"Rollicking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... than a touch of the austere about the music. A glance at the programme was enough to show the lover of airs of the trashy, clashy order that this was no place for him. Most of the items were serious. When it was thought necessary to introduce a lighter touch, some staidly rollicking number was inserted, some song that was saved—in spite of a catchy tune—by a halo of antiquity. Anything modern was taboo, unless it were the work of Gotsuchakoff, Thingummyowsky, or some other eminent foreigner. Foreign origin made ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... party set out for the boathouse with merry shouts and echoing laughter. The quiet air rang with the melody of school songs welling from care-free young throats as the crowd of rollicking girls tramped along the ...
— Marjorie Dean High School Freshman • Pauline Lester
... straightway rushed off and secured Mr. Grindle to give his name to the 'Westminster Magazine.' When Bacon brought out his comic Irish novel of 'Barney Brallaghan,' off went Bungay to Dublin, and produced his rollicking Hibernian story of 'Looney MacTwolter.' When Doctor Hicks brought out his 'Wanderings in Mesopotamia' under Bacon's auspices, Bungay produced Professor Sandiman's 'Researches in Zahara;' and Bungay is publishing his 'Pall Mall Gazette' as a counterpoise to Bacon's 'Whitehall ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... room was very large, and to the culprits who stood just inside the door, looked solemn and awe-inspiring. Even Eric felt a little subdued; the chamber seemed so vast, and the great four-poster, away by itself in an alcove, had a remote and unapproachable aspect. It was one thing to have a rollicking, merry, good-humored father to romp about with all day, and another to approach the solemn personage who reposed in the center ...
— The Children of Wilton Chase • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... sentimental cats on moonlight nights—and this was a moonlight night. Down at the eaves, below the chimney, a canopy of dead vines spread away to some posts, making a cozy shelter, and after an hour or two the rollicking crowd of young ladies and gentlemen grouped themselves in its shade, with their saucers of liquid and piping-hot candy disposed about them on the frozen ground to cool. There was joyous chaffing and joking and laughter—peal upon ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... easily led, and easily pleased. The wind of their passion shifts quickly from point to point, one moment blowing a hurricane, the next sinking to a happy-go-lucky summer breeze. I have seen a little thing convert a crew on the point of mutiny into a set of rollicking, good-natured souls who—until the wind veered again—would not hurt a fly. So with these. They spread themselves into a circle, squatting or kneeling or standing upon the white sand in the bright sunshine, their sinewy ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... in that shawl, and we left by the back road to be seeing my mother, and the lassies flung bachles at us 'for luck.' And although Mirren was not out o' my sight in the house, yet I will be quite sure they kent we were for the marrying, for I got a glimpse o' Peggy, a rollicking tomboy o' a lass, rubbing herself against Mirren's shawl and crying, 'It's me that will be going ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars
... the nesting song of a bobolink before. What a song it is!—the eager zeal, the exultation in it. The overflowing, rollicking joy with which it is poured forth, filled me with such gleeful astonishment, the first time I heard one, and struck such a chord of sympathetic feeling in my heart and so powerfully, that I recollect shouting, "ye-ho!" and racing tumultuously ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... subjected to the curious gaze of only one servant, the operator of the small elevator. Once in the shelter of his quarters he rummaged through some scrap-books for data—he found it in a Sunday feature story published a month before in a semi-theatrical paper. It described with rollicking sarcasm, a gay "millionaire" party which had been given in Rector's private dining rooms. Among the ridiculed hosts were Van Cleft, Wellington Serral and Herbert De Cleyster! Here, in some elusive manner, ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... supplies, From his hurdy-gurdy the waltz is sublime; His fair daughter Rosa, whose tambourine flies, Is merrily thumping the rollicking time; The Widow McCann pats the tune with her slipper, The peanut-man hums as he peers from his stall, And Officer Quinn for a moment looks in To see the new steps at the ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln
... there. It did not stir, and gathering resolution from the terrors that had beset him when he fancied his opportunity threatened, he ran like a frightened deer fleetly down the road, and plunged into the dense forest. The wind kept him company, rollicking, quickening, coming and going in fitful gusts. He heard it die away, but now and again it was rustling among a double file of beech-trees all up the mountainside. He saw the commotion in their midst, the effect of swift movement as the scant foliage fluttered, then the white ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... glanced at all the sober faces before him and burst into a rollicking laugh. Perhaps I should say it was half laughter and half a chuckle of merriment, for the sounds he emitted were quaint and droll and tempted every ...
— Rinkitink in Oz • L. Frank Baum
... proves the good right he has to his name. Trill and quavers and roulades are shaken from his bow as lightly as foam from the prow of a ship. The music leaps rollicking up and down, here and there, till the air is all a-quiver with merriment. The old man draws himself up to his full height, all save that loving bend of the head over the beloved instrument. His long slender foot, in its quaint "Congress" shoe, beats time like a mill-clapper,—tap, tap, tap; his ...
— Melody - The Story of a Child • Laura E. Richards
... breezy, rollicking old saga it is! Can't you almost catch the spray and sea-swell ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... by rollicking dog-team from the Lodge to inquire after my mother's health—to cheer us, it may be, I'm thinking, with his hearty way, his vast hope, his odd fancies, his ruddy, twinkling face. Most we laughed when ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... other studious of the south. And the gentle Scuddy (who was finding all things happy, which is the only way to make them so) was startled by a sharp jerk of his dear friend's head. Following the clue of gaze, there he saw, coming up the river with a rollicking self-trust, a craft uncommonly like that craft which had mounted every sort of rig and flag, and carried every kind of crew, in his many dreams about her. This made him run back to his room at once, not only in fear of being seen upon the bank, but ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... from the shopping center, a row of spacers on planet-leave came rollicking cheerily toward her.... Trigger shifted toward the edge of the sidewalk to let them pass. As the line swayed up on her left, there was a shadowy settling of an aircar at the curb to ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... temporary encampment; passed under the Pacific Railroad; and then for twelve miles followed the windings of the Truckee River, a clear, rushing, mountain stream, in which immense pine logs had gone aground not to be floated off till the next freshet, a loud-tongued, rollicking stream of ice-cold water, on whose banks no ferns or trailers hang, and which leaves no ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... and to enhance His children's pleasure in their harmless rollicking, He, like a good old fellow, stood to dance; When something checked the current of his frolicking: That curate, with a maid he treated lover-ly, Stood up and figured ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... given the intense sweetness and rollicking quality of Freckles' voice better scope. He forgot everything but pride in his work. He was singing the chorus, and the Angel was shivering in ecstasy, when clip! clip! came the sharply beating feet of a swiftly ridden horse down the trail from the ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter
... came the rise and fall of a man's voice in a brisk chant. No words could be caught, but the air ran trippingly, and if the higher notes broke in a crack which told of age or misuse, or both together, the lower ran clear and full, and the tune ran on with a rollicking, careless awing which showed that, whoever might cavil, the singer had at ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... man in front of me who was now coolly listening to the word of God! However, the service was over, and the Volunteers filed out of the church and marched to the strains of their drum and fife band, which played rollicking tunes to the delight of the rollicking Yorkshiremen. When we got in front of the Bank of England, Captain Allan Brown (commanding the Keighley detachment) halted and dismissed us until seven ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... Lavendar and Danny, jogging along behind Goliath under the buttonwoods on the road to Upper Chester, were somewhat inconvenienced by the dust of a buggy that crawled up and down the hills just a little ahead. The hood of this buggy was up, upon which fact—it being a May morning of rollicking wind and sunshine—Dr. Lavendar speculated to his companion: "Daniel, the man in that vehicle is either blind and deaf, or else he has something on his conscience; in either case he won't mind our dust, so we'll cut in ahead at the ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors
... suppose, Abu Hasan al-Ziyadi and the Khorasani Man, iv. 285), whilst he suggests, "a careful abridgment of the tale of Omar the Son of No'man" (ii. 7,, etc.). Let me add that wittiest and most rollicking of Rabelaisian skits, "All the Persian and the Kurd Sharper" (iv. 149), struck-out in the very wantonness of "respectability;" and the classical series, an Arabian "Pilpay," entitled "King Jali'ad of Hind and his Wazir Shimas" (iv. 32). Nor must I omit to notice the failure most injurious to ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... the rollicking music back of the paying booth. Three sable musicians form the orchestra, and from a bass viol, fiddle and fife they extract melody that, with all its short-coming, would make a deacon wish to dance. Any one, white or black, can purchase ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... a merry life for the Baron of Grogzwig, and a merrier still for the baron's retainers, who drank Rhine wine every night till they fell under the table, and then had the bottles on the floor, and called for pipes. Never were such jolly, roystering, rollicking, merry-making blades, as ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... could see all that was to be seen, so far as a lone lorn female could venture in a city, one-half of whose male population seemed to be taking the other half to the guard-house,—every morning I took a brisk run in one direction or another; for the January days were as mild as Spring. A rollicking north wind and occasional snow storm would have been more to my taste, for the one would have braced and refreshed tired body and soul, the other have purified the air, and spread a clean coverlid over the bed, wherein the capital of these United States appeared ...
— Hospital Sketches • Louisa May Alcott
... cannonade all day long. It seemed as though the Confederate and Federal cannons were talking to each other. Sometimes a ball passing over would seem to be mad, then again some would seem to be laughing, some would be mild, some sad, some gay, some sorrowful, some rollicking and jolly; and then again some would scream like the ghosts of the dead. In fact, they gave forth every kind of sound that you could imagine. It reminded one of when two storms meet in mid-ocean—the mountain billows of waters coming from ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... own Christian name and mine were both the same)—"Cousin, I was thinking it would not be amiss if you went along with me to R—sitten and felt the sea-breezes blow about your ears a bit. Besides giving me good help in my often laborious work, you may for once in a while see how you like the rollicking life of a hunter, and how, after drawing up a neatly-written protocol one morning, you will frame the next when you come to look in the glaring eyes of such a sturdy brute as a grim shaggy wolf or a wild boar gnashing his teeth, and whether you know ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... little mixing perhaps. It is always difficult to tell the difference between the sublime and the ridiculous in talking of a being like man. It is what makes him sublime—that there is no telling about him—that he is a great, lusty, rollicking, easy-going son of God and throws off a world every now and then, or puts one on, with quips and jests. When the laugh dies away his jokes are prophecies. It behooves us therefore to walk softly, you and I, Gentle Reader, while we are here with him—while this dear gentle ground ...
— The Voice of the Machines - An Introduction to the Twentieth Century • Gerald Stanley Lee
... the world in which they were of the multitude of the vanquished; old women, too, jaded and tired, and ready to slip into oblivion, their long day's duty done; mothers with babes in their arms and young children nestling close at their sides; rollicking boys and girls as well, with all the struggle of ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... indicate, he was deficient in humour, so were his contemporaries, with the sole exception of Cartwright. Witty he could be, and bitter; but he did not live in a really humorous age: and if he has none of the rollicking fun of the foxhound puppy, at least he has none of the obscene ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... be followed by a slower movement. He makes great use of fugue, more or less free, and of imitation, and, of course, he employs ground-basses. The masculine strength and energy, the harsh clashing discords, are not less remarkable than the constant sweetness; and if there is rollicking spring jollity, there are also moments of deepest pathos. There is scarcely such a thing as a dry page. It is true that Purcell avowed that he copied the best Italian masters, but the most the copying amounts to is taking suggestions for the external scheme of his sonatas and for ...
— Purcell • John F. Runciman
... directions, and kicking off his shoes, he strikes into a sharp but noiseless squall of a hornpipe right over the Grand Turk's head; and then, by a dexterous sleight, pitching his cap up into the mizentop for a shelf, he goes down rollicking so far at least as he remains visible from the deck, reversing all other processions, by bringing up the rear with music. But ere stepping into the cabin doorway below, he pauses, ships a new face altogether, and, then, independent, hilarious little Flask enters ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... night on a steamboat there was a rollicking dance. It was a moonlight excursion. There was a splash and a cry that a woman had fallen overboard. I leaped into the river, grasped her, held her head above the stream, fighting the current. A boat was put out and we were ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... put in Sammy Barham during this pause. "Shall I go on, or wait for the rollicking Polly to hear it out?—for the queerest part is ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... revel. Plumed and turbaned they come, clad in mail and silken broideries, gentle maids in Quaker gray, gay princes in scarlet cloaks, coquettes with roses in their hair, monks in cowls that might have covered the tall Minster Tower, demure little girls hugging paper dolls, and rollicking school-boys with ruddy morning faces, an absent-minded professor carrying his shoes under his arms and looking wise, followed by cronies, fairies, goblins, and all the troops just loosed from Noah's ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... 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 part of the production. And I have designed the extravaganza features so that she may preserve and present ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... sound such depths of suffering and despair as are fathomed by the Russians. Many English readers used to say that the novels of George Eliot were "profoundly sad,"—it became almost a hackneyed phrase. Her stories are rollicking comedies compared with the awful shadow cast by the literature of the Slavs. Suffering is the heritage of the Russian race; their history is steeped in blood and tears, their present condition seems intolerably painful, and the future is an impenetrable cloud. In the life of the peasants there is ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... the table with a rollicking smack, and thrust her hands in her breeches-pockets, swaying with laughter; and, indeed, 'twas ringing music, her rich great laugh, which, when she grew of riper years, was much lauded and written verses on ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Cambridge were (as everybody knows they are) far too much merely plutocratic playgrounds. One would have thought that an Anglican Bishop might be allowed to know something about the English University system, and even to have, if anything, some bias in its favour. But (as I pointed out) the rollicking Radicalism of Bishops has to be restrained. The man who writes the notes in the weekly paper called the Outlook feels that it is his business to restrain it. The passage has such simple sublimity ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... jovial words and rollicking tune made his own fate seem the harsher, but there was no softening in those venomous blue eyes. Copley Banks had brushed away the priming of the gun, and had sprinkled fresh powder over the touch-hole. Then he had taken up the candle and ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... one dandy, fine, rollicking game where men and big boys from the Academy and other schools played up on Mr. Phinney's farm, a mile or two up the west side of the lake,[101] when Abner Doubleday and Prof. Green chose sides, and Doubleday's side beat Green's side badly. Doubleday was captain ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... Clinton's pillow even more tenderly than before. Poor Clinton! who had always been such a rollicking, rosy-cheeked lad. Surely it ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... is a clever dog; he can walk across the yard on his hind legs—the gardener's boy taught him the trick. Now, then, Bill, walk like a gentleman." And Bill obediently rose on his hind legs and stalked across the yard with an air of dignity, followed by a fat, rollicking puppy, barking with all ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... pumps, silk stockings, and flowing cravat, unless he belonged to the army or the navy, in which case complete regimentals covered a multitude of sins. The ball, commencing with the stroke of eight precisely, opened with a rollicking country dance, and the lady selected for the honor of opening the festivities was subsequently toasted as the reigning divinity of fashion for the hour. The "minuet de la cour" and stately "quadrille," varied by the "basket dance," and, on exceptional ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... the winding trail bare shoulders of bluff, covered only by the dense carpet of bunch grass, jutted out into the comparative level of the eastward plain. A clear, cold, sparkling stream, on whose banks the little command had halted for a noontide rest, went rollicking away northeastward, and many a veteran trooper looked longingly, even regretfully, after it, and then cast a gloomy glance over the barren and desolate stretch ahead. Far as the eye could reach in that direction the earth waves heaved and rolled in unrelieved monotony to the ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... went the sunbeams, rollicking and playing; and through all went Hildegarde, her heart filled with a new delight, feeling as if she had never lived before. She talked to the flowers. She bent and kissed the damask rose, which was too beautiful ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... him in under arrest; but when I announced myself in Romany as an accomplice, emotion stifled thought. And I lingered not, and spoke no more, but walked away into the woods and the darkness. However, the legend went forth on the roads, even unto Kingston, and was told among the rollicking Romanys of 'Appy Ampton; for there are always a merry, loafing lot of them about that festive spot, looking out for excursionists through the months when the gorse blooms, and kissing is in season—which is always. And he who seeks them ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... faces, the sound of the kindly voices, to which I had been so long accustomed. At last a turn in the road brought us in sight of the numberless fires of a large camp. It was a bright scene, though, far from gay. The few men who crouched by the fires were not roistering, rollicking soldiers, but pale shadows, holding their thin hands over the blaze which scorched their faces, while their thinly-covered backs were exposed to a cold so intense that it congealed the sap in the farthest end of the log on which they sat. Driving in among these, up an "avenue" ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... year, when just eighteen years old, P. Henry, Junior, got married—married a rollicking country lass, as foolish as himself—done in bravado, going home from a dance, calling a minister out on his porch, in a crazy-quilt, to perform the ceremony. John Henry would have applied the birch to this hare-brained ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... in the big woods: a Christmas temperature like frozen steel—thirty below in the clearing of Swamp's End—and a rollicking wind, careering over the pines, and the swirling dust of snow in the metallic air. A cold, crisp crackling world! A Christmas land, too: a vast expanse of Christmas colour, from the Canadian line to the Big River—great, grave, green pines, white earth and a blood-red sunset! The ...
— Christmas Eve at Swamp's End • Norman Duncan
... or else fell down on a bundle of rags in the corner and were sound asleep in a moment. They often slept in the heat of the day and were up almost all night listening to a neighbour playing the guitar, or singing and rollicking with other children. Their usual drink was sour red wine made from grapes grown on the neighbouring hillsides after all the best juice had been already pressed out of them. This the peasants bought in immense bottles, swollen out below ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... the air, and every living creature made what noise it could, to show its joy in being happy and free in the beautiful Bush. Rich and gurgling came the note of the magpies, the jovial Kookooburras saluted the sun with rollicking laughter, the crickets chirruped, frogs croaked in chorus, or solemnly "popped" in deep vibrating tones, like the ring of a woodman's axe. Every now and then came the shriek of the plover, or the shrill cry of the peeweet; and ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... living for, though it was so unlike any interest that had ever filled his life before. He had been essentially a man's man hitherto, in spite of his gay light love for lovely woman; a good comrade par excellence, a frolicsome chum, a rollicking boon-companion, a jolly pal! He wanted quite desperately to love something staid and feminine and gainly and well bred, whatever its age! some kind soft warm thing in petticoats and thin shoes, with no hair on its face, and a ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... without any alarm, the inhabitants relapsed into their old habits; and some even began to believe that the rumored descent of the Indians was only a pretext for quartering upon them two-score of lazy, rollicking soldiers, who certainly seemed more expert in making love to their daughters, and drinking their best ale and cider, than in patrolling the woods or putting the garrisons into a defensible state. The grain and hay harvest ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... of the house, you know, A jolly and rollicking lad; He was never tired, and never sick, And nothing could ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... he has ever permitted his pen to tell of the intoxication of a free, animal existence are in the opening pages of the story entitled "Mouche," where he recalls, among the sweetest memories of his youth, his rollicking canoe parties upon the Seine, and in the description in "La Vie Errante" of a night spent on the sea,—"to be alone upon the water under the sky, through a warm night,"—in which he speaks of the happiness of those "who receive sensations through the ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... of happiness which sounds through English letters so quietly, so cheerfully, and so contentedly. Therefore my Bed-Book is almost entirely an English Bed-Book, for I liked not the biting acid of Voltaire's epigrams any more than the rollicking and disgustful coarseness of Boccaccio or Rabelais. It is an interesting reflection, if it be true, that English literature is par excellence the ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... March it was! And after an unusually mild season, too. Old Winter seemed to have hoarded up all his stock of snow and cold weather, and left it as an inheritance to his wild and rollicking heir, that was expending it ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... translations are known to him, and occasionally he borrows from them. But he knows exactly why he does borrow. His scholarship and his real poetic power combine to give us a translation of which Landsmaal literature has every reason to be proud. We need give only a few passages. I like the rollicking humor ...
— An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway • Martin Brown Ruud
... in blessings for his goodness. Nor were theirs the only lips which spoke of gratitude to Reuben May: his name had now become familiar to many who through his means were kept from being ignorant of the sad fate which awaited their boon companion, their prime favorite, the once madcap, rollicking Jerrem—the last one, as Joan often told Reuben, whom any in Polperro would have fixed on for evil to pursue or misfortune to overtake, and about whom all declared there must have been "a hitch in the block ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... in a happy mood. A rollicking, loquacious mood. He talked. Unconsciously he made me witness to his confession of black treacheries, and deeds more loathsome than I could have ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... and it is for you and I who are engaged to serve her to look after her interests. I wish she had a good husband to help her; but it is my belief, from what I see here, that there is not a young man in the country at all fit for her. She is a good, gentle creature, and were she to wed one of the rollicking, harum-scarum young fellows who are her equals, he would break her heart; and staying at home as she does, she is not likely to meet any others, while even abroad she saw no one to care for, or, at least, ...
— The Heir of Kilfinnan - A Tale of the Shore and Ocean • W.H.G. Kingston
... out of the crowd with some acquaintances, to have his smarting eye attended to, while the procession reformed, and the rollicking students began again to shout their ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... old mossback a treat for the sight of gods and men?" asked Polk with a laugh as we all stood watching the old gray coat-tails flapping in the warm breeze that was rollicking across ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... of the night, Numbers 7 and 8 touched off their triggers and yelled "Fire;" 5 and 6, nearer home, followed suit, and in two minutes the bugles were blowing the alarm all over Ermita and Malate, and rollicking young regulars and volunteers by the hundred were tumbling out into the street, all eagerness and rejoicing at the prospect of having a lark with the Bomberos, the funny little Manila firemen with their ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... added impressively, this rollicking, devil- may-care, perfectly sound and hearty young Hibernian had ever been absolutely, entirely, and completely sober since his sojourn in the land of the free, no one of his ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... brave as they make 'em. He always went over the top with us and was in the thick of the fighting, and he had the military cross for bravery. He passed down the line, giving us a slap on the back or a hand grip and started us singing. No gospel hymns either, but any old rollicking, good-natured song that he happened to think of that would loosen things up and relieve ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes
... invested with a lasting human charm in the sunny page of Irving, and is the only one of our songsters, I believe, that the mockingbird cannot parody or imitate. He affords the most marked example of exuberant pride, and a glad, rollicking, holiday spirit, that can be seen among our birds. Every note expresses complacency and glee. He is a beau of the first pattern, and, unlike any other bird of my acquaintance, pushes his gallantry to the point of wheeling ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... sang Hal, taking the child up in his arms and putting on his hat. "You follow me; we'll have some sport. Tally ho! tally ho!" And away we went, Hal heading our procession through the streets, shouting a rollicking song, the baby staring at ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... girls have returned to the house, the sailors open the hampers and lustily fall to, casting playful thanks to those dumb neighbours for this double share of victuals and wine. In the lightness of their hearts they sing, and to the verses of their rollicking "Steersman, leave the watch!" clash ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... had been recommended to Mr Abney. He made himself exceedingly pleasant. He was a breezy, genial man, who joked with Mr Abney, chaffed the boys, prodded the Little Nugget in the ribs, to that overfed youth's discomfort, made a rollicking tour of the house, in the course of which he inspected Ogden's bedroom—in order, he told Mr Abney, to be able to report conscientiously to his friend Ford that the son and heir was not being pampered too much, and departed in a whirl of good-humour, leaving every one enthusiastic ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... ever, steadily singing her way star-ward; and Susini, who combines German strength with Italian fire—a true Tedesco Italiana-zato. Something, too, we would say of Mancusi, whose clear and rapid execution, in Figaro, and whose real Spanish majo rollicking style of acting were quite spirited enough, even for that very spirited part. Formes was indeed under the impression that he himself was the Figaro Figarorum, the incarnate half-Spanish ideal of that wonderful barbaresque conception; but then, the Formes ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... rode through camps of men in gray and butternut, as she had ridden through those of men in blue in the morning. In these, as in the others, she heard gay songs, dance music and laughter, and saw thousands of merry boys rollicking in the sunshine at games of ball and other sports, with the joyous earnestness of a school-house playground. She tried, but in vain, to realize that in a few days these thoughtless youths would be ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... thrill of expectancy as they began to don their costumes. Once he thought he almost heard again that low, cheerful strumming that had seemed to beat upon his ears when he first saw the poster of the elephant jumping the fence. He said nothing about it and soon lost all recollection of the rollicking strains in the anticipation of the circus joys that he ...
— The Circus Comes to Town • Lebbeus Mitchell
... of the change on Steve was to make him almost rollicking in his manner, as if he and Mr. Bannister were the nucleus of an Old Home Week celebration or two old college chums meeting after long absence. Nervousness, on the rare occasions when he suffered from it, generally had that ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... said a rather rollicking voice, with a rank puff and a shower of sparks, as the cautious steps ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... a gray cat with white paws and breast, not fat at the moment but with a comfortable well-fed look. She alternately washed herself and washed her offspring. There were four of them, a rollicking lot not easy to keep ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... chaffinch; and the metallic clinking of two or three sorts of titmice. But above the tree-tops, rising, hovering, sinking, the woodlark is fluting, tender and low. Above the pastures outside the skylark sings—as he alone can sing; and close by, from the hollies rings out the blackbird's tenor—rollicking, audacious, humorous, all but articulate. From the tree above him rises the treble of the thrush, pure as the song of angels: more pure, perhaps, in tone, though neither so varied nor so rich, as the song of the nightingale. And there, in the next holly, is the nightingale himself: now ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... teller of stories—for laughter and for tears. Some of these tales are allegories as universal to the life of man as "Pilgrim's Progress." Elsewhere, as in the fictional essay on the "The Cow" and in the delightful lies that Brann in rollicking mischief attributed to his fellow Texas journalists, we find the humorous tale enriched with the bizarre and scintillating figure. Nor was Brann unconscious of his fictional gift, for he was working on a novel at the time of his death. That O. Henry's ambition to write may ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... sturdy pony, the "dealer" on his black, raw-boned half-bred, the publican on his stolid old mare, farmers, drovers, after-riders, on cropped and uncropped mounts more accustomed to the slow drudgery of labour than to the rollicking, hard-going hunt; and after them the crowd on foot—village children, farm labourers, and apprentices from forge and counter. Riding side by side, and earnestly conversing, were the "vet," whose ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... verses have an assured literary form. The scope and strain were new, but their most significant quality was not melody nor pensive grace, but humor. This was ingrained and genuine. Sometimes it was rollicking, as in "The Height of the Ridiculous" and "The September Gale". Sometimes it was drolly meditative, as in "Evening, by a Tailor". Sometimes it was a tearful smile of the deepest feeling, as in the most charming and perfect of these poems, "The Last Leaf", in which delicate ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... such is the life of the strolling friar, With aplenty to eat and to drink; For the goodwife will keep him a seat by the fire, And the pretty girls smile at his wink. Then he lustily trolls As he onward strolls, A rollicking song for the saving of souls. When the wind doth blow, With the coming of snow, There's a place by the fire For the fatherly friar, And a crab in the ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... had set for herself. Toys were made in Germany, and the men who had made them were in the trenches, the women who had helped were in the fields—the days when the bisque babies had smiled on happy working-households were over. There was death and darkness where once the rollicking clowns and dancing dolls had ...
— The Tin Soldier • Temple Bailey
... rollicking fellow with an engaging gray eye, the most irresistible grin, a rather dark or much sunburned complexion, and a head of the fieriest red hair ever seen in that country. Speaking the Spanish language as well as he spoke English, and seeming always to ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... abundance of resources and enjoyments, careless and satisfied,—and this little girl alone at home with her cranky father, and no variety or change or outlook or help, struck him painfully. It would hardly have struck most young men; but Pitt, with all his rollicking waywardness and self-pleasing, had a fine fibre in him which could feel things. Then Esther's nature, he knew, was one rich in possibilities; to which life was likely to bring great joy or great ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... Serpentine, Yeo ho, my lads, ahoy! With clockwork, sails, or spirits of wine, Yeo-ho, my lads, ahoy! I did respeckfully decline, So I was left in port to pine, Which wasn't azactually the line Of a rollicking Sailor Boy, Yeo-ho! ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, May 24, 1890 • Various
... silence came at that, and then a clapping of hands from all about the Parade as the banner floated out, and the voices of men, deep throated, greeting the flag. Again the bands broke into the strains of the national anthem; but immediately they swung into a rollicking cavalry air. As they played, all four of the bands marched toward the center of the Parade, and halted at the dancing pavilion, where the lighter instruments selected for the orchestra took their places at the head ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... for answer; then, leaning as far out as she dared, both hands stemmed on the window ledge, the child began to sing. Full, free, joyously light-hearted, she sent forth the rollicking Irish melody and the merry sentiment that was strung upon it; evidently it had been adapted to her, for the words had suffered ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... the sandy street that slept in the sun and dreamed, it may be, of rich, unforgotten moments when the cow-punchers had come in off the range and stirred the sluggish town to a full, brief life with their rollicking. Across the street was Rusty Brown's place, with its narrow porch deserted of loafers and its windows blinking at the street with a blankness that belied the things they had looked upon in ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... occasion like this, when the rigors of the village point of view were relaxed. It would relieve him of several dozen private visits of apology, and altogether he felt that his courage would have wavered had he not been disguised as another person altogether: a popular favorite; a fat jolly, rollicking dispenser of bounties to the general public. When he finally discarded his costume, would it not be easier, too, to meet his father first before the church full of people and have the solemn hour with ...
— The Romance of a Christmas Card • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... tormented him till he roared like a wounded bull. The woman with the brand cried out on him with vile words that made my face burn in the dark, and belaboured him about the head with her blazing cudgel. At every blow a shower of sparks flew out that drove his rollicking mates into a ring around them at a safe distance away. The man must have been set afire had he not been soused in the river beforehand. None of his fellows tried to help him, just as before none had tried to hinder him. It was his look ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... simple, homely song of the song-sparrow; and in March we also hear the piercing cadence of the meadow-lark—to us one of the most attractive of all bird calls. Of late years now and then we hear the rollicking, bubbling melody of the bobolink in the pastures back of the barn; and when the full chorus of these and of many other of the singers of spring is dying down, there are some true hot-weather songsters, such as the brightly hued indigo buntings and thistlefinches. Among the finches one of the most ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... little store wended their uneasy way along, a spark of humour was often injected into them by the delightful banter of a rollicking, good-natured Irishman, a big two-fisted fellow, generous- hearted and lovable, whom we affectionately called "Big Phil." I can see him now, standing like a great pyramid in the midst of the little group, every now and then throwing his head back in good-natured ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... works with a rollicking stave at lip, And loud is the chorus skirled; With the burly note of his rumbling throat He ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... a merry, rollicking nature. At times you are seized with a wild, tumultuous hilarity to which you give ample vent in shouting and song. You are much addicted to profanity, and you rightly feel that this is part of your nature and you must not check it. The world is a very bright ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... Presently the rollicking couple made their appearance. Sally's foot had caught in her riding-skirt as she ran, throwing her at full length on the sward, and Mark, in picking her up, had possessed himself of the whip. She was ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... I, and I faithfully served the ships With apples and cakes, and fowls, and beer, and halfpenny dips, And beef for the generous mess, where the officers dine at nights, And fine fresh peppermint drops for the rollicking midshipmites. ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... slit he could catch a glimpse of the clean-shaven face of the doctor, looking wearier and more anxious than before. Then he rushed downstairs like a lunatic, and running to the door he tried to distract his thoughts by watching what; was going on in the street. The shops were all shut, and some rollicking boon companions came shouting along from the public-house. He stayed at the door until the stragglers had thinned down, and then came back to his seat by the fire. In his dim brain he was asking himself questions which had never intruded themselves ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... round of life and duty went steadily on and every week or so one of the Glen lads who had just the other day been a rollicking schoolboy ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... almost any bright morning, gamboling and courting amid its decayed branches. Sometimes you would hear only a gentle persuasive cooing, or a quiet confidential chattering,—then that long, loud call, taken up by first one, then another, as they sat about upon the naked limbs,—anon, a sort of wild, rollicking laughter, intermingled with various cries, yelps, and squeals, as if some incident had excited their mirth and ridicule. Whether this social hilarity and boisterousness is in celebration of the pairing or mating ceremony, or whether it is only a sort of annual "house-warming" ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... There was no rollicking about the camp-fires any more. When evening came the men were weary from hurrying their wagons over rugged ground or climbing lofty buttes to look ahead for signs of water. Isham the fiddler left his violin in its case; ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... out his hand, and all the time his eyes never left Norgate's. Gone the florid and beaming geniality of the man, his easy good-humour, his air of good-living and rollicking gaiety. There were lines in his forehead. The firm contraction of his lips brought lines even across his plump cheeks. It was the face, this, of a strong man and a thinker. He held Norgate's fingers, ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... changes in the music which Haydn testily declined to make. He was frequently irritated over the many imitative passages, and it was to relieve his own feelings and vary the monotony of the sentiment that he introduced the rollicking bacchanal chorus in the third part. He expressed his feelings to a friend in the remark: "My head was so full of the nonsensical stuff that it all went topsy-turvy, and I therefore called the closing fugue the 'drunken fugue.'" Notwithstanding ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... that this or that one is best, though some have preferred Master Crewe to all others.[6] We shall see by-and-by in Master Bunbury, and the Cupid, that the painter understood boy nature pretty thoroughly. This rollicking Master Crewe is not so serious as Master Bunbury, nor so sly as the Cupid boy; he is in fact a typical English lad, sturdy, ...
— Sir Joshua Reynolds - A Collection of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... The sterling good sense, and quiet, yet rich humor of Scott, as well as his literary tastes and wonderful fund of legendary lore, would find no more intelligent and discriminating admirer than Irving; while the rollicking fun of the veritable Diedrich and the delicate fancy and pathos of Crayon were doubtless unaffectedly enjoyed by the great Scotsman. I wish I could tell you accurately one-half of the anecdotes which ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... early to lay the foundations of health. Children should have plenty of vigorous, joyous exercise out of doors. They should have romping, rollicking fun every day, at the same time giving exercise to every part of the body, and a healthy tone to the spirits. The body and soul are so intimately blended that exercise for the one is of little value when the other is repressed. ...
— Minnesota; Its Character and Climate • Ledyard Bill
... zeal over the terse realism and pathos of Lawson, and enjoyed Paterson's redolence of the rollicking side of the wholesome life beneath these sunny skies, which he depicted with grand touches of power flashing here and there. I learnt them by heart, and in that gloriously blue receptacle, by and by, where many pleasant youthful dreams are stowed, I put the hope that one ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... more closely to Eachard. The likeness between them cannot be traced further; they were both, it is true, humorists, but there is little in common between the austere and bitter, yet, at the same time, delicious flavour of the one, and the trenchant and graphic, but coarse and rollicking, humour ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... resolved to visit him at about this time. Having no chance to apprise Jack of his intention, on coming to Hightown at night he procured a conveyance at the depot to carry him to Windy Hill Rancho. The wind blew with its usual nocturnal rollicking persistency, and at the end of his turbulent drive it seemed almost impossible to make himself heard amongst the roaring of the pines and some astounding preoccupation of the inmates. After vainly knocking, the doctor pushed open the front door and ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... the rising wind. A cool gust of air, out on a lark, now swept down the path, and, with lance in rest, toppled over my white umbrella. Big drops of rain fell about me, spitting the dust like spent balls. Growls of thunder were heard overhead. One of those rollicking, two-faced thunder-squalls, with the sun on one side and the blackness of the night on the ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... there—men, women, the old and the young, in their nearly primitive costume, looking on with all their eyes, listening with all their ears. The smiling entertainer, half in Portuguese, half in Ticunian, favored them with his customary oration in a tone of the most rollicking good humor. What he said was what is said by all the charlatans who place their services at the public disposal, whether they be Spanish Figaros or French perruqiers. At the bottom the same self-possession, the same knowledge of human weakness, ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... things, and you know they are not true! You know that I had rather drink water with you than wine with him. I am not thirsty; but since it is you who offer it"—His expression changed; he broke into sudden pleasant laughter, and with a rollicking stave of the song, "Drink with me a cup of wine," he caught the bowl from the girl's hand and ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... given a tasselled cap, doublet and hose, and a long, slim pipe, Ben Westerveld would have been the prototype of one of those rollicking, lusty young mynheers that laugh out at you from a Frans Hals canvas. A roguish fellow with a merry eye; red-cheeked, vigorous. A serious mouth, though, and great sweetness of expression. As he grew older the seriousness crept up and up and almost ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... boy, born two years and eight months ago, is walking on the boulevard with his nurse. He is wearing a long, wadded pelisse, a scarf, a big cap with a fluffy pom-pom, and warm over-boots. He feels hot and stifled, and now, too, the rollicking April sunshine is beating straight in his face, ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... case, as offering better guarantees than Mr. Cass. He then enters upon an analysis of the position of Cass and his party which is full of keen observation and political intelligence, and his speech goes on to its rollicking close with a constant succession of bright, witty, and striking passages in which the orator's own conviction and enjoyment of an assured success is not the least remarkable feature. A few weeks later Congress adjourned, and Lincoln, without returning home, entered upon the canvass in New ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... wilds of Cumberland on his way to his destination in Scotland. He had walked for some distance, when he stopped at a small public-house to procure refreshment. He here fell in with a farmer named Dandie Dinmont, a big, rollicking fellow, with an honest face and kindly ways, with whom he became friends in ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... in his gray eyes. Sandy was not old—a little short of thirty—but he was generally mature, suggesting deliberation of mind if not of action. This morning youth was his, rollicking, devil-may-care youth that showed in his walk, the set of his shoulders, ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... Tower of London as a political prisoner. Pierre le Grand, the first Flibustier who took a ship, retired to France with wealth and consideration. Captain Avery, who had an immense fame, was the subject of a drama entitled "The Happy Pirate," which inoculated many a prentice-lad with cutlasses and rollicking ferocity. Others became the agents of easy cabinets who always winked at buccaneering, because it so often saved them the expense of war. What gift or place would a slave-holding cabinet, or a Southern ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... was killed at the same time, threw his rifle in the air and caught it again in sheer excess of animal spirits. Three rollicking lads, all of whom we buried during the week in the same shell hole under the same wooden cross, stumbled with an exaggerated show ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall
... my time with more or less pleasure to very rollicking songs about the sea, the flashing brine, the spray and the tempest's roar, the wet sheet and the flowing sea, a life on the ocean wave, and all the rest of it. To paraphrase a land proverb, let me write the songs of the sea, and I care not who ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the rollicking young attendant who drove Father O'Shane in the snowdrifts from Vermont, a specimen of whose oratory we have given in a preceding chapter. The antagonist of Parson Grinoble was no other than the same ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... she cast her net no more, but devoted herself thenceforth with tender consecration to her important catch. In time Ames brought a friend, the rollicking James Hawley-Crowles, to call upon the charming Beaubien. In time, too, as was perfectly natural, a rivalry sprang up between the men, which the beautiful creature watered so tenderly that the investments which she was enabled ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... me under one arm and my bundle under the other, and was proceeding on his march, when three men came rollicking up. ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... tartar emetic, is as disgusting and inartistic a method as fiction presents. Why not have made it croton oil? More and worse of this hideous realism is to be found in About's books, such, for instance, as "Germaine"; but from which censure I like to exclude the rollicking fun of "Le Nez d'un Notaire." As to the recent realistic atrocities of Zola, and even of Tolstoi, a more rare sinner, if we exclude his disgusting drama of peasant life, I prefer to ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell
... familiar—with his 'red gold-trimmed dress and mantle of stiff silk and the cock-feathers in his hat,' the type of the dissolute man-about-town of the period. To me it seems very natural that, dispirited by his first contact with the outer world—unable to feel any real sympathy with the rollicking and sleek self-sufficiency of that holiday crowd, Faust should turn again to reflexion and speculation, and that when he is in this depressed and metaphysical mood the demonic element in his nature should first present itself—and that ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... the committee of nine for the delightful task of tying up the parcels for that tree. It was such bliss to share all the secrets and anticipate the surprise and laughter each ridiculous gift would call forth. And when all the joking and rollicking was over there was the carol service on the last night of the term, so sweet and solemn and full of the real Christmas gladness, that it was something to remember always as the crowning beauty of that ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... however, were only, after all, a veneer; and when two or three days of merry, rollicking family life had passed by, the old Darsie made her appearance once more, forgot to be learned and superior, forbore to refer to college and college ways in every second or third sentence, and showed a ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... so rude," says HARRY LAWSON, jealous for the reputation of Metropolitan Members, even though some sit on the Benches opposite. With folded hands thrust behind coat-tails, rollicking stride, thunderous voice, and blooming countenance, Sir ROBERT positively pervades the Lobby. Personally receives POPE HENNESSY; shakes hands with everybody; and finally halting for a moment under the electric-lit archway leading into House, presents interesting and attractive ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 31, 1891 • Various |
