"Farce" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... This fearful farce was enacted in the cemetery of St. Ouen, behind the beautifully severe monastic church so called, and which had by that day assumed its present appearance. On a scaffolding raised for the purpose sat Cardinal ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... inconsistencies and contradictions, and displayed his insatiable thirst for public office. All the sympathies of the Democratic party had been his antipathies, all their hates his loves, and many of their leaders spoke of him publicly with contempt. Indeed, his campaign would have been a farce had not his untimely death made it a tragedy. Ridicule killed him politically, and his political failure was the immediate cause of his ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... vanity made a farce of the funeral. A big, bull-necked publican, with heavy, blotchy features, and a supremely ignorant expression, picked up the priest's straw hat and held it about two inches over the head of his reverence during the whole of ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... his eyes to heaven, with a look of appealing innocence; but I was wearied with this odious farce. ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... once. Dick has announced his engagement to an actress—a soubrette, too, in a farce-comedy. If it had been a woman who played Shakespeare, it would have been bad enough, but a girl who sings and dances and does all sorts of things, including wearing her dresses up-side down, as it were—that is, ...
— The Smart Set - Correspondence & Conversations • Clyde Fitch
... books were appearing in Germany, the original life was translated into English and dramatized by Marlowe. English players brought Marlowe's work back to Germany, where it was copied by German actors, degenerated into spectacular farce, and finally into a puppet show. Through this puppet show Goethe made acquaintance ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... his pocket which I had seen him fingering all the first day, and read it off just as it had been written before the trial began, condemning the poor devil to twenty years' imprisonment. I never saw such a farce. Everybody shouted for the army, and the little generals kissed each other and cried, and they had a great time of it. And the president made a speech in which he said that they had saved the army and consequently the country too, and that honor and glory and the fatherland had been redeemed. They've ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... its evil deeds. The Egyptian bishops protested. Alexander of Thessalonica denounced the plot to the Emperor's representative. Athanasius himself took ship for Constantinople without waiting for the end of the farce, and the council condemned him by default. This done, the bishops went on to Jerusalem for the proper business ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin
... sometimes happened, the latter (either from accident, or perhaps from a pardonable pique at having the duty taken out of his hands), was not at his elbow to prompt him when at fault—at these times the cant phrase of the officers, taken from some farce, used ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... such an age since she had laughed, and it was such a happy, contented little sound that she was quite startled thereat. The custom-house officials were going through the farce of examining the luggage, and while the rest of the passengers groaned and lamented at the delay, Jack and his companion stood together in the background, blissfully ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... feeling in its favour would be deeper and deeper." Mr. Tilley showed the great advantages which would accrue to New Brunswick eventually in consequence of confederation. He combated the statement made by Mr. Smith that after confederation the provincial legislature would become a mere farce, showing that of all the Acts passed during the previous two years there were only seven which would have come under the control of the general legislature. Mr. Tilley closed by dwelling on the impression of power ...
— Wilmot and Tilley • James Hannay
... third, she made his fortune by playing out a farce worthy of Figaro's genius. She passed as his wife and became the mistress of a man in power, who believed her to be the most innocent of good citizens. To one she gave life, to another honor, to the third fortune—what ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... It is as clear as day that the whole object of this elaborate secrecy was to hide the fact of her death! She was infinitely more useful alive than dead, Mr. Addison; and they hoped to keep up the solemn farce until—" ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... marks of treachery, that it could not be attributed to the general trepidation and disorder which possessed the army, and circumstances proved that a correspondence subsisted between Monthault and the Parliamentary general, which the farce of taking him prisoner and committing him to close custody, when the King's forces were generally permitted to disband and return to their houses, strongly confirmed. Lord Hopton recollected that his designs had been counteracted ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... against her. His advances to her were deliberate, and she felt a retrospective disgust for them. Perhaps other men's lives were of the same kind—full of secrets which made the ignorant suppositions of the women they wanted to marry a farce at which they were ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... flash of eyes and teeth. Their shoulders stooped, their chests were narrow, their arms flabby. They came in their hundreds to the hall at night. It was square-shaped with a stage and galleries, for a jargon-company sometimes thrilled the Ghetto with tragedy and tickled it with farce. Both species were playing to-night, and in jargon to boot. In real life you always get your drama mixed, and the sock of comedy galls the buskin of tragedy. It was an episode in the pitiful tussle of hunger and greed, yet its humors were ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... school. But it must be taught seriously to make it worth while, and as in the teaching of needlework, the foundations must be plain. To begin by fancy-work in one case and bonbons in the other turns the whole instruction into a farce. In this subject especially, the satisfaction of producing good work, well done, without help, is a result which justifies all the trouble that may be spent upon it. When girls have, by themselves, brought to a happy conclusion the preparation ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... of the farce. When complaint was made against Masazumi, the Tokugawa leader simulated astonishment, expressed much regret, and said that he would condemn Masazumi to commit suicide were it permissible to mar this happy occasion by any capital sentence. "Peace," declared the ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... Douglas, then living at Boston, writes that the expedition had a lawyer for contriver, a merchant for general, and farmers, fishermen, and mechanics for soldiers. In fact, it had something of the character of broad farce, to which Shirley himself, with all his ability and general good sense, was a chief contributor. He wrote to the Duke of Newcastle that though the officers had no experience and the men no discipline, he would take care to ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... in Ah Moy's power, and quite well aware of it, exacted from all of his countrymen a certain amount of deference, and was loath that his visitor should prove an exception to this gratifying rule. Ah Moy knew this, but the little farce was becoming very irksome to him; it took up too much of his always valuable time, and he intended to forego it in future. Quong Lee, thought he, was a tiresome old goat who badly needed his whiskers trimmed ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... of Cherubina. In this farcical romance it is clearly Barrett's intention to make so vigorous an onslaught that "the Selinas, Evelinas, and Malvinas who faint and blush and weep through four half-bound octavos" shall be, like Catherine Morland, "humbled to the dust." Sometimes, indeed, his farce verges on brutality. To expose the follies of Cherubina it was hardly necessary to thrust her good-humoured father into a madhouse, and this grim incident sounds an incongruous, jarring note in a ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... officially no state of war existed, and in the eyes of the Government the Dutch were supposed merely to be quelling some revolutionary movements ere they departed for Europe! Now the time came for this farce to be ended, and the Governor of Bahia sent troops to the north to join the insurgents in their struggle against the Dutch. The traitor Hoogstraten now definitely joined these forces, and the whole of the country south of Recife fell once ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... farce of state and public business, the emperor Diocletian resigned the imperial diadem, and was succeeded by Constantius and Galerius; the former a prince of the most mild and humane disposition and the latter equally remarkable for his cruelty and tyranny. These divided the empire ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... civility, cleanliness of face, clothes, beard, hair, hands, mouth, even his very nails; as if he were to play the part of a lover in some comedy, or enter the lists to fight some enemy. And indeed the practice of physic is properly enough compared by Hippocrates to a fight, and also to a farce acted between three persons, the patient, the physician, and the disease. Which passage has sometimes put me in mind of Julia's saying to Augustus her father. One day she came before him in a very gorgeous, loose, lascivious dress, which very much ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... "The same pitiful farce that was played in Paris, only on a smaller scale," he murmured. "Avarice and human cowardice are ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... thus let down on the last act of the farce, there was no alternative between being queerly plundered, or instantly laying a horse-whip over the hungry philosophers. To sue them reminded me of the proverb—'Sue a beggar,' &c. To crack a baculine ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... notwithstanding his Ode on St. Cecilia's Day, he hated music with an entire sincerity. He also affected to hate the drama; but some have thought this accounted for by the fact that, early in his career, he was damned for the farce of Three Hours after Marriage, which, after the fashion of our own days, he concocted with another, the co-author in this case being a wit of no less calibre than Gay, the author of The Beggars' Opera. The astonished audience bore it as best they might till the last act, when the ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... said the playwright, "and assuming that you have not seen a production of 'A Gay Coquette,' I will make a brief but necessary explanation. It is a musical-farce-comedy— burlesque-comedietta. As the title implies, Miss Carroll's role is that of a gay, rollicking, mischievous, heartless coquette. She sustains that character throughout the entire comedy ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... smokiest; London is the dirtiest; London is, if you will, the most sombre; London is, if you will, the most miserable. But London is certainly the most amusing and the most amused. You may prove that we have the most tragedy; the fact remains that we have the most comedy, that we have the most farce. We have at the very worst a splendid hypocrisy of humour. We conceal our sorrow behind a screaming derision. You speak of people who laugh through their tears; it is our boast that we only weep through our laughter. There remains always this great boast, perhaps the greatest boast that ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... of the United States has this farce been repeated, and in every case with the same result. It is now generally acknowledged that the attempt to regulate the price of gas by competition is unwise and harmful. Prof. E. J. James, of the University of Pennsylvania, in a monograph entitled "The Relation of the Modern Municipality ...
— Monopolies and the People • Charles Whiting Baker
... Impression upon the Porter day after day in vain, till at length he made his appearance in a very thoughtful dark sute of Clothes, and two Pair of Spectacles on at once. He was conducted from Room to Room with great deference, to the Minister; and carrying on the Farce of the Place, he told his Excellence, That he had pretended in this manner to be wiser than he really was, but with no ill Intention; but he was honest Such-a-one of the Train, and he came to tell him that ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... And it seems as if a hot walk purged you, more than of anything else, of all narrowness and pride, and left curiosity to play its part freely, as in a child or a man of science. You lay aside all your own hobbies to watch provincial humours develop themselves before you, now as a laughable farce, and now grave and beautiful like an ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the affair too seriously. It was evidently more than half a joke. Anti-Smith was more good-humouredly in evidence than the winning party. Just this touch of buffoonery completed our sense of the farce-comedy character of the situation. The town was tawdry in its preparations—and knew it; but half sincere in its enthusiasm—and knew it. If the crowd had been composed of Americans, we should have anticipated an unhappy time ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... ancient, learned Latin store, Giv'st us one author, and we hope for more. May they enjoy thy thoughts!—Let not the stage The idlest moment of thy hours engage; Each year that place some wondrous monster breeds, And the wits' garden is o'errun with weeds. There, Farce is Comedy; bombast called strong; Soft words, with nothing in them, make a song. 10 'Tis hard to say they steal them now-a-days; For sure the ancients never wrote such plays. These scribbling insects have what they deserve, Not plenty, ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... by printing them: for my part, the copy that sells best will be always the best copy in my opinion; I am no enemy to sermons, but because they don't sell: for I would as soon print one of Whitefield's as any farce whatever." ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... arguments, that the same might not come twice over. But, after I left Cambridge, it became the fashion to invite the respondent to be present, who therefore learnt all that was to be brought against him. This made the whole thing a farce: and ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... until it became a farce. One run for each despatch rider every third day was the average. St Jans was not the place we should have chosen for a winter resort. Life became monotonous, and we all with one accord began applying ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... good fellow, Fogerty. I—I thank you. But I can't do it. In the first place, I can't rest in peace until Louise is found, or I know her fate. Secondly, I'm game to give an account for all my deeds, now that I've played the farce out, and lost. I—I really haven't the ambition, Fogerty, to make a new start in life, and try to reform. What's ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne
... by a sudden death in the world outside the scenes into Lord Aimwell, and can marry the lady in the light of day, it is to the credit of her vivacious nature that she does not anticipate your calling her Farce. Five is dignity with a trailing robe; whereas one, two, or three Acts would be short skirts, and degrading. Advice has been given to householders, that they should follow up the shot at a burglar in the dark by hurling the pistol after it, so that ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... followed French methods, observed the unities, and used the rhymed couplet. But they were not French; they were a nondescript incubation by Dryden himself, and were called heroic dramas. They were ridiculed in the Duke of Buckingham's farce, the Rehearsal; but their ...
— Palamon and Arcite • John Dryden
... again. "The farce is over. Now come and be real. Your own beautiful real self. Come and meet ...
— Patty's Suitors • Carolyn Wells
... show; } But 'tis as rollers in wet gardens grow } Heavy with dirt, and gathering as they go. } May none, who have so little understood, To like such trash, presume to praise what's good! And may those drudges of the stage, whose fate Is damned dull farce more dully to translate, Fall under that excise the state thinks fit To set on all French wares, whose worst is wit. French farce, worn out at home, is sent abroad; And, patched up here, is made our English mode. Henceforth, let poets, ere allowed to write, Be searched, ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... intentions of the band. The scheme of the hour was to rob another Augustine monk, Robert de la Porte, and in this the Prior agreed to take a hand with simulated greed. Thus, in the course of two days, he had turned this wineskin of a Tabary inside out. For a while longer the farce was carried on; the Prior was introduced to Petit-Jehan, whom he describes as a little, very smart man of thirty, with a black beard and a short jacket; an appointment was made and broken in the de la Porte affair; Tabary ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... delight in clever companions who assumed the same role. Frequent allusion is made to his intercourse with Erskine and Sheridan: the latter he is never tired of praising, as "the author of the best modern comedy (School for Scandal), the best farce (The Critic), and the best oration (the famous Begum speech) ever heard in this country." They spent many an evening together, and probably cracked many a bottle. It is Byron who tells the story of Sheridan being found in a gutter in a sadly incapable ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... is true, rendered us a great service, but that does not justify us in advancing him in chivalry. He must earn that by some deed of valour, or knighthood would be a mere farce." ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... "my education is beyond the vagaries that are so generally taught in the name of knowledge. Intellectual education is a farce. It does nothing for mankind, except to give them a false culture. Were the so-called great men of the past really educated? Here is an extract which I copied this afternoon from Hawthorne." She opened her note ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... usurping kings in "The Rehearsal"; the celebrated farce written by the Duke of Buckingham, in conjunction with Martin Clifford, Butler, Sprat, and others, in ridicule of the rhyming tragedies then in vogue, and especially of Dryden in the character of Bayes.—See Malone's "Life of ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... alone could cure. The juste milieu of brandy, so favored in 1832, if we can believe Mr. Hamilton, was not thought of in 1857. A quarter of a century had made a change in the popular taste. Perhaps the temperance reformation had had something to do with it. The whole thing was as complete a farce as ever was seen at an American or an English election, and those who were engaged in it are now sincerely ashamed of their failure. If foreigners will have it that it was an outbreak of Agrarianism, the first in a series of outrages against property, so be it. Let them live in the enjoyment ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... element in his character. It was an integral part of his individuality. It coloured his whole temperament or idiosyncracy. Unconsciously he described himself, to a T, in Nicholas Nickleby. "There's genteel comedy in your walk and manner, juvenile tragedy in your eye, and touch-and-go farce in your la'ugh," might have been applied to himself in his buoyant youth quite as readily and directly as to Nicholas. The author, rather than the hero of Nickleby, seems, in that happy utterance of the theatrical manager, to have been photographed. It cannot ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... I say it is too much to expect of any man that he should face the prospect of being ruined and probably murdered, and his family reduced to beggary, in order to enable the Government to keep up the farce of pretending that they are ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous
... The journeying peasants; They go to inspect it. A farce is being acted, 430 A goat for the drummer; Real music is playing— No common accordion. The play is not too deep, But not stupid, either. A bullet shot deftly Right into the eye Of the hated policeman. The tent is quite crowded, The audience cracking 440 Their ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... that held me down in that way, I should have been going through a regular war-dance on that circle of boulder-tops, and should have scared the game into activity if the hook had failed to wake him up. But as the farce continued ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... that having nothing particular to keep him occupied—for he had long since learned all the village schoolmaster could teach him, and it was a mere farce his remaining any longer under his tutelage—the wonder was, not that Teddy got into any mischief at all, but that he did not fall into more; and Doctor Jolly was continually speaking to his father about neglecting him in that way, ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson
... little that they have contrived to have a good time at the University. They have made friends, played games, and lived a healthy life enough; they resolve that their boys shall have a good time too, if possible; and so the poor educational farce is played on from generation to generation. It is melancholy to read the sonnet which Tennyson wrote, more than sixty years ago, a grave and ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... himself bold for any situation. He would carry the farce through if they insisted on it. He no longer planned to elude the waster. They were in ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... the conclusion of the two years' farce. It has cost me a whole week's sleep to sketch a plan by which to declare my sex in the most becoming manner ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... season, players from the different theatres of Paris are paid to perform three times in the week; and each guest, according to the period of his arrival, is asked, in his turn, to command either a comedy or a tragedy, a farce or a ballet. Twice in the week concerts are executed by the first performers of the opera-bouffe; and twice in the week invitations to tea-parties are sent to some of the neighbours, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... clustering around them. Too great a poet himself merely to imitate, Beaumont yet felt the influence of that still greater poet who swayed every one of the later dramatists, with the single exception perhaps of Jonson. But in pure comedy, mixed with farce and mock-heroic parody, he belongs to the school ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... dreadful farce to Olga. She was waiting, she was listening, she was watching. It seemed ludicrous to her stretched nerves to be seated there with food before her, when every instant she expected the devastating power that lurked behind the stillness to burst ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... farce amused her at first. It was soon to become interesting, exciting, terrible, even to ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... gold and silver, thus establishing the presence of auriferous and argentiferous rocks on the Arabian shore, Son Excellence exclaimed, "Imprudent jeune homme, thus to throw away the chances of life! Had he only declared the whole affair a farce, a flam, a sell, a canard, the Viceroy would have held him to be honest, and would have taken care ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... the chief difference between capitalism and slave-owning? A. The fact that the capitalist goes through the form of bargaining with the labourer as to the amount of the portion of the produce that shall be returned to him.—Q. What is this farce called? A. Freedom of contract.—Q. In what sense is it free? A. In this sense—that the labourer is free to take what is offered or nothing.—Q. Has he anything to fall back upon? A. He has absolutely nothing in ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... two years; secondly, the royal palaces of St James's and Whitehall were exempted from the operation of this statute, so long as the sovereign was actually resident within them—which last clause probably showed that the entire Draconian enactment was but a farce. It is quite certain that it was inoperative, and that it did no more than express the conscience of the legislature—in deference to PRINCIPLE, ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... all the tingling bodies constrained into the rigid attitudes of automatons in uniforms like this one; of all the hideous farce of making men into machines. Oh, if some gesture of his could only free them all for life and freedom and joy. The thought drowned everything else for ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... Constantinople, and that he, therefore, had a claim to the throne of Greece. He assumed royal state, added a throne to his personal possessions and began to raise a fleet for the conquest of his kingdom. How long this farce continued is unknown. Barral died in 1192 and Peire transferred his affections to a lady of Carcassonne, Loba de Pennautier. [73] The biography relates that her name Loba (wolf) induced the troubadour to approach her in a wolf's skin, which disguise was so successful that he was attacked by ...
— The Troubadours • H.J. Chaytor
... Budowa was up. The debate, thought he, was fast becoming a farce. The King was fooling his subjects. The King must be taught a lesson. As the Diet broke up, he stood at the door, and shouted out in ringing tones: "Let all who love the King and the land, let all who care for unity and love, let all who remember the zeal of our fathers, ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... is the wretched outcome of the hundred years of American education in politics—making of every man not only a sovereign, but a possible candidate for President. What is it all but a roaring farce? If we could forget that this is real government coupled with all the pains and penalties which are the heritage of ignorance, and not mere child's play, then even serious intelligence might smile though commiserating the follies of grown men. Have we finally reached the condition ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... to describe my life these last few days? I have been wholly swallowed up in politics, a wretched business, with fine elements of farce in it too, which repay a man in passing, involving many dark and many moonlight rides, secret counsels which are at once divulged, sealed letters which are read aloud in confidence to the neighbours, and a mass of fudge and fun, which would have driven me crazy ten years ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... attempt to gain by manoeuvre what he had missed in battle. The sudden swelling of rivers and downpour of rain stopped all movement at once, and the "Mud March" came to an end. A Federal general could retain his hold on the men after a reverse, but not after a farce: Burnside was replaced by General Joseph Hooker, who had a splendid reputation as a subordinate leader. The new commander displayed great energy in reorganizing the Army of the Potomac, the discipline of which had not come unscathed through a career of failure. Lee still held the battlefield ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... want to say is, that I believe less in your gratitude than in your fear, and you can spare yourself the trouble of keeping up that farce." ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... toil of a life, perhaps—to open, and to read them. And what have we to do with books? The Herr Doctor might perhaps be asked for his advice; but we have no index expurgatorius in Gruenewald. Had we but that, we should be the most absolute parody and farce upon ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Afterward I was sure. I had entered into your life in a moment of frivolous recklessness, but you had entered into mine with another purpose, and I could not rid myself of you. Your hold upon me was strong. It grew stronger, do what I would, and the farce ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... 11th, Hurley, Laseron, Hunter and Correll made an innovation by presenting a small farce to an audience which had been starved of dramatic entertainment for a long time, and consequently ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... meaning of this? I have heard of your shame, of your dishonour—of the disgraceful way in which you have entrapped my poor boy. But what is this farce enacted here? How dare you enter the House of God and forge this ridiculous statement? Where is my son, whom ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... spare no pains to show that they consider the country as valuable merely for rent and game—the duties of the magistracy are a bore—county meetings are a bore—a farce, I believe, was the word—the assizes are a cursed bore—fox-hunting itself is a bore, unless in Leicestershire, where the noble sportsmen, from all the winds of heaven cluster together, and think with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 380, July 11, 1829 • Various
... a farce by J. M. Morton, remarkable for a successful run such as is said to have brought ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... familiar,"—Peggy winced and Margaret blushed, but Rita continued her direct gaze at her uncle and gave no sign,—"and to pass (by a way that has not yet been discovered) to and from the White Rooms. I intended to keep up this little farce for a few weeks only, but somehow the time has slipped by, and each day has brought you some new occupation which I was loath to interrupt. Lately, I confess, there has been a new incentive to secrecy, and perhaps—Rita—perhaps I may have been boy enough, old as I am, to enjoy my own ...
— Three Margarets • Laura E. Richards
... is invariably a useless proceeding," added the man in the corner, with a shrug of the shoulders. "No one, not even a latter-day domestic, would be fool enough to keep stolen property in the house. However, the usual farce was gone through, with more or less protest on the part of Mr. Shipman's servants, and with the ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... pernicious effect of this transfer of power to ignorant, reckless men would be felt at the polls in New York City, where this class was in the greatest number. The elections here soon became a farce, and the boasted glory of a free ballot-box a taunt and a by-word. That gross corruption and villany practised here should eventually result in the open violation of law, as it did in the charter election ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... and are easily deluded, by the fairest promises, to surrender their opinions to another's guidance: these are the supporters of quackery, and the encouragers of those needy plunderers, who would render medicine a farce, that they might practice ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... a century takes the shine out of most things—and people too." He shrugged his shoulders, eyed the last sentence he had written, and perceiving a little space at the end of a line, put in an adjective to make it rather warmer. "Won't show," he said to himself—"looks very natural. Lord! what a farce it all is! Fifty years ago there was Thorne, like a fool, worshipping the very ground Fanny Harvey trod on, and a few years later he wasn't particularly sorry to put her safe underneath it. Wonderful coal-scuttle of a bonnet ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... Colonel Astor and his young wife together. She was clinging to him, piteously pleading that he go into the life-boat with her. He refused almost gruffly and was attempting to calm her by saying that all her fears were groundless, that the accident she feared would prove a farce. It proved ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various
... me. She was weeping over an abomination. She was all wrong, all tragically wrong, and I could not set her right. Her woe desolated me. We had been happy together for sixteen years. Her error desolated me, as a painful farce. But a slow, horrible change in my own consciousness made me forget her grief in ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... to be trusted here. Uncertainty is better than the truth. I have made matters right for Amy, and confessed everything. They'll find it when I'm gone, and can wag their tongues all they please. It won't hurt me then, but while I live I'll keep up the farce. It might have been better to have told the truth at first, but I didn't, and it's too late now. Who in thunder is that knocking at the door? Not Amy, I hope,—and I can't reach that letter," he continued, as there came a low ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... if vitally necessary—for these three to have to go through the farce of playing a bridge hand while one of the original players was lying on a marble slab at the morgue, her cold flesh insensible to the ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... his glisten; and my delight at having given him such sensible gratification would have been unmixed but for the thoughts of you. These out of the question, I could have grappled with the bags, had they been as large as corn-sacks. But, to turn what was grave into farce, the door opened, and Wilkinson ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... jerked back his head. "It's a bit of a farce, what?" he said. "But I'll do it on your recommendation, I'll give it a six months' trial, and see what comes of it. That's a fair test anyhow. Something ought to turn up in ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... know what to make of such extraordinary and unexpected questions. He blushed, tried to write, fingered his curls, and then gave himself over to despair; whereupon Mr. Bouncer was seized with an immoderate fit of laughter, which brought the farce almost to ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... knew history adequately when they could rattle off a list of dates and tell something of the deeds and misdeeds of a set of unhappy persons who masqueraded as statesmen and courtiers. Such unedifying farce has nothing to do with history, which is a serious, instructive, and all-embracing study. The social life of the great mass of a nation is far more important and interesting than the eccentric deeds of a few high-placed ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... her. Now it seemed that the little Dutch clock, which had been ticking so merrily, so much in unison with life, all went out of time. It seemed a farce then, that little Dutch clock. All the romance went out of it—it was only a trade—a trade machine for the making of money, no longer the counting of happy hours. Everything seemed a trade then—everything ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... been tried in the court, they could readily have been saved. For you all knew in what evil the state was, although you were not able to bring aid. But the fact was, they brought them into the Boule before the Thirty. And you know what a farce the trial was. 37. The Thirty sat on the seats where the Prytanes are now. Two tables were placed in front of the Thirty. It was necessary to deposit the vote, not in the urns, but in plain sight on the tables, the condemning vote ...
— The Orations of Lysias • Lysias
... as they sail from shore to shore are like giant theaters. Every trip is an impromptu drama where comedy, farce, and often startling tragedy offer large speaking parts. The revelation of human nature in the original package is funny and pathetic. Amusement is always on tap and life stories are just hanging out of the port-hole waiting ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... for Love," Booth's dignified action and forcible elocution, in the part of Antony, attracted the public to that heavy, though, in many parts, well written play, six night's successively, without the assistance of pantomime, or farce, which, at that time, was esteemed something extraordinary.—But, indeed, he was well supported by an Oldfield, in his Cleopatra, who, to a most harmonious and powerful voice, and fine person, added grace and elegance ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... what it is for a soul in this state to have to return to the commerce of the world, to see and look on the farce of this life, [6] so ill-ordered; to waste its time in attending to the body by sleeping and eating! [7] All is wearisome; it cannot run away,—it sees itself chained and imprisoned; it feels then most keenly the captivity into which the body has brought us, and the wretchedness of this life. ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila
... cannot satisfy a man's appetite by stopping him at the door of your dining room, where he can get only a smell of the dinner while he sees others eating. Of course he would turn away in disgust and call it all a farce. You cannot teach a man to swim by stopping him at the water's edge. You cannot convince a man that he is at the top of a mountain when you stop him at the base, where he can look up and see others above him; and you cannot show a man the virtue of education when you stop him at the school house ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... stiff, one more account was closed for good or evil, the echo of one more tread had passed from the earth for ever. The old million-numbered tragedy in which all must take a part had repeated itself once more down to its last and most awful scene. Yes; the grim farce was played out, and the little actor Jeannie was white ...
— Mr. Meeson's Will • H. Rider Haggard
... wit, but, as he was fond of saying himself, no sympathy with farce or mere high spirits. I doubt even if he had a sense of humour in the ordinary meaning of that term, or in the Frenchman's definition: "la mlancholie gaie que les Anglais nomment 'humour.'" To say this is not to say that he did not enjoy a humorous, ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... to and fro. Clouds of white dust filled the room; while through the mist, with grave and deliberate gait, walked Kaunitz, every now and then halting, when the brushes all stopped; then giving the word of command, they all fell vigorously to work again. Four times he went through the farce, and then, grave as a ghost, walked back to his dressing-room, followed by ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... dislike and then to hate the idea of their being friends, if Jeannie's plan was to succeed. She would also have to hate one, anyhow, if not both, of the two whom she liked so much. The curtain had gone up on a tragic little farce. It was in order to avoid a tragedy, however, that the farce had been planned. It was in order to save Daisy that she ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... out the list from A to Z, the pairs are called, more explanations given, then there is more filibustering (I think that is the correct word) on the part of the obstructionists, and for the third time the same farce is enacted. Then the division takes place, when the Members leave their seats and are counted as they enter. No, the division takes place before the last count, for after the names are called again and there are ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... of highway robbery runs in the channel of a swift accomplishment and a rapid getaway. Yet this crew, leaving the saddle-bags uninvestigated at their feet, were solemnly playing out their farce at the expense of valuable time—time which should have stood for miles put between ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... are all enacting a farce, which can have no final act. I vow that I cannot allow my friend Blakeney to go over to France at your bidding. Your government now will not allow my father's subjects to land on your shores without a special passport, and then only for ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... ma?" said Ricka, carrying out the farce of mother and children as we often did, Mary being the eldest ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... the extraordinary drama—farce would be a better name were its possibilities not so tragic—which is being staged at Fiume would be complete without some mention of the romantic figure who is playing the part of hero or villain, according to whether your sympathies are ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... could have been continued in a friendly spirit. Moreover, the so-called ruthless submarine campaign was, according to the opinion of Admiral von Tirpitz, who was at that time still in office, although he was not consulted until the decision was taken, a military farce. He declared the order to be technically nonsense, and the pompous way in which it was issued as unnecessarily provocative and a challenge. The whole thing was ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... from the upper branches to the trunks swathed in creepers that clutched and interlocked with tendrils venomous, frantic and faint. Down below, by force of habit, the lush herbage went through the farce of growth—that farce old and screaming, whose trite end ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... beautiful," she went on softly, "but, helas, they are not the Schoenbrunn. Nor is Chapultepec more than a feeble miniature of the Hofburg. Oh, the wretched farce! The wretched farce, sire, in your pretension to—to honor me! A wooer from the throne, indeed? A straw throne—no, no, I ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... Forrester had become too well known to the police in connection with it. Davitt, too, had a hawker's licence; and, at first, there was really no evidence to connect him with the Fenian movement. The farce was gone through of bringing Corydon to identify him—not a very difficult task in the case of a one-armed man—though this was the first time Corydon had ...
— The Life Story of an Old Rebel • John Denvir
... whispered once to Carroll, "this part of it is a farce for an old fellow like me, standing in a blooming bower, being patted on the ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... would happen!" exclaimed her ladyship. "A riot, a massacre—anything! It all sounds like a farce to you, Genevra, but you haven't been here for five months, ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... a gaiety that was too boisterous to be quite natural. "Of course I'm sure! I never saw anything more amusing in my life. It's first-rate farce.... What a master of chaff this Arsene Lupin is!... He tricks you, but he does it so gracefully!... I wouldn't give my seat at this banquet for all the gold in the world.... Wilson, old chap, you disappoint me. Can I have been mistaken ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc
... the moon every one looked upon the enterprise as simple and practicable enough— a mere question of gunnery; but when a person, professing to be a reasonable being, offered to take passage within the projectile, the whole thing became a farce, or, in plainer ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... old, old delusion of masculine enterprise in amour—the concept of man as a lascivious monster and of woman as his shrinking victim—in brief, the Don Juan idea in fresh bib and tucker. In such bilge lie the springs of many of the most vexatious delusions of the world, and of some of its loudest farce no less. It is thus that fatuous old maids are led to look under their beds for fabulous ravishers, and to cry out that they have been stabbed with hypodermic needles in cinema theatres, and to watch furtively for white slavers in railroad stations. It is thus, indeed, ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... with a sort of inconsequent earnestness, a relic of the school-days she had so lately left behind. She did not seem to have had time to decide yet whether life was a rattling farce or a matter of deadly earnest. And who shall blame her, remembering that older heads than hers are no clearer on ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... Wittleworth, unless the trustee and defendant could produce his daughter. She was produced; but Fitz was still hopeful. The elegant young lady was no other than Miss Maggie Maggimore. It was evident enough to him that she had been engaged to play the part in the farce. Mrs. Checkynshaw was the first witness called. She told the whole story about the cholera in Paris; that Marguerite, her husband's daughter, had the disease first, and was reported to have died with it; that she was taken with the terrible ...
— Make or Break - or, The Rich Man's Daughter • Oliver Optic
... few hours the concentrated essence of a music-hall knock-about sketch, an earthquake, a football scrummage, and the rush-hour on the Tube; when the office was full of shouting men, when strange figures dived in and out and banged doors like characters in an old farce, and Harold, the proud office-boy, lost his air of being on the point of lunching with a duke at the club and perspired like one of the proletariat. On these occasions you could not help admiring Joe, even if you hated him. When a man is doing his own job well, it is impossible not to admire ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... arriving at the fair! How I was enchanted with the world of fun and pageantry around me! The humors of Punch; the feats of the equestrians; the magical tricks of the conjurors! But what principally caught my attention was—an itinerant theatre; where a tragedy, pantomime, and farce were all acted in the course of half an hour, and more of the dramatis personae murdered, than at either Drury Lane or Covent Garden in a whole evening. I have since seen many a play performed by the best actors in the world, but never have I derived half the delight ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... imaginations in the most agreeable manner, and keeps them always in good humour. A Roman catholic longs as impatiently for the festival of St. Suaire, or St. Croix, or St. Veronique, as a schoolboy in England for the representation of punch and the devil; and there is generally as much laughing at one farce as at the other. Even when the descent from the cross is acted, in the holy week, with all the circumstances that ought naturally to inspire the gravest sentiments, if you cast your eyes among the multitude that croud ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... up the copper coins which one of them was jingling in his pocket. But if they were hard up for money they did not want for ingenuity, and all three arranged to play their parts like thieves at a fair. Theirs was a farce in which there was plenty of eating and drinking, since for five days they so heartily attacked every kind of provision that a party of German soldiers would have spoiled less than they obtained by fraud. These three cunning fellows made their way to the fair after breakfast, well ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac
... the farce,—within the last month of this present writing (1821), I have had my life threatened in the same way which menaced Mr. Bowles's fame,—excepting that the anonymous denunciation was addressed to the Cardinal Legate of Romagna, instead of to Mrs. Bowles. ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... features. Four puny souls stand in the organ-loft and squall a tune that nobody knows, and worshipers, with two thousand dollars' worth of diamonds on the right hand, drop a cent into the poor-box, and then the benediction is pronounced and the farce ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... have we always done in Russia when a Czar suggests reforms?—nothing. You forget we are diplomatists. Men of thought should have nothing to do with action. Reforms in Russia are very tragic, but they always end in a farce. ...
— Vera - or, The Nihilists • Oscar Wilde
... true. I always was that sort of chap. I'm very sorry. But now that you've found that life isn't a farce, but something quite sensible and serious, what further obstacle is there to ...
— Arms and the Man • George Bernard Shaw
... irritably. "All our medicine is but a contrivance to keep up the farce, to continue the ills of humanity, to keep the wretched and diseased where they have no right ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... and the suspicion, as well, that her uncle's will and its purport had long been no secret to him. But, partly from force of habit, and partly because he was not yet quiet hardened, John Arthur kept up his farce of affection for the child. And while his wife awoke to a knowledge of many of his short-comings, she always believed in his ...
— Madeline Payne, the Detective's Daughter • Lawrence L. Lynch
... them, which she does with postures and practices that are scandalously indecent; they have likewise disposed of all their effects, and hold a community of goods, and live nearly an idle life, carrying on a great farce of pretended devotion in barns and woods, where they lodge and lie all together, and hold likewise a community of women, as it is another of their tenets that they can commit no mortal sin. I am personally acquainted with most of ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... literary composition the drama holds the most important position; for it is a picture of real life, and, as such, of national interest. It consists of two principal species, tragedy and comedy; the minor species are tragi-comedy, farce, burlesque and melo-drama. Both tragedy and comedy attained their perfection in Greece long before the Christian era. There it originated ...
— Tales from the Hindu Dramatists • R. N. Dutta
... his heroics. "Put that in your play," said she. "But this isn't the melodrama of the stage. It's the farce ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... gentleman, came over express, with this Letter and the more private news; Wilhelmina being full of anxieties. Keyserling said, The Prince was inwardly "well content with his lot; though he had kept up the old farce to the last; and pretended to be in frightful humor, on the very morning; bursting out upon his valets in the King's presence, who reproved him, and looked rather pensive,"—recognizing, one hopes, what a sacrifice it was. The Queen's Majesty, Keyserling ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... This ridiculous farce was soon after followed by a scene truly tragical—the murder of the two young princes. Richard gave orders to Sir Robert Brakenbury, constable of the Tower, to put his nephews to death, but this gentleman, who had sentiments of honor, refused to have any hand in the infamous ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... Cleveland as his model. The Boston Journal led in the exploitation of the charges, and partisans forgot decency on both sides. Nast, having formerly cartooned Blaine in the "Bloody Shirt," now turned to "A Roaring Farce—The Plumed Knight in a Clean Shirt," while others pointed out the fact that the admirer who coined the "plumed knight" epithet had been counsel for the fraudulent ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... now. Just think what coming down over that ridge above Boko Boko will be like! I do not fancy however it would ever be possible to get up the river, when it is at its height, with so small a crew as we were when we went and played our knock-about farce, before King Death, in his amphitheatre in the Sierra ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... everything that did not demand the superior accommodations of the men's gymnasium, had prepared them for anything. They had looked calmly down upon student farces and Wednesday evening prayer meetings, professional impersonations and baccalaureate sermons. Once, there had been a German farce under the protection of the Germanic Language department, by a company from town, a boisterous play with a gigantic comedienne in a short skirt. Beside this performance, Lillian Arnold's singing a love duet with Jack Smith was ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... man of his superiority, and with a less obtrusive policy, might, who knows? have got the length of half a crown. A man who prides himself upon persuasion should learn the persuasive faculty of silence, above all as to his own misdeeds. It is only in the farce and for dramatic purposes that Scapin enlarges on his peculiar talents to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... when we reached the large building where Mrs. Conway had her apartment. McKnight left the power on, in case we might want to make a quick get-away, and Hotchkiss gave a final look at the revolver. I had no weapon. Somehow it all seemed melodramatic to the verge of farce. In the doorway Hotchkiss was a half dozen feet ahead; Richey fell back beside me. He dropped his affectation of gayety, and I thought he looked tired. "Same old Sam, I suppose?" ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... said, "going through the farce of asking what I do wrong, because I know the answer. It's not the right one, but you seem incapable of ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... the earlier sins of Spanish America. Upon a comparatively placid presidential regime followed a series of barrack uprisings or attacks by Congress on the executive. The constitution became a farce. No longer, to be sure, an abode of Arcadian seclusion as in colonial times, or a sort of territorial cobweb from the center of which a spiderlike Francia hung motionless or darted upon his hapless prey, or ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd
... public administrations and popular societies was written up, "Ici on s'honore du Citoyen, et on se tutoye"!!! ("Here they respect the title of Citizen, and they 'thee' and 'thou' one another.") Take away Murder from the French Revolution and it becomes the greatest farce ever played before the angels!) that thou art treading on my feet. I beg thy pardon, but now I look at thine, I see the hall is ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... grows absurd," says Molly, in disgust. "How much longer does he intend keeping up the farce? He must fall to ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... abstention. The boat was heavy; they pushed at the bow with no breath to spare for an encouraging word: but the turmoil of terror that had scattered their self-command like chaff before the wind, converted their desperate exertions into a bit of fooling, upon my word, fit for knockabout clowns in a farce. They pushed with their hands, with their heads, they pushed for dear life with all the weight of their bodies, they pushed with all the might of their souls—only no sooner had they succeeded in canting the stem clear of ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... live with us. Nobler hearts than yours have sat here in this darkness to wait, and they have come to us and we to them; and they have never left us, never. All else is a delusion, but we are real, we are real, we are real. Truth is a shadow; the valleys of superstition are a farce: the earth is of ashes, the trees all rotten; but we—feel us—we live! You cannot doubt us. Feel us how warm we are! Oh, come to us! ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner
... worthy forerunners were equally reactionary. They found no constitutional grounds for reversal! Of course not, even though the right of free speech and assembly had been trampled underfoot at the Haymarket Square, the right to a fair trial made into a cruel farce. ...
— Labor's Martyrs • Vito Marcantonio
... Greyne were lunching, dining, or supping together, were driving upon the front, sailing upon the azure waters of the bay, riding upon the heights beyond El-Biar, or, ensconced in a sumptuous private box, listening to the latest French farce at one or another of the theatres. Only one day, when they had driven out to the monastery at La Trappe de Staoueli, did a momentary cloud descend upon her piquant features, and she explained this by the ...
— The Mission Of Mr. Eustace Greyne - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... situation, and you might look far for a better passage than the description of Sir Condy's parting with his lady. But it is better to illustrate from a scene perhaps less genuinely humorous, but more professedly so—Sir Condy's wake. Miss Edgeworth does not dwell on the broad farce of the entertainment; she does not make Thady eloquent over the whisky that was drunk and the fighting that began and so forth, as Lever or Carleton would certainly have been inclined to do. She fixes on the central comedy of the ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn |
