"High-spirited" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... much at the king's command for opposing statesmen to stop the project. The Americans wakened resentfully to the new conditions. The revived navigation laws, the stamp act, the tea duty, and the dispatch of redcoats to coerce Massachusetts were a cumulation of grievances not to be borne by high-spirited people. For some years the colonial spokesmen tried to persuade the British government that it was violating historic and constitutional rights; but these efforts had little success. To the argument that the empire was composed of parts mutually independent ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... but he had come as the martyr, as one injured. His egotism at such a time, joined to his attempt to make light of things, of treating what had happened as a mere "moment of exasperation," as "one of those episodes inseparable from the lives of the high-spirited," only made her heart sink and grow cold, almost as insensible as the flesh under a spray of ether. He had been neither wise nor patient. She had not slept after that bitter, terrible scene, and the morning had found her like one battered ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... How soon the character is in its essence complete! After an interval of twenty-five years, beneath the wrinkles and grey hairs and other changes, with which life disguises the outer man, the schoolfellows found each other just what they were when they sat together in class: one wilful, high-spirited, rebellious; the other obedient and submissive, with a tendency to indolence, which had been fostered by his quiet country life. After all Vedrine was perhaps right. Even if he was sure of succeeding, was the thing worth the trouble? He was particularly anxious about his invalid sister, ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... likely that in Turkey a high-spirited man would find more opportunities for lively adventure than even in Poland. At any rate, Charles Lee thought so; and to Turkey he went, and entered into the service of the sultan. Here he distinguished himself ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... I am here, at this hour, beneath the sculptured steeds of Marly, more high-spirited than those aristocratic quadrupeds themselves; this is why I am setting foot in the avenue whose entrance is marked by their hoofs of stone perpetually poised in air. The carriages flow past endlessly, like a sombre scintillating stream ...
— Marguerite - 1921 • Anatole France
... many later critics have made merry. {251b} A few lines were obviously drawn from that story of Boccaccio with which Shakespeare had dealt just before in 'Cymbeline.' {251c} But Shakespeare created the high-spirited Paulina and the thievish pedlar Autolycus, whose seductive roguery has become proverbial, and he invented the reconciliation of Leontes, the irrationally jealous husband, with Hermione, his wife, whose dignified resignation and forbearance lend the story its intense pathos. ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... when duty is interpreted as enlightenment, life must lose its romantic flavor and cease to require the old high-spirited virtues. It is this very linking of life to life, this abandonment of one's self to the prodigious of the whole, that provides the true object of reverence, and permits the sense of mystery to remain even after the light has come. Although the way of morality is evident and ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... by his friends, France and Belgium, in the face of the monstrous outrage that was being forced upon them. He is out, in fact, to save civilization and human decency. Consequently he finds it just a little difficult to understand how a warm-hearted and high-spirited nation can be expected to remain "neutral even ...
— Getting Together • Ian Hay
... "A mere question of management. High-spirited children want tact in dealing with them, that is all. You never trouble to exercise any tact whatever." Her eyes dwelt fondly on her high-spirited son, whose red head was bent attentively over Africa while he traced a mighty mountain range along the course of the Nile. "Wilfred, have you ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... kings of Spain and Portugal.[62] Neither England nor France allowed the right of conferring this magnificent and undefined gift; it did not throw the slightest obstacle in the path of British enterprise and discovery, and the high-spirited Francis I. of France refused ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... Babbie, who was standing next the groom. "He's the greed——" The next minute Betty found herself holding her own and the groom's horse, while he plunged after Babbie's, who was snorting and kicking right into the midst of everything. It had lightened, and between the lightning and the water Babbie's high-spirited mare was frantic, and was fast communicating her ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... of consequences might hinder some weak-hearted boys, but it never prevented any of the hardy ruffians from having their day out when the fever seized them. Playing truant was the same thing for a boy as bolting for a high-spirited horse; done once, the animal is bound to try it again, and to both, the joy of their respective sins must be very much the same. Boys did not plan a week ahead and then go astray in cold blood, because this sin was not an act of malice aforethought—it was a sudden impulse, not a matter of ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... by those unfrequent, agitating, exasperating encounters, and which flowed on through a hundred petty toilsome duties to the fretful accompaniment of Susan's iterations and the novel persecution now carried on by the children, was naturally irksome to the high-spirited and impatient nature which, now no longer heart-whole or fancy-free, did not find it so easy to carry its own way triumphantly through those heavy clogs of helplessness and folly. In the days when Miss Wodehouse pitied and wondered, Nettie had required no sympathy; ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... Gallipoli it was said that they had no discipline; and certainly at first discipline did irritate them as a snaffle bit irritates a high-spirited horse. "Little Kitch," as the stalwart Anzacs called the New Army Englishman, thought that they broke all the military commandments of the drill-grounds in a way that would be their undoing. I rather think that it might have been ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... pathos, but his tragic situations are rarely overstrained and maudlin. He has all the tenderness of Dickens; his Christmas Eve at Topmast Tickle may well be compared with A Christmas Carol. Norman Duncan never married, but few Canadian or American authors have understood women as did the creator of high-spirited Bessie Roth and her noble mother in Doctor Luke of the Labrador, of naive little Patty Batch, and of Millie Slade, glorified by her love for her son. In the delicacy and sensibility of his delineation ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... business arrangements proposed are all that I could wish, I cannot see that I have any ground for withholding my consent. So all I can say, sir, is that I hope you will make my daughter a good husband, and that you will both be happy. Ida is a high-spirited woman; but in my opinion she is greatly above the average of her sex, as I have known it, and provided you have her affection, and don't attempt to drive her, she will go through thick and thin for you. But I dare say ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... young, how the child as a stripling appear'd in a moment. Aye, and the weaker sex, as people commonly call it, Show'd itself brave and daring, with presence of mind all-unwonted. Let me now, in the first place, describe a deed of rare merit By a high-spirited girl accomplish'd, an excellent maiden, Who in the great farmhouse remain'd behind with the servants, When the whole of the men had departed, to fight with the strangers. Well, there fell on the court a troop of vagabond scoundrels, ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... Kendrick as he listened with interest to Old Nat's homily upon the caprices of the eternal feminine—that this high-spirited motherless girl and her father were very close to each other and, paradoxically, that he knew nothing of her present masquerade as a stenographer in Ferguson's office. For masquerade it evidently was, and ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... Nat," grandpa shook his head. "He was as high-spirited a young chap as ever lived, but uncontrolled and always fighting against the pricks. It must be pretty hard for him, pretty hard. He has grown so morose and snappish that no one takes the trouble to do more than nod to him nowadays. He wasn't ...
— A Dear Little Girl's Thanksgiving Holidays • Amy E. Blanchard
... unaffected kindliness set himself boisterously to cheer him up. He exaggerated the Americanisms which he knew always made the Englishmen laugh and poured out a breathless stream of conversation, whimsical, high-spirited, and jolly. In due course they went out to dinner and afterwards to the Gaite Montparnasse, which was Flanagan's favourite place of amusement. By the end of the evening he was in his most extravagant humour. He had drunk a good deal, but any inebriety from which he suffered ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... experienced all the bitterness of slavery. She was set at work in the kitchen with the other slaves. It seemed that Mrs. Preston took especial delight in assigning to the naturally high-spirited and sensitive girl the most menial employments. Patiently trusting in God that He would send deliverance, she endeavored to perform, uncomplainingly, her allotted tasks. Wholly unaccustomed to such work, weary ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... right hand or the left, halting at the word of command, or dashing forward at full speed at the sound of the trumpet or signal of the officer. He was, when young, a dark, dappled iron-gray, and considered very handsome. His master, a young, high-spirited gentleman, was very fond of him, and treated him from the first with the greatest care and kindness. He told me he thought the life of an army horse was very pleasant; but when it came to being sent abroad over the sea in a great ship, he ...
— Black Beauty • Anna Sewell
... separate room, it was merely cut off by closed folding doors from the dining-room, folding doors that slowly transmitted the dinner flavours to a sensitive worker, and its window looked out upon a blackened and uneventful yard and the skylights of a populous, conversational, and high-spirited millinery establishment that had been built over the corresponding garden of the house in Restharrow Street. Lady Ella had this room lined with open shelves, and Clementina (in the absence of Eleanor at Newuham) arranged the pick of her father's books. It is to be noted as a fact of psychological ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... issue in 1662. In 1665, Anne, countess of Buccleuch, married James Fitzroy, duke of Monmouth, eldest natural son of Charles II. They were afterwards created duke and duchess of Buccleuch. She was an accomplished and high-spirited lady, distinguished for her unblemished conduct in a profligate court. It was her patronage which first established Dryden's popularity; a circumstance too honourable to her memory to be ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... frightening the high-spirited and courageous man by the imputation of cowardice, and the sober and orderly man by that of licentiousness, and the liberal and munificent man by that of meanness and avarice, people urge them on to what is good, and deter them from what is bad, showing moderation in cases ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... comparisons, and remembered that he was the only one who ever apologised. This gave him a high station in his own esteem, and thus contributed indirectly to his better behaviour; for he was scrupulous as well as high-spirited, and prided himself on nothing more than on ...
— Tales and Fantasies • Robert Louis Stevenson
... belly always giving a certain note, and the maple of the back a certain other note. These peculiarities are not regarded as fully established. The tone of the Stradivarius violin is full, musical and high-spirited. The small number now in existence are held at extremely high prices. The usual pattern is that represented in ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... did not increase the popularity of Ernest with the high-spirited Spaniards, nor was it palatable to them that it should be proposed to supersede the old fighting Portuguese, Verdugo, as governor and commander-in-chief for the king in Friesland, by Frederic van den Berg, a renegade Netherlander, unworthy ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... or other now that I saw all this so clearly, I found myself singularly reluctant to accept the logical conclusion that this gentleman of good lineage and standing and this attractive high-spirited girl were actually traitors of the basest sort, and ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... sighed Miss Tippet, "I don't know what he'll do (ring the bell, Emma, darling); he's such a bold, high-spirited young man, and it's all owing to his determination to take to—to what's-'is-name as a profession (bring the tea, Matty). It's ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... use here as do donkeys and horses in European cities; but such horses as one sees at Lahore are generally very fine creatures, of the true Arab breed, with faces almost human in intelligence. These animals are at the same time high-spirited and gentle, with forms that are the very ideal of equine grace and beauty. Round bodies, arching necks, small heads and limbs, large eyes and nostrils, with full mane and tail. Lahore is a place of more than usual interest to the traveler, as exhibiting much of the ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... There was one high-spirited black mare, the dearly beloved of Felix's heart, who, whether dragging at the heavy wagon or cantering under the saddle, was always full of energy and fire. She was the boy's especial charge, and, as the weeks passed, the ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... the other hand, was pleased. The high-spirited girl was just beginning to fear that she was unequal to the task which she had chided Bream for being unable to perform and this was ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... and not to engage in battle during his absence. After the departure of the dictator, Fabius having discovered by his scouts that the enemy were in as unguarded a state as if there was not a single Roman in Samnium, the high-spirited youth, (either conceiving indignation at the sole authority in every point appearing to be lodged in the hands of the dictator, or induced by the opportunity of striking an important blow,) having made the necessary preparations and dispositions, marched to a place called Imbrinium, and there ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... astonishment, Sam Marlowe had listened to his father's harangue with a growing indignation which, towards the end of the speech, had assumed proportions of a cold fury. If there is one thing the which your high-spirited young man resents, it is being the toy of Fate. He chafes at the idea that Fate had got it all mapped out for him. Fate, thought Sam, had constructed a cheap, mushy, sentimental, five-reel film scenario, and without ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... beautiful, and accomplished sister shared his splendid establishment in Malaga; and for her my father formed an engrossing attachment, reciprocated in the fullest, almost simultaneously with his friendship for her brother. Zea favored the suit of the high-spirited and clever young Englishman, whose intelligence, independence, and perseverance, to say nothing of his good looks and his engaging manners, had quite won his heart. By policy, too, no less than by pleasure, the match recommended itself to him;—my father would make a famous junior-partner. So they ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... the city boy. It was very doubtful, moreover, that it would be safe to mount him on Bobs, who was already excited with the coming storm and the prospect of home. She knew every turn, and thought of the high-spirited pony—he went quietly for her, but with a new-chum it might ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... Juan arrived at Messina and was joyously received by the city and the fleet. Nevertheless, it was the 12th of September before the decision was finally reached to seek out the Turkish fleet and offer battle. Fortunately Don Juan was a high-spirited youth who shared none of his brother's half-heartedness; he went to work to organize the discordant elements under his command into as much of a unit as he could, and to imbue them with the idea ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... said to the man, who was approaching with a true machinist's fear of a high-spirited horse. "You've got no business to have a motor like that, if you can't handle it ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... clandestinely married his master's daughter, and afterwards became a wealthy merchant. On the death of old Belcour, the young man came to England as the guest of his unknown father, fell in love with Miss Dudley, and married her. He was hot-blooded, impulsive, high-spirited, and generous, his very faults serving as a foil to his noble qualities; ever erring and repenting, offending and atoning for his ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... happened to be a Spanish prisoner among the Araucanians, who by his ingratiating manners had acquired the confidence and esteem of the principal people of that high-spirited nation. Either by secret instructions from the governor, or from gratitude for the kind treatment he had received while prisoner, this man exerted himself to effectuate a treaty of peace between the nations, and had at one time a fair ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... lucky, that there had been half-a-dozen casualties amongst the defenders. The wounded were lying on the verandah tended by their women-folk. The women and children from the lower part of the town had been sent into the fort at the first alarm. There Jewel was in command, very efficient and high-spirited, obeyed by Jim's "own people," who, quitting in a body their little settlement under the stockade, had gone in to form the garrison. The refugees crowded round her; and through the whole affair, to the very disastrous last, she showed an extraordinary martial ardour. It was to her that Dain ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... latter days of March there came a third letter from Rachel O'Mahony. Like the other letter it was cheerful, and high-spirited; but still it seemed to speak of impending dangers, which Frank, though he could not understand them, thought that ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... high-spirited prisoner was not content with merely enlivening his own and his friends' captivity—day and night that active brain of his was plotting escape. One attempt to get away by land failed at once, but with him a failure only meant a fresh start, and he was soon at work again with those ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... rushing torrent, on its way to the river below the steep, had dwindled to a few drops of water, collected in tiny pools among the stones, or trickling reluctantly down the dank, green water-weed. The young badger family had grown so strong and high-spirited that their dam, weakened by motherhood, and at a loss to restrain their increasing desire for outdoor air and exercise, determined to wean them, and to teach them many lessons, concerning the ways of the woodland people, which she had learned ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... who shone and sparkled about the sun of the European firmament—Le roi soleil, or "the King," par excellence, who took the blazing sun for his crest. The Fronde had been a time of pleasurable excitement to the high-spirited girl, whose mixed blood ran like quicksilver, and who delighted in danger and party strife, stratagem and intrigue. The story of her courage and gaiety of heart in the siege of Paris, she being then little more than a child, ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... be evident to you, sir, that a high-spirited gentleman like Mr. March—I confess that my feelings are with him very warmly in the matter—could not submit to dictation of the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... spirit of fair treatment and respect for the customs of the natives, much of the bloody warfare that has stained the annals of the Colony might have been averted; though it is scarcely possible that with such a high-spirited race the occupation of the islands, especially the North island, where the majority of the Maoris were, could have taken place ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... cheered and shouted, shaking each other's hands, then fell to eating the food which the women brought them with appetite, chattering incessantly, although as a general rule they were a very silent people. Even the grave Harut, who arrived full of congratulations, seemed as high-spirited as a boy, till I reminded him that the real battle ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... freedom. Janet will be just the right wife for Erskine, good tempered and yielding. He is a dear person, but obstinate. When he once makes up his mind, nothing will move him. It would never do for him to have a high-spirited wife." ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Highlander, who had never before been south of the Tweed. He spoke strong Scotch, but not broad Scotch; that is, Lowland Scotch, with the full forcible expressions which are to be found in such abundance in the language. He was a truly honourable, high-spirited fellow, and most kind-hearted and generous. Had Blackall's misdeeds come to his notice he would have doubled him up, as our Yankee cousins would say, in no time. The rest of the party willingly agreed ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... own, Polish Jews; who, though excellent friends in their way, and well versed in all the rites and ceremonies of the Mosaic law, were totally ignorant of the proper course to be pursued with a wild, high-spirited girl, fully aware of the importance of her father's wealth and influence, and panting for the time when she should share in both. The people with whom she resided perceived her wilfulness; but, instead of combating it with reason, they sought to overcome it by force—and the best of all force, ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... fascination of manner, singular grace and animation; of pregnant wit, though quite uneducated; devoted to gallantry, and too high-spirited to heed propriety; obeying no control save that of honour; despising, for those she loved, danger, fortune, and opinion; rather restless than ambitious; risking willingly her own life as well as that of others; and after having passed the best part ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... of the information she communicated, indeed, was so valuable and important that she could not trust the air with it, but whispered the most important portions in a confidential tone. Among the crowd, Cerinthy Ann's theological admirer was observed in deeply reflective attitude; and that high-spirited young lady added further to his convictions of the total depravity of the species by vexing and discomposing him in those thousand ways in which a lively, ill-conditioned young woman will put to rout a serious, well-disposed young man, comforting herself with the reflection ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster
... back his head with a proud, self-confident gesture. Young, strong, high-spirited, he felt at that moment that the world lay at his feet. All things seemed possible to his unaided powers, and the thought of help was repugnant rather than welcome. The two girls looked at him with the involuntary admiration which women ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... which justified his rapid rise to the high places in his profession. In the hunting-field, he was noted as one of the most daring and most accomplished riders in our county. He had always delighted in riding young and high-spirited horses; and the habit remained with him after he had quitted the active duties of his profession in later life. From first to last he had met with no accident worth remembering, until the unlucky morning when ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... entertain his guest did not conceal from Paul the strain of the situation. A young relative, Alexis Vseslavitch by name, was present at the board, having ridden in that afternoon from his estate back in the hills. He was a high-spirited youth and loved dearly to tease his cousin Natalie. But even he saw that for once an unusual ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... a darkening landscape. Doris's dormer window was open. She was leaning on the sill, but he could not tell whether or not her eyes were turned his way. Her attitude was pensive, disconsolate, curiously forlorn for a girl normally high-spirited. He was on the point of signaling to her when he remembered Furneaux's presence. There was something impish, almost diabolically clever, in that little man's characteristics which ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... conscious of,—for the first time recognized, but the supreme impulse of procreation was regarded as a sacred function, to be exercised in the light of scientific knowledge. It was a public rather than a private duty, because it concerned the interests of the race; only valorous and high-spirited men ought to procreate, and it was held that the father should bear the punishments inflicted on the son for faults due to his failure by defects in generation.[23] Moreover, while unions not for the end of procreation ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... write a real story of a real pirate I was actuated by another intent. There are numberless tales of the brave days of the Spanish Main, from "Westward Ho!" down. In every one of them, without exception, the hero is a noble, gallant, high-souled, high-spirited, valiant descendant of the Anglo-Saxon race, while the villain—and such villains they are!—is always a proud and haughty Spaniard, who comes to grief dreadfully in the final trial which determines the issue. My sympathies, from a long course of reading of such romances, have ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... small mouth with ripe red lips, which were never still except when she held them pressed with her sharp white teeth to make them look redder and riper than ever. Her brown fluffy hair was worn short like a boy's, and she looked not unlike a handsome high-spirited boy, with brown eyes, mirthful and daring. She was extremely vivacious in disposition, and active—too active, in fact, for she got through her housemaid's work so quickly that it left her many hours of each day ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... our sin that we have cause to be afraid of. Secondly, your so doing will open an effectual door to the entertainment of the Gospel." Probably Mr. Eliot was right, and the keeping the arms only irritated the high-spirited chief, who said to the messenger of the Governor of Massachusetts, "Your governor is but a subject. I will not treat but with my brother, King Charles ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... bald very far up, but not benevolently so, and it is covered with light red hair, so thin as to contrast indifferently with the denseness of his beard and goatee. His nose would be insignificant but for its sharpness, and at the nostrils it is swelling and high-spirited. His eyes impinge upon his brows, and they are shining and rather dark, while the brows themselves are so scantily clothed with hair that they seem quite naked. Mudd is neatly dressed in a green-grass duster, and white ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... nearest to him at a moment of excitement. Love has fallen out of this marriage by the way, and left a curious friendship. Only once—at the very moment when she is showing herself so little a woman and so much a high-spirited man—only once is he very deeply stirred towards her; and that finds expression in the strange and horrible transport of admiration, doubly strange and horrible on Salvini's lips—"Bring ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and the extraordinary attraction I felt towards him, brought the warm, bright color to my cheeks, and I instinctively dropped the veil which I had raised a moment before. As we entered the carriage, which had been kept in waiting, the horses, high-spirited and impatient, threatened to break loose from the driver's control,—when the stranger, coming rapidly forward, stood at their heads till their transient rebellion was over. It was but an instant; for ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... East, where it is considered infra dig to meet a native on a social footing. Herein lies a grave danger to English colonial policy. Your semi-European educated native, having partly absorbed European manners, resents this subordination and ostracism. So, with this high-spirited, rather clever young rajah. I accepted his invitation to whiskey "pegs" and subsequent dinner at his bungalow. One visit led to another and we were soon rather intimate. The young Rajah, having the usual native taste for luxury well developed and his income stopped, I became of some monetary ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... manchet and rere supper were brought into the hall, he mixed her wine and water, and held the silver basin and napkin to her on bended knee, and had become her recognized cavalier. He was really thriving. Even the high-spirited son of Hotspur could not help loving and ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... riding out alone on the highway. She replied that she would just have one little gallop—a mile or so—and then come back. Her sister, still anxious, followed her out of the gate and said she would wait there for her return. Half a mile or so from the gate the horse, a high-spirited animal, took fright at something and bolted with its rider. The sister waiting and looking out saw them coming, the horse at a furious pace, the rider clinging for dear life to the pummel of the saddle. It flashed on her mind that ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... a young man of high aims and purposes, he was not much pleased with his companions. He was what they termed "green," and it was quite plain to him that there would be a fight before many days had passed by, for he was too high-spirited to submit tamely to the insults which ...
— Work and Win - or, Noddy Newman on a Cruise • Oliver Optic
... and mother looked at each other with shocked understanding. The surprise attending the letter had caused both parents to forget, for the moment, the effect of this wonderful promise of fortune, whether true or false, on imaginative, high-spirited Nan. ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... soon discover that it is much more than that. Carried along on the boisterous rush of the narrative by Chesterton's wonderful high-spirited style, he will soon see that he is being carried into much deeper waters than he had planned on; and the totally unforeseeable denouement will prove for the modern reader, as it has for thousands of others since 1908 when the book was first published, ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... completed the destruction of the monarchy. While the French were smarting under defeat and stung by the knowledge that their natural defender, the king, was leagued with their enemies, this foreign soldier warned a high-spirited and gallant nation that he was come to restore Louis XVI. to his authority, and threatened to treat as rebellious any town that opposed his march, to shoot all persons taken with arms in their hands, and in the event of any ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... proud of her children and had unbounded confidence in them. She was high-spirited and self-respecting and it never seemed to enter her mind that any evil might befall the children that would bring sorrow and shame to her home; but nevertheless it came and Lucy, her youngest child, the pet and pride of the household returned home with a great sorrow tugging at her heart ...
— Trial and Triumph • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... warrior / many a coat was rent, For in the country's custom / they tourneyed as they went, Until before the palace / the monarch did dismount. They tended fairest ladies / as knights high-spirited ...
— The Nibelungenlied - Translated into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original • trans. by George Henry Needler
... Emma's letters to me were cheerful. Latterly, however, they got into difficulties, and poor Emma's letters were sad, and came less frequently. For a year past she has scarcely written to me at all. Tom has never written. He was a high-spirited fellow, and turned his back on us all when my father ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... on a Trinity Sunday, a number of persons were assembled to witness the college ceremonies; and as a sizer was carrying up a dish of meat to the fellows' table, a burly citizen in the crowd made some sneering observation on the servility of his office. Stung to the quick, the high-spirited youth instantly flung the dish and its contents at the head of the sneerer. The sizer was sharply reprimanded for this outbreak of wounded pride, but the degrading task was from that day forward very properly ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... a huntress in the "Faerie Queene," the impersonation of Queen Elizabeth, conceived of, however, as a pure, high-spirited ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... least left behind a framework of enlightened institutions, while our success in the Napoleonic wars only confirmed the ruling aristocratic families in their grip of the nation which they had governed since the reign of Anne. This despotism crushed the humble and stimulated the high-spirited to violence, and is the reason why three such poets as Byron, Landor, and Shelley, though by birth and fortune members of the ruling class, were pioneers as much of political as of spiritual rebellion. Unable to ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... with which cordial relations have been re-established between Spain and the United States is most gratifying; and too much praise cannot be bestowed upon that proud, high-spirited people, who have accepted the results of the war in a spirit so admirable. In the loss of her American colonies, Spain has been paying a debt contracted in the days of her dazzling splendor—the time of the great Charles and of Philip II.,—a kind of indebtedness which in the ...
— A Short History of Spain • Mary Platt Parmele
... Thomas left the Treasury Department, and the New York bankers, whose aid was essential, forced the President, sorely against his will, to give the place to General John A. Dix. This proved an excellent appointment. General Dix was an old Democrat, but of the high-spirited type; he could have tolerated secession by peaceable agreement, but rose in anger at menaces against the flag and the Union. He conducted his department with entire success, and also rendered to ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... life of the Honourable Reginald Annersley. When one heard the details of the up-bringing of this "millionaire baby," one was able to forgive him for being self-centred. He had grown into a man who lived to fulfil his social duties, and he had taken to wife a girl who was reckless, high-spirited, with a streak of almost savage pride ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... and above all, he was tickled by the bitter tone of frustration which characterized it. Oakes was baffled, and his knowledge of Oakes told him that the sensation of being baffled was gall and wormwood to that high-spirited young man. Whatever might be the result of this investigation, it would teach ...
— Death At The Excelsior • P. G. Wodehouse
... 'Young and high-spirited as I then was, I found it impossible to bear such brutal treatment, and one day when I was about fourteen years of age, in a fit of anger and despair, I left the home of my cruel aunt, and found myself ...
— Blackbeard - Or, The Pirate of Roanoke. • B. Barker
... grateful, albeit a little frightened and remorseful over his luck. He could not help thinking of the kindly tolerance of the highwayman, the miserable death of the actual thief, which had proved his own salvation, and above all the generous, high-spirited girl who had aided his escape. While on his way to San Francisco, and yet in the first glow of his success, he had written her a few lines from Marysville, inclosed in a letter to Mr. Tarbox. ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... wasn't. Mary Alden was incapable of deceit, and Roy Wright knew she didn't love him. He knew she was never going to marry him. Poor Roy! He was as gentle and sweet and patient as Mary was high-spirited and beautiful, and the last type on earth to win a woman of Mary's temperament. She wanted to be mastered, and Roy could ...
— Mary Cary - "Frequently Martha" • Kate Langley Bosher
... disposition for cricket and punching his companions' heads than for his Greek and Latin, Lovat's father had given it as his opinion that Lovat deserves a right good flogging; while Lovat's mother maintains that all noble, high-spirited boys are "just like that," and asks Mr. Massereene, with the air of a Q. C., whether he never felt a ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... define life as a series of interruptions. There are a good many valuable and inspiring things which can only be done when one is in the mood, and to secure a mood is not always an easy matter; there are moods which are as coy as the most high-spirited woman, and must be wooed with as much patience and tact: and when the illusive prize is gained, one holds it by the frailest tenure. An interruption diverts the current, cuts the golden thread, breaks the exquisite harmony. I have often thought that Dante was far less unfortunate ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... insolence in persons of rank, as there are others who will insist; that all clergymen are hypocrites, all reformers villains, all placemen plunderers, and so forth; and Mrs. Newcome never, I am sure, imagined that she had a prejudice, or that she was other than an honest, independent, high-spirited woman. Both of the ladies had command over their husbands, who were of soft natures easily led by woman, as, in truth, are all the males of this family. Accordingly, when Sir Brian Newcome voted for the Tory candidate in the City, Mr. Hobson Newcome plumped for the Reformer. While Brian, ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... aside. She was impulsive, high-spirited, and defiant, but where her passions were concerned her heart was very soft. She burst into tears now and flung ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... satisfaction in helping to further it. Who does not know instances of women of high possibilities, who have quietly sacrificed the pursuit of their own accomplishments to the tendance of some brilliant self-absorbed artist? With such love is often mingled a tender compassionateness, as of a mother for a high-spirited and eager child, who throws herself with perfect sympathy into his aims and tastes, while all the time there sits a gentle knowledge in the background of her heart, of the essential unimportance of the things that the child desires so eagerly, and which she yet desires ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the key-note of Scott's personal life as well as of his poetic power. Above everything he was high-spirited, a man of noble, and, at the same time, of martial feelings. Sir Francis Doyle speaks very justly of Sir Walter as "among English singers the undoubted inheritor of that trumpet-note, which, under the breath of Homer, has made the wrath of Achilles ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... assembly, as I think it might best be called. The king came down to his assembled people in form to announce his will, but in reality, speaking in very modern words, to "feel his way". He was sacred, no doubt; and popular, very likely; still he was half like a popular Premier speaking to a high-spirited chamber; there were limits to his authority and power—limits which he would discover by trying whether eager cheers received his mandate, or only hollow murmurs ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... much as he could of the world with all its contradictions, and leave the upshot with God who planned it. What he has made of the world and the world's meanings is to be found at large in his poems. These altogether give his answers to the problems of belief and conduct; in many ways righteous and high-spirited, in some ways loose and contradictory. And yet there are two passages from the preface to the "Leaves of Grass" which do pretty well condense his teaching on all essential points, and yet preserve a measure of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... together, in a sort of defensive league, against their common oppressors. All four were high-spirited lads. The other three, indeed, were sons of men of substance in Devon, whose fathers had lent funds to Captain Drake for the carrying out of his great enterprise. They therefore looked but ill on the kicks and curses which, occasionally, ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... the principal part in this great ceremonial was dressed in elegant garments, so covered with gold embroideries that the color and material could hardly be discerned. He was mounted on a beautiful and high-spirited horse, which pranced and curvetted as if aware that he bore a king; and Louis managed him so skilfully and gracefully that he won the admiration of ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... had now reached her seventeenth year, beautiful, gifted, high-spirited and generous-hearted. And if willful—why, even that seemed to give a prononce shade to her character, that rather heightened the ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... as soon as he could, and, drawing his sword, rode back to assist his friend, and punish the aggressor; but the enthusiast, nothing daunted, met him in full career, and suddenly lifting up his arms, uttered a loud cry, which so startled the knight's high-spirited horse, that it reared and flung him. All this was the work of a few seconds. Pillichody had been borne forward by the impetuosity of his steed to within a short distance of the apprentice, and seeing the fate of his companions, and not liking ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... influenced by the truth or falsity of their component ideas. Their tendency to personification is stronger, because of the much greater nearness they have to the individual desire. The one aspiration of a high-spirited people when subjugated will be freedom; and in the lower stages of culture they will be very certain to fabricate a myth of ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... of his early years. It is clear, however, that he was a mischievous, high-spirited boy, and often got into trouble. At least one anecdote is thoroughly in keeping with his career in manhood. Some of his playmates, so the story goes, once loaded a gun to the muzzle and gave it him to fire. As they expected, it kicked him over, but ...
— Andrew Jackson • William Garrott Brown
... Government, and by them legally recognised. Here, it was far otherwise: the Protestantism of Scotland was the creation of the commons, as in turn the commons may be said to have been created by Protestantism. There were many young high-spirited men, belonging to the noblest families in the country, who were among the earliest to rally round the Reforming preachers; but authority, both in Church and State, set the other way. The congregations who gathered in the fields around Wishart and ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... preponderant, with good right, in the policy of his country. Bold and prudent, courageous and wise, he had known better than anybody how to estimate the true interests of Holland, and how to maintain them everywhere, against Cromwell as well as Mazarin, with high-spirited moderation. His great and cool judgment had inclined him towards France, the most useful ally Holland could have. In spite of the difficulties put in the way of their friendly relations by Colbert's commercial measures, a new treaty was concluded between Louis XIV. ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... however, was gradually thrown off, treated with coldness, and ultimately with disdain, while no one suspected the cause. It is painful to dwell upon subsequent occurrences. My brother grew jealous, and, being a high-spirited young man, released Lady Emily from her engagement. I was mad with love; and this conduct, honorable and manly as it was in him, occasioned an explanation between me and Lady Emily, in which, weak and vacillating as I was, in the frenzy of the moment I disclosed, avowed my passion, and—but ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... speech of such severity and keenness that the House believed he was "digging his own grave;" for Ewing was a high-spirited man who would not hesitate to answer by a challenge. It was, in fact, only the interference of their friends which prevented a duel at this time between Ewing and Lincoln. This speech, to many of Lincoln's colleagues, was a revelation of his ability and character. "This ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... chain he had fastened a string, so as in a manner to suspend them and keep them from galling his ankles. This slave, whose name was Frank, was an intelligent, good looking man, and a very good mechanic. There was nothing vicious in his character, but he was one of those high-spirited and daring men, that whips, chains, fetters, and all the means of cruelty in the power of slavery, could not subdue. Mr. S. had employed a Mr. Beckwith to repair a boat, and told him Frank was a good mechanic, and he might have his services. Frank was sent for, his shackles still on. ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... of age when he took his place on the honorable Saxon throne of Alfred the Great. He was a high-spirited young man, warm-hearted and brave. He conquered Cumberland from the Ancient Britons, and protected his kingdom against the fierce sea-kings of the North. Like his great ancestor, King Alfred, he was fond of learning and art. He improved and adorned public places and buildings. ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... this experience, there was always present in his thought the Aileen Armagh as he knew her now—pure, loyal, high-spirited, helpful, womanly in all her household ways, entertaining in her originality, endowed with the gift of song. She was charming; this was patent to all who knew her. It was a pleasure to dwell on this thought of her, and, dwelling upon it too often at off-times ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... of the visited, fortunate; to more, injurious, by exciting expectations which were never to be realized, and, unhappily, to no small number ruinous. The known wealth of the father and, possibly, the presence of a high-spirited brother, forbade any apprehension of the latter danger to the young ladies: but it was impossible that all the admiration bestowed on the fine figure and lovely face of Sarah Wharton should be thrown away. Her person was formed with the early maturity of ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... so, and that the lady-chauffeur was no less than "PAT BEAUCHAMP" herself, in the later stages of her career overseas. Though her only response may have been to splash mud over me, I should feel happy, now, thus to have paid my respects to this gallant and high-spirited lady. I count myself among the company, battalion, division, corps and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 21st, 1920 • Various
... is of no use, nephew, for us to deny our years when any Peerage guide must reveal them pretty closely to the curious), and I am this month passing sixty-nine, at my age the charge of two high-spirited young Females, in whom conventional education has failed to subdue Aspirations for worldly happiness whilst it has left them somewhat inexperienced in the Conventions of Society, I find a little trying. ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... is more than beautiful; she is at the same time a noble, high-spirited woman, and an august queen. Her misfortunes and humiliations have not bent her neck, but this noble lady seems even more august and majestic in the days of adversity than in those of splendor ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... the travellers had seen. They never begged: they were not tempted to a single act of dishonesty by the sight of the treasures which their visitors displayed; and they were ready to share with their guests, the little which they themselves possessed. They were also a high-spirited people. The Spaniards, the only white men with whom they had hitherto had any intercourse, would not supply them with fire-arms, alleging that, if they were possessed of such weapons, they would only be the more induced to kill one another. ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... a high-spirited little animal, a thoroughbred Arab no less, and Hollyhock knew that at the top of the gorge, when all things looked so ghostly, he would start at every shadow and at the slightest sound. He was all nerves, was Lightning ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... back to the friends, the horses, the dogs, the rooms, the gardens, the fields, the forests of youth, and was going to be the real Vixen again; the wild, thoughtless, high-spirited girl whom Squire Tempest and all the ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... nations, there was probably none that fretted and winced under its subjection more than the Medes. Naturally brave and high-spirited, with the love of independence inherent in mountaineers, and with a well-grounded pride in their recent great successes, they must have chafed daily and hourly at the ignominy of their position, the postponement of their hopes, and the wrongs which they continually suffered. ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3. (of 7): Media • George Rawlinson
... were two books by Charles Dibdin the Younger, the father of Lamb's correspondent. Arthur was Young Arthur; or, The Child of Mystery: A Metrical Romance, 1819, and the novel was Isn't It Odd? three volumes of high-spirited ramblings something in the manner of Tristram Shandy, nominally written by Marmaduke Merrywhistle, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... permitted to extend itself to his family. Rigid and uncompromising in everything, he had observed that Andrew was frequently in company with the child of this neighbor, and felt impelled to lay a prohibition on their intercourse. But Andrew, a light-hearted, high-spirited boy, who inherited from his father a strong will, was by no means inclined to yield a ready obedience in this particular. He loved his little companion, and never was happier than when in her society. Naturally, therefore, he sought it on every ...
— The Iron Rule - or, Tyranny in the Household • T. S. Arthur
... mean anything," declared Betty. "He is just high-spirited; that's all. What sort of a secret did it seem to be, if it wasn't ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Ocean View - Or, The Box That Was Found in the Sand • Laura Lee Hope
... into the hall, to the moment when we and the said packages poured out of it again into a carriage and a cart, I have no recollection, excepting meal-times and bedtime, of having been still for an instant. Escorted everywhere by two handsome, high-spirited boys, in a wild state of excitement about our voyage, we ranged the house from top to bottom, and laid hands on everything portable and eatable that we wanted in it. The inexhaustible hospitality of our hostess was proof against all the inroads that we could make on it. The priceless ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... him with a shower of repentant kisses, as one usually does, the same as one sprinkles salt on claret stains. But in him I beheld the original and entire cause—and I just couldn't do it. He called me a high-spirited devil with a hair-trigger temper. But he left me alone to ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... sure he felt like doing it. He was in the right, and knew he was. He was high-spirited and utterly without fear. And yet he never even defended himself. lie let Paul bully him and beat him. He endured to have himself looked upon as a coward - although you may observe that all the time he did not budge an inch from the line of conduct he had chosen. ...
— For Greater Things: The story of Saint Stanislaus Kostka • William T. Kane, S.J.
... portrait of the duke as he looked in the year 1473, whose trend is more sympathetic.[2] "His stature was small and nervous, his complexion pale, hair dark chestnut, eyes black and brilliant, his presence majestic but stern. He was high-spirited, magnanimous, courageous, intrepid, and impetuous. Capable of action, he lacked nothing ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... the place was oppressive to the bright, high-spirited young man. The bare severity of the building was bad enough in church, he felt, but in Sunday school it was disastrous. It should be a bright place, full of light and life. He made up his mind he would set Miss Cotton and the Ladies' Aid to redouble their ...
— Duncan Polite - The Watchman of Glenoro • Marian Keith
... is, as one might believe, worst informed on the present times. He says eight hundred persons were put to death for the last rebellion-I don't believe a quarter of the number were: and he makes the first ]lord Derwentwater—who, poor man! was in no such high-spirited mood—bring his son, who by the way was not above a year -,ind a half old, upon the scaffold to be sprinkled with his blood. However, he is in the right to expect to be believed: for he believes all the romances in Lord ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... in the various stanzas of each member of the party and his characteristics. The horses became high-spirited with nothing to do and plenty of good feed. One of our amusements was to corral several, and then, putting saddles on the most prancing specimens, mount and ride down on the plain, the horse running at top ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... being one of the most dangerous islands in the group. The natives in the north, the Big Nambas, are certainly not very gentle, and the others, too, are high-spirited and will not submit to ill-treatment from the settlers. Malekula is the second largest island of the group, and its interior is quite unexplored. I could not penetrate inland, as I was unable to find boys and guides for a voyage they all thought extremely dangerous. Mr. ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... of my youth, when the quick blood would throb at my heart and burn in my cheek at any slight to the real manhood and worth I saw in him, and preference for the poor cringing courtiers I despised. The thought of those old days has brought me back to the story as all then seemed to me—the high-spirited, hot-tempered maiden, who had missed all her small chances of even being mild and meek in the troubles at home, and to whom Paris was a grievous place of banishment, only tolerable by the aid of my dear brother and my poor Meg, when she was not too French ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... on principle, while our modern progress is mostly based on precedent. We go, not by what may be affirmed in theory, but by what has been already admitted in practice. That is why the Jacobites are the last Tories in history with whom a high-spirited person can have much sympathy. They wanted a specific thing; they were ready to go forward for it, and so they were also ready to go back for it. But modern Tories have only the dullness of defending situations that they had not the excitement ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... she was subjected. But this dignified endurance of hers subdued her pupils, in the long run, far more than the voluble tirades of the other mistresses. My informant adds:—"The effect of this manner was singular. I can speak from personal experience. I was at that time high-spirited and impetuous, not respecting the French mistresses; yet, to my own astonishment, at one word from her, I was perfectly tractable; so much so, that at length, M. and Madame Heger invariably preferred all their wishes to me through her; the other pupils did not, ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... high-spirited, animated girl; but it must not be thought that she was a highly educated lady, or that time had been given to her amidst all her occupations, in which she could allow her mind to dwell much on feelings of romance. Her life had ...
— The Golden Lion of Granpere • Anthony Trollope
... had other things to think of in the silence of her room. Another woman would have unburdened herself to a confidante; but Polly was too loyal to her father to shatter his beliefs, and too high-spirited to take another and a lesser person into her confidence. She was certain that Aunt Chloe would be full of sympathetic belief and speculations, but she would not trust a nigger with what she couldn't tell her own father. For Polly really and truly believed ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... to pick out those of their number who claimed to have most distinguished themselves against the enemy, in order that they might receive their freedom; the object being to test them, as it was thought that the first to claim their freedom would be the most high-spirited and the most apt to rebel. As many as two thousand were selected accordingly, who crowned themselves and went round the temples, rejoicing in their new freedom. The Spartans, however, soon afterwards did away with them, and no one ever knew how each of them perished. ...
— The History of the Peloponnesian War • Thucydides
... But the high-spirited Giulietta had now become too conscious of her own value to remain hampered by a contract which in its essence was fraudulent. She determined to break her bonds by flight to Paris, where her sister Giuditta and her aunt Mme. Grassini-Ragani were then domiciled. She confided ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... he could earn to put bread in the mouths of his thirteen children, who were taught early to help themselves, after the fashion of their stalwart Anglo-Saxon forefathers. One of Farmer Eaton's boys, named William, was born February 23, 1764, and was a high-spirited, clever, reckless little chap, keeping his mother continually in a state of anxiety on his account; indeed, if she had not been so used to boys with their pranks and unlimited thirst for adventures, I ...
— Harper's Young People, June 22, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... looked sadder on her return. Ella and Katie, too, made constant demands on her time and patience. Christine was very unlike Bessie in temperament. She was a pretty, bright girl, warm-hearted and high-spirited, but she did not possess Bessie's contented nature. Christine often found her quiet life irksome. She was inquisitive, restless, eager to see the world. She had insatiable curiosity; a love of change, her small girlish ambitions. She ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... trudged manfully onward his eyes ever bent upon "the strait and narrow path." Lottie the pretty child, full of life and hope with her sweet winning ways imparted warmth and sunshine to the snug home; and the merry high-spirited Tom, a blue-eyed youth of fourteen, gave life and freshness to ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... ill-used by his betrothed, and when he had any ground of grievance, he had the pleasant habit of venting his complaints as long as his audience would listen to him. To-night the habit proved even stronger than his distaste for his high-spirited parent. ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... gave the horses a flick with the whip. The afternoon air was keen and the high-spirited team needed no further urging. They swung out of the farm gate at a pace that made Reggie ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett
... thoroughly morbid and impotent by this intolerable violence and more intolerable tenderness. In her estimate of her own health she did, of course, suffer. It is evident that she practically believed herself to be dying. But she was a high-spirited woman, full of that silent and quite unfathomable kind of courage which is only found in women, and she took a much more cheerful view of death than her father did of life. Silent rooms, low voices, lowered blinds, long days of loneliness, and of the sickliest kind of sympathy, ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... hamlet to hamlet, and chateau to chateau; of testing humanity, high and low, on the romantic side, and, at the end of a victorious conspiracy, of rearing in France the standard of the monarchy—all this was too dazzling not to captivate a young and high-spirited woman, bold through very ignorance of the obstacles she had to surmount, heroic in the hour of danger through levity; able to endure all but ennui, and ready to lull any misgivings with the ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... crofter's only fuel. They were dragging down a prickly pile of it by a straw rope when, dipping into the high road by a bridge, they crossed the path of a splendid carriage which swirled suddenly out of the drive of the Big House behind two high-spirited bays driven by an English coachman in gorgeous livery. The horses reared and shied at the bundle of kindling, whereupon a gentleman inside the carriage leaned out and swore, and then the brutal coachman, lashing out at the bare-headed woman with his whip, struck ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... you a pair of fine high-spirited girls," said the old gentleman heartily, interrupting in his turn, "and all I can say is I wish I had ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... he's a high-spirited, right-actin' gentleman. But what do you reckon he'd feel obliged to do if a body stole one of ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... Lady Cantrip and her husband and by Mr. Monk was equally favourable. She had always regarded him as a perfect gentleman. Lord Cantrip had found him to be devoted to the service of the country,—modest, intelligent, and high-spirited. Perhaps the few words which fell from Mr. Monk were as strong as any that were spoken. "He is a man whom I have delighted to call my friend, and I have been happy to think that his services have been at the disposal ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... height of steeple-crowned hat, a larger allowance of cloak, and a treble proportion of sour gravity of aspect. It might be read on his countenance, that he was one of those resolute enthusiasts to whom Oliver owed his conquests, whose religious zeal made them even more than a match for the high-spirited and high-born cavaliers, who exhausted their valour in vain defence of their sovereign's person and crown. He looked with grave solemnity at Wildrake, as if he was making in his own mind an inventory of his features and dress; and having fully ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... particularly in the present times of trouble and innovations. He would have told them: "Make me great and wealthy, but not at the expense of your own grandeur or of the loyalty of your people. Do not treat an humble subject as an equal, nor suffer Your Majesties, whom Providence destined to govern a high-spirited nation, to be openly ruled by one born to obey. I am too dutiful not to lay aside my private vanity when the happiness of my King and the tranquillity of my fellow subjects are at stake. I am already too high. In descending a little, I shall not only rise in the eyes of my contemporaries, but ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... the letters are among the papers yet, and you can see them. One in particular was fearful in its denunciations of her. He reviled her, called her by opprobrious epithets, and told his father that he would never consent to see her. Lady Chetwynde saw all these. You know how high-spirited she was. She at once took fire at these insults, and declared that she would never consent to see Lord Chetwynde. She wrote him to that effect, and then departed from Chetwynde ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... file was largely made up of men of education and high social position. And this resulted from the character of the struggle. The war was a war of invasion on the part of the North; and the ardent and high-spirited youth of the entire South threw themselves into it with enthusiasm. The heirs of ancient families and great wealth served as privates. Personal pride, love of country, indignation at the thought that a hostile section had sent an army to reduce them to submission, combined ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... dignified about the figure of John Shakespeare as we dimly sight it in what remains of the annals of his town and time. The stage he treads is circumscribed, and his appearances are few, but sufficient for us to apprehend a high-spirited but injudicious man, showing always somewhat superior in ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... glad to do, for our meals had been rendered a little unpleasant by mortified tears bedewing the face of the gentle Zoe, while indignant sobs and haughty looks betokened the harassed feelings of the high-spirited Lilly. ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... attempt would be made to surprise him in his green-wood castle. His nephew, Colonel Martin, of the militia, who resided with him, suggested the expediency of a removal to the lower settlements, beyond the Blue Ridge. The high-spirited old nobleman demurred; his heart cleaved to the home which he had formed for himself in the wilderness. "I am an old man," said he, "and it is of little importance whether I fall by the tomahawk or die of disease and old ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... to his stern and inflexible temper. His integrity was republican—his loftiness of spirit was patrician. He had all the purity, the disinterestedness, and the fervour of a patriot—he had none of the suppleness or the passion of a demagogue; on the contrary, he seems to have felt much of that high-spirited disdain of managing a people which is common to great minds conscious that they are serving a people. His manners were austere, and he rather advised than persuaded men to his purposes. He pursued no tortuous policy, but marched direct ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... several occasions where he had been able to meet her socially; and had impressed the Governor's lady very favorably, as being an unusually handsome, well-bred and highly cultivated young man. A comely and high-spirited lady of forty, she was better pleased to be the recipient of the courteous and deferential attentions of a young Englishman of good connections like Master Raymond, than even to listen to the wise and weighty counsel of so learned a man ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... in 912, and his son Henry, a high-spirited youth, who had greatly distinguished himself against the Slavi, ere long quarrelled with the aged bishop Hatto. According to the legendary account, the bishop sent him a golden chain so skilfully contrived as to strangle its wearer. The truth is that the ancient ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... and frightened, these dreadful pictures of robbers and pistols had a reality for her which was too much to bear. Mary the courageous, the high-spirited, who scorned tears and laughed at weakness, was now crying and sobbing helplessly, like the ...
— A Pair of Clogs • Amy Walton
... it's no use baulking a lad if he wishes to go to sea, and that if he is determined, he must go: now I think otherwise - I think a parent has a right to say no, if he pleases, upon that point; for you see, sir, a lad, at the early age at which he goes to sea, does not know his own mind. Every high-spirited boy wishes to go to sea - it's quite natural; but if the most of them were to speak the truth, it is not that they so much want to go to sea, as that they want to go from school or from home, where they are under the control of their masters or ...
— Masterman Ready • Captain Marryat
... grumbled at the friar who spoiled their trade. The ban of interdiction lay upon the city, where the sacraments could no longer be administered or the dead be buried with the rites of Christians. Meanwhile a band of high-spirited and profligate young men, called Compagnacci, used every occasion to insult and interrupt him. At last in March 1498 his staunch friends, the Signory, or supreme executive of Florence, suspended him from preaching in the Duomo. Even the populace were weary of the protracted quarrel with ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... pleasant humour, which it would otherwise have lacked. Her mouth was large, and full of character, and her chin oval, dimpled, and finely chiselled, like her father's. I beg you, in taking her for all in all, to admit that she was a fine, handsome, high-spirited young woman. ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... his wife, he swore so loud that she should, that, all amazed, the priest let fall his book, and as he stooped to take it up, this mad-brained bridegroom gave him such a cuff, that down fell the priest and his book again. And all the while they were being married he stamped and swore so, that the high-spirited Katharine trembled and shook with fear. After the ceremony was over, while they were yet in the church, he called for wine, and drank a loud health to the company, and threw a sop which was at the bottom of the glass full ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... placed as boys in the same herd or troop for the purposes of discipline. It was then that Lysander learned to admire the moderation and self-restraint of Agesilaus, who, although he was ambitious and high-spirited, with a most vehement and passionate desire to be first in every kind of competition, was yet of a manageable and easily ruled disposition, very sensitive to reproach, and far more afraid of blame than of toils ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... was something detestable in the way he had referred to Beulah Rutherford. In the first place, Roy believed it to be a pure assumption that he was going to marry her. Then, too, he had spoken of this high-spirited girl as if she were a colt to be broken and he the man to wield the whip. Her rebellion against fate meant nothing more to him than a tantrum to be curbed. He did not in the least divine the spiritual unrest ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... stucco beneath which he had so carefully hidden his spiritual and imaginative side cracked and broke. Under the indescribable shock of what seemed to him to be wanton and meaningless cruelty, the boy gave way to a grief that was angry and agonized by turns. He had left a fit, high-spirited father to drive to a golf shop to buy a new mashie, returned to take him out to Sleepy Hollow for a couple of rounds—and found him stretched out on the floor of the library, dead. Was it any wonder that he tortured himself with unanswerable questions, sat for hours in the dark trying with ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... his greatest bane upon earth: by the walls of Berwick the Mayor kept from his arms the fair Isabella, and by the dam-dike of Newmilne the same Mayor deprived him of the pleasure of angling. Was such power on the part of a Mayor to be borne by the high-spirited youth who had been trained to look upon mason-work as a mere stimulant to love or war—a thing that raised the value of what it enclosed by the opposition it offered to the young blood that raged for entrance? The youth thought not. He vowed that he would neither lose his Isabella ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... proud, high-spirited ambitious girl, who laughed at adverse fortune, and forgot poverty in lofty aspirations? How long ago it seemed, since she kissed the dear faded cheek, and knelt for her mother's farewell benediction. Was it the same world? Was she the same Beryl; was the eternal and unchanging ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson |
