"Rigmarole" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... life was wholly purposeless took more and more hold upon him. Often, after studying earnestly for a day or two, and making extracts for his book, he would ask himself, "Why take all this trouble? Who is going to be made wiser or happier by this rigmarole?" and his pleasure in the work was gone again for days. The consciousness of exile, instead of being blunted by time, weighed ever more heavily upon him. He never realized till now what an absolute necessity it was to his nature to lean upon a kindred spirit, for he ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... and faced this way, and then that. "The street? Which way shall we go?" I slipped my boots down in the passage. "Look here!" he said abruptly; "this business of mine is a rigmarole. Come and lunch with me, Mr. Eden. I'm an old man, a very old man, and not good at explanations, and what with my piping voice and the clatter of ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... moment I thought the man daft. What on earth (I asked myself) was this nonsense about Sabugal and a barber's shop? I had not been near Sabugal; as for the barber's shop it sounded to me like a piece out of the childish rigmarole about cutting a cabbage leaf to make an apple pie. Some fleeting suspicion I may have had that here was another affair in which you and I had again managed to get confused; but if so the suspicion occurred only to be dismissed. A fortnight before you had left me on your way south to Badajoz, and ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... jingle—"Mud won't daub sieve, sieve won't hold water, water won't wet stone, stone won't edge axe, axe won't cut rod, rod won't make a gad, a gad to hang Manachar who has eaten my raspberries every one." (So ran the rigmarole with which Mrs. Nance had beguiled my infancy.) The second refrain echoed poor Nat's cry, "She needs help, needs help, and you could not see! Blind, blind, ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... Mr. Ridding, watching the group of young people, called sulkily to himself his rigmarole, but continued more abstractedly. He also was watching the Annas and the experts. The young men were evidently in the highest spirits, and were walking round the Annas admiring their get-up and expressing their admiration in laughter ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... authority to use his facts? Well, I should have done that yesterday if you had let me. In the first place, Kinney's the most helpless ass in the world. He could never have used his own facts. In the second place, there was hardly anything in his rigmarole the other day that he hadn't told me down there in the lumber camp, with full authority to use it in any way I liked; and I don't see how he could revoke that authority. That's the way I reasoned ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... no doubt they came to one accurate enough, in the end. But all this rigmarole is what people call testing a thing by "internal evidence." The Record insists upon the truth of the story because of certain facts—because "the initials of the young men must be sufficient to establish their identity"—because "the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... hog-troughs, and so on. These were placed in a hat and shaken up. Before this could be done, however, notice must be given by one of the men, calling out, at the top of his voice, 'Harko,' and using some sort of rigmarole, calling people to witness that the lots were drawn fairly and without favour.... The hat being shaken up, and one of the boys standing by, looking on with the greatest interest, is pitched upon as a disinterested person to draw the lots, and each owner had to 'sup up' with the lot ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... nonsense, utter nonsense, gibberish; jargon, jabber, mere words, hocus-pocus, fustian, rant, bombast, balderdash, palaver, flummery, verbiage, babble, baverdage, baragouin^, platitude, niaiserie^; inanity; flap-doodle; rigmarole, rodomontade; truism; nugae canorae [Lat.]; twaddle, twattle, fudge, trash, garbage, humbug; poppy-cock [U.S.]; stuff, stuff and nonsense; bosh, rubbish, moonshine, wish-wash, fiddle- faddle; absurdity &c 497; vagueness &c (unintelligibility) 519. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... was educated does not appear; but there can scarcely be a shadow of doubt, that he was for a considerable while at some school or other, where he had a number of cronies. In proof of this, and to show that we have good reasons for our suppositions, James recommends me to print the following rigmarole meditations, on the top of which is ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... is the work of an author of the fourth century, Critias is introduced pale and wild. His friend asks him if he has seen Cerberus or Hecate; and he answers that he has heard a rigmarole from certain "thrice-cursed sophists"; which he thinks would drive him mad if he heard it again, and was nearly sending him headlong over some cliff as it was. He retires for relief with his inquirer to a ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... beginning to be bored. Had the butler fallen prey to one of the graminophile sects like Brother Paul's and gone through all this rigmarole merely to give me notice previous to ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... given utterance to this amazing rigmarole stood at the top of a terrace flight (much cracked and broken) between two leaden statuettes (headless)—a willowy child in a large-brimmed hat, with a riding-switch in one hand and the other holding up an old ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... did not try to grasp the inner significance of this rigmarole. He was unfeignedly glad to have escaped from ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... Opimian. Why that, Miss Gryll, I cannot well make out. I have asked several professors of the science, and have got nothing in return but some fine varieties of rigmarole, of which I can make neither head nor tail. It seems to be a real art of talking about an imaginary art of teaching every man his own business. Nothing practical comes of it, and, indeed, so much the better. It will be at least harmless, as long as it is like Hamlet's ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... first to one side and then to the other, shifting himself upon his legs, and twirling his enormous moustachios; then he drew his cap down over his eyes and roared out: "Zounds! deuce take it! I can make nothing of this rigmarole." At last the animal became so tiresome that I said: "Leave it then to me, who do understand it," and turned my shoulders to go about my business. At this he began to threaten me with his head, and, setting his left hand ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... find Mary. Instead I found my brother and his wife alone. My sister-in-law, I must say in justice, seemed terribly grieved at what had happened. She could or would tell me nothing. But Angelo—my brother—began some rigmarole about Mary having run away from her convent-school years ago with a man, and—but I won't repeat the story. I refused to listen. I can ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... to talk like a woman in a Shaw play. I don't like this rigmarole about "pursuit." Say you're in love, like a civilized human being. And take a cigarette, ...
— King Arthur's Socks and Other Village Plays • Floyd Dell
... exactly what would happen, because it would be a tragedy without precedent, but it is impossible that German officials would surrender a trunk without receiving a Schein in exchange; at least, not without months of rigmarole and delay. Even when it is the official who blunders the public suffers for it. We were travelling some years ago from Leipzig to London when the guard examining our tickets let one blow away. Luckily some German gentlemen in ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... his complaint had been his addiction to making a number of wills—"two-thirds of 'em incoherent. Every two or three days he'd compose a new one and send for Huskisson, his lawyer; and Huskisson, after reading the rigmarole through, as solemn as a judge, would get it solemnly witnessed and carry it off. He had three boxes full of these lunacies when the old man died, and I'll wager he has not destroyed 'em. Lawyers never destroy handwriting, however foolish. ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... all this rigmarole which appealed to Master Boltay most strongly was that this worthy woman had eaten no food that day. So he considered it his Christian duty to there and then take a plate of lard-dumplings and a tumbler full ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... much-required "passaporte" has to be exhibited; but the police-officers of Mustapha Pasha seem to be exceptionally intelligent and quite agreeable fellows. My revolver is in plain view, in its accustomed place; but they pay no sort of attention to it, neither do they ask me a whole rigmarole of questions about my linguistic accomplishments, whither I am going, whence I came, etc., but simply glance at my passport, as though its examination were a matter of small consequence anyhow, shake hands, and smilingly request me to let them see me ride. It begins to rain soon after I leave ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... precious and costly? Would the illustrations have so enriched photographers? And would the amanuensis have made L350 more out of the thing then Mr. Murray himself? The price was not extortionate. But it was farcical. The entire rigmarole combines to throw into dazzling prominence the fact that modern literature in this country is still absolutely undemocratic. The time will come, and much sooner than many august mandarins anticipate, when such a book as the "Letters of Queen Victoria" will be issued at six shillings, and newspapers ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... be for ever banished; there were to be no harps and lutes in our heaven, only drums; and the preservation of all the essentials of poetry, by the simple enumeration of the utensils to be found in a back kitchen, sounded, I could not help thinking (here it becomes necessary to whisper), not unlike rigmarole. I waited for the master to speak. He had declared that the Republic would fall if it did not become instantly naturalistic; he would not, he could not pass over in silence so important a branch of literature as poetry, ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... delightful. Towards the end of September, a few small, fleecy clouds appeared one day in the sky and everyone ran out and stared solemnly at them as if they were angels. But there is one phrase that sums up the prolonged effects of heat better than any scientific rigmarole. It takes the silk out of ...
— In Mesopotamia • Martin Swayne
... privacy, to live fifty-three years more and become very venerable, though the more rude of the country-people would persist in calling him "Tumble-Down Dick." In the week of his abdication there was on the London book-stalls a rigmarole poem on the subject, called The World in a Maze, or Oliver's Ghost. It opened with this dialogue ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... great deal of ceremonious rigmarole, in which the Admiral was asked for his autograph, and it was wonderful how well the shrewd little Malay interpreter expressed to the Admiral, who cheerfully agreed to the proposal, and desired me to send for his writing-case. As I rose, ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... he would shove his scratch back from his forehead and shut his eyes and recite Homer or Virgil by the page together, while Lancelot and I listened open-mouthed, and I wondered what pleasure he got out of all that rigmarole. The heroes of Homer and of Virgil seemed to me very bloodless, boneless creatures after my kings and wizards out of Mr. Galland's book; even Ulysses, who was a thrifty, shifty fellow enough, with some touch of the sea-captain in him, was not a patch upon my hero, Sindbad of Bagdad, from whose ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... "I know the rigmarole, the salutes; I could begin a duel, par exemple. It's the other man ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... (to the Captain). I declare the creature has been listening to all this rigmarole, instead of attending to me. Do you ever expect forgiveness? But now that they are all talking together, and you cannot make out a word they say, nor they hear a word that we say, I will describe the company to you. First, there ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... long passed—is worth the somewhat arduous mount to get to it. The peasant girl who stands inside the door, and in a sing-song voice that never varies mixes up saints, fathers, towns, corn, potatoes, bells, and "quelque chose pour le gardien," in her rigmarole, was the least attractive adjunct ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... I pray, a rigmarole which cannot affect me. Besides, I do not blame you particularly. I know the heart of man too well not to be sure, that, in acting thus, you have followed much less the inspirations of your own heart than the ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... in their dealings with one another than if they were as ignorant of the Ten Commandments as the most benighted heathens, to whom even the name of Moses was never spoken. Yet, from your looks, I see that you are wondering within yourselves what all this rigmarole about England, France, the Six Nations, and disputed territories, can have to do with George Washington. Had you held a tight rein on your impatience a little while longer, you would have found out all about ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... in a remark on De Quincey's conversation which I have seen quoted somewhere (whether by Professor Masson or not I hardly know), that it was, with many interesting and delightful qualities, a kind of "rigmarole." So far as I remember, the remark was not applied in any unfriendly spirit, nor is it adduced here in any such. But both in the printed works, in the remembrances of De Quincey's conversation which have been ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... came a rigmarole of all sorts of stories, many of which (like the dollar he took from Mr. Tarleton's head) were plain enough to me, but others I could make nothing of; and the thing that most surprised the Kanakas was what surprised me least—namely, that he would go in the desert ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... "I never read it: would not read it for a great deal of money. The moment I saw what a senseless rigmarole it was, I flung it down and insisted on the battological author furnishing me with an English translation. He complied: the crib occupies just twenty lines; the original three folio pages, as you see. That crib, gentlemen," added he severely, "is now in my waistcoat pocket; and you shall never ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... a landlady," Sebright chuckled. "Old but good, he says. He expected to die there in peace, a good Christian. And what's that about the priests getting hold of his very last bit of silver? I must say that sounded truest of all his rigmarole. For the salvation of his soul, ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... its contents. But Edward might have known that something like this would happen. Why didn't he put the letter into his pocket, and keep it until he came home? He seems to have lost his common sense. And then he must go off into that rigmarole about Mr. Lyon, and try to make him out a saint, as if to encourage you to give his letter to Fanny. I've no patience with him! Mr. Lyon, indeed! If he doesn't have a heart-scald of him before he's done with him, I'm no prophet. Important business for Mr. Lyon! Why didn't Mr. Lyon attend to his ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... modest prototype of this elaborate rigmarole chasing itself through his mind as he walks the street in jaunty mood, and who of us would not surprise and alarm his friends if he should suddenly let go his habitual control, express his every thought and materialize his every passing ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.
... says that this petrified man is nothing but a graven image, proves that he is a little soft in the upper story. There is no shadow of doubt that this is a genuine petrifaction. I would take my oath of it. Dr. Boynton writes a long rigmarole to show that he is a statue made by the Jesuits; but in my opinion the Dr. is just laying low so that he can buy the curiosity and make his pile on him. Why, you can see the very cords in his legs, where ...
— The American Goliah • Anon.
... long and merrily. "Old Bloggs taught you the silly rigmarole you men call logic, but he didn't teach you woman's logic, that's plain. Don't you see what I've made you do, ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... but time and custom put him more at his ease. One evening, as little groups were gradually formed for the interchange of jest and repartee, he seemed to lose his timidity altogether, and, assuming the mien of a fortune-teller, caught his hostess's hand, and poured out a long rigmarole of nonsense which much amused the rest ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... notice. They were hailed successively, as a grocer's wife upon a party of pleasure with her eldest apprentice—as an old woman carrying her grandson to school—and as a young strapping Irishman, conveying an ancient maiden to Dr. Rigmarole's, at Redriffe, who buckles beggars for a tester and a dram of Geneva. All this abuse was retorted in a similar strain of humour by Greenjacket and his companion, who maintained the war of wit with the same alacrity with ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... for instance, has nothing in it to my ears more human than a whisker, and it may belong to a rat. As the names of the Poles and Russians are to us, so are ours to them. It is as if they had been named by the child's rigmarole,—IERY FIERY ICHERY VAN, TITTLE-TOL-TAN. I see in my mind a herd of wild creatures swarming over the earth, and to each the herdsman has affixed some barbarous sound in his own dialect. The names of men are, of course, as cheap and meaningless ...
— Walking • Henry David Thoreau
... the usual rigmarole such as I had at first experienced at Goch. The evidence also, as usual, was committed to paper. It was a perfunctory enquiry, however, and was soon completed. Naturally upon its conclusion I considered that I would be free to resume my journey. I ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... (Life, p. 373) has given a long detail of it, in that manner vulgarly, but significantly, called rigmarole; in which, amidst an ostentatious exhibition of arts and artists, he talks of 'proportions of a column being taken from that of the human figure, and adjusted by Nature—masculine and feminine—in a man, sesquioctave of the head, and in a woman sesquinonal;' nor has he failed ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... understand all that rigmarole about truth," she concluded, "but I'm no sort of a one at pretense. Outside, my ...
— The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to this mixture of rigmarole and bombast was followed by those of his sons, the Princes Maximilian Luitpold, Adalbert, and Carl. As for Maximilian, the new sovereign, he, rather than risk being thrown out of the saddle, was prepared to make a clean sweep of a number of existing grievances. As an earnest of ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... any more rigmarole on you, because of an obstinate conviction in my inside that dear Mother was right in the idea that it is the learned—not the ignorant—who wonder, and that the ploughman feels no wonder at all in the ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... that I ransacked it with my eye in search of some large bird, and was confounded when finally I discovered who the musician really was. Here, every day, were to be heard the glorious song of the cardinal grosbeak, the insect-like effort of the blue-gray gnatcatcher, and the rigmarole of the yellow-breasted chat. On a wooded hillside, where grew a profusion of trailing arbutus, pink azalea, and bird-foot violets, the rowdyish, great-crested flycatchers were screaming in the tree-tops. In ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... my father, that, not knowing what he might do, I rushed between them, and hastily pushed back the arm-chair to the wall. Then the monk, speaking in a mournful tone, which was rendered still more terrifying by the approach of night, began to pour out some lamentable rigmarole of a confession, and ended by asking pardon for his crimes, and declaring that he was already covered by the black veil which parricides wear when ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... he shows full well that old-time tales are things to scorn; that such a man as William Tell, in liklihood, was never born. If Gessler lived and had a hat, he didn't hang it on a pole; the rules of Euclid show us that—so goes King Skeptic's rigmarole. But, granting that he had a lid, and hung it on a pole awhile, and granting that the people did bow down to reverence that tile, this does not prove that William shot an apple through an apple's core, and so the anecdote is rot—don't let ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason
... good! Well! I know it! She doesn't care for me! I don't believe she does. She's as cruel as a woman can be. Sometimes, when I am away from her, the thought of going back makes me shudder; and yet, I could no more keep away than lift the roof from this house. Of course, this sounds like rigmarole to you. You think I'm raving! I don't blame you. Only it is so, and I can't help it! I am as much a prisoner as any poor devil ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... he won't find the joke 's fine 's he did at first.' But she was too used up to know when she was havin' good common-sense talked to her; she jus' kep' wipin' her eyes, 'n' then Mrs. Sperrit drove up 'n' the whole rigmarole had to be gone over again for her. I mus' say that she behaved kind of un-neighborly, f'r she laughed fit to kill herself, 'n' Mrs. Craig was nigh to put out over such doin's,—'n' the cat not dead a week yet; but when Mrs. Sperrit got through laughin' she made up f'r it all, for ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Friend Mrs. Lathrop • Anne Warner
... me at the admiral's office to-morrow at ten o'clock," returned I. "And I suppose, from your appearance, you are pretty well aground. Here is something that will keep your body and soul together." He made a leg and took his departure.' But I am afraid, Lady Campbell, you have had enough of this rigmarole story, for it is rather a long one, and to those who know nothing of the man it may not be an interesting one." "Why, Captain M.," said Lady Campbell, "as the weather is disagreeable, and we do not intend ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... at the old man, but he apparently meant just what he said. "All right, Mother," he said finally. "How in hell do I marry her without any rigmarole?" ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey
... scene he tells his dupe Roderigo that three great men of Venice went to Othello and begged him to make Iago his lieutenant; that Othello, out of pride and obstinacy, refused; that in refusing he talked a deal of military rigmarole, and ended by declaring (falsely, we are to understand) that he had already filled up the vacancy; that Cassio, whom he chose, had absolutely no practical knowledge of war, nothing but bookish theoric, mere prattle, ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... islander, speaking no English and about fifty words of Samoan, recently promoted from the bush work, and a most good, anxious, timid lad of 15 or 16 - looks like 17 or 18, of course - they grow fast here. In comes Mitaiele to Lloyd, and told some rigmarole about Paatalise (the steward's name) wanting to go and see his family in the bush. - 'But he has no family in the bush,' said Lloyd. 'No,' said Mitaiele. They went to the boy's bed (they sleep in the walled-in compartment ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... dog story, we thought we were going to have a little quiet. But we were mistaken; for, with the same breath with which he finished the dog rigmarole, our talkative ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... "Pooh! Alma. That rigmarole is not in the guide books. Come, Dixon is waving his handkerchief down there, as a signal that ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... that my readers may be spared the trouble of making out the meaning of some of the words. It was a long time before it dawned upon me that "vouled earms" meant "folded arms "; "auverdrow" likewise was very perplexing. Like many of the old ballads, it sounds like a rigmarole from beginning to end; but there is really a great deal more in it than meets the eye. George Ridler is no less a personage than King Charles I., and the oven represents the cavalier party. ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... withstanding the slowly coming on cool period, I trust to such facts as yours (and others) about seeds of the same species from mountains and plains having acquired a slightly different climatal constitution. I know all that I have said will excite in you savage contempt towards me. Do not answer this rigmarole, but attack me to your heart's content, and to that of mine, whenever you can come here, and may ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... at me with his shrewd grey eyes all the time that he was uttering this rigmarole, and I gave him a glance in return which showed him that he was not dealing with a fool. He took out a canvas bag full ...
— The Adventures of Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... on my fraternity pin, and I thought she meant that. So I said, "You can wear it today"; but she only hugged me the tighter and ran on in a rigmarole I didn't understand. ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... Sancho, "that this Merlin, or those enchanters who enchanted the whole crew your worship says you saw and discoursed with down there, stuffed your imagination or your mind with all this rigmarole you have been treating us to, and all that is ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... of that. He went through the rigmarole wearily but without any sense of surprise. The one thing he hadn't been expecting was the man who was waiting for him on the ...
— Brain Twister • Gordon Randall Garrett
... Mrs. Farquharson. "He is getting a little childish, I think. The other night he told me the greatest rigmarole about some collector or other in Birmingham. He collected weapons, of all things! He had Mr. Rowlandson buy him swords, and daggers, and spears, and even bows and arrows from America, until his house fairly rattled with them. ...
— Old Valentines - A Love Story • Munson Aldrich Havens
... to the tipsy philosopher without understanding one word of his rigmarole; only Monsieur Tudesco struck him as a strange and alarming personage, and taller by a hundred feet than anybody ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... Oliver, laughing; "and after all that long rigmarole, I suppose it is something I don't want. Now, then, don't keep it behind you like that. Let's see what it's like. Come, don't ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... now, you said to him: 'But how did you come by this land and these herds so that you can stand between them and the people who have need of them, exacting this profit?' He would probably either embark upon a long rigmarole, or, what is much more probable, lose his temper and decline to argue. Pursuing your doubt as to the rightfulness of his property in these things, you might admit he deserved a certain reasonable fee for the ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... chairman step on to the platform; and, amidst the profoundest gloom, the latter rises to pronounce the prefatory rigmarole. "Archaeology," he says, in a voice of brass, "is a science which bars its doors to all but the most erudite; for, to the layman who has not been vouchsafed the opportunity of studying the dusty volumes of the learned, the bones of the dead ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... Miss Monson," he continued, after a very beautiful specimen of rigmarole in the way of love-making, a rigmarole that might have very fairly figured in an editor's law and logic, after he had been beaten in a libel suit, "I think, Miss Monson, you cannot have overlooked the VERY particular attentions I have endeavored to pay you, ever since ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... had talked glibly about infinity ever since the beginnings of Greek thought, nobody had ever thought of asking, What is infinity? If any philosopher had been asked for a definition of infinity, he might have produced some unintelligible rigmarole, but he would certainly not have been able to give a definition that had any meaning at all. Twenty years ago, roughly speaking, Dedekind and Cantor asked this question, and, what is more remarkable, ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... incident was a French military officer. His services were necessarily dispensed with on the abolition of the feudal system. Memories of him still linger in Matsue; and old people remember a popular snatch about him—a sort of rapidly-vociferated rigmarole, supposed to be an imitation ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... a rigmarole in all my born days." And then, angrily to Rachel, "Go down and look on th' top o' ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... generations of readers. At times his characters will speak with something far beyond propriety with a true heroic note; but on the next page they will be wading wearily forward with an ungrammatical and undramatic rigmarole of words. The man who could conceive and write the character of Elspeth of the Craigburnfoot,[34] as Scott has conceived and written it, had not only splendid romantic, but splendid tragic gifts. How comes it, then, that he could so often fob us ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... I said in confusion, recalling all the highfalutin rigmarole which Americans believed—(little martyred Belgium protected by the allies from the inroads of the aggressor, etc.)—"why should the French put machine guns ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... said peevishly; "it's worse than the heat. Do you know what's happened? The chief has saddled Old Signal Corps on me. Yes, sir, I've got to take his old pet, the major, on the city staff. It seems he's succeeded in losing what little property he had—the chief told me some rigmarole about sudden financial reverses—and now he's down and out. So I'm elected. I've got to take him on as a reporter—a cub reporter sixty-odd years old, mind you, who hasn't heard of anything worth while since Robert ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... distinguish between the English of a Lowland Scot and a Highlander, which is more than 'Punch' does after all these years of practice. "Ah'm, Jock Furgusson frae Auchtermurrchty and Achterlony, longest maun in the forty twa," he begins—but somebody help me—I've forgotten how he goes on, a long rigmarole in broadest Doric; the words and intonation so perfect, you can so little believe your eyes that you are landed with a scarab or a string of beads before you have recovered, and he is off to another passenger, clippin' 'is g's and r's and puttin' ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... the days of Noah. For days everything was in dire confusion; but for all that our own home was delightful, and we had the most outrageous appetites you ever heard of. George is in ecstasies with his house, his land, his pig, and his horse.... I hope you are not sick and tired of all this rigmarole; it isn't in human nature to move into a house of its own and talk of anything else. I got a warm-hearted letter a few days ago from the city of Milwaukee, from an unknown western sister, beginning, "Whom not having seen I love," and going on to say that Katy describes herself ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... mask viciously, as she spoke. "Hang me if I didn't think so all the time!" she exclaimed with a sudden change of tactics. "That Jasper's a thief. I heard you say something about those deeds, and Jasper told me a long rigmarole that you wouldn't sign them. Whether that's true or not, Heaven only knows. Jasper's a bad one, an' he's sold me. He's got the coin, and I'll split on him, as I threatened. No, it's no use your trying to make me hush up, I will speak out. I'll show you what a fool he's made of you, you who have ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... the White House, which seemed to have been "edited" by the President himself—as often royalty revises plays—for his special entertainment, the Cabinet being invited, after a rigmarole of stilted phrases purporting to be by Washington, Franklin, Napoleon, and other past celebrities, Mr. Welles, secretary of the navy, remarked: "I will think this matter over, and see what conclusion to ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... Hunt and De Quincey, were indeed critics, and no inconsiderable ones; but the natural force of both had long been much abated, and both had been not so much critics as essayists; the tendency of Hunt to flowery sentimentality or familiar chat, and that of De Quincey to incessant divergences of "rigmarole," being formidable enemies to real critical competence. The greatest prosemen —not novelists—of the generation now closing, Carlyle and Macaulay, were indeed both considerable critics. But the shadow of death in the one case, the "shadow of Frederick" in the ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... with the glass in it, dropped nervelessly at her side. "If he uttered one single syllable of all that rigmarole, then Ollendorf is a myth, that's all I ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... thus: if the Deity was in the world itself, he was immanent; if he was somewhere outside it, he was transcendent. Nothing could be clearer and more obvious! You knew where you were. But this Kantian rigmarole won't do any more: it's antiquated and no longer applicable to modern ideas. Why, we've had a whole row of eminent men in the metropolis ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Studies in Pessimism • Arthur Schopenhauer
... who has moved to town gets up in the morning, goes to see the train come in, whittles a stick, loafs at the hotel or store, goes to the next train, talks of his rheumatism, goes to bed at eight o'clock, and the next day goes through the same rigmarole. ...
— Dollars and Sense • Col. Wm. C. Hunter
... answered Balder, seating himself on the side of my bed, although I forestalled his intention, and left hardly an inch for him to sit on. Then he entered into a long and not very lucid rigmarole on souls which are destined to come together. The story was rendered all the more difficult to understand from the fact that I kept falling asleep, and dreaming between his rhapsodies; but I gathered that Balder ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... heard what (i.e. that which, or the thing which) has been alleged.' "—Kirkham's Gram., p. 111. Here, we sec, the author's "which-that" becomes that which, or something else. But this is not a full view of his method. The following vile rigmarole is a further sample of that "New Systematick Order of Parsing," by virtue of which he so very complacently and successfully sets himself above all other grammarians: "'From what is recorded, he appears, &c.' What is a comp. rel. pron. including both the antecedent ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... regular little greyhound. It seems she didn't answer signals. The captain hadn't thought much of that, because there was a slight fog and she could have missed them. But it came back to him afterward, and seemed to bear out the Countess's rigmarole. ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... people, and if they had, they learn that power, patronage and pay are reserved for us and our friends. Well then like practical men, they look to some result, and they get it. They are asked out to dinner more than they would be; they move rigmarole resolutions at nonsensical public meetings; and they get invited with their women to assemblies at their leader's where they see stars and blue ribbons, and above all, us, whom they little think in appearing on such occasions, make ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... I remember being jealous because she was chosen by the Kappa Alpha as a candidate. Glad I wasn't one if they put all their new members through the same rigmarole." ...
— Ruth Fielding At College - or The Missing Examination Papers • Alice B. Emerson
... in talking easily with strangers. Lensley was prattling as if he were determined to discharge an entire novelful of "chatter" at Lady Cecily, and Boltt's little clipped, pedantic voice recited a long rigmarole about a glorious view in France which he had lately seen while motoring in that country. Boltt admired Nature in the way in which any man of careful upbringing would admire a ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... wait till night if he takes as long to go through his rigmarole as he done yesterday. If I got to fight I want to hop to it, not set round in the shade o' the shelterin' palm while them guys are heatin' up the stewpot. This ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... that though the Empress overwhelms Diderot with favours, people at St. Petersburg find him tiresome and disputatious, and "talking the same rigmarole over and over again." In her letters to Voltaire, Catherine lets nothing of this be seen. She finds Diderot's imagination inexhaustible, and ranks him among the most extraordinary men that have ever lived; she delights in his conversation, and his visits have given ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... doing, and the other half from the mere desire of selfish gratification. The times and ways in which Lot and Abraham were walked into the conversation were incalculable,—and unintelligible except to the person who understood it only too well. On one occasion Mrs. Evelyn went on with a long rigmarole to Mr. Thorn about sea-breezes, with a face of most exquisite delight at his mystification and her own hidden fun; till Fleda was absolutely trembling. Fleda shunned both the gentlemen at length with a kind ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... the least." What an absurd rigmarole she was uttering! Yet such was the spell of her eyes, her voice, her nearness that I merely felt like saying, ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... disagreeable occupations, hunger and an occasional fisticuff, may be classed as adventure, then I have had my run of it. But I always supposed adventure was the finding of treasures, on land and on sea; of filibustering; of fighting with sabers and pistols, and all that rigmarole. I can't quite lift my imagination up to the height of calling my six months' shovel-engineering on The Galle an adventure. It was brutal hard work; and many times I wanted to jump over. The Lascars often got out of ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... a fresh page he came upon a passage in the life of one of the Elect who was mourning for his mother, excusing him in this solemn rigmarole: "After granting to the feelings of nature such relief as grace ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... a Frenchman prate; Yet, pray, don't take it as annoyance! Why, all at once, exhaust the joyance? Your bliss is by no means so great As if you'd use, to get control, All sorts of tender rigmarole, And knead and shape her to your thought, As in ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... swooped. 'No rigmarole!' she said, sharply. 'Do you confess you put it there or do you not—reptile?' Her vehemence ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... them: 'Nay, I would only rid so brave a young ruffler as yourself of much that will be a great hindrance to you on your way through life in the Indies; for believe me,' and here he looks full on me once more, 'there is no return.' At all this rigmarole, which I could not then understand, I was a good deal put aback and waited for what should come next. Says he very calmly, 'Give me your trust in man.' At that I saw how heavy would be my price, for ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... pay SMALL? Rubbish! You pay me altogether too much and what I give you to eat isn't worth half of it. But there, I didn't mean to go into all this at all. What I told you all this long rigmarole for was to see if you could think of any way for me to turn those Development Company shares of mine into money. Not what father paid for them, of course, or even half of it. But SOME money at least. If I thought ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... smoking away and reading something or other, and letting them all gabble like a lot of ducks, it just makes me mad. But when he wakes up he puts the fear of death on you, and when he reads he makes you shiver through and through. You know that long rigmarole, 'Friends, Romans, countrymen'? I used to hate it. Well, sir, he told us about it last Friday. You know, on Friday afternoons we don't do any work, but just have songs and reading, and that sort of thing. Well, sir, ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... Are we to have a Pope of science, with infallible decrees laid down ex cathedra, and accepted without question by the poor humble public? I tell you, sir, that I have a brain of my own and that I should feel myself to be a snob and a slave if I did not use it. If it pleases you to believe this rigmarole about ether and Fraunhofer's lines upon the spectrum, do so by all means, but do not ask one who is older and wiser than yourself to share in your folly. Is it not evident that if the ether were affected to the degree which ...
— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle
... old rigmarole of childhood. In a country there was a shire, and in that shire there was a town, and in that town there was a house, and in that house there was a room, and in that room there was a bed, and in that ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... a game. The whole rigmarole of police and police-cells and formalities seemed insincere. His cousin's case was not like any other case, and, though formalities might be necessary, it was rather absurd to pretend that it was like any other case. In what ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... between a father and his child, and truckle to her, by backing her up in whims that were against her good, and making light of right and wrong, as if they turned on money; but Mary (such a prudent lass, although she was a fool just now) must see through all such shallow tricks, such rigmarole about Parson Beloe, who must be an idiot himself to think so much of Simon Popplewell—for Easter offerings, no doubt—but there, if Mary had the heart to go away, what use to stand maundering about it? Stephen Anerley would be dashed if he ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... protested that she knew what she was a-saying of. He questioned her fiercely, but there was nothing to be got out of her rigmarole account, which Fenwick cut short by retreating into the studio in ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and gained the Acquaintance of Mr. Gozzleton.' So funny! And the exhaustive treatise on the Sources of Light, in the Scientific Saturday. And think of the fuss they make about Homer, a blind old person who wrote a long rigmarole of a poem about battles, and wrote it so badly that to this day no one knows whether it's one complete poem, or a lot of odds-and-ends in the way of poetry, put together by a man with an unpronounceable Greek name. When I think of what Valentine accomplishes in comparison ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon |
