"Gaiety" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... she. "You mistake my character. I'm not at all anxious for London parties and gaiety. Stupid as you may think me, I'm quite as well contented to stay here as I should be ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... square up once more and stride off, jaunty as a young man. He was tired and, although the late sun was still shining, curiously cold, with a numbed feeling all over. Quite suddenly he hadn't the energy, he hadn't the heart to stand this gaiety and bright movement any longer; it confused him. He wanted to stand still, to wave it away with his stick, to say, "Be off with you!" Suddenly it was a terrible effort to greet as usual—tipping his wide-awake ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... hear the distant strain of the orchestra, and the various noises of a great crowd of people. But this little dark room, with its sharply defined oval of light, was utterly shut off from the scene of gaiety. I was aware of an involuntary shiver, and for the life of me I could not keep my gaze steadily on the face of the tall woman who sat so still, with such impressiveness, on the other side of the table. I waited for her to proceed, and after what ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... of a child. Jane mourned and wept; Adeline had at least the merit of activity, and made herself useful as an assistant nurse, in preparing whatever was needed by her brother. These two young women, who had been so often together in brilliant scenes of gaiety, were now, for the first time, united under a ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... This is a glorious country; but not for such as you, dear, who love music and gaiety. I often fear you'll not be happy here, and then I long for the old home, which reminds me ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... Mr. Amidon, "if I have contributed my share to the gaiety of the occasion, I shall beg now to be ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... not to be thought of. He soon found himself on the high-road to Irbit, crowded with an innumerable mass of sledges, going or returning to the fair. It is the season of gain and good humor, and the people show it by unbounded gaiety. Piotrowski took courage, returned the salutations of the passers-by—for how could he be distinguished in such a crowd? The gates of Irbit were reached on the third day. "Halt, and shew your passport," cried an official; ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... actors and actresses lead gay lives! Could anything be more dull than the life of an actor in a repertory theatre? Daily rehearsals in a dingy and draughty theatre and nightly performances in half-rehearsed plays!... "Give me the life of a bank clerk for real gaiety," he murmured. "An actor's just a drudge ... and a dull drudge, too! Very uninteresting people, actors!... Why the devil did I ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... talking with charming earnestness to the man on her other hand. The amber radiance flickered over the beautiful curves of her shoulders and cast a warm shadow at the base of her throat. She smiled at her son; and her face, in spite of its present gaiety, held a definite reminder of her years, almost fifty; but when she turned again her profile, with slightly tilted nose and delightfully fresh lips and chin, was that of a girl no older than Caroline. Howat had often noticed this. It was amazing—with ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... the dance came to an end. The sun had been gone a long time, and all the pink shades had slowly turned to grey; the creek had lost its radiant colour, and looked like a silver mirror, and so desolate and sombre, that no one could have imagined it to have been the scene of so much gaiety shortly before. ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... night was a season of gaiety in Scotland, but Scotland wasn't in it with the Fatherland. Even Schenk, though he was in charge of valuable stores and was voyaging against time, was quite clear that the men must have permission for some kind of beano. Just before darkness we came abreast a fair-sized town, whose name I never ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... that Captain Wow regarded his, Underhill's, brains as silly. What Captain Wow liked was Underhill's friendly emotional structure, the cheerfulness and glint of wicked amusement that shot through Underhill's unconscious thought patterns, and the gaiety with which Underhill faced danger. The words, the history books, the ideas, the science—Underhill could sense all that in his own mind, reflected back from Captain Wow's mind, ...
— The Game of Rat and Dragon • Cordwainer Smith
... passing remark upon our domestic kings: because they are not hereditary, we may suppose. The ballad of 'The Duke and the Dairymaid,' ascribed with questionable authority to the pen of Mr. Beamish himself in a freak of his gaiety, was once popular enough to provoke the moralist to animadversions upon an order of composition that 'tempted every bouncing country lass to sidle an eye in a blowsy cheek' in expectation of a coronet for her ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... again from a trip to the Hindoo Koosh or the Mountains of the Moon, I suppose?" cried Merton with overflowing gaiety. ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... gentlemen, how time doth fly in talk!—this Christian goeth his way. We, each in accord with his caprice and conscience, go ours. We envy him not his vapours, his terrors, or his shameless greed of reward. Why, then, doth he envy us our wealth, our success, our gaiety, our content? He raves. He is haunted. What is man but as grass, and the flower of grass? Come the sickle, he is clean gone. I can but repeat it, sir, our poor neighbour was crazed: 'tis Christian ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... find it a nuisance to count all the blades of grass or all the leaves of the trees; but this would not be because of our boldness or gaiety, but because of our lack of boldness and gaiety. The bore would go onward, bold and gay, and find the blades of grass as splendid as the swords of an army. The bore is stronger and more joyous than we are; he is a demigod—nay, he is a god. For it is the gods who do not tire ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... I find, Tom; all life, spirit, and gaiety, nothing like a hit, and I suppose you now think you have a palpable one. Never mind, I am not easily disconcerted, therefore you may play off the artillery of your wit without much chance of obtaining a triumph; but however, ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... a roguish and irresponsible mood seized upon Clematis; he laid his nose upon the ground, deliberating a bit of gaiety, and then, with a little rush, set a large, rude paw upon the sensitive face of Flopit and capsized him. Flopit uttered a bitter complaint ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... should be left in the room. Strange half-shadows quivered on the walls, thrown by the fanciful play of the fire in the hearth and the flame of the punch... a soft, exceedingly agreeable sense of soothing comfort replaced in our hearts the somewhat boisterous gaiety that ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... many of the boys who had relatives in Ireland within reaching distance took advantage of the fact to pay them a visit. Mrs. Anson and I spent the day in driving about the city visiting Phoenix Park and other places of interest, and that evening we attended the "Gaiety Theater," where a laughable comedy called "Arabian ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... was passed at the Observatory, and afterwards we walked in the country without being observed, for the chiefs had not yet recovered from the effects of last night's gaiety: but we had not gone a mile before Jeeroo overtook us. We were very anxious to gain the brow of a neighbouring hill, from which we imagined there would be a good view of the palace; but although Jeeroo was the most obliging creature in the world on every other occasion, ...
— Account of a Voyage of Discovery - to the West Coast of Corea, and the Great Loo-Choo Island • Captain Basil Hall
... they crowded into their borough towns, into Eastlake, at every opportunity, attracted by the gaiety, the lights, the stir, the contact with humanity. Before prohibition they had drunk at the hotel bars, and driven home, with discordant laughter and the urged clatter of hoofs, to the silence of star-lit fields. The buggies had gone; High ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... stayed with its Gargantuan bill of fare, and its abonnes from the town, ruddy, full-fleshed citizens, whose achievements in the way of eating and drinking we watched with amazement. Even the cathedral seemed to me to breathe the richness and gaiety of this central France; the sculptures of the facade with its famous "laughing angel" expressed rather the joy of living, of fair womanhood, of smiling maternity, and childhood, of the prime of youth and the ...
— Fields of Victory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the gaiety of Paris that our soldiers spread the fame of America. In the peaceful countrysides far behind the flaming fronts, the Yankee fighting men won their way into the hearts of the French people. Let me tell you the story ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... young it groweth in a clime of its own, plagued by no heat of the sun nor rain nor wind; in careless gaiety it builds up its days till it is no longer maid, but wife; then in the night it hath its meed of cares, terrified for lord or children. Only such a one can know from the sight of her own sorrows what is my ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... around the corner to be out of sight of the store, during this gaiety, and the old man now shoved Seffy and the girl out in front of him, linked their arms, and retreated to ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... this outpour of revelation by confiding to the two ladies his design for the work with which he had been haunted; they smiled and promised him their assistance. The youngest, with an air of gaiety suggested one of the first chapters of the undertaking, by saying that she would take upon herself to prove mathematically that women who are entirely ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part I. • Honore de Balzac
... was in a perpetual whirl of affairs and gaiety. All her days, and her nights into the small hours, seemed to be filled. At this time Mary had a great deal of her time to herself. In the morning she wrote her Ladyship's letters, and selected from the newspapers such things as her Ladyship ought to read. By-and-by she would be much ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... hollow cheeks and shrunken chests and wrinkled foreheads by squinting at the sun.... Even the women are tiny things with a perpetual smile that pushes up their high cheek bones into a horn-like prominence and apparently belies their apparent gaiety.... The belts of these men are perfect arsenals of curious-looking things.... With their cloth caps with ear flaps hanging down, their knee breeches and their linen shirts hung with a dozen prayer wheels, they characterize this ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... respectable furniture and swarming servants, was one to be proud of. Ellen's position as Squire Joanna Godden's sister was much better than if she were living by herself in some small place on a small income. Her brief adventure into what she thought was a life of fashionable gaiety had discouraged and disillusioned her—she was slowly slipping back into the conventions of her class and surroundings. Ansdore was no longer either a prison or a refuge, it was beginning to be a home—not permanent, of course, for she was now a free woman and would marry again, but ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... on setting out a pie and making a hot cup of coffee. Alfred was highly complimented that he had kept his promise to return. Alfred accepted the praises with a conscience stricken feeling that kept him miserable under his assumed gaiety. ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... the thin mysterious voice of little Mary Alice Smith herself that so often queried and responded as above— every word accented with a sweet and eery intonation, and a very gaiety of solemn earnestness that baffled the cunning skill of all childish imitators. A slender wisp of a girl she was, not more than ten years in appearance, though her age had been given to us as fourteen. The spindle ankles that she so airily flourished from ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... a vague notion, that generally, if what we mean by an early change from childishness to manliness be that we should become religious, then, although it may not exhaust the powers, or injure the health, yet it would destroy the natural liveliness and gaiety of youth, and by bringing on a premature seriousness of manner and language, would be unbecoming and ridiculous. Now, in the first place, there is a great deal of confusion and a great deal of folly in the common notions ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... the society of men, and would sing and be delightful only for the applause of women, it mattered little whether one circle was more talented than another.' At length Mr. Moore was announced, and the poet, 'sliding his little feet up to Lady Blessington, made his compliments with an ease and gaiety, combined with a kind of worshipping deference, that were worthy of a prime minister at the Court of Love.... His eyes still sparkle like a champagne bubble, though the invader has drawn his pencillings about the corners; and there is a kind of wintry red that seems enamelled on ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... was parking room for motors on each side of the road, and there were saloons, tawdry and bright, each one noisy with its mechanical piano, and there were barbers' shops and tobacconists. There was a stir in the air and a sense of expectant gaiety. You turned down a narrow alley, either to the right or to the left, for the road divided Iwelei into two parts, and you found yourself in the district. There were rows of little bungalows, trim and neatly ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... party, than that they formed a less striking exception to the conventional picture of the appearance of those engaged in tending flocks, than the truth ordinarily betrays; and that their buoyant gaiety, blooming faces, and unweaned action, formed a good introductory preparation for the saltation that ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... the disease was not hinted at until evening, when one of the men died. Soon after midnight, the other followed. A minister making the voyage home, Rev. J. G. Fackler, read the burial service. The gaiety of the passengers, who had become well acquainted during the Pacific voyage, was subdued. When the word "cholera" went among them, faces grew grave and frightened. On the morning of January 4th Reverend Fackler's services were again ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... and Madame Jules showed to each other those particular attentions in which there is always something of affectation. There were glances of forced gaiety, which seemed the efforts of persons endeavoring to deceive themselves. Jules had involuntary doubts, his wife had positive fears. Still, sure of each other, they had slept. Was this strained condition the effect of a want of faith, or was it only a memory of their nocturnal ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... twined his feet among the rungs of his chair, and heaved a sigh of contentment from the breathing spaces of his innermost soul; for this mud honey was clarified sweetness to his taste. The sham gaiety, the hectic glow of counterfeit hospitality, the self-conscious, joyless laughter, the wine-born warmth, the loud music retrieving the hour from frequent whiles of awful and corroding silence, the presence of well-clothed and frank-eyed beneficiaries of Rooney's removal of ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... courtiers; she had commanded the chivalry of young and splendid nobles, she had lived to see one of her favourites die and to send another to the block; and now she herself was dying. She knew it, and she would not hear of death. She was never so ready for the gaiety she could not enjoy. Her strength left her, she was a skeleton; still she sat with her dress unchanged, staring before her, flashing sudden rages at her ministers, rallying at the mention of an heir's name. Beauchamp, heir to the Suffolks, they put forward; she cried out he was the son ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... of The Chief, Not in gaiety, nor grief; Change not by your art to stone, Ireland's laugh, or Ireland's moan. Dark her tale, and none can tell Its fearful chronicle so well. Her frame is bent—her wounds are deep— Who, like him, her woes ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... through the squalid streets was quite triumphal. A large juvenile crowd attended me, with appropriate vocal music, and adults cheered from the pavements, though no one embarrassed me with gifts. But, for all my outward gaiety, I was secretly anxious. It was barely ten o'clock and many hours of the dreary November day had yet to run before it would be safe for me to approach my destination. The prospect of tramping the streets for some ten or twelve hours with this very conspicuous appendage was far from ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... gaiety of our cottage life, previous to the departure of our elder brothers for Conway, and the constant field-sports in which she indulged with John, proved too much for a frame never ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... expresses creative power, producer of forms. And these gods received a worship analogous to their attributes, real or imaginary; which worship was divided into two branches, according to their characters. The good god receives a worship of love and joy, from which are derived all religious acts of gaiety, such as festivals, dances, banquets, offerings of flowers, milk, honey, perfumes; in a word, everything grateful to the senses and to the soul.* The evil god, on the contrary, received a worship of fear and pain; whence originated all religious acts of the gloomy sort,** tears, desolations, ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... room and dressed. There was a wild recklessness of gaiety in his manner as he sat at table, but now and then a thrill of terror ran through him when he remembered that, pressed against the window of the conservatory, like a white handkerchief, he had seen the face of James ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... was to be had, apparently for the asking. Margaret's sweet face, opposite him, was radiant; it struck Mr. Montfort that he had never seen her look so pretty before. The delicate rose-flush on her cheek, the light in her eyes, an indescribable air of gaiety, of ...
— Fernley House • Laura E. Richards
... slight appearance of surprise, as though he had expected to be asked to stop. Giving his hand to Irene, he allowed himself to be conducted to the door, and let out into the street. He would not have a cab, he would walk, Irene was to say good-night to Soames for him, and if she wanted a little gaiety, well, he would drive her down ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... that as I stood on the hearthrug with my husband, receiving their rather crude compliments, a vague gaiety came over me, and I smiled and laughed, although my heart was growing sick, for the effect of the wedding-service was ebbing away into a cold darkness like that of a night tide when the ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... work, and so did Mr. GEORGE BARRETT, a humourist by gift of nature. Mr. GEORGE GROSSMITH, who with Mr. LAURILLARD has made out of the old Middlesex a most attractive and spacious "Winter Garden," brought with him the traditions of the Gaiety, and had a warm personal welcome. I could bear him to be funnier than he was; but as I'm sure that he's clever enough to be anything he likes I can only assume that he ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 28, 1919. • Various
... But the feeling that I had when, whilst poor Florence was taking her morning bath, I stood upon the carefully swept steps of the Englischer Hof, looking at the carefully arranged trees in tubs upon the carefully arranged gravel whilst carefully arranged people walked past in carefully calculated gaiety, at the carefully calculated hour, the tall trees of the public gardens, going up to the right; the reddish stone of the baths—or were they white half-timber chalets? Upon my word I have forgotten, I ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... had seen on it when she had looked in at him from the darkness and again there came over her a sense of the mysterious distance between them; but usually his fits of abstraction were followed by bursts of gaiety that chased away the shadow before ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... has no right to force their mentioning it. This leads us, then, to the conclusion that the aim of conversation is to distract, to interest, to amuse; not to teach nor to be taught, unless incidentally. In good conversation people give their charm, their gaiety, their humor, certainly—and their wisdom, if they will. But conversation which essentially entertains is not essentially nonsense. Some one has drawn this subtle distinction: "I enter a room full of pleasant people as I go to see a picture, or listen ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin
... carry herself quite differently. Much less afraid of him, she was the more watchful to minister to his wants, dared a loving liberty now and then in spite of his coldness, took his objurgations with something of the gaiety of one who did not or would not believe he meant them, and when he abused Gibbie, did not answer a word, knowing events alone could set him right in his idea of him. Rejoiced that he had not laid hold of the ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... You see, in letting off your witticism at a Scotchman, you would have to explain that it was a joke. You might also hint that it was "hard lines" for the Railway Companies concerned; but this will provoke gloom rather than gaiety amongst those who have invested in Caledonians and North British. If you talk about the riots in connection with the movement, you might say that the pugnacious rioters remind you of safety matches, "for they not only strike, ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 17, 1891 • Various
... we went to London, and reached there early in July, just about the height of the London social season. Parliament was in session, and there was a great deal of gaiety. Mr. Garrison and other friends had provided us with a large number of letters of introduction, and they had also sent letters to other persons in different parts of the United Kingdom, apprising these people of our coming. Very soon ...
— Up From Slavery: An Autobiography • Booker T. Washington
... for the secret police. The gorgeous state uniforms of the marshals, the rich and elegant costumes of the ladies, the bespangled and begilt coats of the household, dancing, theatricals, concerts, and excursions—all these elements should have combined to create brilliancy and gaiety in the imperial circle, but they ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... fell on her knees beside Eleanor, and took the other's thin hands into her own. Her face, thrown back, had lost its gaiety; her mouth quivered. ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... therefore, was generally his companion, and was, indeed, in a short time invited for his own sake; for the Scottish officers were regarded in a different light to the Prussians, and their pleasant manners and frank gaiety made them general favourites. ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... the undergrowth. For a moment she stopped to admire him as the moonlight gleamed on a white star in the centre of his forehead. Then away she jumped, dodging round the bushes and hither and thither among the grassy tangles, while her admirer followed, frisking and leaping in sportive gaiety. Another jack-hare now came along the hedgerow. In utter mischief, Puss called "leek, leek, leek," as if pretending to be in distress and in need of help. "Leek, leek," came the low response, as, quickening his pace, ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... ours is one seamless stuff of brown. Not that we are without apparent festivity, but festivity more or less forced, mistaken, embittered, incomplete—not of the heart. How wonderfully, since Shakspere's time, have we lost the power of laughing at bad jests! The very finish of our wit belies our gaiety. ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... childhood tarried with her into girlhood. Like the old inscription of the sun-dial, she seemed to "count none but sunny hours." But those who knew her best saw that the shadows of life also left their marks upon her. At times the gaiety was displaced by seriousness. Mother Bab knew of the struggles in the girl's heart. Granny Hogendobler could have told of the hours Phoebe spent with her consoling her for the absence of Nason, mitigating the cruel stabs of the thoughtless people ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... bread and cake, several indigenous preserves; and Robert could not help going back with aching heart to the scant supply of meagre fare at home; he saw again his sweet pale mother trying to look cheerful over the poor meal, and Linda keeping up an artificial gaiety, while her soul was sick of stints and privations. His face grew stern and sad at the memory; enjoyment or amusement was criminal for him while they were suffering. So when, by and by, Mr. Holt invited him ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... present conflict, and stimulated by the vivid interest of undetermined issues. If this be a well-grounded plea, and it may be so, then of course it excludes a contrast not only with Burke, but also with Bolingbroke, whose fine manners and polished gaiety give us a keen sense of the grievous garishness of Macaulay. If we may not institute a comparison between Macaulay and great actors on the stage of affairs, at least there can be no objection to the introduction of Southey as a standard of comparison. Southey was a man of letters pure and simple, ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley
... rhythm; the term being derived from giga (German, geige)—an early name for fiddle—on account of the power of accent associated with the violin family. The Gigue is always the closing number of Bach's Suites, in order to give a final impression of irrepressible vitality and gaiety, and is treated with considerable polyphonic complexity; in fact, his gigues often begin like a complete Fugue. They are all in clear-cut Two-part form; and it became the convention for the second part to treat ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... that way, None that I know,— The essence of all Gaiety lay, Of all mad mirth that men may know, In that sad smile, serene and slow, That on your ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.
... contented. The guest was, indeed, one of those men whose animal spirits exercise upon such as come within their circle the influence and power usually ascribed only to intellectual qualities. During the month he had sojourned with Caleb, he had brought back to the poor parson all the gaiety of the brisk and noisy novitiate that preceded the solemn vow and the dull retreat;—the social parties, the merry suppers, the open-handed, open-hearted fellowship of riotous, delightful, extravagant, thoughtless YOUTH. And Caleb was not a bookman—not ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 1 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... made Henri snigger indeed, remembering those days, now it seemed so long ago, when he and Jules had been among the elegants of the city. Yet, if these two young soldiers had known what luxury meant, and what it was to lead a life of gaiety, they were none the less good soldiers of France, destined to prove themselves, indeed, as noble as any of those comrades about them. Seated there on the fire-bench, where a man could stand and level his rifle in the direction of the enemy, they and the Sergeant sipped their bowls of soup with relish, ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... poets, from the example of a gallant king and sprightly court, have learned, in their comedies, a tone of light discourse and raillery, in which the solidity of English sense is blended with the air and gaiety of their French neighbours; in short, that those who call Jonson's the golden age of poetry, have only this reason, that the audience were then content with acorns, because they knew not the use of bread. In all this criticism there was much ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... You cannot imagine the upheaval it caused in me. It must be that she had something within her that I lacked, and had always lacked! It was her wonderful naturalness; everything she did was done with more charm and gaiety than I found in any one else, and she was quite unconscious of it herself. I used to ask myself what was the reason of it—how it could be that it had been her lot to grow up so free and wholesome. I realised ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... tragedy, but also never without fun. The world is, of course, the comparatively passive feminine world, but few modern books (if any) have treated of that world so happily, with such complete acceptance, unbiassed and unprejudiced, yet with such selective tact and variety of gaiety. She comes to the complete understanding of Henrietta by illuminating all the facets in her character and all the threads of her destiny, and this is an unusual achievement, made all the more remarkable by a brightness and quickness of mind which give delightful life to a multitude of incidents ...
— The Third Miss Symons • Flora Macdonald Mayor
... brought some bread, some Parmesan cheese and water, laughing all the while, and then we went to work. The wine, to which they were not accustomed, went to their heads, and their gaiety was soon delightful. I wondered, as I looked at them, at my having been blind enough not to see ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... was now perfectly happy. He had got a lodger at last, of just his own way of thinking—a serious, well-disposed man, who abhorred gaiety, and loved retirement. He took down the bill with a light heart, and pictured in imagination a long series of quiet Sundays, on which he and his lodger would exchange mutual civilities ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... want opportunities for enjoying himself; as, after suffering a penitential confinement to the house during the long rainy season, for some time before Christmas, the cool nights and other circumstances induce the residents to break out into greater gaiety than is prevalent at other seasons of the year; and amusement, about that time, generally appears to be the order of ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... way, seemed to him the soul of spirited and gracious ease—unconscious of everybody and everything save the spirit of the dance itself as a medium of sweet emotion, of some far-off, dreamlike spirit of gaiety. He wondered. ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... world for being of a vain lightness, having nothing of that devotion to good works which Mr. Mappin had seen so often on those high levels where the rich and the aristocratic lived. There was, then, more than beauty and wit and great social gift, gaiety and charm, in this delicate personality? Yes, there was something good and sound in her, after all. Her husband's life was in infinite danger,—had not Brengyn said that his chances were only one in a thousand?—death ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... steps to a narrow frame back porch littered with parts of a broken cream-separator. She told herself that she was simple and friendly in going to the back door instead of the front, and it was with gaiety that she knocked on the ill-jointed screen door, ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... Russians predominated. By listening attentively, our friends thought they could distinguish very many different languages and dialects; and all were speaking in an earnest, energetic way, showing that they had met for business, and not for pleasure. There was, in truth, no gaiety either in their manner or their costume; for their dresses also were of somewhat grave, sombre colours, though here and there gay sashes, or caps, or vests, or turbans were to be seen. They walked up and down the long lanes of booths, in which the traders sat in state ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... overturning all subterfuge and evil devices by plain questionings. His quick perception, his long training in his profession gave him that divining sense which goes to the depths of conscience and reads its secret thoughts. Though grave and deliberate in business, the patriarch could be gay with the gaiety of our ancestors. He could risk a song after dinner, enjoy all family festivities, celebrate the birthdays of grandmothers and children, and bury with due solemnity the Christmas log. He loved to send presents at New Year, and ...
— The Marriage Contract • Honore de Balzac
... of whom consoles the fiddler in the face of her husband—such is the choice company. The action is mere by-play, drunken love making; the main point is the songs. They are mostly frank autobiography, all pervaded with the gaiety that comes from the conviction that being at the bottom, they need not be anxious about falling. Wine, women, and song are their enthusiasms, and only the song is above the lowest ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... of the Nibelung! He who marvels at the rapid succession of the two operas, Tristan and the Meistersingers, has failed to understand one important side of the life and nature of all great Germans: he does not know the peculiar soil out of which that essentially German gaiety, which characterised Luther, Beethoven, and Wagner, can grow, the gaiety which other nations quite fail to understand and which even seems to be missing in the Germans of to-day—that clear golden and thoroughly fermented mixture of simplicity, deeply discriminating love, observation, ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... not," said Hoffland, with one of his strange transitions from gaiety to thoughtfulness; "I wear more ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... twenty-four; she was fair to an excess, had fine-turned features, and an air which her ecclesiastic habit could not deprive of its freedom; but the enchanting manner of her conversation, her wit, and the gaiety that accompanied all she said, so much astonished and transported him, that he cried out, without knowing that he did so, 'Good God!—is it possible a monastery can contain such charms!'—She affected to treat ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... Anne," replied Hezekiah, "it's all the other way—pleasure, gaiety, a day at Rosherville or the ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... a story," she said, with a gaiety thrown out for rousing him, "a very fine story;—every one must listen." He looked over at her and smiled at ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... nor thirsty," said Dominick, with an air of somewhat forced gaiety, "and our clothes are getting dry. Come, sister, you must be weary. Lie down at the inner side of the cave, and Otto and I, like faithful knights, will guard the entrance. I—I wish," he added, in a graver tone, and with some hesitation, "that we had a Bible, that we might ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne
... friend, the Cerebral does not make many friends and does not care for many. He is too abstract to add to the gaiety of social gatherings, for these are based on the ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... these days, who so cheery as Black Roger, full of a new-found gaiety, who laughed for small reason and ofttimes for none at all and was forever humming snatches of strange song as he stooped above pipkin and pannikin. Much given was he also to frequent comings and goings within the green to no apparent end, while Beltane, within the ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... objections to the gaiety of my dress; and told me, that if she went to St. Paul's, she could go in a ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... few friendships, had kept her curiously ignorant of evil, of much also that is neither good nor evil, but merely human. The sombre sentimentality which lurks in most young girls of seventeen was not in her character at all, and in its stead she possessed the gaiety and carelessness of feeling which belongs to imaginative rather than to sensuous natures. A boy-like spirit showed itself in all her words, movements, moods; her womanhood still slept, and thus, while ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... fierce a blow that gangrene set in and he died of the wound. While he was on his death-bed, he was called upon by one of his old friends, whom his wife reproached with having been the last to get him drunk. Whereupon the dying man spoke up with the gaiety for which he was famous, "That's true, my dear, and when I get well he shall be the first to ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... heart," Lucia said in a very low sorrowful tone, all her gaiety disappearing before the terrible idea—"the only thing that is good for her is to be quiet and happy—and the last few months have been so dreadful, she ...
— A Canadian Heroine - A Novel, Volume 3 (of 3) • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... Li'l boy, eh? Fling—me know!" He took the emigrant's hand again and shook it, smiling and looking him straight in the eyes with innocent gaiety. "These boys—no good; no good now. Pete, he fling so. Li'l boy—quite li'l boy. Me know, eh? ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... simply, as they say in Bursley, knocked silly by Ella. He honestly imagined her to be the wonderfullest woman on the earth's surface, with her dark eyes and her expressive sympathetic gestures, and her alterations of seriousness and gaiety. It astounded him that a girl of twenty-one could have thought so deeply upon life as she had. The inexplicable thing was that she looked up to HIM. She evidently admired HIM. He wanted to tell her that she was quite wrong ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... was the blissful reply. "Sarah is coming to the supper. She's filling her old 'bus up with peaches from the Gaiety. Not being allowed to sit inside with any of them, ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the setting up of Maypoles, and other manly sports), they had substituted some vicious ones. Alehouses were more frequented, drunkenness more general, tale-mongery and sedition, the vices of sedentary idleness, prevailed, while a fanatical gloom was spreading over the country. The King, whose gaiety of temper instantly sympathised with the multitude, being perhaps alarmed at this new shape which Puritanism was assuming, published the Book of Sports, which soon obtained the contemptuous name of 'The Dancing Book'" (Life of James, p. 135). In reply ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... shadow of the tall trees into the open glade effulgent with flowers, his gaiety seems to have reached its climax: it breaks forth in song; and for some minutes the forest re-echoes the well-known lay of "Woodman spare that tree." Whence this joyous humour? Why are those eyes sparkling ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... things]?" The passion plays of the Rhine valley followed those of France. Those of the fourteenth century lacked the rude jests and ghoulish interest of those of France in the fifteenth. The street public never tired of the horrors of executions, or of the low gaiety of funerals, etc. The "sot" first appeared in the Passion de Troyes at the end of the fifteenth ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... in turn and looked for it, but it was not there either. It should have consisted, I gather, of "gorgeously-coloured dahlias, gay sunflowers, Michaelmas daisies, gladioli and other autumn blossoms, adding brightness and gaiety ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 29th, 1920 • Various
... is not fit to be the wife of such a man as Edward Leslie. For him, a cold, calculating woman of the world were a better companion. One who has her own selfish ends to gain; and who can find, in fashion, gaiety, or personal indulgence, full compensation for ...
— Heart-Histories and Life-Pictures • T. S. Arthur
... sub-tropical zones—that dryness of atmosphere, that limpidezza of the air. Here in every respect the climate is altered. Here another kind of sensuality, another kind of sensitiveness and another kind of cheerfulness make their appeal. This music is gay, but not in a French or German way. Its gaiety is African; fate hangs over it, its happiness is short, sudden, without reprieve. I envy Bizet for having had the courage of this sensitiveness, which hitherto in the cultured music of Europe has found no means of ...
— The Case Of Wagner, Nietzsche Contra Wagner, and Selected Aphorisms. • Friedrich Nietzsche.
... bravery that she probably felt to be a sham all the while. "I believe it is my turn now. Dear me, how heavy that thunder is! Try and amuse yourselves, good people, while I 'follow in the footsteps of my illustrious predecessor'!" and with an affectation of gaiety that was a little transparent, she obeyed the summons of the black girl who at that moment made her appearance again outside the curtain, ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... weapon could I use, composing-stick or dung-fork, upon an anonymous correspondent of the hawkers' and newsboys' "Hecker," the favourite ha'porth of East London? So I left him to the tender mercies of Gaiety ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... a true and enduring devotion, and the troubles inseparable from a constant financial struggle, ending with bankruptcy, and a retreat from a tastefully furnished villa at Surbiton to a dreary lodging in Oxford Terrace. Poor Edith had lost much of her beauty and light-hearted gaiety as a result of anxiety and the constant care of two delicate children; but never in the blackest moment of her trouble had she wished herself unwed, or been willing to change places with any woman who had not the felicity of being John ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... of the land fearlessly charging hedge and brook can, however, repel the invasion of a foe mightier than their chief. Frost sometimes comes and checks their gaiety. Snow falls, and levels every furrow, and then Hodge going to his work in the morning can clearly trace the track of one of his most powerful masters, Squire Reynard, who has been abroad in the night, and, likely enough, throttled the traditional grey goose. The farmer watches for ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... and reverence were more impressive falling from lips usually sparkling with gaiety and wit. We walked in silence up the gradual ascent, till we came to a fine old elm, branching out by the way-side, and we paused to rest under its boughs. As we did so, we turned towards the valley we were leaving behind, and beheld ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... again,' but on looking around I could not see him. The new-comers did not appear to be in the same holiday humour as the throng around us; they walked gravely about without joining in the general mirth and gaiety, and manifesting none of the curiosity in regard to ourselves, which the others had evinced. I, however, thought nothing of this at the time, supposing that they had been of the number of those whom we had seen in the morning by the ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... which Clarissa met the small gentry of Holborough, who pronounced her a very lovely girl, and pitied her because of her father's ruined fortunes. To her inexperience these modest assemblies seemed the perfection of gaiety; and she would fain have accepted the invitations that followed them, from the wives of Holborough bankers and lawyers and medical men to whom she had been introduced. Against this degradation, however, Mr. Lovel ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... strike a European as singular to see so many birds' nests, situated close to a village, remain unmolested within reach of so many boisterous children, with their little proprietors and families fluttering and chirping among them with as great a feeling of security and gaiety of heart as the ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... the swift passing away of youth, spring, joy, and so on. Gradually the song itself, instead of the king's son, began to be called Maneros, and became the well-known banquet song of the social feasts, calling upon the guests to enjoy life while they might. In time the song became a symbol of gaiety and merriment instead ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... unbeknown,"—being, for this occasion only, the Duke of Disguisebury,—his own property, the Island of St. Endellion, just to see, we suppose, what sort of people the Quaker family may be from which his mistress, the Dancing Quakeress (and how funny she used to be at the Music Halls and at the Gaiety!), has sprung. For some reason or other, the Dancing Quakeress has gone to stay a few weeks with her family in the country, and while this hypocritical Daughter of HERODIAS is with her Quaker belongings at prayers in the Meeting House, the spirit moveth her to come out, and ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 31, 1891 • Various
... make a beginning. And I am tired of so much gaiety. It makes no difference about its being ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... various reasons. She was glad to see her settling down—for the first time in her volatile life—into a friendship with another girl; to hear of her being interested in picture-galleries; to find a uniform gaiety taking the place of the restless, captious moods which made others suffer besides herself. As for the boy, he was a nice clever boy who would make his way in the world; but he was only "the boy." Three months ago, if anybody had told ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... melancholy poem, sombre as the secrets of the Conciergerie. Other kinds of poverty, the poverty of the artist—actor, painter, musician, or poet—are relieved and lightened by the artist's joviality, the reckless gaiety of the Bohemian border country—the first stage of the journey to the Thebaid of genius. But these two black-coated professions that go afoot through the street are brought continually in contact with disease and dishonor; they see nothing of human nature but its sores; in the forlorn first ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... of the Convention is sent to a town on mission, sadness takes possession of every heart, and gaiety of every countenance. He is beset with adulatory petitions, and propitiating gifts; the Noblesse who have escaped confinement form a sort of court about his person; and thrice happy is the owner of that habitation at ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... Fawley than he would have let out to Alban Morley or even to Lionel Haughton. Alban was too old for that confidence—Lionel much too young. But the Musician, like Art itself, was of no age; and if ever the gloomy master unbent his outward moodiness and secret spleen in any approach to gaiety, it was in a sort of saturnine playfulness to this grotesque, grown-up infant. They cheered each other, and they teased each other. Stalking side by side over the ridged fallows, Darrell would sometimes pour forth his ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... thoughts a godlike desire for wanton pranks and wrong inferences!—how from the beginning, we have contrived to retain our ignorance in order to enjoy an almost inconceivable freedom, thoughtlessness, imprudence, heartiness, and gaiety—in order to enjoy life! And only on this solidified, granite-like foundation of ignorance could knowledge rear itself hitherto, the will to knowledge on the foundation of a far more powerful will, ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... insinuating hand out of the dark. This love was his strength. If Francey were like his mother, then she was also good. It was these rag and bobtail friends that poisoned everything. They would have to be shaken off. Francey was a child, fond of gaiety and pleasure, with no one to guide her. ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... very low against England. With the assistance of a new character in fiction, a super-valet, justice is done and we are all (except the coarse capitalist and his son) extremely happy. Mr. MACKAIL has invented some excellent scenes and he carries them off with gaiety and spirit. In his second book (and for the answer to What Next? we shall not, I imagine, have long to wait) he will amend certain little faults, not the least of which is a tendency to give us the most significant events ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 1, 1920 • Various
... The light-hearted gaiety, which ten years ago had bubbled over in continual song, was still there; but it was under control, evident only because it made perpetual sunshine on his face. He had taken the doctor's advice—completed his study of English and Mexican law—and become a famous referee in cases ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... this man's intellectual and social gifts, his participation in all the literary and philosophical interests of his century, his large and liberal patronage of art, and the gaiety with which he joined the people of Florence in their pastimes—Mayday games and Carnival festivities—strengthened his hold upon the city in an age devoted to culture and refined pleasure. Whatever was most brilliant in the spirit of the Italian Benaissance seemed to ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... she did her best to join in them. The sensitive soul often reproached itself afterwards for having juggled in the matter. Was it not her duty to manage a little society and gaiety for her sisters sometimes? Her mother could not undertake it, and was always plaintively protesting that Catherine would not be young. So for a short week or two Catherine did her best to be young, and climbed ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... body reverently on the moss at the foot of the tree, and for a time were silent. The remembrance of his activity and gaiety on the previous day, and of his sweet minstrelsy on the very eve of his voice being hushed for ever, came sadly to their minds. At length ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... was free to take her own course as to society, for Janet cared for the Cambridge examination far more than for gaiety, and thus she had no call, and no heart for "going out," even if she had as yet been more known. Some morning calls were exchanged, but she sent refusals on mourning cards to invitations to evening parties, though she took her young people to plays, ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... inhabitants are of a very simple and mild disposition, seemingly ignorant of "quarreling." Women are very rare among them. Those of them whom I encountered were distinguished from the women I had hitherto seen in India or Kachmyr, by the air of gaiety and prosperity apparent in their countenances. How could it be otherwise, since each woman in this country has, on an average, three to five husbands, and possesses them in the most legitimate way in the world. Polyandry ...
— The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ - The Original Text of Nicolas Notovitch's 1887 Discovery • Nicolas Notovitch
... Gopher Prairies had no monopoly of greetings and friendly hands. Sam Clark was no more loyal than girl librarians she knew in St. Paul, the people she had met in Chicago. And those others had so much that Gopher Prairie complacently lacked—the world of gaiety and adventure, of music and the integrity of bronze, of remembered mists from tropic isles and Paris nights and the walls of Bagdad, of industrial justice and a God who spake not in ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... the Flower-Garden owes much of its gaiety to this elegant plant, and at a time when ornament is ...
— The Botanical Magazine, Vol. V - Or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... by the veteran's departure, began at once to make himself very agreeable company. When he chose to lay aside the topic of his own difficulties and ambitions, he could converse with a spontaneous gaiety which readily won the good-will of listeners. Naturally he addressed himself very often to Marian Yule, whose attention complimented him. She said little, and evidently was at no time a free talker, but the smile on her face indicated a mood of quiet enjoyment. When her eyes wandered, ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... Genuine gaiety resumed its sway, and the work of taffy-making was taken up again. Cary was fed with choice titbits until he was fairly satisfied and had to beg for quarter. Then, taking up a large roll of the tire, Zulma twisted it into a series of elegant and intricate plaits. The long coil flashed ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... Staffordshire seemed the wrong place for such a man. Both he and his money would have been far safer in Change Alley. If her explanation was acute and probable, her manner of making it had convinced me that my explanation of her gaiety was wrong. Of him she certainly had not been thinking. Then there was only one thing left to account for it. What makes a maid as merry as a grig? Didn't our Kate sing all morning when Jack ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... thoughts, consult her own tastes, and receive her own friends, not another's, like a lady to the manner born. And if this emancipation from a self-imposed thraldom is not too long deferred, if it finds her at sixty with a relish for gaiety still unslaked, she may yet be able to enjoy society herself and to render it enjoyable to others. How many women there are of whom one says, How pleasant they will be when they have done pushing! or have pushed ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... insensible to the impressions produced by such a sight. In vain the warm light from the heavens bathed the whole landscape in a flood of glory; in vain the meadows put forth their flowers, the woods their variegated, bright, American verdure, and the birds their innocent gaiety and brilliant plumage; the fancy of Grace was portraying scenes that had once been connected with the engrossing sentiment of her life. I felt her tremble, as she lay in my arms; and bending my head towards her in tender concern, I could just distinguish the murmuring ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... mind from fears and somber thoughts. I say this to Seraphine when she warns me that I must not go to Roberta's party. She says I will go at my great peril, but I refuse to entertain these fears. I crave the gaiety and insouciance of Roberta's care-free Bohemians. Besides, I shall see Christopher. I will tell him that I love him with all my soul and will marry him—the sooner the better—any time. Within a month I may be Mrs. Christopher ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... All of this gaiety and amusement was just a prelude to the ride home in the moonlight, which the Violet took with good Dennis Farraday and during which she discovered that there is such a thing as honor among men about poaching on ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... lived in a perpetual round of amusement; and my uncle, who thought I should be rich enough to afford to be ignorant, was more anxious that I should divert my mind, than instruct it. Well, this year passed slowly and sadly away, despite of the gaiety around me; and, at the end of that time, I left my uncle to go to the university; but I first lingered in London to make inquiries after D——. I could learn no certain tidings of him, but heard that the most probable place to find him was a certain ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 17, No. 483., Saturday, April 2, 1831 • Various
... Saint-Amand as one in which women were Christian in certain aspects of their character and pagan in others, taking an active part in every event, ruling by wit and beauty, wisdom and courage; an age of thoughtless gaiety and morbid fanaticism, and of laughter and tears, still rough and savage, yet with an undercurrent of subtle grace and exquisite politeness; an age in which the extremes of elegance and cruelty were blended, in which the most glaring scepticism and intense superstitions were everywhere evident; ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... he brought with him gaiety and good will. The sympathy and charm of his nature had made him so many friends that of himself did not know the number. And now he had come down to Wellington and made a host of new ones eager to show him how much Wellington ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed
... XIV., united with the gaiety of his Court, and the gaudy ostentation of his character, had so humbled, and at the same time so fascinated the mind of France, that the people appeared to have lost all sense of their own dignity, ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... all types of "bals" in Paris. Over in Montmartre, on the Place Blanche, is the well-known "Moulin Rouge," a place suggestive, to those who have never seen it, of the quintessence of Parisian devil-me-care gaiety. You expect it to be like those clever pen-and-ink drawings of Grevin's, of the old Jardin Mabille in its palmiest days, brilliant with lights and beautiful women extravagantly gowned and bejeweled. You expect to see Frenchmen, too, in pot-hats, crowding in a circle about ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith
... Ada Forcus that ineradicable love of gaiety which some women carry to the grave. Since, at the death of his wife, she had gone to keep house for her brother small indulgence had been shown to this passion. In the grave of his wife, not only all Sir ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... satisfaction. He made his thoughts travel back to that delightful afternoon on Christmas Eve, when they had all come home riotous through the brilliant streets, laden with purchases from the Baker Street Bazaar, and then had decorated the rooms with such free and careless gaiety. ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... whirling through a waltz in the parlor, now talking and laughing in a rather pronounced way from the midst of a group of gentlemen, and again coquettishly stealing off with one of them through the moonlit walks. Her manner, whether assumed or real, was that of extravagant gaiety. Occasionally she seemed to glance towards their obscure corner, but neither she nor her mother came to seek the man who had been toiling all the week to ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... Her features expressed gaiety, approaching to volatility; yet one could not help feeling that there was firmness of character en perdu. Her figure was beyond criticism; and the face, if not strikingly beautiful was one that you could not look upon without emotions ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... which generally betokens a robust constitution, and high animal spirits; the jaw was massive, and, to a physiognomist, betokened firmness and strength of character; but the lips, full and large, were those of a sensualist, and their restless play, an habitual half smile, spoke of gaiety and humour, though when in repose there was in them ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... their part in this brilliant society. Mistress Anne's tender heart was moved to pity by the "sad spectacle of war," when starving, half-naked prisoners were marched past the windows of their lodging, but nothing could damp for long her high spirits and girlish gaiety. We are told (not by herself, but by the arch-gossip, old Aubrey) that in the company of Lady Isabella Thynne, brightest star of the Stuart Court, "fine Mistress Anne" played a practical joke on Dr. Kettle, the woman-hating President of Trinity, ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe
... of Glendora were no more dazzling by night than by day. There was not much business in the saloon, there being few visitors in town, no roistering, no sounds of uncurbed gaiety. Formerly there had been a dance-hall in connection with the saloon, but that branch of the business had failed through lack of patronage long ago. The bar stood in the front of the long, cheerless room, a patch of light over and around it, the melancholy furniture of its prosperous days dim ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... whose eyes are closed, sparkle, on pressure, phosphorescent rings. So there was Gipsy laughter; and the ancient wicca and Vala flashed out into that sky-rocketty joyousness and Catherine-wheel gaiety, which at eighty or ninety, in a woman, vividly reminds one of the Sabbat on the Brocken, of the ointment, and all things terrible and ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... home of jollity, was not warranted by its real atmosphere. Since there were not many inhabitants of Littleburg detached from housekeeping, Miss Sapphira Clinton depended for the most part on "transients"; and, to hold such in subjection, preventing them from indulging in that noisy gaiety to which "transients" are naturally inclined—just because they are transitory—the elderly spinster had developed ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... or uncalculating mind, or that it was in her case, as it frequently is in others, associated with qualities which exclude the finer and better feelings of female nature. It was by no means so. With all her gaiety and sportiveness, she had a heart filled with all the tenderest sensibilities of a woman. Her attachments were warm and ardent. In character, simple and sincere, Rosy could have died for those she loved; and so finely strung were the sympathies ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... suffering he was full of life, and even of gaiety. He went one of these afternoons, at his own suggestion, to a cinema show with one of the priests, but though he enjoyed it, and even laughed heartily, he said later that it ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... got up, took down his hat, brushed it with the sleeve of his coat and announced his readiness to go. Together they walked out. Lyman assumed an unwonted gaiety. He commented humorously upon the tradesmen standing in their doors. The banker strove to laugh, but his heart was not in the effort. "Yes, sir," said he, "things change and women change, too. And I may make bold to say that my daughter—and my wife, sir—are not exceptions ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read
... piano and dancing lessons. I had often taught her little girls for pleasure, they were so sweet and lovable, when they visited in my rooms. Still, afterwards, I learned the suggestion came from Elizabeth. Now you know everything," she added with determined gaiety. "And I have had my draught of ozone. We must hurry back, or they will wonder what ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson |
