"Mimic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... than divisional exercises is the mimic warfare that is heralded by a notice in battalion orders such as the following: "The battalion will take part in brigade exercise to-day. Ten rounds of blank ammunition and haversack ...
— The Amateur Army • Patrick MacGill
... innocuous engines of destruction, little black cannon balls had been piled into a mimic pyramid, near to which three men stood engaged in desultory conversation. One of them, Tom observed as markedly taller, more commanding and distinguished in bearing, than his companions. Even from here, the whole ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... considerable of a mimic and an actor. During a political campaign, he took the platform against a certain Tom Corwin of Ohio, who was considered a great political orator. On one occasion Corwin was the first speaker, and to emphasize his speech, he danced about on the ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... research and study, in all my close analysis of the masterpieces of Shakespeare, in my earnest determination to make those plays appear real on the mimic stage, I have never, and nowhere, met tragedy so real, so sublime, so magnificent as the legend of Hiram. It is substance without shadow—the manifest destiny of life which requires no picture and scarcely ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... into an incoherent clay, the fossils which it envelops become not unfrequently wholly detached from it, so that, on a smart blow dealt by the hammer, they leap out entire, resembling, from the degree of compression which they exhibit, those mimic fishes carved out of plates of ivory or of mother-of-pearl, which are used as counters in some of the games of China or the East Indies. The material of which they are composed, a brittle jet, though better suited than the stone to resist the disintegrating ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... what I can't be with the witch, confound her! she is such a wag, such a drole, such a mimic; disobeys me in such a mocking, cajoling, affectionate way. I could not give her pain if her soul depended ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... of becoming a mere bookworm, and, on the contrary, we have had one excessively brisk and pleasant game at football already this season, and should, but for the unfortunate inclemency of the weather, have engaged again this afternoon in the mimic warfare. ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... narrative: Agnes, as I have said, came into my room again before leaving the house—we conversed for five minutes—we parted—she went out—her last words being that she would return at half-past one o'clock; and not long after that time, if ever mimic bells—bells of rejoicing, or bells of mourning, are heard in desert spaces of the air, and (as some have said) in unreal worlds, that mock our own, and repeat, for ridicule, the vain and unprofitable motions of man, then too surely, about this ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... "Three large pigs were barbecued," and "forty-five toasts were given on the occasion," the last of which was, "Strong halters, firm blocks and sharp axes to all such as deserve them." The toasts were varied with songs of liberty and patriotism by a noted colonial mimic named Balch, and another song composed and sung by Dr. Church. "At five o'clock," says Mr. Adams, "the Boston people started home, led by Mr. Hancock in his chariot, and to the honour of the Sons, I did not see one ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1 • Various
... tree-shaded slope along the road. "Left there from some game!" they say to one another, and drive on, satisfied. But these are no mere discarded playthings, dear ignorant travellers! They are tokens of the mimic earnest with which child-life is ever seeking to sober itself, and rushing unsummoned into the workaday fields of an aimlessly frantic world. They are houses, and the stone boundaries are walls. This tree stump is an armchair, this board a ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... A mimic battle takes place on a bridge—i.e., rival factions shake their fists with prudent defiance over one another's shoulders. (An Old Lady in the Balcony, who has been watching this desperate encounter, finds that she has missed a very ...
— Punch Volume 102, May 28, 1892 - or the London Charivari • Various
... seems to have been quite a favorite in the Austrian court. Maria Antoinette introduced it to Versailles. The tourist is still shown the dairy where that unhappy queen made butter and cheese, the mill where Louis XVI. ground his grist, and the mimic village tavern where the King and Queen of France, as landlord and landlady, ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... playhouse formed a fitting background for her, and Allison watched her beautiful, changing face with an ever-increasing sense of delight. The play itself was an old story to him, but the girl was a new sensation, and while she watched the mimic world beyond the ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... of Villon's week of wonder, his glory was at its greatest. No fairer day had traced that radiant month of June and no more splendid pageantry had adorned the illustrious reign of the new Grand Constable. Mimic battles, fountains running wine, free doles of food, fantastic pageants, grotesque dances, all the gorgeous mummery that the fifteenth century delighted in was offered in profusion to please the fancy and win the hearts of the people of Paris. But the crowning triumph was the great ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... petulances, and fancies, and unrest passed away. Before he had told her all that happened to him during the week—touching gently on the poor Revivalist—although his mother had a saving sense of humour, and was a quite wonderful mimic—and saying nothing of his evening with St. Francis de Sales—for this would have alarmed her at once—he knew perfectly well that he would be neither a Roman nor a reporter, but a Free Kirk minister, and was not utterly cast down; for notwithstanding the yeasty ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... to his death, with brief intervals, he was Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, in the administrations of Lord Grey and of Lord Melbourne. Outside the House he kept the party together by his great social gifts. An admirable talker, 'raconteur', and mimic, with a wit's relish for wit, the charm of his good ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... Chaucer's "Host"—the actual Master Harry Bailly, vintner and landlord of the Tabard Inn in Southwark, was likewise a member of Parliament, and very probably felt as sure of himself in real life as the mimic personage bearing his name does in its fictitious reproduction. And he and his fellows, the "poor and simple Commons"—for so humble was the style they were wont to assume in their addresses to the sovereign,—began to look upon ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... the owner would scarcely care to go, and they believed him. The new fashion brought with it a new affectation, perhaps the most offensive of all, the affectation of simplicity. The garden, as truly a product of man's hand and brain as the house or the picture-gallery, was made to mimic the forest, losing, in too many cases, its own peculiar beauty, without gaining the true charm of wild nature. On the other hand, the eyes of Rousseau's admirers were opened to many things not noticed before. ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... instruments, accompanying monotonous Quichua songs, the dances commence with those solemn movements with which the Incas used to worship the sun: they then suddenly assume a more joyous character, and at last change to the wild war-dance, in which the mimic contest, stimulated by copious libations of chicha, frequently ends in a real fight. In the larger towns, where the Mestizo portion of the population predominates, these dances are discouraged, and in course of time they will probably be entirely ...
— Travels in Peru, on the Coast, in the Sierra, Across the Cordilleras and the Andes, into the Primeval Forests • J. J. von Tschudi
... and waistcoats, visited With too-familiar elbow, swell the curse Vortiginous. The boating man returns, His rawness growing with experience— Strange union! and directs the optic glass Not unresponsive to Jemima's charms, Who wheels obdurate, in his mimic chaise Perambulant, the child. The gouty cit, Asthmatical, with elevated cane Pursues the unregarding tram, as one Who, having heard a hurdy-gurdy, girds His loins and hunts the hurdy-gurdy-man, Blaspheming. Now the clangorous bell proclaims The Times or Chronicle, and ...
— Green Bays. Verses and Parodies • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... just glimmering under the dead gray ashes,—that is all we can look for. When it comes to the manufactured article, one is surprised to find how well the metrical artisans have learned to imitate the real thing. They catch all the phrases of the true poet. They imitate his metrical forms as a mimic copies the gait of the ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the island called "Magna Charta Island," which forms a charming feature in the landscape, and upon which is built a little sort of altar-house, so to call it. We leave the settlement of such matters to wiser and more learned heads; but we incline to the idea that John would have felt even the mimic ferry a protection. The island looks even now exclusive, and as we were impelled to its shore, we indulged the belief that the charter was really there signed ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... for some moments listening attentively. He could hear nothing—at least no sound that betokened the presence of human beings. The breeze sighing among the leaves, the distant howl of the coyote, the sweet note of the mimic night-thrush, or perchance the rustling caused by the iguana as it scampered over the dead leaves, were the only sounds that broke the stillness of ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... trepidation, expecting trouble. Trouble there was, but of a different sort to that which we feared. Scarcely had we entered the great room where the Child of Kings was seated in her chair of state surrounded by all the pomp and ceremony of her mimic court, when the big doors at the end of it were opened, and through them marched three gray-bearded men in white robes whom we saw at once were heralds or ambassadors from the Fung. These men bowed to the veiled Maqueda and, turning toward where we stood in a little ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... approach of morning for their second cast. Towards midnight, then, we sailed boldly up to the outermost boat and spoke her through Marc'antonio, who (fas est ab hoste doceri) had in old campaigns picked up enough of the Genoese patois to mimic it very passably. He announced us as sent by certain Genoese fishmongers—a new and enterprising firm whose name he invented on the spur of the moment—to trade for the first catch of fish and carry them early to market, where their freshness would command good prices. ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... ever, trod. Look at the northern coast of Australia, with its mysterious Gulf of Carpentaria; a survey of which, it is supposed, would solve the great geographical question respecting the rivers of the mimic continent. Place your finger on Japan, with its exclusive and civilized people; it lies an unknown lump on our earth, and an undefined line on our charts! Think of the northern coast of China, willing, as is reported, to open an intercourse and trade with Europeans, ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... 'e says. 'You'll be havin' th' roof in, one o' these days.' An' I says, 'Tha'd better stan' on a bit o' clunch, then, an' hold it up wi' thy 'ead.' So 'e wor that mad, 'e cossed an' 'e swore, an' t'other chaps they did laugh." Morel was a good mimic. He imitated the manager's fat, squeaky voice, with its ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... armies, &c., are heard in other regions of the Desert. Forms, also, are seen of more people than have any right to be walking in human paths: sometimes forms of avowed terror; sometimes, which is a case of far more danger, appearances that mimic the shapes of men, and even of friends or comrades. This is a case much dwelt on by the old travellers, and which throws a gloom over the spirits of all Bedouins, and of every cafila or caravan. We all know what a sensation of loneliness or 'eeriness' (to use an expressive term of ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... outspread before us. At first one can see nothing but a chalky and stony plain, yellow and gray to the limit of sight. No human wave is preceding ours; in front of us there is no living soul, but the ground is peopled with dead—recent corpses that still mimic agony or sleep, and old remains already bleached and scattered to the wind, half ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... no Northern Poles With crowns of mimic roses. That mock our sad sepulchral souls ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 16, 1891 • Various
... a confidant of Sir Walter's in the matter of the anonymity of the Waverley Novels; an inimitable story-teller and mimic, very much to the delight of Sir ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... hopped out into the howling, dancing circle. The howling had ceased. He had tumbled to a sitting position on the snow, but was speaking and motioning with his hands. Once he pointed at his bandaged foot. Twice he put his hands to his mouth, as if to mimic eating. Then he sprang nimbly upon his one foot and would have leaped toward the now raging fire, but the one who had been first impassive, then had attempted to restrain the mad throng, restrained him, for the others, leaping at the fire, threw it hither and yon, stamping out ...
— The Blue Envelope • Roy J. Snell
... was gay and cheerful; and Dickens, Thackeray, and many other noted men were his friends. We are told that above all things. Sir Edwin was a great mimic and that one night at dinner he threw everybody into fits of laughter by imitating his friend the sculptor Sir Francis Chantry. It was at the sculptor's table, where a large party was assembled. Chantry called Sir Edwin's attention, ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... finances, pulled with all their strength, and that magic word, the finances, promised them a liberal gratification, of which they wished to prove themselves worthy. The lighter seemed to leap the mimic waves of the Loire. Magnificent weather, a sunrise that empurpled all the landscape, displayed the river in all its limpid serenity. The current and the rowers carried Fouquet along as wings carry a bird, and he arrived before Beaugency without ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the rippling of the stream over its rocky bed below the cottage, and the chirrup of some insects in the neighbouring wood. The stars shone brightly forth from the intense blue sky, their light just glancing on the mimic waves of the rivulet, while the tall trees and wild rocks on either side were ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... the knights rushed against each other with the utmost impetuosity. The clashing of swords, the sounding shields, the war-cry of the knights, who shouted the name of their ladye-love in the midst of the mimic strife, greatly excited the spectators, who, in return, cheered and encouraged the combatants. When the knights were brave and determined, the contest lasted some hours; the vanquished, that is, those who were thrown from their horses, withdrew from the lists as quietly as possible, leaving the ...
— The Manual of Heraldry; Fifth Edition • Anonymous
... neighborhood of the lakes. Before his retirement, in the annual maneuvers, he had often rehearsed his defense against Russian invaders. Indeed report, perhaps unfounded, described his retirement to the displeasure of the Emperor William at being badly worsted in one of these mimic combats. He had prevented the country from being cleared and the swamps from being drained, arguing that they were worth more to Germany than a dozen fortresses. A man of rugged strength, his face suggesting power and tenacity, he was to become the ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... before we could stop him, he was in. The hole was too small to admit a hand, though not a rat or a snake, so the prospect was gloomy. Suddenly a happy inspiration came to me. That sad, husky cry with which he expressed his need of a mother was not difficult to mimic, and he might be cheated into thinking that a lost brother or sister was looking for him. I retired and made the attempt, and, hark! a faint echo came from the wall. At each repetition it became clearer, until the round face and great eyes appeared at the ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... his manner, his method, not in his substance. "His laugh was striking. Such awkward gestures belonged to no other man. They attracted universal attention from the old sedate down to the schoolboy."(4) He was a famous mimic. ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... party of his friends, male and female, to the bride's house. Most of the males have warlike weapons, real or sham, and as they approach the village of the bride's family the young men from thence emerge, also armed, as if to repel the invasion, and a mimic fight ensues, which like a dissolving view blends pleasantly into a dance. In this the bride and bridegroom join, each riding on the hips of one of their friends. After this they have a feast till late in the night. Next morning ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... safely sailed from Kennebunkport to Massachusetts Bay. Thorny, from his chair, was chief-engineer, and directed his gang of one how to dig the basin, throw up the embankment, and finally let in the water till the mimic ocean was full; then regulate the little water-gate, lest it should overflow and wreck the pretty squadron of ships, boats, canoes, and rafts, which soon rode ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... to an end; the shadows began to lengthen on the turf. The mimic warriors were disbanded. The tea-tables made their appearance under the elms, where one was welcomed and waited upon by cheerful matrons and neat maidservants, and delightfully zealous and inefficient ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... started together in the direction of the sound. They walked along a short distance, passing several beautiful little enclosures, where quiet and gentle-looking animals, of various forms, were grazing in their mimic pastures, or lying at rest before the doors of the thatched-roofed cabins that had been built for them instead of barns, until at length they came to a place where a long range of buildings opened to view before them, the fronts of which, instead of showing doors and ...
— Rollo in Paris • Jacob Abbott
... any other part of the tents; nor is this to be wondered at. Nothing can be more singular in appearance or gorgeous in colouring. Their fragrance, too, is so delightful. Description can convey but a faint idea of their great beauty and diversity of character. They seem to mimic the insect world in the shapes of their blossoms; nor are the resemblances distant. Every one has heard of the butterfly-plant: there is one on the stage now before us, and as the breeze gently waves its slender stalks, each tipped with a vegetable ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 447 - Volume 18, New Series, July 24, 1852 • Various
... him," she declared to my aunt. "He is so awfully humorous—his droll sayings and antics keep us in a perfect roar each night at dinner. He's such a perfect mimic." ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... the wave as it retreats again, the fresh advance and defiance—this is the paradise of the dabbler. Hour after hour, with clothes tucked round their waist and a lavish display of stout little legs, the urchins wage their mimic warfare with the sea. Meanwhile the scientific section is encamped upon the rocks. With torn vestments and bruised feet the votaries of knowledge are peeping into every little pool, detecting mussel-shells, picking up seaweed, hunting for anemones. A ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... the Rajah had him tied up in his artillery gun-shed, and gave him raw-flesh to eat: but he several times cut his ropes and ran off; and after three months the Rajah got tired of him, and let him go. He was then taken by a Cashmeeree mimic, or comedian (bhand), who fed and took care of him for six weeks*; but at the end of that time he also got tired of him (for his habits were filthy), and let him go to wander about the Bondee bazaar. ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... childhood Charles was a spectator only on the days of mimic battle. In his seventeenth year he was permitted to enter the lists as a regular combatant, a permission shared by his fellow pupils all eager to flesh their maiden spears. The duke arranged that his son should have a preliminary ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... painter; Wm. H. Chase, the artist; Bettini, inventor of the new phonograph. Nikola Tesla, the world-wide illustrious electrician; see article about him in Jan. or Feb. Century. John Drew, actor; James Barnes, a marvelous mimic; my, you should see him! Smedley the artist; Zorn the artist; Zogbaum the artist; Reinhart the artist; Metcalf the artist; Ancona, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... not sought in vain, I seem to have lived my childhood o'er again; To have renewed the joys that once were mine, Without the sin of violating thine; And, while the wings of Fancy still are free, And I can view this mimic show of thee, Time has but half succeeded in his theft,— Thyself removed, thy ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... can,"—briskly. "Lord de Burgh, if you care for music—not severe classical music, you know—ballads, recitatives, and that sort of thing—Hyacinth O'Hara, the new tenor, and Mr. Merrydew, that wonderful mimic and singer, are coming to me next Tuesday; I shall be delighted to ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... in Milton's memory for repetition to himself, when he dreamt a memorable dream. The house is all still, the voices and the pattering feet of the children hushed in sleep, and Milton too asleep, but with his waking thoughts pursuing him into sleep and stirring the mimic fancy. Not this night, however, is it of Heaven, or Hell, or Chaos, or the Universe of Man with its luminaries, or any other of the objects of his poetic contemplation by day, that dreaming images come. ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... boar, and the furious onset the wounded animal made on him, causing him to drop his gun, and climb a tree, and the terrible grunt of the beast he well remembered, and the whole welkin rang with the peals of laughter which his mimic powers evoked. Another had shot a buffalo-calf, and another had bagged a hartebeest; the Wakonongo related their laughable rencontre with me in the woods, and were lavish in their description of the stores of honey to ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... a sudden he had an inspiration. He tells the story himself, sir, and I assure you he'd make you laugh—Morgan is a wonderful mimic. Well, he remembered suddenly, as I said, that he was a mighty good ventriloquist, and he saw his chance. He gave a great jump like a startled fawn, and threw up his arms and stared like one demented into the tree over their heads. There was a mangy-looking crow sitting up there ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... "bear leader" had laughed at some Arabs prostrating themselves to pray, at that sacred moment, just after sunset, ordained by Mohammed lest his people should appear to worship the orb itself. One of these youths, fancying himself a mimic, had imitated the Moslems. They were old men, unable to resent with violence what they thought an insult to their religion; but they had told their sons, and the story had spread. Later that night the joyous ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... old story into which all this Elizabethan history is crowded. That mimic scene in which the great historic instances in the science of human nature and human life were brought out with such scientific accuracy, and with such matchless artistic power and splendour, was, ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... was a little older, and lessons and play alternated with each other, she was taught to attend to the thing in hand, and finish what she had begun, both in her studies and games. One day she was amusing herself making a little haycock when some other mimic occupation caught her volatile fancy, and she flung down her small rake ready to rush off to the fresh attraction. "No, no, Princess; you must always complete what you have commenced," said her governess, and the small haymaker had to conclude her haymaking before she was at liberty ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... ship, heeling to her covering-board, was gallantly breasting the huge billows of the mid-Atlantic; each wave a deep blue liquid hill, half as high as our fore-yard, crested with a ridge of snow-white foam that, caught up and blown into spray by the gale, produced an endless procession of mimic rainbows past the ship. And, as the crest of each wave struck our weather-bow and burst into a drenching shower of silvery spray, a rainbow formed there too, overarching the ship in the wake of the foremast and causing ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... packed. The cook hitches up the horses and starts for the next camping-ground. The cow-boys pursue their business of 'cutting out;' cattle, with tails valiantly erect, snorting defiance, rush by the 'cow-waggon,' which, unmoved amid this mimic war, ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... manoeuvres of the little army beneath for an hour or so, while drum and clarionet did their best to fill the square with music, and send up their thousand echoes to break and die amid the spires and statues of the Cathedral. At last the mimic war was ended, and I was left alone, with the silent and moveless, but ever acting statues around and below me. What a picture, thought I, of the pageantry of life, as viewed from a higher point than this world! Instead of an hour, take a thousand years, and how do the scenes shift! The golden ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... the Saint. The regions nearer drew, And raised resplendent to their Hero's view Rich nature's triple reign; for here elate She stored the noblest treasures of her state, Adorn'd exuberant this her last domain, As yet unalter'd by her mimic man, Sow'd liveliest gems, and plants of proudest grace, And strung with ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... with his clan to Ohio from their home in Florida, about the middle of the last century. Tecumseh was born, as nearly as can be reckoned, in the year 1768, and from his earliest childhood he showed the passion for war which ruled him through life. He led his playmates in their mimic fights, and at seventeen he went on his first war party against the Kentuckians. The Indians attacked some boats on the Ohio River, and killed all the boatmen but one, whom they brought back and burned ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... reached a tea-house, kept by a closely shaven bonze, or priest. He seemed very pleased to see us, and bowed and shook hands over and over again. He placed his whole house at our disposal, and a very clean, pretty, and well-arranged house it was, with a lovely little formal garden, ornamented with mimic temples and bridges of ice, fashioned by the hard frost, with but little assistance from the hand of man. Bits of wood and stone, a few graceful fern-leaves and sprays of bamboo, and a trickling stream of water produced the most fairy-like crystalline effects imaginable. If ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... Lady Byron called "the mimic woe" of the poet, but it was rather the grand defiance of the Indian warrior at the stake, whose proud soul can hold in hand ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... U.S. navy, who enjoys the reputation of being a zealous Methodist preacher and a daring officer). The latter told me he could hardly understand how I could be an Englishman, as I pronounced my h's all right. General Scurry himself is very amusing, and is an admirable mimic. His numerous anecdotes of the war were very interesting. In peace times he is a lawyer. He was a volunteer major in the Mexican war, and distinguished himself very much in the late campaigns in New Mexico and Arizona, and at ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... Gaiety, her fringe was curled and her pretty face rouged with the best of them. And, if further need be to show the absurdity of having called her performance 'a triumph of naturalness over the jaded spirit of modernity,' let us reflect that the little mimic was not a real old-fashioned girl after all. She had none of that restless naturalness that would seem to have characterised the girl of the early Victorian days. She had no pretty ways—no smiles nor blushes nor tremors. Possibly Demos could not have stood ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... the light of our burning roof-thatch I saw all that were dear to me in this world (save an elder brother, your ancestor, left behind with the court) butchered while they begged for mercy, and heard the butchers laugh at their prayers and mimic their pleadings. I was overlooked, and escaped without hurt. When the savages were gone I crept out and cried the night away watching the burning houses; and I was all alone, except for the company of the dead and the wounded, for the rest had taken ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... middle comedy, which came next, observe what it was, and again, for what object the new comedy was introduced, which gradually sank down into a mere mimic artifice. That some good things are said even by these writers, everybody knows: but the whole plan of such poetry and dramaturgy, to what end does ...
— Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
... up the river; mimic fleetnesses Of little wavelets, fretted by the shells And shingle of the beach, circle and eddy round, And smooth themselves perpetually: there dwells A spirit of peace in their low murmuring noise Subsiding into quiet, as if life were such A struggle with inexorable bound, Brief, bright, ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... showed a special bent for unkingly and frivolous diversions. Save in his devotion for the chase, his tastes had nothing in common with the high-born youths with whom he was educated. He showed himself a coward on the battlefield, and shirked even the mimic warfare of the tournament. He repaid the contempt and dislike of his own class by withdrawing himself from the society of the nobles, and associating himself with buffoons, singers, play-actors, coachmen, ditchers, ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... itself before his eyes, and you will prosper. I will pledge my expected earldom that he yields! Sir, these distant situations are like so many half-authorized mints, in which money is to be coined; and the only counterfeit is your mimic representative of Majesty. Ply him with golden hopes; if ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... lay, as if convinced it has nought to fear from such fair intruders. Its song is not strange to their ears, though there are some notes they have not hitherto heard. It is their own mocking-bird of the States, introducing into its mimic minstrelsy certain variations, the imitations of sounds peculiar ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... and his own dogs killed un and eat un. Od-rabbit it, no mortal was ever run in such a manner; if I dodged one way, one had me; if I offered to clap back, another snapped me. 'O! certainly one of the greatest matches in England,' says one cousin (here he attempted to mimic them); 'A very advantageous offer indeed,' cries another cousin (for you must know they be all my cousins, thof I never zeed half o' um before). 'Surely,' says that fat a—se b—, my Lady Bellaston, 'cousin, you must be out of your wits to think of ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... tobacco incessantly, acquired a taste for strong drink, and set a pace for wildness which few of his associates could keep up. He was passionately fond of running foot races, leaping the bar, jumping, wrestling, and every sort of sport that partook of the character of mimic battle—and he never acknowledged defeat. "I could throw him three times out of four," testifies an old schoolmate, "but he would never stay throwed. He was dead game even then, and never would give up." Another early companion says that of all the boys he had known Jackson was the only bully ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... had special pasttimes that belonged to that day only, and Marilyn Severn still cherished a box of wonderful stone blocks that had been her most precious possessions as a child, and had been used for Sabbath amusement. With these blocks she built temples, laid out cities, went through mimic battles of the Bible until every story lived as real as if she had been there. There were three tiny blocks, one a quarter of a cube which she always called Saul, and two half the size that were David and Jonathan. ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... smoke, and something like insects, accompanying them; but, when I can scarcely discern the great masses of cities and monuments, how should I discover, such little creatures? I can just perceive that these insects mimic battle, for they advance, ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... in many another detail, we are reminded, of course, of the difference between our own and past times in mimic as in real life. For Prynne one of the great horrors of the stage was the introduction of actresses from France by Henrietta Maria, to take the place of young [84] male actors of whom Dr. Doran has some interesting notices. Who the lady was who first trod the stage as a professional actress ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater
... had loved her as a child, for the same reason that the twins thought her the most charming of womankind, because she treated them as if they were her equals in intelligence, as no doubt they were. It had never occurred to them to mimic her, which was a feather in her cap if she had known it. And another was that Miss Bird adored her, being made welcome in her house, and, as she said, ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... of theatrical representation is afforded by the celebration, every eight years, of the mythus of Apollo's fight with the Pythian dragon, his flight and expiatory service to Admetus, the subterranean king of the dead. In mimic order, a boy slew a monster at Delphi, ran along the road to Tempe, represented on the way the bondage of the god in Hades, and returned, purified, bringing a branch of laurel from the sacred valley.15 The doctrine of a future life connected with the legend of some hero who had ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... his custom to return, exactly, the treatment he had received. He was very ceremonious in following the very voice and manner of his entertainers. The Woodpecker had no sooner entered his lodge, therefore, than he commenced playing the mimic. He had previously directed his wife to change his lodge, so as to inclose a large dry tamarack-tree. "What can I give you?" said he to the Woodpecker; "but as we eat, so shall you eat." He then put a long piece of bone in his nose, in imitation of the bill ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... Jinnie took the position he directed. She had come to play for him, to mimic the natural world ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... hands and eyes like the old steward in Hogarth's "Marriage a la mode." They never seemed to tire, and every fresh incident at once suggested its appropriate treatment. Jones asked them whether they thought they could mimic me. "Oh dear, yes," was the answer; "we have mimicked him hundreds of times," and ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... enslaved the youth of Wordsworth. In The Prelude he tells how, in early life, he misunderstood the teaching of Nature, not from insensibility, but from the presumption which applied to the impassioned life of Nature the "rules of mimic art." He calls this habit "a strong infection of the age," and tells how he too, for a time, was wont to compare scene with scene, and to pamper himself "with meagre novelties of colour and proportion." In another passage he speaks of ...
— Romance - Two Lectures • Walter Raleigh
... humming-birds, the flocks of pale canaries, Heard the coyotes dirging to the ruddy Northern moon; Woolly foals, leggy foals, foals that romped and wrestled, Rolled in beds of golden-rod and charged to mimic fights, Saw the frosty Bear wink out and comfortably nestled Close beside their vixen dams beneath the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol 150, February 9, 1916 • Various
... is; he must be perfectly sure of his environment, before the flower uncloses. And he merely relates what he has seen, what he has taken part in. The narrations would be naught if he were not the narrator. His effects are helped by the fact that he is an excellent mimic and by his utter realistic mercilessness. But like all first-class realists he is also a romantic, and in his mercilessness there is a mysterious touch of fundamental benevolence—as befits the attitude of one who does not worry because human nature is not something ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... gables and high stone houses. But when I was in Mittau I found it a mere winter camp of Russian nobles. The houses are low, one-story structures. There is but one castle, and in that his Royal Highness the Count of Provence holds mimic court." ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... previous occasion, have presented to him? Even when the characters are strictly historical, the imagination is little better provided. The spectator does not refer to any faint conception in his own mind of a Brutus, or a Mark Antony, and then derive his pleasure from watching how closely the mimic representation imitates the original. Very often the scene must present something entirely new to the imagination, and yet the pleasure is not diminished on this account. A simple man, who has never seen the interior of a palace, never looked on royalty, never beheld even a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... in the mimic art, I feign'd the transports of a vengeful heart; When, as the Royal Slave, I trod the stage, To vent in Zanga, more than mortal rage; The praise of Probus, made me feel more proud, Than all the plaudits of ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... unless aided by mischance. Conscious of the terrors of discovery, it rocks to and fro, that its plumes may sway, as it were, in rhythm with the surge of the sea. Can there be such a thing as an unconscious mimic? If not, then the portrait is that of ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... relish for metheglin. The metheglin story is once in a while, until this day, related by John S., especially when we all meet for a family visit. It not unfrequently causes much laughter. I suppose the laughter is caused as much by the manner in which he tells it (he trying to imitate or mimic me) as its funniness. It sometimes causes a tear, perhaps, from excessive laughter and may be, from recollections of the past and its associations. It may once in a while cause me to give a dry laugh, but never a sad tear since the night ...
— The Bark Covered House • William Nowlin
... his unpretentious character.[1] One might venture to say as much of a Northern or a Western farmer. But they did not farm in Virginia; they planted. Mr. Rives says that the elder James was "a large landed proprietor;" and he adds, "a large landed estate in Virginia ... was a mimic commonwealth, with its foreign and domestic relations, and its regular administrative hierarchy." The "foreign relations" were the shipping, once a year, a few hogsheads of tobacco to a London factor; the "mimic commonwealths" were clusters of negro huts; and the "administrative ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... say what mingled feelings swept through Elinor's mind, with all these elements in them, is beyond my power. She saw him with his face concealed, standing up unconscious of the crowded place and of the mimic life on the stage, his eyes fixed upon his son whom he had never seen before. Where was there any drama in which there was a scene like this? His son, his only child, the heir! Unconsciously even to herself that fact had some ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... this palace of little-ease. He caused the carriage to be drawn close up to the outer gate, and got out himself to summon the warders. The noise of his rap alarmed some twenty or thirty ragged boys, who left off sailing their mimic sloops and frigates in the little pools of salt water left by the receding tide, and hastily crowded round the vehicle to see what luckless being was to be delivered to the prison-house out of 'Glossin's braw new carriage.' The door of the courtyard, ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... Newcastle Journal, writing from Yeare, near Wooler, in Northumberland, recently described the performances of a wild starling which has settled near his house. It is such an excellent mimic of other birds' notes that no one can help noticing its performances. A record has been kept of the variety entertainments provided by the bird. Besides its own calls, whistles, and song, it reproduces the song of the blackbird and thrush absolutely correctly, and ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... whose falling-in had perplexed Mr. Pickwick a few seconds before, were drawn up to repel the mimic attack of the sham besiegers of the citadel; and the consequence was that Mr. Pickwick and his two companions found themselves suddenly inclosed between two lines of great length, the one advancing at a rapid pace, and the other firmly ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... high glee. The crackers snapped admirably, and the little forest of Centre Isle reverberated with the reports of their mimic guns. Various expedients were devised to vary the entertainment. Crackers were fired in the water, in the stumps, thrown in the air, or half buried in the wet ...
— The Boat Club - or, The Bunkers of Rippleton • Oliver Optic
... hypokrites, one who answers on the stage, an actor, especially a mimic actor) is one who acts a false part, or assumes a character other than the real. Deceiver is the most comprehensive term, including all the other words of the group. The deceiver seeks to give false impressions of any matter where he has an ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... out of time, as your wisdom thinks in the present book of Heart. People will die untowardly, and people will live provokingly, notwithstanding all that novelists have said and poets sung to the contrary: and if two characters out of our principal five have already left the mimic scene, it will now be my duty only to show, as nature and society do, how, of those three surviving chief dramatis personae, two of them—to wit, our hero and heroine of Heart—gathered many friends about their happy homestead, did a world of good, and, in fine, furnish our volume with a suitable ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... full of vivacity, excitement. He was telling a jesting story, at which even her mother was heartily laughing. Her father had laughed till the tears were rolling down his cheeks. John was holding his sides. Wilhelm was a mimic, it appeared; he was imitating the ridiculous speech, gait, gestures, of a man he had seen ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... that Taug was no longer the frolicsome ape of yesterday. When his snarling-muscles bared his giant fangs no one could longer imagine that Taug was in as playful a mood as when he and Tarzan had rolled upon the turf in mimic battle. The Taug of today was a huge, sullen bull ape, somber and forbidding. Yet he ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... disgusting. We want to take him into shelter and relieve him. That is all the feeling which the acting of Lear ever produced in me. But the Lear of Shakespeare cannot be acted. The contemptible machinery by which they mimic the storm which he goes out in, is not more inadequate to represent the horrors of the real elements, than any actor can be to represent Lear: they might more easily propose to personate the Satan of Milton upon a stage, or one of Michael Angelo's terrible figures. The greatness ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... Antoinette, whom she remembered in all the glory of her youth, popularity, and loveliness, seated in an open chariot, pale, wan, and grief-stricken, surrounded by a guard of troopers with drawn swords and hooted at by a mob of howling sans-culottes. Better far to be a mimic queen than to be hurled from the most radiant and splendid place in European royalty, to be the scorn and plaything of the ragged ruffians of Paris, and to finish with the guillotine in the Place de la Greve! About this time she was freed from the bete ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... a great many stories of which Winchell, the great wit and mimic, was the hero, showing always how neatly and entirely he sold somebody. Any one who is familiar with Winchell's wonderful powers of mimicry cannot doubt that these stories are all substantially true. But there is one instance ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... his lips. He replaced between them the oval hook of clear amber enclosing the thin round one of black nicotine, and he puffed until the cruel carved face was hotter and more infuriate than ever, under the swirling smoke of mimic battle. To the boy it was all but a living face, and a vile one, capable of nameless atrocities; and the hard-frozen face of Baumgartner was capable ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... related the fact of his having passed himself off for William Stanley by way of a joke. "The sight of means to do ill deeds, makes deeds ill done:" Clapp seemed from that moment to have first taken the idea of the plot; he gradually disclosed his plan to Hopgood, who was quick-witted, a good mimic, and quite clever enough for the purpose. The idea was repeatedly abandoned, then resumed again; Hopgood having purposely shipped under the name of William Stanley, several times, and practised an imitation of William Stanley's hand by way of an experiment. ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... now-a-days; they are mimic men and women. They dine late, they stay up until the small hours, and are altogether as objectionable a faction as can be. They respect their father and mother not a whit. It was only two or three days ago I heard a child of five ...
— Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Girl - Sister of that "Idle Fellow." • Jenny Wren
... below, with hunger her dish, starvation her knife, care her bed, and anguish her curtains. To survive for easy death, long deferred, perhaps, I should have my empty dish and bed of care at once. Lacking the battle death, I could at least mimic it, as they did of old, that Odin's choosers of the slain might lead me to Valhalla. There should I forever fight at dawn and be healed at noon, if wounded, to be ready for the feast and song. The world was not big enough for us two if we must stay apart. ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... a child a mimic and singer. First visits to the theatre. Plays Lady Macbeth, her first part. To a young actress. To a young mother. Early griefs. Art her only spouse. Farewell to ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... we commenced our return by a different route from that of our arrival. Shaikh Ayan and Hadj 'Othman, of the quarantine, amusing themselves with jereed-playing and other mimic manoeuvres of warfare, ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... who was making some excavations in the neighbourhood, and by Lord Byron, who had just won fresh laurels by swimming the Hellespont. Lady Hester formed but a poor opinion of the poet, whose affectations she used to mimic with considerable effect. 'I think Lord Byron was a strange character,' she said, many years later. 'His generosity was for a motive, his avarice was for a motive; one time he was mopish, and nobody was to speak to him; another, he ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... the dwarf and the morio (a lilliputian and Gulliver) fought a mimic combat; the juggler and the clown, who could eat no more, were keeping time to a chorus by beating with their empty trenchers ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... cups, fragrant aroma of tea, and winsome, graceful girls, invite you to drink and rest, and more solid but less inviting refreshments are also to be had. Rows of pretty paper lanterns decorate all the stalls. Then there are photograph galleries, mimic tea-gardens, tableaux in which a large number of groups of life-size figures with appropriate scenery are put into motion by a creaking wheel of great size, matted lounges for rest, stands with saucers of rice, beans and peas ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... is the only one who comes to us, with whom she might change clothes. And Madame is not at all of Brigitte's figure—nor could she mimic Brigitte's walk as I can. She could not act a part in the slightest degree. And I know that Madame would never consent to go and leave me behind to bear the Count's wrath. We must all three go together. Besides Brigitte comes ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... accompaniment of the imaginative temperament. The cry of bugles sometimes brought tears to her eyes; her breath came quickly when she sat—as she often did—in the Fort Myer drill hall at Washington and watched the alert cavalrymen dashing toward the spectators' gallery in the mimic charge. The work that brave men do she admired above anything else in the world. As a child in Washington she had looked wonderingly upon the statues of heroes and the frequent military pageants of the capital; and she had wept at the solemn pomp of military funerals. Once on a battleship she ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... not to mimic. You're an actress, but the Big Dramatist writes your business for you. Now, I've got some fairly good ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... waste. Tecumseh, of course, had learned to swim almost as soon as he could walk; in running it is said that he could easily out-distance his companions; while his skill with the bow excited their admiration and envy. His greatest delight, however, was to muster his playmates into rival bands for mimic warfare. ...
— Tecumseh - A Chronicle of the Last Great Leader of His People; Vol. - 17 of Chronicles of Canada • Ethel T. Raymond
... their learning taught; in speech Right gentle, yet so wise; princely of mien, Yet softly-mannered; modest, deferent, And tender-hearted, though of fearless blood; No bolder horseman in the youthful band E'er rode in gay chase of the shy gazelles; No keener driver of the chariot In mimic contest scoured the Palace-courts; Yet in mid-play the boy would ofttimes pause, Letting the deer pass free; would ofttimes yield His half-won race because the labouring steeds Fetched painful breath; or if his princely mates Saddened to lose, or if some wistful dream Swept ...
— The Light of Asia • Sir Edwin Arnold |
