"Levee" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... about the beginning of the eighteenth century. Louis the Fourteenth in his old age became religious: he determined that his subjects should be religious, too: he shrugged his shoulders and knitted his brows if he observed at his levee or near his dinner-table any gentleman who neglected the duties enjoined by the Church, and rewarded piety with blue ribbons, invitations to Marli, governments, pensions, and regiments. Forthwith Versailles became, in everything but dress, a convent. The pulpits and ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... for the mission and for himself, was to be still further tried. On 12th July 1828 we find him thus writing from Calcutta to Jabez:—"I came down this morning to attend Lord W. Bentinck's first levee. It was numerously attended, and I had the pleasure of seeing there a great number of gentlemen who had formerly studied under me, and for whom I felt a very sincere regard. I hear Lady Bentinck is a pious woman, but have not yet seen her. I have a card to ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... Cincinnati about going with him as first clerk on the side-wheel packet Frank Steele, a new boat about the size of the War Eagle. The Captain is Letter A, No. 1, and I think I shall go with him. If not, I have two or three good offers for coming season on the levee, besides my present berth, which is ...
— How to Write Letters (Formerly The Book of Letters) - A Complete Guide to Correct Business and Personal Correspondence • Mary Owens Crowther
... party; and he was hailed by the Tories as a valuable accession to their ranks. This proves that his talents were even then known; a fact corroborated by Johnson's statement, that while he was waiting in the outer-room at Lord Oxford's levee, the prime minister, when told he was there, went out, at the persuasion of Swift, with his treasurer's staff in his hand, and saluted him in the most flattering manner. He became, either before or immediately after this, intimate ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... M'Loughlin, "whether is it you or I that is about to hold a little levee in my humble parlor to-day? But I suppose I need not ask. Consider yourself at home here, my good neighbor—you are now up, and I am down; so we must only allow ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... High Commissioner and the Marchioness of Heatherdale will arrive to-day at Holyrood Palace, there to reside during the sittings of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, and to-morrow the Royal Standard will be hoisted at Edinburgh Castle from reveille to retreat. His Grace will hold a levee at eleven. Directly His Grace leaves the palace after the levee, the guard of honor will proceed by the Canongate to receive him on his arrival at St. Giles' Church, and will then proceed to Assembly Hall to receive him on his arrival there. The Sixth Inniskilling Dragoons and the First Battalion ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... London engulfs them all. The shark is there, And the shark's prey; the spendthrift, and the leech That sucks him. There the sycophant, and he That with bare-headed and obsequious bows Begs a warm office, doomed to a cold jail And groat per diem if his patron frown. The levee swarms, as if in golden pomp Were charactered on every statesman's door, 'BATTERED AND BANKRUPT FORTUNES MENDED HERE.' These are the charms that sully and eclipse The charms of nature. 'Tis the cruel gripe ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... Ay, truly, the sentinels on duty used to salute me as if I were Corporal John himself! I was on the high road to fortune. Charley Mordaunt used to call me Jack, and drink canary at my chambers; I used to make one at my Lord Treasurer's levee; I had even got Mr. Army-Secretary Walpole to take a hundred guineas as a compliment: and he had promised me a majority: when bad luck turned, and all my fine hopes ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Mississippi, all Negroes, and about 160 of the 23rd Iowa (white), about 1100 fighting men in all? Attacked by a force of six Confederate regiments, crushed out of their works by sheer weight of numbers, borne down toward the levee, fighting every step of the way, hand to hand—clubbed musket, bayonets, and swords,—from three A. M. to twelve noon, they fought desperately until a Union gun-boat came to the rescue and shelled the desperate foe back to the woods, with a total loss to the defenders of 437 men,—two-fifths ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... the head of whom I name with honour Pistorides.[147]) For these have decided the matter directly against me, by declaring that no person who was ever known to lie under the suspicion of one single Tory principle, or who had been once seen at a great man's levee in the worst of times,[148] should be allowed to come within the verge of the Castle; much less to bow in the antechamber, appear at the assemblies, or dance at a birth-night. However, I dare assert, that this maxim hath been often controlled, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... was critical. It was that first, redoubtable moment of inundation, when the stream rises to the level of the levee and when the water begins to filter through the fissures of dike. A second more and the barricade would have ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... last reception before Easter, and Bentinck House was even more crowded than usual. Six Cabinet Ministers had come on from the Speaker's Levee in their stars and ribands, all the pretty women wore their smartest dresses, and at the end of the picture-gallery stood the Princess Sophia of Carlsruhe, a heavy Tartar-looking lady, with tiny black eyes and wonderful emeralds, talking bad French at the top of her voice, and laughing immoderately ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... green and danced around the May pole. Turkey shooting was a favorite amusement, which usually took place on the Common. New Year's Day was devoted to the interchange of visits. Every door was thrown open, and all guests were welcome, friends as well as strangers, as at a Presidential levee. This custom of olden time has passed down to us from our worthy Dutch predecessors. Dinner parties were unknown. But tea-parties, with the ...
— Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam • John S. C. Abbott
... couple of hours later, when Captain Blood, as spruce and cool as if he had just come from a levee, stepped upon the quarter-deck of the Victoriense, to confront M. de Rivarol, still in ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... doubtful. They are so originally vice, that they are generated in the dung of other vices, and crawl into existence with the filth upon their back. The fugitives have found protection in you, and the levee-room is their place ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... Janders—old Subadar Goordit Singh. It myde me sick to see them Bengalesey, some of 'em 'ookin' it to Suakim, some of 'em retirin' on the seraphim, which is another name for Berkshires. It ain't no sweet levee a-tryin' to rally 'eathen 'ands to do their dooty. So we 'ad to cover 'em back into the zeriba of the seraphim—which is our glorious selves. A bloomin' 'asty puddin' was that tournamong, but it wasn't so bloomin' 'asty that the Subadar and William Connor didn't finish ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... to an extent that cannot be realized easily. In the months of June and July the weather was extremely hot. The army of General Grant had quartered in and around the town during the preceding winter. The larger portion of the town inside of the levee, had been covered with water to the depth of several feet. Much of the refuse of the army, including some dead animals, had been left upon the surface of the ground. Sickness was general among the inhabitants. Health was the exception. We had our quarters upon the levee, and ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... the prospect of ultimate victory; how deep and abiding was their faith in the justice of the cause and in the ability of the government to maintain the union; and how determined that nothing must be held back that was needed to accomplish that result. For some days there was a regular levee beneath my father's roof and the good people of the town gave the union soldier much cause to remember them with gratitude as long ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd
... in my Favour speak, Your Levee is but twice a Week; From mine I can exclude but one Day, My Door is quiet ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... about the dreadful part," urged Betty. "Think of the funny things Mrs. Brown told, of the time the levee broke at Shawneetown. The table all set for supper, and the water pouring in until the table floated up to the ceiling, and went bobbing around ...
— The Little Colonel's Hero • Annie Fellows Johnston
... on to Leixlip,' (where—this between ourselves and the reader—during the summer months His Excellency and Lady Townshend resided, and where, the old newspapers tell us, they 'kept a public day every Monday,' and he 'had a levee, as usual, every Thursday.') But ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... under a triumphal arch. The governor then addressed him in a Greek speech, to which his Majesty replied; but in what language the court newsman has not thought fit to inform us. After parading through the town, the procession arrived at the governor's, where the King held a levee. In the afternoon, he returned to the vessel, on board of which a dinner was given to the principal inhabitants; and again the poor Greeks illumined their ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... beguile with lies and flattery? O'er plains they ramble unconfined, No politics disturb their mind; They eat their meals, and take their sport, Nor know who's in or out at court. They never to the levee go To treat as dearest friend a foe; They never importune his grace, Nor ever cringe to men in place; Nor undertake a dirty job, Nor draw the quill to write for Bob. Fraught with invective they ne'er go To folks at Paternoster Row: No judges, fiddlers, ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... confidence which the hens placed in these pompous geese, who were not the first fools whose solemn air has deceived a few old females, that as soon as they perceived them in the train of the horseman they also trotted up to pay their respects at his levee. ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... conceal? You and Yorke held a levee here, I suppose? That's the fact. You had so many fellows in here, gossiping, that you don't know who may have meddled with the letter; and when you were off to college, they stayed on ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... heard the clang and turmoil of human labor, the din of congregated thousands; and where the great river rolls down through the forest, in lonely grandeur, he saw the waters lashed into foam beneath the prows of panting steamboats, flocking to the broad levee." ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg
... being the receipt at last of two sets of letters from home.... I have a great heap of despatches, some of which seem rather likely to perplex me. I daresay, however, that I shall see my way through the mist in a day or two.... I had a levee last evening, which was largely attended. The course which I am about to follow does not square with the views of the merchants, but I gave an answer to their address, which gave them for the moment wonderful satisfaction.... A document, taken in one of the Chinese junks lately captured, ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... Parliament has begun, for everybody invites on Wednesday, Saturday, or Sunday, when there are no debates. We had three dinner invitations for next Wednesday, from Mr. Harcourt, Marquis of Anglesey, and Mrs. Mansfield. We go to the former. The Queen held a levee on Friday, for gentlemen only. ...
— Letters from England 1846-1849 • Elizabeth Davis Bancroft (Mrs. George Bancroft)
... when each man had exchanged his three or four minutes' conversation with the fair postmistress,—a conversation at times impeded by bashfulness or timidity, on his part solely, or restricted often to vague smiling,—he resignedly made way for the next. It was a formal levee, mitigated by the informality of rustic tact, great good-humor, and infinite patience, and would have been amusing had it not always been terribly in earnest and at times touching. For it was peculiar to the place and the epoch, and indeed ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... shipped with during that year or more—I am sure that he had never dreamed that such men were. He had never stood on the curbing outside a recruiting office on South State Street, in the old levee district, and watched that tragic panorama move by—those nightmare ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber
... various plans, collecting arms, and giving instructions to their agents amongst the populace. An agitation of the same sort prevailed at the Louvre; the king, too, was deliberating with his advisers as to what he should do on the morrow: Guise would undoubtedly present himself at his morning levee; should he at once rid himself of him by the poniards of the five and forty bravoes which the Duke of Epernon had enrolled in Gascony for his service? Or would it be best to summon to Paris some troops, French and Swiss, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... laughing at it then (though Sandy held a levee in the evening), they were all so stricken with amazement. By one movement they swung round to see what had fascinated Cathro, and the other classes doing likewise, Tommy became suddenly the centre of observation. Big tears were slinking down ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... as he was furnished with the necessary credentials from the king, Edward presented himself at the levee of the ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat
... conviction of our total inability to make war that the five or six thousand troops now in Canada are considered to be amply sufficient to protect that province against our mightiest efforts."[378] A revolution of sentiment was to be noted even in the minds of former advocates. Castlereagh, at a levee on March 12, said to Russell that the movements in the United States appeared to him to ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... and for those alone; neither did the king usually sit down to table with the nobility or with his courtiers. Never was he known to be guilty of the slightest excess at table, and his repasts were simple, if not frugal. At a levee, or on the terrace at Windsor, or in the circle of Hyde Park, this model of a worthy English gentleman might be seen, either with his plain-featured queen on his arm, or driven in his well-known coach with his old and famous cream-coloured horses. Junius derided the ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... ex stultis facit insanos." "This fellow," says he, "has an art of converting fools into madmen." When I was in France, the region of complaisance and vanity, I have often observed that a great man who has entered a levee of flatterers humble and temperate has grown so insensibly heated by the court which was paid him on all sides, that he has been quite distracted before he could get ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... undoubtedly made in London to order, the tailor having had instructions to prepare for his highness a dress that would be striking and impressive, and from this point of view he had done his work well. The trousers were blue with gold stripes, of the most elaborate floral pattern, such as decorate levee uniforms; and, after the fashion of our most gaily-dressed hussars of fifty years ago, there were wonderful specimens of embroidery part of the way down the front of the thigh. But the tunic was the dazzling part of the show, ...
— The Rajah of Dah • George Manville Fenn
... the value of that interdependence of each part of our organism, which often, owing to a want of equilibrium of strength and resistance in some part when compared to the rest, causes the whole to give way, just as a flaw in a levee will cause the whole of the solidly-constructed mass to give way, or a demoralized regiment may entail the utter rout of an army. As described by George Murray Humphry, in his instructive work on "Old Age," ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... week she and Julia sat patiently at the morning levee of an eminent and titled London surgeon. Full forty patients were before them: so they had to wait and wait. At last they were ushered into the presence-chamber, and Mrs. Dodd entered on the beaten ground of her daughter's ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... batches Of political despatches, And foreign politicians circumvent; Then, if business isn't heavy, We may hold a Royal LEVEE, Or ratify some Acts of Parliament: Then we probably review the household troops - With the usual "Shalloo humps" and "Shalloo hoops!" Or receive with ceremonial and state An interesting Eastern Potentate. After that we generally Go and ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... and Bobby had rounded the corner by an old hop-house and kept on down the levee. Now that the presence of the others was withdrawn, the two looked about them differently and began themselves to give off an influence instead of being pressed upon by overpowering personalities. Frogs were chorusing in the near swamp, and Bobby wanted one. He was off after it. But Di ...
— Miss Lulu Bett • Zona Gale
... soldiers; it's the people cheering Lord Ronald on his way to the Parliament House. They like him. Every one does. He knows my father, and yours too. He knows me. Didn't you see him smile? I'll introduce you to him first time there's a levee." ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... of giving a general and comprehensive account of the late actions around and on Spion Kop prevented me from describing its scenes and incidents. Events, like gentlemen at a levee, in these exciting days tread so closely on each other's heels that many pass unnoticed, and most can only claim the scantiest attention. But I will pick from the hurrying procession a few—distinguished for no other reason than that they have caught my eye—and from their quality ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... upper end of King's Bench walks in the Temple. There I shall have all the privacy of a house without the encumbrance, and shall be able to lock my friends out as often as I desire to hold free converse with my immortal mind; for my present lodgings resemble a minister's levee, I have so increased my acquaintance (as they call 'em), since I have resided in town. Like the country mouse, that had tasted a little of urban manners, I long to be nibbling my own cheese by my dear self without mouse-traps and time-traps. By my new plan, I shall ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... similar rustic lodge, of which Haliburton has given a charming description. 'Twas on the 11th of August the youthful colonel, with his fine regiment, landed in the Lower Town; on the 12th was held in his honour, at the Chateau St. Louis, a levee, whereat attended the authorities, civil, military and clerical, together with the gentry. In the afternoon "the ladies were presented to the Prince in the Chateau." Who, then, attended this levee? Did he dance? If so, who were his partners? No register ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... After his levee, that is to say, giving directions about the labors of the next day, and seeing all the peasants who had business with him, Levin went back to his study and sat ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... the spring in its beauty is near! How the fences and tules once more re-appear! How soft lies the mud on the banks of yon slough By the hole in the levee ...
— East and West - Poems • Bret Harte
... doing?" said he, in a sort of grave tone which did not however mean gravity. "Holding a levee?—and do you receive your courtiers at different hours according to their ages? in that case. I have ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... to follow. The chase led him to a half-hollow log which lay on a low, grass-grown levee above the stream, where the dog's interest in the pursuit became vivid; temporarily, however, for after a few minutes of agitated investigation, he was seized with indifference to the whole world; panted briefly; slept. Joe sat upon the ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... me, 'you will see that lovely creature I once told you about; I can hear a fine lady's step in the corridor; it is she, no doubt;' and, as a matter of fact, the young man came in with a woman on his arm. I recognized the Countess, whose levee Gobseck had described for me, one ...
— Gobseck • Honore de Balzac
... the low gurgle of water, and a leaden sky greeted us the next morning as we lay beside the half-submerged levee of Sacramento. Here, however, the novelty of boats to convey us to the hotels was an appeal that was irresistible. I resigned myself to a dripping rubber-cased mariner called Joe, and wrapping myself in a shining cloak of the like material, about as ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... he said, at length, with not a little stiffness in his manner, while Charles had no less awkwardness in receiving him; "you have been holding a levee this morning; I thought I should never get to see you. Sit you down; let us both sit down, and let me at last have a word or ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... rest was a young gentleman, called the Lord des Cheriots, (3) who wooed her so ardently that he was never absent from her levee and couchee, and was also with her as much as possible during the day. This did not please the Prince of Belhoste, who thought that a man of such poor estate, and so lacking in grace, did not deserve an honourable and gracious reception, and he often made remonstrances about it to the ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. V. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... by came a little dry cough, as she went through the presentations at the levee, and read out 'Viscount Fitzjocelyn, by the Earl ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in China would hold it disgraceful to expose her face to a strange man. Queen Victoria, sober, sage matron and pink of propriety as she is reputed, would not consider a lady properly dressed for her levee—where the more strange men to gaze the better—who did not expose her face and neck and shoulders to full view. Education, my boy, education! all things right and all things wrong within a very wide ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... hang-dog ruffian, scouring the ventilator? So, that's Rowland, of the navy, is it! Well, this is a tumble. Wasn't he broken for conduct unbecoming an officer? Got roaring drunk at the President's levee, didn't he? I think I read ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... del Campo.—When the attempt was made upon the life of George III., by Margaret Nicholson, who attempted to stab him as he was going to St. James's to hold a levee, a council was ordered to be held as soon as the levee was over. The Marquess del Campo, the Spanish ambassador, being apprised of that circumstance, and knowing that the council would detain the king in town three or four hours beyond ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... Mr. Gubb. "Everything is arranged satisfactory. I'm to be on the old house-boat by the wharf-house on the levee at nine, with it." He glanced at the night man's back and lowered his voice. "And Mr. ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... perfect order when the bombardment commenced, the dirt which now disfigures everything is the accumulation of a few days. The water did not enter the fort until the levee had been broken by the bombs; during the summer of 1861, when the Mississippi was even higher, the parade ground remained ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... attorney; then a quarter-hour's fencing with the press correspondents, who wanted to know things which it was inexpedient to tell; and, finally, a rasping conference with the Boss, who, using the ball as a cover for one of his rare pilgrimages to Albany, had, throughout the day, held levee in his hotel parlors with such vogue that at moments both Senate and Assembly all but lacked ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... ambulances should be replaced by women. The authorities promised to grant that application, and the women next claimed the right to share the dangers of the field with their husbands and their brothers. This question was repeatedly discussed at the public clubs, notably at one in the Rue Pierre Levee, where Louise Michel, the schoolmistress who subsequently participated in the Commune and was transported to New Caledonia, officiated as high-priestess; and at another located at the Triat Gymnasium in the Avenue Montaigne, where as a rule no men were allowed to be present, that is, excepting ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... impatient desire to have it satisfied. To this end I am resolved to withdraw alone from the camp, and I order you to keep my absence secret: stay in my pavilion, and to-morrow morning, when the emirs and courtiers come to attend my levee, send them away and tell them that I am somewhat indisposed and wish to be alone; and the following days tell them the same thing, till ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... intended to keep you about my own person, as I thought you would make a good officer and would some day do me credit. He was busy at the time, so he simply signed an appointment as a lieutenant and gave it to me to fill in your name. I asked if I should bring you to his levee tomorrow, but he said, 'There is no occasion, viscount, we have both plenty on our hands; neither you nor I can waste time on young lieutenants. You can present him to me when you return from the war.' You know the cardinal by ...
— Won by the Sword - A Story of the Thirty Years' War • G.A. Henty
... the clock They roost upon or quit their rock, Or swim ashore and hold their levee, Lords of the mixed lacustrine bevy; Or with their slow unwieldy gait Their green domain perambulate, Or with prodigious flaps and prances Indulge in their peculiar dances, Returning to their feeding-ground What time the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 3, 1920 • Various
... began to hope for some change. The place was decidedly unhealthy. Our men were dropping off rapidly from a species of putrid sore throat which was very prevalent. The soil was so full of moisture that we had to use the levee for a burial ground. Elsewhere a grave dug two feet deep would rapidly fill with water, and to cover a coffin decently, it was necessary that two men should stand on it, while the extemporized sextons completed ...
— Reminiscences of two years with the colored troops • Joshua M. Addeman
... other member of the family ill than to acknowledge themselves to be so. "I have known the King," says Hervey, "get out of his bed choking with a sore throat, and in a high fever, only to dress and have a levee, and in five minutes undress and return to his bed till the same ridiculous farce of health was to be presented the next day at the same hour." It must be owned, however, that George made a stout fight against ill-health, and if he shammed being well, he kept up ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... did not soar above fancy. But the point is that Maltby's fancifulness went far and well. In telling how Ariel re-embodied himself from thin air, leased a small house in Chesterfield Street, was presented at a Levee, played the part of good fairy in a matter of true love not running smooth, and worked meanwhile all manner of amusing changes among the aristocracy before he vanished again, Maltby showed a very pretty range of ingenuity. In one respect, ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... The facts were proved beyond dispute; Pug must refund his hoards of fruit: And, though then minister in chief, Was branded as a public thief. Disgraced, despised, confined to chains, He nothing but his pride retains. A goose passed by; he knew the face, Seen every levee while in place. 110 'What, no respect! no reverence shown? How saucy are these creatures grown! Not two days since,' says he, 'you bowed The lowest of my fawning crowd.' 'Proud fool,' replies the goose,''tis true, Thy corn a fluttering levee drew! For that I joined the hungry ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... a cushion and to give way to unrestrained hysterical laughter. This same feeling has been known to overcome one in Church when a hen, side-tracking through the open door, takes a constitutional up the aisle on a Sunday morning in the country; also it has been known to seize you in its grip at a levee, when your predecessor's shoe-buckles, not having been properly adjusted, flip up and down like shutters as their owner, in solitary state, stalks up the audience chamber; worse and stronger still is it when your revered ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... made preparation for defending it. He himself occupied the late Governor Semple's quarters and passed out compliments to white and native alike, praising them for their daring, their adroitness and their success. A great meeting was then gathered in the Governor's apartments and a levee was held at which all of the servants and employees of the Company were present, and in a speech McLeod told the audience that the English had no right to build upon their lands without their ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... most implacable foe of republican institutions in France, at a dinner-party, at the town mansion of the Count d'Artois. Lord Grenville gave a magnificent entertainment in their honor, on the 1st of March, 1800; and the next Sunday the exiles were presented to his majesty George III. at a levee held especially ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... almost as much as either wealth or pleasure. He had long been in the habit of exacting the most abject homage from those who were under his command. His flagship was a little Versailles. He expected his captains to attend him to his cabin when he went to bed, and to assemble every morning at his levee. He even suffered them to dress him. One of them combed his flowing wig; another stood ready with the embroidered coat. Under such a chief there could be no discipline. His tars passed their time in rioting among the rabble of Portsmouth. Those officers ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... at home at this hour, your Excellency," replied De Pean. "But she likes her bed, as other pretty women do, and is practising for the petite levee, like a duchess. I don't ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... pleases me is, there is no place where women are of such importance: not one of the sex, who has the least share of attractions, is without a levee of beaux interceding for the honor of attending her on some party, of which every day ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... he call me Pig-Woman for?" she grumbled, but still half mollified. "What if I did waste my youth and prime in cooking of porkers in a booth; I am no cutpurse. I, I never shoved the tumbler for tail-drawing or poll-snatching on a levee-day.[L] But I will draw for you, and welcome my guests ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... Lord Loughborough. Radnor's further remark, that Fox, having on a former occasion sought to trespass on the royal just prerogative, had now completed his attack on the Constitution, in denying the rights of Lords and Commons, is worthy observation. Talbot, who made one of my morning's levee, told me that at White's last night, all was hurra! and triumph. Charles Sturt and other youngsters took part at the bar, to echo the "Hear, hear," from Fitzpatrick and Burke, of Fox's doctrine; yet the "Hear, hear," was but little caught or repeated, though given loudly. Looking ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... mats, we now held a kind of levee, giving audience to successive troops of the natives, who introduced themselves to us by pronouncing their respective names, and retired in high good humour on receiving ours in return. During this ceremony the greatest merriment prevailed nearly ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... Miekes[29] fut clamee Fu grande la bataille, et fiere la mellee, Enchois car on eust nulle tente levee, Commencha li debas a chelle matinee. Li cinc frere paien i mainent grant huee, Il keurent par accort, chascuns tenoit l'espee, Et une forte targe a son col acolee. Esclamars va ferir sans nulle demoree, Un gentil crestien de France l'onneree— Armeire ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... teaching contrabands, the new work I had taken up, and go to nurse "our boys," as my dusky flock so proudly called the wounded of the Fifty-Fourth. Feeling more satisfaction, as I assumed my big apron and turned up my cuffs, than if dressing for the President's levee, I fell to work on board the hospital-ship in Hilton-Head harbor. The scene was most familiar, and yet strange; for only dark faces looked up at me from the pallets so thickly laid along the floor, and I missed the sharp accent of my Yankee boys in the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... of voices took up the cry, and a howling mob, mostly of soldiers, were at his heels. He hoped to reach the river, where among the immense piles of stores heaped along the levee, or among the shipping, he might secrete himself, but a patrol guard suddenly appeared a block away, and his retreat was cut off. He gave himself up for lost, and reached for a small pistol which he carried, with the intention of putting a bullet through his own heart; "for," ...
— Raiding with Morgan • Byron A. Dunn
... immediately pulled out a boatswain's whistle. Upon the first whiff the tradesmen came jumping into the room, and began to surround Lewis like so many yelping curs about a great boar; or, to use a modester simile, like duns at a great lord's levee the morning he goes into the country. One pulled him by his sleeve, another by the skirt, a third hallooed in the ear. They began to ask him for all that had been taken from their forefathers by stealth, fraud, force, or ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... continued sporting and laughing and Janshah's heart kept fluttering for stress of passion: but he hid behind the tree so that he saw without being seen. Presently they swam out to the middle of the basin leaving their clothes on the bank. Hereupon he sprang to his feet, and running like the darting levee to the basin's brink, snatched up the feather-vest of the youngest damsel, her on whom his heart was set and whose name was Shamsah the Sun-maiden. At this the girls turned and seeing him, were affrighted and veiled their shame from him ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... gladness. It is like a summer picnic of school-children suddenly let loose in a wood; they sing, shout, whistle, squeal, call, in the most blithesome strains. The warm wave has brought the birds upon its crest; or some barrier has given way, the levee of winter has broken, and spring comes like an inundation. No doubt, the snow and the frost will stop the crevasse again, but only ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... a little after sunset on Decoration Day—May 30, 1865—when young Duncan went ashore from the tow boat at Cairo. The town was ablaze with fireworks, as he made his way up the slope of the levee, through a narrow passage way that ran between two mountainous piles of cotton bales. At other points there were equally great piles of corn and oats in sacks, pork in barrels, hams and bacon in boxes, and finer goods of every kind ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... morning I held a general levee. About twenty headmen, or sheiks of principal villages, attended by many of their people, came to present themselves and to sue for peace. I received the chiefs on my diahbeeah, and each received a present of a long blue shirt as he stepped on board. They now seated ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... yet preserving an air of quiet self-possession, the labourer received their courteous kindnesses; and acquitted himself of what may well be called the honours of that levee, with a dignity native to the true-born Briton, from the time of Caractacus at Rome to ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... strain. I am sorry I burnt one of his Letters, wherein he assured me he would in the Versailles Antechamber itself speak of me to the King, and that my name had actually been mentioned at the King's Levee. It certainly is not my ambition to choose this illustrious mortal to publish my renown; on the contrary, I should think it soiled by such a mouth, and prostituted if he were the publisher. But enough of the ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... received a patent of precedence, entitling him to rank with her Majesty's counsel; and in April of that year attended the levee as Q.C. It was at his own request that the dignity of the silk gown was conferred upon him in this form; and his reason was a conscientious difficulty about taking the oath of supremacy so far as ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... than 500,000 persons. Soon after their arrival the parochial deputies waited on Lord Melbourne, who prudently advised them to commit their addresses to the county members for presentation at the levee. This was announced to the multitude by Mr. Hume, who, while he exhorted them to be firm and united, advised them to be peaceable, and to disperse immediately, so that no advantage might be given to the enemies of reform. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... To-morrow we have a Levee, and on Thursday a ball in our fine new room, which we open on that day; and on Friday there is a Peace Fete at the Crystal Palace. On Saturday we go out of town; and now I must end, begging to be forgiven for so hurried a scrawl, but I had to write ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... Rambouillet being unable to attend the LEVEE, had appointed me to wait upon him at six in the evening; at which hour I presented myself at his lodgings, attended by Simon Fleix. I found him in the midst of half a dozen gentlemen whose habit it was to attend him upon all public occasions; and these gallants, greeting ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... open shops in every corner of the town, and the whole town deals with them. As I have gone to one, I chose to frequent all, that I night not be particular, and seem to have views; and yet it went so much against me, that I came to town on purpose a month ago for the Duke's levee, and had engaged brand to go with me, and then could not bring myself to it. At last, I went to him and the Princess Emily yesterday. It was well I had not flattered myself with being still in my bloom; I am grown so old since they saw me, that neither of them knew me. When they were told, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... strange there as one's self. The routine varied little. There was no attempt at entertainment. Except for the desperate isolation of these two first seasons, even secretaries would have found the effort almost as mechanical as a levee ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... Possibly steamboats may be utilized on short stretches of rivers, but even on these they will have to compete with railroads having wide-reaching connections which they do not possess. The money expended to levee the Mississippi may be lost by the United States, but the planters will receive some benefit from it in the protection given to their crops. The steamboats in interior waters will be exchanged for iron whalebacks, and new forces of a ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... the afternoon and lay on the horsehair sofa in the sitting-room, and held a sort of levee of her visitors. Tom was subdued, and the twins were envious—nothing uncommon ever happened to them! They knew too much or were too cautious, but they sat on two stools by the window and followed Mrs. Beauchamp's movements with their uncanny eyes, until the ...
— Troublesome Comforts - A Story for Children • Geraldine Glasgow
... juncture the earl of Leicester happened to spy Dr. Dee among the crowd who attended at a royal levee. The earl immediately advanced towards him; and, in his frank manner, having introduced him to Alaski, expressed his intention of bringing the Pole to dine with the doctor at his house at Mortlake. Embarrassed ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... quoted but few points of his personal character. This has been so well drawn, and so recently too, that we are induced to adopt the following traits from a contemporary Magazine.[5] The paper whence these are extracted, purports to be a description of the Lord Chancellor's first levee:— ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction, No. 496 - Vol. 17, No. 496, June 27, 1831 • Various
... not light, but she hardly felt it as she moved swiftly through the deserted, moonlit streets toward the river. The wharf boat for the Cincinnati and Louisville mail steamers was anchored at the foot of Pine Street. On the levee before it were piled the boxes, bags, cases, crates, barrels to be loaded upon the "up boat." She was descending the gentle slope toward this mass of freight when her blood tingled at a deep, hoarse, mournful whistle from far away; she knew it was the up boat, rounding the bend ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... doing so he first compassed his design. Thus, Carpalin, meeting once Epistemon looking upon a wall with his fiddle-diddle, or live urinal, in his hand, to make a little maid's water, cried that he did not wonder now how the other came to be still the first at Pantagruel's levee, since he held his shortest and ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... distance, out of compliment to the country, her traditions, "his most gracious majesty," and himself, put his own corpulent form into fancy costume, and likewise donned the Highland garb. The absurdly ludicrous result is told us by Lockhart. "The king at his first levee diverted many, and delighted Scott by appearing in the full Highland garb—the same brilliant Stewart tartans, so-called, in which certainly no Stewart, except Prince Charles, had ever before presented himself in the saloons ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... drove into the busy and bustling town of Leavenworth, one bright autumnal morning. All along the way they had picked up much information about the movement of steamers, and they were delighted to find that the steamboat "New Lucy" was lying at the levee, ready to sail on the afternoon of the very day they would be in Leavenworth. They camped, for the last time, in the outskirts of the town, a good-natured border-State man affording them shelter in his hay-barn, where they slept soundly all through their ...
— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks
... my journey back there is no need to speak; suffice it to say that two or three weeks thereafter, one night as the sun was setting, I stood with beating heart on the levee, outside of Simsport on the Red River, waiting for the coming of the regiment on its march down from Alexandria. Column after column passed and still I waited. But suddenly I caught the roll of drums and there came a dimness over my eyes, ...
— The Twenty-fifth Regiment Connecticut Volunteers in the War of the Rebellion • George P. Bissell
... Imperial and Venetian ambassadors, concerning titles and visits," how they were to address one another, and who was to pay the first visit!—then "the Frenchman takes exceptions about placing." This historian of the levee now records, "that the French ambassador gets ground of the Spanish;" but soon after, so eventful were these drawing-room politics, that a day of festival has passed away in suspense, while a privy council has been hastily summoned, to inquire ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... Illinois Cavalry, on the evening of the 13th, on the steamboat Dove, and proceeded up the Mississippi River, reaching Buck Island (No. 52) on the next day, and searched it as ordered. Returned to the levee at Helena the same night, and lay there. Next day, the 15th, went up the St. Francis River, some thirty-five miles, to Alligator Bayou, then returned to Helena and into camp again. The Mississippi River part of ...
— History of Company E of the Sixth Minnesota Regiment of Volunteer Infantry • Alfred J. Hill
... that they should forfeit five hundred extra rifles and thirty thousand rupees as a fine, and lastly, that they must offer submission to the Queen's rule within a fortnight,—the submission to be given at a full durbar, which is a native Indian term for a levee or reception held by a native prince or officer of ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 56, December 2, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... was next day ordered for our entertainment ashore, on Point Venus, and on our landing we were preceded by a band of music, and led to where the king and his levee were in waiting to receive us. The course was soon cleared by the chiefs, and the entertainment began by two men, who vied with each other in filthy lascivious attitudes, and frightful distortions of their mouths. These having performed their part, two ...
— Voyage of H.M.S. Pandora - Despatched to Arrest the Mutineers of the 'Bounty' in the - South Seas, 1790-1791 • Edward Edwards
... yet the Major had, for reasons of his own, neglected up to the present moment his humble rural petitioner, who to be sure could hardly hope to get a hearing among so many grand folks who attended his levee. The fact was, this was a letter from a female relative of Pendennis, and while the grandees of her brother's acquaintance were received and got their interview, and drove off, as it were, the patient country letter remained for a long time waiting for an audience in the ante-chamber ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... has not been absent from Versailles, for the past month. He has been at my morning levee, and on all other occasions at my breakfasts and dinners. He has walked with me in the gardens, and been always present ...
— In the Irish Brigade - A Tale of War in Flanders and Spain • G. A. Henty
... at La Glorieuse is built in a shining loop of Bayou L'Eperon. A level grassy lawn, shaded by enormous live-oaks, stretches across from the broad stone steps to the sodded levee, where a flotilla of small boats, drawn up among the flags and lily-pads, rise and fall with the lapping waves. On the left of the house the white cabins of the quarter show their low roofs above the shrubbery; to the right the plantations of cane, ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... and increased Tempe's terror to such an extent that she became almost unmanageable. During the next day I actually became accustomed to the noise and danger, and "with a heart for any fate" passed the day. At night my levee was larger than before; among them I had the satisfaction of seeing and supplying some Alabama, South Carolina, and Tennessee soldiers. That night the bombardment was terrific. Anxiety for my husband, combined with a ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... Queen of Holland again, because she is ill. Hence I have nothing positive to tell you concerning the matter in question; but if I wanted to tell you all the honors that have been showered upon me, I should not stop so soon. At the last levee I played with the Emperor; you may imagine that it was a serious matter for me, but I managed to come off with glory. He began by praising my diamond headband, and that everlasting gold dress, then he asked ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... sit in her chair and embroider, like a demoiselle bien elevee, instead of a wild maiden of the civil wars. However, my mother spent most of her day in waiting on the Queen of England, who was very fond of her, and liked to have her at her levee, so that we really ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... which his worship lolled at ease, and sipped his chocolate of a morning. He had swords and walking-canes, and French watches with painted backs and diamond settings, and snuff boxes enamelled by artists of the same cunning nation. He had a levee of grooms, jockeys, tradesmen, daily waiting in his anteroom, and admitted one by one to him and Parson Sampson, over his chocolate, by Gumbo, the groom of the chambers. We have no account of the number of ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the funny boats!" exclaimed Tom, pointing to the long line of river steamers that were tied up at the levee. "What are those ...
— Comrades of the Saddle - The Young Rough Riders of the Plains • Frank V. Webster
... figure imaginable. He is a machine, little superior to the court clock; and, as this points out the hours, he points out the frivolous employment of them. He is, at most, a comment upon the clock; and according to the hours that it strikes, tells you now it is levee, now dinner, now supper time, etc. The end which I propose by your education, and which (IF YOU PLEASE) I shall certainly attain, is to unite in you all the knowledge of a scholar with the manners of a courtier; and to ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... looking down from that balcony, awestruck, not fearstruck, on the people who in agonies of rage and terror fled the city by pairs and families, or in armed squads and unarmed mobs swept through the streets and up and down the levee, ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable
... harbour. She was, however, considered fit to go to sea again after an ordinary repair, and was recommissioned by Captain Bonham. Pearce was sent for by the First Lord of the Admiralty to attend the King's levee. He was presented to his Majesty, that good old king who truly loved a sailor, and knew how to appreciate honour and valour. On kneeling to kiss his sovereign's hand he felt a touch on his shoulder, and with astonishment, gratitude, and delight, heard the ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... was not a mere levee of men. There was as well an assemblage of brilliant women, of whom the presiding genius was Mme. Bonaparte. Love, doubt, decision, marriage, separation, had been the rapidly succeeding incidents of her connection with Bonaparte in Paris. Though she had made ardent professions of devotion to ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... the King has had his levee, which was crowded beyond all precedent. He was very civil to the people, particularly to Sefton, who had quarrelled ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... so excessively lively that the creatures require stirring up with the long hairpin or skewer whenever too unruly. This appears to be constantly necessary from the vigorous employment of the ruling sceptre during conversation. A levee of Arab women in the tent was therefore a disagreeable invasion, as we dreaded the fugitives; fortunately, they appeared to cling to the followers of Mahomet in ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... and molasses, a mob, composed of the scum of the city, men and women, broke and smashed without restraint. Toward noon of the 25th, as the fleet drew round the bend where the Crescent City first appears in sight, the confusion and destruction were at their height. "The levee of New Orleans," says Farragut in his report, "was one scene of desolation. Ships, steamers, cotton, coal, etc., were all in one common blaze, and our ingenuity was much taxed to avoid the floating conflagration. The destruction of property was awful." Upon this pandemonium, in which ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... earlier days; it was a deeper, a deadlier wrath, which he governed and concealed in order to wreak a feller vengeance. On the evening of the day on which the election in the House occurred there was a levee at the Presidential mansion, which General Jackson attended. Who, that saw him dart forward and grasp Mr. Adams cordially by the hand, could have supposed that he then entirely believed that Mr. Adams had stolen the Presidency from him by a corrupt bargain ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... the rubicund Mr. Danckwerts, but no Bishop—in fact, there is no one of public interest to be seen; probably they have not come, as to-day is to be a half-holiday. It is now one o'clock, and the Bishops rise to go to the Levee. I pounce upon Francis Jeune, Q.C., and gasp, "Where, oh, where is the Bishop of Lincoln? Quick! I want to sketch him before he leaves." "Oh, he's not ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... that. At once pass over to the Levee; go on board the first boat that is leaving, whether bound up the river or for Galveston. Only get off from the city, and then make your way to Mexico. You ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur |
