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More "Mirth" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Quickly mirth of Pocahontas died away, And her lightning glance at once did stray Meeting gaze direct and true, yet fond withal, Of those eyes whose strange, mysterious power cast Spell upon her heart, that thrilled to swift response. Dark eyes softened, flashed again with sudden fire, Pocahontas stood entranced, ...
— Pocahontas. - A Poem • Virginia Carter Castleman
... one mad little, glad little trill. Never had the old gray-green house among its enfolding orchards known a blither, merrier afternoon. All the old jests and quips that must have done duty at weddings since Eden were served up, and seemed as new and brilliant and mirth-provoking as if they had never been uttered before. Laughter and joy had their way; and when Anne and Gilbert left to catch the Carmody train, with Paul as driver, the twins were ready with rice and old shoes, ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... jest, were thrown The half-gnaw'd rib, and marrow bone: Or listen'd all, in grim delight. While Scalds yell'd out the joys of fight. Then forth, in frenzy, would they hie, While wildly-loose their red locks fly, And dancing round the blazing pile, They make such barbarous mirth the while, As best might to the mind recall The boisterous joys ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... a heifer cow does her calf." Roberts laughed softly, as though from some fund of inner mirth. "He's kinda hopin' you'll prove stubborn so as to give him a chance to come ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... strides of old age knocking daily at our door, and threateningly telling us, we are not only mortal, but must expect ere long to take our leave of our ancient cottage, and lie down in our last dormitory. Pray pardon my neglect to answer yours: let us hear sooner from you, to augment the mirth of the Christmas holidays. Wishing you all the pleasures of the approaching season, I am, dear Son, with ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... taken a dozen steps, however, before I was overtaken. My companion of a few minutes before was again by my side. All traces of his recent preoccupation seemed to have vanished. He was smoking a fresh cigarette, and his bright, deep-set eyes were lit with gentle mirth. ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... chuckle, more expressive of malignity than mirth, the man turned himself round, applied vigorously to his pipe, and sank into a silence which, as mile after mile glided past the wheels, he did not seem disposed to break. Neither was Philip inclined to be communicative. Considerations for his ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the monarch, and his commands were gladly obeyed. Telemachos and the servants went their way to the baths and arrayed themselves in splendid clothing. The bard took his harp and woke the pleasing strains, and the palace halls resounded with mirth and dancing. ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer
... one fond heart! I talk of things that are not; and if prayers By night and day availed from my weak lips, Then should they never be! till I was gone, Before the friends I loved, to my long home. Oh pardon me, if e'er I say too much; my mind Too often strangely turns to ribald mirth, As though I had no doubt nor hope beyond— Or brooding melancholy cloys my soul With thoughts of days misspent, of wasted time And bitter feelings swallowed up in jests. Then strange and fearful thoughts flit o'er my brain By indistinctness made ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley
... intended to get the silver if it took the whole night, and nothing could have pleased me more. I lay in my comfortable bed fairly shaking with suppressed laughter, and had to stuff a corner of a pillow in my mouth to smother the sound of my mirth. I did not allow the least pity for the unfortunate fellow to ...
— The Water Goats and Other Troubles • Ellis Parker Butler
... that so much of the good music of Germany is performed in the beer-gardens. The too free use of the glass and the pipe cannot tend to make the nation strong for the future; and one cannot long be charmed with the music and mirth of such places without fearing for ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... rest—and what if thou withdraw Unheeded by the living—and no friend Take note of thy departure? All that breathe Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care Plod on, and each one as before will chase His favorite phantom; yet all these shall leave Their mirth and their employment, and shall come And make their bed with thee. As the long train Of ages glide away, the sons of men, The youth in life's green spring, and he who goes In the full strength of years, ...
— Graded Memory Selections • Various
... knew him for a sluggard in the morning; but, as it drew on towards noon, I lost my patience. To say the truth, I had promised myself to break my fast in the pavilion, and hunger began to prick me sharply. It was a pity to let the opportunity go by without some cause for mirth; but the grosser appetite prevailed, and I relinquished my jest with regret, and sallied from ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... By this time they had got round to the steps leading from the garden to the house. "I think I'll go in, Mr. Poojean." She did go in, and Mr. Poojean was left looking at the moon all alone, as though he had separated himself from all mirth and society for that melancholy but pleasing occupation. He stood there gazing upwards with his thumbs beneath his waistcoat. "Grand,—is it not?" he said to the first ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... ask'd it, ever thinking thee Not mortal, but of heavenly progeny, As still I do. Hast any mortal name, Fit appellation for this dazzling frame? Or friends or kinsfolk on the citied earth, 90 To share our marriage feast and nuptial mirth?" "I have no friends," said Lamia, "no, not one; My presence in wide Corinth hardly known: My parents' bones are in their dusty urns Sepulchred, where no kindled incense burns, Seeing all their luckless race are dead, save me, And I neglect ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... marched to Silchester, and held there his husting of all his British thanes, all the Britons came to the meeting, and took Constantin the noble, and made him king of Britain— much was then the mirth that was among men. And afterwards they gave him a wife, one wondrous fair, born of the highest, of Britain the best of all. By this noble wife Constantin had in this land three little sons. The first son had well nigh his father's name; Constantin ...
— Brut • Layamon
... flowers, fresh flowers for the bride to wear; They were born to blush in her shining hair; She's leaving the home of her childhood's mirth; She hath bid farewell to her father's hearth; Her place is now by another's side; Bring flowers for the locks of the ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley
... could rise from her bed, meet her parents and her neighbours with her usual smile of vivacity, and voice of mirth, was impossible: to leave her bed at all, to creep downstairs, and reply in a faint, broken voice to questions asked, were, in her state of mind, mighty efforts; and they were all to which her struggles could ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... medley of luxury and vice, of refinement and cruelty, recalled the days of Imperial Rome. But the balmy breath of these Southern climes, the soft luxuriant spell of blue seas and groves of palm and cassia, sank deep into the child's being, and something of the fire and passion, the mirth and gaiety, of the dwellers in this delicious land passed into her soul, and helped to mould her nature during these years that she spent far from mother and sister at ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... now her own. But she told herself that that blackness was an injury to her, and not a benefit, and that it had now become a duty to her for his sake, if not for her own to dispel its shadows rather than encourage them. She would go down to him full of joy, though not full of mirth, and would confess to him frankly, that in receiving the assurance of his love, she had received everything that had seemed to have any value for ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... vaguely conjecturing their date, their circumstances; some of them may have dwelt in the old time on this very spot of ground now covered by the Museum. Like other people who grow too rich and comfortable, the citizens of Tarentum loved mirth and mockery; their Greek theatre was remarkable for irreverent farce, for parodies of the great drama of Athens. And here is testimony to the fact: all manner of comic masks, of grotesque visages; mouths distorted into impossible ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... Zashue could not control his mirth at the sight of the men in such guise; he broke out in a ringing laugh, pointed at them, and shouted, "Puyatye!" then to ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... all that day resounded with roars of laughter; and the only thoroughly grave man on the ground was he who occasioned the mirth of all ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... an entirely different matter. The moment you begin to "paddle your own canoe," lively and—to the lookers-on—mirth-provoking exercises ensue. When you stick your hand under to make a stroke your feet decline to stay anywhere but on top; and when, after an exciting tussle with your refractory pedal extremities, you again get them beneath the surface, your hands fly out with the splash ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... lay back in her steamer chair, her hand abandoned to him. And when her mirth had passed a slight sense of fatigue left her silent, inert, staring ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... contestants they were too intent upon the race to perceive the strange turn of affairs until the wild mirth upon the "mainland" apprised them of it. They must have looked funny enough from the shore frantically pursuing the fugitive turning post, and the unhallowed joy of the spectators was only increased by Pee-wee's heroic efforts in the emergency ...
— Pee-Wee Harris Adrift • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... then I was fit for any drawing-room. I should like you to tell me how many fathers, lay and clerical, go upstairs every day with a face like a lobster and cod's eyes—and are dull, upon the back of it—not even mirth for the money! No, if that's what she runs for, all I ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... gladness lurks a fear, In all her mirth there breathes a sigh, So soon her pretty flowers are gone— And ah! she is too young ...
— The Lonely Dancer and Other Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... for us. One seems to see the picture of the unknown friend who has charmed us so long—charmed away dull hours, created neighbours and companions for us in lonely places, conferring happiness and harmless mirth upon generations to come. One can picture her as she sits erect, with her long and graceful figure, her full round face, her bright eyes cast down,—Jane Austen, 'the woman of whom England is justly proud'—whose method generous Macaulay has placed near Shakespeare. ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... drop my slippers in the sink And leave them there to soak. That's very laughable, you think But I can't see the joke You take my hat outdoors with you And fill it full of earth; You seem to think that's witty, too, But I'm not moved to mirth. ...
— Bib Ballads • Ring W. Lardner
... that night, and there was much mirth in the little house, such mirth as there had not been since Henri went away. The Belgians called it a bal masque, and putting them on bowed before one another and requested dances, and even flirted coyly with each other over their ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Maria, thy mirth was away When Christ on cross thy Son did die Full dolefully on Good Friday, That many a mother's son it sye. His blood us brought from care and strife, His watery wounds us wisshe from woe. The third day from ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... the poor bare bipes implumis, a forked creature, waiting to be forked supererogatively; ay, and risibilis to boot, if ever all concomitants of the hearty old festival were properly provocative of decent mirth. Thus then return we to our muttons, and time enough, quotha: literary pundit, (whose is the notable saying?) thy definition is bomb-proof, thy fancy unscaleable, thy thought too deep for undermining; that notion is at the head of the poll, a candidate ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... beyond the force Of the most forward soules; all must submit Untill they reach these Mysteries of Wit. The Intellectuall Language here's exprest, Admir'd in better times, and dares the Test Of Ours; for from Wit, Sweetnesse, Mirth, and Sence, This Volume springs a new ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher in Ten Volumes - Volume I. • Beaumont and Fletcher
... cuddle doon at nicht. Wi' mirth that's dear to me; But sune the big warl's cark an' care Will quaten doon their glee. Yet come what will to ilka ane May He who sits aboon, Aye whisper, though their pows be bauld, "Oh, bairnies, ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... time mostly in my room. They did not, of course, invite me to join parties, but they would often urge me to join a few friends in their own parlor; but I always replied that my deep mourning must be my excuse. I had no taste for company or mirth. ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... at the serious face upon the youngster, but the conviction which he threw into his words choked my mirth. Whether it was the little brush with the Kanaka or the gloomy forebodings of the boy I couldn't tell, but I felt a trifle anxious after my ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... of pure poetic fancy in each of the tales, and the sunbeams here invested with life and tiny human forms, are lovable and mirth-provoking imps.... The children, too, are real children, and there is no mawkish sentimentality, but an unforced, tender pathos in the story of little Tom Riley, who was 'mos twelve,' but who had a heart big enough for a man, and so skilfully is it told that a child may ...
— The Angel of the Tenement • George Madden Martin
... her face in her hands. "And in that dress!" she ejaculated in the midst of her mirth. But she suddenly ceased laughing and ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... letters. "Should we wonder," he writes, "if carpenters were to remonstrate that since the Peace there is no demand for wooden legs?" The wags of the period could not allow the opportunity to pass without attempting to provoke more mirth out of the matter, and a petition was published purporting to come from the body-carpenters imploring his Majesty to wear a wooden leg, and to enjoin his servants to appear in his royal presence ...
— At the Sign of the Barber's Pole - Studies In Hirsute History • William Andrews
... poor tireman, rail the musick out of tune, and sweat for every venial trespass we commit as some author would." While, in the Induction to his "Staple of News," Jonson has clearly portrayed himself. "Yonder he is," says Mirth, in reply to some remark touching the poet of the performance, "within—I was in the tiring-house awhile, to see the actors dressed—rolling himself up and down like a tun in the midst of them ... never ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... comic paper is Life, which is modelled on the lines of the Muenchener Fliegende Blaetter, perhaps the funniest and most mirth-provoking of all professedly humorous weeklies. Among the most attractive features are the graceful and dignified drawings of Mr. Charles Dana Gibson, who has in its pages done for American society what Mr. Du Maurier has done for England by his scenes in Punch; the ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... by fits of deep melancholy. One day he was walking with a lady, who was also subject to depression of spirits, and he said to her: "Tell me why I am like a Jew?" She could not answer and he replied: "Because I am sad-you-see" Tears and mirth dwelt very closely together in his keen, fervid, sensitive spirit. It is remarkable that one who devoted himself so assiduously to his exacting profession should have been able to master such an immense amount of miscellaneous reading, and to have won such a splendid name in ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... robust man might face with calm valiancy if he could be spared the cheering influence of the homely scene or the unchanged presence of his familiars and friends. I have sat in companies and put on an affected mirth, and laughed and sung with the most buoyant of all around, and yet ever and anon I chilled at the intruding notion ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... interest, the scandal continued to increase. The draughts of liquor were repeated with much frequency; the tongue unloosed itself; oaths mingled themselves with jests, while loud laughter made the edifice to tremble. The vow of poverty did not escape from the sacrilegious mirth. One of the San Franciscans, who had often touched money with his fingers and placed it on the table, when he gained any considerable sum, in order to divert the company, opened his broad sleeve, and with the hem he swept the table ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... was carried out with tremendous enthusiasm. The girl chums were applauded to the echo for their capable handling of the honors assigned them. Nora in particular rose to heights of fame, her clever grinds provoking wholesale mirth. ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... course not, old chap," answered Jack, manfully struggling to suppress his mirth; "awfully annoying it must have been, I'm sure. ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... porcupig." How the frisking red rogue seemed to enjoy what he had found! He looked in at the door and snickered, then in at the window, then peeked down from between the rafters and cachinnated till his sides must have ached; then struck an attitude upon the chimney, and fairly squealed with mirth and ridicule. In fact, he grew so obstreperous, and so disturbed our repose, that we had to "shoo" him away with one of our boots. He declared most plainly that he had never before seen so preposterous a figure as we cut lying there in the corner ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... But the mirth passed away directly, for the matter was too serious, and he now lay with knitted brows, listening to his cousin's breathing, ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... festival of wild mirth in the Middle Ages, held on 1st January, in which the Ass of Scripture celebrity played a chief part, and in which many of the rites and ceremonies ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... What it was she failed to imagine, but it dawned upon her gradually that people were looking her way. Knots of the older students were watching her; bewildered newcomers were trying, like herself, to discover the cause of mirth. At first she smiled sympathetically; then suddenly, with a thrill of mortification, she perceived that she was ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... ill, young 'uns," he said. "But them Indians 'ud be pretty sick if they knowed what they run from. That there object cavortin' round that there bonfire is old Sanchez, and he's drunk. Oh, Lord!" And once more Hill gave way to mirth. ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton
... it is necessary to practice before the mirror in order to see that this facial expression is present and that it is not exaggerated; that the face is not contorted by lines of suffering or by the lines of mirth. ...
— Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing • Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini
... hilarity prevailed in the camp, so different from the prison of the krepost, where the daily drill, the appointed roll of the drum, and the enforced dance and song but poorly relieved the still, dull monotony. But the mirth was often ill-timed; for when refreshed by the evening's pottage and his cup of wodka, the Cossack sat carolling a ditty or meditating on the charms of the fair one left behind on the Don, suddenly a ball from the rifle ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... village, and commenced their search for a cottage, that would afford a night's lodging. In several, which they entered, ignorance, poverty, and mirth seemed equally to prevail; and the owners eyed St. Aubert with a mixture of curiosity and timidity. Nothing like a bed could be found, and he had ceased to enquire for one, when Emily joined him, who observed the languor of her father's countenance, and lamented, that ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... gave, as we went along, The faith that to-day we keep; And those April days were for mirth and song, While the nights ...
— The Miracle and Other Poems • Virna Sheard
... his true soul hath taught him, which hath come to him from his noble sires. Darken not thou the light of one who springeth from the same stock of Kallianax. Surely with the joys of Eratidai the whole city maketh mirth. But the varying breezes even at the same point of time speed each upon their ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar
... new soft broom. Sometimes she would shy things at me—but not often. There seemed always laughter round and about her—all three of us would share hysterics at times—and on one occasion the two of them came home from church shockingly ashamed of themselves, because of a storm of mirth during the sermon. The vicar, it seems, had tried to blow his nose with a black glove as well as the customary pocket-handkerchief. And afterwards she had picked up her own glove by the finger, and looking innocently but intently sideways, had suddenly by this ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... m., joyous carrying-on in social entertainment, mirth, social gaiety: acc. sg. ...
— Beowulf • James A. Harrison and Robert Sharp, eds.
... was in his diversions we know not; here was no room for such things. It was no time for mirth. Neither can I say I ever saw him smile. Those who speak so positively of his being like King James the Seventh, must excuse me for saying that it seems to say they either never saw this person or never saw King James the Seventh; and ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... me more, than to see Men Laugh so freely at a Comedy, and yet account it a silly weakness to Weep at a Tragedy. For is it less natural for a Man's Heart to relent upon a Scene of Pity, than to be transported with Joy upon one of Mirth and Humour? Or is it only the alteration of the Features of one's Face that makes us forbear Crying? But this alteration is undoubtedly as great in an immoderate Laughter, as in a most desperate Grief; and good Breeding teaches us to avoid the one as well as the other, ...
— The Present State of Wit (1711) - In A Letter To A Friend In The Country • John Gay
... the 7,800th Time, by way of Mirth-Provoking Rejoinder, Zendavesta kicked Zoroaster in the Stomach, after which the Slap-Stick was introduced ...
— Fables in Slang • George Ade
... absurd in the old gentleman's appearance and method of address, that Miss Ogilvy, who had a sense of humour, was obliged to turn away to hide her mirth. Recovering, ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... are an inch taller," she admitted, with mock reluctance. And then she said, with a ripple of mirth: "You are taller than I am—I give up; I ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... transition, now of foolish persons and now of real lunatics. They are happiest of all, he makes Stultitia say: they are not frightened by spectres and apparitions; they are not tortured by the fear of impending calamities; everywhere they bring mirth, jests, frolic and laughter. Evidently he here means harmless imbeciles, who, indeed, were often used as jesters. This identification of denseness and insanity is kept up, however, like the confusion of the comic and the simply ridiculous, and all this is well calculated to make us feel how wide ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... the peripatetic definition, is to be found in energy; it accords, therefore, with the nature and etymology of the drama, which is, in truth, not less natural than agreeable. Its grand divisions correspond, moreover, with those of time; the contemplation of the present is Comedy—mirth for the most part being connected with the present only—and the past and the future are the dominions ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction, No. 391 - Vol. 14, No. 391, Saturday, September 26, 1829 • Various
... At meals the aunt assigned the child her coarse food without a word, and on the way to chapel and back there had been a stony silence between them. It was evident, even to his dull mind, that the girl was white and thin, and that between her wild temper and mischief and the mirth of other children there was a great difference. Moreover, certain passages in the chapel prayers that morning had come home sharply to a mind whereof the only definite gift was a true religious sensitiveness. The text of the sermon especially—'Whoso loveth not his brother, whom he hath seen, ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... too much. I am neither melancholy, nor morose, nor austere, nor distant, nor reserved, nor sullen. I am always cheerful, ready and eager to join in any merriment. I am not clouded with sadness, nor absent in mind, nor deficient in action. No; take me when I am most foolish at home and extend mirth into childishness; yet all the time I am shuddering at myself.' There spake the future author of the immortal sermons. There spake a mind and a heart that have deepened the minds and the hearts of Christian men more than any other influence of the century; a mind and ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... disguised like face-ache, sauced; (Too gaily for that bandaged cheek, thought I); But they, whose business was to think, Were quite contented, let the hussy pass, Returned her kisses blown back down the road, And crowned the mirth of their outwitter's heart. As the steep road wound clear above the town, Fewer became those little comedies To which encounters roused him: till, at last, He scarcely knew we passed some vine-dressers: And I could see the sun's heat, lack of sleep, And his late ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... harbour where the rest of the fleet lay moored. Joyful were the greetings of their comrades, who had given them up for lost; and a merry feast they made on the flesh of the fat sheep, though their mirth was checkered by sadness when they thought of the brave six who had come to so horrible an end in the ...
— Stories from the Odyssey • H. L. Havell
... the silence grow around her. She saw the whole school drop its mirth and its employments to watch this duel ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... Ursula invariably brought blinding, bitter tears to the eyes of those assembled at picnics and hunt balls. It had an opposite effect upon Dorothea's auditors. With apparently one accord they burst into hilarious mirth, ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... off that uncomfortable speculation. The baby began loudly to demand its morning meal; and the three-year-old, having run through its mirth, began to whimper for its mother. Altogether Jeffreys had a busy ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... life to me, his death the greater payne: His life in Christ so surelie set, doth glad my hearte agayne: His life so good, his death better, do mingle mirth with care, My spirit with ioye, my flesh with grief, so deare a frend to spare. Thus God the good, while they be good, doth take, and leaues vs ill, That we should mend our sinfull life, in life to tary still. Thus, we well left, be better rest, in heauen to take his place, That by ...
— The Schoolmaster • Roger Ascham
... my dear old grandmother brought me up, and I said no more; colouring, I believe, a little, at my own folly. Even uncle Ro joined in the mirth, though I could see he wished Mary Warren even safely translated along with her father, and that the latter was Archbishop of Canterbury. I must acknowledge that I felt a good deal ashamed of the weakness ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... point we children, stifling our laughter, rush headlong from the room, to vent our mirth in safety in ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... Naylor, "the carpet!" Fresh moans of mirth shook the table; for having tasted the wine of laughter, all wanted as much more as they could get. When Scruff and his traces were effaced, Herr Paul took a ladle in ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Dr. Douglass laughed a low, quick laugh, as if he found it quite impossible to restrain his mirth, and then became ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... accidental structure of which the value is purely relative, seriously. When once a man has touched the absolute, all that might be other than what it is seems to him indifferent. All these ants pursuing their private ends excite his mirth. He looks down from the moon upon his hovel; he beholds the earth from the heights of the sun; he considers his life from the point of view of the Hindoo pondering the days of Brahma; he sees the finite from the distance of the infinite, and thenceforward the insignificance of ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... redress the dolours of the unjustly afflicted. No, brethren, let us be assured, that the right hand of the Lord will change the state of things that are most desperate. In our God there is wisdom and power, in a moment to change the joy and mirth of our enemies into everlasting mourning, and our sorrows into joy and gladness ...
— The Pulpit Of The Reformation, Nos. 1, 2 and 3. • John Welch, Bishop Latimer and John Knox
... amazement of his companions, he addressed a speech to Stalker in language so broken with stuttering and stammering that the marauders around could scarcely avoid laughing, though their chief seemed to be in no mood to tolerate mirth. Tom and Fred did not at first understand, though it soon dawned upon them that by this means he escaped being recognised by the man with whom he had so recently conversed through the keyhole of ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... he stay, And long lock'd in silence his tongue; Then he humm'd an elegiac lay, Or a Psalm penitential he sung: But if with his Friends he regal'd, His Mirth, as his Griefs, knew no bounds; In no Tale of Mark Sargent he sail'd, Nor in all ...
— An Essay on War, in Blank Verse; Honington Green, a Ballad; The - Culprit, an Elegy; and Other Poems, on Various Subjects • Nathaniel Bloomfield
... May-poles too, with garlands grac't, Thy morris-dance, thy Whitsun-ale, Thy sheering feast, which never faile, Thy harvest home, thy wassaile bowle, That's tost up after Foxi'th'hole, Thy mummeries, thy twelfth-tide kings, And quenes, thy Christmas revellings, Thy nut-browne mirth, thy russet wit, And no man pays too deare ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... gather wild fruits for the voyage. We found quinces, peaches, and figs, and the children gathered a basket of each. It takes very little to please children, and these little ones, never hearing a word in their lives except Spanish, made the hills ring with mirth at the sound of words in English. They asked me the names of all manner of things on the island. We came to a wild fig-tree loaded with fruit, of which I gave them the English name. "Figgies, figgies!" they cried, while ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... face. His jet-black eyebrows met in the center of his scowling forehead, and under them gleamed eyes cold and dangerous. A thin wisp of a dark mustache contrasted with the quick gleam of his strong, white teeth. On the rare occasions when he laughed, his mirth was like the ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... take from them the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, the sound of the millstones, and the light of the lamp. And this whole land shall be a desolation and an astonishment; and these nations shall ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman
... him. A chuckle from Arthur Chester caused him to turn his eyes that way. He scrutinized his guests in turn, and detected signs of mirth. Winifred Chester's pretty shoulders were shaking. Martha Macauley's lips were pressed close together. The ...
— Red Pepper's Patients - With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in Particular • Grace S. Richmond
... lying In the buried past of the earth, Built Nineveh with our sighing, And Babel itself with our mirth; And o'erthrew them with prophesying To the old of the new world's worth; For each age is a dream that is dying, Or one ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... called the 'friends' or companions 'of the bridegroom.' According to the Jewish wedding ceremonial it was their business to conduct the bride to the home of her husband, and there to spend seven days in festivity and rejoicing, which were to be so entirely devoted to mirth and feasting that the companions of the bridegroom were by the Talmudic ritual absolved even from prayer and from worship, and had for their one ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... rate there are your shoes, Ferguson, and I hope you'll have a good game!" The Chief went out, rather annoyed at having wasted so much time. At tea that evening there was mirth at the ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... of the earth Hath quickly found what empire means; For while he scoffs with bitter mirth, And curses, after Eden's scenes, ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... blessed children of the jocund day! What mean these mysteries of love and birth? Caught up like solemn words by babes at play, Who know not what they babble in their mirth. ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... the seventh officer's story, they were moved to exceeding mirth, and El Melik ez Zahir Bibers rejoiced in that which he heard and said, 'By Allah, there betide things in this world, from which kings are shut out, by reason of their exalted station!" Then came forward another man from amongst ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... fascinated and repelled by them. Mrs. Hunter's bearing was the subject of constant and delighted meditation, while the cold carefulness of it was a terrorizing nightmare. The girl kept up a conversation with Aunt Susan on the sewing, or a fire of mirth and jollity with Nathan or Luther, with this undercurrent of thought always going on. How was she to emulate that polish with so little experience in social affairs she would ask herself one moment, and the next would be harassed by the ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... sound that is ringing in his ears is no longer of the brass-band that he had heard in the theatre. It is quite different. It has all the ghastly mirth of that song that Norman Ogilvie used to sing in the old, half-forgotten days. What is ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... his race, as from his car The glorious sun illumes the subject earth More than the silver moon or lesser star; So far all others he transcends in worth. I see this captain, ill bested for war, Go forth afflicted, and return in mirth: Backed by few foot, and fewer cavaliers, He homeward ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... praising, in giving and receiving, In eating and drinking, in singing and making merry, In parents' gladness and in children's mirth, In dear memories of those who have departed, In good comradeship with those who are here, In kind wishes for those who are far away, In patient waiting, sweet contentment, generous cheer, God bless us every one, with ...
— The Spirit of Christmas • Henry Van Dyke
... out. He had no voice in being carried into the South, but he will have a very loud voice in any attempt to put him out. The expatriation of 5,000,000 to 6,000,000 people to an alien country needs only to be suggested to create mirth and ridicule. The white men of the South had better make up their minds that the black men will remain in the South just as long as corn will tassel and cotton will bloom into whiteness. The talk about the black people being brought to this country to prepare themselves ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... was not unmusical, was never pleasant. It did not seem to come from the heart, and was the farthest in the world removed from mirth. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... us Delight in simple things, And Mirth that has no bitter springs; Forgiveness free of evil done, And Love to all men 'neath ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold
... notice; and, being a lad with a keen appreciation of humour, it was with difficulty that he conquered an almost irresistible inclination to laugh aloud while he reflected upon the situation. By an effort of will, however, he conquered the desire to indulge in untimely mirth—for he fully realised that he and his followers were standing upon the crumbling brink of a volcano, and said, with an air ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... unpremeditated and coarse jests in such rude verses as were used by the Fescennini, but of satires, accompanied with music set to the flute, recited with suitable gestures. After satires, which had afforded the people subject of coarse mirth and laughter, were, by this regulation, reduced to form and acting, by degrees became an art, the Roman youth left it to players by profession, and began, as formerly, to act farces at the end of their regular pieces. These ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... a sailor, was invited to spend a week with his sister in Northamptonshire before he went to sea. Their eager affection in meeting, their exquisite delight in being together, their hours of happy mirth, and moments of serious conference, may be imagined; as well as the sanguine views and spirits of the boy even to the last, and the misery of the girl when he left her. Luckily the visit happened in the Christmas ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... the piece had begun. It was one of those impossibly amusing Paris farces, on the borderland of all convention but so intensely comic that none could help their mirth, and Tristram shook with laughter and forgot for the time that he was a most miserable young man. And even Zara laughed. But it did not melt things between them. Tristram's feelings had been too wounded for any ordinary circumstances to ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... thought Uncle Remus was making him the victim of one of his jokes; but the youngster was never more mistaken. The old man was serious. Nevertheless, he failed to rebuke the ill-timed mirth of the child, appearing to be altogether engrossed in his work. After ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris
... back, for he had already begun his retreat; and after sending two or three more with all the vigour produced by anger, Peter Pegg lay back on the roof, listening to the distant pattering of feet, and laughing with suppressed mirth till the tears ran ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... 1563. See a notice of him prefixed to his Diary, published by the Camden Society.——An account of John Stradling, the epigrammatist, will be found in Wood's Athenae (Bliss), vol. ii. p. 396.——Hockday, or Hokeday, is a high-day, a day of feasting and mirth, formerly held in England the second Tuesday after Easter, to commemorate the destruction of the Danes in the time of Ethelred.——For notices of George Wither in the Gentleman's Mag., see vol. lxxxvi. pt. ii. 32. 201.; vol. lxxxvii. pt. i. 42.; vol. lxxxviii. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 238, May 20, 1854 • Various
... it is quite different. When it rains porridge I have no spoon. I am always to play merry pranks, and make faces which force people to laugh, and if they give me an apple, and I bite into it, why it is sour! How often sadness hides itself behind mirth! I shall never be able to hold out for thirty years." God was gracious ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... embrace, and gave way to endearing epithets. Madame Wang laughed, and pointed at lady Feng with her finger; but as for saying a word, she could not. Mrs. Hseh had much difficulty in curbing her mirth, and she sputtered the tea, with which her mouth was full, all over T'an Ch'un's petticoat. T'an Ch'un threw the contents of the teacup, she held in her hand, over Ying Ch'un; while Hsi Ch'un quitted her seat, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... was with the multitude, And gladness on the earth, The tongue of every living thing Rang with a sound of mirth. All that stern Wisdom could desire, Or Fancy fair engage— Danger-defying youth was there, And calm experienced age. It seemed as though earth's very best To that brave barque were given— Science for nature's mysteries, And childlike ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 452 - Volume 18, New Series, August 28, 1852 • Various
... at random, in speaking against these, that their origin is objectionable. It is no where insisted upon, that there is evil in them considered abstractedly by themselves, or that they may not be used innocently, or that they may not be made the occasion of innocent mirth. The evil is candidly stated to arise from their abuse. The nature of this evil is unfolded. Thus the malevolent passions, such as anger, envy, hatred, revenge, and even avarice, are stirred up, where they should be particularly ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... the line of battle, seen from a distance, is a red horizon, ominous and threatening, fringing a land of broken homes, ruined villages, and blazing funeral pyres. There the mirth of yesteryear lives only in a soldier's dreams, and the harvest of last autumn rots with withering men on the field ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... knew, as well as the boy knew, that we were trapped, that before us now were the awful chances of unequal Plains warfare. A mere handful of us had been hurrying after a host, whose numbers the broad beaten road told us was legion. There was no mirth in that little camp that night in mid-September, and I thought of other things besides my strange vision at the gorge. The camp was the only mark of human habitation in all that wide and utterly desolate land. For days we had noted even the absence of all game—strong evidence ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... the most mirth-provoking of Irish novels published in the last few years, and Mr. Birmingham's new book is a worthy successor. Once more the admirable red-haired curate, "J. J.," appears, and his wild energy turns a peaceful ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... in dreams' projections, While the world of gain and appearance and mirth goes on, So soon what is over forgotten, and waves wash the imprints off the sand, In nature's reverie sad, with hinged knees returning, I enter the doors—(while for you up there, Whoever you are, follow me without ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... woman did not even attempt an answer. Nor did she apparently even try to control her mirth. But, after a while, when she had laughed until she was tired, she suddenly rose to her feet, and as she gathered up a handful of wet garments, and began rubbing them on the wash-board, she ...
— Moriah's Mourning and Other Half-Hour Sketches • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... which in boyhood we seldom beheld through tears. And therefore have we chosen the gayest day of all the year, when all life is rejoicing, from the grasshopper among our feet to the lark in the cloud. Melancholy, and not mirth, doth he hope to find, who after a life of wandering—and maybe not without sorrow—comes back to gaze on the banks and braes whereon, to his eyes, once grew the flowers of Paradise. Flowers of Paradise are ye still—for, praise be to Heaven! the sense of beauty is still strong within ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... company, they visited the bonfire, taunting the others if inferior in any respect to themselves. After the fire was burned out they returned home, where a feast was prepared, and the remainder of the evening was spent in mirth and diversions of various kinds. Next morning they repaired betimes to the bonfire, where the situation of the stones was examined with much attention. If any of them were misplaced, or if the print of a foot could be discerned near any particular stone, it was imagined ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... great stage where the wild games of the satyrs are being performed by choruses, hurried on in the unrestrained wantonness of intoxication. When she saw thus for the first time an entire people given up to the wildest and most unfettered mirth and enjoyment, she woke up from her silent brooding thoughts and began to weep again, as in the first days after ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... asked, laying down the proofs on Paul's enquiring of him how soon the work would be published. And when the young man answered "Oh yes, always," he was moved to mirth again by something he caught in his manner of saying that. "You go to see your grandmother on her birthday—and very proper it is, especially as she won't last for ever. She has lost every faculty and every sense; she neither sees, nor hears, nor speaks; but all customary pieties ...
— The Lesson of the Master • Henry James
... uncontrollable laughter. "That is the best thing I ever heard in all my life. I don't think I ever heard anything that amused me more. The grotesqueness of the whole thing." Seeing that Mike was annoyed he hastened to explain his mirth. "The inexplicableness of human action always amuses me; the inexplicable is romance, at least that is the only way I can understand romance. When you reduce life to a logical sequence you destroy all poetry, and, I think, all reality. We do things constantly, ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... rapidly pondered the situation. She felt like laughing outrageously at the prank Cupid had played on them, but she dared not utter a sound of mirth because that might spoil everything. And there might be a possible chance of saving the day, ...
— Polly's Business Venture • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... away," he said quietly, peering down at the strange face that looked up at him from its hooded gray, and then she laughed at him with insane mirth. It would have done severe damage to less hardy nerves than those which our "hero" possessed. Jim regarded her with unwavering kindness, which seemed to reach through the gray cloud of her unhappy condition, much as the ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... shock with which he realized that she was, unknown to herself, already in the throes of a romantic attachment for Wilson; and, long, long after, when he had gone down to the depths with her and saved her by his steady hand, with something of mirth for the untoward happening that ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... they will never obtain, and that is, happiness independent of God. Some tell us that they mean to make the most of life, and to be happy while they live; therefore, begone, reflection! religion is not for the spring-tide of youth; mirth and merry days are for the young; soberness and the russet garb of autumn belong to the decline of life, which certainly to them, they think, is far off;—as though every material necessary for their last, long sleep, may not at this moment be in the warerooms and shops; as though ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... harm in trying: Wonder 'tis how little mirth Keeps the bones of man from lying On ...
— A Shropshire Lad • A. E. Housman
... temper with the world, and society, and his nearest kin. But with the demand and response of real cash the jovial frivolity of the scene departed. A lurid colour seemed to fill the tent, and change the aspect of all therein. The mirth-wrinkles left the listeners' faces, and they ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... diverted immediately from the teacher to the face of the sweet pupil. Women have a quick appreciation of beauty in their own sex; and women who are themselves beautiful, not the least. Irresistibly Lady Montfort felt attracted towards that innocent countenance so lively in its mirth, and yet so softly gay. Sir Isaac, who had hitherto lain perdu, watching the movements of a thrush amidst a holly-bush, now started up with a bark. Waife rose; Sophy turned half ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Boat Song: but the comic always carries off the palm; "Jim along Josey," "Lucy Long," "Old Dan Tucker," and a hundred others of the same character, are listened to delightedly by the crowd of men and boys collected round the fore-hatch, and always ready to join in the choruses. Thus a sound of mirth floats far and wide over the twilight sea, and would seem to indicate that all goes ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... come upon them, apparently unintentionally. He hesitated and paused when Peter looked up. Peter saw no grin upon his lips. They were set in a firm, straight line. His long arms were folded behind his back, and his eyes were empty of mirth—or malice. They simply expressed nothing. He looked at Peter shortly, and favored Miss Vost with a ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... or on shore, Piety, learning, fond affection, Holy welcome and kind protection.... I found in Munster unfettered of any Kings and queens and poets a many, Poets well skilled in music and measure; Prosperous doings, mirth and pleasure. I found in Connacht the just, redundance Of riches, milk in lavish abundance; Hospitality, vigor, fame, In Crimean's land of heroic name.... I found in Ulster, from hill to glen, Hardy warriors, resolute men. Beauty that bloomed when ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... till the tears came. I was ready to cry, too, but from quite a different reason. A lump rose in my throat, and I could not speak. I gazed at him with wild eyes, and this only increased his mirth. He rolled on the ground, holding his sides. As for me, I could not get over the insult—for a bitter insult it was. Those—few, I hope—who will understand it, from having had a similar experience in their lives, will recall all the bitterness ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... still more inclined to cry, so touching was it to witness the old dog's clumsy playfulness and the little sufferer's spasmodic merriment—for spasmodic it needs must be, as yet, though so hearty, heart-easing and wholesome. Indeed, there are few things more pathetical than the innocent mirth of the young heart, over whose dawning existence has already fallen, though but for a brief space, the shadow of the inevitable hour. And I will venture to affirm, upon the strength of my own experience and observation, that if you, my gentle reader, had been present ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... he sets his bones To bask i' the sun, and thrusts out knees and feet For the ripple to run over in its mirth; Listening the while, where on the heap of stones The white breast of the ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... wine, his manner blithe and boyish; yet beneath all this fair and guileless exposition of carelessness lay the sober integrity of caste. It looked out through the steady, unswerving eyes, even when they twinkled with mirth; it met the gaze of the world with a serene imperiousness that gave way before no mortal influence; it told without boastfulness a story of centuries. For he was the son of a princess royal, and the blood of ten score ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... borne by men on horseback, made of pieces of hollow wood with a brass mouth-piece, usually precede the sovereign on any important visit. The costume and attitude of the musician are highly characteristic of savage mirth. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 10, Issue 285, December 1, 1827 • Various
... upon him with the blackness of his look lightening into a smile as different from mirth as the brassy gleam behind a thundercloud is from sunshine. "What concerns your lordship?" he asked contemptuously. "Do you imagine that ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1 • Various
... for tryin' your hand at prospecting," Sam said, with a laugh, and Fred arose to his feet with a rueful look on his face, which caused his companion yet more mirth. ...
— Down the Slope • James Otis
... come to regard him in an altered light. It was not simply that he looked to be older, and because his face was careworn. It was not only that he had lost that look of an Apollo which Lily had once in her mirth attributed to him. I think it was chiefly that she herself was older, and could no longer see a god in such a man. She had never regarded John Eames as being gifted with divinity, and had therefore always been making comparisons to his discredit. ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... after that, and so Bill Cowan sang "Billy of the Wild Wood," and Terence McCann wailed an Irish jig, stamping the water out of the spongy ground amidst storms of mirth. As he desisted, breathless and panting, he flung me up in the firelight before the eyes of them ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the Grasshopper's Feasts Excited the spleen of the Birds and the Beasts: For their mirth and good cheer—of the Bee was the theme, And the Gnat blew his horn, as he danc'd in the beam. 'Twas humm'd by the Beetle, 'twas buzz'd by the Fly, And sung by the myriads that sport through the sky. The Quadrupeds listen'd with sullen displeasure, But the tenants of air were enraged ...
— The Peacock 'At Home:' - A Sequel to the Butterfly's Ball • Catherine Ann Dorset
... upper oil springs on Oil Creek, by boring in the rock. But it was labor pursued under difficulties. To have announced the intention of boring for petroleum into the bowels of the earth, would have been to provoke mirth and ridicule. The enterprise would have appeared quite as visionary as that of Noah to the antediluvians in building his ark against an anticipated inundation. It was generally supposed that the search was for salt water; and perhaps the idea was a complex one even in the mind ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... six-and-thirty years afterward that I found that out, and then—oh, then I only cried when that picture of young care-free mirth rose before me out of the blur and mists of that long-vanished time; for there had come a day between, when God's good gift of laughter had gone out from me to come again no more in ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... his barrow, which was full of gravel, over Davy's toes. The said toes were sticking quite bare through great holes in an old pair of woman's boots. Then he began to tease him rather roughly. But Davy took all his banter with just the same complacency and mirth with which he had received the kindliness of the ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald
... appeared indifference, frivolity, and mirth; this being considered, especially by the females, as conducive to health. Seldom was the body followed by even ten or twelve attendants; and instead of the usual bearers and sextons, hirelings of the lowest of the populace undertook the office for the sake ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... not been for that untimely mirth of O'Brien's probably nothing of what followed would have passed into the history ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... being the inventor of all, or even any of these tales, he is still the father of this class of modern Italian literature, since he was the first to transplant into the world of letters what had hitherto been only the subject of social mirth. These tales have in their turn been repeated anew in almost every language of Europe, and have afforded reputations to numerous imitators. One of the most beautiful and unexceptionable tales in the Decameron is that of "Griselda," the last in ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... tale would be too long for your patience. The result of it would be to make you feel that I am no longer fit to enter in upon a new home. I should bring showers instead of sunshine, melancholy in lieu of mirth. ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... in voice, visage, and manners, the ruffians and drabs of maturer growth? Or why should not the young men and women collect in clusters, or range about or beyond the neighborhood in bands, for revel, frolic, and all kinds of coarse mirth; to come back late at night to quarrel with their wretched elders, who perhaps envy them their capacity for such wild gaieties and strollings, while rating them for their disorderly habits? We say where can be the harm of all this? What reasonable and benevolent man would think of making ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... all gone this morning, and have left me much more at liberty than I have been of late, therefore I believe this will be a long letter; perhaps too long, at least if my letters are as little entertaining as my company is. I was carried yesterday abroad to a dinner that was designed for mirth, but it seems one ill-humoured person in the company is enough to put all the rest out of tune; for I never saw people perform what they intended worse, and could not forbear telling them so: but to ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... of my childhood days, But bear in mind the courage of thy mirth. Remember all the virtues of thy father And let them live again in thine own heart. Thou must not yield to weakness and lamenting, Tend to life's duties: Go and call me Channa, Bid him to saddle Kanthaka, my steed, And let him ready be for a ...
— The Buddha - A Drama in Five Acts and Four Interludes • Paul Carus
... the pride of her stately rivers, Cleaving their way to the far-off sea; Glory of strength in their deep-mouth'd music— Glory of mirth in their tameless glee. Hark! 'tis the roar of the tumbling rapids; Deep unto deep through the dead night calls; Truly, I hear but the voice of Freedom Shouting her ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... himself. He seized the doctor's cocked hat and put it on, while the doctor did the same with his hatchee-matchee. The oddity of the Chief's appearance produced by this change overcame the gravity of the attendants, and the mirth became general; nor was the joke relished by any body more than the Chief's two sons, who stood by his chair during all the entertainment: they were pretty little boys, with gaudy dresses, and their hair ...
— Account of a Voyage of Discovery - to the West Coast of Corea, and the Great Loo-Choo Island • Captain Basil Hall
... until the lights flashed about madly and there was a scent of burning feathers. The circle stood its ground bravely, but there were shrieks and mocking laughter as they danced around, sometimes making a lunge out at the spectators, who would draw back in affright, a signal for roars of mirth. ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... The mirth faded from the lad's face at the words, as the blossom fades 'neath the blighting touch of frost. What he said was so undutiful from a nephew touching his uncle—particularly when that uncle is a prelate—that I refrain ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... to it, and he continued waving it in front of himself all the time we were there. He seemed in good spirits, laughing heartily several times. This is a good sign, for a man who shakes his sides with mirth is seldom difficult to deal with. When we rose to take leave, all rose with ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... said. "He was the 'shock'! How perfectly ridiculous! Robin had never played with a boy before and she fell in love with him. The little thing's actually pining away for him." She dropped the grapes and gave herself up to delicate mirth. "He was taken away and disappeared. Perhaps she fainted and fell into the wet flower bed and spoiled her frock, when she first realized that he ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... younger pirate, so promptly and so gravely that again I had much to do to refrain from sudden mirth. ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... understand them aright we cannot possibly see in them any motive for low jesting. They are simple, serious and solemn words, connoting the most central facts of life, and only to ignorant and plebeian vulgarity can they cause obscene mirth. An American man of science, who has privately and anonymously printed some pamphlets on sex questions, also takes this view, and consistently and methodically uses the ancient and simple words. I am of opinion that this is the ideal to be sought, but that ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... Chinaman's name was printed. We went up the steps of the stoop, rang the bell, and were admitted without any delay. From the outside the house bore a rather gloomy aspect, the windows being absolutely dark, but within, it was a veritable house of mirth. When we had passed through a small vestibule and reached the hallway, we heard mingled sounds of music and laughter, the clink of glasses, and the pop of bottles. We went into the main room and I was little prepared for what I saw. The ...
— The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man • James Weldon Johnson
... extraordinary figure in language to which they were so little used, the women could not restrain their mirth, but laughed so long and loud that Don Quixote began to be vexed and said in a tone of grave rebuke, "Beauty and discourtesy are ill-matched together, and unseemly is the laugh which folly breeds in a vacant mind. Take not my words amiss, for I mean no ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... that he had reprobated, that is, degrade the humour: into an oddity of speech, an eccentricity of manner, of dress, or cut of beard. There was an anonymous play called "Every Woman in Her Humour." Chapman wrote "A Humourous Day's Mirth," Day, "Humour Out of Breath," Fletcher later, "The Humourous Lieutenant," and Jonson, besides "Every Man Out of His Humour," returned to the title in closing the cycle of his comedies in "The Magnetic ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... when we brought Mathews down as far as Leamington. Poor Byron lunched, or rather made an early dinner, with us at Long's, and a most brilliant day we had of it. I never saw Byron so full of fun, frolic, wit, and whim: he was as playful as a kitten. Well, I never saw him again.[86] So this man of mirth, with his merry meetings, has brought me no luck. I like better that he should throw in his talent of mimicry and humour into the present current tone of the company, than that he should be required to give this, ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... universal, perhaps the most fatal, of all, fretting the whole depth of our humanity into storm "to waft a feather or to drown a fly,"—definitely expressed in art. Even Spenser, I think, has only partially expressed it under the figure of Phaedria, more properly Idle Mirth, in the second book. The idea is, however, entirely worked out in the Vanity Fair ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... awaiting the command to move, several half-hearted attempts at jocularity died cold. One irrepressible made a futile attempt at frivolity by announcing that he had Cherokee blood in his veins and was so tough he could "spit battleships." This attempted jocularity drew as much mirth as an undertaker's final invitation to the mourners to take the last, ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... altered so much within her mind;—why she should so suddenly have come to regard him in an altered light. It was not simply that he looked to be older, and because his face was careworn. It was not only that he had lost that look of an Apollo which Lily had once in her mirth attributed to him. I think it was chiefly that she herself was older, and could no longer see a god in such a man. She had never regarded John Eames as being gifted with divinity, and had therefore always been making comparisons to his discredit. Any such comparison now would tend quite ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... had given me and Tom a wink, as he repeated the two last lines; and then we saw what was going on, we burst into an uncontrollable fit of laughter. "Boys! boys!" said the Dominie, starting up, "thou hast awakened me, by thy boisterous mirth, from a sweet musing created by the harmony of friend Dux's voice. Neither do I discover the source of thy cachinnation, seeing that the song is amatory and not comic. Still, it may not be supposed, at thy early age, that thou canst be affected ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... their happiness here, and their glory hereafter. Such a strange stupidity hath seized upon the hearts of men, that they will venture the loss of their immortal souls for a few dying comforts, and will expose themselves to endless misery for a moment's mirth, and short-lived pleasures. But, certainly, a barn well fraught, a bag well filled, a back well clothed, and a body well fed, will prove but poor comforts when men come to die, when death shall not ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... he!" and he shook his fist waggishly at the unconscious gray dog. "I owe ye anither grudge for this—ye've anteecipated me"—and he leant back and shook this way and that in convulsive mirth. ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... quiet spirit lulls the lab'ring brain, Lures back to thought the flights of vacant mirth, Consoles the mourner, soothes the couch of pain, And wreathes contentment round the humble hearth; While savage warriors, soften'd by thy breath, Unbind the captive, hate had doomed ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... the cloud, and green from earth, And from a human breast the fire he drew, And life and death were blended in one dew. A sunbeam golden with the morning's mirth, A wan, salt phantom from the sea, a girth Of silver from the moon, shot colour through The soul invisible, until it grew To fulness, and ...
— Enamels and Cameos and other Poems • Theophile Gautier
... jaws wide and laughed. Granger had never heard him laugh before, and the sound was not pleasant. There was nothing of mirth about the man or in anything that he said—there was only disappointment and scorn. His bitterness became horrible when he pretended to be merry. "He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh; the Lord shall have them in derision." It was like the thunderous scoffing of ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... Death, we come full-handed to thy gate, Rich with strange burden of the mingled years, Gains and renunciations, mirth and tears, And love's oblivion, and remembering hate. Nor know we what compulsion laid such freight Upon our souls—and shall our hopes and fears Buy nothing of thee, Death? Behold our wares, And sell us the one joy for which we wait. Had we lived longer, life had such for sale, With ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... far-fetched similes, the endless and often most inappropriate classical, mythological, and quasi-zoological allusions and parallels, are indeed sufficiently absurd and wearisome; and when "Euphuism" became a fashionable craze, its sillier disciples were a very fit target for jesting and mirth, very much as in our own day the humorists found abundant and legitimate food for laughter in the vagaries of what was known as "aestheticism". In both cases, the extravagances were the separable accidents, the superficial excrescences, of a real intellectual ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... see that Irishman—the fellow who had charge of the box. He looks poorly enough, as far as this world's goods are concerned, but happy and full of mirth, for all that." ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... the boughs Sing all day to his nested spouse? What but the song of his old Mother-Earth, In her mighty humour of lust and mirth? 'Love and God's will go wing and wing, And as for death, is there any such thing?'— In the shadow of death, So, at the beck of the wizard Spring The dear bird ...
— Hawthorn and Lavender - with Other Verses • William Ernest Henley
... Caderousse, unable to appear abroad in his pristine splendor, had given up any further participation in the pomps and vanities, both for himself and wife, although a bitter feeling of envious discontent filled his mind as the sound of mirth and merry music from the joyous revellers reached even the miserable hostelry to which he still clung, more for the shelter than ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Thackeray and Dickens. Of all the pupils of Dickens he is perhaps the only one who has continued to be himself, who has not fallen into a trick of aping his master's mannerisms. His mixture of the serious, the earnest, the pathetic, makes his humour not unlike the melancholy mirth of Thackeray and Sterne. He is almost the only American humorist with sentiment. It is only the air, not the spirit, that ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... see how much enjoyment every one but Jim and myself got out of the situation. They howled with mirth over the feeblest jokes, and when Max told a story without any point whatever, they all had hysteria. Immediately after dinner Aunt Selina had begun on the family connection again, and after two bad breaks on my part, Jim offered to show her the house. The ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... than temporary and objectless annoyance. Throughout the whole play runs a healthy, thoughtless, honest, almost riotous happiness; no note of difficulty, no shadow of coming doubt being perceptible. The pert and nimble spirit of mirth is fully awakened; the worst tricks of the intermeddling spirits are mischievous merely, and of only transitory influence, and "the summer still doth tend upon their state," brightening this fairyland with its sunshine and flowers. Man has absolutely no power ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... very probable that death was not due to the emotion itself, but to the extreme convulsion and exertion used in the laughter. The Ephemerides mentions a death from laughter, and also describes the death of a pregnant woman from violent mirth. Roy, Swinger, and Camerarius have recorded instances of death from laughter. Strange as it may seem, Saint-Foix says that the Moravian brothers, a sect of Anabaptists having great horror of bloodshed, executed their condemned brethren by ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... gifted but hostile woman who watched him from the gallery—Lincoln, conversely, made no such overpowering impression. His observers, however much they have to say about his humor, his seasons of Shakespearian mirth, never forget their impression that at heart he is sad. His fondness for poetry in the minor key has become a byword, especially the line "Oh, why should the ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... wakened with an aching head, he recollected with disgust the figure of Father Jos, and all the noisy mirth of the preceding night. Not without some self-contempt, he asked himself what had ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... his own energetic and valorous conduct—all these were a pleasant relief to the ennui of a barrack life and, during the several days' visit of "los barbaros," the Comandante and his captain were never without a theme for mirth ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... student, and somewhat of the college professor in his appearance. But he is a very sincere man; has neither show nor fussiness in him; and practices his duties with a strict, quiet regularity. He may have moods of mirth and high moments of sparkling glee, but he looks as if he had never only laughed right out about once in his life, and had repented of it directly afterwards. If he had more dash and less shyness ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... the forms, colours, and other characteristics of animals and plants are by no means new. Our Teutonic forefathers had a pretty story which explained certain points about several common plants. Balder, the God of Mirth and Merriment, was, characteristically enough, regarded as deficient in the possession of immortality. The other divinities, fearing to lose him, petitioned Thor to make him immortal, and the prayer was granted on condition ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... my raillery very well, and merrily replied with the old English proverb, that he doubted mine eyes were bigger than my belly, for he did not observe my stomach so good, although I had fasted all day; and continuing in his mirth, protested, that he would have gladly given a hundred pounds to have seen my closet in the eagle's bill, and afterward in its fall from so great a height into the sea, which would certainly have been a most astonishing ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... description of the memorable banquet given at the Devil Tavern, near Temple Bar, in the spring of 1751, to celebrate the publication of Mrs. Charlotte Lennox's first novel. What delightful revelry! what innocent mirth! prolonged though it was till long after dawn. Poor Mrs. Lennox died in distress in 1804, at the age of eighty-three. Could Johnson but have lived he would have lent her his helping hand. He was no fair-weather friend, but shares with Charles Lamb the honour of being able to unite narrow ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... when the priest pronounced the marriage blessing, He put a silent prayer up for the bride, For they stood near who saw his lips move. He came invited to the marriage-feast With the bride's friends, And was the merriest of them all that day; But they, who knew him best, call'd it feign'd mirth; And others said, He wore a smile like death's upon his face. His presence dash'd all the beholders' mirth, And he went away in tears. Simon. What followed then? Marg. Oh! then He did not as neglected suitors use Affect a life ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... one of the loveliest of all the Shakespearean plays. It is the best English comedy. The great mind that mixed a tragedy of intellect with a tragedy of stupidity, here mixes mirth with romantic beauty. The play is so mixed with beauty that one can see it played night after night, week after week, without weariness, even in a ...
— William Shakespeare • John Masefield
... but they were out of bounds, and had to scramble back, which they did undetected, and with much more mirth than the first time. Cicely was young enough to be glad to throw off her anxieties and forget them. She did not want to talk over the plots she only guessed at; which were not to her exciting mysteries, ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of tears. Though you sing for very gladness, Others will not see your mirth; They will mourn your fancied sadness. Though you laugh at them in scorn, Show your happy heart for token, Michael, you'll protest in vain— They will ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... night after night. I was afraid that when I heard her voice it would break the spell, and I actually shook like a man with an ague when she tripped out on the stage as the ingenue in 'Honourable Women.' And her laughter! You know how hollow the usual stage mirth is, but that girl's laugh had the joy ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson
... seems to come into action in these last two cases; for the mental condition of one mind is not only communicated to another, but it appears to be increased and intensified by the communication. Each does not feel merely the enthusiasm or the mirth which would naturally be felt by the other, but the general emotion is vastly heightened by its being so largely shared. It is like the case of the live coal, which does not merely set the dead coal on fire by being placed in contact with it, but the two together, when together, burn far ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... gown, as he had worn his uniform, with the gallant bearing of a King's Guardsman. But the people loved him all the more for his jests, which never lacked the accompaniment of genuine charity. His sayings furnished all New France with daily food for mirth and laughter, without detracting an iota of the respect in which the Recollets were ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... sharing the mirth of the Indian, when music of a very different sort stifled the laugh upon his lips. It was the cry of the jaguars, that, suddenly excited by the voice of the student, had all four of them sent forth ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... being innocent of that peculiar German type of vanity which runs to hair, yet he could not prevent people from commenting on his extraordinary hirsute adornment. Their occasional remarks excited his mirth. If they spoke of it again, he would protest. Once, among a small party of his closest friends, the conversation turned upon the subject of hair, and then upon the beauty of his hair; whereupon he cried out, 'I am embarrassed by ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... for me. I like her," said Gorst stoutly; and Mrs. Hannay hid in her pocket-handkerchief a face quivering with mirth. ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... sinking of the Merline bound for Guinea.] The 26 day the Minion came in also where he was, for the reioycing whereof he gaue them certaine pieces of ordinance after the curtesie of the Sea for their welcome, but the Minions men had no mirth because of their consort the Merline, whom at their departure from M. Hawkins vpon the coast of England, they went to seeke, and hauing met with her, kept company two dayes together, and at last by misfortune of fire (through the negligence of one of the gunners) the pouder in the ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt
... The greater the fear evinced by the victims, the greater was the delight of the humorously inclined menials, and if perchance a dog succeeded in fixing his fangs in the garments or calf of a pedestrian their mirth found vent in ecstatic shouts of laughter. Basilivitch had on more than one occasion been upon such errands as that which brought him to-day, and seemed on terms of familiarity with the liveried guardians ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... me! of mirth; There's nothing lightsome left on earth: Only one scene is fain, O, Where far remote The moonbeams gloat, And sleeps the ...
— Songs of Childhood • Walter de la Mare
... in the centre of an intense redness of light, like another dawn. Thousands of angels were hanging buoyant around her, each having its own distinct splendour and adornment, and all were singing, and expressing heavenly mirth; and she smiled on them with such loveliness, that joy was in the ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... caught the reply, and said severely: 'I do not think, Cuthbert, that either I or your father have ever set you the example of "rollicking," as you call it, at this table. Decent mirth and a cheerful tone of conversation we have always encouraged. I don't know why you should receive a mother's remarks with laughter. It is not respectful of you, Cuthbert, I ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... end may be attained Than when the people is attuned to mirth, . . . . . and groans the festal board With meat and bread, and the cup-bearer's ladle From flowing bowl to ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... and, when they swore, did so good-humoredly, and promised their porters fine presents at New-Year; and August, like a shrewd little boy as he was, who even in the secluded Innthal had learned that money is the chief mover of men's mirth, thought to himself, with ...
— The Nuernberg Stove • Louisa de la Rame (AKA Ouida)
... leaves Of flaunting ivy, that with mantle green Invests some wasted tow'r. . . . Then, when the sullen shades of ev'ning close, Where thro' the room a blindly-glimm'ring gleam The dying embers scatter, far remote From Mirth's mad shouts, that thro' th' illumin'd roof Resound with festive echo, let me sit, Blest with the lowly cricket's drowsy dirge. . . . O come then, Melancholy, queen of thought! O come with saintly look, and steadfast step, From forth thy cave embower'd with mournful yew, Where ever to the ...
— Romance - Two Lectures • Walter Raleigh
... have his fill, and by his wife and her sisters that no one should have too much, at any rate at the beginning of the evening,) thought fit to carry out Toby to be replenished; and a faster spirit of enjoyment and mirth began to reign ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... mirth appeared to shake the different-whiteness. It stooped. One hand-end fumbled at the palmed rheostat, then dropped to pick up the disarmer. Fumbled again at the rheostat while the figure straightened up to point the glistening projector ...
— Zero Data • Charles Saphro
... imagined. Yet it has more the appearance of a chapel than of a place of diversion; and, though I was quite charmed with the magnificence of the room, I felt that I could not be as gay and thoughtless there as at Ranelagh; for there is something in it which rather inspires awe and solemnity than mirth and pleasure.' Ranelagh was at Chelsea, the Pantheon was in Oxford-street. See ante, ii. 119, and post, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... but her eyes denied the mirth that her lips affirmed, and Appleton had such a sudden, illogical desire to meddle with her career, to help or hinder it, to have a hand in it at any rate, that he could hardly ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... He draws out of an inner pocket a gold-mounted letter-case and a book of cigarette paper. Deliberately he wraps the pearl in one of the tissue leaves, and, looking steadily at me, pushes the new treasure far into a corner of the crested case. There is more significance than mirth in the ...
— Under the Southern Cross • Elizabeth Robins
... with which Dr. Royce prepares the way for all that is to follow, deceives the reader at the very outset, predisposes him to believe the preposterous charge that I "appropriated" my main theory from the great idealist Hegel, arouses his indignation or mirth, as the case may be, at my alleged strutting about in borrowed plumes, and so leads him at last to applaud the righteous castigation of the "professional warning," by which the peacock-feathers are made to fly in all directions and I myself am scourged ...
— A Public Appeal for Redress to the Corporation and Overseers of Harvard University - Professor Royce's Libel • Francis Ellingwood Abbot
... give him back his three cows. But when he came near the Pudding-burn House, he found to his dismay that the two Armstrongs who had stolen his cows, Johnie and Willie, had stopped there, on their way home, with all their men-at-arms, and, from the sounds of feasting and mirth which he heard as he approached, he suspected that one, at least, of his three cows had been killed to provide ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... Miss Margaret and the bride created quite a sensation; but when the former explained the ludicrous mistake which caused the doctor's temporary absence from them, their mirth burst all bounds, and the very roof of the grand old mansion shook with peal after peal ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... There was not a trace of mirth in his face. It was evident that he had asked the question ...
— For Gold or Soul? - The Story of a Great Department Store • Lurana W. Sheldon
... Where goat-legged buyers throng. I see not plain:- My meaning is, it must not be again. Great God! the maddest gambler throws his heart. If any state be enviable on earth, 'Tis yon born idiot's, who, as days go by, Still rubs his hands before him, like a fly, In a queer sort of meditative mirth. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... a train of sleeping memories in the minds of the others, and for the next hour the quiet woodland echoed with their mirth over the curious, quaint and ridiculous aims and fancies of their childhood. The talk gradually drifted back to serious things and went on so earnestly that it was well after four o'clock before the party began to make reluctant preparations to ...
— Grace Harlowe's Problem • Jessie Graham Flower
... into the Hativa-faui, or ladies' dressing-room. Instantly we were surrounded by a bevy of captivating beauties. Our guides had evidently counted on our surprise for they laughed uproariously, their mirth being joyously echoed by the graceful women who crowded about us, patting, petting and bidding us unmistakable welcome to their compound. I have never seen ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... God the dower They have, and have despised as dearth, And scorn as low their human lot, With frantic pride, too blind to see That standing on the head makes not Either for ease or dignity! But fools shall feel like fools to find (Too late inform'd) that angels' mirth Is one in cause, and mode, and kind With that which ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore
... phases of our fun. We draw for laughter on all the almost countless racial elements that form our citizenry. And the whole content of our wit and humor is made vital by the spirit of youth. The newness of our land and nation gives zest to the pursuit of mirth. We ape the old, but fashion its semblance to suit our livelier fancy. We moralize in our jesting like the Turk, but are likely to veil the maxim under the motley of a Yiddish dialect. Our humor may be as meditative as the German at its best, but with a grotesque flavoring all ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... began; and again, "Fair Mistress Damaris—" but Damaris was counting days and heard him not. A lesser beauty left her work upon King David's crown to laugh aloud, with some malice and some envy in her mirth. "Prithee, let her alone! She will dream thus even in the presence. But I have a spell will make her awaken." She leaned forward and called "Dione!" then with renewed laughter sank back into her ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... Prince of Wales's statue, but, unfortunately, he went to pieces in a day or two, when the fierce sun beat down upon the clay, and cracked it. This gradual disintegration of the great ruler's deputy vastly amused the blacks, and I eventually had to hasten the Prince's end, lest their mirth should compromise my dignity. ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... Dantes, "that I am too happy for noisy mirth; if that is what you meant by your observation, my worthy friend, you are right; joy takes a strange effect at times, it seems to oppress us ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... a wonderful man, says he, whether we consider the constant good sense, and agreeable mirth of his ordinary conversation, or the vast reach and compass of his inventions, and the amazing depth of his retired thoughts; the uncommon graces of his fashion, or the inimitable turns of his wit, the becoming gentleness, the bewitching softness of his civility, or the force and fitness ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... which was very handsome, and lacked nothing to recommend it to me but the want of mirth and pleasant discourse, which we could neither have with them, nor, by reason of them, with one another; the weightiness which was upon their spirits and countenances keeping down the lightness that would have been ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... well; She is one that is evermore full of strife, And of all scolders beareth the bell. When she speaketh best, then brawleth her tongue; When she is still, she fighteth apace; She is an old witch, though she be young: No mirth with her, no ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... who served in the Garrison during that Memorable Winter. The Company, consisting of upwards of two hundred and thirty Ladies and Gentlemen, made a grand and brilliant appearance, and nothing but mirth and good humour reigned all night long. About half-past six, His Excellency, Sir Guy Carleton, Knight of the Bath, our worthy Governor and Successful General, dressed in the militia uniform, (which added lustre to the Ribbon ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... generally encouraged. Gymnastic exercises may be established for all ages and for all classes. The Jews were ordered to take a walk out of the city on the Sabbath day; and here rich and poor, young and old, master and slave, met ( ) and indulged ( ) in innocent mirth or in the pleasures ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... goldsmith's art; Full often he decks and adorns in glory 75 A great king's noble, who gives him rewards, Grants him broad lands, which he gladly receives. One shall give pleasure to people assembled On the benches at beer, shall bring to them mirth, Where drinkers are draining their draughts of joy. 80 One holding his harp in his hands, at the feet Of his lord shall sit and receive a reward; Fast shall his fingers fly o'er the strings; Daringly dancing and darting ...
— Old English Poems - Translated into the Original Meter Together with Short Selections from Old English Prose • Various
... me stand back silently, The pageant passes by, And live my life with these new Christs Whom you would crucify, And laugh with mirth to see the mob Do homage ...
— Bars and Shadows • Ralph Chaplin
... with levity, nor is it one with light-minded mirth. It springs from the deeper fountains of the soul, and is not infrequently accompanied by tears. Have you never been so happy that you have had to weep? I have." From an article by the author, Improvement Era, vol. 17, No. ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... peacock over 'em. He most dropped 'em when he seen me and I promised not to tell you about it at all, but if you coulder seen him!" And the tried and proven young AEsculapius' mother fairly rolled in her chair with mirth at the recollection. ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess
... spring has waved her sunny wing Upon the verdant earth, And winds from distant, places bring The festal tones of mirth; The sky appears an azure field, With ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 494. • Various
... autumn a party from the farm, myself the youngest of them, started for Boston to hear one of a course of lectures. Mr. Ripley was the chairman, and the ever bounteous joyousness of his nature sparkled out in wit and mirth. These meetings were free, and discussion was invited, but there was present an excitable woman who had a habit of rising at any moment, no matter who was speaking, to make odd remarks and inquiries. ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... looked in at the door and snickered, then in at the window, then peeked down from between the rafters and cachinnated till his sides must have ached; then struck an attitude upon the chimney, and fairly squealed with mirth and ridicule. In fact, he grew so obstreperous, and so disturbed our repose, that we had to "shoo" him away with one of our boots. He declared most plainly that he had never before seen so preposterous a figure as we cut lying there ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... slain. Then all the barons, by one assent, prayed the king of accord between the Lady Igraine and himself. And the king gave them leave, for fain would he have accorded with her; and they were married in a morning with great mirth and joy. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... bliss that is best on earth? Lovers' light whispers and tender mirth; Bright gleams the sun on the Green Sea's isle, But a brighter light has a woman's smile: Ever, like sunrise, fresh of hue, Taza ba taza, now ba now; Ever, like sunset, splendid and new, Taza ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... too, with some enthusiasm, into all the rural sports and merrimakes of the village. The holidays were so many little eras of mirth and good feeling; for the French have that happy and sunshine temperament —that merry-go-mad character—which renders all their social meetings scenes of enjoyment and hilarity. I made it a point never to miss any of the fetes champetres, or rural dances, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... and mourning, appeared indifference, frivolity, and mirth; this being considered, especially by the females, as conducive to health. Seldom was the body followed by even ten or twelve attendants; and instead of the usual bearers and sextons, hirelings of the lowest of the populace ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... seemed to her that Captain Duchesne's dark eyes lighted up when he talked to Ethel as they had not done when he talked to her; that Ethel's cheeks dimpled with her most irresistible smile, and that her voice was full of pretty cadences, delighted laughter, mirth and sweetness. Lesley's nature was so thoroughly unselfish, that she could bear to be set aside for a friend's sake; and she was so ingenuous and single-minded that she put no strained interpretation on the ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... is easy to see by your Grace that we are in the dog-days. Your Highness must pardon my mirth; but who could help it? Merciful God! are Thy wonders, sent to fright the world and turn men from sin, to be called devil's sorceries! To what a pass is the world come! Has your Highness forgotten all history? Know you not that God gives many signs to His people, and speaks ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... skies, where gentler manners reign, We turn, where France displays her bright domain. Thou sprightly land of mirth and social ease, Pleas'd with thyself, whom all the world can please, How often have I led thy sportive choir With tuneless pipe, along the sliding Loire? No vernal bloom their torpid rocks display, But Winter lingering chills the lap of May; No zephyr fondly ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... person appeared in the doorway—one whom nobody present cared to see just then, though the superintendent stepped from his hiding-place, the mirth dying out of his genial face as he bowed respectfully to his superior, Mr. Archibald Wingate, the owner of Ardsley Mill and of ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... Enticing motion with their voice unite; 35 While Indolence, luxurious laid along, Listless and loit'ring, hears the tender song. There, silent Myst'ry, with the veil she wears, And eyes conversing with the soul, appears, Attentive tender cares, attracting smiles, 40 Gay sport and mirth, and all that thought beguiles. Lascivious pleasures group'd with wanton ease; And soft desires ...
— The Fourth Book of Virgil's Aeneid and the Ninth Book of Voltaire's Henriad • Virgil and Voltaire
... party of friends, and our children, to Weinheim; rambled through its vineyards, ascended to its ancient castle, and then went on to Birkenau Thal, a charming valley, celebrated, as its name denotes, for its lovely hanging birches, under which, with much happy mirth, we dined. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... about me. Methinks I should pine and die shut up within high walls, without the liberty to rove as I will. And then I am not /devote/. I love not to spend long hours upon my knees. I feel nearest to the Blessed Saints and the Holy Mother of God out here in these woods, where no ribald shouts of mirth or blasphemous oaths can reach me. But the Sisters live shut behind high walls, and they love best to tell their beads beside the shrine of some Saint within their dim chapels. They were good to us upon our journey. I love and reverence the holy ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... invariably broke into such paroxsyms of laughter that further utterance was impossible. Often as he attempted it, his narrative of the proceedings ended in such violent mirth that his hearers could not restrain themselves from joining in. They were obliged to acknowledge that he looked upon the affair as the ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... with a large quince pye, and many crabs, together with sack and cordials, added our best welcome. The scrivano was so well pleased with his reception, that he insisted upon becoming the sworn brother of our captain, which was accordingly celebrated with a cup of sack; and, after much mirth, and having taken a view of our ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... hers, pressed it to her heart, and smiled away all her sadness. "Dearest," said Montreal, "couldst thou know how much any shadow of grief on thy bright face darkens my heart, thou wouldst never grieve. But no wonder that in these rude walls—no female of equal rank near thee, and such mirth as Montreal can summon to his halls, grating to thy ear—no wonder that thou repentest thee ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... considerable numbers, he would himself, as general, propose and insist upon a retreat. Ronald utilized the short halt at Manchester to obtain new uniforms for himself and Malcolm, which he was glad to exchange for the farmer's garb, which had been the occasion of a good deal of joking and mirth among his fellow officers on ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... wild, His caustic merciless mirth Was leveled at pompous shams. Doubt not behind that mask There dwelt the soul of a man, Resolute, sorrowing, sage, As sure a champion of good As ever rode forth ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... help liking him? He betrayed no weakness which harassed all your feelings with considerations as to how its faltering must be propped; from him broke no irritability which startled calm and quenched mirth; his lips let fall no caustic that burned to the bone; his eye shot no morose shafts that went cold, and rusty, and venomed through your heart: beside him was rest ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... when long in the ground it had lain, And time into clay had resolved it again, A potter found out in its covert so snug, And with part of fat Toby he formed this brown jug Now sacred to friendship, and mirth, and mild ale; So here's to my lovely sweet Nan of ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... aspect—fields still green, but stripped of every gem;—whilst still some russet warbler may be heard chirping in sorrow and distress, and heavy looking clouds anxious to screen the cheering ray, which now and then bursts forth with sickly smile, that seems like ill-timed mirth amongst ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley
... wings, And the night-raven sings; ............There, under ebon shades and low-browed rocks, As ragged as thy locks, ............In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell. But come, thou Goddess fair and free, In heaven yclept Euphrosyne, And by men heart-easing Mirth; Whom lovely Venus, at a birth, With two sister Graces more, To ivy-crowned Bacchus bore: Or whether (as some sager sing) The frolic wind that breathes the spring, Zephyr, with Aurora playing, As ...
— L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas • John Milton
... in motion; And he that in Wedlock twice hazards his Carcase Twice ventures the Drowning, and, Faith, that's a hard case. Even at our Weapons the Females defeat us, And Death, only Death, can sign our Quietus. Not to tell you sad stories of Liberty lost, Our Mirth is all pall'd, and our Measures all crost; That Pagan Confinement, that damnable Station, Sutes no other States or Degrees in the Nation. The Levite it keeps from Parochial Duty, For who can at ...
— Quaint Gleanings from Ancient Poetry • Edmund Goldsmid
... heard it in days of the spring, When gladness and joy were rife. 'Twas a voice of hope, that came whispering Its story of strength and life. It told me that seasons of vigor and mirth Follow the night of pain; And the heaven-born soul, like the flowers of earth, Withers, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... the climax. Paganel could not stand any more. He was obliged to go away and take his laugh out, for he was actually exploding with mirth, and he went fully a quarter of a mile from the encampment before his equilibrium ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... all events, brother," replied Eric, laughing in his old fashion at the possibility of such a thing. The lad was quite overwrought with emotion at parting with the old skipper as well as his late companions in the ship; and, tears and mirth being closely allied, he would have felt inclined to laugh at anything ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... boy of four years of age and a little girl of six, whose tiny form was draped in such gossamer-like fabrics that she seemed more fairy-like than human, were pulling at her dress, eager to enter the mirth-resounding parlors, but afraid to leave her sheltering wing. Mrs. Jocelyn watched the scene from the doorway, where her husband had stood, without his sigh. Her motherly heart sympathized with Belle's abounding life and fun, and her maternal ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... majesty," cried the marquis, whose black eyes were again sparkling with mirth, "I now feel that my poor heart spoke the truth when it declared that you were ever by its side. We have really not been separated, and your majesty begins with me to-day where you left off but yesterday. You laugh now as then at me, and my poor bed, which has heard for more than a year past only ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... mouths, they entertain each other in the most unrestrained manner in spite of the exalted position held by most of these men. Some who do not smoke hold cold pipes between their teeth, that they may not mar the harmony of the picture. One member of the circle is singled out nightly as an object for mirth, and the choice is made by lot. Each and every one can in turn become the butt of merry satire. To have been present at a meeting of this oddest of all court gatherings would furnish me with the most notable memory I could ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... produce an effect," said Miriam: "it shan't be said that I too haven't had my little success in the maison de Moliere." And Sherringham repeated that it was all right—the place was familiar with mirth and passion, there was often wonderful talk there, and it was only the setting that was still and solemn. It happened that this evening—there was no knowing in advance—the scene was not characteristically ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... blue jay gave proof of the need of parental training. While he intuitively called like a jay, he never was able to sing the sweet, gurgling roulade of the wild jays. On the contrary, he treated us to all kinds of odd, imitative, mirth-provoking performances that no self-respecting jay in the open would think of enacting. After several months of cage life he was given his liberty. Now, indeed, he showed his lack of jay bringing ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... shows and sports were arranged by D.H.Q. Substantial prizes and valuable trophies were awarded the successful competitors. The day's proceedings would be enlivened by band music. Impersonations of the world's mirth maker, Charlie Chaplin, and Australian 'sun-downers,' were decidedly clever and afforded much amusement. Horse shows always attract large attendances, and any vehicle going in the direction of the show grounds was ...
— Over the Top With the Third Australian Division • G. P. Cuttriss
... "Your mirth is most ill-timed, Miss Ashby. This is by no means a facetious occasion, please understand. I do not lightly tolerate the infringement of my rules, as you will learn to your cost. If, as you state, you are ignorant of the contents of this letter ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... A sound of mirth swept to them. With horror frozen on their faces, the three rascals were aware of Thompson, leaning in the doorway—unmistakably sober, given up to reprehensible levity, holding out a bright tin ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... in heliotropes was a subject of much mirth between Bart and myself, and the place was anything but a bed of sweet odours! The poor things lost the few leaves they had possessed and really looked as if they had been haunted by the ghosts of all the departed chickens that had gone from the fowl-house to the block. Then we had ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... a very versatile pen and in most of the twenty-one pieces of Jetsam (MILLS AND BOON) which he has recovered from the waves of monthly magazines and elsewhere there is a certain amount of material for mirth. I do not however find him a startlingly original humorist, whether on the river Thames, where he seems to follow in the wake of Mr. JEROME K. JEROME, or in a Chelsea "pub," where his manners are reminiscent of the characters of Messrs. W. W. JACOBS and MORTON HOWARD. Again, in the story ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 29, 1914 • Various
... as we turned into Whitehall! I began to feel I had been wrong about Raffles after all, and that enhanced my mirth. Surely this was the old gay rascal, and it was by some uncanny feat of his stupendous will that he had appeared so haggard on the platform. In the London lamplight that he loved so well, under a starry sky of an almost theatrical blue, he looked ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... turning I saw a man of about thirty years, dressed in the plainest-cut Quaker clothes, but with a contradiction to every tenet of Fox written on his face, where a brow of gravity for ever read the riot act to eyes that twinkled with ill-repressed mirth. When I came to know him well, and saw the preternatural calm of his too quiet lips, I used to imagine that unseen little demons of ready laughter were for ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... business was most distasteful to him. Imagine our delight when he proved to have an elaborate discourse with full notes of which no one had seen the preparation. "I have been fortunate in securing another night," he mentioned amidst mirth, and proceeded to give us the most interesting and able account of the minds and bodies of horses in general and ours in particular. He ended with a story of a dinner-party at which he was a guest, probably against his will. ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... his cheek, and chuckled; and, chuckling, pulled his hat well down over his brows, thrust both hands into his trousers pockets, and shambled back to the St. Luke Building—his heavy body vibrating amazingly with his secret mirth. ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... laughter from my auditor; which, indeed, I now began to think very natural. In a word, to cut the story short, my friend having repeated the conference verbatim to Mr. Bub, he was good-natured enough to join in the mirth, saying, with one of his best sardonics, he "had always had a misgiving that his unlucky ugly face would one day or other be the death of somebody." Well, we passed the day together, and having cracked a social bottle after dinner, parted, I believe, as heartily ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... simple things, And Mirth that has no bitter springs; Forgiveness free of evil done, And Love to ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold
... he had a petition to present which might be a subject of mirth to some honorable gentlemen, but which was one deserving of consideration. It came from a lady of rank and fortune, Mary Smith of Stanmore, in the county of York. The petition stated that she paid taxes, and therefore did not see why she should not have a share in the election of a representative; ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... millet-broth, millet-cakes, and a pot of sake. The men now sat down on mats before the dead bear, offered libations to it, and drank deep. Meanwhile the women and girls had laid aside all marks of sorrow, and danced merrily, none more merrily than the old women. When the mirth was at its height two young Aino, who had let the bear out of his cage, mounted the roof of the hut and threw cakes of millet among the company, who all scrambled for them without distinction of age or sex. The bear was next skinned and disembowelled, and the trunk severed from the ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... the deck the choleric captain still stamped and swore, and his crew, with well-concealed mirth, went about their various duties as if they were accustomed to have shanghaied men act this way. They sympathized with the unfortunate pair, realizing how they themselves would feel if ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... men of sterling worth, all bent upon reforming the heaven and the earth; they come from far Savannah, they come from Texarkana, and points in Indiana, with loud yet seemly mirth. They're come from far Alaska, where show is heaped on snow; they've journeyed from Nebraska where commoners do grow; the famed, the wise, the witty, the timid, and the gritty have come from Kansas City and also Broken Bow. Their battle shout is thrilling as they go marching ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason
... come here as an apostle of a better, honest life, in the nature of a, now, saviour of perishing souls. You know, as in the dawn of Christianity certain holy fathers instead of standing on a column for thirty years or living in a cave in the woods, went to the market places, into houses of mirth, to the harlots and scaramuchios. But you aren't inclined ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... laugh, but her mirth was obviously forced. Their conversation ceased perforce with the return of Mills into ...
— The Zeppelin's Passenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... or be ever so little of the same kidney, it is all over with you: he will become both accuser and judge of you in your spleen, will dissipate you in jests, pulverise you into salt, and sacrifice you, I can promise you, to the God of Mirth. ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... like to see a picture, illustrating a part of L'allegro. Where the godesses of Mirth and Liberty trip along hand in hand. Two beautiful girls dressed in flowing garments, dancing along a flower-strewn path, through a pretty garden. Their hair flowing down in long curls. Their countenances ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... there was something in the tone that was not good to hear. A moment earlier it would have wounded Israel Kafka to the quick and brought the hot, angry blood to his face. Now he laughed with her, vacantly, as though not knowing the cause of his mirth. ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... song among the Irish Celts grew out of their nature, and in time brought out all the refinements of art. Long before Cambrensis's time the whole island resounded with music and mirth, and the king-archbishop, Cormac McCullinan, could not better express his gratitude to his Thomond ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... I was making them dangerous. They spoke of my knowledge of Indian tongues, and added apocryphal tales of my feats of wit and daring. My image loomed large, and it was no wonder that they did not connect this mythical Colossus with the swaggering royster who played buffoon for their mirth. I wondered that Pemaou had not told them, but I reflected that there is a mutual distrust among Indians that takes the place of reticence, and that that had saved me. I had escaped for the moment, but the ice was thin. I should be given short shrift once ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... through the story of a gentleman. You are saved the damage by this, poor fools! besides which, often your lady becomes enamoured, is seized with fecund agitations to your advantage, raised in her by the present book. Therefore do these volumes assist to populate the land and maintain it in mirth, honour and health. I say mirth, because much is to be derived from these tales. I say honour, because you save your nest from the claws of that youthful demon named cuckoldom in the language of the Celts. I say health, because this book incites that which was prescribed by the Church of Salerno, ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... struck him full in the back, for he had already begun his retreat; and after sending two or three more with all the vigour produced by anger, Peter Pegg lay back on the roof, listening to the distant pattering of feet, and laughing with suppressed mirth till the tears ran ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... beautiful tribute to his memory, "never fairly recovered the death of Coleridge. He thought of little else (his sister was but another portion of himself) until his own great spirit joined his friend. He had a habit of venting his melancholy in a sort of mirth. He would, with nothing graver than a pun, 'cleanse his bosom of the perilous stuff that weighed' upon it. In a jest, or a few light phrases, he would lay open the last recesses of his heart. So in respect ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... native-born of Spain. Some of them were disposed to laugh at the strangeness, not to say the absurdity, of some of the costumes which confronted them; but all of them were too well bred to indulge their mirth, or to stare offensively at the subjects of their suppressed merriment. One young man excited their attention especially; and Louis at the side of Miss Blanche, and the rest of the quartet of young Americans, ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... to have put his seal to the writing, testifying that the foreboding had been realized, and that the record was authentic?—Lastingly is it to be regretted in respect to this memorable being, that inconsiderate intrusion has not left us at liberty to enjoy his mirth, or his love; his wisdom or his wit; without an admixture of useless, irksome, and painful details, that take from his poems so much of that right—which, with all his carelessness, and frequent breaches ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... By the gods, who thought about him Till they couldn't do without him. Now he's here again; I've seen Soldier David dressed in green, Standing in a wood that swings To the madrigal he sings. He's come back, all mirth and glory, Like the prince in a fairy story. Winter called him far away; Blossoms bring him ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... company of eighteen men and women amused themselves by dancing and singing in the churchyard of St. Magnus, in the diocese of Magdeburg, to the annoyance of a priest who was saying mass in the church. He ordered them to desist; but they danced on in reckless mirth. The holy father then invoked God and St. Magnus to keep them dancing for a whole year; and not in vain. For twelve months they danced in spite of themselves. Neither dew nor rain fell upon them; and their ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... him as a robber and a tyrant. The most certain intelligence is, that an old captain beat out his brains with a club. Others again say that the Araucanians passed the night after their victory in dances and mirth; and that at the end of every dance, they cut off a piece of flesh from Valdivia and another from the priest, both yet alive, which they broiled and eat before their faces. During which horrid repast, Valdivia confessed to the priest and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... College Gate, its pillars so artfully, invitingly rounded by William of Wykeham, drew us in again. We were stirred by William Byrd's "Praise our Lord, all ye Gentiles," and taken to Oxford by Gibbons's "What is our life? A play of passion. Our mirth? The music of division." Purcell recalled our gracious English landscape, and English life, "When Myra sings we seek the enchanting sound"; and Thomas Morley with "Now is the month of maying." Then there was rollicking Tom Bateson, ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... meal. Like true soldiers, they took it all in a day's work and there seemed to be no lack of spirits among them even if they were assigned the grim task of hanging a man upon the morrow. And Haym Salomon, being condemned to death by a military court, smiled his grave, gentle smile to hear their mirth. He had played the game of chance and he had lost, so why should ...
— The New Land - Stories of Jews Who Had a Part in the Making of Our Country • Elma Ehrlich Levinger
... could long be serious in the presence of Vergil Gunch. "Ask Dant' how Jack Shakespeare and old Verg'—the guy they named after me—are gettin' along, and don't they wish they could get into the movie game!" he blared, and instantly all was mirth. Mrs. Jones shrieked, and Eddie Swanson desired to know whether Dante didn't catch cold with nothing on ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... grew the mirth of the pirates, and wilder their looks and gestures, as the powerful liquor they were swallowing took effect on their brains. I saw Mary cling closer to her father in fear and trembling, all the time watching me with furtive glances, lest ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... the parrot which had saved his life echoing his mirth raucously, as his eyes hit upon the following lines of fine print halfway down the third column of page 410 of ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... drawings the elegance of our architecture. Our manners likewise are little calculated to excite their approval and imitation. Not to insist on the licentiousness that has at times been imputed to our communities; the pleasures of the table; emulation in wine; boisterous mirth; juvenile frolics, and puerile amusements, which do not pass without serious, perhaps contemptuous, animadversion—setting these aside it appears to me that even our best models are but ill adapted for the imitation of a rude, incurious, and ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... moment, Lord Colambre might have been amused with all this rhodomontade, and with the airs and voluble conceit of the orator; but, after what he had heard at Mr. Mordicai's, this whole scene struck him more with melancholy than with mirth. He was alarmed by the prospect of new and unbounded expense; provoked, almost past enduring, by the jargon and impertinence of this upholsterer; mortified and vexed to the heart to see his mother the dupe, the sport of ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... sooth, though he was a young man and loved mirth and the ways of his own will, he was a stalwarth workman, and few could mow a match with him in the hay-month and win it; or fell trees as certainly and swiftly, or drive as straight and clean a furrow through the stiff land ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... had seen a piece of my friend's private life at Epsom. Nothing could have been farther removed from misery. A light-hearted gaiety reigned in his face and ruled his every gesture. His companions seemed to bow to him, as to their leading humorist and mirth-maker. I was stimulated by the collapse of my elaborate illusion to make inquiries about him. I found that he had been born almost on the stage, and had taken part in stage-life from his earliest years. He never had any ambition: so long as he could be on the stage, and take part ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 15, 1893 • Various
... many years, but if she is yet living in any part of England, it would gladden my heart to have one more acknowledgment from her. In relating this case at Temperance meetings, I have sometimes created a little mirth, by remarking, 'I went in search of a man, and lo! and behold, I found a woman.' ...
— The Hero of the Humber - or the History of the Late Mr. John Ellerthorpe • Henry Woodcock
... outright, easily and with real mirth. Yet in his heart were sown already the seeds of a secret dread. There was a ring of passionate truth in Monty's words. He believed what he was saying. Perhaps he was right. The man's inborn hatred ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... sought the feast In vain he quaff'd the bowl, And strove with noisy mirth to drown The anguish of ...
— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey
... mats became deserted, and the pastors had taken their carts for their homes, a little elated but still quoting holy writ, the nymphs and a dozen other girls of seething mirth took possession of the temple with a score of young men, and sang their love-songs and set the words to gesture and somatic harmony. Brooke and I lay and mused as we listened and gazed. When a youth crowned with ferns began to play a series of flageolets ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... banquet I had given on board the Molly Stark—my yacht, named after the lady known to history, whom dad claims for an ancestress—and I laughed out loud. The boys wanted to know the cause of my mirth, and so, with a sardine laid out decently between two crackers in one hand, and a blue "granite" cup of plebeian beer in the other, I told them all about that banquet, and some of the things we had to eat and drink—whereat they laughed, too. The contrast was certainly amusing. But, somehow, I ...
— The Range Dwellers • B. M. Bower
... the old-time waterfront That rang with joy and mirth, And known throughout a dozen states As "the ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... "Simple!" Mrs. Oldham's mirth was high and satiric. "Isn't that like a man? Simple is the last word to be applied to Marcia's frocks, Mr. Hayden. It's a good thing, as I often tell her, that her father left us ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... a clemency which made even those who questioned his policy love him the more for what they called his weakness,—seeing how the man in whom God had most embodied the discipline of Freedom not only could not be a slave, but could not be a tyrant! In the heartiness of his mirth and his enjoyment of simple joys; in the directness and shrewdness of perception which constituted his wit; in the untired, undiscouraged faith in human nature which he always kept; and perhaps above all in the plainness and quiet, unostentatious earnestness and independence ...
— Addresses • Phillips Brooks
... people of Kyle regarded this conduct with suspicion: they were not to be expected to know that when Burns ranted and housed with smugglers, conversed with tinkers huddled in a kiln, or listened to the riotous mirth of a batch of "randie gangrel bodies" as they "toomed their powks and pawned their duds," for liquor in Poosie Nansie's, he was taking sketches for the future entertainment and instruction of the world; they could not foresee that from all this moral strength and poetic ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
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