Inn. Wisely entering his house empty-handed, we left it with sheets, blankets, mattresses, pillows, table-cloths, napkins, knives, forks, spoons, crockery, a frying-pan, a gridiron, and a saucepan. When to these articles of domestic ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... Westmoreland was associated, as Chief Secretary, Mr. Hobart, formerly in the army, a man of gay, convivial habits, very accomplished, and, politically, very unprincipled. These gentlemen, both favourites of Pitt, adopted the counsellors, and continued the policy of the late Viceroy. In pursuance of this policy, a dissolution took place, and the general election of 1790 was ordered. ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... was not really the true one. He knew that she feared the temptation that would come to him, and he was by no means insensible to the perils that would beset him whenever he found himself in the midst of a convivial company, with the odor of wine heavy on the air and invitations to drink meeting ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... favorable opportunity to call at the rooms of Mr. Quentin. They found him the next morning sitting up in a comfortable chair, the picture of desolation, notwithstanding the mighty efforts of Dickey Savage and the convivial millionaire. The arrival of the party put new life into the situation, and it was not long before Phil ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... must be far spent; and so he could not but wonder why people should sit upon their balconies when they should have been asleep among their silks and furs. At first he had thought them the late guests of some convivial host; but the windows behind them were shrouded in darkness and utter quiet prevailed, quite upsetting such a theory. And as he proceeded he passed many another group sitting silently upon other balconies. They paid no attention to him, seeming ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... with ardor the careers of great conquerors like Caesar and Napoleon, and capable, too, of loyalty to party and to men. He had great personal magnetism: young men, especially, he charmed and held as no other public man could, now Clay was dead. His habits were convivial, and the vicious indulgence of his strong and masculine appetites, the only relaxation he craved in the intervals of his fierce activities, had caused him frequent illnesses; but he was still a young man, even by American standards, for the eminence he had attained. At ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown
... increased with the passing of the days. The constable watched him with the air of a proprietor, and Mrs. Cooper's remark that "her husband had had his eye upon him for a long time, and that he had better be careful for the future," was faithfully retailed to him within half an hour of its utterance. Convivial friends counted his cups for him; teetotal friends more than hinted that Cooper was in the employ of his ...
— Odd Craft, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... somewhat at fault, we have proof in occasional outcries over the absence of these or those particular persons famous for inspiriting. It sticks and clogs. The improvising songster is missed, the convivial essayist, the humorous Dean, the travelled cynic, and he, the one of his day, the iridescent Irishman, whose remembered repartees are a feast, sharp and ringing, at divers tables descending from the upper to the fat citizen's, where, instead ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... does not discover. First, it has never yet hired haunted house in which the sights and sounds continued during the tenancy of the curious observers. {137} The most obvious inference is that the earlier observers who saw and heard abnormal things were unscientific, convivial, nervous, hysterical, or addicted to practical joking. This, however, is not the only possible explanation. As a celebrated prophet, by his own avowal had been 'known to be steady for weeks at a time,' so, even in a regular haunted house, the ghost often takes a holiday. ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... person, who has proposed it. Thus many additional glasses are forced upon him. By this time the wine begins to act, when new toasts, of a new nature assail his ear, and he is stimulated to new potions. There are many toasts of so patriotic, and others of so generous and convivial a nature that a man is looked upon as disaffected, or as devoid of sentiment, who refuses them. Add to this, that there is a sort of shame, which the young and generous in particular feel in being outdone, and in not keeping pace with the rest, on such occasions. Thus toast being ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... reference to the tradition of Shakespeare's convivial tendencies is to be found in the legend of his visit to Bidford, six miles from Stratford, with a group of cronies to compare capacities with the Bidford Drinkers. According to the earliest version ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... nor was that of the latter much less; and when the dishes were removed and the tables cleared for their compotations, the faces of both gentlemen appeared as if they were about to explode. The table was now supplied with every variety of liquor, and the conversation began to assume that convivial tone peculiar to such assemblies. The little doctor was placed between Manifold and the Pythagorean, who, by the way, was exceedingly short-sighted; and on the other side of him sat Parson Topertoe, who seemed to feel something ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... kindness to him, "since you put it that way, I dare say I could do with a little snack, as you so aptly put it. Just a bite or two. Like you, my dear fellow, I loathe and detest eating alone. I covet companionship, convivial com—what ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... about the country with his actor-troupe, so now he was occasionally as frolic as a boy, dancing a hornpipe in the train for the amusement of his companions, compounding bowls of punch in which he shared but sparingly—for he was really convivial only in idea—and always considerate and kindly towards his companions and dependents. And mingled pathetically with all this are confessions of pain, weariness, illness, faintness, sleeplessness, internal bleeding,—all ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... nearly dinner-time," she said. "Your friend Mabelle, yes will be your convivial, and in her honour we will make a little feast. My beautiful flowers put them to the water, Kathleen. I run to buy the cakes. Wash the hands, all, and be ready when ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit
... imperceptible kink, could be virtuous. This instinctive conviction inflamed him. For the first time in his life he began to doubt the universal conquering quality of his own charms,—and when such a thing happens to a man like Ditmar he is in danger of hell-fire. He indulged less and less in the convivial meetings and excursions that hitherto had given him relaxation and enjoyment, and if his cronies inquired as to the reasons for his neglect of them he failed to answer with his ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... to her, she swept into such circles bearing a round box of candy, upon which was tied a large bow of satin ribbon of a convivial shade of heliotrope. Opening this box she handed it about, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... rosy-gilled, portly, and convivial, to whom a mass of bushy, white hair, an expansive double chin, and a certain prim sumptuousness of dress imparted an air of old-world distinction. Indeed, as he dipped an amethystine nose into his wine-glass, and gazed thoughtfully at the ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... happy in his surroundings there is ample reason to believe. He loved to be among men. He, too, was appreciated and eagerly sought because of his winning ways, his tolerance and liberality. He was moderately convivial though ...
— Priestley in America - 1794-1804 • Edgar F. Smith
... and when he had drank his tea he was quite ready to go home; and it was as much as his three companions could do, to entertain away his notice of the lateness of the hour, before the other gentlemen appeared. Mr. Weston was chatty and convivial, and no friend to early separations of any sort; but at last the drawing-room party did receive an augmentation. Mr. Elton, in very good spirits, was one of the first to walk in. Mrs. Weston and Emma were sitting together ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... Philadelphia, to enjoy himself, as he said, for the remainder of his days. He lived in what the sober Americans called a most luxurious and magnificent style. The best company in Philadelphia met at his house: and he delighted particularly in seeing those who had convivial talents, and who would supply him with wit and gaiety, in which ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... is, alas! poor Bucket gone? Farewell, convivial honest John. Oft at the well, by fatal stroke Buckets like pitchers must be broke. In this same motley shifting scene, How various have thy fortunes been. Now lifting high, now sinking low, To-day the brim would overflow. Thy bounty then would all supply To fill, and drink, and leave thee ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... his play brings to my mind a very trifling occurrence. Fenton was one day in the company of Broome, his associate, and Ford, a clergyman[25], at that time too well known, whose abilities, instead of furnishing convivial merriment to the voluptuous and dissolute, might have enabled him to excel among the virtuous and the wise. They determined all to see the Merry Wives of Windsor, which was acted that night; and Fenton, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... through the woods, and as he had been for several years Melchior's companion at school in Bologna, and had there learned to speak the sweet Italian tongue, he could talk with Frau Blanca like one of her own countrymen. He was a convivial person, and when he was in the tavern, or dining with a friend, he would expatiate on how learned the doctor was in all the secrets of nature and how well Dr. Vitali, Frau Bianca's father, had known how to cultivate her appreciation ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the windows. They had added a set of shelves made out of a box covered with American leather and brass-headed nails. A few books lay upon one shelf, and on another stood a collection of cups, saucers, and plates, cracked, perhaps, and not all matching, but suggestive of convivial parties and good cheer. In one corner lay a cushion embroidered in woolwork with magenta roses, pea-green leaves, and orange-coloured daisies, all upon a background of ultramarine blue. Mollie thought it gave an effective touch to the somewhat scanty furnishing—in ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... thing," declared the convivial spirit, not guessing how funny it really was. "You know," he continued, so loud that everyone in the vicinity could not fail to hear him, "the last time I met you two, you were on your honeymoon—on THIS VERY TRAIN," and with that the fellow sat himself down, uninvited, by Alfred's ...
— Baby Mine • Margaret Mayo
... a week of glory. The farewell dinner became a series. At the close of one convivial session Artemus went to a concert-hall, the "Melodeon," blacked his face, and delivered a speech. He got away from Virginia about ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... Union party. Thus it would seem that, at the eleventh hour, party lines were drawn against Robert Toombs, and his boast that he had saved the Union in 1850 probably cost him the presidency of the new republic. There was a story, credited in some quarters, that Mr. Toombs' convivial conduct at a dinner party in Montgomery estranged from him some of the more conservative delegates, who did not realize that a man like Toombs had versatile and reserved powers, and that Toombs at the banquet board was another sort of a man from ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... English tragedian, bought a farm near Philadelphia, and it is a positive fact that he is the first man who ever owned a fast trotting horse in America. He used to drive from the farm to rehearsal at the theatre, and I believe has been known on some occasions, when in convivial company, even to drive out at night afterwards. [Laughter.] Following and emulating the example of my illustrious predecessors I became a farmer. I will not allude to my plantation in Louisiana; my overseer takes care of that. I have not heard from him lately but I am told he takes ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... steps, none patrolled this side; I must have waited several minutes, lying concealed in the dense shrubbery, peering and listening, before becoming fully convinced. The omission brought a vague suspicion that Johnston might not be present after all—that this was instead a mere party of convivial officers. If so, the sooner I could convince myself the better, to make good our safe return. The thought urged ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... six feet tall, and none that we measured was under five feet nine inches. One young giant, Emmie-ray, was much interested in our researches. The whalers call him "Set-'em-Up," for his name bears the convivial translation, "Give us a drink." "You going to make better man, you get Outside—make him like Emmie-ray?" As Emmie-ray pursues the tenour of his Arctic way, hunting the walrus, standing, a frozen statue, ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... first time what a bitterly hard thing it is for a man in a large and wicked city to keep from soda when once he has got the habit. Everything was against me. The old convivial circle began to shun me. I could not join in their revels and they began to look on me as a grouch. In the end, I fell, and in one wild orgy undid all the good of a month's abstinence. I was desperate then. I felt that nothing could save me, and I might as well give up the struggle. ...
— A Wodehouse Miscellany - Articles & Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... drunkenness peculiar to the St. Kentigern laborers. Men passed him singly and silently, as if following some vague alcoholic dream, or moving through some Scotch mist of whiskey and water. Others clung unsteadily but as silently together, with no trace of convivial fellowship or hilarity in their dull fixed features and mechanically moving limbs. There was something weird in this mirthless companionship, and the appalling loneliness of those fixed or abstracted ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... Ulysses hath not lost, alone, His day of glad return; but many a Chief Hath perish'd also. Seek thou then again Thy own apartment, spindle ply and loom, And task thy maidens; management belongs 450 To men of joys convivial, and of men Especially to me, chief ruler here. She heard astonish'd; and the prudent speech Reposing of her son deep in her heart, Again with her attendant maidens sought Her upper chamber. There ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... lines in it, the twitching, tortured lines of the victim of premature high pressure, effete in one generation. The small man drank, most distinctly and disagreeably he drank. He might have been the wreck of saloon bars, or of the frequent convivial cocktail, ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... collaborators, although intimate friends, ultimately went different ways, for Fra Bartolommeo came under the influence of Savonarola, burned his nude drawings, and entered the Convent of S. Marco; whereas Albertinelli, who was a convivial follower of Venus, tiring of art and even more of art jargon, took an inn outside the S. Gallo gate and a tavern on the Ponte Vecchio, remarking that he had found a way of life that needed no knowledge ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... tobacco, cakes and wine. The account-books of the church and parish of St. Stephen, Norwich, for 1696-97 show 2s. as the price of a pound of tobacco. These entries, and many others of similar import, show that at feasts and at social and convivial gatherings of all kinds, tobacco maintained its ascendancy. Pipes and tobacco were included in the usual provision for city feasts, mayoral and other; and smoking was made a particular feature of the Lord Mayor's Show of 1672. A contemporary pamphleteer ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... filled with ineffable calm. The hum of convivial voices was hushed, the clicking billiard-balls were still, no merry groups of congenial spirits chatted in ante-room, or dining-room. All was strangely quiet, for most of the members were at the diggings, ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... leaders among the merchants of Montreal. The Company had an energy and ability that made them about the beginning of the nineteenth century the most influential force in Canadian life. At Fort William and Lachine their convivial meetings did something to make them forget the perils of the rapids and whirlpools of the rivers, and the bitterness of the piercing winds of the northwestern stretches. Familiarly they were known as the "Nor'-Westers." Shortly ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... been obliged to leave the table just when it was becoming most characteristic and convivial, and to retire forlorn and chilly in her silken gown to the Woolpack parlour, where she and the landlady drank innumerable cups of tea. It was an unwelcome reminder of the fact that she was a woman, and that no matter how ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... on occasion, and joined the military company of which Pierce was captain. His athleticism seems to have been confined to his form. He played cards for small stakes, being a member of the Androscoggin Loo Club, and he took his part in the convivial drinking of the set where he made one, winning the repute of possessing a strong head. These indulgences were almost too trifling to deserve mention, for the scale of life at Bowdoin was of the most inexpensive order, and though there was light gambling ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... the snow found its way in through divers apertures, but the warmth of the central fire filled the hovel. Their hosts produced a decoction of honey, called mead, of which a little went a long way, and soon they were all quite convivial. ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... known two people, who had no acquaintance with each other, make precisely the same joke—original in both cases. On the other hand, the rarity of genuine humour has given a permanent character to many clever sayings, and there has always been a demand for them to enliven the convivial and social intercourse of mankind. Their subtlety—the small points on which they turn—makes it difficult to remember them, but there will be always some men, who will treasure them for the delectation of their friends. It is remarkable ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... wits. The ready tongue and fluent pen might make a mark in the tavern and all London hear of it. Ben Jonson established the Apollo room at the "Devil Tavern" by Temple Bar and drew up his famous "Convivial Laws," which, while granting admittance to "learned, urbane merry goodfellows" and "choice women," forbade horseplay, and ...
— William Shakespeare - His Homes and Haunts • Samuel Levy Bensusan
... was nothing if not convivial. Writing to Temple and confessing that his London life had 'not been entirely as it ought to be,' he appeals to him for pity in his present surroundings. Imagine 'a young fellow,' he cries, 'whose happiness was always ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... Lord Clifford and his family, as his near relation and presumptive heir; They spent the evening in the pleasures of convivial mirth and hospitable entertainment. The next day Sir Philip began to open his mind to Lord Clifford, informing him that both his young friend and himself had received great injuries from the present Lord Lovel, for which they were ...
— The Old English Baron • Clara Reeve
... polished where Ibanez' is crudely vigorous, and with sympathy and understanding, he portrays Quentin, the natural son of a Marquis and a woman of humble birth; Pacheco, the ambitious bandit chief; Don Gil Sabadia, the garrulous and convivial antiquarian, and a ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... whole Tory party in a fierce opposition to the Government, which was becoming every day more unpopular. Harley was indefatigable in intrigues. "He fasted with religious zealots and feasted with convivial friends." He promised everything to everybody, but kept his ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... his character I knew well—I had known it of old—this was his excessive love of good wine. I aided and abetted him in this weakness, and whenever he visited me I took care that he should have his choice of the finest vintages. Often after a convivial evening spent in my apartments with a few other young men of his class and caliber, he reeled out of my presence, his deeply flushed face and thick voice bearing plain testimony as to his condition. On these occasions I used ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... to smile when the heart is breaking! to talk lightly and freely and mirthfully, when every feeling of the mind is wrung with unutterable agony; to mingle in the laugh and in the gay volleys of convivial fellowship, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... dingy stairway was in square view of the "National House," and the result is imaginable. How many of Joe's clients, especially those sorriest of the velvet gowns, were conjectured to ascend his stairs for reasons more convivial than legal! Yes, he lived with his own kind, and, so far as the rest of Canaan was concerned, might as well have worn the scarlet letter on his breast or branded ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... Government of the Netherlands; and with the aid of generous liquors, and what natural magnanimity he had, spent a noiseless life thenceforth; Sword laid entirely on the shelf; and immortal Glory, as of Alexander and the like, quite making its exit from the scene, convivial or other. 'The first General in the world,' so he used to be ten years ago, in Austria, in England, Holland, the thrice-greatest of Generals: but now he has tried Friedrich in Five pitched Battles (Czaslau, Hohenfriedberg, Sohr, then Prag, then Leuthen);—been beaten every time, under every ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... he would sing while we roared with laughter. He was also great in imitating the tin-foil phonograph.... When Boehm was in good-humor he would play his zither now and then, and amuse us by singing pretty German songs. On many of these occasions the laboratory was the rendezvous of jolly and convivial visitors, mostly old friends and acquaintances of Mr. Edison. Some of the office employees would also drop in once in a while, and as everybody present was always welcome to partake of the midnight meal, we all enjoyed these gatherings. After a while, when we were ready to resume ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... the Old East India Company gave, when we sat down about 400 people, and, as I was told, four pounds was paid for each guest. I mention this because I feel that not only has the Spartan diet of my early years given me a relish all through life for convivial entertainments, even if not quite at four pounds a head, but that the general self-denial which I had to exercise in my youth has made me feel a constant gratitude and sincere appreciation for the small comforts ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... valuable diamond ring, about a hundred and fifty dollars in bills, and his watch, papers, etc. A jovial, light-hearted young rancher, hailing originally from the Old Country, a bachelor of more or less convivial habits, he had enjoyed the hearty good-will of the country-side, incurring the enmity of no one, with the exception of Moran, as far as they knew. The latter's alibi having established his innocence beyond doubt, no definite clues were forthcoming as yet, beyond the foot-prints, the horse, and ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... knowing the treasure they possessed in Dr. Adam, encouraged a savage fellow, called Nicol, one of the undermasters, in insulting his person and authority. This man was an excellent classical scholar, and an admirable convivial humorist (which latter quality recommended him to the friendship of Burns); but worthless, drunken, and inhumanly cruel to the boys under his charge. He carried his feud against the Rector within an inch of assassination, for he waylaid and knocked him down in the dark. The favor which this ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume I (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... occasions, when they indulged in drunken festivities. Chastity was a virtue which was rigorously practiced. There were few cases of adultery among them, and the unfaithful wife was severely punished. Men and women, without seductive spectacles or convivial banquets, were fenced around with chastity, and bound together by family ties. Polygamy was unknown, and the marriage obligation was sacred. The wife brought no dowry to her husband, but received one from him, not frivolous presents, but oxen, a caparisoned steed, a shield, spear, and sword, ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... and the convivial din Of revelers in wanton glee, With tunes of harp and violin In ...
— Riley Love-Lyrics • James Whitcomb Riley
... you ever have a weakness. If you find one getting a hold on you, make a merit of it, he says. Your Uncle Phil doesnt like spirits; and he makes a merit of it, and is chairman of the Blue Ribbon Committee. I do like spirits; and I make a merit of it, and I'm the King Cockatoo of the Convivial Cockatoos. Never put yourself in the wrong, he says. I used to boast about what a good boy Bobby was. Now I swank about what a dog he is; and it pleases people just as well. What a world ...
— Fanny's First Play • George Bernard Shaw
... been followed by others. I transcribe with pleasure a convivial one contained in the following lines, which an ingenious and patriotic Dutchman addressed to his excellency Mr. Adams, on drinking to him out of a large beautiful glass, which is called a baccale, and had inscribed round its ...
— A Collection of State-Papers, Relative to the First Acknowledgment of the Sovereignty of the United States of America • John Adams
... the throne, in which the most remarkable points were a violent declaration against O'Connell, that is, against Irish agitation, and strong expressions of amity with France. It is comical to compare the language of the very silly old gentleman who wears the crown, in his convivial moments, and in the openness of his heart, with that which his Ministers cram into his mouth, each sentiment being uttered with equal energy and apparent sincerity. Lord Grey is said to have made a very good speech on the Address. The House ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... Fips of Austin Friars, present at the dinner, and turning out to be the jolliest old dog that ever did violence to his convivial sentiments by shutting himself up in a dark office. 'Where is he?' said Fips, when he came in. And then he pounced on Tom, and told him that he wanted to relieve himself of all his old constraint; and ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens |
