"Pantomime" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... describe these scenes where a good deal of life is concentrated into a few silent seconds. Mr. Richard Veneer had sat quietly through it all, although this short pantomime had taken place literally before his face. He saw what was going on well enough, and understood it all perfectly well. Of course the schoolmaster had been trying to make Elsie jealous, and had succeeded. The little schoolgirl was a decoy-duck,—that was ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... hen pheasant's tail in her hat raising her above the crowd, her shoulders rain-spotted and a dripping umbrella held well away from her, emerged Gertie Dobriner, a reproach in her expression, but meeting him with a pantomime of laughs and sallies. A tangle of passengers closed them in. A train wild with speed tore into the station, grinding to a stop on shrieking wheels. A second later it tore out again, ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... Macbeth's witches, and with them a number of old men stoop-shouldered, and of wizard aspect, each a very Caliban. Even the boys and girls have an impish, unearthly look, like the dwarfs that figure on the stage in a Christmas pantomime. But neither old nor young show fear, or any sign of it. On the contrary, on every face is a fierce, bold expression, threatening and aggressive, while the hoarse guttural sounds given out by them seem less like articulate speech ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... Typees enjoy a prodigious notoriety all over the islands. The natives of Nukuheva would frequently recount in pantomime to our ship's company their terrible feats, and would show the marks of wounds they had received in desperate encounters with them. When ashore they would try to frighten us by pointing, to one of their own number, ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... not make himself understood except to one or two of the Hottentots; but he was all pantomime, trying, by gestures and signs, to talk to Mr. Swinton and his companions. He endeavored to assist Mahomed as much as he could, and appeared to have attached himself to him, for he kept no company with the Hottentots. He was not more than three feet and a half high, and with limbs remarkably delicate, ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... monotony. They are numerous, and vary both in measure and time. They have songs of war, of hunting, of fishing, for the rise and set of the sun, for rain, for thunder and for many other occasions. One of these songs, which may be termed a speaking pantomime, recites the courtship between the sexes and is accompanied with acting highly expressive. I once heard and saw Nanbaree and Abaroo perform it. After a few preparatory motions she gently sunk on the ground, as if in a fainting fit. Nanbaree applying ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... its glory some years before had ceased. Of that trio of wonderful artists, Nourrit, Levasseur, and Mdlle. Falcon, only one, Levasseur, remained. The art of music was taking a rest. To make amends for this, the opera shone in ballet, fairy-like performances in which pantomime and trap- doors played as important a part as the actual dancing. Nothing could have been more enchanting than the Diable Boiteux with its many and various tableaux and its dresses, and Fanny Elsler dancing the "cachucha," or the Sylphide or the Revolte du Serail with Taglioni. ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... the Church had expelled them (as I gathered) upon an unjust suspicion of offending against public morals. At sight of Badcock, their leader, with little ado, offered him a place in the troupe. His ignorance of Italian was no bar; for pantomime, in which he was to play the role of pantaloon, is enacted (as you are aware) in dumb-show. Nay, on the strength only of our nationality they enlisted us both; for Englishmen, they told me, are famous over the continent of Europe for other things and for making the ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... "Dulce est desipere in loco," he grants the proposition, with the commentary that he, at least, has very rarely been "in loco." He reads tragedies, and perhaps writes one; but he does not affect comedies, and he could have no sympathy with an uproarious burlesque or side-shaking Christmas pantomime. His brethren who seek the theatre for amusement are of similar opinion, and so are they who stand behind the foot-lights. Therefore it is, that, for every passable comedian, America can produce a whole batch of very ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... saw each other only for a moment at church the next day. Bet left immediately after the service, as the Colonel was expecting guests for dinner. She gave her friends a smile, a wave of the hand and a funny pantomime which they understood. They were to be at the Manor the ...
— The Merriweather Girls and the Mystery of the Queen's Fan • Lizette M. Edholm
... pleases, paying a dollar or half a dollar extra should he choose the partial or full fruition of a couch. I confess I have always taken a delight in seeing these beds made up, and consider that the operations of the change are generally as well executed as the manoeuvres of any pantomime at Drury Lane. The work is usually done by negroes or colored men, and the domestic negroes of America are always light- handed and adroit. The nature of an American car is no doubt known to all men. It looks as far removed from all bed-room accommodation ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... greatly delighted all the children of the Prairie Island school. The idea of it was evolved in the form of a popular song many years afterward. In it the children are supposed to ask an old German musician how many instruments of music he could play, and he acts out in pantomime all of the instruments he could blow or handle. We think it was this merriment that became known in America as the song of Johnnie Schmoker in ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... cold, had to stay at home. To compensate for this, I was permitted to read the play to him; and that play was, "The Merchant of Venice." I will not dwell upon the effect. I had already become fond of such theatrical spectacles as were considered suitable for children—pantomime and broad farce—and like a child I gazed upon the glitter, and enjoyed the bustle; but now, seated in a corner, all quiet about me, and nothing to interfere with the mental world, I drank a cup of intoxication ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... a decanter of water, and invites his invisible charmer, in passionate pantomime, to come up and share it with him—to the infinite delight of the Audience, and disgust of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 8, 1892 • Various
... as he liked the sport; and when he had had enough, ended by flinging down the head of the animal with an air of contempt, to show that his warlike appetite craved meat of another sort."[496] Others followed with similar songs and pantomime, and the festival was closed at last by ladling out the meat from the kettles, and ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... the situation was too critical on every hand for the young friends to give way to the wonderment caused by the discovery. It speedily became clear that while the Shawanoe dare not speak, he was trying very hard to convey some message to his friends by means of pantomime. Holding the gun of the Miami in one hand, he kept the other going energetically, but neither Jack nor Otto could guess ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... Rockney's artillery, Captain Con O'Donnell's were popgun-pellets. Only Rockney fired to chasten, Con O'Donnell for a diversion, to appease an animus. The revolutionist in English journalism was too devoutly patriotic to belabour even a pantomime mask that was taken as representative of us for the disdainful fun of it. Behind the plethoric lamp, now blown with the fleshpots, now gasping puffs of panic, he saw the well-minded valorous people, issue of glorious grandsires; a nation under a monstrous defacement, stupefied ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... 1/4 to 12 at night, I write as follows:—I have been at the Drittl comedy, but only went in time for the ballet, or rather the pantomime, which I had not before seen. It is called "Das von der fur Girigaricanarimanarischaribari verfertigte Ei." It was very good and funny. We are going to-morrow to Augsburg on account of Prince Taxis not being at Ratisbon but at Teschingen. He is, in fact, at present at his country-seat, ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
... began to dissolve away; and as the sun brushed the webs from his face, and darted sharp beams upon the water all at once in a shower, the fog-banks went to pieces and rolled away in sections out of sight, like the transformation scene in a Christmas pantomime. And there we were in the very centre of the smiling island world, with splendid snow peaks towering all about us; and such a flood of blue sky and bluer water, golden sunshine and gilded fields of snow, of jutting shores clad in perennial verdure, and eagles and sea-birds wheeling round about ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... kiss. Ugh! Arter that he say Squire an Deacon Edwards, and Deacon Nash, an Cap'n Stoddard an heap more, an Jake he go too, gonter git up arly, at tree o'clock to-morrer, with guns; make no noise go roun creepy, creepy, creepy." Here she expressed by pantomime the way a cat stealthily approaches its prey, culminating by a sudden clutch on Perez' arm that startled him, as she added explosively, "Catch you so, all abed, an Abe an Abner an heap more! Then when mornin come they ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... legs again as if by a spring. Athos then made him a sign to take up his basket and to walk on first. Grimaud obeyed. All that Grimaud gained by this momentary pantomime was to pass from the ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Nelson in this one act towered like a giant above his superior; it was in that supreme moral characteristic which enabled him to shut his eyes to the perils and doubts surrounding the only path by which he could achieve success, and save his command from a defeat verging on annihilation. The pantomime of putting the glass to his blind eye was, however unintentionally, a profound allegory. There is a time to be blind as well as a time to see. And if in it there was a little bit of conscious drama, it was one of those touches that not only provoke ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... sparkling stalactites and stalagmites. The cemented floor was covered with sand that glittered like diamond dust, and there were fruit trees and rose bushes, rows of tall hollyhocks, and buds of tulips all apparently made of illuminated jewels, something like the transformation scene in a Pantomime they once took me to see—only a hundred ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... each burner to its fullest capacity, and passed his hands rapidly to and fro close to the child's eyes, then turning towards the wondering, panic-stricken group, who were slowly beginning to understand the meaning of that fearful pantomime, he laid her once more in her father's arms, and looking in his face, said, in a rough, broken voice, while a great tear trembled in his eye—'God help little ...
— The Big Nightcap Letters - Being the Fifth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... John also told me that an old man had made signs of a large water, but not fit to drink, and was very anxious for us to change our course, Mr. Roper had understood the same. But, as long as we were ignorant what was before us, the pantomime and words of the natives enabled us to form but very vague and hopeless guesses. It was easy to understand them, when we knew the reality. These natives must have had some intercourse with white men, or Malays, for they knew the use of a knife, and ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... OUR cousin) was described as watching from the house and whenever he saw any boy not doing anything, running and doing it himself. Fanny's verse was less intelligible, but it was accompanied in the dance with a pantomime of terror well-fitted to call up her haunting, indefatigable and diminutive presence ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... boor. 'Did you not know that? I thought all Europe knew it!' And he added a pantomime of a nature to explain his accusation to ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... festivity; and the constant swaying backward and forward, and vehement tossing of long streaks of heads and arms on the blinds, resembled the action of a violent domestic scene, in which the angry passions were strenuously engaged. I hardly knew what to conclude from this incoherent pantomime. Either Astraea was there, in the midst of a stormy contention; or she had left the house, and they were disputing furiously over the causes ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... somebody is going to write another version of Faust—presumably the pantomime edition by Wills is copyright. In addition, it appears that Mr Stephen Phillips has concocted an adaptation of The Bride of Lammermoor in which the story and characters are vastly improved. Alas, poor Scott! On top of ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... is stroking his hair and rearranging his tie he talks in pantomime at himself in the glass. In a moment Jennie ushers Mr. Jack Barlow ...
— The Bicyclers and Three Other Farces • John Kendrick Bangs
... a rat," said Peter—"I'm booked; but better booked than cooked, at any rate;" and forthwith returned thanks to the company for the honour they had conferred upon him, in the fashion of an after-dinner speech, accompanied with as much pantomime as he ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... with, many of the leading managers and actors in Australia. There was Coppin, the doyen of the profession. Maggie Moore and her husband, J. C. Williamson, had "struck oil." The four Stewart Sisters were at their best. In a pantomime the youngest of them, Nelly, then only about sixteen, was bewitching her many admirers, singing "For he wore a penny paper collar round his throat," and dancing like a sylph. What a favourite she became, and how for many years she ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... confession voiced, said no more; but her colour came and went expectantly, tantalisingly, and the eyes that still looked into the distance were unconscious of what they saw. From his place the man watched the transparent pantomime, read its meaning, stored the picture in his memory; but he did not speak. A minute had already passed; but still he did not speak. He was thinking of the night before, was the man, of that first look he had received—and of what had followed. ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... rose from them in unison and, hearing it, Molly lifted her face. She only had seen nothing of the pantomime, or such it seemed which had been enacted, though she had heard through her terror the whistling of the Captain and its ...
— Dorothy on a Ranch • Evelyn Raymond
... She was long and lank, with the buttons off the back of her dress, and hands and feet too large for her garments. Margaret could not help but see her in the clever pantomime the boy carried on. Next was Rosa Rogers, daughter of a wealthy cattleman, the pink-cheeked, blue-eyed beauty of the school, with all the boys at her feet and a perfect knowledge of her power over them. Bud didn't, of course, state it that way, but Margaret ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... know not—except that both delinquents were let off—like squibs—and Mine Host, the Boniface, had to pay all the fines. He at all events had a Fine old time of it! Sic transit! So fitly ends the long run of a good Pantomime. Finis coronat opus! ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 9th, 1892 • Various
... 4. Teaching them to "pantomime" the sounds—representing them mutely by movement of the lips, tongue and palate, will aid them in silent ...
— How to Teach Phonics • Lida M. Williams
... who do not look on a play as a mere question of pantomime and clowning psychological interest is everything, I determined, consequently, to make a change in the precise moment of revelation. This determination, however, was entered into long before I had the opportunity of studying the culture, courtesy, and critical faculty displayed in such papers ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... joyous on a Sunday evening with six sovereigns chinking in our pockets. Alas, no one tips us now! Then there was the delight of comparing notes of the doings during the delightful preceding twenty-four hours. Thus, whilst Brown detailed the delights of the pantomime to which Uncle John had taken him on Saturday night, Robinson descanted on the marvels of the Zoological Gardens, with special reference to the free-and-easy life of monkeydom, and Smith never wearied ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... and wheel Like butterflies on banks of thyme. 'Above'?—or 'shove'—alas! I feel, They're too much used to be sublime. I scorn with angry pantomime, The thought of 'move' (pronounced as muv). Ah, in Apollo's golden clime Why, why are ...
— Ban and Arriere Ban • Andrew Lang
... no town in Italy without its opera-house or theatre, and among the most vivid and most precious of scenic delights the pantomime commends itself to the Italian bosom. Of course there was a pantomime at Salerno. It was a mite of a house; on a rough calculation thirty feet by twenty; a double tier of boxes; a parquette about twelve feet square; and a stage of about ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... the last new grand comic Christmas pantomime, in the first scene of which, it pained me to suspect that I detected Mr. Wopsle with red worsted legs under a highly magnified phosphoric countenance and a shock of red curtain-fringe for his hair, engaged in the manufacture of thunderbolts in a mine, and displaying great ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... handbills announcing the meeting that night as one who sees a curious passing show; the men he met on the street he greeted as creatures from another world. Yet he knew he smiled and spoke with them casually. But it was not he who spoke; the real Robert Hendricks he knew was separated from the pantomime about him. When he went into the bank at five o'clock, the janitor was finishing his work. Hendricks called up the depot on the telephone and found that No. 6 was an hour late. With the realization that a full hour of his fighting time ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... though, except in the costume and make-up of Mr. ARTHUR WILLIAMS as Captain Zuniga, there is nothing extraordinarily "burlesque" in the appearance of any of the characters, as the appearance of Mr. HORACE MILLS as Remendado belongs more to Christmas pantomime than to the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 6, 1890 • Various
... at the Indians. They, too, had seen the canoes, but they made no sound of welcome. Bedizened and wolf-eyed, they stood in formal ranks as attentive as children at a pantomime. In a moment the canoes took clearer shape, and the shine of the paddles could be seen as the flat of the blades slanted toward the light. The men at the paddles were indistinguishable, crouching shapes, but their prisoner was standing. He stood in the ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... his common sense, his reason, his true emotions, were defeated by an impulse now scarcely intelligible; he saw himself shot across Europe, like a parcel despatched by express; and all that fury and rush meaningless as buffoonery at a pantomime! Yet this was how the vast majority of men "fell in love"—if ever they did so at all. This was the prelude to marriages innumerable, marriages destined to be dull as ditchwater or sour as verjuice. In love, forsooth! ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... recovered as to be able to turn from one to another, to say in pantomime that she had been misunderstood. Jane began ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... no fewer than seven of these glass theatres. All of the larger producers of pictures in this country and abroad employ regular stock companies of actors, men and women selected especially for their skill in pantomime, although, as most observers have perhaps suspected, in the actual taking of the pictures the performers are required to carry on an animated and prepared dialogue with the same spirit and animation as on the regular stage. ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... the first and soundest step is to mimic her crew. But the next step was a hard matter, for the crew having finished their job sat side by side on the bulwarks and lit their pipes. However, a little pantomime soon occurred, as amusing as it was inspiriting. They seemed to consult together, looking from the tug to the inn and from the inn to the tug. One of them walked a few paces inn-wards and beckoned to the other, who in his turn called something down the engine-room ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... spring to the last stack which the snow of winter overtakes in the fields. Who can guess how much firmness the sea-beaten rock has taught the fisherman? How much tranquillity has been reflected to man from the azure sky? How much industry and providence and affection we have caught from the pantomime ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... start of laughter at the suddenness of the apparition. It was like the genii in a pantomime bobbing up through ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... their socks at Krupp's to replace the shells they have blazed away in this little pantomime,' said Tommy pressing his hands to his sides. 'Star programme—heap big star programme! Phew! Oh, I wish I could stop laughing, I ain't 'ad such a laugh ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... it might be, in what was told him the new arrival was greatly interested. One instant in indignation his gauntleted fist beat upon the steering-wheel, the next he smiled with pleasure. To interpret this pantomime was difficult; and, the better to inform herself, Marie ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... the actresses for the tragedy, Miss Celia and Thorny, who were old hands at this sort of amusement, gave a "Potato" pantomime as a ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... not (starts, then hesitates). Gee! I wish I had a job here. Somehow it seems kind of homelike in this place! (pantomime showing Jack's reluctance). Well—I suppose I've got to go on. Say—do you suppose ...
— The Pot Boiler • Upton Sinclair
... who thought he knew the meaning of this pantomime. "You remind me of old Uncle Toby. He had money which he lost because he hid it in the ground instead of putting it where it would have ...
— True To His Colors • Harry Castlemon
... some myth (but if there is, I know it not) founded on the shivering of the reeds. There are not many things in nature more striking to man's eye. It is such an eloquent pantomime of terror; and to see such a number of terrified creatures taking sanctuary in every nook along the shore is enough to infect a silly human with alarm. Perhaps they are only a-cold, and no wonder, standing waist deep in the stream. Or, perhaps, they have never got accustomed to the speed ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... exactly know her," said Daintree. "You know him. It was a photo of Pat himself dressed up as the Sleeping Beauty, or Fatima, or some such person in a pantomime they did down at the base last Christmas when he was there. The young devil carried the thing about with him so as to play off his silly spoof on every fellow he met I must say he made a damned ...
— Our Casualty And Other Stories - 1918 • James Owen Hannay, AKA George A. Birmingham
... to all but Mr. Edson, who sat like a pantomime in a play, staring and grinning at what he could not understand or digest. Col. Malcome seemed, however, to take a malicious pleasure in placing his guest in the most awkward positions, and showing off his own ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... spoke, fumbling the lock of his gun, that same head observed before suddenly popped over the high rail like Punch at a pantomime. ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... mood was not proof against the humour of the small child's pantomime; and both he and Sir ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... proof that Christine was authentically young! And G.J. had the illusion again that he was in the Orient, and it was extraordinarily agreeable. The recollection of the scene of the Lechford Committee amused him like a pantomime witnessed afar off through a gauze curtain. It had no more reality than that. But he thought better of the committee now. He perceived the wonderful goodness of it and of its work. It really was running those real hospitals; it had a real interest in them. He meant to do his very best ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... made the woman and the children in the pantomime of the "New Circus" laugh most, was the incessant quarrel between an enormous Danish hound and a poor old supernumerary, who was blackened like a negro minstrel, and dressed like a Mulatto woman. The dog was always annoying him, followed him, snapped at his ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... hundred dollars; *The Beautiful Language of Flowers*, arranged in alphabetical order; *Morse Telegraph Alphabet*, complete; *The Improved* Game of *Forfeit*, for two or more. Will please the whole family; *Parlor Tableaux*; *Pantomime;* *Shadow Pantomime*; *Shadow Buff*; *The Clairvoyant*, how to become a medium. A pleasing game when well played; *Game of Fortune*, for ladies and gentlemen. Amuses old and young; *The Album Writer's Friend*, 275 select Autograph Album Verses, in prose and verse, (new); *50 Choice ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various
... hearing a window open from a little three-story-high loggia, opposite, hanging over their garden. A woman came forth, and, from amid the flower-pots which half-concealed her, she dropped a long cord to the ground. "Pst, Pst," she cried to the gardener at work below. He looked up, executed a curious pantomime, shrugged his shoulders, shook his fore-finger, and motioned with his head and elbow sideways to a figure, visible to me, but not to her, of a brown Franciscan, who was amusing himself in gathering some finocchi, just round the corner of the wall. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... the faces of most of the senators. They knew that they were no other than candle-snuffers, revolutionary scene-shifters, second and third mob, prompters, clerks, executioners, who stand with their axe on their shoulders by the wheel, grinners in the pantomime, murderers in tragedies, who make ugly faces under black wigs,—in short, the very scum and refuse of the theatre; and it was of course that the contrast of the vileness of the actors with the pomp of their habits naturally excited ideas ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... and he gave the landlord what no doubt he considered a gentle admonition, but which consisted of such a dig in the ribs, that he made as many evolutions as the clown in a pantomime when he ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... against it all sorts of objections which would have been quite appropriate if the public had been bidden to witness some colossal farce or burlesque; some raree-show of tasteless oddities, or some untimely pantomime of fairy-lore. What was really intended, and was performed, at a great cost of toil and organizing skill, was the opposite of all this. All the best elements of a great and glorious ceremonial were displayed—colour and form and ordered motion; noble music ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... were, of course, incapable of learning anything from experience. At other times he hid himself or others in the straw, in the chest, or under the table. When, in a country district such as this, one hears the laughter that greets so venerable a piece of pantomime, one is surprised that circus owners think it worth while to secure novelties at all. The primitive taste of West Sussex, at ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... afternoon there were public sports in the Champs Elysees, and dancing in the open places and the long walks. With nightfall the illuminations began. A troupe of mountebanks performed on a huge stage a ballet in pantomime, called the "Union of Mars and Flora." There were as many as five hundred performers. There were bands playing in every direction, and food was distributed to the contented multitude. From the Arc to the Tuileries, from the Tuileries to the Louvre, from the Louvre to the ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... after staring at her for a moment, he allowed his own expression to become one of painful fatigue. Then he slowly swung about, as if to return into that side-yard obscurity whence he had come; making clear by this pantomime that he reciprocally found the sight of her insufferable. In truth, he did; for he was not only her neighbour but her first-cousin as well, and a short month older, though taller than she—tall beyond his years, taller than need be, in fact, and still ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... like a child at its first pantomime, dimly understanding all I saw was novel, but more allured to the colour and life of the picture than concerned with its exact meaning; and while I stared and turned my finger was bandaged, and my new friend had been lisping away to ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... form, the patriotic play, with dances, songs, pantomime, and spoken speech, lends itself to schools, communities, and city use, in park, in armory, and on village green: in its one-act form it lends itself to both indoor and outdoor production by schools, patriotic societies, clubs and settlements, and, last, but not ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay
... said derisively. "I haven't got time to mug that up. I've got my living to get. You don't suppose I invent my jokes, do you? I collect them. I'm on the Halls the rest of the year, and I hear them there. There hasn't been a new joke in a pantomime these twenty years. But what you don't seem to get into your head, mister, is the fact that I make them laugh. Laugh. I'm a ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 14, 1914 • Various
... Rich was the father of John Rich, a manager who excelled in pantomime, and who appreciated the "legitimate" as little as did ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... the theatre-goer, than he is now. It is true that from Betterton's days to Garrick's, and later, his plays were commonly acted from mangled versions. But these versions were of two distinct types. The one respected the rules of the classical drama, the other indulged the license of pantomime. The one was the labour of the pedant theorist, the other was rather the improvisation of the theatre manager. And if the former were truly representative of the taste of the century, as has sometimes been implied, it has to be explained how they were not so popular as the latter. ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... moments she turned to her sister and spoke to her, pointing out at something in the scenery, and the same pantomime was repeated, and again ...
— The Princess Aline • Richard Harding Davis
... Indiana played Atalanta to all the boyhood of the quarter. Already Undine's chief delight was to "dress up" in her mother's Sunday skirt and "play lady" before the wardrobe mirror. The taste had outlasted childhood, and she still practised the same secret pantomime, gliding in, settling her skirts, swaying her fan, moving her lips in soundless talk and laughter; but lately she had shrunk from everything that reminded her of her baffled social yearnings. Now, however, she could ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... quiet University of Pisa went the boys Giovanni and Giulio to pursue their studies in "theology and ecclesiastical jurisprudence." Think how you feel, boys and girls, when, after a particularly jolly vacation, or an entrancing evening at the circus or the pantomime, you go back to what seem to you dull school studies, and then consider whether this boy cardinal, after all the glitter and parade and excitement of the carnival days, could be expected to fully relish his tasks of dry and laborious study. I imagine his solemn old biographer tells but half the ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... other of the parties to the conversation was very imperfectly acquainted with it, the conversation was necessarily carried on by means of very short and simple sentences, and the meaning was often helped out by signs, and gestures, and curious pantomime of all sorts, with an accompaniment, of course, ...
— Rollo in Geneva • Jacob Abbott
... thanked Heaven for it—and I began a most expressive pantomime, stuffing my fingers in my mouth and gnawing at them energetically. This I alternated with the action of one drinking from a basin. I hadn't the slightest idea whether he understood me; he turned and disappeared without a sign—at least, without ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... M. Vandeloup, who had been watching this pantomime with considerable interest; 'that pillow is the nugget of which our friend wants ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... for him what he saw her compelled to do for her father, who took her little finger and thumb in his masculine hand, and made them serve as sugar-tongs. Mr. Thornton saw her beautiful eyes lifted to her father, full of light, half-laughter and half-love, as this bit of pantomime went on between the two, unobserved, as they fancied, by any. Margaret's head still ached, as the paleness of her complexion, and her silence might have testified; but she was resolved to throw herself into the breach, if there was any ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... Peters, Elizabeths, and Catherines who played their Tsarships as eccentric character parts, and produced scene after scene of furious harlequinade with the monarch as clown, and of tragic relief in the torture chamber with the monarch as pantomime demon committing real atrocities, not forgetting the indispensable love interest on an enormous and utterly indecorous scale. Catherine kept this vast Guignol Theatre open for nearly half a century, not as a Russian, but as a highly domesticated German lady whose household ...
— Great Catherine • George Bernard Shaw
... pantomime, he gloated wildly. That was the scene which a bolted door had prevented him from surprising! That was the inexpressible and iniquitous devotion which they had hidden in innocent smiles! Their eyes were closed, but each face was turned toward the other, and in death the woman's ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... peering across the sea), saw the joke and gave a wild exhilarating exhibition of amusement. She sat down and rolled about shouting and screeching, hardly able to tell Mickie the fun, and when he was let into it the pantomime was the more extravagant. The outburst continued throughout the day at intervals, Jinny apologising for her boisterousness with reiterations—"Misser Johnssing say he been see 'em cousin belonga me light 'em pipe!" Jinny still rehearses the story ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... the calirco gown was going through the craziest pantomime ever was; p'intin' off to sea and then down to deck and then up to the sails. I didn't catch on for a minute, ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... whistled, and there was pantomime of all sorts going on behind Elnora's back that day. Happy with her books, no one knew how much she saw, and from her absorption in her studies it was evident she ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... the door behind them. He scowled at her, put a finger to his lips and then went through an involved pantomime to indicate looking for a microphone. He raised ...
— Combat • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... of the captive followed swiftly—in pantomime—the brave scouts, under the leadership of Henry Burns, performing a series of dances about the helpless one, accomplishing his end with ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... affairs of nodding and winking, of artful innuendo and scuffles in the dark. The earnest efforts of Broadbeam's minor kindred to knock the nonsense out of even younger people may be heard at almost any pantomime. The Lord Chamberlain's attempts to stem the tide amaze the English Judges. No scheme for making the best of human lives can ignore this system ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... these variations with the acts that accompany or precede them. Animals evidently understand these inflections at once. We cannot better compare the language of animals than with what takes place in a pleasant sport, a kind of pantomime of the voice or language which many youth doubtless understand, and which I venture to refer to here to aid in more easily conceiving of the communication of thought among animals by sounds which seem to us all alike. When I was engaged ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... produces. One may describe a painting; but no description will produce the effect which the painting will produce. So neither music, nor painting, nor both combined, can produce the same effect on the soul as poetry. The "Midsummer Night's Dream" enacted in pantomime, with Mendelssohn's music, would no more produce the same effect on the auditors which would be produced by the interpretation of the play in spoken words, than would the reading of the play at home produce ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... bread and cheese and doughnuts on a rock on the shore, to represent the collation that was usually spread in those parts at a ship launch, and felt quite like grown people—acting life beforehand in that sort of shadowy pantomime which so delights little people. Happy, happy days—when ships can be made with a jack-knife and anchors run in pine blocks, and three children together can launch a schooner, and the voyage of the world can all be made ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... convert to-morrow into a—but the philosopher must not revile. Ah! I see the prefect's apparitors at the gate. He is making the polity, as we call it here; the dispositions; settling, in short, the bill of fare for the day, in compliance with the public palate. A facetious pantomime dances here on this day every week—admired by some, the Jews especially. To the more classic taste, many of his movements—his recoil, especially—are wanting in the true antique severity—might be called, perhaps, on the whole, indecent. Still the weary pilgrim must be amused. ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... compositions: Lower Bohemia in Melbourne (a sketch), Plot (a sensational drama), Review of Comte and Positive Philosophy (magazine article), The Humbug Papers (humorous and satirical), The Future Australian Race (an ethnological study), Goody Two Shoes (a pantomime), Civilization without Delusion (a theological discussion with the Bishop of Melbourne), The Power of Love (an extravaganza), Dore and Modern Art (a review), Cannabis Indica (a psychological experiment). Almost the whole of Clarke's ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... across the room; but even in the act, his countenance cleared. He was standing in the window, and caught a glimpse of Bessie Gottley, who was passing at the moment on the opposite side of the road, and looked across at him, smiling and nodding invitingly. Mrs. Caldwell saw the pantomime, and her heart contracted with a pang when she saw how readily her husband responded. It was hard that the evil moods should not be conquered for her as well ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... the inner office, and Pringle made a grimace like a pantomime clown, suggesting mock horror and fear, as he glided to the outer door, where he turned, looked back, and then disappeared; while, as soon as he was alone, Tom took out a paper of sandwiches, opened it, and began to eat, it being an understood ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... nobody is in the least likely to do so down here. Don't you see how delightfully provincial they are? There's a local lawyer, a pillar of all the virtues, who has misappropriated his own daughter-in-law's marriage portion and fled the country with the principal boy in their last pantomime; there are a lot of smart young fellows who are making a sporting thousand every other day out of iron warrants; the district's looking up after thirty years' bad times; and this is the sort of thing it's talking about. These are its heroes ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... And while Jacqueline was trying to get away, not knowing exactly what she was saying, but frightened, pleased, and much excited, Colette went on: "Oh! I am so glad, so glad you came to-day; now you can see the pantomime! I dreamed, wasn't it odd, only last night, that you were acting it with us. How can one help believing in presentiments? Mine ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... learned from his masters, turning their easel painting into painted scenes. He was a parvenu, but a parvenu whose whole bearing proved that if he did dedicate every story in 'The House of Pomegranates' to a lady of title, it was but to show that he was Jack and the social ladder his pantomime beanstalk. "Did you ever hear him say 'Marquess of Dimmesdale'?" a friend of his once asked me. "He does not say 'the Duke of York' with ...
— Four Years • William Butler Yeats
... A significant pantomime explained the remainder of the sentence, and then Harpour, standing in his one slipper, hastily adjourned to his toilet. Walter, being dressed in good time, knelt down for a few moments of hearty prayer, helped poor Eden, who was as helpless as though he had been always dressed by a servant, ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... pantomime at the approach of night, and as soon as it is dark he enters the town and proceeds to the bentang, or public meeting-house, at which all the inhabitants immediately assemble. The women do not especially relish this exhibition; ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... woman fiercely; and banging down the bucket, she went through a pantomime, in which she took Dyke's hand and placed it upon the back of her woolly head, so that he might feel an enormous lump in one place, a cut in another; and then with wondrous activity went through a scene in which she appeared to have a struggle with some personage, and ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... when acted, is converted from a delightful fiction into a dull pantomime. All that is finest in the play is lost in the representation. The spectacle was grand; but the spirit was evaporated, the genius was fled.—Poetry and the stage do not agree well together. The attempt to reconcile them in this instance fails not ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... mean?" demanded the coxswain, in a low tone, for he was very much mystified by the pantomime ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic
... see plainer, made an unwise move, and attracted the attention of the man on the step. The boy flushed scarlet as their eyes met, for Anthony Crawford, without making a sound, went through a pantomime of an ecstasy of glee. He had evidently expected to arouse Oliver's curiosity by his suggestion the day before, and was overcome with ill-natured delight to catch him in the very act of ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... make Bell understand by frantic pantomime that she hadn't meant just now,—any time would do,—but Bell chose it should be just now; and slightly lifting his eyebrows, Mr. De Forest took his handsome person slowly back to Bell to make an almost impertinently indifferent bow to ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... returned warriors bring out their buffalo masks, made of the head and horns and tail of the buffalo. These they don, and continue to dance until worn out. Ten or fifteen dancers form a ring and, accompanied by drumming, yelling, and rattling, dance until the first exhausted one goes through the pantomime of being shot with the bow and arrow, skinned, and cut up; but the dance does not lag, for another masked dancer takes the place of the fallen one. The dance continues day and night, without cessation, sometimes for two or three weeks, ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... imprisons the wolf. By-and-by the lion and his mate come up. "We shall have monkey to-day," says the lion, lifting the stone—"faith! we shall only have wolf after all!" So the poor wolf is instantly torn into pieces, while the clever monkey once more overhead re-enacts his lion-pantomime.[116] ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... nursery as they are in England. The rooms of a German flat communicate with each other, and this in itself makes the segregation to which we are used difficult to carry out. During the first few days of a sojourn with German friends, you are constantly reminded of a pantomime rally in which people run in and out of doors on all sides of the stage; and if they have several lively children you sometimes wish for an English room with one door only, and that door kept shut. Even when you pay a call you generally see the children, and possibly the nurse ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... have had personal experience of the change to enable one to recognise the advance that has been made in the art of preserving articles of food within the last half-century. In the first Drury Lane pantomime that I can remember—about a year before I went to sea—a practical illustration of the quality of some of the food supplied to the navy was offered during the harlequinade by the clown, who satisfied his curiosity as to ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... an expressive pantomime of an overladen foot-soldier up and down the room, in time to the music. The only person who didn't laugh was James—which ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... what d'ye think, gentlemen? Will you talk any more of your Pargolesi and your Corelli?' — At the same time, he thrust his tongue in one cheek, and leered with one eye at the doctor and me, who sat on his left hand. He concluded the pantomime with a loud laugh, which he could command at all times extempore. — Notwithstanding his disorder, he did not do penance at supper, nor did he ever refuse his glass when the toast went round, but rather encouraged a quick circulation, ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... that I considers as one of the family," said the county Leitrim-man, when his pantomime was through, "but it isn't dacent to be bawling out sacrets through a whole nighbourhood; and then, as for Ould Nick—or Saucy Nick, or whatever ye calls him—Och! isn't he a pratthy Injin! Ye'll mar-r-ch t'rough Ameriky, and never ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper |
