"Amusingly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... paper once sent to that fine scholar and gracious gentleman, Professor Edward Arber, to inquire whether in his opinion one might hope to buy at a modest price a copy of either the first or the second part of Euphues. Professor Arber's reply was amusingly emphatic: 'You might as well try to purchase one of Mahomet's old slippers.' But in July of 1896 there were four copies of this old novel on sale at one New York bookstore. One of the copies was of great beauty, consisting of the two parts of the story bound up together in a really sumptuous ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... concrete they will make their creeds amusingly simian. Consider the simian amorousness of Jupiter, and the brawls on Olympus. Again, in the old Jewish Bible, what tempts the first pair? The Tree of Knowledge, of course. It appealed to the curiosity of their nature, and who ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day
... ideas. No one pretends that ingratitude may, in any past abyss of time, have been a virtue, or that it may be such now in Arcturus or the Pleiades. Indeed, a certain eminent writer of the utilitarian school of ethics has amusingly and very instructively shown how radically distinct even in his own mind are the two ideas which he nevertheless endeavours to identify. Mr. John Stuart Mill, in his examination of "Sir William Hamilton's ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... amusingly named Archibald, Bertram, Clarence—they are entered by the initial letter, but spoken of by ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... playfully, "that—as you so often and so amusingly say—is 'Another Story'! Yet I would have overlooked the theft of the opals if they had not substituted two of the Queen's regimental buttons for the eyes of the god. This, while it did not deceive the ignorant priests, had a deep political and racial significance. ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... f(1) Aristophanes amusingly mixes up real birds with people and individuals, whom he represents in the form of birds; he ...
— The Birds • Aristophanes
... 'Hear, hear!' which, as in Parliamentary debates, shewed that something worth listening to was being said. And next day they would commiserate with those who had been prevented from coming that evening, and would assure them that the 'little scene' had never been so amusingly done. ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... letter we find the sacrifice of the young and lovely Sophia completed. Ambition was the characteristic of her family: and she went, not unwillingly, to the altar. The whole affair is too amusingly told to be given in other ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... by means of which a sound thrashing can be administered to an absent foe through the medium of an old coat which is imagined to cover him. The principle involved here is one which is doubtless familiar to most children, and is closely akin to that which Irving so amusingly illustrates in his doughty general who struts through a field of cabbages or corn-stalks, smiting them to earth with his cane, and imagining himself a hero of chivalry conquering single-handed a host of ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... of our young readers can be so hard-hearted as to enjoy a laugh at the expense of poor Pyramus and Thisbe, they may find an opportunity by turning to Shakspeare's play of the "Midsummer Night's Dream," where it is most amusingly burlesqued. ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... Binet, who remained in the room and took notes, recounts with playful humor how the teachers were unavoidably compelled to resort to the much-abused test method, although their attempts at using it were sometimes, from the psychologist's point of view, amusingly clumsy. ...
— The Measurement of Intelligence • Lewis Madison Terman
... perfectly uneumoirous week among my friends and social acquaintances. I had stood godfather to my sister Agatha's fifth child, taking upon myself obligations which I shall never be able to perform; I had dined amusingly at my sister Jane's; I had shot pheasants at Farfax Glenn's place in Hampshire; and I had paid a long-promised charming country-house visit to ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... heretics, and proselytish ardor. These failings, however, gradually disappear; the consideration and the comfortable incomes they enjoy developing their benevolence. The insight into mankind and the confidence in themselves which distinguish the lower classes of the Spaniards, and which are so amusingly exemplified in Sancho Panza, have plenty of occasions to display themselves in the responsible and influential positions which the priests occupy. The padre is frequently the only white man in his village, probably the only European for miles around. He becomes the representative not ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... your Botanic Garden are as surprising as the bulls with brazen feet, and the fire-breathing dragons, which guarded the Hesperian fruit; yet are they not disgusting, nor mischievous: and in the manner you have chained them together in your exhibition, they succeed each other amusingly enough, like prints of the London Cries, wrapped upon rollers, with a glass before them. In this at least they resemble the monsters in Ovid's Metamorphoses; but your similies, I suppose, ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... an amusingly polite manner arose and bowed. "All right, Bedelia, and if it's all the same to you, you may as well ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... in condemning the principle that Christians are tied to the O.T. canon, rather amusingly supposes: "Wenn Jemand sich bei den Juden jetzt als Prophet geltend machen und ein Buch schreiben würdem so müsste es nach diesem Grundsatz von den Protestanten als kanonisch wohl anerkannt werden" (Esther und Susanna, Würzburg, 1892, p. 140). But such argument is mere polemic, which cannot ...
— The Three Additions to Daniel, A Study • William Heaford Daubney
... acquainted with those godless Greek and Roman doings. As it is in my mind to celebrate my daughter's wedding with all pomp worthy of my crown—I want to ask you—to consult with my son—as to how most gracefully and amusingly to entertain the Courts of Poland, Saxony, Brunswick and Mecklenburg, who will all be here for an entire week—in a word, how we can win much honor and ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... state his age, any more than his nationality. Besides, it matters little; let it suffice that he was a strange personage, impetuous and hot-blooded, a regular oddity out of one of Hoffmann's volumes, and one who contrasted amusingly enough with the good people of Quiquendone. He had an imperturbable confidence both in himself and in his doctrines. Always smiling, walking with head erect and shoulders thrown back in a free and unconstrained manner, with a steady gaze, large open nostrils, a ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... advisable in connection with the packing house inspection law to provide for putting a date on the label and for charging the cost of inspection to the packers. All these laws have already justified their enactment. The interstate commerce law, for instance, has rather amusingly falsified the predictions, both of those who asserted that it would ruin the railroads and of those who asserted that it did not go far enough and would accomplish nothing. During the last five months the railroads have shown increased ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... possessed of not a little shrewdness in his dealings with his buyers (often exhibiting that rarest quality of the successful trader, the art of linking one transaction with another), he was sometimes amusingly deficient in what is known as common sense. In later life he used to tell with infinite zest a story of a blunder of earlier years which might easily have led to serious if not fatal results. He had been ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... alternate scoldings and cajolings, her wild hunt for the tickets, which all the while were stuck in her belt, the grandeur of her deportment when the family was at last prepared for the outing, all were most amusingly represented. Doris was really a born actress, and so completely carried her audience with her that the lack of costumes and scenery was not felt in the force of the reality that she managed to throw into her part. Covered with glory, she gave place to her successor, who, while bewailing the ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... heroical romances did not wait, however, till the eighteenth century to assert itself in England; it set in early and very amusingly: but it remained powerless. As the evil had chiefly come from France, so did the remedy; but the remedy in France proved sufficient for a cure. In that country at all times the tale had flourished, and at all times in ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... appeal of his music to different temperaments, is an artistic personality to be reckoned with; one not to be ticketed and laid on the shelf. Although a century and more has elapsed since his birth the permanent value of his music is still debated, often amusingly enough, by those who seem unaware that, whatever the theoretical rights of the case, in practice his principles are the reigning ones in modern music. As Berlioz stands as the foremost representative of program music and never ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... also, and the burden of the talk fell upon Congdon, who proceeded in his amusingly hit-or-miss way to detail the important or humorous happenings, of the town, and so they rolled along up the wide avenue to the big stone steps before the looming, lamp-lit palace ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... during this debate is worthy of record here; Mr. Bernard Osborne "grew amusingly sarcastic at the expense of the government, though he paid at the same time a great compliment to Mr. Gladstone. He likened the Cabinet to a museum of curiosities, in which there were some birds of rare and noble plumage, both alive and stuffed. There had been a difficulty, unfortunately, ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... gentlemen," he said to his officers, "let us do something to-day which the world may talk of hereafter." Collingwood, in reality, was a great man and a great seaman, and in the battle which followed he "fought like an angel," to quote the amusingly ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... not long been a member of this fraternity of fine fellows, ere I discovered that Jack Chase, our captain was—like all prime favorites and oracles among men—a little bit of a dictator; not peremptorily, or annoyingly so, but amusingly intent on egotistically mending our manners and improving our taste, so that we might ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... irritated and disgusted by the treatment it had received from the manager, determined to muster their forces, and aid in giving it a good launch upon the town. The particulars of this confederation, and of its triumphant success, are amusingly told by ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... the hand, Maezli led him into the house and to the room where the inviting table was already set. Kathy had been so many years in the house that she knew exactly how things ought to be. Everyone sat down now and Uncle Philip was amusingly talking. Everything he had ordered for the meal tasted so delightfully that it seemed like a feast to them and Salo said, "I should never have been able to conceive such a wonderful end of my holidays, if I had imagined the most ...
— Maezli - A Story of the Swiss Valleys • Johanna Spyri
... the leading nations in regard to their mutual encroachments is amusingly illustrated in an interview between Senator Douglas and Sir Henry Bulwer in reference to the Clayton-Bulwer treaty. An article was inserted in this treaty by the English government, binding both England and ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... predominance, as they who deserve it always do, like men, are whimpering like babies after dearly coveted but utterly unattainable enjoyments—to be had at the expense of the interests of the Negroes whom they, rather amusingly, affect to despise. When Mr. Froude shall have become able to present for the world's contemplation a question respecting which the Anglo-Saxon family, in its grand world-wide predominance, and the African family, in its yet feeble, albeit promising, incipience of self-adjustment, ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... others anything like delight at it, well, in that case, the king will be humiliated before the whole court; and what a delightful story it will be, too, for him to whom I am really attached, a part of my dowry for my husband, to have the adventure to relate of the king who was so amusingly deceived ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... was still further embittered by the presence and intrigues of Porpora, his old master and now rival, and jealousy of Porpora's pupil, Mingotti, who threatened to dispute the sway of his wife. Hasse's musical spite was amusingly shown in writing an air for Mingotti in his "Demofoonte." He composed the music for what he thought was the defective part of her voice, while the accompaniment was contrived to destroy all effect. Mingotti was nothing daunted, but by hard study and ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... short time after this took place in honour of those who had been killed in the late fight. The dancers were grotesquely got up, and are amusingly described by Mr Baker. "Each man had about a dozen huge ostrich feathers in his helmet, a leopard or monkey-skin hung from his shoulders, while a large iron bell was strapped to his loins like a woman's bustle. ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... of abstraction of the young poet must often have been regarded as self-conscious attitudinizing by his neighbours—especially by the "stupid stout woman" who lived in the villa next to his father's, and who, as he amusingly ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... after by the government obliged the university to give up this scheme, and was probably the cause of Pierre d'Ailly's temporary retirement to Noyon, where he held a canonry. There he continued the struggle for his side in a humorous work, in which the partisans of the council are amusingly taken to task by the demon ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... her mother, and she had hardly time to say a few words to Countess Nordston when Vronsky came up again for the first quadrille. During the quadrille nothing of any significance was said: there was disjointed talk between them of the Korsunskys, husband and wife, whom he described very amusingly, as delightful children at forty, and of the future town theater; and only once the conversation touched her to the quick, when he asked her about Levin, whether he was here, and added that he liked him so much. But Kitty ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... languidly departing summer to the divine Terpsichore. For summer there, bear in mind, is a loitering gossip, that only begins to talk of leaving when September rises to go. It was like hustling her out, it is true, to give a select bal masque at such a very early—such an amusingly early date; but it was fitting that something should be done for the sick and the destitute; and why not this? Everybody knows the Lord ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... flowers. He looked down into her hair. It struck him that it was a remarkably beautiful idea—a woman's hair—especially hers, streaked as it was with white—silken silver. When she shook her head a snowy thread tickled his nose amusingly. ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... Still he is amusingly perplexed, like all the rest of the infidel world, how to get rid of the miracles—whether on the principle of fraud, or fiction, or illusion. He thinks there would be 'a great accession to the ranks of ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... was not a man of a very pleasing appearance, as he was covered with a kind of leprosy; but that did not prevent him having a good appetite, writing, and enjoying all his bodily and intellectual faculties; he talked well and amusingly. He never went into society, as, besides his personal disfigurement, he was tormented with an irresistible and frequent desire of scratching himself, now in one place, and now in another; and as all scratching is accounted ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... shoulder. As for him, he had had enough of Diana; she had been a great deal too coy with him, he averred. Thereupon Diana promised to keep a sharp eye on him and to be revenged. The duet ended with a comic yodel which Prulliere delivered very amusingly with the yell of an angry tomcat. He had about him all the entertaining fatuity of a young leading gentleman whose love affairs prosper, and he rolled around the most swaggering glances, which excited shrill feminine laughter in ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... without loading, killing dead birds, &c, &c. On the 3rd, the present Lord Chancellor born in 1825—the name of GIFFARD entombed in Hals-bury. A little obscure this, but, if carefully worked out, will amply repay time and attention. On the 9th THOMAS WATTS (who may be amusingly called "Watts-his-name"), died in 1869. Not much in this, but may possibly fill up an awkward pause during the reading of a will, or the arrival of fresh hot water at a newly-married lady's initial hospitality ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., January 3, 1891. • Various
... will be humiliated before the whole court; and what a delightful story it will be, too, for him to whom I am really attached, in fact part of my dowry for my husband, to have the adventure to relate of the monarch who was so amusingly deceived by ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... said of the outside of events I knew too well internally. They most of them had the air of my aunt's solicitor when he had said, "Even I did not realise...." their positions saving them the necessity of concealing surprise. "One can't know everything." They fumbled amusingly about the causes, differed with one another, but were surprisingly unanimous as to effects, as to the panic and the call for purification. It was rather extraordinary, too, how large de Mersch loomed on the horizon over here. It ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... from the dead, at a second festival called 'The Return.' The worship both of Venus and Adonis probably originated in Syria, and was spread through Asia Minor into Greece; while the Carthaginians, a Phoenician colony introduced it into Sicily. The festival of Adonis is most amusingly described by Theocritus the Sicilian poet, in his 'Adoniazusae.' Some authors have suggested that Adonis was the same with the Egyptian God Osiris, and that the affliction of Venus represented that of Isis at the death of her husband. According to Hesiod, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... dialogues, even imparting freshness to the tale of the patient in extremis who persuades his attractive nurse into a death-bed marriage, treatment that the slightest experience of fiction should have warned her to be invariably curative. Perhaps the best of the tales is "Jane," which tells very amusingly the results of a hospital strike that in actual life would, I imagine, have provided little humorous relief. By this time you may have gathered that what matters about Mrs. RINEHART is not what she says but the way that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 14th, 1920 • Various
... trips is amusingly set forth in one of the most lively and characteristic of his Epistles—the fifteenth of the first book. In this he inquires of a friend what sort of winter weather is to be found at Velia and Salernum; two ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 429 - Volume 17, New Series, March 20, 1852 • Various
... amusingly varied by a visit from Lady Jersey. I took her over mysteriously (under the pseudonym of my cousin, Miss Amelia Balfour) to visit Mataafa, our rebel; and we had great fun, and wrote a Ouida novel on ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the low comic. The whole plot turns on a lost needle, the search for which is pursued with the utmost assiduity: the poverty of the persons of the drama, which this supposes, and the whole of their domestic condition, is very amusingly portrayed, and the part of a cunning beggar especially is drawn with much humour. The coarse comic of this piece bears a resemblance to that of the Avocat Patelin; yet the English play has not, like the French, been honoured ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... Lagune's face lingered amusingly in Lewisham's mind as he returned to Clapham. But after a time that amusement passed away. He declined upon the extraordinary fact that Chaffery was his father-in-law, Mrs. Chaffery his mother-in-law, that these two and Ethel ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... charming of all sporting books ever written, Campbell's 'Old Forest Ranger,' there is an amusingly-told bit with reference to this habit of cub-carrying which I am sure my readers will forgive me for extracting. Old Dr. Jock M'Phee had been knocked over by a she-bear, and is relating ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... nickname-classification of "Barbarian-Philistine-Populace" is launched, defended, discussed in a chapter to itself. To do Mr Arnold justice, the three classes are, if not very philosophically defined, very impartially and amusingly rallied, the rallier taking up that part of humble Philistine conscious of his own weaknesses, which, till he made it slightly tiresome by too long a run, was piquant enough. The fourth chapter, "Hebraism and Hellenism," coasts the sands and rocks (on which, ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... though one expatriated person, whose name I have not heard, was writing a series of prejudiced articles for Fraser, which he signed "A White Republican." I thought him a very dirty white. One or two English travellers at the same time were making amusingly stupid notices of America in some of the second-rate monthlies; and Maxwell, a bustling Irishman, who owns Temple Bar, the Saint James, and Sixpenny Magazine, and some half dozen other serials, was employing a man to ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... Lang says amusingly that he has left out of his special versions "all the pieces that are suitable only for Arabs and old gentlemen," and we have done the same; but we have taken no undue liberties. We have removed no genies nor magicians, however ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... an exceedingly cynical and stupid story," observed the girl. "And so I shall be off to look for Jurgen. For he makes love very amusingly," says Dorothy, with the sweetest, loveliest meditative smile that ever ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... his sister and I knew that he was the villain of the piece, and for different reasons neither of us could explain the mistake about his role. He was sure of us both; impudently, aggravatingly, yet (I can't help it, Padre!) amusingly sure of me. He tried to "isolate" me, as if I'd been a microbe while we were still at Soissons, and again just after Father Beckett and Brian went away from Amiens in the big gray car. There was something, something very special that he wished ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... gone. A kerosene lamp set upon a center table sent an apologetic light over the shabby furniture. Above the mantel with its velvet cover and statuette of a crying baby, was a picture of Suzanna, a "crayon," Mr. Bartlett amusingly surmised. The small face looked out with a distorted artificial smile quite unknown to the face it sought to represent. Yet Suzanna's aura was visible, Mr. Bartlett thought. That little girl who so simply and lovingly had called his mother Drusilla because no one in the world was left to do ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... was the only croaker. Wesley and Theodosia were married, in the golden prime of the Indian summer, and settled down on their snug little farm. Dosia was a beautiful bride, and Wesley's pride in her was amusingly apparent. He thought nothing too good for her, the Heatherton people said. It was a sight to make an old heart young to see him march up the aisle of the church on Sunday in all the glossy splendour of his wedding suit, his curly black ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... this sensibility is amusingly mischievous. They never speak of one of their own class without adding some such ejaculation as "Poor fellow!" or, "Poor little creature!" They pity all wretchedness, no matter from what cause, ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... Nationalism," gives an interesting account of this movement and of its organ, the widely circulated Sydney Bulletin, with its furiously anti-British views, its Radicalism, its Republicanism, and what not. He shows amusingly how entirely harmless the propaganda really was, and what a healthy effect it actually had in promoting an independence of feeling and national self-respect among Australians, to such a degree that when the South African War broke ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... capital of Europe and with countless personages of importance. She exchanged personal reminiscences with Lord Shervinton, who had once been attached to the Embassy at Rome, and with Mr. Hannaway Wells, who had been first secretary at Vienna. She spoke amusingly of Munich, at which place, it appeared, she had first studied art, but dilated, with all the artist's fervour, on her travellings in Spain, on the soft yet wonderfully vivid colouring of the southern cities. She seemed ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... else, being made up of names that would turn into a chime if you went back upon them. Dorothea set earnestly to work, bending close to her map, and uttering the names in an audible, subdued tone, which often got into a chime. She looked amusingly girlish after all her deep experience—nodding her head and marking the names off on her fingers, with a little pursing of her lip, and now and then breaking off to put her hands on each side of her face and say, ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... sought to restore the chivalry of the Middle Ages, . . . then it is a peculiarly comic irony of accident that the romantic school should furnish the best translation of a book in which their own folly is most amusingly ridiculed." ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... had been helping a butler, as this talk went on, an' presently one of the other ladies joined her, an' never was any company so picturesquely an' amusingly served. ...
— Keeping up with Lizzie • Irving Bacheller
... provoking discussion. So earnestly and logically (for he was a good dialectician) would he carry on the discussion that it was difficult to believe that he did not really hold the opinions for which he so pertinaciously contended. Sometimes this habit of mind reacted very amusingly upon himself, as the following will show. The subject fixed one Friday evening for debate in the discussion class was, "Have animals souls?" Though fully accepting the common belief that they have not, Gilmour, purely for the sake of argument, took the ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... suggestion of the rod about him, and, moreover, his charges are really too elderly to receive chastisement) to the Royal Exchange, the Thames Embankment, and, lastly, to the Empire. During their travels, they meet Mr. Rapless, known as "the Oofless Swell," (a part amusingly played by Mr. W. WARDE), and John Brough, a carpenter with a taste for ballet costumes and drink, the carpenter's wife, and the carpenter's child. Dr. Burch, who is evidently easy-going, but good-hearted, after flirting with a lady who has her boots cleaned before the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 8, 1892 • Various
... past. I leapt for joy, and hurried back to the countess, whom I had seen in the gothic boudoir. She stopped me by a smile, made me sit beside her, and talked about my work, seeming to take the greatest interest in it, and all the more when I set forth my theories amusingly, instead of adopting the formal language of a professor for their explanation. It seemed to divert her to be told that the human will was a material force like steam; that in the moral world nothing could resist its power if a man taught himself to concentrate ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... noble instincts against such critics. His was indeed a happy fate: the only fault ever advanced by friend or foe against his public life, was an excess of generosity towards his vanquished enemies!' His sense of the comic is amusingly evidenced by the story of his ruse during a dearth in the same siege. Tradition reports, that only one animal, a hog, was left alive in the town, and that more than half starved. In the afternoon, Blake, feeling that in their depression ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 439 - Volume 17, New Series, May 29, 1852 • Various
... suggested Robina, "that if one put it into a book—I mean that if you put it into a book, it would read amusingly." ...
— They and I • Jerome K. Jerome
... as a rule, prevails by custom, and individuals exercising their right of polygamy are looked upon with disfavor. On the other hand, we meet occasionally with men who aver that rather against their will (as they will sometimes rather amusingly say) they have been forced by custom or family influence to add by polygamy to their domestic burdens. In Mohammedan countries, however, when we hear of a man confining himself to one wife, it does not necessarily follow that he has ...
— Two Old Faiths - Essays on the Religions of the Hindus and the Mohammedans • J. Murray Mitchell and William Muir
... we have suppressed. But never could we question the Author's veracity and sincerity of purpose. Whether he crawled like a zoophyte, soared like an eagle, or fought, like Ali, the giants of the lower world, he is genuine, and oft-times amusingly truthful. But the many questionable pages on this curious subject of the eremite, what are we to do with them? If they are imaginary, there is too much in this Book against quackery to daunt us. And yet, if Khalid has found the troglodyte, whom ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... through it, and several Rangers fell on the French side of the stream. About a hundred and fifty of the Old Guard ran into a street, of which the further end was barricaded. Mr Grattan, whose account of the affair is a graphic and interesting piece of military narrative, is amusingly cool and naif in referring to this incident. "Mistakes of this kind," he says, "will sometimes occur, and when they do, the result is easily imagined.... In the present instance, every man was put to death; but our soldiers, as soon as they had leisure, paid ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... I think," she drawled, amusingly, "that he is now. I saw him on the street the other day with one of his students—rather a pretty ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... all, if she wished or intended to marry him? She replied lightly, 'Perhaps, when you become Sir Duke Lawless.' Then Lawless accused her of heartlessness, and of encouraging both his uncle and Just Trafford. She amusingly said, 'Perhaps she had, but it really didn't matter, did it?' For reply, Lawless said her interest in the whole family seemed active and impartial. He bade her not vex herself at all about him, and not to wait until he became Sir Duke Lawless, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... at last we see the lights of heaven looming on our horizon and are at the haven where we would be. Then we realize that all the time He was guiding us by ways that we knew not! In the evening we heard an auction amusingly carried on, though I did not approve of the gambling connected with it; and then Mr. Barrett gave a short account of apparitions, and there ...
— The British Association's visit to Montreal, 1884: Letters • Clara Rayleigh
... who drove Nevill's car was an Algerian who looked as if he might have a dash of dark blood in his veins. Beside him sat the Kabyle servant, who, in his picturesque embroidered clothes, with his jaunty fez, appeared amusingly out of place in the smart automobile, which struck the last note of modernity. The chauffeur had a reckless, daring face, with the smile of a mischievous boy; but he steered with caution and skill through the crowded streets where open trams rushed by, filled to overflowing with white-veiled ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... will be patent to all who peruse his pages. The objections that English readers will make to his books are to be traced to no aberrations of his, but to those of the society whose follies he so ably and wittily depicts. He faithfully sketches, and more often amusingly caricatures, the vices, foibles, and failings of French men and women. If those are to be delineated at all—and, with a view to their amendment, surely they may—the task could hardly be executed with a chaster and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... had long since amused Lady Martin's large circle of acquaintances; and although no one had ventured to breathe a word before either Owen Rose or his wife, it was hardly surprising that Toni came to be considered rather amusingly unsophisticated; so that the slightest gaucherie into which the unconscious Toni was betrayed during those first weeks of her introduction into the society of the district was eagerly noted and joyfully magnified in a ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... floor space and ventilation, and hints in conclusion that only old fogies and dullards, unable to keep pace with the times, fail to appreciate the charm of such structures in a city. One of the “points” this writer makes is the quality of air enjoyed by tenants, amusingly oblivious of the fact that at least three façades of each tall building will see the day only so long as the proprietors of adjacent land are too poor or too busy to construct ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... Amusingly enough, I didn't actually know at the time that it meant "What's the matter?" I had an idea it was a liberal translation of "Who's looney now?" And that seemed ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... and never did Prince Hohenloe, himself, perform a miracle more cleverly; for she bounced almost as high as the ceiling, and flounced about the room, as well and as actively as ever she did, with a countenance in which shame, anger, and a great portion of natural humour were so amusingly blended, that I was tempted to provoke her still further by a salute. Having thus satisfied the mother that I had been the means of restoring her daughter to her usual state of health, she thought it prudent to put the best face upon it, and, therefore, invited ...
— Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands - from 1809 to 1815 • Captain J. Kincaid
... as a strange and frightful exception darkly demanded by the gods. History says nothing; and legends all say that the earth was kinder in its earliest time. There is no tradition of progress; but the whole human race has a tradition of the Fall. Amusingly enough, indeed, the very dissemination of this idea is used against its authenticity. Learned men literally say that this pre-historic calamity cannot be true because every race of mankind remembers it. I cannot keep pace with ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... [Footnote 8: Often amusingly illustrated, M.E., p. 390. A translation into Japanese of Goethe's Reynard the Fox is among the popular works of the day. "Strange to say, however, the Japanese lose much of the exquisite humor of this satire in their sympathy with the woes of the maltreated wolf."—The Japan Mail. This sympathy ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... amusingly he tells about the way he learned! Here, just listen. Well, and how did you ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... fundamental principle of the law of evidence ever since the time of Charles II. To this he adds a note, with all due gravity: "The rule excluding heresay evidence, or rather the mode in which that rule is frequently misunderstood in Courts of Justice, is amusingly caricatured by Mr. Dickens in his report of the case of Bardell v. Pickwick, ...
— Bardell v. Pickwick • Percy Fitzgerald
... can allow no doleful faces to-day. It is a happy day for me, for once more I have two sons to love and be proud of. There goes the bell, and we must go in to tea and to entertain the lovers. Don't be too severe, darling, for they are very new and most amusingly self-conscious. I am sure poor dear Esther will feel it quite ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... through the indiscriminate volubility of his host who, when his feelings had been injured, was amusingly naive for such ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... require a volume to report the conversation which enlivened the many days' journey down the Ohio and the Mississippi. The doctor chirruped constantly. He knew a little of everything, and talked much of nothing, very amusingly. Often he sang French songs, often played dance tunes on the violin, now and then took an ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... perfectly-fitting lemon-colored kid glove.[22] As the trapper stood there in his grotesque rags and odds and ends of apparel, his gentlemanliness of deportment brought into relief the innate vulgarity of a rich parvenu. Mr. Fodder rattled so amusingly as we drove away that I never realized that my Rocky Mountain life was at an end, not even when I saw "Mountain Jim," with his golden hair yellow in the sunshine, slowly leading the beautiful mare over the snowy Plains back to Estes Park, equipped ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... respect to the Hana no Gosho, as the shogun was called. So close were the relations that for ceremonial purposes at the Bakufu, it was customary to employ Court officials, and witty writers of the time discourse amusingly on the often clumsy efforts made by the courtiers to ape the customs and acquire the dialects ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... free communion of tongue amongst guests at dinner, forms an agreeable episode in the life of him whom education and English reserve have inured, without ever reconciling, to a different state of things at home. The difference of the English and French character peeps out amusingly at this critical time of the day; when, oh! commend us to a Frenchman's vanity, however grotesque it may sometimes be, rather than to our own reserve, shyness, formality, or under whatever other name we please to designate, and seek ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... felt instinctively the change in Neal. Perhaps she was conscious of her aunt's keen laughing eyes. Who can tell how a girl first becomes conscious of the fact that a young man loves her? The Comtesse also welcomed Neal. She set herself to please and flatter him. At dinner she talked brightly and amusingly. It seemed to Neal that she talked brilliantly. She told stories of the old French life. She related her recent experiences of English society. She rallied Lord Dunseveric on his grave dignity of manner. She drew laughter again and again from Una and Maurice. But she addressed herself most ...
— The Northern Iron - 1907 • George A. Birmingham
... of it branded. He hadn't so much minded the epithets Mrs. Folliott had applied, for they were to the appropriator of her securities. As the appropriator of his own he didn't so much want to brand him as—just more "amusingly" even, if one would.—to make out, perhaps, with intelligent help, how such a man, in such a relation, could come to tread such a path: which was exactly the interesting light that Winch's curiosity and sympathy were there to assist him to. He pleaded at any rate immediately his advertising ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... she's troublesome to manage. She is so unusually timid, poor creature, so prone to give way to despair when things look bad, yet so sweetly apt to bound into high spirits when things are looking hopeful,—and withal, so amusingly garrulous!" ...
— The Coxswain's Bride - also, Jack Frost and Sons; and, A Double Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... toward error is greater still when it comes to finding the central thought for a portion of text. This was once amusingly illustrated by a class composed only of the principals and high-school teachers in a county institute, some seventy-five persons in all. The text under discussion was the first chapter of Professor James's well- known book, Talks to Teachers. The ...
— How To Study and Teaching How To Study • F. M. McMurry
... his hand, but she refused it angrily. She stood, biting her lip, tapping her foot, her head averted, upon the kerb; her attitude of pique was amusingly familiar to him; often it had gained for her the gratification of some petulant desire; but now all that he wanted was to hurry back to ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... object of jealousy to all these persons. After a time she and her brother received no invitations, but they still persisted in paying evening visits. Satirical persons made fun of them,—not spitefully, but amusingly; inveigling them to talk absurdly about the eggs in their cornice, and their wonderful cellar of wine, the like of ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... and the proof of it is that so many of them manage to keep it whole to an advanced age. You find them in mysterious nooks of islands and continents, mostly red-nosed and watery-eyed, and not even amusingly boastful. There is nothing more futile under the sun than a mere adventurer. He might have loved at one time—which would have been a saving grace. I mean loved adventure for itself. But if so, ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... olden times. This was published in Paris and the French government, tendered him the decoration of the legion of honor which, however, he refused very politely, explaining that he never wore a frock coat! The episode ends amusingly with the publisher, a Swede, receiving the decoration instead. In 1884 the first volume of his famous short stories, called "Marriages" appeared. It was aimed at the cult that had sprung up from Ibsen's "A ...
— Plays: The Father; Countess Julie; The Outlaw; The Stronger • August Strindberg
... without any marked event, but always agreeably; new people came, making a pleasant variety in the society, which, though still refined, was beginning to be very mixed, as was amusingly seen at Torlonia's balls and tableaux, where many of the guests formed a singular contrast with the beautiful Princess, who was of the historical family of the Colonnas. I was often ashamed of my countrymen, who, all the while ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... lessons the Indian never had and never respected. Beside these valuable lessons the negro was taught the fundamental principles of Christianity and at the opening of the war nearly every negro belonged to some church. Their preachers used to get their dictionary and Bible very amusingly mixed at times. Elder Barton exhorting his hearers said: "Paul may plant and Apolinarus water, but if you keeps on tradin' off your birthright for a pot of Messapotamia you'se gwine to git lost. You may go ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... that this young man should be described. He was the type usually called healthy and "clean-minded." He loved all sports and all kinds of exercise, particularly walking, and he could talk about these out-of-door occupations fairly amusingly. He was fair, blue-eyed, clean-shaven, and healthy-looking, and he believed in the possibility of being a "pal" to a girl,—particularly if she happened to be a flapper. ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... The Hellenising fashion is amusingly exemplified in the Grecising of the Jewish names; e.g., Alcimus Eljakim, Jason Jesus, ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... who was in many respects very different from all the others. I think her age must have been at least thirty-five. I did not ask if it were so; and as she never mentioned it herself, that circumstance was hint enough for me to remain silent. I never could understand why so many women are so amusingly anxious to conceal their age, sometimes becoming quite affronted when even a conjecture is hazarded on the subject. This lady was unmarried; perhaps that may have been one reason for her unwillingness to speak of her age. But was not I ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... inwardly. How amusingly Elly had acquired as only a child could acquire an accent, the exact astringent, controlled brevity ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... first meeting is amusingly given in Miss Brightwell's memoirs. It was at an evening party. Some of those present were eagerly expecting the arrival of Miss Alderson, but the evening was wearing away and still she did not appear; 'at length the door was flung open, ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... was, they were able to take their departure through the main entrance with some show of dignity, and not in a less imposing manner (as the Committee—Cook's Gallery near the Dining-rooms—ho! ho! ho! ha! ha! ha!—would probably and amusingly suggest), by ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 100, May 9, 1891 • Various
... William as Emperor are frequent and full, but he has little to say about his character as Prince William beyond noting, when there was some talk of the Prince directly succeeding Emperor William, that he was "too young." On an occasion subsequently Prince Hohenlohe amusingly notes that the Emperor shook hands with him until his fingers "nearly cracked." This is still a genial ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... Thence he went to the Edinburgh Academy, where he was the classmate of Tait and Clerk Maxwell, bore away many prizes, and was once unjustly flogged by Rector Williams. He used to insist that all his bad schoolfellows had died early, a belief amusingly characteristic of the man's consistent optimism. In 1846 the mother and son proceeded to Frankfort-on-the-Main, where they were soon joined by the father, now reduced to inaction and to play something ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... this scene, which Europe related far more amusingly than it can be written, because she told it with much mimicry, Carlos and ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... speakers it is really no more consonantal than if it came from the beaks of birds. They do not lisp the soft c or the z, as the Castilians do, but hiss them, and lisp the s instead, as the reader will find amusingly noted in the Sevillian chapters of The Sister of San Sulpice, which are the most charming chapters of that most charming novel. At the stations there were sometimes girls and sometimes boys with water for sale from ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... The heroic couplet, which was the last word in poetical expression in the age of Queen Anne, we consider to-day as little more than a mechanical jingle. Last year's fashions in dress, which seemed at the time to have their merits, are this year amusingly grotesque. In our judgment of beauty, therefore, allowance must be made for standards which merely are imposed upon us from without. It is necessary to distinguish between a formula and the reality. As far as possible ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... glowed with a tender flush of scarlet, like a rose bursting into blossom; a garland of lilies-of-the-valley confined the scattered curls of her small, round head,—and two peacock feathers quivered amusingly, like the feelers of a butterfly, above the fair, ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... brattling voice might have been heard incessantly; and he was leaping about with the utmost activity, multiplying himself, after the manner of great commanders, as if his universal presence and supervision were of the last necessity. His commands were rather amusingly inconsistent; for when he saw that the men would not do as he told them, he wisely accommodated himself to circumstances, and with the utmost vehemence ordered them to do precisely that which they were at the time engaged upon, no doubt recollecting ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... Jackson, Mr. Clay was again in opposition to the administration; and the General of course concluded, that the Speaker designed, in ruining him, merely to further his own political schemes. How he boiled with fury against Mr. Clay, his published letters amusingly attest. "The hypocrisy and baseness of Clay," wrote the General, "in pretending friendship to me, and endeavoring to crush the Executive through me, makes ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... 411, is a lampoon on Euripides. That poet with his kinsman Mnesilochus calls at the house of Agathon, a brother tragedian whose style is amusingly parodied. Euripides informs him that the women intend to hold a meeting to destroy him for libel; they are celebrating the feast of the Thesmophoria. As Agathon refuses an invitation to go disguised and defend ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... "What an amusingly superb affair!" Basil cried as they glanced through an open window down the long vista of the saloon. "Good heavens! Isabel, does it take all this to get us plain republicans to Albany in comfort and safety, or are we really a nation of princes in disguise? Well, I shall never ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... in this chapter is concerned, I have only one work to recommend, but it is an excellent one: I mean a poetical epistle in terzo rimo by the famous painter Bronzino, entitled "De' Romori: a Messer Luca Martini" It describes fully and amusingly the torture to which one is put by the many kinds of noises of a small Italian town. It is written in tragicomic style. This epistle is to be found in Opere burlesche del Berni, Aretino ed altri, vol. ii. p. 258, apparently published in Utrecht ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... converted, my wife rides him now, and he is as steady as a doctor's cob; Tifaga Jack, a circus horse, my mother's piebald, bought from a passing circus; Belle's mare, now in childbed or next door, confound the slut! Musu—amusingly translated the other day "don't want to," literally cross, but always in the sense of stubbornness and resistance—my wife's little dark-brown mare, with a white star on her forehead, whom I have been riding of late to steady her—she has no vices, but is unused, skittish ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of streets did not cut this block of houses into too disproportionate slices. The forty-two colleges were scattered about in a fairly equal manner, and there were some everywhere. The amusingly varied crests of these beautiful edifices were the product of the same art as the simple roofs which they overshot, and were, actually, only a multiplication of the square or the cube of the same ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... good covering help wonderfully to keep voices pitched low. I have seen this illustrated almost amusingly in Newark, where frequent visits of large classes were made from the schools to the public library. The tramp of forty or fifty pairs of feet in the marble corridors made such a noise that the legitimate questions and answers of children and librarian had to be given in tones to ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... Society showed no puling regret, no backward longings after echoing colleges, lost dons and the scouts that are no more. He was quite at his ease, and displayed none of the high-pitched contempt of Piccadilly that is often so amusingly characteristic of the young gentlemen accustomed ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... proximity was evident to the organs of smell. Several being away at their fishing places, there were only about a dozen men and boys and rather more women and girls with an extra sprinkling of lively and healthy-looking babies. Most were characterized by an air of independence amusingly illustrated at the close by the oldest man, who asked aloud when the visitor from London was going to speak ...
— With the Harmony to Labrador - Notes Of A Visit To The Moravian Mission Stations On The North-East - Coast Of Labrador • Benjamin La Trobe
... escorted us up the rugged street to the palais de justice. They all seemed to be affected with the spirit of fear, except our partisans, who were in a state of exultation from the like cause. Two individuals in particular were amusingly and palpably possessed with the spirit of triumph, and they were the two attendants of the vice-consul. These men were worthy of notice on other accounts, but singularly remarkable in respect of the effectual manner in which they seemed to have divested themselves of national prejudices. They were ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... the whole appearance had risen to the surface, pleasant pretexts, oh certainly pleasant, as pleasant as Amerigo in particular could make them, for associated undertakings, quite for shared adventures, for its always turning out, amusingly, that they wanted to do very much the same thing at the same time and in the same way. Funny all this was, to some extent, in the light of the fact that the father and daughter, for so long, had expressed ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... style of speaking the lady took off very amusingly was one who would scarcely object to suffer by the side of Lord Byron—I mean Lamartine, who had visited her in the course of his travels. The peculiarity which attracted her ridicule was an over-refinement of manner: according ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... excuse the savage if he regard it as another proof of a distinct personality in plant life. Thus, some years ago, a correspondent of the Botanical Register, describing the toad orchis (Megaclinium bufo), amusingly spoke as follows of its eccentric movements: "Let the reader imagine a green snake to be pressed flat like a dried flower, and then to have a road of toads, or some such speckled reptiles, drawn up along the middle in single file, their backs set up, their forelegs sprawling ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... awfully sweet of her. Evidently she'd been bullied about her unseemly behaviour when she was small, till you, and I, and Brockhurst, had been made into a perfect bugbear. She's quite amusingly afraid of you still. But she's no notion what really happened. Of course she can't have, or she could not have mentioned the subject to me." Richard shrugged his shoulders. "Obviously it ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... age, Montaigne was a gay, cheerful, untiring traveller, always eager to be going on, delighted with every place he visited, and yet anxious for constant change of scene and for new experience. To be amusingly and simply selfish is ever part of the charm of Montaigne. He adds to his reader's pleasure in life by the keenness with which he relished his own existence, and savoured every little incident as a man relishes the bouquet of wine. Without selfishness, how can this be managed? and without ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... welfare of the sufferers. He made it a rule to inspect the hospitals himself, and he directed a daily visit by a captain and by the surgeons of the ships from which patients were sent, thus keeping the sick in touch with those they knew, and who had in them a personal interest. An odd provision, amusingly illustrative of the obverse side of the admiral's character, was that the visiting captain should be accompanied by a boatswain's mate, the functionary charged with administering floggings, and, "if they find the patients do not conduct themselves properly and orderly, they are to punish them agreeably ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... the requirements of a profession is oftentimes most amusingly erroneous. We remember a father who told us that he was quite certain that his son was born to be a ruler of men. When we asked why, he told us in all seriousness that from early childhood his boy's blood boiled with indignation against people who had committed indignities upon kings and princes. ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... deceptively serious difficulty. It is happily to be solved as a result of the wives' preceding action. This difficulty and this solution at this final stage of the plot constitute a little character play that is an epitome of the action. The whole is the more happily and amusingly solved that the Audience is wise and the characters still in ...
— Shakespeare Study Programs; The Comedies • Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke
... some of the things he had learned from Bemis. But somehow he found himself working beside McCabe, and when the fence had been put up again and they started home, it was Slim who rode beside him, chatting volubly and amusingly, but sticking ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... would take care to have more light, a more equal distribution of heat, and a more general care for protection and comfort, because these things tend to health and long life. But no beauty. He described to me amusingly the disgust he had experienced in a costly New York dwelling, where he saw carpets nailed down on the floor, "of course with piles of dust beneath, never swept away, and of which I had to breathe;" and with heavy picture-frames hung against the walls, ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... that I had left out the profanity. He wrote back: "Mrs. Clemens opened that proof, and lit into the room with danger in her eye. What profanity? You see, when I read the manuscript to her I skipped that." It was part of his joke to pretend a violence in that gentlest creature which the more amusingly realized the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... own house in the principal street, near the Governor's. Ivan Petrovitch Turkin himself—a stout, handsome, dark man with whiskers—used to get up amateur performances for benevolent objects, and used to take the part of an elderly general and cough very amusingly. He knew a number of anecdotes, charades, proverbs, and was fond of being humorous and witty, and he always wore an expression from which it was impossible to tell whether he were joking or in earnest. His wife, Vera Iosifovna—a thin, ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... and elsewhere they made fun of what they called his craze for scribbling. He himself, in his Retractations, is startled by the number of his works. He turns over the Scripture saying which the Donatists amusingly opposed to him: Vae mullum loquentibus—"Woe unto them of many words." But calling God to witness, he says to Him: Vae tacentibus de te—"Woe unto those who keep silent upon Thee." In the eyes of Augustin, the conditions were such that silence would have been cowardly. And ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... except that the table d'hote where they had meant to dine was in that direction; they had heard of it as an amusingly harmless French place, and they were fond of such ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... in bed—a regal bed, from a dismantled Italian palace —delving through a copy of "Huckleberry Finn," in search of a paragraph concerning which some unknown correspondent had inquired. He pushed the cigars toward me, commenting amusingly on this correspondent and on letter-writing in general. By and by, when there came a lull, I told him what so many thousands had told him before—what his work had meant to me, so long ago, and recalled my childish impressions of that large ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... of those men who, like women, can set up the sympathetic flow and make a fellow give himself away without realising what he is doing. So there sat our friend Aaron, amusingly unbosoming himself of all his history and experiences, drawn out by the arch, subtle attentiveness of the handsome Francis. Angus listened, too, with pleased amusedness on his pale, emaciated face, pursing his shrunken jaw. And Aaron sipped various glasses of the liqueur, ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... third places, they feared their quarrelsome, bullying habits—be it remembered that the crowds to California were of the lowest sorts, many of whom have since fertilised Cuban and Nicaraguan soil—and dreaded their schemes for annexation. To such an extent was this amusingly carried, that when the American Railway Company took possession of Navy Bay, and christened it Aspinwall, after the name of their Chairman, the native authorities refused to recognise their right ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... almost disbelieved at soul in its success. But contrary to his expectation, the business could not have adjusted itself better. The proprietress of an establishment (this was in Kharkov) willingly met his proposition half-way. She had known long and well Simon Yakovlevich, who played amusingly on the piano, danced splendidly, and set the whole drawing room laughing with his pranks; but chiefly, could, with unusually unabashed dexterity, make any carousing party "shell out the coin." It only remained to convince the mate of his life, and this ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin |
