"Mirth" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Yule, the old name for Christmas, which festival took its place when the Scandinavians became Christians. Their festival was in honor of the sun, and was held with sacrifices, feasting, and great mirth. The second festival was in spring, in honor of the earth, to supplicate fruitful crops. The third was also in the spring, in honor of Odin. The sacrifices were of fruits, afterward animals, and ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... cold and proud, Because her lip and brow Amid the mirthful crowd No kindred mirth avowed; Alas! nor look nor language e'er reveal How much the sad can ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... the All. Regarding (thee) a friend whatever hath been said by me carelessly, such as—"O Krishna, O Yadava, O friend,"—not knowing this thy greatness from want of judgement or from love either, whatever disrespect hath been shown thee for purpose of mirth, on occasions of play, lying, sitting, (or) at meals, while alone or in the presence of others, O undeteriorating one, I beg thy pardon for it, that art immeasurable. Thou art the father of this universe of mobiles and immobiles. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... festival days of their sacredness; by God, they are deprived of their joy fulness. The prophet, in order to intimate that he announces the cessation of the festival days as days of gladness, premises "all her mirth," to which all that follows stands in the relation of species to genus. [Hebrew: mwvw] does not here denote "joyful time:" it might, indeed, according to its formation, have this signification: but it ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... situation. This was the last we saw of the natives in Adam Bay, and the meeting is likely to be long remembered by some and not without pleasant recollections, for although at the time it was justly looked upon as a serious affair, it afterwards proved a great source of mirth. No one could recall to mind, without laughing, the ludicrous figure necessarily cut by our shipmates, when to amuse the natives they figured on the light fantastic toe; they literally danced for ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... easy to learn, than the Latin."—Bucke's Classical Gram., p. 25. "I have not been able to make out a solitary instance of such being the fact."—Liberator, x, 40. "An angel's forming the appearance of a hand, and writing the king's condemnation on the wall, checked their mirth, and filled them with terror."—Wood's Dict., w. Belshazzar. "The prisoners' having attempted to escape, aroused the keepers."—O. B. Peirce's Gram., p. 357. "I doubt not, in the least, of this having been ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... gave a queer screech, and began to imitate John's own laughter so exactly that the Prince shook with mirth. At this the raven stood upon one leg gravely, and began to sidle along the footboard of the bed. Presently he spied some fruit carved on the wooden uprights, and making a dart began to peck at the pears and peaches. Then, discovering his mistake, once more he began to chuckle, this time so ...
— John of the Woods • Abbie Farwell Brown
... part which is left of Aristophanes. I will not say, with Frischlinus, that Plutarch seems in this to contradict himself, and, in reality, commends the poet when he accuses him of having adapted his language to the stage; by the stage, in this place, he meant the theatre of farces, on which low mirth and buffoonery was exhibited. This plea of Frischlinus is a mere cavil; and though the poet had obtained his end, which was to divert a corrupted populace, he would not have been less a bad man, nor less a despicable poet, notwithstanding the excuse of his ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... of the relative and respective charms of Mirth and Melancholy, Miss Faith?—I mean their charms to inward ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... mere jest. It brought out the extraordinary capacities of the book which have exercised so many minds. For "The Pickwick Examination," he says, "was not altogether a burlesque of a college examination; it was a very real and searching examination in a book which, brimful as it is of merriment, mirth, and wit, is just as intensely human as a book can be. The characters are not puppets in a farce, stuck up only to be knocked down: they are men and women. Page after page, they show their true characters and reveal themselves; they are consistent; even ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... his comely air, his politeness, and a certain peculiar happiness in the turn of his conversation, had spent the evening till eleven o'clock with the monarch, in pleasant familiarity; and had given a loose, with the utmost mirth, to the sallies of his imagination. The monarch felt some remorse, and being touched with a kind of compassion, bid him, two or three times, not to go home, but lie in the Louvre. The count said, he must go ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... sin remains On this saddened earth, Humbly walk my ways! For my garments are as chains; And I fear to praise My frame with careless mirth. ...
— Rose and Roof-Tree - Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... against dark forebodings and pessimism. The grotesque and the ludicrous find in him a joyous patron. Where others count and bewail their woes, he sees only sunshine. Gloom and sorrow melt away at his approach, while his features are ever radiant with mirth and joy. His head is up and erect with every sense attuned to the bright, and dead to the doleful. He thanks God that the lot apportioned him is fashioned by infallible wisdom, while he munches with contentment the humble crust that honest toil has brought him. Malevolence towards his fellow men ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... they {114} laughed came the tears. With a rear sweep, the rafts headed about and escorted the newcomers to the fortress, where they were locked for the night. After all, a welcome to exile was a sardonic sort of mirth. ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... medicine," says a wise writer; "everybody ought to bathe in it. Grim care, moroseness, anxiety—all the rust of life, ought to be scoured off by the oil of mirth." It is better than emery. Every man ought to rub himself with it. A man without mirth is like a wagon without springs, in which one is caused disagreeably to jolt by every pebble over which it runs. A man with mirth is like a chariot with springs, in which ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... next time you find yourself using ridicule or sarcasm to provoke mirth remember you are toying with a habit-forming practice that is likely to get the best of you unless you stop ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... negroes laughed heartily, manifesting so little care to suppress their mirth, that Rose trembled lest their noise should awaken Spike. Accustomed sounds, however, seldom produce this effect on the ears of the sleeper, and the heavy breathing from the state-room, succeeded the merriment of the blacks, as soon as the latter ceased. Jack now ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... "Simple!" Mrs. Oldham's mirth was high and satiric. "Isn't that like a man? Simple is the last word to be applied to Marcia's frocks, Mr. Hayden. It's a good thing, as I often tell her, that her father left us ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... that us away led in captivitee, Requir'd of us a song, & thus askt mirth: us waste who laid, sing us among a Sion's song, unto us then ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... beaming state of moderate company that had taken no more than was wholesome for them, and had served to develop their best qualities. Sprinkling dewy drops about them on the ground, they seemed profuse of innocent and sparkling mirth, that did good where it lighted, softening neglected corners which the steady rain could seldom reach, and ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens
... and shook his fat sides with suppressed mirth; and it was plain the principal had a very doubtful ally in the person of the deputy sheriff. And the ill-mated pair walked towards the landing, where we saw them embark, and leave ...
— Breaking Away - or The Fortunes of a Student • Oliver Optic
... of the competition between idiots and the court of noses make us smile; but the normal competitions between our children are not matters for mirth. The healthy children who, when side by side with the deaf, the sickly, and the deficient are only conscious of their superiority; the fortunate children who have the help of educated mothers and are brought into contact with poor, unhappy, neglected ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... and sputtering; indeed, he was ultimately forced to sit upon the ground, so exhausting was the mirth to which he now gave way. Penrod's composure was somewhat affected and ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... he had reprobated, that is, degrade "the humour: into an oddity of speech, an eccentricity of manner, of dress, or cut of beard." There was an anonymous play called "Every Woman in Her Humour." Chapman wrote "A Humourous Day's Mirth," Day, "Humour Out of Breath," Fletcher later, "The Humourous Lieutenant," and Jonson, besides "Every Man Out of His Humour," returned to the title in closing the cycle of his comedies in "The Magnetic Lady or ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... fresh spring-clouds across all earth their glistening pearls profuse now sow; The flowers, too, all appearing, forth the radiance of their beauty show; Of mirth and joy 'tis now the time, the hour, to wander to and fro; The palm-tree o'er the fair ones' pic-nic gay its grateful ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... grace, nor by any solemn providence, but in a manner illustrating the force of scripture, and the sovereignty of that gracious Spirit by whom it was originally inspired, and is still savingly applied. Being present at a party where the evening was spent in festivity and worldly mirth, she was invited to join in the dance. This she had often done, for she was of a lively disposition, and her parents were gratified by her mixing in the gaieties of life; but in the present instance she felt herself unable to maintain the hilarity of her ...
— The Baptist Magazine, Vol. 27, January, 1835 • Various
... daughter, Born between the storm and sun; Coy as nymph ere Pan hath caught her,— Thou then, April, Iris' daughter. Now are light, and rustling water; Now are mirth, and nests begun. ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... Pontgrave and Champlain, with the rest of the colony, had set sail for France a few days previously, in two small vessels which they had built themselves. But there was no time to spend in vain regrets. Poutrincourt opened a hogshead of wine, and the fort was soon the scene of mirth and festivity. Poutrincourt set energetically to improve the condition of things, by making additions to the buildings, and clearing the surrounding land, which is exceedingly rich. The fort stood on the north bank of the river—on what ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... mind was engaged with Mrs. Hardy and Conward, and, unintentionally, he allowed his eyes to embrace them both in his remark. One more astute than Mrs. Hardy might have had a glimmer of the absurdity which had provoked Dave's untimely mirth, but she was a woman who took herself with much seriousness. If Conward guessed anything he concealed his intuition behind ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... young ladies, with flying draperies and countenances of mingled mirth and dismay, might have been seen precipitating themselves into a respectable mansion with unbecoming haste; but the squirrels were the only witnesses of this "vision of sudden flight," and, being used to ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... and wonder. There, where the unseen could move freely and the invisible manifest itself on the perpetual rocks, the towering trees, the still green fields, and the vast acres of the sea, one could hear the dreaming prophet proclaim the burden of the Lord; and the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, the sound of the mill-stones and the light of the candle mattered not. But the kingdom of all the worlds—the worlds and habitations not made with hands—rose up as the real theatre of man's ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... poor streets, on the degraded, hopeless faces, the dull eyes, the languid bearing of those who appeared to have lost interest in, and respect for, themselves. She believed it wholly sad. Standing on the outside, she knew nothing of the homely joys, the gleams of mirth, the draughts of happiness possible to the very poor. She thought their laughter, when it fell sometimes upon her ears, more dreadful than their tears. So she slipped silently about among them, quite unnoticed, looking on with large sad eyes, and almost ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... brown jug which was among our stores, removed the corn-cob which served as a cork, and having wetted his great heart with a draught which I have no doubt measured a full pint, fell, entirely regardless of the day, to performing his most spirited hoe-down, while the most of us looked on with a mirth that knew ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... crest and crowning of all good, Life's final star, is Brotherhood; For it will bring again to Earth Her long-lost Poesy and Mirth; Will send new light on every face, A kingly power upon the race. And till it comes we men are slaves, And travel downward to the ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... his den—(Ah, my bachelor chum!) I have sat with him there in the gloom, When the laugh of his lips died away to become But a phantom of mirth in the room! And to look on him there you would love him, for all His ridiculous ways, and be dumb As the little girl-face that smiles down from the wall On the tears of my ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... rage mean, and therefore I cannot conceive how they should countenance a practice which entirely ignores and defies honor, and which not a single redeeming feature. It has neither wisdom nor wit, no spirit, no genius, no impulsiveness, scarcely boyish mirth. A narrow range of stale practical jokes, lighted up by no gleam of originality, seems to be transmitted from year to year with as much fidelity as the Hebrew Bible, and not half the latitude allowed to clergymen of the English Established Church. But besides its platitude, ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... sorrowful I am, without mirth, without light, but only sadness and grief and long dying; your harp used to be sweet to me, it wakened my heart to gladness. Now my courage is fallen down, I not to hear you but to be always remembering your ways. Och! my grief is going ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... august De Castro that during the remainder of the evening's entertainment she should occupy herself more with her neighbors than with the opera. She aroused M. Renard to a secret ecstasy of mirth by the sharp steadiness of her observation of the inmates of the box opposite to them. She talked about them, too, in a tone not too well modulated, criticising the beautifully dressed little woman, her hair, her eyes, her Greek nose and mouth, and, more than all, her indifferent expression ...
— "Le Monsieur De La Petite Dame" • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... angrily; but the next moment the remark presented such a ludicrous side that he began to laugh, and then, possibly from exhaustion and the result of the exciting passages he had gone through, his mirth grew at once almost hysterical, so that he ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... the multitude took the handle of raising a tumult: and if Archelaus could thus requite his dead father, who had bestowed such benefits upon him, and bequeathed such great things to him, by pretending to shed tears for him in the day time, like an actor on the stage, but every night making mirth for having gotten the government, he would appear to be the same Archelaus with regard to Caesar, if he granted him the kingdom, which he hath been to his father; since he had then dancing and singing, as though an enemy ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... patches on the pavements. Claude was conscious of a gay awakening in the huge resonant markets—indeed, all over the neighbourhood—crowded with piles of food. It was like the joy that comes after cure, the mirth of folks who are at last relieved of a heavy weight which has been pulling them down. He saw La Sarriette displaying a gold chain and singing amidst her plums and strawberries, while she playfully pulled ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... several cases in which the partial similarity in spelling and identity in sound of the Hebrew words for 'not' and 'to it,' have led to a mistaken reading. The joy is described in words which dance and sing, like the gladness of which they tell. The mirth of the harvest-field, when labour is crowned with success, and the sterner joy of the victors as they part the booty, with which mingles the consciousness of foes overcome and dangers averted, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... the eye of a bridle-cull, and gives as much real happiness to his fancy, as that of as many thousands to the statesman; and doth not the former lay out his acquisitions in whores and fiddles with much greater joy and mirth than the latter in palaces and pictures? What are the flattery, the false compliments of his gang to the statesman, when he himself must condemn his own blunders, and is obliged against his will to give fortune the whole honour of success? What is the pride ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... of mind I was joined by Flora. She laid her hand on my arm, and we walked up and down together. She was serious, almost sad, and she viewed the English hills with a pensiveness which became her better than mirth. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... goat-legged buyers throng. I see not plain:- My meaning is, it must not be again. Great God! the maddest gambler throws his heart. If any state be enviable on earth, 'Tis yon born idiot's, who, as days go by, Still rubs his hands before him, like a fly, In a queer sort of meditative mirth. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... bleak-fac'd Hallowmass returns, They get the jovial, rantin kirns, When rural life, of ev'ry station, Unite in common recreation; Love blinks, Wit slaps, an' social Mirth Forgets there's ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... their tails coming behind them instead of before them tickled the risibilities of the sympathizing friends, and for a few moments the woods echoed to their responsive mirth. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 34, November 19, 1870 • Various
... while he was in the house. She brought Jenny's high chair to the table in order that the adorable infant might breakfast with her father; she kept Harry up an hour later at night so that he might add the gaiety of his innocent mirth to their otherwise long and silent evenings. Though she would have given anything to drop into bed as soon as the babies were undressed, she forced herself to sit up without yawning until Oliver turned out the lights, bolted the door, and remarked irritably that she ought to have ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... of the yearly Christmas play at court has been settled; the Master of the Revels has chosen from the rich stores of his manuscripts "The Midsummer Night's Dream", graciously adding that "for wit and mirth it is like to please her Majesty exceedingly." A high honor, indeed, for its author. For, not then, as now, were plays written primarily for the recreation and approval of the audience of the theatre. ...
— Shakespeare's Christmas Gift to Queen Bess • Anna Benneson McMahan
... which deals mostly with the Treaty Money, I guess, and there's that other which should be mine. You see, he left them in my care. And so there's a big account to be squared between him and me. Best let me handle the whole rotten thing." Then with a sound that was a laugh without the least mirth: "It's a doctor's job to hand out unpleasant dope to a patient. It's a policeman's job to act unpleasant. Guess the act isn't needed, but the dope is. Yes, it's mine, Belton. ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... warns the wearer of old breeches to sit down with deliberation and grace, rather than with rash haste, and to make no uselessly quick movements whereby an old sewing may rip open, or the silk or cloth itself may split and gape in an unseemly manner, furnishing a cause for mirth in better-clad men. ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... Rev. Pantheist calls one of Spiritualism's 'splendid arguments,' and splendidly absurd it certainly is; quite equal, considered as a provocative of mirth, to Robert Owen's sublimest effusions about that very mysterious and thoroughly incomprehensible power which 'directs the atom and controuls the aggregate of nature.' But the argument though 'splendid,' is false. Who is ignorant that resistance is not a power at all, though we ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... objects shown to them, they liked pieces of iron and looking-glasses best, amusing themselves with making grimaces in the latter of such absurdity as to keep the crew in fits of laughter. Their general appearance, too, was very provocative of mirth. Their jet black complexions, blue feathers, and faces streaked with parallel red and white lines, like tick, made up a whole of the greatest absurdity, and many were the hearty laughs the English enjoyed at their expense. Presently disgusted at receiving nothing more than the ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... spent by Brahms in directing orchestra and chorus at Detmold and elsewhere, and in Switzerland, which has always had great attraction for him. In 1859 he played in Leipsic his first great pianoforte concerto; most of the criticisms thereon were, however, such as now excite mirth. Lately he has played in Leipsic again, conducted several of his works, and was greeted with the reverence and enthusiasm due the greatest living representative of the art of music. In 1862 Brahms located in Vienna, where he has almost ever ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... back of his mind was an impulse of mirth—there was a touch of humorous blasphemy in the conception of the Almighty as managing director of "Fish Palaces, Limited"—but the nominal earthly managing director saw not the slightest humour in ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... world; I've cried my fill Many and many a time by my own fire: Now why, I'll ask you, should it comfort me And ease my heart when, pitiful and sweet, One sings of other souls and how they mourned? A body would have thought that did not know Songs must be merry, full of feast and mirth. Or else would all folk flee ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... and he took out his handkerchief to wipe his eyes. Just as he was returning it to his pocket, the lady suddenly pointed a finger at him. She was in the center of the stage, fully fifteen feet away from the subject, but the moment the gesture was made, his countenance fell, his mirth stopped, while that of his companions redoubled, and the change was so obvious that the audience shared in the laughter—but the subject neither saw nor heard. His eyes assumed the same expression that had been noticed in his companion's. He, too, arose in the same attitude, as if his ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus
... their mistress was not in the humor for laughter and mirth, and would rather talk quietly with her chief friend and adviser, the attendants gradually left them, and gathered in a ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty
... three characters who excited most mirth or fear amongst the spell-bound spectators were, first and foremost, the kitchen cat; second, the timorous mongrel dog; and third, the lion with his mighty mane and terrible roar. The mongrel dog gave faint yelps and howls of anguish whenever he was approached ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... prominent nose, with its primitive shape modestly concealed beneath a luxuriant growth of pimples, half red, half violet, gave a funny expression to a perfectly beardless face; while a large mouth, with thick lips turning their insides outwards, added to the air of mirth and jollity which beamed from his large gray eyes, set ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... 'n' I'll tell you no lies,' is an awful good motto," chuckled Jabe, with a new explosion of mirth that stretched his mouth to an alarming extent. "Oh, there, I can't hold in 'nother minute. I shall bust if I don' tell somebody! Set down on that nail kag, Samanthy, 'n' I'll let you hev a leetle slice ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... herd] It is not without pity and indignation that the reader of this great poet meets so often with this low jest, which is too much a favourite to be left out of either mirth or fury. ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... have th' expressions of her thoughts be such, She might not seem reserved, nor talk too much: That shows a want of judgment and of sense; More than enough is but impertinence. Her conduct regular, her mirth refined; Civil to strangers, to her neighbours kind; Averse to vanity, revenge, and pride; In all the methods of deceit untried; So faithful to her friend, and good to all, No censure might upon her actions fall: Then would e'en ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... sevenfold notes are there, And triple measure,(57) wrought with care With melody and tone and time, And flavours(58) that enhance the rime; Heroic might has ample place, And loathing of the false and base, With anger, mirth, and terror, blent With tenderness, surprise, content. When, half the hermit's grace to gain, And half because they loved the strain, The youth within their hearts had stored The poem that his lips outpoured, Valmiki kissed them on the head, As at his feet they bowed, and said; "Recite ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... field in tragedy rather than in comedy. Colombe's Birthday has a joyous ending, but the joy is very grave and earnest, and the body of the play is made up of serious pleadings and serious hopes and fears. There is no light-hearted mirth, no real gaiety of temper anywhere in the dramas of Browning. Pippa's gladness in her holiday from the task of silk-winding is touched with pathos in the thought that what is so bright is also so brief, and it is encompassed, even within delightful Asolo, by the sins and sorrows of the ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... replied, repressing my mirth; "true as the tale of Timothy. I knew him when he was a mere boy. But I don't give you that as a proof, for he might have become all things to all men since. Ask Miss Trevor; or Miss Thorn; she knows the other man, the bicycle man, and has seen them ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... peopled with phantasms and realities undistinguishably confused and intermingled—here illuminated with dazzling splendour, there dim with melancholy mists,—or it may be shrouded in impenetrable darkness. To bring, visibly and distinctly before our memory, on the one hand, all our hours of mirth and joy, and hope and exultation,—and, on the other, all our perplexities, and fears and sorrows, and despair and agony,— (and who has been so uniformly wretched as not to have been often blest?—who so uniformly blest as not ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... who served in the Garrison during that Memorable Winter. The Company, consisting of upwards of two hundred and thirty Ladies and Gentlemen, made a grand and brilliant appearance, and nothing but mirth and good humour reigned all night long. About half-past six, His Excellency, Sir Guy Carleton, Knight of the Bath, our worthy Governor and Successful General, dressed in the militia uniform, (which added lustre to the Ribbon and Star) as were ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... boys were young and full of mirth and fun which was continually overflowing. They seemed to think they were to be on a sort of every day picnic and bound to make life as merry and happy as it could be. One of the boys was Ed Doty who was a sort of model traveler in this line. A camp life suited him; he could drive an ox team, ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... Irish! Always witty! Always sparkling, paradoxical, brilliant! I shall tell the Prime Minister what you say. He'll enjoy it. What should we do without you Irish? Life would be dull indeed. What is it the poet says? Wordsworth, I think. 'Turning to mirth, All things of earth, As only boyhood can.' You are all boys. That is why we love you. Your freshness. Your delightful capacity for the absurd. I feel that in choosing you for this delicate mission we have chosen the right man. Only an Irishman could hope ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... been found dead in his dressing-room. The good old man had been full of years, and there was nothing frightful in his death but its suddenness. But sudden death is always frightful. Overnight he had been talking to his daughter with his usual quiet, very quiet, mirth; and in the morning she was woke with the news that his spirit had fled. His mirth for this world was over. His worldly duties were done. He had received his daughter's last kiss, had closed for the last time the book which had been his life's guide, had whispered to heaven his ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... the necessity of being solitary and inactive, while her companions sported on the grass, without fear of incommoding themselves. The pleasure she had lately taken in viewing her fine slip and shoes was, at this moment, but a poor compensation for the mirth ...
— The Looking-Glass for the Mind - or Intellectual Mirror • M. Berquin
... pleasures a new-married wife most part enjoys; yet they are but toys in respect, easily to be endured, if conferred to those frequent encumbrances of marriage. Solitariness may be otherwise avoided with mirth, music, good company, business, employment; in a word, [5808]Gaudebit minus, et minus dolebit; for their good nights, he shall have good days. And methinks some time or other, amongst so many rich bachelors, a benefactor should be found to build a monastical college for old, decayed, deformed, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... to smile(862)—yes, yes: at times I should have laughed too, if I could have dragged my muscles at once from the zenith of horror to the nadir of contempt: but their abominations leave one leisure enough to leap from indignation to mirth. I abhor war and bloodshed as much as you do; but unless the earth is purged of such monsters, peace and morality will never return. This is not a war of nation and nation; it is the cause of every thing dear and sacred to civilized man, against the unbounded licentiousness of ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... first at this unusual mirth; but recollecting what Jackson had told me about his intemperance, I presumed that this mirth which it produced was the cause why he indulged so much in it; and I felt less inclined to blame him. At all events, I was much pleased ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat
... public-house where he goes to play billiards," said Patty with scornful mirth; "a great fat woman! Oh! And he's going to turn publican. And my aunt and me will have to ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing
... from yon stately ranks what laughter rings, Mingling wild mirth with war's stern minstrelsy, His jest while each blithe comrade round him flings, And moves to death with military glee: Boast, Erin, boast them! tameless, frank, and free, In kindness warm, and fierce in danger known, Rough Nature's children, humorous as she: And HE, yon Chieftain—strike ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... feet again, but Allen coaxed her into her seat once more, while the court squelched the mirth of the house. Then the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the citizens, their encomiums on his own energetic and valorous conduct—all these were a pleasant relief to the ennui of a barrack life and, during the several days' visit of "los barbaros," the Comandante and his captain were never without a theme for mirth and laughter. ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... young people, and there was, as usual, plenty of mirth and chatter. Jenny felt utterly out of tune for it, and slipped out of the back door into the lane. She went slowly up, feeling very low-spirited, and wondering what God was going to do with her. When she came to the gate of the bean-field—the ...
— The Gold that Glitters - The Mistakes of Jenny Lavender • Emily Sarah Holt
... the sunshine and bobolinks and buttercups of the merry May-day world, to the sad strains that chanted of "this barren land," this "vale of tears," this "wilderness" of distress and woe. It let us light-hearted children too quickly down from the higher key of mirth to which our careless thoughts were pitched. We knew that we were happy, and sorrow to us was unreal. But somehow we did often get the impression that it was our duty to try to be sorrowful; and that we could not be entirely good, without being ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... finished and was followed by a mirth-provoking comedy at which the entire audience laughed heartily. Then came a reel of current events from various portions of ...
— The Rover Boys at Colby Hall - or The Struggles of the Young Cadets • Arthur M. Winfield
... mirth and light-heartedness are very far from being characteristics of the Scottish ballads. Of ballad themes in general, it has been said that they concern themselves mainly with the tragedy and the pathos of the life of feudal and early times; while, on the other hand, the folk-song ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... by meanness the favour which he had forfeited by presumption. His epitaph, written by himself, still informs all who pass through Westminster Abbey that he lived and died a sceptic in religion; and we learn from the memoirs which he wrote that one of his favourite subjects of mirth was the Romish superstition. Yet he began, as soon as James was on the throne, to express a strong inclination towards Popery, and at length in private affected to be a convert. This abject hypocrisy had been rewarded by a place in ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... fevers of the flesh, the upheavals of personal fortune, were events a robust man might face with calm valiancy if he could be spared the cheering influence of the homely scene or the unchanged presence of his familiars and friends. I have sat in companies and put on an affected mirth, and laughed and sung with the most buoyant of all around, and yet ever and anon I chilled at the intruding ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... number of common women on board our ships considerably increased, since we had begun to deal in red feathers. Their mirth was often extravagant and noisy; and sometimes their ideas were so original as to give great amusement. We had a very weak scorbutic patient when we arrived at Otaheite; this man being somewhat recovered by means of fresh vegetable food, and animated by the example of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... same folly as Jonathan had done before, and Jonathan was again installed, resolving in his own mind to lead his former life, and have nothing more to do with ladies'-maids. But from habit Jonathan still carried himself as a mute on all ordinary occasions—never indulging in an approximation to mirth, except when he perceived that his master was in high spirits, and then rather from a sense of duty than from ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... observed that the party displayed varying emotions. It afterward transpired that the hunters had spent most of the afternoon in her ladyship's distant lodge playing bridge for rather high stakes. Little Miss Folsom was pitifully unresponsive to the mirth of Mr. Odwell. She could ill afford to lose six hundred dollars. Lady Bazelhurst was in a frightful mood. Her guests had so far forgotten themselves as to win more than a thousand dollars of the Banks ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth centuries, give the idea of a man of unaffected humility and simple piety, of a happy, kindly disposition, and full of spirit and innocent mirth. Though he could not take the oaths, he regularly communicated at the parish church.[15] Controversy he abhorred; it seemed to him, he said to Kettlewell, as if the one thing needful were scarcely heard, amidst the din and clashings of pros ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... mirth; nor thought the mind; Nor words a language; nor e'en men mankind. Where cries reply to curses, shrieks to blows, And each is ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... Venice, and carrying back the silks of Bengal and the furs of Siberia to the palaces of Milan. With peculiar pleasure, every cultivated mind must repose on the fair, the happy, the glorious Florence, the halls which rang with the mirth of Pulci, the cell where twinkled the midnight lamp of Politian, the statues on which the young eye of Michael Angelo glared with the frenzy of a kindred inspiration, the gardens in which Lorenzo meditated ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... who was leaning over the footlights, and declaiming his woes with a directness of appeal to the audience which alone would have marked the nationality of the robust actor, who was creating so much mirth out of the extremely hackneyed situation. He had got into the wrong bathing-machine (Lightmark seemed to find it intensely amusing) and the trousers of the rightful occupant only came down to his knees. Rainham at first was disconcerted, ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... adroitly turned them into an argument for woman suffrage. A beautiful poem was read, entitled "Pioneers," dedicated to Miss Anthony by her old friend John M. Thayer, of Rochester. Col. D. R. Anthony created great mirth by telling among other stories that eighty years ago his father had a cotton mill of twenty-six looms; one day all of them suddenly stopped and, rushing out to ascertain the cause, he found that his wife, in rinsing her mop in the stream, had stopped the power which moved the ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... ill, young 'uns," he said. "But them Indians 'ud be pretty sick if they knowed what they run from. That there object cavortin' round that there bonfire is old Sanchez, and he's drunk. Oh, Lord!" And once more Hill gave way to mirth. ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton
... know not of dearth Nor lie for their fruit's sake fallow Laugh large in the depth of their mirth But inshore here in the shallow, Embroiled with encumbrance of earth, Their skirts ...
— Studies in Song • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... friend to Cecilia: but now, in consequence either of the wear and tear of London life, or of a disappointment in love or matrimony, she had lost the fresh plumpness of youth; and gone too was that spirit of mirth, if not of good humour, which used to enliven her countenance. Thin and sallow, the sharp features remained, and the sarcastic without the arch expression; still she had a very fashionable air. Her pretensions to youth, as ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... Swallowtail sat and watched her. Presently he smiled grimly and Nan never noticed the expression. Perhaps, had she done so, she would have demanded an explanation. He rarely smiled, and certainly his daughter's disclosures were not calculated to excite mirth, or even ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)
... were warmly attached. Having been brought up together, they loved each other as sisters—all the more, perhaps, that in character they were somewhat opposed. Hilda was grave, thoughtful, almost pensive. Ada was full of vivacity and mirth, fond of fun, and by no means averse to a little of what she ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... it tightly upon a fistful of Nigel's yellow curls. The groan that came forth was enough to convince him that it was indeed a man who lurked within. At the same time his eyes fell upon the hole in the mail corselet which had served the Squire as a visor, and he burst into deep-chested mirth. The King, the Prince and Chandos, who had watched the scene from a distance, too much amused by it to explain or interfere, rode up weary with laughter, ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... depending. He hailed them with "horse patrole!" in his natural voice; they recognised him and laughed heartily, upon which he entreated them to stop at the Mother Red Cap, a well known public-house, till he joined them. He soon made his appearance in his proper dress, and gave way to mirth and good fellowship. On another occasion he paid a parishioner, who was drawn for constable, to be permitted to serve in his place, he billeted soldiers during the day, and presided in the constable's chair ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... Hawkins' inimitable description of the memorable banquet given at the Devil Tavern, near Temple Bar, in the spring of 1751, to celebrate the publication of Mrs. Charlotte Lennox's first novel. What delightful revelry! what innocent mirth! prolonged though it was till long after dawn. Poor Mrs. Lennox died in distress in 1804, at the age of eighty-three. Could Johnson but have lived he would have lent her his helping hand. He was no fair-weather friend, but shares with Charles Lamb the honour of being ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... touched. The water welled to his eyes, yet at the same time the grisly humour of the situation and circumstances so undermined his gravity that it was all he could do to keep some sign of his inward mirth from showing outside. To be suddenly hoisted, naked and gory, from the common stocks to the Alpine altitude and splendour of an Earldom, seemed to him the last possibility in the line of the grotesque. He said to himself, "Now am I finely tinselled, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... thus circumstanced without a shudder that makes the very marrow in his bones to quiver in him like a shaken jelly. Yet habit —strange thing! what cannot habit accomplish? —Gayer sallies, more merry mirth, better jokes, and brighter repartees, you never heard over your mahogany, than you will hear over the half-inch white cedar of the whale-boat, when thus hung in hangman's nooses; and, like the six burghers of Calais before King Edward, the six men composing the crew pull ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... Mandeville, was surrendered in mid-winter. Here, in the month of February, 1317, the new King of Ireland had the gratification of welcoming his brother of Scotland, at the head of a powerful auxiliary force, and here, according to Barbour's Chronicle, they feasted for three days, in mirth and jollity, before entering on the third campaign ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... his horse to the man-at-arms and walked into the house; in the hall he found a drunken company and much ugly mirth. He surveyed the scene awhile in disgust, for they cried out at first for him to join them, till it came upon them who it was that looked upon them; so they stumbled to their feet and did him obeisance, and slunk out one by one upon some pretence of business, ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... laughter was heard; and all the company were in convulsions of mirth at the grey, dirty, and hoary head of Madame de Charlus, and the Archbishop's omelette; above all, at the fury and abuse of Madame de Charlus, who thought she had been affronted, and who was a long time before she would understand the cause, irritated at finding herself thus treated ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... the candle we surveyed each other, and we were objects for mirth. Hotchkiss was taking off his sodden shoes and preparing to make himself comfortable, while I hung my muddy raincoat over the ghost in the corner. Thus habited, he presented a rakish but distinctly ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... dissatisfied with our proceedings, as will soon appear. Their moroseness was a prelude to what was to follow. We were, in a short time, forbidden to pass along the common gangway, and every attempt to do so was repelled by the bayonet. Although thus incommoded our mirth still continued. Songs were still sung, accompanied by occasional cheers. Things thus proceeded until about four o'clock; when the guards were ordered out, and we received orders to descend between decks, where we were immediately ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... his quick mirth and then laughed outright—the throaty, infectious laugh of his race. The coronel's eyes twinkled. And when Tim fished a damp cigarette from his shirt, nonchalantly scraped a match on his host's table, blew a cloud of smoke, and sprawled back with ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... a bookseller in Edinburgh: David Ramsay, printer of the Evening Courant: William Dunbar, an advocate, and president of a club of Edinburgh wits; and Alexander Cunningham, a jeweller, who loved mirth ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... volunteer porters swarmed into the van, which drove off in the direction of the nearest reliable public-house. Gideon closed the door on their departure, and turned to Julia; their eyes met; the most uncontrollable mirth seized upon them both, and they made the house ring with their laughter. Then curiosity awoke in Julia's mind, and she went and examined the box, and more ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Anglia, came day by day into the town with their followings, taking up their quarters either in the better houses of the place or else pitching bright-coloured tents and pavilions on the hillside meadows beyond the stockades. Many brought their ladies with them, and all day long was feasting and mirth at one place or another, as friend met with friend. Never had I seen such a gay sight as the marketplace was at midday, when the young thanes and their men met there and matched their followers at all sorts of sports. The English nobles are far more fond of gay dress and jewels ...
— Havelok The Dane - A Legend of Old Grimsby and Lincoln • Charles Whistler
... grief, my dear colonel, we must away; the half-hour has just chimed, and we must be within 'the gates' before twelve. The truth is, the superior has been making himself very troublesome about our 'carnal amusements' as he calls our innocent mirth, and we must therefore ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... without a fear, Of danger darkly lurking near, The weary laborer left his plough, The milkmaid carolled by her cow; From cottage door and household hearth Rose songs of praise, or tones of mirth. ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... somewhat of the student, and somewhat of the college professor in his appearance. But he is a very sincere man; has neither show nor fussiness in him; and practices his duties with a strict, quiet regularity. He may have moods of mirth and high moments of sparkling glee, but he looks as if he had never only laughed right out about once in his life, and had repented of it directly afterwards. If he had more dash and less shyness in him, less learned coolness ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... fire, Cheerful in its glow; Twenty summers back— Twenty years ago! If the days were days of toil Wherefore should we mourn; There were shadows near the shine, Flowers with the thorn? And we still can recollect Evenings spent in mirth— Fragments of a broken life, Sitting round the hearth: Sitting by the fire, Cheerful in its glow, Twenty summers ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... Truthfulness, equability, and grief or joy of soul, And birth and death, and fearfulness, and fearlessness, and shame, And honour, and sweet harmlessness,[FN17] and peace which is the same Whate'er befalls, and mirth, and tears, and piety, and thrift, And wish to give, and will to help,—all cometh of My gift! The Seven Chief Saints, the Elders Four, the Lordly Manus set— Sharing My work—to rule the worlds, these too ...
— The Bhagavad-Gita • Sir Edwin Arnold
... of those Great Days when we marched the Long Trail together; shared the same sorrows, the same mirth;—and now the same memories, far away, indistinct; laughter merged with the tears. A. STANLEY ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... up town beside a driver of one of the wagons on the Harlem route. He was in the uniform of the Wingfield light cavalry, having obtained a cap with embroidered initials on the front. The driver was like to burst from inward mirth, and Jack was regarding the ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... as they roll cut all our pleasures short; Our pleasant mirth, our loves, our wine, our sport, And then they stretch their power, and crush at last Even the power ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... legitimate occasion for mirth, so the men laughed, and Mr Wilkins looked pleased and the ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... armour is being weakened. With thy shafts reduced, and without quivers, with thy driver and steeds fatigued, and thyself mangled by foes with weapons, when thou wilt approach Partha, O son of Radha, thou wilt be an object of derision and mirth." Though thus addressed by the ruler of the Madras, Karna still, filled with rage, continued to assail Yudhishthira in battle. And he continued to pierce the two sons of Madri by Pandu with many keen arrows. Smiling the while, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... lordship," replied Pillichody, "lest it should spoil your mirth; but he broke out of his chamber a few hours ago, and has not been discovered since. Most likely, he will be found in the plague-pit or the Thames in the morning, for he was in such an infuriated state, that it is the opinion of his attendants he would certainly destroy ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... world which allow of no description, and of such things a true Roman carnival is one. You might as well seek to analyze champagne, or expound the mystery of melody, or tell why a woman pleases you. The strange web of colour, beauty, mirth, wit, and folly, is tangled so together that common hands cannot unravel it. To paint a carnival without blotching, to touch it without destroying, is an art given unto few, I almost might say to none, save to our own wondrous word- wizard, who ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... fearful sneering mirth, which was never excited in his breast, but by things perilous and terrible and hateful. In a moment, however, he repressed his ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... murmur in the sand, And fringe the edge on either hand With myrtle rich in shadow; The shepherds and the sheep rejoice, In joy and mirth you hear their voice Sound from ...
— Paul Gerhardt's Spiritual Songs - Translated by John Kelly • Paul Gerhardt
... a little as he stretched his hand out to the girl, but the light which shone back at him from her eyes was softer than that of mirth. ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... the 'friends' or companions 'of the bridegroom.' According to the Jewish wedding ceremonial it was their business to conduct the bride to the home of her husband, and there to spend seven days in festivity and rejoicing, which were to be so entirely devoted to mirth and feasting that the companions of the bridegroom were by the Talmudic ritual absolved even from prayer and from worship, and had for their ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... Mix, her mirth quite beyond control, as she gave various futile little tugs and twitches at the trap. "That's the trouble! The key never has had the slightest effect. Oh, I will NOT laugh this way!" she upbraided herself sternly. "Bu—bu—but you did look so—" She abruptly turned her back upon ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... you think I ought to help you with the rent when you are wasting money on excursions and shows?" Miss Margery frowned on Peggy's mirth. ...
— Honey-Sweet • Edna Turpin
... restaurant, the waits are long; and there comes an awful moment when the host mentions that he has got six stalls for the ——. Generally there is some friend present who knows the true position, and exhibits a smile of fiendish mirth. ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... later entrance, which Cartel cut, but it necessitated the mention of her name, whereupon the monster mirth was loosed again. ...
— The Cricket • Marjorie Cooke
... death And fill the fields and fire the woods with thee And seaward hollows where my feet would be When heaven shall hear the word that April saith To change the cold heart of the weary time, To stir and soften all the time to tears, Tears joyfuller than mirth; As even to May's clear height the young days climb With feet not swifter than those fair first years Whose flowers revive not ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... into a belief that we have no other intention than the amusement of a thoughtless crowd, and the collection of pence. We have a higher object. Few of the admirers of our prototype, merry Master PUNCH, have looked upon his vagaries but as the practical outpourings of a rude and boisterous mirth. We have considered him as a teacher of no mean pretensions, and have, therefore, adopted him as the sponsor for our weekly sheet of pleasant instruction. When we have seen him parading in the glories of his motley, flourishing his baton (like ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 1, July 17, 1841 • Various
... checkered year; One summer month, of sunlight, moonlight, mirth With not a hint of shadows lurking near, ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... only tossed her head a little higher out of the water, and again he saw, or fancied he saw, mirth dancing ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... and died. She was alone for a few days afterwards. Ian Belward came to her. Of that miserable, heart-rending, cruel time,—the life-sorrow of a defenceless girl,— Gaston heard with a hard sort of coldness. The promised marriage was a matter for the man's mirth a week later. They came across three young artists from Paris—Bagshot, Fancourt, and another—who camped one night beside them. It was then she fully realised the deep shame of her position. The next night she ran away and joined a travelling menagerie. The rest he knew. When she had ended there ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... once removed. We just began to talk, here in the boat, and the water went away and left us." Then she laughed, and Mark laughed too, and Carnaby's look of unutterable scorn seemed to have no effect upon them. They might almost have been laughing at him, their mirth was so senseless, viewed in ...
— Robinetta • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... too late to overtake a liberating idea once it gets free. Tolstoi tells of Batenkoff, the Russian nihilist, that after he was seized and confined in his cell he was heard to laugh loudly; and, when they asked him the cause of his mirth, he said that he could not fail to be amused at the absurdity of the situation. "They have caught me," he said, "and shut me up here; but my ideas are out yonder in the streets and in the fields, absolutely free. They cannot overtake them." It was ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... Major laughed, though more in sympathy than in mirth; and Mrs. Cranceford simply smiled as if with loathness she recognized that there was cause for merriment, but when she had quitted the room and gone to her own apartment, she sat down, and with the picture in her ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... mirth appeared to shake the different-whiteness. It stooped. One hand-end fumbled at the palmed rheostat, then dropped to pick up the disarmer. Fumbled again at the rheostat while the figure straightened up to point the glistening ...
— Zero Data • Charles Saphro
... this apple tree, The winter stars are quivering bright, The winds go howling through the night, Girls, whose young eyes o'erflow with mirth, Shall peel its fruit by cottage hearth, And guests in prouder homes shall see, Heaped with the grape of Cintra's vine, And golden orange of the line, The fruit of ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... merry-makings take place on these occasions, and drinking, drumming, and dancing continue day and night, till the beer is gone. In crossing the hills we sometimes found whole villages enjoying this kind of mirth. The veteran traveller of the party remarked, that he had not seen so much drunkenness during all the sixteen years he had spent in Africa. As we entered a village one afternoon, not a man was to be seen; but some women were drinking ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... into thy bosom, Earth, This joyous, May-eyed morrow, The gentlest child that ever Mirth Gave to be rear'd by Sorrow. 'Tis hard—while rays half green, half gold, Through vernal bowers are burning, And streams their diamond-mirrors hold To Summer's face returning— To say, We're thankful that His sleep Shall never more be lighter, In whose sweet-tongued companionship Stream, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... you had but trumped that diamond, ma'am!" "Bless me, sir, it was the best heart!" And somehow or other, both the laughter and the exclamations affected him alike with what then was called "the spleen,"—for the one reminded him of his own young days of joyless, careless mirth, of which his mechanical gayety now was but a mocking ghost; and the other seemed a satire, a parody, on the fierce but noiseless rapture of gaming, through which his passions had passed, when thousands had slipped away with a bland smile, provoking not one of those natural ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to make her my wife, knowing that she would be a counsellor of good things, and a comfort in cares and grief. For her conversation hath no bitterness; and to live with her hath no sorrow, but mirth and joy."—Wisdom ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... of the United States? She noticed that Flossy seemed unduly at her ease as though the importance of the ceremony was lost on her, and that they group of people with whom Flossy had been talking and who stood a little apart were obviously indulging in quiet mirth at the expense of some of those in ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... register at the last election, but because I come from Colorado I am considered an authority on woman suffrage, and when I say it's no good, and swell out my chest and look gloomy, it has great weight, great weight!" He leaned back in his chair and gave way to unseemly mirth as he recalled some occasion on which he had ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... enter many a home—some joyous with the mirth of children, the hopefulness of youth, the serene happiness of useful and contented men and women;—some shadowed by recent sorrow, where perhaps patriots, as in the olden time, learn to endure for the sake of a beloved country;—or others, perchance, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... of laughter arose from the boys at this, and the black turned sharply to give them a self-satisfied nod, as if to say, "She can't get at me now," while the mirth increased as Aunt Georgie ...
— The Dingo Boys - The Squatters of Wallaby Range • G. Manville Fenn |
