"Ludicrous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... observer helped him into his cumbersome, heavily-padded armor. They checked his instruments, making sure that the protective devices of the suit were functioning at full efficiency. Then all three went out to the flitter. A tiny speedster, really; a torpedo bearing the stubby wings and the ludicrous tail-surfaces, the multifarious driving-, braking-, side-, top-, and under-jets so characteristic of the tricky, cranky, but ultra-maneuverable breed. But this one had something that the ordinary speedster or flitter did not carry; spaced around the ...
— The Vortex Blaster • Edward Elmer Smith
... littered with bits of glass and slate. The village lay very still and motionless in the pelting rain. We glanced up each of its lanes as we glided by, and in each the bodies of numerous dead French soldiers lay sodden in the mud, with their red legs sticking out in attitudes of ludicrous ghastliness. A line of ammunition wagons half a mile long was parked at the side of the village street and the horses were picketed in long lines in the ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... the thing designed. Nay, further, even when we perceive the turpitude tending to the destruction of its subject, we may still be sensible of a ridiculous appearance, till the ruin become imminent, and the keener sensations of pity or terror banish the ludicrous apprehension from our minds; for the sensation of ridicule is not a bare perception of the agreement or disagreement of ideas, but a passion or emotion of the mind consequential to that perception; so that the mind may perceive the agreement ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... these earlier efforts failed was due as much to ill luck and bad management as to the work of Bridport's fleet. Intended, moreover, primarily as diversions to keep England occupied at home and sicken her of the war, they did not altogether fail of their aim. Some of these projects verged on the ludicrous, as that of corraling a band of the criminals and royalist outlaws that infested France and dropping them on the English coast for a wild campaign of murder and pillage. Fifteen hundred of these Chouans were actually landed at Fishguard in February of 1798, but promptly surrendered, ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... noises, distinguished only by hard or gentle blows upon the buffaloe skin: the song is perfectly extemporaneous. In the pauses of the dance, any man of the company comes forward and recites, in a sort of low guttural tone, some little story or incident, which is either martial or ludicrous; or, as was the case this evening, voluptuous and indecent; this is taken up by the orchestra and the dancers, who repeat it in a higher strain and dance to it. Sometimes they alternate; the orchestra first performing, and when it ceases, the women raise their voices and make a music more ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... to," he responded; "and I shall never forget that meeting with her niece while life lasts, it was so ludicrous. I arrived at the depot just as the train had stopped, and the passengers were already pouring from the car. In my haste to reach the throng I slipped upon a banana peel, and the next instant I was plunging headlong forward, bumping straight ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... impetuosity, whooping and screaming, but they met such a raking fire from the disciplined troops that they fell back in disorder. Just then the men at the howitzer opened fire. The effect of this field-piece on the children of the plains was magical—almost ludicrous. A veritable stampede followed. ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... good children. It's hardly fair, because he went to sleep last night after dinner while you and I kept ourselves awake: but we needn't do that another night, to be sure." After breakfast they all three went to work to do nothing. It was ludicrous and almost painful to see Mr Palliser wandering about and counting the boxes, as though he could do any good by that. At this special crisis of his life he hated his papers and figures and statistics, and could not apply himself to them. He, whose application had been so unremitting, ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... beyond his power. When, therefore, he exerted his magic strength, the mountains bent and the seas receded; but when the philosopher attempted to lead forth the Princess of Zulichium in the youthful dance, youths and maidens turned their heads aside lest they should make too manifest the ludicrous ideas with which ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... morning service, said: 'Brethren, there's gwine to be a 'lection here next week, and I wants you all to vote in de light dat God has gin you to see de light, but I spects to vote wid de taters.' Now, this may seem ludicrous, but Tobey, in that act, was a fit representative of the white man in politics—for every class of American citizens except the Negro divide their vote and put it where to them personally it will do the ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... impoverished and unpretentious Dixie, the propensity to appropriate beyond limit or restraint. I had never before seen anything like this disposition to plunder. Our perilous situation only seemed to render the men more reckless. At the same time, anything more ludicrous than the manner in which they indulged their predatory tastes can scarcely be imagined. The weather was intensely warm,—the hot July sun burned the earth to powder, and we were breathing superheated ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... the beloved camera into the cavity that lay beneath the rocks, and Frank, nothing loth, also pushed his rifle into the same place. Then it was ludicrous to see how quickly they made a ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... of speaking to him—which he might have done, had he been sober—burst into a frantic fit of laughter. The remarkable gravity and composure of the stranger's tone and manner, contrasted with the oddity of the proposition by which he opened the conversation, would have been irresistibly ludicrous even to a man whose faculties were ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... am content, your Honor! We notaries are privileged to wear furred cloaks in the Palais de Justice, and black robes in the country when we can get them! Look here at my robe of dignity!" He held up the tattered tail of his gown with a ludicrous air. "The profession of notary is meat, drink, and lodging: every man's house is free to me—his bed and board I share, and there is neither wedding, christening, nor funeral, in ten parishes that can go on without me. Governors and intendants flourish and fall, but Jean Pothier ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... now? Perhaps I did not hear you aright," inquired Alden, elevating his eyebrows, for there was something that struck him as unreal, ludicrous and bordering upon the burlesque in the ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... the perception that so much was kept back by a strong force, that made Guy's least token of displeasure so formidable. A village boy, whom he caught misusing a poor dog, was found a few minutes after, by Mr. Ross, in a state of terror that was positively ludicrous, though it did not appear that Sir Guy had said or done much to alarm him; it was only the light in his eyes, and the strength of repressed indignation in his short broken words that ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... ludicrous in the manly tone and decided manner of the smooth-faced little creature before them, that the sisters burst into a hearty fit ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne
... the writer's description of a ball or a dinner,' said Miss Grandison; 'everything lives and moves. And yet, when the hero makes love, nothing can be more unnatural. His feelings are neither deep, nor ardent, nor tender. All is stilted, and yet ludicrous.' ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... her out in the new place she had chosen, and came up to pay his compliments. Fleda was in a mood for anything but laughing, yet the mixture of the ludicrous which the doctor administered set her nerves a-twitching. Bringing his chair down sideways at one angle and his person at another, so as to meet at the moment of the chair's touching the floor, ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... fellows seized Cadurcis, and placed him again, in spite of his struggling, upon his pony, with the same irresistible facility with which they had a few nights before dismounted him. The little lord looked very sulky, but his position was beginning to get ludicrous. Morgana, pocketing his five guineas, leaped over the side of the cart, and offered to guide the Doctor and his attendants through the forest. They moved on accordingly. It was the work of an instant, and Cadurcis suddenly found himself returning home ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... Perhaps Mr. Austin can manage him. Oh, isn't it ludicrous?" and she burst into hearty laughter. It was a very musical laugh, but Crosby considered ...
— The Day of the Dog • George Barr McCutcheon
... Goose rhyme of "jumping over the moon." With tails stiff as crowbars and hind legs higher than their heads, they were cavorting around the field, bellowing with fright, and making such an extremely ludicrous spectacle, that, in our excited condition, it was more than we could bear, and almost hysterical laughter weakened us so that we were hardly able to move. But the range of the enemy's guns was too accurate to admit of a long stay in this locality, so we pushed on, rolling or crawling, to the ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various
... phrasing. Thus they apprehend precisely where commendation ends and irony begins, where attraction ends and pretence begins, in a manner which would be impossible for persons possessed of a different order of apprehension. Persons possessed of identical apprehension view objects in an identically ludicrous, beautiful, or repellent light; and in order to facilitate such identical apprehension between members of the same social circle or family, they usually establish a language, turns of speech, or terms to define such shades of apprehension as exist for them alone. In our particular family such apprehension ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... loved a truth, and who despised austerity as something owlish, set them the example of getting all the harmless fun they could out of experience. They had their laugh about nearly everything that was not essentially sacred; they were made to feel the ludicrous as an alleviation of existence; and the father and mother were with them on the same level ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... said, "that's all that is the matter with her. She sees all her friends married and established, she has the perfectly ludicrous idea that she is not as young as she used to be. She feels like an ambitious thoroughbred that's been left at ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... one American example (to be found at length in S. P. R. Proceedings XVIII.) of well-recorded telepathic transmission. The incident thus transferred is trivial and even ludicrous; the fact of the transference was absolutely useless. But the case is not only none the worse for this; it is all the better. When we are trying to prove that such transmission exists, we want to keep clear, if we can, of emotional complications. If P is brooding over A's approaching death, and ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... idea of waiting ten days for this important business. You forget the wireless," answered the uncle, looking fondly at the enthusiastic young fellow, who was so like him except for the gray hair that it was almost ludicrous. ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed
... messages and announce visitors; this latter function he performed with a degree of pomposity truly Asiatic, dwelling with open mouth very audibly on some of the most sounding and emphatic syllables in a way that appeared to strangers almost ludicrous, [493] as shown in the following instance: "On advancing, the Chobdars or heralds proclaimed the titles of this princely cow-keeper in the usual hyperbolical style. One of the most insignificant-looking men I ever saw then became the destroyer of nations, the leveller of mountains, the ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... may imagine the joy of Howells and the others in this ludicrous extravaganza, which could have been written by no one but Mark Twain. It will hardly take rank as prophecy, though certainly true forecast in it ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... to be facetious, sir," said he; "but you cannot be ignorant that the ludicrous incident you mentioned is the subject of a tale much older than that ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... made them desist, by snapping his fingers, the spell was broken. It was most astonishing to see that as each one awoke, he seemed to be fully cognizant of the ridiculous position in which his comrades were placed, and to enjoy their confusion and ludicrous attitudes. The moment, however, he was commanded to do things equally absurd, he obeyed. While, therefore, the class appeared to be free agents, ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... as if reflecting over the numerous cases of rewarded virtue which had come under her notice, and the action made two jet ornaments in her cap wobble, in a ludicrous manner, ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... Ludicrous as was the scene, the consequences might have been disastrous. Should the huge animal not be got out, the water would be spoiled; at all events, his floundering about would make it very muddy. The elephant, however, seemed in no way disconcerted, ...
— Stories of Animal Sagacity • W.H.G. Kingston
... attack upon himself. In this attempt to forestall his enemies Jonson succeeded, and "Poetaster" was an immediate and deserved success. While hardly more closely knit in structure than its earlier companion pieces, "Poetaster" is planned to lead up to the ludicrous final scene in which, after a device borrowed from the "Lexiphanes" of Lucian, the offending poetaster, Marston-Crispinus, is made to throw up the difficult words with which he had overburdened his stomach as well as overlarded his vocabulary. ...
— Every Man In His Humor - (The Anglicized Edition) • Ben Jonson
... friend of man to be the pet of woman. Down, down, he sinks; no shepherd, no hunter, no guardian now; far from the pleasant chase of food desired; only a pet, her pet. Dwarfed, distorted, feeble; a snub-nosed monsterling; ears cropped, tail cut, hair shaved in ludicrous patches; collared and chained; basketed, blanketed, braceleted, dressed,—O last and utter ignominy!—stuffed on unnatural food till he waddles grossly, panting and diseased; so ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... zealous Bonder started up in passionate parliamentary eloquence; but after a sentence or two, broke down; one, and then another, and still another, and remained all three staring in open-mouthed silence there! The peasant-proprietors accepted the phenomenon as ludicrous, perhaps partly as miraculous withal, and consented to baptism ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle
... humorous tales, and I wished to increase my own sense of laughter—to see the ludicrous from an abnormal point of view. I wished to study it a bit, if ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... of ludicrous actions, and hence all their ceremonies seem farcical. The greater part pull the fingers till they crack. Snelgrave gives an odd representation of the embassy which the king of Dahomy sent to him. The ceremonies of salutation consisted in ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... meaning of the words used sufficiently far to show it. The daily experience of every man, from his cradle to his grave, shows that human acts are as much the subject of external causal influences as are the phenomena of nature. To dispute this would be little short of the ludicrous. All that the opponents of freedom, as a class, have ever claimed is the assertion of a causal connection between the acts of the will and influences independent of the will. True, propositions of this sort ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... time, was in a somewhat hysterical condition. The idea that he was there for the pleasure or profit of hunting bears struck him as so ludicrous that he laughed loudly, a performance that evidently puzzled the redskin ...
— Rodney, the Ranger - With Daniel Morgan on Trail and Battlefield • John V. Lane
... Psalm, and after he had finished the first verse Mrs. Jameson promptly responded with the second, as she would have done in her own church, raising her solitary voice with great emphasis. It would not have been so ludicrous had not poor Mr. Jameson, evidently seeing the mistake, and his face blazing, yet afraid to desert his wife's standard, followed her dutifully just a few words in the rear. While Mrs. Jameson was beside the still waters, Mr. Jameson was in the green pastures, and so on. I pitied the ...
— The Jamesons • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... popularity by interesting circumstances, or by a personal interest attached to any of the parties, or by wit, or by extraordinary malice, or by scenical circumstances, or by circumstances unusually ludicrous, are but too likely to occur; and, with every fresh repetition, the keenness of the original provocation is renewed, and in an accelerated ratio. Again, with reference to my own case, or to any case resembling that, let it be ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... a little of them. I have fought side by side with them. Now I have a proposal to make, which is that we put these brigands to flight in a ludicrous manner, which will annoy them more than being beaten in fight. Myself and the black men will do it with ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... is of true proportions, and, regardless of the severity of its lines, and the ludicrous pillars, is undeniably ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... at once more confused and ludicrous: he poised himself alternately on either foot, and scratched his head vigorously, while his facial expression was something too comical for description. Finally, through a series of embarrassed chuckles and gurgles, he rippled into a broad guffaw, articulating indistinctly between its paroxysms, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... two foreign gentlemen were announced as desirous to see Baron Rothschild in propria persona. The strangers had not the foresight to have the letters of introduction in readiness. They stood, therefore, before the Baron in the ludicrous attitude of having their eyes fixed upon the Hebrew Croesus, and with their hands rummaging in large European coat-pockets. The fervid and excited imagination of the Baron conjured up a multitudinous array ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... Seriously, it is the most awful part of my official duty,— this necessity of making dinner-speeches at the Mayor's, and other public or semi-public tables. However, my neighborhood to Mrs. ——— was good for me, inasmuch as by laughing over the matter with her came to regard it in a light and ludicrous way; and so, when the time actually came, I stood up with a careless dare-devil feeling. The chairman toasted the president immediately after the Queen, and did me the honor to speak of myself in a most flattering manner, something ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... then be adopted, I would say—destroy the facility of spirit-drinking, by laying on a heavy duty. It is in vain that interested sophistry would plead its benefits in particular cases—such, for instance, as the ludicrous plea of the needfulness of drams for market-women on wet and frosty mornings.[A] Set these specious benefits against the dreadful results to men's health and pockets, from the present low price of spirits, and their consequent enormous ...
— The Infant System - For Developing the Intellectual and Moral Powers of all Children, - from One to Seven years of Age • Samuel Wilderspin
... "The ludicrous dismay that will seize you when the constablery of your progressive civilization notify you that you must emigrate to the Gossip and Slander Reservation. Poor Mrs. Prudence Potter! from my earliest recollection she has been practising archery upon the target ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... if struck by lightning. His jaw dropped, and a ludicrous look of alarm and bewilderment overspread ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... followed, during which the three looked blankly at the bed, and then at each other. The scene, no doubt, would have been ludicrous enough to a third party; but neither of our trio could saw anything whatever to laugh at. Ormiston was the first ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... upon the old beau, waited for him, and walked parallel with him on the other side of the room, giving an absurdly exact imitation of his carriage and deportment. To make this more striking, she pulled out of her pocket, after a mock search, a huge paste ring, gazed on it with a ludicrous affectation of simple wonder, stuck it, like Cibber's diamond, on her little finger, and, pursing up her mouth, proceeded to whistle ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... the rungs in this ladder, for the lawyer had risen from the barber's chair. He had shaved and sheared his way from that ancient trade, in which he had been respected as an able hand, to the equally ancient profession, in which he was cutting a rather ludicrous and ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... of his hands and shouted: "Here, Pete, old boy! Here, Pete, you black rascal!" At the sound of his voice the swimmer suddenly turned and struck out for the ship with an enthusiasm that was actually ludicrous. We roared with laughter—we could not help it; for when the boat had pulled up to the almost water-logged swimmer, and he began to climb in with an energy that imperiled the safety of the crew, we saw that the black rascal in ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... all three rooms were in spick-and-span order, and the two judges were summoned to behold the result of the week's labor. At the first door they halted, and the President turned to his wife with a ludicrous grimace as he said, "Dora, I am afraid I've got us into trouble. How in this wide world are we going to be able to decide which is the prettiest room! And if it should be easy to decide that question, how shall we ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... But once launched thereon, his sense of humour could not be denied its full enjoyment in this first telling of the entire tale. Full justice he did to the pathos, but he also shook with mirth over the ludicrous. As he quoted Mary Antony, the old lay-sister's odd manner and movements could be seen; her mumbling lips, and cunning wink. And here was Mother Sub-Prioress, ferret-faced and peering; and here Sister Mary Rebecca, long-nosed, flat-footed, eager to scent out and ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... compact result, indestructible and unrivalled; and he always found himself turning away from the books of reference, and re-reading with increased wonder this marvellous new growth. There were certain books particularly hateful to him, and of which he never spoke except in terms of most ludicrous raillery. Mr. Barlow, in "Sandford and Merton," he said was the favorite enemy of his boyhood and his first experience of a bore. He had an almost supernatural hatred for Barlow, "because he was so very instructive, and always hinting ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... regret was intentionally ludicrous. Had Rachel been listening, she would once more have suspected a pose. But already she was deep in the article in the two-year-old magazine, or rather in ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... this resolution was so sweet a sarcasm on the proceedings of that occasion, that it was received with peals of laughter and deafening cheers, and as he went bitterly on, from resolution to resolution, raising his voice to overtop the jargon, the scene became too ludicrous for description. The resolutions, which never had any sincerity in them, were such a confirmation of all that Mr. Snow had said, and such a comment on their own duplicity and moral debasement, that there was nothing left for them but to break up and ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... clothes as well, even to his silk stockings, garters, and roses, and with the help of many pillows and other such farcing, so filled the garments which otherwise had hung upon him like a shawl from a peg, and made of himself such a 'sweet creature of bombast' that, with ludicrous unlikeness of countenance, he bore in figure no distant resemblance ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... English ones as are now frequently met with. Who can say that Chelsea is an improvement on sweet Win'nisim'met? Or that the slight elevation which joins that city to Everett, called Mount Washington (how ludicrous that must strike strangers who are familiar with the Mount Washington!), was not better as Sagamore Hill, the Indian name for it? Some of its public-spirited inhabitants are going back to that; and they dare to prophesy that, by the time Chelsea ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various
... for a half incredulous, half frightened look at her. She met his eyes steadily—the torn veil, quite discarded now, was in her pocket. She did not know the man; but it was quite evident from the almost ludicrous dismay which spread over his face that ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... brawny woman, with a man's jerkin slipped over her green serge gamurra or gown, and the peaked hood of some departed mantle fastened round her sunburnt face, which, under all its coarseness and premature wrinkles, showed a half-sad, half-ludicrous maternal resemblance to the tender baby-face of the little maiden—the sort of resemblance which often seems a more croaking, shudder-creating prophecy ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... in immediate succession to this incident of epic dignity, which has its only parallel by the way in the case of Vasco de Gama, (according to the narrative of Camoens,) when met and confronted by a sea phantom, whilst attempting to double the Cape of Storms, (Cape of Good Hope,) a ludicrous passage, in which one felicitous blunder did Caesar a better service than all the truths which Greece and Rome could have furnished. In our own experience, we once witnessed a blunder about as gross. The present Chancellor, in his first electioneering ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... somewhat ludicrous in their uniforms,[309] were not much behind their comrades of the Ninth and Tenth Kansas[310] in earnestness and in attention to duty.[311] Nevertheless, they had been very reluctant to leave their families and were, one and all, very apprehensive ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... at Balaklava, at the end of a long day's work, and laughed out loud as he read the stiff, formal little epistle, which, to the young man in the midst of the whirl and bustle of camps and hospitals, seemed like a voice from another world; there was something too ludicrous in the notion of a child of eleven years old being forbidden to receive letters, because she might possibly be a nun ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... upon him by a divine law-giver of any sort" (this is the "materialism" of our author!), "but is the protracted and constant result of combinations of natural causes and effects; that is not, according to the ludicrous idea of the idealists, shut up in him like a soul within its body, but is, in fact, only the inevitable and constant form of his real existence. The human, like all other species, has inherent principles quite special to itself, and all these ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff
... portions of the noble knight's achievements, his eyes the while twinkling, through their sad setting of darkness, with enthusiasm, and often suffused with tears. In some minds the conception of this blind wandering bard may awaken ludicrous emotions, but to us it suggests a certain sublimity. Blind Harry has powerfully described Wallace standing in the light and shrinking from the ghost of Fawdoun, (see the 'Battle of Black- Earnside,' in the 'Specimens,') but Harry himself seems walking in the light of the ghost of Wallace, ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... I do not remember literatim, is such metrically as to require two syllables for aches. But how, then, was this to be pronounced? Kemble thought akies would sound ludicrous; aitches therefore he called it: and always the pit howled like a famished menagerie, as they did also when he chose (and he constantly chose) to pronounce beard like bird. Many of these niceties must be ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... the wall, and stuffing her handkerchief in her mouth to prevent a sudden explosion of laughter, by which cousin Betty might be awakened, she ran to call the family. No pen-sketch but an actual profile would give the slightest idea of the extraordinary and most ludicrous appearance of the image thus thrown upon the wall; with the enormous ears standing up, and the mouth and chin snapping together like the claws of a lobster. One by one they rushed from the room, till at length a smothered cacchination ...
— Lewie - Or, The Bended Twig • Cousin Cicely
... of acting as the Conservatoire and the Franais form could of course never be seen in America. The idea of our popular practical Government undertaking to direct the amusements of the people is quite ludicrous. In France, the Government does all it can for the people. With us, the people are left to do everything for themselves, with the least possible amount of Government interference. Our play-writers and play-actors could do a great deal to raise the standard of stage-literature ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... his wheezy lungs, and for a minute or two he could do nothing but cough and splutter and groan, and cling to his unresponsive comrade for support. Then at last, when he had succeeded in recovering his breath, he said dolefully and with a ludicrous ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... coup had decidedly astonished her. What he might do next she could not conjecture. The idea of his doing anything sufficiently brilliant to arrest her attention would have seemed ludicrous, had not Jim, by entering the Yeomanry, revealed a capacity for dazzling exploits which made it unsafe to predict ...
— The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid • Thomas Hardy
... that Desmond, sitting in the forecastle among the men of his mess, was occupied in darning a pair of breeches for Parmiter. It was the one thing he could not do satisfactorily; and one of the men, after quizzically observing his well meant but ludicrous attempts, at last caught up the garment and held it aloft, calling his mates' attention to it with ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... have slightly modified and abridged what follows, being impatient of its prolixity, as well as ashamed of what is truly called the ludicrous under-estimate of the mass of the ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... pushing up the trap-door with his head, gave it a final thrust, and the door fell over with a loud flap, which made Jem Wimble sit up, with his face so swollen and bruised that his eyes were half-closed; and this and his dirty face gave him an aspect that was more ludicrous than strange. ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn
... life is at best, but a mixture of a little good with much evil, and a little pleasure with much pain. The beautiful is linked with the revolting, the sublime with the commonplace, and the solemn with the ludicrous. ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... bore so large a part. Mr. Joe thoughtfully punched five holes in the sand, and for a moment Debby liked the expression of his face; then the old listlessness returned, and, looking up, he said, with an air of ennui that was half sad, half ludicrous, in one so young and so generously endowed with youth, health, and the good gifts ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... the evening now gradually changed. A strange wild glee spread from one to another of the party, which, much to the surprise of his companions, began with and was communicated from, Fanshawe. He seemed to overflow with conceptions inimitably ludicrous, but so singular, that, till his hearers had imbibed a portion of his own spirit, they could only wonder at, instead of enjoying them. His applications to the wine were very unfrequent; yet his conversation was such as ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... school period. It will not crowd out anything else, because it underlies everything. After many years of perversion and neglect, to take up the study of literature in a comprehensive text-book, as if it were to be learned—like arithmetic, is a ludicrous proceeding. This, is not teaching literature nor giving the scholar a love of good reading. It is merely stuffing the mind with names and dates, which are not seen to have any relation to present life, and which speedily fade out ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... freshness of mind, which is so attractive, as to make us regret that we have not room for them. In proof of this, only let the reader turn to Mr. Cunningham's remarks on the Harlot and Rake's Progress, at pages 98 and 99. His descriptions too of the satirical pictures are extremely ludicrous, and in effect second only to painting itself. The following anecdote of the celebrated March to Finchley is ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 382, July 25, 1829 • Various
... on the exceptional man!" Goethe cries to us; "for it was his lot to live in such a wretched age that his life was one long polemical effort." How can ye, my worthy Philistines, think of Lessing without shame? He who was ruined precisely on account of your stupidity, while struggling with your ludicrous fetiches and idols, with the defects of your theatres, scholars, and theologists, without once daring to attempt that eternal flight for which he had been born. And what are your feelings when ye think of Winckelman, who, in order to turn his eyes from your grotesque ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... cleverness with which several times he had nearly secured his man; but still, making all allowances for native vanity in concealment and addition, he was distinctly funny—he represented the matter for once in its ludicrous rather than in its disastrous aspect. He observed also, looking around the table, that after all he had lost less by Colonel Clay in four years of persecution than he often lost by one injudicious move in a single day on the London Stock Exchange; while he ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... me to its rendezvous at Hunter's Mills. We started at two o'clock, and occupied an hour in passing the city limits. I calculated that, advancing at the same ratio, we should arrive in camp at noon next day. We presented ludicrous figures to the grim sabremen that sat erect at street corners, and ladies at the windows of the dwellings smothered with suppressed laughter as we floundered along. My friend had the better horse; but I was the better rider; and if at any time I ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... telegraph-wires in order to fence his own farm. Feeling ran so high ordinary courts was not permitted, but a Special Commissioner, one not qualified by legal experience or official position to preside in such a case, was selected. By a positively ludicrous exercise of discretion in the matter of admission of evidence Mr. Kock was cleared. Mr. Marais, nothing daunted, continued his exposures, challenging that action should be taken against himself for libel, and finally producing ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... grievous calamity, probably borrowed from the notion of tucking up the skirts and stripping for flight. On the dangerous San Francisco River one of the rapids is called "Tira-calcoens" take off your trousers (Highlands of the Brazil, ii. 35). But here the allusion is simply ludicrous ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... around to the same place at about the same time of day, especially if that place is a beer-house, is remarkable,—indeed, amusing. A gentleman residing in Berlin, where this everlasting beer-drinking does not prevail, mentioned to me, as one of the most ludicrous occurrences of his life, an invitation which he once received to visit a Munich professor whose acquaintance he had made in Berlin. The professor told him, that, in case he should arrive in Munich after a certain hour of the day, he must go ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... slept. I asked one of the guides, who questioned her in Erse. She answered with a tone of emotion, saying (as he told us) she was afraid we wanted to go to bed to her. This coquetry, or whatever it may be called, of so wretched a being, was truly ludicrous. Dr Johnson and I afterwards were merry upon it. I said, it was he who alarmed the poor woman's virtue. 'No, sir,' said he, 'she'll say, '"There came a wicked young fellow, a wild dog, who I believe would have ravished me, had there not been with ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... the interest shortly to be added thereto. Finally, that very evening, had I not been addressed as 'Mister Freydon,' I, the erstwhile bare-footed 'inmate' of St. Peter's? There was nothing of bathos, nothing in the least ludicrous, to me in ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... at him with surprise. His cordial agreement with all I said cut the ground from under my feet. It made my position complicated, not to say ludicrous. I was prepared to be persuasive, touching, and hortatory, admonitory and expostulating, if need be vituperative even, indignant and sarcastic; but what the devil does a mentor do when the sinner makes no bones about confessing his sin? ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... crisis the disciplined human mind works as a thing detached, refusing to be hurried or flustered by outward circumstance. Time and its artificial divisions it does not acknowledge. It is concerned with preposterous details and with the ludicrous, and it is acutely solicitous of other people's welfare, whilst working at a speed mere ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... there was no want of grandeur and magnificence in the public scene ever before Spenser's imagination; and its quaintness, because the whole outward apparatus of representation was borrowed from what was past, or from what did not exist, and implied surrounding circumstances in ludicrous contrast with fact, and men taught themselves to speak in character, and prided themselves on keeping it up by substituting for the ordinary language of life and emotion a cumbrous and involved ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... and then the ludicrous climbed uppermost, and I laughed, whereat Madame looked positively shocked, and even mamma seemed aghast and murmured something apologetic about my having been at boarding-school in the country, and at college, where I had ridden horseback without proper instruction, which had injured my figure. ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... tragic, he could not have refrained from laughing at the ludicrous way she bristled up and snapped out her command; but mindful only of the great trouble which had suddenly overshadowed the young life, he hastily tucked his long limbs out of sight under the edge of the bed, slumped as far down in his chair as he possibly could, and fell ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... moment everyone was silent, affected by the thought behind what they had said. Then the girl's voice suggested, with a touch of Earth formality that was almost ludicrous under the circumstances: "But you two men have not yet ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... contradiction to universal experience, that objects of vision alone are capable of attracting our regard. But nothing can be more unfounded than such a supposition. It might appear to be too nearly approaching to the ludicrous, to suggest as an example to the contrary, the metaphysician's attachment to his insubstantial speculations, or the zeal displayed in ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... stood a large close-pruned vineyard, inclosed by a high white wall; at one end of which, and facing the front of his red and yellow chateau, M. de St. Vallier had built a red and yellow summer-house, with green shutters, to keep it in countenance. Very much diverted at our ludicrous disappointment, we sauntered along the road, which followed the course of the Rhone. At two miles distance, just where the river winds with a broad and rapid sweep into a woody gorge, with one blue mountain peeping over it, a black venerable ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... begged for my photograph. The elderly gentleman, on the other hand, gave me a great deal of good advice; but I subdued even him, for before he went away he spoke in a broken voice, and there were tears in his eyes, which papa said were owing to a variety of causes. It is ludicrous enough, no doubt, but it is also a little bit humiliating. I try to laugh the thing away, whether the opinion expressed about me is solemnly stupid or merely impertinent, but the vexation of it remains; and the chief vexation to me is that I should have so little command ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... of a formidable monster—no other than a bottled scorpion, a recent present from Captain Hannaford. He did not say how emblematic the scorpion lotion was of that which Jem had been administering to his wounded spirit all the morning, but he put the story in so ludicrous a light that Isabel decided that Mr. Dynevor was ungenerously and ungratefully treated as a butt; and she turned away in displeasure from the group whom the recital was amusing, to offer her sympathy to the tutor, and renew the ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... good to suffer in this world, especially for the thruth. Indeed I am proud of this face," he continued, blinking with a visage so comically disastrous at Mr. Lucre, that had that gentleman had the slightest possible perception of the ludicrous in his composition, not all the gifts and graces that ever were poured down upon the whole staff of the Reformation Society together, would have prevented him from laughing outright. "Of course you are come," pursued Lucre, "to swear information ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... perhaps, even eight solid minutes, in order not to trample on the woman who lay immediately beneath it. [SPITTA is answered by a round of laughter.] You may laugh! The behaviour of the horse didn't strike me as in the least ludicrous. I could well understand how some people applauded him, clapped their hands, and how others stormed a bakery to buy buns with ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume II • Gerhart Hauptmann
... a simple rustic, was in a state of ludicrous bewilderment. "Dol, master, I don't know," he stuttered, rubbing ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... burglaries were a negligible quantity. So was the little accident which had just happened to Mr. Keith, who ruefully declared he had done it on purpose, in order to liven things up. No one was likely to be taken in by this kind of talk, because the accident was of an inglorious and even ludicrous kind. ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... to miss any opportunity to see Haig. More than ever now was she determined to solve his mystery. So Huntingdon's "surprise" was a greater shock to her than he, simple man, could possibly have foreseen or perceived. But even if she had not been moved by his rather ludicrous disappointment she would not have dared to refuse acquiescence in his programme. She had indeed expressed an ardent—oh, too ardent!—desire to go camping, and any explanation she could think ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... men, with a number of cartridges sufficient to prevent their starving on their return home. Their leader was buried where he had fallen, and thus ended this mock engagement. Yet another battle was to be fought, which, though successful, did not terminate in quite so ludicrous a manner. ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... is lacking the end is not far off. England is given up to idleness, pomp, dissolute practices, and pleasure—pleasure, always pleasure. The vice of intemperance, the mania for gambling, these are the vultures that are consuming the vitals of our people. Look at the luxury of the country—a ludicrous travesty of national greatness! Look at the tastes and habits of our age—the deadliest enemies of true religion! And then look at the price we are paying in what the devil calls 'the priestesses of society' for the tranquillity of the demon ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... have none of this; thy food will be fir-bark, thy drink marsh-water." Nevertheless, "Joseph Tzarevitch" persists in his intention, and Mother Desert receives him at last. Most versions of this ballad are full of genuine poetry, but a few are rather ludicrous: for example, "Mother Desert" asks Joseph, "How canst thou leave thy sweet viands and soft feather-beds to come ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... It had, besides, a penthouse, projecting four or five feet beyond the roof, and running the whole length on each side. At each end of the middle room were hung some Chinese paintings, representing men and women in ludicrous attitudes. In this apartment we were civilly desired to seat ourselves on mats, and betel was ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... Secure in a garret, she looked down into the streets below, to see his vacant, dazed look as he sought, unable to find her. Her rendering of the expression of his face at this time, was irresistibly ludicrous, as was that of his whole bearing while searching for her. "Mort Cunningham" did not get her, but whether or not she ever returned to the enjoyment of her happy home, in West Chester, we never knew, as this sudden flight was the last we ever heard of her. ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... confusion, while elegant equipages rolled along the streets, scarcely able to make their way through the crowd. At nine o'clock, a royal salute thundered from the cannon of the fortress; and at twelve the procession began to move, displaying a rather ludicrous mixture of Spanish and Asiatic taste. I saw it from the windows of a house on its route, which commanded a very extensive view of the line of march. The cortege was led by the Chinese. First came a body ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... who built up "The Lady Shore" smashed history into smithereens in their rabid and frenzied effort to make her an exquisite impersonation of nearly all the virtues. It was, in fact, grotesque and ludicrous. With any old history book staring them in the face, they treated Jane Shore precisely as though she were the heroine of a dime novel. They had no qualms. They lopped great wads from her past, and huge excrescences from her present, and by the time that she had reached the last act, ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... was standing in the steerage brimming over with the ludicrous character of the previous night's frivolity, was heard to chuckle and say: "What damned nonsense to ask ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... for whom so quickly "time doth transfix the flourish set on youth," there is something strange, even a trifle ludicrous, in the thought that Zeus, after all these years, is still at the beck and call of his passions. And it seems anyhow lamentable that he has not yet gained self-confidence enough to appear in his own ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... he turned round the ludicrous mixture of cunning and confusion, anger and vexatious alarm on his face caused the ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... 1843, Lincoln had hopes that the Whigs would nominate him as their candidate for the national House of Representatives. In the canvass he developed some strength, but not quite enough, and the result was somewhat ludicrous, for Sangamon County made him a delegate to the nominating convention with instructions to vote for one of his own competitors, Colonel Edward D. Baker, the gallant gentleman and brilliant orator who fell at Ball's Bluff. The prize was finally carried off by Colonel John J. ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... social position had reminded himself that his guest, though armed with the best of credentials, was quite unknown to him otherwise, and that, perhaps, he had acted unwisely in inviting a stranger to his house without making some preliminary inquiry. This reversal of their roles was a conceit so ludicrous that Theydon smiled too. ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... in vain that she looked haughty and handsome. Addressing her as Fraeulein Hulstrom, von Francius gave her a sharp lecture, and imitated the effect of her voice in a particularly soft passage with ludicrous accuracy. The rest of the chorus was tittering audibly, the musicians, with the exception of Courvoisier and his friend, nudging each other and smiling. She bridled haughtily, flashed a furious glance at her mentor, grew ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... excused herself had that been possible; she was becoming painfully conscious of finding Mrs. Wibberley-Stimpson as a Queen irresistibly ludicrous. Once already that morning she had only just escaped detection, and she was horribly afraid now that something might happen which would lead her to betray herself by unseemly laughter. She could only ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... "discovery" of the vertebral nature of the skull. Just as the fore limb can be homologised with the hind limb, so, reasoning by analogy, the skull should be capable of being homologised with the vertebrae. To what ludicrous extremes this doctrine of the repetition of parts within the organism was pushed we shall see when we consider the theories of the German transcendentalists of the early ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... and having arrived within a few paces of where they stood, I heard the one say to the other, with a look of the most perfect simplicity, "Stop, John, till the gentlemen pass." There was something so ludicrous in this speech, and in the cast of countenance which accompanied it, that I could not help laughing aloud; nor was my mirth diminished by their attempts to persuade me that they were quiet country people, come out for no other purpose than to shoot squirrels. When I desired to know whether ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... are gone," he said. "We hav'n't got them in the house, I assure you that they are gone." Here there were sounds and whisperings in the main building adjoining, and the lieutenant strode to the door. A ludicrous instant intervened, the old man's modesty outran his terror. "Don't go in there," he said, feebly; "there are women undressed in there." "Damn the women," cried Baker; "what if they are undressed? We shall go in if they haven't a rag." Leaving the old man in ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... should compare the outward aspects of the two establishments, Minot & Doane's offered a ludicrous contrast to the imposing white buildings of Fort Moultrie, arranged military-wise on the grassy promontory; nevertheless, as is not infrequently the case elsewhere, the humbler ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... thought of going to such a place, wondering what Sir Edward and Lady Merton would think of the expedition, and for a moment considering whether Mr. Woodbourne could approve of it, yet at the same time keenly enjoying all that was ludicrous in the scene, and longing to talk it over with Rupert. She was also much diverted with Mr. Augustus Mills's eloquent lecture, in which she afterwards declared that she heard the words 'barbarous institution' fifteen times repeated, ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... him, as he left the room and tramped up stairs in search of the list of notes, with a ludicrous expression of wonder. In his eyes, no revenge at present seemed worth so extravagant a price. But Trevethick had his reasons, or thought he had, for this excess of hate; his slow-moving yet powerful nature resembled the python—it ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... Gens. A little brass basin dangled above the threshold; and looking through the glass I saw the master of the establishment shaving a fat-faced neighbour. Now I had come to see and pay my compliments to a poet, and there did appear to me to be something strangely awkward and irresistibly ludicrous in having to address, to some extent, in a literary and complimentary vein, an individual actually engaged in so excessively prosaic and unelevated a ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... of its literary academies. Tiraboschi, in his History of Italian Literature, has given a list of 171; and Jarkius, in his Specimen Historiae Academiarum Conditarum, enumerates nearly 700. Many of these, with a sort of Socratic irony, gave themselves ludicrous names, or names expressive of ignorance. Such were the Lunatici of Naples, the Estravaganti, the Fulminales, the Trapessati, the Drowsy, the Sleepers, the Anxious, the Confused, the Unstable, the Fantastic, the Transformed, the Ethereal. "The first academies of Italy ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... mathematical sciences. This is done partly to avoid monotony, partly for the sake of making Aristophanes 'the cause of wit in others,' and also in order to bring the comic and tragic poet into juxtaposition, as if by accident. A suitable 'expectation' of Aristophanes is raised by the ludicrous circumstance of his having the hiccough, which is appropriately cured by his substitute, the physician Eryximachus. To Eryximachus Love is the good physician; he sees everything as an intelligent physicist, and, like many professors of his art in modern times, attempts ...
— Symposium • Plato
... joined in "sallying" ship. The dog-kennels amidships made it necessary for the people to gather aft, where they rushed from side to side in a mass in the confined space around the wheel. This was a ludicrous affair, the men falling over one another amid shouts of laughter without producing much effect on the ship. She remained fast, while all hands jumped at the word of command, but finally slid off when the men were stamping hard at the double. We were now ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... growing in clusters, are exquisite, of a rich golden tint veined with red; while the fruit hangs pendent, like bean-pods strung all over the branches of the mammoth tree. The diminutive leaves, blossoms and fruit are so singularly opposed to the stately growth as to appear almost ludicrous, yet the tout ensemble is "a thing of beauty" never to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... deal with; for it is necessary that they should. They have eloquence to express their passions, and wit at will to express their contempt and provoke laughter. Their natural use of speech is not hung up in monumental mockery, in an obsolete language; nor is their sense of what is ludicrous, or readiness at finding out allusions to express it, buried in collections of Anas. You will hear more good things on the outside of a stage-coach from London to Oxford than if you were to pass ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... then, surely, it would enjoy all the fairer prospect of these advantages, by being transferred to wiser and better guardianship than Hester Prynne's. Among those who promoted the design, Governor Bellingham was said to be one of the most busy. It may appear singular, and indeed, not a little ludicrous, that an affair of this kind, which, in later days, would have been referred to no higher jurisdiction than that of the selectmen of the town, should then have been a question publicly discussed, and on which statesmen of eminence took sides. At that epoch of pristine ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... to Corydon at last as though she had always lain like this, and as though she must for endless time. She found herself getting used to it even; her muscles relaxed. There came to her a sense of the ludicrous side of it. "He means to conquer me!" she thought. "Can I hold out? If I only had something to think about, then I'd be a match for him." And suddenly the inspiration came to her. "I'll write ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... henceforth. A little later I moved away from the rail to look at the compass with such a stealthy gait that the helmsman noticed it—and I could not help noticing the unusual roundness of his eyes. These are trifling instances, though it's to no commander's advantage to be suspected of ludicrous eccentricities. But I was also more seriously affected. There are to a seaman certain words, gestures, that should in given conditions come as naturally, as instinctively as the winking of a menaced eye. A certain order should spring on to his lips without thinking; a ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... craft, of some species or another, though all agreed she was not a felucca, a bombarda, or a sparanara. All this time Ghita was thoughtful and silent; quite as much so, indeed, as Tommaso himself, though from a very different motive. Nothwithstanding all the gossip, and the many ludicrous opinions of her companions, her eyes scarcely turned an instant from the lugger, on which they seemed to be riveted by a sort of fascination. Had there been one there sufficiently unoccupied to observe this interesting girl, he might have been struck with the varying expression ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... railing and looking at the fish; and most of the people were busied in getting a barrel of pitch to light, for them to play with. The captain now called me to him, having learned some of my apprehensions from Dick; and having diverted himself and others for some time with my fears, which appeared ludicrous enough in my crying and trembling, he dismissed me. The barrel of pitch was now lighted and put over the side into the water: by this time it was just dark, and the fish went after it; and, to my great joy, I saw them ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... touch of vanity in his smile, as though in memory of some old, half-ludicrous story from ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... "engineer to the Houses," was pleased to show his adaptation of the Peaucellier linkage to his new blowing engines, which proved to be exceptionally quiet in their operation (fig. 25).[47] A bit on the ludicrous side, also, was Sylvester's 78-bar linkage that traced a straight line along the line connecting the two fixed centers ...
— Kinematics of Mechanisms from the Time of Watt • Eugene S. Ferguson
... hain't any 'bjection to my giving the laugh to Bill?" he said, with ludicrous dismay; "there ain't nothing ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... long outstanding, and so beset with grave difficulties. Notwithstanding all this, the last gentleman was said to be young, but a clever lawyer. Now a play of the humorous invaded his face; and while from his eye there came out a strong love of the ludicrous, a curl of sarcasm now and then ruffled his lip. They called him the British agent—in other words, the Counsel for Her Most Gracious Majesty. Smooth had no stronger evidence of this fact than that the gentleman seemed very contented with the way time went, amusing ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... he came in sight of Annapolis. Hurrying on faster, he at last entered the town. The further he went the more painfully conscious the boy became of the ludicrous appearance that he made. He saw men and women turn their heads to look after him, and his cheeks burned to a deep scarlet that glowed over the ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Middies • Victor G. Durham
... medicine had been with them until midnight, and, having done his best, had gone away, leaving the child to the two women. Maurice had been in twice, clumsily, on tiptoe, to look with ill-concealed awe at the child, and to whisper hopes to Marie which displayed a ludicrous, if lamentable, ignorance of what he ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... brogue, in the slouched caubeen and coarse, gray habiliments of some poor, plundered Son of the Sod. Those who caught a glimpse of the brave commander as he fled before the dangers that threatened him, report him as presenting the most ludicrous appearance imaginable, and scarcely worth sending to his account in a respectable manner. To this disguise alone, we learn, he owed his escape after the second carnage of the British by the Irish troops on the memorable day already named, ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... and hazel eyes dancing with merriment, and face and figure at some years above thirty, would have suited a girl of twenty. To see Mr. Dusautoy bringing her footstools, shawls, and cushions, and to remember the accusation of starvation, was almost irresistibly ludicrous. ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... here. The divine vindication and acquittal is not a mere hidden thought and judgment in the mind of God. It is a declaring and showing to be innocent, and that not by word but by deed. That expectation seemed to be annihilated and made ludicrous by His death. But the 'justifying' of which our text speaks takes place in Christ's ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... divine. No man is great enough to put himself in the right by admitting he was wrong. And even if he were great enough to admit it under argument, he would have to be godlike to admit it under menace. Rather than admit it, Mr. Asquith has let himself be driven into a position more ludicrous than perhaps any Prime Minister has occupied. For though he declares woman suffrage to be "a political disaster of the gravest kind," he is ready to push it through if the House of Commons wishes, relying for its rejection upon the House of Lords, which he has denounced and eviscerated. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... the manners of the Americans; but it is singular that most of the writers who have drawn these ludicrous delineations belonged themselves to the middle classes in England, to whom the same delineations are exceedingly applicable: so that these pitiless censors for the most part furnish an example of the very thing they blame in the United States; they do not perceive that they are deriding ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... A ludicrous instance of the promptitude with which he punishes offenders, is related by Colonel Smith, in the following manner:—"We have witnessed the care they take of their charge, and with what readiness they chastise those that molest them, in the case of a cur biting ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee |
