"Mikado" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... irrespective of any essentially amusing quality in the cause of the surprise. The unfamiliar, for this reason, often has a ludicrous appeal to primitive peoples. An African tribe, on being told by the missionary that the world is round, roared with laughter for hours; it is told of a Mikado that he burst a blood-vessel and died in a fit of merriment induced by hearing that the American people ruled themselves. In like fashion, the average person grins or guffaws at sight of a stranger in an outlandish costume, although, as a matter of fact, the ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... The conductors were A. Seppilli and Richard Eckhold. The operas performed were "Faust," "Tannhuser," "Mignon," "Carmen," "Trovatore," "Lohengrin," "The Bohemian Girl," "Traviata," "Romeo and Juliet," "Cavalleria Rusticana," "Pagliacci," "Martha," "The Mikado," and Goring Thomas's "Esmeralda." This last opera, a novelty in America, was brought forward on November 19, 1900, with the following distribution of parts: Esmeralda, Grace Golden; Phoebus, Philip Brozel; Claude ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... be as infatuated with any stage production as with the first performance of the pirated edition of "The Mikado" in Chicago, in the summer of 1885. The cast was indeed a memorable one, including Roland Reed as Koko, Alice Harrison as Yum-Yum, Belle Archer as Pitti-Sing, Frederick Archer as Pooh-Bah, George Broderick as the Mikado, and Mrs. Broderick as Katisha. The ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... revolution would be the inevitable result of the concessions that had been extorted from the tycoon; that civil war could hardly fail to take place, by which the government would be brought under the sway of one ruler, tycoon, mikado, or some powerful daimio, which would lead to the destruction of the feudal system, and to the introduction of Christian civilization, a consummation which we in the interest of the Japanese may devoutly wish, but which the daimios, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... him; and his whole life, down to its minutest details, must be so regulated that no act of his, voluntary or involuntary, may disarrange or upset the established order of nature. Of this class of monarchs the Mikado or Dairi, the spiritual emperor of Japan, is or rather used to be a typical example. He is an incarnation of the sun goddess, the deity who rules the universe, gods and men included; once a year all the gods wait upon him and spend a month at his court. ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... French and one which gave plays in English and another one which gave operas. On New Year's day, 1916, I attended at Ruhleben do really wonderful performance of the pantomime of "Cinderella"; and, in January, 1917, a performance of "The Mikado" in a theatre under one of the grand stands. In these productions, of course, the female parts were taken by young men and the scenery, costumes and accessories were all made by the prisoners. There was ...
— My Four Years in Germany • James W. Gerard
... years he was attached to the Embassy in Japan, and he boasts that he has made Tongchuan as clean a city as any to be found in the empire of the Mikado. The yamen is a model of neatness. Painted on the outflanking wall there is the usual huge representation of the fabulous monster attempting to swallow the sun—the admonition against extortion—and probably the only magistrate in China who does ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... leader, the Peshwa, into whose hands had fallen the sway of Mahratta power. For their titular head, the descendant of Sivaji the original founder, was a puppet, almost a prisoner, such as we, not many years ago, considered the Mikado of Japan. ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... the shore (as Hathor drank the didi mixture from pots associated with the river); and the intoxicated monster was then slain. From its tail the hero extracted a sword (as in the case of the Western dragons), which is now said to be the Mikado's state sword.] ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... sing the lately revived "Duty, duty must be done, the rule applies to everyone, and painful though the duty be, to shirk the task were fiddle-dee-dee..."; a happy impulse, for when Henry arrived from his five o'clock he found Tom at the piano and Nancy sitting by him, the one in the role of the Mikado of Japan and the other as ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... those carrying travellers between North America, China, Japan, and the Oriental islands put in. It is situated in the bay of Yeddo, and at but a short distance from that second capital of the Japanese Empire, and the residence of the Tycoon, the civil Emperor, before the Mikado, the spiritual Emperor, absorbed his office in his own. The Carnatic anchored at the quay near the custom-house, in the midst of a crowd of ships bearing the flags of ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... from Gilbert to Kipling. I always judge your mood by your quotations. Has life suddenly become too serious for 'Pinafore' or the 'Mikado'?" ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... stripe black; lateral dorsal dark stripes Fuscous Black mixed with Russet; outermost dorsal dark stripes slightly darker or indistinguishable from sides in color; dorsal light stripes grayish white with Mikado-Brown along margins; outermost pair of dorsal light stripes nearly pure white; sides Russet mixed with Cinnamon or Ochraceous-Tawny; rump and thighs Smoke Gray mixed with Cinnamon-Buff, with a larger or smaller number of Fuscous Black hairs; antipalmar and antiplantar ...
— Taxonomy of the Chipmunks, Eutamias quadrivittatus and Eutamias umbrinus • John A. White
... do what thousands of his kind have done before: regardless of obstacles and consequences marry the girl off to the highest bidder; rid himself of all responsibility and make a profit at the same time. From his point of view it is the only thing to do. He would be the most astonished uncle in Mikado-land if anybody suggested to him that Sada had any rights or feelings in the matter. He would tell you that as Sada's only male relative, custom gave him the right to dispose of her as he saw fit, and custom is law and there is ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... influence. For a change we did not sleep on the floor, and by way of recreation I scented out a billiard table, not a good one, it is true, and the balls were rather elliptical; but as I had once personated the "Mikado," a la Gilbert & Sullivan, the conditions were not so disconcerting as they would doubtless have been to a less famous personage! Sorata, being the nearest town to the Bolivian rubber districts which export their products to the Pacific coast, is naturally ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... never dreamed that twenty thousand citizens would go to the poll led by a "boss." America exemplifies at the other end of the social scale, a change analogous to that which has taken place under sundry despotisms. You know that in Japan, before the recent Revolution, the divine ruler, the Mikado, nominally supreme, was practically a puppet in the hands of his chief minister, the Shogun. Here it seems to me that "the sovereign people" is fast becoming a puppet which moves and speaks as ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... Mr. Custer, "that I had gone down after my guns. Why didn't you tell me, in the first place, that I was a king, and that I might get you in trouble if you were found with me? Why, they may even take me for an emperor or a mikado—who knows? And then look at all ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... of Spain. He has come from failure. He had been to Japan with presents to the emperor, was received by minor officials with a hospitality that poorly concealed the fact that he was virtually a prisoner, and then dismissed without admission to the audience he sought with the mikado. He had gone then to bleak, inhospitable Sitka, to find the settlement there in a plague of scurvy and starvation only slightly mitigated by vodka. Down the coast then he sailed to the Spanish ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... George Airy was very jealous of this honourable title. He rightly held that there is only one Astronomer Royal at a time, as there is only one Mikado, one Dalai Lama. He said that His Majesty's Astronomer at the Cape of Good Hope, His Majesty's Astronomer for Scotland, and His Majesty's Astronomer for Ireland are ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes
... of the Hojo, who, as regents(125) of the shogun, exercised with unlimited sway the authority of this great office. The situation of affairs in Japan at this time was deplorable. Go-Toba and Tsuchi-mikado were both living in retirement as ex-emperors. Juntoku was the reigning emperor, who was under the influence and tutelage of the ex-Emperor Go-Toba. Fretting under the arrogance of the Hojo, Go-Toba undertook to resist their claims. But Yoshitoku, the Hojo regent at this time, quickly brought ...
— Japan • David Murray
... settle the whole case, for if the encyclopedia says it has no reason to be, then, like the edict of the Mikado, it is as good as dead, and if that is the case, "Why not say so?" On the contrary, the torsion balance seems very much alive. But as it is not very generally known, perhaps the early history of this form of balance, briefly sketched, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 601, July 9, 1887 • Various
... to reign an indefinite number of years,—generally some thousands. Beginning with 660 B.C., we have something authentic. At that time a warrior whose name signified "the divine conqueror"—(the supposed Chinese invader)—entered Japan, and assumed the control of its destinies. He called himself "Mikado," and established his court at Miako, in Nipon, the largest of the group of islands, where he built temples and palaces, both spiritual and secular. Claiming to rule by divine right, he exercised the sole functions of the government, which, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... with it; what can be more uninteresting than the plot of many of Handel's oratorios? We both believe the scheme of Italian opera to be a bad one; we think that music should never be combined with acting to a greater extent than is done, we will say, in the Mikado; that the oratorio form is far more satisfactory than opera; and we agreed that we had neither of us ever yet been to an opera (I mean a Grand Opera) without being bored by it. I am not sorry to remember that Handel ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... exist in Ireland. Mr Barry O'Brien in his admirable book, "Dublin Castle and the Irish People," confesses himself unable to find a better characterisation of the whole system than is contained in a well-known passage from "The Mikado." I make no apology ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... dollars was leveled at John Chinaman. That didn't keep John Chinaman out. It simply raised his wages; for the Chinese boss added to the new hand's wages what was needed to pay the money loaned for entrance fee. A special arrangement was made with the Mikado's government to limit Japanese emigration to a few hundreds given passports, but California went the whole length of demanding the ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... deerskin and soft, spotted fawn-skins were traded across Bering Straits and far up along the Alaskan coast. These skins came from the camps of the Reindeer Chukches of Siberia. Many years ago the Mikado of Japan, in the treasure of furs with which he decorated his royal family, besides the mink, ermine and silver fox, had skins of rare beauty, spotted skins, brown, white and black. These were fawn-skins traded from village to village until they reached Japan. They came from the ...
— The Blue Envelope • Roy J. Snell
... to face with real Nature. A faint and distant roar was also a reminder that the jungle had its inhabitants, and through it all came the quaintly incongruous strains of the orchestra playing a selection from "The Mikado": ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... of the opera's charm from this sketch, but the opera is likely to live, even after the topical stories of "Pinafore" and "The Mikado" have lost their application, because the story of Robin Hood is romantic forever, and the DeKoven music is not ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... treaty of friendship with Japan which virtually opened that nation to the influences of western civilization, and one of the most wonderful transformations of a people recorded in history soon began. In 1867 a new Mikado came to the throne, and in 1868 the small military class, which had ruled the nation for some seven hundred years, gave up their power to the new ruler. A new era in Japan, known as the Meiji, dates from this event. In 1871 the centuries-old feudal system was abolished, ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... background. This word must sound so that all who hear it can look in each other's eyes with a full mutual understanding and without the slightest sense of ambiguity; just as they do in Japan when the name of the common head of all families, the Mikado, is named. There must be one thing in Germany and it must be this thing, which is altogether out of reach of the yawning, blinking and grinning scepticism of the coffee-house, and of the belching and growling of the tavern. Any man who puts this thing aside in ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... object of determining the Tokio Cabinet to take part in the military operations in Europe, the question of motive was discussed with a degree of tactlessness which it is difficult to account for. It was affirmed, for example, that the Mikado's people would be overjoyed if the Allied governments vouchsafed them the honor of participating in the great civilizing crusade against the Central Empires. That was proclaimed to be such an enviable privilege that to pay for ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... from Japan and as the latter is to form a junction with the Trans-Siberian Railway, a land journey in a sleeping car will soon be practicable from London and Paris to the capitals of China and Korea, and, save for the ferry across the Korean Strait, to any part of the Mikado's kingdom. The locomotive runs noisily from Jaffa to venerable Jerusalem and from Beirut over the passes of Lebanon to Damascus, the oldest city in the world. A projected line will run from there to the ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... Secretary of State Root and the Japanese ambassador at Washington entered into the Root-Takahira Agreement to uphold the status quo in the Pacific and maintain the principle of equal opportunity for commerce and industry in China.[235] Meantime, in 1907, by a "Gentlemen's Agreement," the Mikado's government had agreed to curb the emigration of Japanese subjects to the United States, thereby relieving the Washington government from the necessity of taking action that would have cost Japan loss of face. The final of this series of executive agreements touching American ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... government was despotic in its character, and feudal in its system. The country was governed by a powerful ruler with the title of mikado—"son of the sun"—who was supported in his despotism by tributary princes, or daimios. Of them the mikado demanded military service in time of war, and also compelled them to reside a part of each year in his capital, where quarters were provided for ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... stores" along the way, containing vast stocks of Japanese lilies living in Japanese pans, other exotic blossoming plants, pink and yellow slippers from the Orient, and striking flowered garments like a scene from a "Mikado" opera. ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... shores of Japan, and the United States had more than once picked up and sought to return Japanese castaways. In 1846 an official expedition under Commodore Biddle was sent to establish relationships with Japan but was unsuccessful. In 1853 Commodore Perry bore a message from the President to the Mikado which demanded—though the demand was couched in courteous language—"friendship, commerce, a supply of coal and provisions, and protection for our shipwrecked people." After a long hesitation the Mikado yielded. Commodore Perry's success was ...
— The Path of Empire - A Chronicle of the United States as a World Power, Volume - 46 in The Chronicles of America Series • Carl Russell Fish
... explained that astronomical observations must be made out of doors. Further, the whole telescope must be out of doors so as to get an even temperature. This is a fact that the excellent astronomers of the Mikado of Japan did not know until very recently. It seems they constructed a costly telescope and housed it in a costly observatory-house, with an aperture barely large enough for the big telescope to be pointed out at the heavens. Inside, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard |
