"Farce" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had listened with surprise and attention while his lips curled slightly with a smile of such disdain and sarcasm at the sight of this farce that, had Lucas noticed it, he would have run away at top speed. "Now what do you ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... for the sake of being near his master as long as possible, "Cuthbert, take the carriage around to the 'Highlander' and put up there for the night. We shall want it to take us back to the castle to-morrow, after this ridiculous farce is over." ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... once challenged him. Now, he might have the effrontery to deny what I had seen with my own eyes, and could swear to. By lying in wait for him again, and accosting him whilst he was in the very act of perpetrating his solemn farce, I should deprive him of all power of evasion and escape. And so I ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... who has seen the farce of Hob in the Well, performed, will remember to have seen a specimen of this kind of prize fighting, for which as well as wrestling, the people of Somersetshire have for ages been renowned. In Scotland they excel at the backsword—the Irish too are admirable hands—but neither ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... civil. Their duty was to visit the various chiefs, and endeavour to make such treaties with them as would ensure permanent peace. History shows that so far as the object for which it was created is concerned, it was a stupendous farce. Let it be understood, however, that the failure to accomplish the work intended, was through no fault of the Commission. The fault lies with Congress which neglected to make the necessary appropriations to carry out the stipulations of the treaties. On account of this ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... was over, some of the actors being ashamed of themselves, the Rev. John Marsh tried to defend himself and his coadjutors, but Mr. Greeley very summarily brushed his sophistry aside, and placed all the actors in that disgraceful farce in their ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... with some money and no brains, a mother who is a nonentity, and a daughter Clodora,[48] a not bad-looking and not unamiable girl, unfortunately dowered with the silliness of her father and the nullity of her mother combined and intensified. There is some pretty bad stock farce about M. Bringuesingue and his valet, whom he pays to scratch his nose when his master is committing solecisms; and about Edmond's adroitness in saving the situations. The result is that the Bringuesingues throw their not unwilling ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... Actually, of all the publications which came out this year in England, not more than at the rate of three a fortnight regularly registered throughout the whole year, and hardly more than one a week during the second half of the year! Clearly, censorship and registration had then become an absolute farce. ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... the annihilating bliss of Buddha's Nirvana," the White Logic adds. "Oh well, here's the house. Cheer up and take a drink. We know, we illuminated, you and I, all the folly and the farce." ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... save her from herself; he must somehow reach the submerged personality and awaken it to the hideousness of that other, the soulless, heartless automaton that schemed and executed crimes with mechanical exactitude. He took a long breath of determination, and again grinned at the farce he was playing for his own benefit. Through repetition he was beginning to believe in the fiction of his former intimacy with Marteen. True, he had known him slightly, had once or twice snatched a hasty luncheon in his company at one of his clubs; ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... Cabinet. Until that date the Government Gazette had actually perpetrated the folly of publishing side by side Imperial Edicts and Presidential Mandates —the first for Chinese eyes, the second for foreign consumption. Never before even in China had such a farce been seen. A rapid perusal of the Mandate of Cancellation will show how lamely and ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... Even when she was upon her trial, he frequently called out to her, and asked her, "Do you repent?" until she, quitting the court, went home, and stabbed herself; openly upbraiding the vile old lecher for his gross obscenity [349]. Hence there was an allusion to him in a farce, which was acted at the next public sports, and was received with great applause, and became a common topic of ridicule [350]: that the ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... 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 taste, and perhaps of virtue. But the Tragic and Comic Muse of the Romans, who seldom aspired beyond the imitation of Attic genius, [62] had been almost totally silent since the fall of the republic; [63] and their place was unworthily occupied by licentious farce, effeminate music, and splendid pageantry. The pantomimes, [64] who maintained their reputation from the age of Augustus to the sixth century, expressed, without the use of words, the various fables ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... letter Charles adds his scene in the farce: "La Plessis said to Rahuel (he was the concierge) yesterday that she had been gratified at dinner to find that Madame had turned the child out of her seat and put herself in the place of honour. And Rahuel, in his Breton way: ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... 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 ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... constant writing I completed a two-act farce comedy which I called The Diamond Palace Saloon. Upon the suggestion of one of the boys in the section I sent a proof of the program to a printing house in London. Then I assigned the different parts and started rehearsing. ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey
... was going splendidly, and that our boys were the bravest of the brave. Suddenly there came the news that an Atlantic liner, the Lusitania, had been torpedoed, and that several well-known first-class passengers, including a famous theatrical manager and the author of a popular farce, had been drowned, among others. The others included Sir Hugh Lane; but as he had only laid the country under great obligations in the sphere of the fine arts, no great stress was laid on that loss. ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... should have gone on trying to govern through the Durbar, and declaring that we were merely taking care of the country until Lena Singh comes of age, knowing that if he ever reigned alone it would mean the destruction of all we had done. But now the farce is at an end, and they must annex Granthistan. Our ikbal[1] stands fairly high, but it can't take the risk of a war bad enough to drag the C.-in-C. from his Olympian retirement every two or three years. I'm sorry for Sir Edmund, who has done his very best to bolster ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... 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 of ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... Mrs. Harley into the fresh sunshine and clear air this afternoon. I have been telling her to forget this trial. It's a farce, anyhow. Nothing will come of it. Take her out to the ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... belongings 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
... Bross. I'll do it for you—no, I won't, either. Stand up to it yourself. You must hurt one of two women; choose the one that will suffer only in her vanity. I tell you that Scotch entanglement of yours is pure cardboard farce—it won't stand examination. It's appalling to think that out of an extravagant, hypersensitive conception of honour, egged on by that poor girl, you could be capable of turning it into the ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... a Perquisition without a plan is a farce!" said the man, this time addressing Gerald Burton. "An absolute farce! In such an old house as this there ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... had to urge, and, though he made light of Sir Edward, it was with a startling candor that he added, "But woman's a riddle indeed if Elizabeth would give her shoe-tie for Cecil." Lady Angleby was so amazed and shocked that she made no answer whatever. The squire went on: "The farce had better pause—or end. Elizabeth is sensitive and shrewd enough. Cecil has no heart to give her, and she will never give hers unless in fair exchange. I have observed her all along, and that is the conclusion ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... my dear! So perfectly wonderful! You really have got some dandy actors!" And, "Why don't you try something lighter—something simpler, don't you know. Something really popular that these poor people could understand and appreciate? A little farce! I could help you pick ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... pretty widespread. I was angry with Aunt Cynthia, and a little with every one I had met that evening. They were so cheerful, so content with things as they were, finding all the world such a screaming farce.... I sometimes get my family on my nerves, when I go there straight from Covent Garden and its slum babies, and see them spending and squandering and being irresponsible and dissolute and not caring twopence for the way two-thirds of the world live. There was Wycombe to-night, with a long story ...
— Potterism - A Tragi-Farcical Tract • Rose Macaulay
... 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
... through the heart of Brittany. It was said that his army had no better occupation than teaching the local nobles to drink deep after the English fashion. The King had wasted all his treasure, and the poorer knights were compelled to sell or pawn their horses and arms to support themselves. The farce ended when the King sailed from St. Pol de Leon, and late in October landed at Portsmouth. He left a portion of his followers in Brittany, under the Earls of Chester and Pembroke. Randolph himself, as a former husband of Constance of Brittany, had claims to ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... a farce, this!" he exclaimed, fiercely. "Prince Ughtred and I are not strangers. I ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim
... songs, visions, fables, fabliaux, ballads, epics, in legion, but no definite and recognised school of satire. It is sufficient to name, as examples of the extraordinary range of the mediaeval satiric genius, the farce of Pathelin, the beast-epic of Renart, the rhymes of Walter Map, and the ...
— English Satires • Various
... blanket from his head, rose to confront the screaming woman. Twice he had seen the child stolen, and the first occasion had not been without its drama, but the Governor had made of the second the sheerest farce. The woman berated him roughly for his stupidity while ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... convened to listen in reverence to some representative emissary from the Man of Sin, with new dictates of blasphemy or iniquity promulgated in the name of the Almighty: or to witness the trickery of some farce, devised to cheat or frighten them out of whatever remainder the former impositions might have left them of sense, conscience, or property. Here, in fine, there was never presented to their understanding, from their childhood to their death, a comprehensive, ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... other, "the whole thing is a farce. Domitian is in a hurry, that's all, so the auction ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... soldiers of the party indulged in screams of laughter at the uncouth appearance of the whilom rebel; and certainly the character in tableau or farce need not have spoken, to convulse any audience that ever assembled in Christendom. Rip Van Winkle, with the devastations and dilapidations of five-and-twenty years hanging about him, did not present a more forlorn appearance than did this representative ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... to be taking 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 for Smith; but good, loyal ...
— The Forest • Stewart Edward White
... walk before his flock a distinguished pattern of sobriety, righteousness, holiness, humility, heavenliness, temperance, charity, brotherly kindness, and every good word and work. Without this his ministrations appear but a solemn farce of deceit, 2 Tim. ii. 4; 1 Tim. iv. 15; 2 ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... interest in what is to become of our bodies. There is a modesty that belongs to death. Upon this subject Voltaire was infinitely sensitive. It was that he might be buried that he went through the farce of confession, of absolution, and of the last sacrament. The priests knew that he was not in earnest, and Voltaire knew that they would not allow him to be buried in any of the cemeteries of Paris. His death was kept a secret. The Abbe Mignot made arrangements for the burial at Romilli-on-the-Seine, ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... 21st of that month of February, however, he did receive a reminder that the bill and all concerning it had not merely been a farce. This was a letter from Mr. Sowerby, dated from Chaldicotes, though not bearing the Barchester post-mark, in which that gentleman suggested a renewal—not exactly of the old bill, but of a new one. It seemed to Mark that the letter had been posted in London. If I give it entire, I shall, ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... Gentleman, The," farce written by Dickens and produced, i. 4; price of, i. 5; sent ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... what they misunderstand by imports and exports. The subject is really one for knowledge, not for politicians. With great ceremony at intervals, they go through the highly superfluous performance of calling each other liars, as who should say that Queen Anne is dead: and while this tragical farce continues the question of vital imports and exports is ignored. Within it there lies the key to the Irish question, for instance, since no nation can be saved which persistently exports the best of its life. ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... drink tea, or lemon squashes," said the duchess. "I've come to learn what this means—to put an end to this ridiculous farce?" ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... said a centurion, pointing to her pinioned arms. He yanked off the chaplet and threw it back in the crowd. They roared with merriment at the farce.... ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon
... is inspired by that spirit of broad farce which runs glorious riot through nearly all that Stephen ...
— Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... The Jacobite farce, or tragedy, was speedily brought to a close by the Battle of Culloden; there did Charlie wish himself back again o'er the water, exhibiting the most unmistakable signs of pusillanimity; there were the clans cut to pieces—at least, those who could be brought to the charge—and there fell Giles ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... took an Englishman to a theater. An actor in the farce, about to die, exclaimed: "Please, dear wife, don't bury me ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... date the garrison of Washington was a brigade of infantry and a battery of artillery. I never doubted Mr. Johnson's sincerity in wishing to befriend me, but this was the broadest kind of a farce, or meant mischief. I therefore appealed to him by letter to allow me to remain where I was, and where I could do service, real service, and received ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... Leek, valet, would be added to the list of adventurous scoundrels who have pretended to be their masters. But if Witt should lose—then what a complication, and what further enigmas to be solved! If Witt should lose, the national funeral of Priam Farll had been a fraudulent farce. A common valet lay under the hallowed stones of the Abbey, and Europe had mourned in vain! If Witt should lose, a gigantic and unprecedented swindle had been practised upon the nation. Then the question ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... 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 situation, Sir Condy's innocent vanity and its pitiable disappointment—is ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... then there was Deacon Heukbane's butcher's account; and John Cony's spirit account; and Thomas Burlings' bap account; and deevil kens how many more accounts, that came all in upon us afterwards. But the crowning of all was reserved for the end. It was no farce at the time, and kept our heads down at the water edge for many a day. I was just driving the hot goose along the seams of a Sunday jacket I was finishing for Thomas Clod the ploughman, when the Englisher came in ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... and all came forward to protest to us during the adjournment. "This is monstrous." . . . "Never have I seen evidence so disregarded." . . . "This is a tragic farce" ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... to see you have some honesty left in your composition. You acknowledge the deception, and we will let the farce end here. You have become a thief and a midnight incendiary. I have been weak and indulgent towards you. My eyes are opened, and I shall pursue ...
— In School and Out - or, The Conquest of Richard Grant. • Oliver Optic
... provided with some player, mimic, or buffoon, who hath a general reception at the good tables; familiar and domestic with persons of the first quality, and usually sent for at every meeting to divert the company, against which I have no objection. You go there as to a farce or a puppet-show; your business is only to laugh in season, either out of inclination or civility, while this merry companion is acting his part. It is a business he hath undertaken, and we are to suppose he is paid for his day's work. I only quarrel when in select and private ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... is so trodden upon, so robbed in order to support in luxury a host of rapacious Spaniards, and forbidden any voice in the control of her own affairs, all the treaty concessions which we could make to Spain would only serve to keep up and perpetuate the great farce. Such a treaty as is proposed would be in reality granting to Spain a subsidy of about thirty million dollars per annum! This conclusion was arrived at after consultation with three of the principal ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... not felt the weight of the world on my shoulders, I believe my sense of humor would have caused me to laugh outright; for the signing of such an agreement by one so situated was, even to my mind, a farce. After much coaxing I was induced to go so far as to take the pen in my hand. There I again hesitated. The supervisor apparently thought I might write with more ease if the paper were placed on a book. And so I might, had he selected a book of a different title. ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... that the head and shoulders remained above the surface, bobbing up and down, until we lost sight of it in the distance. The captain's clerk always officiated as Chaplain at the funerals and divine service; which latter, by the way, was more of a farce than any thing else; for I have known more than one instance where they have been interrupted in the very midst by a squall of wind. Then to see the hubbub; the congregation dispersed; some ordered aloft, with such pious (though sometimes more forcible) ejaculations as: 'Lay aloft there, you ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... he said, "this farce is drawing to an end. You are in my power, and for the means which I have taken to capture you, I will account to the prince. You are a traitor to him; you have attacked and slaughtered many of my friends; you are an outlaw defying the ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty
... from slavery, and pro-slavery lodges in Missouri went across the border to vote against and perhaps to shoot Free-State men who disputed the right of the South to plant and to maintain slavery there. Under these circumstances the first election for members of the territorial legislature was a farce. Yet Reeder felt obliged to let the new assembly go on with its work of making easy the immigration of masters with their "property"; when he went East a little later he took occasion to protest in a public address against the intrusion of Missouri voters. He was regretfully removed from ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... compensate for this, I was permitted to read the play to him; and that play was, "The Merchant of Venice." I will not dwell upon the effect. I had already become fond of such theatrical spectacles as were considered suitable for children—pantomime and broad farce—and like a child I gazed upon the glitter, and enjoyed the bustle; but now, seated in a corner, all quiet about me, and nothing to interfere with the mental world, I drank a cup of intoxication under which my brain reeled ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... that the remainder is to be found in the food. Now anybody with a fair understanding can easily figure that if a patient of middle age eventually loses through disease about 200 grams of lime, it is simply a farce to claim that the above dose of 1/100,000,000,000 of a gram (which is the homeopathic dose of Schuessler), will cure or replace the lime ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... acted in a little French musical farce together at Cornelys's; he had a charming voice and sang beautifully, ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... as to the actions of Dorothy and Tavia while they were in her department. Did they appear hurried, or did they seem to crowd others? These and like questions were put to the clerk. Dorothy felt by this time that the whole thing was a farce. How could they help crowding? And why would they not appear in a hurry, when there were not half enough clerks to attend to ...
— Dorothy Dale's Queer Holidays • Margaret Penrose
... talk about these matters," said his lordship; "bring the man up to your own room, Norton, and I will join you there. The thing, however, is a mere farce, and my father a fool, or he would not give himself any concern about it. Bring him to your room, where I will join you presently. But, observe me, Norton, none of these tricks upon me in future. You said you got only twenty-five for the mare, and now it appears you got exactly double ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... John Lateran, where, as my laquais de place said, 'converted Jews, or Turks, or Lutherans' were baptised; got too late for the baptism, which I believe is a farce regularly got up, but heard the High Mass. The churches were crowded all this week with pilgrims, whose appearance is always very picturesque. Went into the cloisters, and was shown by the monk ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... Thus ended the mighty farce which for more than two months held in suspense the hopes and fears of three nations. But the friends of Cromwell resumed the subject in parliament. It was observed that he had not refused to administer the government under any other title; the name of king ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... Devonshire way, for a few days, and I went and had tea at a farmhouse there. It was quite amazing! Thick Devonshire cream and home-made jam and cakes of every kind. This sort of thing here is just a farce. I do wish that woman would make haste with that butter. It'll be too late ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... from being confined to things material. Witness the occurrence of my dream, which, though a dream, was true in spirit. More speeches, writings, and actions of humanity have their result in morbid impulse than we have an idea of. Their territory stretches from the broadest farce to the deepest tragedy. I remember spending an evening at Mrs. Cantaloupe's, and being seized with an impulse to say a very insolent thing. Mrs. Cantaloupe is the daughter of a small pork butcher, who, having married the scapegrace younger son of a rich man, by a sudden sweeping away ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... it? Here we are face to face; what's the use of going on keeping up a farce to each other? Are you still trying to throw it all on me, to my face? You murdered him; you are the real murderer, I was only your instrument, your faithful servant, and it was following your ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... discovered, I am sure; for when I had given it a glance, and found it was nothing more nor less than a domino, such as is worn by masqueraders, I experienced a shock that the mask, which fell out of its folds, scarcely served to allay. It was like the introduction of farce into a terrible tragedy; and as I stood in a maze and surveyed the garment before me till its black outline swam before my eyes, I remember thinking of the effect which had been produced, at a certain trial I had heard of, by the prisoner ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... baffled by these precautions, and, having smoked their pipe, and vapored off their valor, took their departure. The farce, however, did not end here. After a little while the warriors returned, ushering in another savage, still more heroically arrayed. This they announced as the chief of the belligerent village, but as a great pacificator. His people ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... turned from the window and was tramping absently down the road, all unmindful of the skulking methods of the spectral gentry. If he had chanced to be observed, his little farce, that had yet an element of tragedy in its presentation, must soon have reached its close. But the fog hung about him like a cloak, and when the moon cast aside the vapors, it was in a distant silver sheen illumining the far reaches of ...
— His Unquiet Ghost - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... farce went on for forty-eight hours or more until at last the wretched Japhet, who was quite demoralized and in no mood for acting, betrayed us, exactly how I cannot remember. After this Maqueda would touch nothing more, which did not greatly matter as there was only one biscuit ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... achieved an object fondly cherished. His past life,—alas! what has he done with it? His actual life, broken fragment though it be, is at rest now. But still the everlasting question,—mocking terrible question, with its phrasing of farce and its enigmas of tragical sense,—"WHAT WILL HE DO WITH IT?" Do with what? The all that remains to him, the all he holds! the all which man himself, betwixt Free-will and Pre-decree, is permitted to do. Ask not the vagrant alone: ask each of the four there assembled on that flying bridge ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... well dressed from the wardrobe of some master-mind; it greets the public with a captivating air, and straightway becomes the rage; it seems epidemical; it comes out simultaneously as a piece of political economy, a cookery-book, a tragedy, a farce, a novel, a religious experience, an abstract ism, or a concrete ology; till the poor worn-out, dissipated shadow of a thought looks so feeble, thin, fashionably affected and fashionably infected, that its honest, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... and the curtain, falling on the interrupted scene, hide him for ever from the audience whom he had made wondering applauding partners in his counterfeit. The last of his life was to be like the rest of it, with the same elements of tragedy and of farce, of what attracted and of what revolted, of the great and the little. It was to be like in another way too; it was to be lived alone, without any true companion for his soul, without the love that he had not asked except of one, and, asking of that one, had not obtained. ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... life is more or less of a farce," he went on a little bitterly. "It's a silly show. The best we can do is to hold our personality intact. It doesn't appear that integrity has much to ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... been a considerable farce, in which I had played the most humiliating part. Indeed, but for the interposition of Barraclough I must have come out of it the butt of all shafts. As it was, I was sensitive in regard to my position, ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... represented twenty-six Imperial towns, thirty-eight high prelates, eighteen princes, and twenty-nine counts and barons—the representatives of the cities complained grievously that their attendance was reduced to a farce, since they were always out-voted, and hence obliged to accept the decisions of the other estates. They stated that their position was no longer bearable, and for the first time drew up an Act of Protest, which further complained of the delay in the decisions of the Imperial courts; of their sufferings ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... The action of the farce amused her at first. It was soon to become interesting, exciting, terrible, even to the verge ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... transformed into a district magistrate, collector, or military commander of a populous province, without any other counsellor than his own crude understanding, or any other guide than his passion. Such a metamorphosis would excite laughter in a comedy or farce; but, realized in the theatre of human life, it must give rise to sensations of a very different nature. Who is there that does not feel horror-struck, and tremble for the innocent, when he sees a being of this kind transferred from the yard-arm to the seat of justice, deciding, in ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... imperturbable store of talk. His words gushed forth abundantly in original remarks, laughable images, the metaphors that flow from the comic genius of crowds. He had the natural picturesqueness of the unadulterated farce. He was brimming over with amusing stories and buffoonery, rich in the possession of the richest of all repertories of house-painter's nonsense. Being a member of divers of the low haunts called lists, he knew all the new tunes and ballads, and he was never tired of singing. ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... the French appeared to me equally mad, in expecting any thing from their flotilla. Three English frigates would sink the whole force at Boulogne in the open sea. The French seem to know this; yet, to amuse the populace, and to play upon the fears of the English Ministry, the farce is kept up, and daily reports are made by the Commandant of the state of the flotilla. There is a delightful walk on the beach, which is a flat strand of firm sand, as far as the tide reaches. In the summer evenings when ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney
... to the "Farce," Maroossia and F., myself and Misha. Afterwards we had supper. At the next table to us were the M's., Alexander Ivanitsky and the Baroness B. Since her return she certainly looks much better. At first I did not see her, then before ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... after 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
... drawn, mutual friends took the case out of the hands of the seconds and declared an adjustment. The terms of the fight as written by Mr. Lincoln show plainly enough that in his judgment it was to be treated as a farce, and would never proceed beyond "preliminaries." There, of course, ensued the usual very bellicose after-discussion in the newspapers, with additional challenges between the seconds about the proper etiquette of such farces, all resulting only in the shedding of much ink ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... as well as the judges that his trial was a merely perfunctory formality. The verdict was decided ere it began, and, indeed, so eager was Megales to get the farce over with that several times he interrupted the proceedings ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... lobbies of both Houses With politick important buzzes: Set committees of cabals, 945 To pack designs without the walls; Examine, and draw up all news, And fit it to our present use. Agree upon the plot o' th' farce, And ev'ry one his part rehearse, 950 Make Q's of answers, to way-lay What th' other pasties like to say What repartees, and smart reflections, Shall be return'd to all objections; And who shall break ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... feeling pretty sad, so he looked around for his meerschaum. His wife had been cleaning house that day and he couldn't find any pipe but the long one. What was the result? Why, he wrote such a humorous description of the play that everybody thought 'East Lynne' was a farce comedy and, when the performance closed on the following night, two-thirds of the ...
— Said the Observer • Louis J. Stellman
... in January 1863, an 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 of ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... already done so. He made no inquiry where she was going. He would not offer her money, though he secretly wanted her to ask for it. But it was past that with her. The miserable, bitter drama—the tawdry tragedy, whose most desperate accent was its shameful approach to farce—wore itself ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... have waited patiently for you to end this farce," said Somers, in deep disgust apparently. "You have looked at the pictures, and you are not satisfied yet. I can stand it no longer; I am tired of the whole thing. You have treated me very handsomely, and I am grateful to you for ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... in a louder tone, we had better give our minds to the present scene of the farce, and perform the opening quadrille, as is ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... Inamorat sole appeared. This looked like secret understanding or sympathy; perhaps, however, it was only as head and representative of the family. She looked well; but, unfortunately, a trifling carelessness in dress had nearly concluded the farce. Recollecting, however, that they were packing up for a temporary removal, to take place this very day, an apology was obvious. Having made to myself the apology, I went further, and found that there was politeness, at least, ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... from I do not know where—a Palais Royal farce, I believe—had once got into my head, it was impossible for me to get rid of it, and I felt bursts of wild merriment welling up ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... days of decrepitude arrived. With this age of pain came cries of helplessness, cries made the more piteous by the remembrance of his impetuous youth and his ripe maturity. This man, for whom the last jest in the farce was to make others believe in the laws and principles at which he scoffed, was compelled to close his eyes at night upon an uncertainty. This model of good breeding, this duke spirited in an orgy, this brilliant courtier, gracious toward women, whose hearts he had wrung as a peasant bends a ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... subdivide already excessively small holdings, while the benefits to be derived from the admission to power of propertied Catholics, with all their intensely Conservative instincts, were thrown away. Emancipation apart, the franchise without Reform was a complete farce, for the boroughs, which controlled the Parliamentary balance, were the personal property of Protestant landlords, and the 110 Parliamentary placemen were indirectly their tools. As usual, the men of light and leading contributed unconsciously to the strength of ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... of M. de Neuborg's envoy, an honest Jesuit, who draws out of his pocket victoriously two portraits of his good lord, ogles Mademoiselle as long as he could, and talks "goguette" to her for a whole hour, is one of the most amusing farces anywhere to be met with. Unluckily, the farce was not worth the candle in the opinion of certain judges, and all the diversions of Saint-Fargeau did not prevent our princess from regretting with all her heart that pompous Court of Versailles in which the young ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... will, they encounter, and always in the same form. In Ireland, they are at liberty, apparently, to do the same by reason of their superiority in point of numbers; the result of the late Galway elections proves what a farce is this show of liberty, and even the members whom they would and do sometimes elect possess a very feeble influence, or none, in what is called the Imperial Parliament. But, in the colonies, if they, as electors, outnumber their political opponents, ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... protestant burial service was read over the body, in secret, during the night, and on the next day, the remains were committed to the grave. At the grave, it was deemed necessary to keep up the farce of Mahommadism, by publicly reciting the first chapter of the Koran, which the most serious Christian would consider as a beautiful and applicable form on such ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... what Inconveniences might ensue, from a Rencounter that I, at first, conceiv'd ridiculous, but might now reasonably begin to have more dangerous Apprehensions of. I knew, by the Articles of War, all Persons are exempted from any Power of the Inquisition; but whether carrying on a Part in such a Farce, might not admit, or at least be liable to some dangerous Construction, was not imprudently now to be considered. Though I was not fearful, yet I resolv'd to be cautious. Wherefore not making any Answer ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... embarrassing, the latter should suddenly discover some fault in his own front door—in the stained glass, or something of that sort—and have it taken off bodily and sent away to be remodeled; while a temporary door should be put in its place. The old gentleman listened amazed, and thought it all a farce; but then the word of Jason B. Grampus had gone out, and he must keep his ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... "There's farce somewhere in every tragedy, Roddy. Here, against the glare on the Pacific, it challenged all doom, broad and unashamed. I need hardly tell you that Grimalson, at the opening of this harangue, had dropped ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... May 24, 1671, at the Palais Royal, 'Les Fourberies de Scapin' had great success. It is nothing, however, but a farce, taken partly from classical, partly from ...
— The Impostures of Scapin • Moliere
... after this farce was over, obliged Hyder to come down from labour-in-vain hill and to give them battle in earnest. As the historian observes, "The ridiculous cannonade at the top of the hill had exhausted his ammunition, his great guns were useless to him, and he lost the day by his premature ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... George Ade, and other great writers, so you see we were giving them bits of the best living and dead dramatists. Our native Shakespeares do the same thing nowadays in all of their original works, and that's no idle fairy tale. We sandwiched comedy, drama, tragedy, and farce, and interlarded the mixture with Victor Herbert and Oscar Hammerstein's opera comique and May Irwin coon songs. Such a presentation of 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' was never before presented, and I am free to confess the chances are never will be again. We actually played the town on the other fellow's ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... appear contented, even at various moments gay, when she and Mr. 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 frank confession that she had always wished to become a nun, but had been hindered from ...
— The Mission Of Mr. Eustace Greyne - 1905 • Robert Hichens
... conjure by in Lost Valley. Steptoe Service prated of Gov'ment. It was a farce, a synonym for juggled duty, a word to suggest the one-man law of the place, for even Courtrey, who made the sheriffs—and unmade them—did it under the grandiloquent name of Government. She looked at him keenly, and there was a ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... a mere farce my being here for poor Maria,' she continued; 'but your father takes her ailments to heart, and I cannot always be refusing him. We are great friends, your father and I; he was very kind to me long ago - ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... hired carriage. 'Tis only a blockhead like yourself that can't see what all the world sees! You are a stupid dolt, made to be taken in. I wonder it has never entered into the head of some play-writer to put you into a farce! What! a pater-familias who, when he is half-tipsy, on Sunday afternoons preaches moral sermons to daughters, who are laughing in their sleeves at him all the time, and who brags about the meerschaum pipe which the seducer of his own daughter ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... Mountfalcon could not get himself up to the farce, and he felt a pity for the strangely innocent unprotected child with anguish hanging over her, that withheld the words he wanted to speak, or insinuate. He sat ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... there was the memory of another woman, only a little less fair than Nitocris, who had shut herself up yonder in the gloomy Castle of Trelitz, acting the farce of her official sorrow for love of him, and pining for the time when the finding of her betrayed husband's corpse should leave her free, after a decent interval of mock-mourning, to join her lot with his: but what did that matter? Was it not as ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... immediately to open the boxes. Four big beautiful boxes full of splendid great books all in green with gilt lettering. Hurry! Hurry quick yourself! You're head literary editor. It's really your book—the ideas, editorials, verses, farce, everything! The sale opens at five. Everybody's crazy to see the new senior Annual. Our Annual! Oh, Berta!" She seized the taller girl around the waist and whirled her down the hall till loose sheets of paper from her dangling note-book ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... frame of mind, and stifled the feeling that had sprung up in his heart when she turned to him with tears in her eyes. He was angry again, and almost shouted after the retreating girl: 'You may make a good actress, but why did you think fit to play off this farce on me?' ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... the 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 this tawdry earth." ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... be over now," said Frank, to himself, thankfully; for, though he be no means despised good claret, he had lost his temper too completely to enjoy it at the present moment. But he was much mistaken; the farce as yet was only at its commencement. The duke took his cup of coffee, and so did the few friends who sat close to him; but the beverage did not seem to be in great request with the majority of the guests. When the duke had taken his modicum, he rose up and silently retired, saying no word and making ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... get along without quite so much style," said Mrs. Belgrave, laughing; and she seemed to feel as though she was taking a part in a farce. ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... when the poor minor seemed to have lost both his love and his property. But how can I touch off my feelings, when, in the fourth act; the villain was detected; and all ended as it should! And, oh! Tibbie, mommy enjoyed it nearly as much as I, though the farce at the end vastly shocked her—and, indeed, Tibbie, 't was most indelicate, and made me blush a scarlet, and all the more that Sir William whispered that he enjoyed the broad parts through my cheeks—and she says if ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... absurdness &c adj.; imbecility &c 499; alogy^, nonsense, utter nonsense; paradox, inconsistency; stultiloquy^, stultiloquence^; nugacity^. blunder, muddle, bull; Irishism^, Hibernicism^; slipslop^; anticlimax, bathos; sophism &c 477. farce, galimathias^, amphigouri^, rhapsody; farrago &c (disorder) 59; betise [Fr.]; extravagance, romance; sciamachy^. sell, pun, verbal quibble, macaronic^. jargon, fustian, twaddle, gibberish &c (no meaning) 517; exaggeration &c 549; moonshine, stuff; mare's nest, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Beauty and Strength of Simplicity. Could Not Afford to Make Money Direct While Appearing to Obey Education Endeavoring to Blow up a Storm That He May Ride upon Events Control Me; I Cannot Control Events Falsehood Farce Father Abraham Favor to Me Would Be Injustice to the Public Fees We Earn at a Distance Gals, Tied as Tight in the Middle General Grant Good, Bright, Passable Lie His Parts Seemed to Be Raised by the Demands of Great Station ...
— Widger's Quotations from Abraham Lincoln's Writings • David Widger
... Californian romancer, Bret Harte, has told us that he never saw a genuine Chinaman laugh, and has even confessed that he is unable to say whether one of the national pieces he witnessed was a tragedy or a farce. ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... in Cicero Orations and the Greek Testament, gave him a certificate of admission before he was ten years old. "Of course," he adds, "I knew very little, and the whole thing was a form, perhaps a farce. There was no thought of my going to college then, and I did not go till I was fourteen, but I was twice examined at the college (where I went with my father and mother every summer) for advanced standing, and was finally admitted as a junior, and went to reside there from Commencement, August, ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... so, and that man jailed for fifteen months. In contrast to this case, we see these men with their murderous schemes, deliberately planned, attempted and partially executed, we see these men condemned to one month's imprisonment with hard labor! What a farce is the law! Is it any wonder that indignation is aroused in the hearts of the conscientious and God-fearing members of the community, and that men as they meet ask each other the question, 'Why is this? Did the jury fear that they, too, ...
— The Story of a Dark Plot - or Tyranny on the Frontier • A.L.O. C. and W.W. Smith
... and putting up hay for their cattle. More cows and better farming implements have been issued in recent years, and there is a wholesome effort to make the work of the so-called agency or "district farmers" less of a farce than it has often ...
— The Indian Today - The Past and Future of the First American • Charles A. Eastman
... would-be comic, would-be serious, it is handled more or less coarsely, more or less unintelligently, gushed over, gibed and jeered at. Not a shred of self-respect is left to it. It is made the central figure of every farce, danced and sung round in every music-hall, yelled at by gallery, guffawed at by stalls. It is the stock-in-trade of every comic journal. Could any god, even a Mumbo Jumbo, so treated, hold its place among its votaries? Every term of endearment has become a catchword, every ...
— Tea-table Talk • Jerome K. Jerome
... to the Duke's playhouse, where we saw the new play acted yesterday, "The Feign Innocence, or Sir Martin Marall;" a play made by my Lord Duke of Newcastle, but, as every body says, corrected by Dryden. It is the most entire piece of mirth, a complete farce from one end to the other, that certainly was ever writ. I never laughed so in all my life, and at very good wit therein, not fooling. The House full, and in all things of mighty content to me. Every body wonders that we have no news from Bredah of the ratification of the peace; and do suspect ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... the reason for my silence, and shall have it. I did not wish to endanger your recovery, and so have kept my trouble to myself, but now I write to tell you that the farce is ended. You have utterly broken your promise; I am absolved from mine. The fact that you could find time to write day after day to Miss Warren, and neglect me for weeks, would in itself be justification for demanding my release from an engagement you have held so lightly. ...
— A War-Time Wooing - A Story • Charles King
... successful, and so was the ball. I was so anxious to hear how Eleanor had sped, that I felt quite sure that I could not go to sleep, and that it was a farce to go to bed just when she was beginning to dance. I went, however, at last, and had had half a night's sound sleep before rustling, and chattering, and the light from bed-candles woke me to ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... with which it seemed unnecessary to meddle. When he had first come home from Harvard, Roscoe had approached him with the proposition that he should wear eye-glasses and imitation whiskers glued to his cheeks, and it had seemed for a moment that the farce of his early years was to be repeated. But whiskers had itched and made him ashamed. He wept and Roscoe ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... had led the public to expect an exhaustive statement, gave rise to general disappointment and excited the utmost dissatisfaction, it became manifest that a manly, straightforward course on their part was not to be hoped for, and that any protest against the consummation of the farce would be vain. ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... the most characteristic thing Oscar Wilde ever wrote, a thing produced in perfect health at the topmost height of happy hours, more characteristic even than "The Importance of Being Earnest," for it has not only the humour of that delightful farce-comedy, but also more than a hint of the deeper feeling which was even then forming itself into a master-work that will form part of the inheritance of ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... of Marguerite are quite numerous, consisting of six moralities or comedies, a farce, epistles, elegies, philosophical poems, and the Heptameron, her principal work—a collection of prose tales in which are reflected the customary conversation, the morals of polite society, and the ideal love of the time. They are a medley of crude ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... reproachfully, ordered a fresh cigar, and suggested turning in for the night. I walked home with him and tried to get him interested in a farce I was at work on, but it was of no use. He had become a monomaniac, and his monomania was his rebellious heroine. ...
— A Rebellious Heroine • John Kendrick Bangs
... "though it may seem hard for a week or two, like the loss of any other toy, I deprive you of nothing, but add to your comfort, and (if there be such a thing) to your happiness, when I forbid you ever to see that foolish child again. All marriage is a wretched farce, even when man and wife belong to the same rank of life, have temper well assorted, similar likes and dislikes, and about the same pittance of mind. But when they are not so matched, the farce would become a long, dull ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore |
