"Melodramatic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... little tales given us by a wandering revivalist, who was on a starring tour through the New England villages, "How Gussie Grew in Grace," and "Little Harriet's Work for the Heathen,"—melodramatic histories of spiritually perfect and physically feeble children who blessed the world for a season, but died young, enlivened by a few pages devoted to completely vicious and adorable ones who lived to curse the world to a ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... the French population are generally of a melodramatic order. The temperament of the nation is eminently theatrical; and the multitude of minor theatres scattered through France, naturally sustain this original tendency. A villain in the south of France, lately constructed a sort of machinery for murder, which ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... put it into plain words. His instinct told him what the result would be, so he decided to wait a little longer, although just towards the end he nearly gave himself away. As a matter of fact," she went on, "he was rather tediously melodramatic. My husband, it seems, is in disgrace with the company—has overdrawn, or helped himself to money, or something of the sort. I rather fancy that I am cast for the role of self-sacrificing wife, who saves her husband from prison by little acts of kindness to his wronged partner. Somehow or other, ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... morality but scientific theories. Herein, permit me to say, you entirely misapprehend the spirit of the age. People read novels merely to be amused, not educated; and they will not tolerate technicalities and abstract speculation in lieu of exciting plots and melodramatic denouements. Persons who desire to learn something of astronomy, geology, chemistry, philology, etc., never think of finding what they require in the pages of a novel, but apply at once to the text- books of the respective sciences, and would as soon hunt for a lover's sentimental dialogue ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... the wretched class that would furnish studies for it, but to society at large, and so indirectly to the class in question, by providing a subject of this kind which could be studied and talked about. Dumas fils' "Dame aux Camelias" is a great melodramatic story; but it is so exceptional in its incidents and episodical in its character, that its heroine is quite worthless as a specimen for examination and analysis; and it is, beside, so very French as to be almost valueless in this regard, for that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... nothing. The old sadness was in her eyes, but it certainly had become more natural—more human, as it were—and the melodramatic gloom in which she had hitherto appeared was certainly ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... name in poster letters. When you look upon the Declaration the first thing you see is the signature of John Hancock, and you recall his remark, "I guess King George can read that without spectacles." The whole action was melodramatic, and although a bold signature has ever been said to betoken a bold heart, it has yet to be demonstrated that boys who whistle going through the woods are indifferent to danger. "Conscious weakness takes strong attitudes," ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... carpenter who was my chiefest hero. He was a mighty liar, but I did not know that; I believed everything he said. He was a romantic, sentimental, melodramatic fraud, and his bearing impressed me with awe. I vividly remember the first time he took me into his confidence. He was planing a board, and every now and then he would pause and heave a deep sigh; and occasionally mutter broken sentences— confused and not intelligible—but out of their ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... "Melodramatic, isn't it?" laughed Mrs. Carnarvon. "So he's off. How furious Martha Fortescue and Ellen will be. But they'll go in pursuit, and they'll get him. A man is never so susceptible as when he's broken-hearted. Well, I must go. Good-night, dear. Don't mope and whine. Take your punishment ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... made by some roving dog, or by a cat or a startled bird. Had it not been for the light he would scarcely have noticed it. Taken in conjunction with the light, it suggested some one who had been watching and had slunk away; but even that thought was slightly melodramatic in so well-ordered a community. He went on till he was at the foot of the steps, at a point where he could no longer descry the glow in the upper window, but could perceive through the fanlight over the inner door that, though ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... be rid of her. My desire finally overleaped my befuddled senses. And now this desire has become a new soul for my phantom. Yet I planned no details in my desire. I did not will this melodramatic denouement. Then it is obvious that my desire is like a seed filled with hidden life. I blow a thought into my phantom and that thought develops and hatches. This is a phenomenon to be ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... met the then young mistress of the mansion, at the Grand Central Station. It was a home of richness, a home of discriminating wealth, a home of artistic beauty; it was a home of nervous tension. This neurotic intensity was not of the cheap helter-skelter, melodramatic sort; there was a splendid veneer of control. But all the mother's plans and activities depended on the moods, whims and impulses of little Lawrence, the only child, then glorying in the hey-day of his three-year-old babyhood. It was a household ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... one of the three men interested in that venture to ascertain exactly who was its author,—his mind misgave him. He knew my father's necessities and his childish capacities for business. With a keen sense of the power displayed in "Don Juan," and even in more melodramatic works, Shelley had acquired a full knowledge of the singularly licentious training from which Byron had then scarcely emerged, and of the vacillating caprice which enfeebled all his actions. His own ability ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... to be free, but he was helpless, even as a Sparrow might be in a rat-trap, and when the sun had played his fierce chromatic scale, his swan-song sung, and died as he dies only in the blazing west, and the shades had fallen on the melodramatic scene of the Mouse in the elephant-trap, there was a deep, rich sound on the high flat butte, answered by another, neither very long, neither repeated, and both instinctive rather than necessary. One was the muster-call of an ordinary Wolf, ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... taste of the day, to forego their green-room traditions, to forswear their Tate and Brady emendations, in their heart of hearts they love him not; and it is with a light step and a smiling face that our great living tragedian flings aside Hamlet's tunic or Shylock's gaberdine to revel in the melodramatic glories of The Bells ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... and she went home, a little amused by her melodramatic conduct, but much comforted by the fact that Charles, though ignorant of his part, was with her in this conspiracy. She was met ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... studio, and spend two or three days a week at picture galleries or museums. Then she would take to attending race-meetings, wear the most horsey clothes, and talk about nothing but betting. She abandoned religion for mesmerism, mesmerism for politics, and politics for the melodramatic excitements of philanthropy. In fact, she was a kind of Proteus, and as much a failure in all her transformations as was that wondrous sea-god when Odysseus laid hold of him. One day a serial began in one of the French magazines. ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... must understand that I do not vouch for the strict correctness of Lenz's somewhat melodramatic narrative; and having given this warning I shall, to keep myself free from all responsibility, simply translate the rest of what is ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... action. The same mighty force which in its repression drives the men to the brandy-bottle makes the women intoxicate themselves with fictitious narratives of high courage, daring rescues, and all kinds of melodramatic heroism. Extremely amusing is the scene in which Karen Riis (who loves Hans and is beloved by him) goes rowing with her friends Nora and Lisa, taking with her a stock of high-strung novels, and when a drowning man cries to ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... words he assumed a melodramatic attitude. But Mrs. Jones was not to be won by any facetiae, and walked up to him, placing her hands upon his shoulders, said: "Do you think for one moment that I will ever consent to your going off on so fearfully perilous an expedition as this? ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... think the Rhine rather overdoes it. You can't help feeling, you know, that it's somewhat melodramatic and—common. Have ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... parsimonious in only sending me a single copy of the Ballade of Count Tolstoy. ["The Blind Bard." Liszt wrote the melodramatic piano accompaniment to it (1874).] Allow me then to make use of this copy to indicate the version which I think should be put into the arrangement for piano (alone without declamation). I add, the necessary notes and alterations, for you to publish or not, as you think best, ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... possession of her cousin, snatched her away from poor Mrs. Malone, who was looking very old and sad, and insisted on inspecting his cabin and as much as was possible of the ship. When the bell rang and the moment of parting arrived, she burst into wild unrestrained sobs, and clung, in the best melodramatic style, to her unresisting kinsman, who was compelled to accept her kisses and tears. In fact, as her brother rudely stated, "she made a shameless show of herself, slobbering over Douglas before all the passengers, and he was sorry for the poor chap, who was ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... beyond the recollection of that guilt that was really shocking in the woman—between the extravagant extremes of hope and fear suggested by their words, there was something so grotesquely absurd in the melodramatic chorus that she with difficulty ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... of the sea of colours so beautiful and happy a vision that the priest felt his suspicion shaken and shifted. "After all," he thought, "perhaps the poison isn't hers; perhaps it's one of Muscari's melodramatic tricks." ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... Gentleman's Magazine for September, 1837, p. 283. In the review of Doveton the writer says, "There is in it a good deal to amuse, and something to instruct, but the whole narrative of Mr. Anstruther is too melodramatic," &c. However, as he declines the compliment, perhaps some of our readers will be able to find the right ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 213, November 26, 1853 • Various
... of modern Italian life, involving the Old Catholic movement and the Jesuit intrigues to suppress the spread of reform in the papal communion. We think it one of the best, if not the best, novels we have met with upon such topics. It is thoroughly well written, not exaggerated, not melodramatic, and the characters admirably drawn and finely discriminated.... Apart from its great interest and exceptional cleverness as a novel, this ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... D. C.! Their performance of TOM TAYLOR'S romantic, pathetic, melodramatic, crib-cracking, head- (though not always side-) splitting play, was an admirable one, carefully rehearsed, well stage-managed, and played with a fine feeling for the capital situations in which the piece abounds. Especially good was Mr. BROMLEY-DAVENPORT'S Jem Dalton, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, February 4, 1893 • Various
... would on the question, reason, instinctive reason, always came back with the same answer: "Be on your guard, that knife is the only barrier between you and heaven knows what. Without it you would be at the mercy of a superior force. La Touche is no melodramatic villain; he is, what is perhaps worse for you, a creature of low instincts, stronger than you. Beware of being at ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... just a bit haughty in virginal safety and pride; No rival too near her high throne, Prince FORTUNIO aye at her side; But now a poor PERDITA, prone at the feet of her foes she lies bound, And that melodramatic thud-thud ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 21, 1893 • Various
... from the beginning anything upon which to base suspicion. Given the premises of an abnormal girl with a passion for himself which humiliated him, an abnormal woman like Miss Farrel with a similar passion, albeit under better control, the melodramatic phases of the candy, and sudden death, and traces of arsenical poison, what should be ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the town, one of large puppets, about as high as my umbrella, the others, to which he went every evening, being rather smaller. Accordingly, at about a quarter to eight, he called for me, wrapped in his melodramatic cloak, and hurried me through the wet and windy streets to the teatrino. He kept me on his right hand because he was the host and I the guest, and if, owing to obstructions, he found me accidentally on his left he was round ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones
... different view. The matter is one of some importance because the attack is insidious and dangerous. The deadliest weapon in the hands of the critic is the allegation of boredom. You can say that a piece is vulgar, indelicate, inartistic, indecent, full of "chestnuts," old-fashioned, "melodramatic," ill-constructed or unoriginal, without doing fatal injury, but if you allege that you and everybody else suffered from boredom your attack may be fatal. This is the reason why the charge is so often made by people ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... discharge a revolver, rush off right first entrance, where he would pass his weapon to 'Eva' and 'Uncle Tom,' and this bisexual individual would discharge it in the wings at the imaginary pursuer, while 'Harris' would put on a wire beard, slouch hat, black melodramatic cape, and, rushing behind the flat, ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... guides who had been sent back to pilot us to our position. I asked him if the Tommies in the houses were not in danger of being heard by the enemy. He laughed uproariously at this, whereupon one of our officers, a little second lieutenant, turned and hissed in melodramatic undertones, "Silence in the ranks there! Where do you think you are!" Officers and men, we were new to the game then, and we held rather exaggerated notions as to the amount of care to be observed in ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall
... reporter-friend, Percy might sit down on the waiters and the conductor and the camp-marshal and the gunmen—but he could not possibly sit down on all his friends! They would talk about nothing else for weeks! The story would be all over Western City in a day—this amazing, melodramatic, ten-twenty-thirty story of a miner's buddy in the private car of the Coal ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... but the audience if not select are enthusiastic; the stage is narrow, but affords room for a deal of strutting and striding about on the part of an overpowering actor in the inevitable belt and boots of the melodramatic highwayman. The play represents certain startling passages in the career of one Claude Duval, formerly a running footman, afterwards—strange anomaly!—a robber on horseback, distinguished for polite manners and ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville
... of Mary Shelley's methods of revision. A study of the manuscript shows that she was a careful workman, and that in polishing this bizarre story she strove consistently for greater credibility and realism, more dramatic (if sometimes melodramatic) presentation of events, better motivation, conciseness, and exclusion of purple passages. In the revision and rewriting, many additions were made, so that Mathilda is appreciably longer than The Fields of Fancy. But the additions are usually improvements: a ...
— Mathilda • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
... Sylla; "then we will consider that settled; you do the Ladies and I do the Chambermaids. Now, gentlemen, you must select your own lines. What will you be, Mr. Sartoris—Walking Gentleman, Low Comedian, or Melodramatic Villain?" ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... Christmas Eve. CHARACTERS: Arabella, a heartless French doll; Koko, a melodramatic Japanese doll; Jackski-in-the-Boxovitch, the Muscovite Mystery. SCENES: The children's room. A Christmas tree, properly decorated, L. A box or hamper with a hinged cover, large enough to contain Jack, center. An entrance, R. Arabella ...
— Christmas Entertainments • Alice Maude Kellogg
... slowly been undermining his position, and all was ready for the fall. It cost no such struggle to return to the world as it had taken to leave it, for the poet had overgrown the philosopher, and the open mystery of the common day was already exercising an appeal beyond that of any melodramatic 'arcana.' Of course the period left its mark upon him, but it is most conspicuous ...
— The Book-Bills of Narcissus - An Account Rendered by Richard Le Gallienne • Le Gallienne, Richard
... the large building where Mrs. Conway had her apartment. McKnight left the power on, in case we might want to make a quick get-away, and Hotchkiss gave a final look at the revolver. I had no weapon. Somehow it all seemed melodramatic to the verge of farce. In the doorway Hotchkiss was a half dozen feet ahead; Richey fell back beside me. He dropped his affectation of gayety, and I thought he looked tired. "Same old Sam, I suppose?" ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... to see, in revenge for her mother's unfaithfulness, and the still more famous scene in Nature and Art where a judge passes the death-sentence on a woman whom he has betrayed—have, as has been allowed, the dramatic or melodramatic quality which attracts people in "decadent" periods. There seems, indeed, to have been a certain decadent charm about Mrs. Inchbald herself—with her beauty, her stage skill, her strict virtue combined with any amount of "sensibility," her affectation of nature, and her benevolence ...
— The English Novel • George Saintsbury
... was a little disappointed after the first flush of excitement. I thought it a little melodramatic and I abhor melodrama. I wanted something finer, something with a touch of great sentiment, something commensurate with the beauty and dignity of the woman's bodily frame, something that would explain and gild with delicate interest the expression of sombre ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... imagine such a thing as a veteran Scotch Commander-in-Chief comporting himself in the field like a windy melodramatic actor, but Cooper could. On one occasion Alice and Cora were being chased by the French through a fog in the neighborhood of their ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... me," she said. "You intimate that you have been laying melodramatic plots against me which will injure my good name. That is rubbish. Let us leave it at that. You threaten that you will break Rosy's heart and take her child from her, you say also that you will ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... and to strike the correct mean betwixt the sublime patriot and the unsanctified incendiary, while I could find no refuge from weak contrition save in greater and greater depths of courtesy; and so melodramatic became our interview that some of the soldiers still maintain that "dem dar ole Secesh women been a-gwine for kiss de Cunnel," before we ended. But of this monstrous accusation I wish to register an explicit denial, once ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... with a portentous frown. "'Tis well. Marchioness!—but no matter. Some wine there. Ho!" He illustrated these melodramatic morsels by handing the tankard to himself with great humility, receiving it haughtily, drinking from it thirstily, and smacking ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... judicial cases, from which he had extracted a system of principles that appear to govern—some always, and others occasionally only—the condition of the vampire. I may mention, in passing, that the deadly pallor attributed to that sort of revenants, is a mere melodramatic fiction. They present, in the grave, and when they show themselves in human society, the appearance of healthy life. When disclosed to light in their coffins, they exhibit all the symptoms that are ...
— Carmilla • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... unrepresented in its councils, because, forsooth, their will there expressed may affect the government of another class of the same general population, is as repugnant to justice and human rights as was the institution of slavery itself. Such a condition of affairs has not the melodramatic and soul-stirring incidents of chattel slavery, but its effects can be as far-reaching and as debasing. There has been some manifestation of its possible consequences in the recent outbreaks of lynching and other race oppression in the South. The practical disfranchisement of the colored people ...
— Frederick Douglass - A Biography • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... and here we don't have to marry to amalgamate business interests. I won't do it. I'd rather be—" She gave a little shrug of her shoulders. The passion died out of her voice. "Oh, well! No need getting melodramatic about it. Just the same, I won't do it. My mind's ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... of the Commune, with but few exceptions, seem to have been of the most humble sort, inspired with the melodramatic taste of our Seven Dials or the New Out, venting itself in ill-drawn heroic females, symbols of the Republic, clad in white, wearing either mural crowns or Phrygian caps, and waving red flags. They are the work of aspiring juvenile artists ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... man after weighing and putting aside all the sophisms with which this affair has been obscured, is that Robespierre interfered in the one case because its further prosecution would have tended to make him ridiculous, and he did not interfere in the other, because the more exaggerated, the more melodramatic, the more murderous it was made, the more interesting an object would he seem in the ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... day by Victor Hugo and a few other deputies of the Left to rouse the populace are almost ludicrous. Victor Hugo, no doubt, was a brave man, though a very melodramatic one, and he seems to have thought that if he could get the soldiers to shoot him,—him, the greatest literary star of France since the death of Voltaire,—the notoriety of his death might ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... wholly escape the powerful conventions of his Greek predecessors: in his fourth book, for instance, there are suggestions of the melodramatic "maiden's lament" so dear to the music hall gallery of Alexandria. But Vergil, apparently to his own surprise, permits his Roman understanding of life to prevail, and transcends his first intentions as soon as he has felt the grip of the character he ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... rob her of Elise, the last living link that bound her to the blessed memories of her childhood, and he only mildly strove to point out to her how oddly, yet persistently, her good name had suffered through the words and deeds of this flighty, melodramatic Frenchwoman. Something of her baleful influence he had seen and suspected before ever they came to their exile, but here at Sandy, with full force he realized the extent of her machinations. Clarice ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... do but scant justice to the marchese's inimitable style. The above sentences must be imagined as hurled forth in a series of yells, with a pant between each of them. As a melodramatic actor this terrific Marinelli would, I am sure, have risen to the ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... that had been removed. In one part is painted on the plaster a false door partially open, behind which is seen the figure of Tasso about to enter; but every person of good taste must condemn the melodramatic exhibition, and wish that he could obliterate it with a daub of whitewash. The custode directed my attention to it with an air of great admiration, and could not understand the scowl with which I turned away my face. There are several most interesting relics of Tasso ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... a long and expressive breath, and, with melodramatic movements of the shoulders, he sighed. "I have not seen you since. Oh, I had terrible scenes with the father. They had a house up the river. I followed them, and put up at the Angler's Hotel. She told her father that I must be allowed to come to the house, and he had to give way. ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... Ciceronian style of the age of Gray and Johnson, as it is from the resounding torrent which was poured forth by Byron and Scott. The social earnestness of our time colours our literature, and almost distorts our literature; while, on the other hand, our practical and scientific genius scorns the melodramatic imagery with which our grandfathers were delighted. Gibbon would have smiled a cruel epigram, if he had been expected to thrust a Latter-Day Pamphlet on the social question into one of his chapters on the Fall of Rome. But Carlyle's ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... such a thing as silly theatrical sentiment, and much of it is shown in the vulgar, melodramatic acting out of popular songs, as shown by ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... agreeable and provocative. It contains a poem called "Afternoon Tea," which readers of the English Review will remember. I do not particularly care for "Afternoon Tea." I find the contrast between the outcry of a deep passion and the chatter of the tea merely melodramatic, instead of impressive. And I object to the idiom in which the ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... there will be no melodramatic abductions in the shadow of White Divide," she laughed triumphantly, "and I shall escape a most horrible fate!" She went, still laughing, down to where ...
— The Range Dwellers • B. M. Bower
... attractive forms of the Mermaid, the Norfolk Giant; the Pig-faced Lady, the Spotted Boy, and the Calf with Two Heads; while high over even these edifices, and occupying the most conspicuous vantage-ground, a lofty stage promised to rural playgoers the "Grand Melodramatic Performance of The Remorseless Baron and the Bandit's Child." Music, lively if artless, resounded on every side,—drums, fifes, penny-whistles, cat-calls, and a hand-organ played by a dark foreigner, from the height of whose shoulder a cynical ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... warning.' I'm only a poor girl, sir, but I up and spoke to her as plain as she spoke to me. 'I want to know,' I says, 'why I am sent away in this uncivil manner?' I couldn't possibly repeat what she said. My blood boils when I think of it," Phoebe declared, with melodramatic vehemence. "Somebody has found us out, sir. Somebody has told Mrs. Farnaby of your private meeting with Miss Regina in the shrubbery, and the money you kindly gave me. I believe Mrs. Ormond is at the bottom of it; you remember ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... assumed from the outset a mysterious and melodramatic tone. "Perhaps, finally, she really has something to say," commented Truesdale. But she went on, circling round her theme, dipping down to it now and again, and then soaring up and away from it altogether. "Well," asked Truesdale presently, with a slight show of impatience, ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... melodramatic suddenness. Casting off the steamer's tow-ropes, the Belles Soeurs swung alongside the wharf much more easily and quickly than did the friendly vessel by whose aid she had ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... are told that Lincoln gallantly interfered to save the life of a poor old Indian who had thrown himself on the mercy of the soldiers, and whom, notwithstanding that he had a pass, they were proceeding to slay. The anecdote wears a somewhat melodramatic aspect; but there is no doubt of Lincoln's humanity, or of his readiness to protest against oppression and cruelty when they actually fell under his notice. It was also in keeping with his character to insist firmly ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... Lady is driven to suicide, with a death scene of rather unconvincing sentiment. The fact is, I am afraid, that Capuan ease does not altogether suit the super-strenuous beings whom Mr. JACK LONDON designs. They are too energetic for it, and, lacking an outlet, tend to become melodramatic. I hope that next time he will take ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, May 3, 1916 • Various
... though I don't know whether he would have been equal to Calverley's famous examination-paper, and he had a special liking for the 'Uncommercial Traveller.' But when Dickens deserted his proper function Fitzjames was roused to indignation. The 'little Nell' sentimentalism and the long gallery of melodramatic deathbeds disgusted him, while the assaults upon the governing classes generally stirred his wrath. The satire upon individuals may be all very well in its place, but a man, he said, has no business to set up as the 'regenerator of society' because he ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... to leave his house. The example of Mrs. Travis was too near. Escape, with or without melodramatic notes of farewell, never suggested itself. She knew that it was a practical impossibility to make that absolute severance of their lives without which they were still man and wife, though at a distance from each other; they must still ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... people in the court-room were beginning to believe in this new witness. They were amused by his melodramatic action in thus fixing the hour; but they seemed to have confidence in the outcome. As for the President, it looked as if he also had made up his mind to take the young man in the same way. He had certainly been ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux
... countervails its own loss of immediate intensity: the least touch of color shows strongly against that subdued background. A very slight catastrophe among those orderly scenes of peaceful life has more effect than the noisier incidents and contrived convulsions of more melodramatic novels. Thus, in 'Mansfield Park' the result of private theatricals, including many rehearsals of stage love-making, among a group of young people who show no very strong principles or firmness of character, appears in a couple of elopements which break ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... were dragged, tied to the tails of horses, to the open square, each of them bearing upon his breast a white placard with this inscription, in black letters: "Guilty of high treason." Then the wretched General shivered from head to foot. Every detail of the melodramatic execution seemed burned into his brain as with a red-hot iron. He fancied he could see the procession and the three gibbets, painted black; beside each gibbet was an open ditch and a black coffin covered with a dark gray ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... making an ass of yourself. If you had taken more time to think it over you wouldn't have followed me up with any such melodramatic intention as murder. Good God! Haven't you seen enough of murder in the past four years? I could readily fancy you going in for some sort of revenge but I should have expected something ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... love to hear that story," affirmed Arthur. "I do! She tells me lots of stories. She was telling one when you came—the one I like the best of all. It had a be-u-ti-ful trooper in it who rescued her from a water-y grave!" The child's recital was as melodramatic as his words. "He held her just so!" Arthur illustrated by a tight clasp of the embarrassed ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... of Fielding. He was a man whom it would have been a rare delight to know. His character, so eminently English, compact of courage, of originality, of imagination, and with something coarse in it as well, puts one in mind of Hamlet: not the melodramatic sentimentalist of the stage; but the real Hamlet, Horatio's Hamlet, who called his father's ghost old truepenny, who forged his uncle's signature, who fought Laertes, and ranted in a grave, and lugged the guts into the neighbour room. His tragedy, like Hamlet's, was the tragedy of an ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... her on the palm of my hand. It was melodramatic, probably; but I was very young, and by that time wildly in love with her. I thought, for a moment, that she would take it; but she only drew a deep breath and ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... like a melodramatic hero of a slide-by-night, but like a matter-of-fact young man going to see some one about business of no great importance. He abstractedly brushed his left sleeve or his waistcoat, now and then, as though ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... his conscience did Barry go to the cinema show that night, which in this camp was run under the chaplain service and by a chaplain. He knew what the thing would be like. His whole soul shrunk from the silly, melodramatic films which he knew would constitute the programme as from a nauseating dose of medicine. The billboard announced a double header, a trite and, especially to Canadians, a ridiculous representation of the experiences of John Bull and his wife and pretty daughter as ...
— The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land • Ralph Connor
... grey eye, I read that he listened half doubtingly to the narrative of his companion, whose back was turned towards me, but who appeared, from the occasional words which reached me, to be giving a rather marvellous and melodramatic version of the expected pleasures of the capital. There was something in the tone of the speaker's voice that I thought I recognised; I accordingly drew near, and what was my surprise to discover my friend Tom O'Flaherty. After our first salutation was over, Tom presented me to ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... written a very clever and very interesting criticism," Mr. Merrill replied. "I had to edit it somewhat, because he was inclined to be Hugoesque and melodramatic in describing the action with very short sentences. But I am very ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... unreasoning nor vain; that a woman should have refused to marry him did not seem to him a monstrous thing; she was surely within her right in saying no; while, on the other hand, he was neither going to die of chagrin nor yet to plan a melodramatic revenge. But the truth was that he had never been passionately in love with Honnor Cunyngham. Passionate love he did not much believe in; he associated it with lime-light and crowded audiences and ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... true and that he would do well to take them to heart. At first she had made him angry and that had delighted her, so he had been angry no longer; it seemed to him, during these days of convalescence, that the solemn melodramatic young man of Bucket Lane ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... vexed and suffered a vague disappointment. It is to be wished that things would happen in a manner harmonious with their true nature—the tragic tragically, the comic so that laughter roars out, the melodramatic with the proper limelight effects. To do the Tristrams justice, this was generally achieved where they were concerned; Harry could have relied on his mother and on Cecily; he could rely on himself if he were given a suitable environment, one that appealed ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... have been against the popular party. The first insurrection of Paris is associated with the harangue of Camille Desmoulins at the Palais Royal, with the fall of the Bastille, with the murder of the governor, and a hundred other scenes of melodramatic horror and the blood-red picturesque. The insurrection of the Fourteenth of July 1789 taught Robespierre a lesson of practical politics, which exactly fitted in with his previous theories. In his resentment against the oppressive disorder of monarchy and feudalism, ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... The old melodramatic stage ghost—the spectre of "The Castle Spectre" school of plays—the phantom in a white sheet with a dab of red paint upon its breast, that rose from behind a tomb when a blow was struck upon a gong ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... his poetic and inward temper, he might have fallen a prey to the enervating mysticism, then in wait for ardent souls in many a melodramatic revival of old religion or theosophy. From all this, fascinating as it might actually be to one side of his character, he was kept by a genuine virility there, effective in him, among other results, as a hatred of what was theatrical, and ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... tragic in my remarks," went on Sylvie, resuming her usual gaiety, "Melodramatic, as they say! If I go on in this manner I shall qualify to be the next 'leading lady' to Miraudin! Quelle honneur! Good-bye Angela;—I will not tell you where I am going lest Fontenelle should ask you,—and then you would have to commit yourself to a falsehood,—it is enough to say ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... dissatisfaction of enjoying from a quiet corner a well-meant effort to dramatize "Elsie Veneer." Unfortunately, a physiological romance, as I knew beforehand, is hardly adapted for the melodramatic efforts of stage representation. I can therefore say, with perfect truth, that I was not disappointed. It is to the mind, and not to the senses, that such a story must appeal, and all attempts to render the character and events objective ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... say money, that no obstacle was allowed to stand in his way. During the last few years he had composed a number of occasional things—which we need not stop to consider—but nothing on the sumptuous scale of Rienzi. Heroic personages, dramatic or melodramatic situations, opportunities for huge gaily-dressed crowds and scenic display—these were what the young man was after; and in the story of Rienzi he found plenty to fire an imagination always prone to flame and ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman
... recent duel between M. Floquet and the melodramatic General Boulanger is that Bishop Freppel has moved in the Chamber of Deputies for the legal abolition of private combats. That a bishop should do this is remarkable. If Bishop Freppel possessed any sense of humor, he would leave ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... gold from the alloy. Unlike the critics of the nil admirari school, whose reluctance to trust themselves to their emotions proceeds in great part from the absence of this instinct, he is proof against the approaches of the charlatan, and has never debased the word "art" by applying it to a mere melodramatic mechanism. But he rightly considers the office of the detector as insignificant in comparison with that of the discoverer, and his glow of satisfaction is reserved for the nobler employment. The points on which he insists are the obligation of honestly desiring to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... to him entreatingly: 'Leave me,' as though she were a person on the stage. She thought of other phrases, such as 'Please go away,' and 'Do you mind leaving me for a while?' but her tongue, somehow insisting on the melodramatic, would ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... ridiculous answer to the request to aid her chauffeur in changing a tire: "I'll do it for you, Darling." And listening to that dominant voice in the next room, she slowly grew crimson before a vision of herself in the middle of a country road, appealing to a stranger for succor, like the heroine of melodramatic fiction. Decidedly, she would never see Lestrange, never let him discover ...
— The Flying Mercury • Eleanor M. Ingram
... what you are thinking," she said. "No, no, captain. It is not the beginning of a melodramatic speech. I am not offering pity to the villain in the story. Even the first night I met you, I was sorry for you, captain. I was sorry as soon as I saw your eyes. I knew then that something had happened, and when I heard you speak, I told myself you ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... certainly had a gypsy charm, and seemed to carry oceans of Sahara and caravans of camels about with her. When she was in one of her furies, it was an echo of the whole Greek drama. This, you must recollect, was ten years ago, and even then she was spoiled by being coarse and melodramatic, but now she is a horror. She suggests nothing but the penitentiary. When she saw that there were three of us, she flew into a whirlwind of passion, and screamed French that I was glad to find I could not wholly understand. Her dialect must come from the ...
— Esther • Henry Adams
... to himself, in the melodramatic tones of a whimsical boy, that the schoolmaster had drawn at that well scores of times on a morning like this, and would never draw there any more. "I've seen him look down into it, when he was tired with his drawing, just as I do now, ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... too; but this is the first occasion on which the theme has been a personal one. He was so frantic, as he is wont to be, that, to calm him, I told him about Paul,—which, under the circumstances, to him I felt myself at liberty to do. In return, he was melodramatic; hinting darkly at I know not what, I was ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... but there was no indignation at all. If he had looked for melodrama he was disappointed; the melodramatic did not appeal to Peter Fourtenay-Carew. He merely told his uncle quite quietly and respectfully that he intended to marry Joan Whitby. Richard Carew condescended to reason a little before he resorted ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... despair which appears on everybody's face when he is anxiously seeking for an important but mislaid paper; and the resemblance, heightened by just the least imitation of Mr. Chamberlain's voice, was so striking, so startling, so melodramatic, that the whole House, Tories and all, joined in the wild delight of laughter and cheers—laughter at the comic power, delight at the splendid courage and exuberant spirit of the prancing old war-horse, delighted, exhilarated, and fortified by the joy ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... life, and school life is not likely to find pleasure in the rudeness, idleness, and vulgarity of the village poolroom. The pupil who is taught to appreciate the beautiful, the true, and the good in standard literature is not likely to find pleasure in reading the melodramatic and sentimental trash that now has prominence of place and space in many book stores and in some public libraries. It is the duty of the teacher, and it should be her pleasure, to cultivate in her pupils such a taste for good literature as will lead them to ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... magnificent toilette, receiving the bows and the money of the customers as they passed before her, whilst M. Jerome—exactly in appearance as before, except that prosperity had begun to round him—was leaning against a pillar in rather a melodramatic attitude, a white napkin gracefully depending from his hand. They started on seeing me, and were a little confused, but soon laughed over their adventure; called Penelope to take her turn at the counter—the little serf whispered to me as she passed, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 435 - Volume 17, New Series, May 1, 1852 • Various
... us is that we're so civilized we bend over backward with it. You're going to find us mighty tame. The melodramatic romance of the West is mostly in storybooks. What there was of it has gone out with ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... foot of the Cross is grouped the first of those characteristic scenes of the fainting Virgin which was, probably from its dramatic element, so favourite a subject with Signorelli. Sincerely and naturally felt, it in no way trenches on the melodramatic, as one or two of the later groups tend to do, and the solitary figure of Christ, raised high above the sorrowing women, is for once, among his Crucifixions, of dignity and real pathos. The solemnity of the mood given, is enhanced by the fine idea of the soldier on the left, ...
— Luca Signorelli • Maud Cruttwell
... girl!" said Wentworth. "Don't be so melodramatic! No man is guilty until he is proved so. And—thanks to the kindly offices of your good husband—I did not ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... never rise from the ground. Their brains are gangrenous with memories of cancelled malice. They suspect hero-worship; it smacks to them of sentiment. They examine, but never praise. Being incapable of sacrifice, they find something meretriciously melodramatic about men and nations who are capable. Had they lived nineteen hundred years ago, they would have haunted Calvary ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... you are absurd to-day; you are hurting me. This melodramatic pose approaches the ludicrous, and I have really no patience with your folly. A little period of calm reflection may prove beneficial, and I will leave you to it. ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... of August my husband told me the plan of "Marmorne" (for the "No Name Series"), and I had been afraid that it would be too melodramatic; however, I was charmed when he read me the beginning, and my fears were soon dispelled by the strength ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... there grew in Scrope's mind the persuasion that he was in the presence of the living God. This time there was no vision of angels nor stars, no snapping of bow-strings, no throbbing of the heart nor change of scene, no magic and melodramatic drawing back of the curtain from the mysteries; the water and the bridge, the ragged black trees, and a distant boat that broke the silvery calm with an arrow of black ripples, all these things were still before him. But God was there too. God was everywhere about him. This persuasion ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... orator was effectively snuffed out—I was that puppet and that orator. I stop and think—shall I describe how I paced up and down the pier, respectfully but emphatically watched by the secretary? And all the melodramatic plots I conceived, the muffled oars and the midnight visits to my Sylvia? My sense of humour forbids it. For a while now I shall take the hint and stay in the background of this story. I shall tell the experiences of Sylvia as Sylvia herself told them to me ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... and melodramatic charges of robbing the firm," Milburgh went on, "the books are now in the hands of an eminent firm of chartered accountants, who can give the lie to any such statement as you ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... feel a little uneasy about that imagined self of mine—the Me of my daydreams—who leads a melodramatic life of his own, quite unrelated to my real existence. So one day I shadowed him down the street. He loitered along for a while, and then stood at a shop-window and dressed himself out in a gaudy tie and yellow waistcoat. Then he bought a great sponge and ...
— Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... cultivated, a sense of the dramatic, that the scene to which he and Davidge were presently conducted by a trim and somewhat surprised-looking parlour-maid, was one which might have been bodily lifted from the stage of any theatre devoted to work of the melodramatic order. The detective and the reporter found themselves on the threshold of a handsomely furnished dining-room, vividly lighted by lamps which threw a warm pink glow over the old oak furniture and luxurious fittings. On one side of the big table sat Professor Cox-Raythwaite ...
— The Herapath Property • J. S. Fletcher
... does not disguise himself in any elaborate or melodramatic fashion. He will not wear a false moustache or a wig, for instance. But the beginner is taught how a difference in dressing the hair, the combing out or waxing of a moustache, the substitution of a muffler for a collar, a cap for a bowler will alter his appearance. They ...
— Scotland Yard - The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police • George Dilnot
... does not consist of making money. He rather goes to the other extreme, and takes it as meant for doing nothing in, for chatting, for smoking indifferent cigarettes, for strolling about under a melodramatic black cloak with crimson plush lining, and for other enjoyments. He has no marked objection to money when it comes to his hand, but he will neither stoop nor climb to gather it. Allah has given him a lovely ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... was fitting and proper to die, when I felt that dying would be such a trump card to play, if only I could manage it, I must say that I am glad now that it was beyond my power to arrange things according to the melodramatic rules. As it is, I am alive now. I shake my fist at all the ghosts of my departed tragedies and say, 'I am worth two of you. I am alive. I have all the chances of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... suppose I have as much vanity as most girls, but you make me blush. You are indeed dazed, for you appear to take me for a melodramatic heroine." ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... reservation of our profound disbelief in his existence. Take it for all in all, there are few books in the world that can be compared with it. There is as much calm and serenity as Hugo has ever attained to; the melodramatic coarsenesses that disfigured "Notre Dame" are no longer present. There is certainly much that is painfully improbable; and again, the story itself is a little too well constructed; it produces on us the effect of a puzzle, and we ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Republicans? What did he want among such people? Why should he care about them? Why should he want to govern them? And if he did want to govern them, why did he not stay there and govern? The thing was in any case mere bravado, and melodramatic enterprise. ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... Moulin Rouge and I don't know what all. Philip did not care that if she yielded to his desires it would only be the unwilling price she paid for the gratification of her wish. He did not care upon what terms he satisfied his passion. He had even had a mad, melodramatic idea to drug her. He had plied her with liquor in the hope of exciting her, but she had no taste for wine; and though she liked him to order champagne because it looked well, she never drank more than half a glass. She ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... later tragedy and are not absent from Sophocles' own earlier work there is not a trace. The odes are relevant, the Chorus is indispensable; in short, Sophocles has shown Euripides that he can beat him even on his own terms. Melodramatic the play may be, but it wins for its author our affection by the sheer beauty of a boyish nature as noble as Deianeira's; the return of Neoptolemus upon his own baseness is one of the many compliments Sophocles has paid to our ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... he declared. "This is unworthy of you. It is positively melodramatic. It reminds me of the plays of my Fatherland, and of your own Adelphi Theatre. We should be men of the world, you and I. You must take your defeats with your victories. I can assure you that the welfare of the Countess Lucille ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... it was like a movie in five reels. Never before did I believe such things happened outside a Yonkers studio. But they do, Naia. And I've learned that the world is full of more excitingly melodramatic possibilities than any novel or scenario ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... called Bulkley's Farm, selected because the black overseer on that plantation was one of the initiated, and because the farm was accessible by water, thus enabling them to elude the patrol. There they prepared cartridges and pikes, and had primitive banquets, which assumed a melodramatic character under the inspiriting guidance of Jack. If a fowl was privately roasted, that mystic individual muttered incantations over it, and then they all grasped at it, exclaiming, "Thus we pull Buckra to pieces!" He gave them parched ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... mind had been less harrowed with the looming and possibly dire climax of his own secret drama, would have laughed aloud at this melodramatic entrance to the grounds of one of his most intimate friends. He and Spaulding had walked from the train, but they were not detained as long as a gay party of young people from Atherton, who teased the police by refusing to present their cards or lift their masks. Ruyler ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... expression?—had vanished. His "orchestral" playing was one of those pretty fables invented by hypnotized pupils like Amy Fay, Aus der Ohe, and other enthusiastic but not very critical persons. I remember well that Liszt, who was first and foremost a melodramatic actor, had a habit of striding to the instrument, sitting down in a magnificent manner and uplifting his big fists as if to annihilate the ivories. He was a master hypnotist, and like John L. Sullivan he had his adversary—the audience—conquered before he struck a blow. His glance was terrific, ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... whom Dickens evidently prided himself, I must confess, never laid hold of me. He is a melodramatic young man. The worst I could have wished him would have been that he should marry Rose Dartle and live with his mother. It would have served him right for being so attractive. Old Peggotty and Ham are, of course, impossible. One ...
— Idle Ideas in 1905 • Jerome K. Jerome
... he was back in America and settled in San Francisco, with whose musical life he was long and prominently identified as a teacher and critic. Here he wrote his first large work, the well-known melodramatic music to "Macbeth." A local benefactor, John Parrot, paid the expenses of a public performance, the great success of which persuaded McKee Rankin, the actor, to make an elaborate production of both play and music. This ran for three weeks in San Francisco ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... names on the lists of traveling messengers for those States,' but it should be remembered that such accusation requires clear proof. With this single exception, we commend the pamphlet in question as a document well worth perusal and investigation. The subject, as it stands, appears trashy and melodramatic; but be it remembered the Southern mind is prone to trash and romance, and quacks and adventurers would be more likely to be found actively working to aid treason founded on folly than would men ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... wrenched the imagination to see tidy nursemaids wheeling perambulators and children playing diavolo on the very square where Bloody Sunday had gone into history. It takes a long perspective and no very vivid acquaintance with revolution to be melodramatic about it. So much is left out of history and biography which would spoil the effect. The ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... its legs, and out of the two grew that great movement for the liberation of the common people, that determined and bitter struggle for a fair share in the fruits of human progress, which came to its melodramatic climax in the execution of Francisco Ferrer. Spain now began to go ahead very rapidly, if not in actual achievement, then at least in the examination and exchange of ideas, good and bad. Parties formed, split, blew up, ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... Gordon. "I don't mean to blaspheme; but Job is not in it with me just now. You cannot imagine what I had to contend with before this melodramatic villain appeared on the stage. Sometimes I think this is the finish," Gordon's mouth contracted. He looked savage. James continued to stare at him. Gordon laid his hand on James's shoulder. "Thank ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
... any melodramatic nonsense with straws, or bits of wood of different lengths. We'll go down to the gateway to-morrow between one and two, when there's scarcely a creature about, and one shall look up the street, and the other down. Whoever can count twenty human beings first shall have first right ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... a melodramatic idea, that! He had writing materials before him if he wanted to do that, if he thought of it. He was shot down in ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... chosen from the vocabulary which he had heard all his life from the painted lips of the orators before the stage-lamps. But he was not acting or masquerading, as Pen knew very well, though he was disposed to pooh-pooh the old fellow's melodramatic airs. "Come along, sir," he said, "as you are so very pressing. Mrs. Bolton, I wish you a good day. Good-by, Miss Fanny; I shall always think of our night at Vauxhall with pleasure; and be sure I will remember the theatre-tickets." And he ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a visible limp in his gait hastened across the stage; as he went, he turned towards the audience, brandished the bloody dagger with which he had just struck Rathbone, and cried "Sic semper tyrannis!" Some one recognized John Wilkes Booth, an actor of melodramatic characters. The door at the back of the theatre was held open for him by Edward Spangler, an employee, and in the alley hard by a boy, also employed about the theatre, was holding the assassin's horse, saddled and bridled. Booth kicked the boy aside, with a curse, climbed into the saddle ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... war there is the position of neutralization and nothingness. It is a question of knowing how to be, and how not to be, for we must fulfil both. Enrico Persevalli was detestable with his 'Essere, o non essere'. He whispered it in a hoarse whisper as if it were some melodramatic murder he was about to commit. As a matter of fact, he knows quite well, and has known all his life, that his pagan Infinite, his transport of the flesh and the supremacy of the male in fatherhood, is all unsatisfactory. All his life he has really cringed before the northern Infinite of the Not-Self, ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... ambuscade now prepared to attack the enemy. Creeping stealthily down as near as possible without being discovered, they simultaneously rushed upon the astonished animals; and the tragic scene of slaughter, mingled with melodramatic and comic incidents, that ensued, baffles all description. In one place might be seen my friend Jordan swinging a huge club round with his powerful arms, and dealing death and destruction at every blow; while in another place a poor weazened-looking Scotchman (who had formerly been a tailor! ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... anticipate for a moment what is going to happen. The chief adventure is abduction, the subject of it being Mary Carstairs, whose father was separated from her mother, and, being a lonely old man with a longing for a daughter's affection, took this melodramatic course to secure it. In furtherance of his end he secured the services of Maginnis, genial swashbuckler, and Varney, young, susceptible and heroic, and despatched them on his yacht to apprehend one whom they vaguely supposed to be "a little ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 5th, 1914 • Various
... heady violence, all the real, the essential charm of the place. Nature was not what Turner depicted it; and he did not even develop and heighten its beauty, but substituted for the real charm an almost grotesque personal mannerism. Turner's idea of nature seemed to Hugh often purely theatrical and melodramatic, wanting in restraint, in repose. The appeal of Turner seemed to him to be constantly an appeal to childish and unperceptive minds, that could not notice a thing unless it was forced upon them. Some of the earlier pictures indeed, such as that of the frost-bound lane, with the boy blowing ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... "Oh! Grand, melodramatic words already!" said he, placing his palette upon the table. "Amedee, my dear boy, I do not recognize you, and if you have any explanation that you wish to ask of your old friend, it is not thus that you should do it. You have received, you tell me, Mademoiselle Gerard's confidence. I know you are ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... that very strangely proclaimed a resemblance between them which was very seldom perceptible crossed Bernard's face. "I—thought so," he said. "Now look here, boy! Let's stop being melodramatic for a bit! Take a dose of quinine instead! It seems to be the panacea for all ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... marked upon the antique altar, column or cippus. On an ancient pillar was found an amusing grafita, the sketch of some Roman schoolboy, showing an aquarius (or water-carrier) loaded with his twin buckets. Philippeville, nursed among these glowing African hills, has the look of some bad melodramatic joke. Its European houses, streets laid out with the surveyor's chain, pompous church, and arcades like a Rue de Rivoli in miniature, make a foolish show indeed, in place of the walls, white, unwinking and mysterious, which ordinarily enclose the Eastern home or protect the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... that, allowing for great advances in the art of novel writing between the time of Richardson and the time of Dickens, we still should find the astonishing characterizations of "Pamela" reflected in the impossible virtues and melodramatic vices of ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... show anything to herself, but all the deeper, because it found no expression, did her hatred penetrate. She scored now little marks against him for everything that he did. She did not say to herself that a day of vengeance was coming, she did not think of anything so melodramatic, she expected nothing of her future at all—but the ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... with great relish—"you ask to search my rooms and I give you permission. You lock yourself in through your own carelessness and when I release you you have a revolver in your hand, and are even more melodramatic than ever. I know what ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... the sensational horrors which to the majority of Mrs. Haywood's readers doubtless seemed the chief attraction of the story are not different from the melodramatic features of countless other amatory tales, French and English. But when for a dozen pages the author seeks to discover and explain the motives of her characters both by impersonal comment and by the self-revelation of letters, she is making a noteworthy step—even ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... delightful public readings from his works that he gave before vast audiences all over the United Kingdom, and in his two visits to America. It is not surprising, either, to learn that upon the stage his preference was for melodrama and farce. His own serious writing was always dangerously close to the melodramatic, and his humor to the farcical. There is much false art, bad taste, and even vulgarity in Dickens. He was never quite a gentleman, and never succeeded well in drawing gentlemen or ladies. In the region of low comedy he is easily the most ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... Melodramatic and obvious in all he does and says, Sebald refuses the red wine: "No, the white—the white!"—then drinks ironically to Ottima's black eyes. He reminds her how he had sworn that the new year should not rise on them "the ancient ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... as if he rather enjoyed the observation. "I know," he said; "a regular melodramatic villain, 'away with him to the lowest dungeon beneath the castle moat' sort of fellow, who would draw a Jew's teeth before breakfast and roast a restive burgher after. I wonder, considering you possess the two strongest attractions ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... large fashion, he was skilful in inventing impressive effects. Another instance is the solitary trumpet that breathed its "note of defiance" in the lists of Ashby-de-la-Zouch, which has the genuine melodramatic thrill—like the horn of Hernani or the bell that ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... 1851, Mr. Savage Landor, who knew him well, said to us that Louis Napoleon had ten times the political sagacity of his uncle; but who foresaw or foretold an Augustus in the dull-eyed frequenter of Lady Blessington's, the melodramatic hero of Strasburg and Bologne, with his cocked hat and his eagle from Astley's? What insurance company would have taken the risk of his hare-brained adventure? Coleridge used to take credit to himself for certain lucky vaticinations, ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... lived for time and him to busy themselves about; he was even glad (and herein appeared the unsuspected subtlety) that Will had prospered and come by a little show of fortune. Half unconsciously he hoped for the boy something of his own experiences, and had determined with himself—in a spirit very melodramatic but perfectly sincere at present—to ruin his enemy if patience and determination could ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... England saved. But such great undertakings seldom end in one grand melodramatic explosion of fireworks, through which the devil arises in full roar to drag Dr. Faustus forever into the flaming pit. On the contrary, the devil stands by his servants to the last, and tries to bring off his shattered ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... can only be seen from the British side. There they are seen in their veils, and at sufficient distance to appreciate the magical effects of these, and the light and shade. From the boat, as you cross, the effects and contrasts are more melodramatic. On the road back from the whirlpool, we saw them as a reduced picture with delight. But what I liked best was to sit on Table Rock, close to the great fall. There all power of observing details, all separate consciousness, ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... meant to say about the long, unholy deception that had been put upon her. She was going to say good-bye now and be free. Molly's money would now be her own, she could take it away and share it with the deserted, misjudged mother. Nothing in all this was melodramatic; it would have been but natural if the facts had been as she supposed, only Molly made the little mistake of treating as facts her carefully built-up fancies, her long, childish story of ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... years of age. He looked thirty. A serious faced, cadaverous individual, whom, given three guesses you would have judged to be a Scotch free kirk minister in mufti; an actor in the melodramatic line; a food crank. These being the three most serious occupations in ...
— The Man Who Lost Himself • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... been melodramatic, superb! But here they were, skirting the very gates of Paris, apparently fleeing before the enemy, and this without having made any very determined effort at resistance. Poor protectors they must have looked! Those simple peasants would ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... eyes ought to be still open, when the murderer is dangling on the gallows. This was the demand of Panna's passionate heart, but also of her peasant-logic, which could comprehend the causal relation between sin and expiation clearly and palpably, only when both were united in a single melodramatic effect. Why was nothing heard of a final trial, of a condemnation? For what were the legal gentlemen waiting? Surely the case was as clear as sunlight, with no complication whatever, the criminal had acknowledged everything. Even if he had not, there were three ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... my house immediately," M. Roussillon ordered, as soon as they were restored to consciousness; and he shook himself, as a big wet animal sometimes does, covering everybody near him with muddy water. Then he led the way with melodramatic strides. ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... that it is utterly vile and melodramatic, contrary to Othello's expressed resolve, and quite unnecessary?—for a better effect would be produced, if the actor averted his head and with both hands pressed hard upon the pillow, trembling in every limb at the horrible deed he is forced, in mercy, to bring to a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... They were held for a time by the son of Dost Mahomed in a sort of captivity; where some of them had leisure to write narratives of their adventures, while others, with an inconsistence common and entertaining in melodramatic pieces, amused themselves with ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 425 - Volume 17, New Series, February 21, 1852 • Various
... 2. E.), while THOMAS proceeds to scale the wall and climb the boughs of the nearest pear-tree. Melodramatic Music. The Monster Man-trap stealthily emerges from long grass below, and fixes a baleful eye on ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 January 11, 1890 • Various |
