"Puck" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... brier. This, which was difficult by day, was dangerous in a threefold degree at night. Moreover, the Moor was reputed to be haunted by spirits, shadows that ran and leaped, and peered and jabbered; and Puck wi' the lantern flickered over the surface ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... scholarship. More tragic were the misprints in a work by the Italian poet, Guidi, which are said to have hastened his death. In an interesting volume by Henry B. Wheatley on "Literary Blunders," the Tricksy Puck of the Press has revenged himself on the author for his attacks by smuggling in a number of misprints, among them one that he must have inspired in the mind of the author, the spelling "Bride of Lammermuir," ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... is a mystery no critic may solve. It is useless to criticize genius or a miracle, except to increase its wonder. Who remembers anything in "Crusoe" but the touch of the wizard's hand? Who associates the Duke of Athens, Hermia and Helena, with Bottom and Snug, Titania, Oberon and Puck? Any literary master mechanic might real off ten thousand yards of the Greek folks or of "Pericles," but when you want something ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... not at some time given ear to the whispers that tell of long-lost treasures, of forgotten cities, of Atlantis swallowed by the sea? It is* not only children who love the tales of Fairyland. How happily we have read Kipling's 'Puck of Pook's Hill,' De la Motte Fouque's 'Undine,' Kenneth Grahame's 'Wind in the Willows,' or F.W. Bain's Indian stories. The recent fairy plays—Barry's "Peter Pan," Maeterlinck's "Blue Bird," and the like—have been enormously successful. Say what we will, fairy tales still hold their old power ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... vast systems of Asiatic superstition, it seems, are less objectionable than our own folk lore; the tremendous shades of Brahma and Budhu, of Juggernaut and the goddess Kali, with their uncouth images and horrid worship, are harmless when compared with Puck, the Pixies, and Robin Goodfellow; and Caste, Suttee, and Devil-worship[3] are evils of less magnitude than cairns, kist-vaens, and cromlechs. The mental balance must be peculiarly constructed that could lead to such a decision. Certainly H. N. is no Rhadamanthus. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 214, December 3, 1853 • Various
... Quantocks I feel fairies all round me, the good folk, meet companions for young poets. How Coleridge, more especially, fits in to such surroundings! 'Fairies?' say you. Well, there's odds of fairies, and of the sort I mean Coleridge was the absolute Puck. 'Puck?' says you. 'For shame!' says you. No, d—n it! I'll stick to that. There's odds o' fairies, and often enough I think the world is nothing else; troops, societies, hierarchies—S.T.C., a supreme hierarch; look at his face; think of meeting him at moonlight between Stowey and Alfoxden, ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... accompanied us, sailing at the rate of seven miles an hour, struck upon one of these rocks. Its mast was carried away by the shock but fortunately no other damage sustained. The Indians ascribe the muddiness of these lakes to an adventure of one of their deities, a mischievous fellow, a sort of Robin Puck, whom they hold in very little esteem. This deity, who is named Weesakootchaht, possesses considerable power but makes a capricious use of it and delights in tormenting the poor Indians. He is not however invincible and was foiled in one of his attempts by the artifice ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... chuckling for all the world like a wicked Puck, bent upon mischief, joyfully and solely devised for a confusion of his enemies, ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton
... othahs dat could keep de banjo ringin'; But of all de whistlin' da'kies dat have lived an' died since Ham, De whistlin'est I evah seed was ol' Ike Bates's Sam. In de kitchen er de stable, in de fiel' er mowin' hay, You could hyeah dat boy a-whistlin' pu'ty nigh a mile erway,— Puck'rin' up his ugly features 'twell you could n't see his eyes, Den you 'd hyeah a soun' lak dis un f'om dat ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... conception of Donatello, the fresh, free, sylvan man untouched by sin or crime. Donatello must rank with a class of poetic creations which has nearly become extinct among modern writers: he belongs to the world of Caliban, Puck, and Ariel. But besides this unique creation, the book reveals regions of thought wide, ruin-scarred, and verdurously fair as the Campagna itself, winning the mind back through history to the primitive purity of man and of Christianity. ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... to describe the success of Mr. Lough as a sculptor. His statue of "The Mourners" is known all over the world. He has illustrated Shakespeare and Milton. His Puck, Titania, and other great works, are extensively known, and their genius universally admired. But it may be mentioned that his noble statue of Milo was not cast in bronze until 1862, when it was exhibited at the International Exhibition ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... Billy Stirling. He liked him from the moment that gentleman thrust a wet paw out of the water to shake hands and tossed the brine from a grinning face to acknowledge the girl's introduction. He liked him even better for the Puck-like irresponsibility of his good humor as, later on, he introduced Stuart to the ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... and rope limitations, since it was the farthest out in the Atlantic Ocean. Her experience with the strong undertow in its effects upon herself and upon those who watched her is one, which, as no words can portray it, Tom has decided to draw out for some future Puck; for he thinks that it is too good to be ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 3 • Various
... glory, Foliage fresh and billows hoary, Hollows bathed in yellow haze, Hills distinct and fields of maize, Ancient legends come to mind. Who would marvel should he find, In the copse or nigh the spring, Summer fairies gamboling Where the honey-bees do suck, Mab and Ariel and Puck? Ah! no modern mortal sees Creatures delicate as these. All the simple faith has gone Which their world was builded on. Now the moonbeams coldly glance On no gardens of romance; To prosaic senses dull, Baldur's dead, the Beautiful, Hark, the cry rings overhead, ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... was very sorry then, and gave the creature to Mary Rivers. He was such a beauty! I hope the perdition has gone with him, for I don't like Mary Rivers at all. I had to give the poor beasty to somebody, and Mary Rivers happened to be there. I told her that Puck was connected with Apollyon, but she didn't mind that. Puck was worth twenty guineas, and I daresay she has ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... he said. 'Why could they not dance in the day-time?—not when all respectable leaves and flowers were sleeping! making such a noise, especially that mischievous Puck!' ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... to be good, dear," had been the verdict of the Commissioner's wife when she had first seen little Puck Merryon, ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... lived in caves, could not possibly know some things that are like A B C to the fairies of to-day. For the Welsh fairies, King Puck and Queen Mab, know all about what is in the telegraphs, submarine cables and wireless telegraphy of to-day. Puck would laugh if you should say that a telephone was any new thing to him. Long ago, in Shakespeare's time, he boasted that he could "put a girdle round the ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... this earth, but invisible and immaterial to us. Able, however, occasionally to manifest their presence; known in almost all countries and ages as demons not necessarily bad, gnomes, fairies, kobolds, elves, goblins, Puck, &c. ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... latter half of the nineteenth century is perhaps the most imaginative period the world's history has ever known. While with one hand we are contriving means of transit for our ideas, and even our very voices, compared to which Puck's girdle is anything but talismanic, with the other we are stretching out to grasp the action of mind on mind, pushing our way into the very realm of ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell
... been goun' from bed tull worse, ploughun' up an' down the fields an' talkun' an' mutterun' tull humself. On the marnun' o' the day I mind me, he was suttun' on the bench outside the kutchen, a-futtun' the handle tull a puck-axe. Unbeknown, the monster eediot crawled tull the door an' brayed after hus fashion ot the sun. I see old Tom start up an' look. An' there was the monster eediot, waggun' uts bug head an' blunkun' an' brayun' like the great bug ass ut was. Ut was too ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... they were "senili vultu, facie corrugata." The wrinkled face and aged countenance of the Portuni remind us of nursery Fairy tales in which the wee ancient female Fairy figures. The pranks of the Portuni were similar to those of Shakespeare's Puck. The species Grant is not described, and consequently it cannot be ascertained how far they resembled any of the many kinds of Welsh Fairies. Gervase, speaking of one of these species, says:—"If anything should be to be carried on in the house, or any ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... dissertation. A pause for a few days, a visit to the country, anything that would seem designed to restore the mind to its normal state, destroys the faculty. The weary penman, who wishes his chaotic head could be relieved by being transformed even as by Puck, knows that very whirling chaos is the condition of his multitudinous periods. It seems as if some special sluices of the soul must be opened to force the pen. One man, on returning to his desk ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... Century be achieved, Larkspurs and tiger-lilies humbled, Geraniums of their fire bereaved, And calceolarias torn and tumbled. With fairy craft from dusk to dawn Quaint Puck himself may bowl half-volleys, But I have vowed, by love and lawn, To weed ...
— More Cricket Songs • Norman Gale
... great Parliamentarian, a brilliant debater and a famous Irish Secretary in difficult times, but his political energies lay in tactics. He took a Puck-like pleasure in watching the game of party politics, not in the interests of any particular political party, nor from esprit de corps, but from taste. This was very conspicuous in the years 1903 to 1906, during the fiscal controversy; but any one with observation ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... sympathetic atmosphere, made her indescribably charming. As she grew stronger she frolicked with every human being and every living thing. When the spring first opened and she could be out of doors, she seemed more like a divine mixture of Ariel and Puck than like a ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... he is an elf, a sprite, a creature of fantasy, who may be—and, I rejoice to say, is—in this world, but certainly is not of it. This Oliver is in the line of Puck and Mercutio and Lamb and Hood and other lovers and makers of nonsense, and it is we who ask for "more." He had just brought out his irresponsible but very searching exercise in cosmogony, "This Giddy Globe," dedicated to President ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... fifteenth century, entering into the Greek fancy because it belongs to all ages, has expressed it in its most exquisite form, in a design of Ceres and her children, of whom their mother is no longer afraid, as in the Homeric hymn to Pan. The puck- noses have grown delicate, so that, with Plato's infatuated lover, you may call them winsome, if you please; and no one would wish those hairy little shanks away, with which one of the small Pans walks at her side, grasping her skirt stoutly; ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... of Ariel, just a streak of Puck, Much Antony, of Hamlet most of all, And something of ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... only being for whom it was suspected that Tait felt a mild dislike—an impudent Irish terrier, full of fun and mischief, yet with a somewhat unfriendly and suspicious temperament that made him, perhaps, a better guardian for Norah than the benevolently disposed Tait. Puck had a nasty, inquiring mind—an unpleasant way of sniffing round the legs of tramps that generally induced those gentry to find the top rail of a fence a more calm and more desirable spot than the level of ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... reputation: his fame is chiefly in the mouths of those who know him not at all, and use their hats for speaking-trumpets. We have in English no approximately decent translation of him. Someone said that Pope served him as Puck served Bully Bottom, what time Peter Quince was moved to cry: "Bless thee Bottom, how thou art translated!" It is not so; to call Pope an ass would be to wrong a faithful and patient quadruped; than which Pope was as much greater in intellect as he was less ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... ideal, Or in the Immaterial furl'd Alone resides the Real, FREED ONE! there's wail for thee this hour Through thy loved Elves' dominions[33]; Hush'd is each tiny trumpet-flower, And droopeth Ariel's pinions; Even Puck, dejected, leaves his swing[34], To plan, with fond endeavour, What pretty buds and dews shall keep ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... inch beyond one's nose; blunder, bungle, boggle, fumble, botch, bitch, flounder, stumble, trip; hobble &c 275; put one's foot in it; make a mess of, make hash of, make sad work of; overshoot the mark. play tricks with, play Puck, mismanage, misconduct, misdirect, misapply, missend. stultify oneself, make a fool of oneself, commit oneself; act foolishly; play the fool; put oneself out of court; lose control, lose control of oneself, lose ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... seeming reluctance, she turned her head towards him, and—oh, thou mischievous Puck, that sometimes takest upon thee the semblance of Eros, what skill is thine! . . . there were tears in her eyes—real tears—bright, large tears that welled up and fell through her long lashes in the most beautiful, ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... of whinnering country horses, and people are in town you wouldn't think existed if you hadn't seen their pictures in Puck and Yudge, people from over by Muchinippi, and out Noodletoozy way, big, red-necked men with the long loping step that comes from walking on the plowed ground. Following them are lanky women with ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... novel idea, and one sure to catch the romantic sentiments of Queen Elizabeth, as old Duke Theseus, the cross-purposed lovers, Bottom and his rude theatrical troop, and the fairies, led by Oberon, Titania and Puck could have full swing in the forest, sporting in their ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... good Puck," replied the lady; "we are well placed; but dear me, we haven't brought, or we have lost, our vinaigrette; we positively cannot go without it. What can our ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... many feats of strength and skill, that he excited the envy of the Puck-wudj In-in-ee-sug, or fairies, who conspired against his life. 'For,' said they, 'if this man is suffered to go on, in his career of strength and exploits, we shall presently have no work to perform. Our agency in the affairs of men must cease. He will undermine our power, and drive ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... the author is of a nice conscience and anxious to place responsibility where it is due. He therefore wishes to make all proper acknowledgments to the editors of Vanity Fair, The American Magazine, The Popular Magazine, Life, Puck, The Century, Methuen's Annual, and all others who are in any way implicated in the ...
— Moonbeams From the Larger Lunacy • Stephen Leacock
... stuff. Read the speech through, and then think of the writer of "Hamlet," and "Lear," and "Othello," producing such a weak wash of words at the same time when he was writing those tragedies. And even turn back and compare it with the rhyming speeches of his other supernatural personages, of Puck and Titana and Oberon in "A Midsummer Night's Dream," which he wrote at least ten or twelve years earlier, and you will see that it is not only so inferior, but so unlike his undoubted work that it must be rejected. Turn next to Scene 3 of Act II., and ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... deciduous trees, no doubt the abodes of elves. That may have been but a sphinx moth that flew down the path before me, his fat gray body silvered by the moonlight, his short, narrow wings beating so fast that they became but a gauzy nimbus about him, or it may have been Puck, training to put that girdle round about the earth in forty minutes. Here invisible creatures scurried away from a fairy ring whose flagging is of round pyrola leaves, lighted by ghostly white candelabras of the waxy blooms, field mice, very likely, or black beetles, or elves dancing in the moonlight ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... Seminary, at Cambridge, and write one of the most successful series of Bible stories for children ever printed; and then he supplemented this feature for children by publishing Rudyard Kipling's "Just So" stories and his "Puck of Pook's Hill." He induced F. Hopkinson Smith to tell the best stories he had ever heard in his wide travels in "The Man in the Arm Chair"; he got Kate Douglas Wiggin to tell a country church experience of hers in "The ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... collection, files of such magazines as Life, Judge, Puck and Punch were drawn on extensively; also magazines having humorous pages or columns, such as the Literary Digest, Ladies' Home Journal, Everybody's, Harper's; also Bindery Talk and various other house organs. According ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... away the romantic mysteries, the kings and knights and big-sounding titles, and Mardi-Gras would die, down there in the South. The very feature that keeps it alive in the South—girly-girly romance—would kill it in the North or in London. Puck and Punch, and the press universal, would fall upon it and make merciless fun of it, and its first exhibition would be also ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... collection of studios, where some of her own works were to be seen: Beatrice Cenci, which did not very greatly impress me; and a monumental design, a female figure,—wholly draped even to the stockings and shoes,—in a quiet sleep. I liked this last. There was also a Puck, doubtless full of fun; but I had hardly time to glance at it. Miss ——— evidently has good gifts in her profession, and doubtless she derives great advantage from her close association with a consummate artist like Gibson; ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Julien was in the mood for this final and fierce attack upon Le Jour and all the powers that stood behind it. He held up Falkenberg to derision—the charlatan of modern politics, the Puck of Berlin, whose one sincerity was his hatred for England, and one capacity, the giant capacity for mischief! He wound up his article with a scathing and personal denunciation of Falkenberg, and a splendidly worded appeal to the French nation not for one moment to be deceived ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... nor Junius ever dealt in more furious words than Macaulay, who had not the excuse of controversy or passion. Frederick William of Prussia was "the most execrable of fiends, a cross between Moloch and Puck"; "his palace was hell"; compared with the Prince, afterwards Frederick the Great, "Oliver Twist in the workhouse, and Smike at Dotheboys Hall were petted children." It would be difficult for Mark Twain to beat that. "The follies and vices of King John were the salvation of England." ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... have touched upon all the myths referring to Fairies, as thus strictly defined; and the Kobolds and Puck, the Household Spirits and Mischievous Demons, have scarcely been so much as mentioned. Want of space forbids our going further. It is hoped, however, that enough has been said, not merely to give the readers an idea of the Fairy Mythology correct ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... quaint Puck the Antic, Brought Robin Goodfellow, that merry swain; And stealthy Mab, queen of old realms romantic, Came too, from distance, in her tiny wain, Fresh dripping from a cloud—some bloomy rain, Then circling the bright Moon, had wash'd her car, And ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... weaving; indeed, a man must have attained the dignity and ability of that position before being able to produce those marvels of skill which were woven between 1475 and 1575 in Flanders, France and Italy. Their aids, the apprentices, pique the fancy, as Puck harnessed to labour might do. They were probably as mischievous, as shirking, as exasperating as boys have ever known how to be, but those little unwilling slaves of art in the Middle Ages make an appeal to the imagination more vivid ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... Leprechawn of Ireland, a relic of the pagan mythology of that country. By birth the Leprechawn is of low descent, his father being an evil spirit and his mother a degenerate fairy; by nature he is a mischief-maker, the Puck of the Emerald Isle. He is of diminutive size, about three feet high, and is dressed in a little red jacket or roundabout, with red breeches buckled at the knee, gray or black stockings, and a hat, cocked in the style of a century ago, over a little, old, ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.
... (which Puck wouldn't put a girdle around for forty dollars) shook gleefully while I read ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 4 • Charles Farrar Browne
... PUCK, a tricky, mischievous fairy, identified with Robin Goodfellow, and sometimes confounded with a house spirit, propitiated by kind words and the liberty of ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... been disposed to assign it to Cyril Tourneur, author of The Revenger's Tragedy; and he had drawn up in support of this theory a series of parallel passages extracted from the speeches of Vindice in that drama and of Oberon in the present play. He pointed out however that the character of Puck could hardly have been the work of any English poet but the author of Bussy d'Ambois. There was here likewise that gravity and condensation of thought conveyed through the medium of the "full and heightened style" commended by Webster, and ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... lights along the banks formed one long unbroken line. One hundred miles a minute we sped along, and yet without the least vibration or sound. At such a speed it was possible to encircle Mars in seventy minutes, almost, I thought, as rapidly as could Puck in "Midsummer Night's Dream," who boasted of putting a girdle round the ...
— Zarlah the Martian • R. Norman Grisewood
... do not know much of life. Pooh! I, Puck, who have dwelt for many of my days on their boudoir cushions, and eaten of their dainty little dinners, and been smuggled under their robes even into operas, balls, and churches, tell you that is an utter fallacy. They do not choose you to know that they know it, very probably; ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... "Puck" was the little dog's name, and he appeared in a fair way of "putting a girdle round the earth," if not in forty minutes like his elfish namesake, at least in an appreciable limited space of time, Teddy never ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson
... New England moonlight; when flitting Ariel forsook Prospero's isle to make his nest in Wellesley's bowering rhododendrons—in blossom time he is always hovering there, a winged bloom, for eyes that are not holden. Those were the nights when Puck came dancing up from Tupelo with Titania's fairy rout a-twinkle at his heels; when the great Hindu Raj floated from India in his canopied barge across the moonlit waters of Lake Waban; when Tristram and Iseult, on their way to the court of King Mark, all love distraught, ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... a giant hunter who lives in one of the great mountains of the Blue Ridge and owns all the game. Others are the Little Men, probably the two Thunder boys; the Little People, the fairies who live in the rock cliffs; and even the De[']tsata, a diminutive sprite who holds the place of our Puck. One unwritten formula, which could not be obtained correctly by dictation, was addressed to the "Red-Headed Woman, whose hair hangs ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney
... pursuits; and on the Continent we are told of a certain evil spirit named Kleure who transforms himself into a tree to escape notice, a superstition which under a variety of forms still lingers here and there.[2] It would seem, too, that in some of our old legends and superstitions the terms Puck and Devil are synonymous, a circumstance which explains the meaning, otherwise unintelligible, of many items of plant-lore in our own and other countries. Thus the word "Puck" has been identified with Pogge—toad, under which form the devil was supposed to be personified; and hence probably ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... ... my affections are in a state of perfect tranquillity." But she admitted he was her "only fellowship and support," and confiding at length the truth about Irving, surrendered in the words, "Decide, and woe to me if your reason be your judge and not your love." In this duel of Puck and Theseus, the latter felt he had won and pressed his advantage, offering to let her free and adding warnings to the blind, "Without great sacrifices on both sides, the possibility of our union is an empty dream." At the eleventh hour, when, in her own words, ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... morning dew"; from England, all this out-door woodland life, the clown's play and the clowns themselves,—Bottom with his inimitable conceit, and his fellows, Snug, Quince, and the rest. English is all Puck's fairy lore, the cowslips tall, the red-hipt humble-bee, Oberon's bank, the pansy love-in-idleness, and all the lovely imagery of the verse. English is the whole scenic background, and the "Wood near Athens" is plainly the Stratford boy's idealised memory of the Weir ...
— Shakespeare's Christmas Gift to Queen Bess • Anna Benneson McMahan
... affectionately remembered. Mr. Wyke Bayliss, upon the other hand, is rather tedious. The last President never said much that was true, but the present President never says anything that is new; and, if art be a fairy-haunted wood or an enchanted island, we must say that we prefer the old Puck to the fresh Prospero. Water is an admirable thing—at least, the Greeks said it was—and Mr. Ruskin is an admirable writer; but a combination of both ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... character, for the older one of them thought too much about clothes and wealth and position, and so immediately fell to admiring and imitating Betty, while the other was an impossible tomboy, more like a feminine Puck, the very incarnation of mischief, whose one idea of happiness seemed to ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at Sunrise Hill • Margaret Vandercook
... instead of salt into the salt-cellars at the housekeeper's dining-table, that he might see what she would say; and he had been caught dressing up Miss Jane's Skye terrier in one of the butler's clean cravats; so, though Puck, the aforesaid terrier, liked him better than any other person, Miss Jane not excepted, a regular complaint went up of him to my Lady, and he was sent home. He was abashed, and sorry to have vexed mother and disappointed Miss Jane; but somehow he could not be unhappy when he had Harold ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Sinn Feiners," O'Farrell played up to me, unoffended. "Still, as a brother of one, I'm bound to search, if it takes all night. A sister's a sister. And mine is quite a valuable asset." He tossed me this hint with a Puck-like air of a private understanding established between us. Yes, "Puck-like" describes him: a Puck at the same time merry and malicious, never to be ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... the undergrowth, while the young leaves of the tree-tops, far overhead, were quivering and dancing in the sunlight and the breeze. Here Oberon and Titania might sleep beneath a bower of motionless royal Osmunda. Here Puck might have a noon-tide council with Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Moth, and Mustardseed, holding forth to them in whispers, beneath the green and purple sounding-board of a Jack-in-the-Pulpit. Here, even in ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... (But stop, first let me kiss away that tear,) Thou tiny image of myself! (My love, he's poking peas into his ear!) Thou merry, laughing sprite, With spirits feather light, Untouched by sorrow, and unsoiled by sin— (Good heavens! the child is swallowing a pin!) Thou little tricksy Puck! ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... Light That Failed, The Brushwood Boy, The Many Inventions Captains Courageous Naulahka, The (With Wolcott Collected Verse Balestier) Day's Work, The Plain Tales from the Hills Departmental Ditties and Puck of Pook's Hill Ballads and Barrack-Room Ballads Rewards and Fairies Diversity of Creatures, A Sea Warfare Eyes of Asia, The Seven Seas, The Five Nations, The Soldier Stories France at War Soldiers Three, The Story From Sea to Sea of the Gadsbys, ...
— The Eyes of Asia • Rudyard Kipling
... himself to study and prayer, and enforced this pious advice by a sound caning, administered on the spot. But it was in his own house that he was most unreasonable and ferocious. His palace was hell, and he the most execrable of fiends, a cross between Moloch and Puck. His son Frederic and his daughter Wilhelmina, afterwards Margravine of Baireuth, were in an especial manner objects of his aversion. His own mind was uncultivated. He despised literature. He hated infidels, papists, and metaphysicians, and did not very well understand in what they differed ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... at least to the Jacobite army. Boswell has oddly described M'Cruslick, the being whose name was conferred upon this gentleman, as something between Proteus and Don Quixote. It is the name of a species of satyr, or esprit follet, a sort of mountain Puck or hobgoblin, seen among the wilds and mountains, as the old Highlanders believed, sometimes mirthful, sometimes mischievous. Alexander Macleod's precarious mode of life and variable spirits ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... watching the effect of one of his own most brilliant and easy jokes. But Sir Joshua does not compare with Gainsborough in landscape; there the lover of Nature had the advantage over the lover of Poussin and Claude. The famous picture of Puck, which Lord Fitzwilliam lately bought at Mr. Rogers's sale for the extravagant sum of nine hundred and eighty guineas, is here for all eyes to see how far the imagination of the President of the Royal Academy differed from ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... airy form into the butter-churn, and while he was dancing his fantastic shape in the churn, in vain the dairymaid would labor to change her cream into butter. Nor had the village swains any better success; whenever Puck chose to play his freaks in the brewing copper, the ale was sure to be spoiled. When a few good neighbors were met to drink some comfortable ale together, Puck would jump into the bowl of ale in the likeness of a roasted crab, and when some old goody was going to ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... remember the day you played Rarey with Puck, and we all looked on? Meg and Beth were frightened, but Jo clapped and pranced, and I sat on the fence and drew you. I found that sketch in my portfolio the other day, touched it up, and kept it ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... first, but, oh, I would do such a lot of things! I'd find out where money was most needed and drop it on the people anonymously so that they wouldn't be bothered about thanking anyone. I would creep about like a beneficent Puck and take worried frowns away, and straighten out things for tired people, and, above all, I'd make children smile. There's no fun or satisfaction got from giving big sums to hospitals and things—that's all right for when ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... sat quite still. "Sister Blossom," said Puck, "it's too close in here. I must go see where they keep the honey." He was starting off that very minute, but all the Bee children flew up in such a rage, and fastened themselves upon Puck and Blossom, that they got ...
— Harper's Young People, April 13, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... his nap just where he had left off when his master so rudely aroused him. Joan had hushed her sobs, although now and again a long, shuddering sigh shook her little body from head to foot, as with small, smudgy fingers she gently stroked her brother's cheek. Puck, the monkey, had skipped nimbly from his perch on the chimney of the caravan and found another more to his mind on top of Tonio's woolly head, where he sat glowering and grinning at the group, as if he wanted to ask, only he couldn't in words, "What's the matter, ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... thirty feet of the storm-tossed waves of Lake Ontario for fifty miles and ploughing a tornado-track through a dense forest, terminated in a treetop near Sackett's Harbor, Jefferson county, New York, at 2.20 P.M.—twelve hundred miles in nineteen hours and forty minutes! Puck's promise kept! ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... a dressing-gown and hastened to the room appropriated to their patron saint, which I entered at one door just as little Eva Dudley appeared at another. Without being in the least a beauty, Eva has the most charming face I know; merry and bright as Puck's, or as her own life, which from its earliest dawn has been joyous as a bird's carol. She gazed now with eager delight on the toys exhibited by her brothers and sisters, without, apparently, one thought of herself, till Robert said, "But see here, ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... FAIRY WAYS. In which we chiefly distinguish—1, The active presence of the Sprites in a human habitation. 2, Their masquerading. 3, Their dispatch of human victuals. 4, The liability of Elfin limbs to human casualties. 5, The personality of that saucy Puck, our tiny ambassador elf. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... Puck. Through the Forest haue I gone, But Athenian finde I none, One whose eyes I might approue This flowers force in stirring loue. Nigh and silence: who is heere? Weedes of Athens he doth weare: This is ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... Steevens is a dangerous guide for such as do not look well about them. His errors are specious: for he was a man of ingenuity: but he was often wantonly mischievous, and delighted to stumble for the mere gratification of dragging unsuspecting innocents into the mire with him. He was, in short, the very Puck of commentators.... ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... prince put his horse "Daretz," through all kinds of tricks, of a high school character, winding up by making the horse kneel in token of salute before the emperor and empress. More trick riding on another horse named "Puck," belonging to the crown prince, followed, and thereupon there was a comical intermezzo, in which Prince Adalbert and Prince Eitel took the part of two clowns. Later on, the crown prince's dogs were brought on the scene, and his favorite "Tom" ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... "Puck-a-chee! Seechy-do!" (Get out—bad.) For, like most of his class in Minnesota at that day, the Superior Being had enriched his vocabulary of slang with divers Indian words. Then, after a pause, he said: "What does he call ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... too settled an aspect—unless, of course, Vesuvian Revolution shakes the land. And that touches only their nerves. I dream of some old Judge! There is one—if having caught we could keep him. But I dread so tricksy a pilot. You have guessed him—the ancient Puck! We have laughed all day over the paper telling us of his worrying the Lords. Lady Esquart congratulates her husband on being out of it. Puck 'biens ride' and bewigged might perhaps—except that at the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... indeed, most of all, for he has now relieved them from the necessity of a tedious existence. Considered, again, merely as an orator, Mr. Whistler seems to me to stand almost alone. Indeed, among all our public speakers I know but few who can combine so felicitously as he does the mirth and malice of Puck with the ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... delicate,—of wit withering and scorching, yet combined with a pathos cool as morning dew,—of satire ponderous as the mace of Richard, yet keen as the scymitar of Saladin.... A work full of 'mountain-mirth,' mischievous as Puck, and lightsome as Ariel.... We know not whether to admire most the genial, fresh, and discursive concinnity of the author, or his playful fancy, weird imagination, and compass of style, at once both objective and subjective.... We might indulge in some criticisms, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... poet in the eye when he would sing to you praises of the month of May. It is a month presided over by the spirits of mischief and madness. Pixies and flibbertigibbets haunt the budding woods: Puck and his train of midgets are ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... the political Puck he was rare fun, As young Bellerophon he was a wonder; He'd see that England had the biggest gun, He'd end the era of expensive blunder. E'en as Jack Sheppard collaring GLADSTONE'S "swag," The Tory-Democratic hosts admired him; And when he seemed to stumble or ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 1, 1890 • Various
... entertainers as Ezra Kendall, Lew Dockstadter, Josh Billings, James Whitcomb Kiley, Marshall P. Wilder, Mark Twain, Bret Harte, Opie Read, Bill Nye, Petroleum V. Nashby, Artemus Ward, together with the best from "Puck," "Judge," "Life," "Detroit Free Press," "Arizona Kicker," renders this book the best of ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... and godmothers gave her the name of Rosalie. Mine might just as well have called me Hercules or Puck. ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... me of one little peculiarity in the external ear, which he has often observed both in men and women, and of which he perceived the full significance. His attention was first called to the subject whilst at work on his figure of Puck, to which he had given pointed ears. He was thus led to examine the ears of various monkeys, and subsequently more carefully those of man. The peculiarity consists in a little blunt point, projecting from the inwardly folded margin, or helix. When present, ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... Where are Oberon and Puck? Without a name? Where Titania?—Mab? Without a motive? Where the godmother of the sweet-faced and sweet-hearted Cinderella? Partial, and without a distinct type in your own recollections, you guessingly pronounce the characterization ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... a crab" is to roast a wild apple in the fire in order to throw it hissing hot into a bowl of nutbrown ale, into which had been put a toast with some spice and sugar. Puck describes one of ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Thou tricksy Puck! With antic toys so funnily bestuck, Light as the singing bird that wings the air— (The door! the door! he'll tumble down the stair!) Thou darling of thy sire! (Why Jane, he'll set his pinafore ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... them,—attracted far more attention than the not very numerous volumes forming his library.[40] What people flocked to see at the tiny treasure-house overlooking the Green Park,[41] which its nonagenarian owner had occupied for more than fifty years, were the "Puck" and "Strawberry Girl" of Sir Joshua, the Titians, Giorgiones, and Guidos,[42] the Poussins and Claudes, the drawings of Raphael and Duerer and Lucas van Leyden, the cabinet decorated by Stothard, the chimney-piece ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... lowest step, with one leg over the other, and rubbing the top of his boot with a vigor which betrayed to me some secret mirth. He looked up at me from under his straw hat with the grin of a malicious Puck, glanced towards the group, and made a curious gesture with his thumb. There were several empty pint-bottles ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... farm-house was then furnished, rolled off her horse, and went into the house. She then discovered, for the first time, that there was no one at home. After resting awhile, she mounted to depart. But Isaac, as full of mischief as Puck, put the bars up, so that she could not ride out. In vain she coaxed, scolded, and threatened. Finding it was all to no purpose, she rode up to the block and rolled off from her horse again.—Isaac, having the fear of her whip ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... jacket-pockets, and her short hair curling up round her velvet cap, struts cheerfully forth out of the obscurity of the past in my memory; her studio, I think, adjoined that of Gibson, of whom I remember nothing whatever. Her most notable production at that time was a Puck sitting on a toadstool, with a conical shell of the limpet species by way of a cap; he somehow resembled his animated and clever creator. Miss Hosmer's face, expressions, gestures, dress, and her manifestations in general were perfectly ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... is of the same plastic kind as his conception of character or passion. "It glances from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven." Its movement is rapid and devious. It unites the most opposite extremes; or, as Puck says, in boasting of his own feats, "puts a girdle round about the earth in forty minutes." He seems always hurrying from his subject, even while describing it; but the stroke, like the lightning's, is sure ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... Puck, while the dew is sweet; Come to the dingle where fairies meet. Know that the lilies have spread their bells O'er all the pools in our mossy dells; Stilly and lightly their vases rest On the quivering sleep of the waters' ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 209, October 29 1853 • Various
... her studio and saw 'Puck,' a statue all fun and frolic, and I imagined all was fun to the core ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... "Goodfellow, Puck and goblins, Know more than any book. Down with your doleful problems, And court the sunny brook. The south-winds are quick-witted, The schools are sad and slow, The masters quite omitted The lore we care to know." ...
— A Village Stradivarius • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... fairly stoned to death, and his bruised and broken carcase was left unburied, a horror to all passers-by! We see the Genii are a moral people, and in general the Mussulmans of The Sahara speak of them as a good sort of folks, not unlike Puck and his merry crew, only playing occasionally mischievous pranks upon ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... Everything here is as of yesterday, the identity of the actors, the details of their dress, the charm imparted by the sisters Gougenheim, the elegant elder as the infatuated Helena and the other, the roguish "Joey" as the mischievous Puck. Hermia was Mrs. Nagle, in a short salmon-coloured peplum over a white petticoat, the whole bulgingly confined by a girdle of shining gilt and forming a contrast to the loose scarves of Helena, while Mr. ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... PUCK. "Now the hungry lion roars, And the wolf behowls the moon; Whilst the heavy ploughman snores, All with, weary task fordone. Now the wasted brands do glow, Whilst the scritch-owl, scritching loud, Puts the wretch, that lies in woe, In remembrance of a shroud. Now it is the time of night, That the ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... and I have always suspected the impish James of deliberately putting us face to face with Margarita's foreign strain and the tiny, deep gulf that cut her off, in some parts of her nature, so hopelessly from us. And he made us see it, too, that Puck of all painters, even as he had intended, and we were forced to thank him for it, for it was too beautiful to have gone undone, and he knew it. And Jimmie's dead, worse luck, and one of his most devoted collectors told me last week that he really thought ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... but therewithal He meeteth Puck, which most men call Hobgoblin, and on him doth fall, With words from frenzy spoken: "Oh, oh," quoth Hob, "God save thy grace! Who drest thee in this piteous case? He thus that spoiled my sovereign's face, I would ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... matter. Marion was a very "will o' the wisp" in military affairs, almost as difficult to find, at times, by his own followers, as by the enemy. He was the true model of a partisan in a country, like ours, of swamp and thicket; leading the pursuing foe, like Puck, "through bog and through briar," till he wearied out his patience, exhausted his resources, and finally laid him open for defeat. He seldom lingered long in any one spot, changing his ground frequently, with Indian policy; his scouts, well chosen, were always on the alert; and, by constant ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... "The Tempest;" and the concluding lines of "The Midsummer Night's Dream," and of "All's Well that Ends Well"—which are not described as epilogues, and should, perhaps, rather be viewed as "tags"—are spoken by Puck and the King. The epilogues to "King Henry V." and "Pericles" are of course spoken by the Chorus and Gower, respectively, who, throughout those plays, have favoured the spectators with much discourse and explanation. "Twelfth ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... thing, and his deeds another. Through Puck as his instrument, his jealousy at once begins to make matters worse instead of better for the lovers. Notice the delicate appropriateness of Oberon's means of influence, namely Puck and the two flowers, the first being 'Cupid's flower,'—Love in idleness—the second 'Dian's bud,' introduced ...
— Shakespeare Study Programs; The Comedies • Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke
... the sleighbells died away across the snow, Hi offered to read jokes to Anna from "Pickings from Puck," which he had selected as a Christmas present from Kate, if she would consent to have supper in the sitting-room, where it was warm and cosy. Anna began to pop the corn, and Hi to read the jokes with ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer |
