"Extempore" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that every one should make an extempore couplet to the same rhyme and measure. Every one accordingly repeated his verse. As we had been very merry, I repeated the following extempore ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... verses for the ladies extempore, and gives a sample, the sentiments of which are as characteristic of the declamatory century as of ...
— Paul Jones • Hutchins Hapgood
... Individual. But alas! Tom, in Ireland, we neither think, or act for ourselves or the Publick, nor seem to have any System of Rules, for managing our Estates or our Country; but we live in an extempore Method, and as Time serves, and Accidents happen, we Conduct ourselves. When we are famish'd we think of Bread, when frozen to Death, of Coals and Fire, and when we grow uneasy with the Thoughts of ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous
... stolest a cup of sack eighteen years ago, and wert taken with the manner, and ever since thou hast blush'd extempore." 1 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... general tone of this reply. Here, for instance, is the comment of the bishops upon the request of the Puritans to be allowed occasionally to substitute extemporaneous for liturgical devotions. "The gift or rather spirit of prayer consists in the inward graces of the spirit, not in extempore expressions which any man of natural parts having a voluble tongue and audacity may attain to without any special gift." Nothing very conciliatory in that. To the complaint that the Collects are too short, the ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... on the following night. The Major was not present, for he was engaged in making some arrangements for the commissariat on the march. He had always insisted on it that they were indispensable, and he had been bitterly opposed the week before by some of his brethren, who were in favour of extempore foraging which looked very much like plunder. He carried his point, notwithstanding some sarcastic abuse and insinuations of half- heartedness, which had touched also Caillaud and Zachariah, who supported ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... was produced and seized to the end of a boat-hook; this extempore flag and staff Grummet took in his hand, and, proceeding to the summit of the beach, commenced waving it to and fro, to attract the attention of the people on board the doomed ship. She was now so close that we could see the two men at her wheel, and a man, whom we supposed to be the master, standing ...
— For Treasure Bound • Harry Collingwood
... ceremonial of the English Established Church, though so modified as to meet the doctrinal views of the Unitarians. There may be good sense in this, inasmuch as it greatly lessens the ministerial labor to have a stated form of prayer, instead of a necessity for extempore outpourings; but it must be, I should think, excessively tedious to the congregation, especially as, having made alterations in these prayers, they cannot attach much idea of sanctity ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... though we must own it probable that some more jokes were (as they call it) cracked during their dinner; but we have by no means been able to come at the knowledge of them. When dinner was removed, the poet began to repeat some verses, which, he said, were made extempore. The following is a copy of them, ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... an undiscovered knack of extempore rhyming, a gift which has seldom or never been exercised in the House of Commons. That will be a bright day for legislators when a Member rises in his place and begins something like this: "Sir, if the House will bear with me ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 1, 1916 • Various
... instructive, what is historic, is the probability that young persons offering themselves at that time as guides and communicators—the requirements of our small sister were for long modest enough—quite conceivably lacked preparedness, and were so thrown back on the extempore, which in turn lacked abundance. One of these figures, that of Mademoiselle Danse, the most Parisian, and prodigiously so, was afterwards to stand out for us quite luridly—a cloud of revelations succeeding her ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... 2199," which is without date in the MS., but in the edition bears date March 21, 1771; as likewise the "Invitation to Miss Warb[u]rt[o]n," edit. p. 35., which appears in the MS. without any name; and the "Extempore Rhapsody, March 21, 1771," edit. p. 37., also undated in the MS., but which supplies the name of "Yates," expressed in the edition by asterisks; and also six lines at the end, which were omitted in the edition on account of their indecency. There are several variations in the manuscript, which ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 193, July 9, 1853 • Various
... and Bostonians with Jenny Lind are weak and cold compared with the ovations which Jasmin has received. At a recitation given shortly before my visit to Auch, the ladies present actually tore the flowers and feathers out of their bonnets, wove them into extempore garlands, and flung them in showers upon the panting minstrel; while the editors of the local papers next morning assured him, in floods of flattering epigrams, that humble as he was now, future ages would acknowledge the 'divinity' ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... compliment to his sincerity, has no force in it. His majesty's speech was spoken immediately upon, passing the bills which the Speaker presented, and he could not therefore take notice of the Speaker's words unless he had spoken extempore; for the custom is not, nor I believe ever was, for the Speaker to give beforehand copies of addresses of this nature. James would not certainly have scrupled to repeat the assurances which he had so ...
— A History of the Early Part of the Reign of James the Second • Charles James Fox
... that at so great an age, and on the brink of the grave, man is not wont to compose poems, may be refuted by a reference to the history of the ancient Arabic poetry. The Arabic poets before the time of Mohammed often recited long poems extempore,—so natural to them was poetry. (Compare Tharaphae Moallakah, ed. Reiske, p. xl.; Antarae Moallakah, ed. Menil. p. 18.) The poet Lebid, who attained to the age of 157 years (compare Reiske prolegg. ad Thar. Moall. p. xxx.; ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... home, as if some person really cared for them. One could not help noticing how many of them broke out into verse, though most of them were labouring men at home. Although some was not original, it showed that they liked poetry. Some was extempore, ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... Bon. again, which is always a change, because it gives a good deal of reading and research, whereas Woodstock and such like, being extempore from my mother-wit, is a sort of spinning of the brains, of which a man tires. The ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... that he may test his memory, and then become familiar with a procedure in private in order to be sure to be perfect in it before the public. This private discipline is all the more necessary in the early stages of extempore speaking—if the speaker is at all troubled by ...
— Assimilative Memory - or, How to Attend and Never Forget • Marcus Dwight Larrowe (AKA Prof. A. Loisette)
... contemporary of Demosthenes, who, by his genius for extempore oratory, raised himself to a predominant position in Athens as a champion of the Macedonian influence, but afterwards incurred ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... was now wearing late, and our landlord had just come in to announce that supper was ready, and would be served up when ordered, we agreed to rest satisfied for the night with the extempore autobiographies, as I may call them, of our two worthy companions—the little hunch-backed personage in the bright yellow waistcoat, and the melancholy gentleman; but we, at the same time, resolved that we would resume the same mode of entertainment ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... the fish pounded and mixed with butter, with a little lemon-juice, &c. is an elegant and inoffensive relish to fish (see No. 288). Mushroom sauce extempore (No. 307), or the soup of mock turtle (No. 247), will make an excellent ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... got to the Cedars a solemn stillness reigned in the nursery, and instead of an orderly room a perfect chaos of doll revelry prevailed. All the chairs were turned into extempore beds, and the twelve dolls, with bandaged heads and arms, were tucked up ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... remain with us. That evening we invited the captain and his crew to dine in the camp; and it was fortunate that we did so, as the sequel will show. Shortly after sundown, as we were all sitting in our usual way, on an extempore divan in front of the tents, drinking coffee, telling stories, and enjoying the cool sea evening breezes, a challenge was heard by the sentinel placed on the rear right of the camp, followed by a sudden and rapid discharge of musketry, which took us by ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... song in a gay, ever-repeated chorus; some raffling for nuts and biscuits at smartly-decked fair-booths, or playing at Chinese billiards for painted mugs or huge cakes of gilt gingerbread; some listening to the stump orations of an extempore fortuneteller, who promised the baton of the field-marshal to any conscript who would give him a penny; and some buying by yards the patriotic, soul-stirring songs of Beranger, and reciting them in every tone, in every key and to every tune. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... inclining ominously towards a catastrophe. This story was Waverley. Mr. Carlyle has praised Waverley above its fellows. "On the whole, contrasting Waverley, which was carefully written, with most of its followers which were written extempore, one may regret the extempore method." This is, however, a very unfortunate judgment. Not one of the whole series of novels appears to have been written more completely extempore than the great bulk of Waverley, including ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... under laws which dictate almost every detail of his public and private conduct, and punish every sign of bad discipline with the most appalling rigour; and these laws are enforced by police who supply the chance gaps in them extempore, and exercise that authority in the best manner of prison guards, animal trainers and ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... for this kind of impromptu acting that the actors are freer than when speaking words they have learnt, and can therefore behave with more naturalness. It is the difference between delivering an extempore speech and reciting one that has been learnt—the difference between "recitare a soggetto" and "recitare col suggeritore." So great is the freedom that an actor may introduce anything appropriate that occurs to him at the moment, and ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones
... are many things may be said to be the practice of the Church, which were never established by any law either common, statute, or canon; as singing of psalms, binding up; prayers at the end of the Bible, and praying extempore before and after sermon: and though these are things indifferent, yet things for aught they at present know may be started, which may be said to be the practice of the Church which would not be fit to allow. For the Lords' priviledges, Mr. Waller told them how tender their predecessors had ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... children, bethought himself that others might receive from them the same delight and interest if they were put into book form. He at once acted upon the suggestion and wrote out a chapter of his story for each day, and instead of telling it to his children in an extempore fashion, read what he had written. When the story was completed, the various chapters were placed together and dispatched to a publisher, who at once accepted and published it. It was in this way the long series of historical stories which has come from his ...
— The Golden Canyon - Contents: The Golden Canyon; The Stone Chest • G. A. Henty
... GESTEIN. We sat down with him for a time, for all felt the heat exceedingly in the climb up this very steep BOLWOGGOLY, and then we set out again together, and arrived at last near the Dead Man's Lake, at the foot of the Sidelhorn. This lonely spot, once used for an extempore burying-place, after a sanguinary BATTUE between the French and Austrians, is the perfection of desolation; there is nothing in sight to mark the hand of man, except the line of weather-beaten whitened posts, set up to indicate the direction of the pass in the OWDAWAKK of winter. Near ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... between the rows. Each scholar was hurrying to his place at one of the desks, where, as he arrived, he stood. The master already stood in solemn posture at the nearer end of the room on a platform behind his desk, prepared to commence the extempore prayer, which was printed in a kind of blotted stereotype upon every one of their brains. Annie had hardly succeeded in reaching a vacant place among the girls when he began. The boys were as still as death while the master prayed; but a spectator might easily ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... unfortunate student is placed being far more uneasy than the tightest fitting "Scavenger's daughter" in the Tower of London. After an anxious hour, Mr. Jones returns, with a light bounding step to a joyous extempore air of his own composing: he has passed. In another twenty minutes Mr. Saxby walks fiercely in, calls for his hat, condemns the examiners ad inferos, swears he shall cut the profession, and marches away. He has been plucked; and Mr. Muff, who stands sixth on the list, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 20, 1841 • Various
... They run on, in a low, guttural, monotonous sort of chant, their lips and tongues seeming hardly to move, and the sounds modulated solely in the throat. There is very little tune to it, and the words, so far as I could learn, are extempore. They sing about persons and things which are around them, and adopt this method when they do not wish to be understood by any but themselves; and it is very effectual, for with the most careful attention I never could detect a word that I knew. I have often heard ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... instruments were very simple, and of two kinds only: the one, a sort of flute, producing four notes, and blown with the nostrils; the other, a drum, made of the hollow trunk of a tree; but the accompanying songs, usually extempore poems, were pretty, and showed the delicacy of their ear. The girls excelled in the dance; the married women were forbidden to take part in it, and the men never did. The dancers executed a species of ballet, and, according to the judgment of travellers, they might with little ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... but, by the by, I must repeat to you some extempore verses I made yesterday at the house of a certain duchess, an acquaintance of mine. I am deuced ...
— The Pretentious Young Ladies • Moliere
... said Emilius; "he is always the child of the moment. I have done all in my power, and even run the risk of some amicable quarrels, to cure him of this habit of for ever living extempore, and playing out his whole life in impromptus, card after card, as it chances to turn up, without once looking over his hand. But these follies have struck such deep root in his heart, he would sooner part with his best friend ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... Pulaski, but he might have been the gentleman from Vallombrosa for all that any one cared. The convention was annoyed that a gentleman from Pulaski County should have dared to flourish manuscript when there were innumerable orators present fully prepared to speak extempore on any subject. For all that any one knew the gentleman from Pulaski might be primed with a speech on the chinch bug or the Jewish kritarchy; a man with a sheet of paper in his hand was a formidable person, if not indeed a foe of mankind, ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... in the Praise of some Men, that they could Talk whole Hours together upon any Thing; but it must be owned to the Honour of the other Sex, that there are many among them who can Talk whole Hours together upon Nothing. I have known a Woman branch out into a long Extempore Dissertation upon the Edging of a Petticoat, and chide her Servant for breaking a China Cup, in all ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... away; toute a l'heure[Fr]; at one jump, in the same breath, per saltum[Lat], uno saltu[Lat]; at once, all at once; plump, slap; "at one fell swoop"; at the same instant &c. n.; immediately &c. (early) 132; extempore, on the moment, on the spot, on the spur of the moment; no sooner said than done; just then; slap-dash &c. (haste) 684. Phr. touch and go; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... they trembled at the sound of a trumpet, in peace they quaked before the shouting of their own demagogues; and during the assault of Philip II. they could only be prevailed on to man the walls by the savour of extempore cook-shops distributed along the ramparts. The modern Greeks attribute the introduction of Christianity into Byzantium to St Andrew; it certainly had some hold there ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... Perfesser Bunker Hill Monument," he said, but spoiled it by laughing himself. It was extempore and had caught him unawares. The harried Bean fled to ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... the United States where I have chanced to be, except among the Dutch, the Germans, and the Quakers, people seem to build everything extempore and pro tempore, as if they looked forward to a speedy removal or did not expect to want it long. Nowhere else, it seems to me, do people work more for the present, less for the future, or live so commonly up to the extent of their ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... charge, had been one of those in whom a more passionate missionary zeal had been stirred by the Methodist movement—"endeared to the more serious inhabitants by warm zeal and a powerful talent for preaching extempore." The parishioners had made urgent appeal to the noble patron to appoint this man to the benefice, and the Duke's disregard of their petition had produced much bitterness in the parish. Then, again, in Crabbe there was a "lay" element, which ...
— Crabbe, (George) - English Men of Letters Series • Alfred Ainger
... the improbability of an extempore organ of sense being thus established, by supposing that the mind of the entranced person has only penetrated a little deeper than before into yours, and perceives what you see. But I had the following experiment made, which excludes this solution of the phenomenon. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... sect, but from principle remain, what we have always been, true members of the Church of England.'[732] In 1778, 'To speak freely, I myself find more life in the Church prayers than in any formal extempore prayers of Dissenters.' In 1780, 'Having had opportunity of seeing several Churches abroad, and having deeply considered the several sorts of Dissenters at home, I am fully convinced our own Church, with all her blemishes, is nearer the Scriptural plan than any other Church in Europe.' ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... demand on the part of my class-fellows was, however, as great and urgent as ever; and, setting myself, in the extremity of the case, to try my ability of original production, I began to dole out to them by the hour and the diet, long extempore biographies, which proved wonderfully popular and successful. My heroes were usually warriors like Wallace, and voyagers like Gulliver, and dwellers in desolate islands like Robinson Crusoe; and they had not unfrequently to seek shelter in huge deserted ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... ought to give good bread week in and week out, so saving you from the frequent calamity of soda-biscuits. These may be used for dumplings, or as a sudden extempore, but do not let them be habitual. True, you will occasionally meet people who say that they can eat these, when raised ones are fatal. But some persons find cheese good for dyspepsia, many advocate ice-cream, others can eat ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... for Otto's Bohemian Autumn Nightly Concerts at Covent Garden Theatre, had happened to hear her and that seldom played sonata for the first time. It was a wondrous chance. Otto's large, picturesque, extempore way of inviting her to appear at his promenade concerts reminded her ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... the war of Modena, notwithstanding the weighty affairs in which he was engaged, he is said to have read, written, and declaimed every day. He never addressed the senate, the people, or the army, but in a premeditated speech, though he did not want the talent of speaking extempore on the spur of the occasion. And lest his memory should fail him, as well as to prevent the loss of time in getting up his speeches, it was his general practice to recite them. In his intercourse with individuals, and even with his wife Livia, upon subjects of importance he wrote on his tablets ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... being annually held at a large chait hard by, which is painted red, ornamented with banners, and surmounted by an enormous yak's skull, that faces the mountain. The Lama invited me into his tent, where I found a wife and family. An extempore altar was at one end, covered with wafers and other pretty ornaments, made of butter, stamped or moulded with the fingers.* [The extensive use of these ornaments throughout Tibet, on the occasion of religious ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... to the ideal world of beauty symbolized by the song of the bird. Here finding all real things, even the most beautiful, pall upon him, he extols the fancy, which can escape from reality and is not tied by place or season in its search for new joys. This is, of course, only a passing mood, as the extempore character of the poetry indicates. We see more of settled conviction in the deeply-meditative Ode to Autumn, where he finds the ideal in ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... now extempore," she continued, "and more to my satisfaction than ever before. I am amazed at myself, but I could not do it if any of our other speakers were listening to me. I am entirely off old antislavery grounds and on the new ones thrown up by ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... in the popular mind with the idea of a lecture. After a moment of silence, there was a spontaneous burst of applause. It was renewed when Amelius, first placing on his table a little book, announced his intention of delivering the lecture extempore. The absence of the inevitable manuscript was in itself an act of mercy that cheered the ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... manner which would have been impossible for me to have imitated without being severely burnt. I once saw him go to a bright wood fire, and, taking a large piece of red-hot charcoal, put it in the hollow of one hand, and, covering it with the other, blow into the extempore furnace till the coal was white hot, and the flames licked round his fingers. No sign of burning could be seen then or afterwards ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... money. Hostess, clap to the doors. Watch to-night, pray to-morrow. Gallants, lads, boys, hearts of gold; all the titles of good-fellowship come to you! What! shall we be merry? Shall we have a play extempore? ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... the play out, or to refrain from tears while it was acting. The piece concluded with the reception which she was supposed to meet with from her friends at her return; and it was a reception that was by no means favourable. As these people, when they see occasion, can add little extempore pieces to their entertainments, it is reasonable to imagine, that the representation now described was intended as a satire against the girl, and to discourage others from following her steps. Such is ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... Rocky-Mountain Lines. He was returning from Washington over the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, on a freight-train, when he heard of the President's danger. Langenzunge loved Old Rough and Ready,—and he felt badly about his own office, too. But his extempore train chose to stop at a forsaken shanty-village on the Potomac, for four mortal hours, at midnight. What does he do, but walk down the line into the darkness, climb a telegraph-post, cut a wire, and apply the two ends to his tongue, to taste, at the fatal moment, the words, "Died ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... complaint, ejaculation in the Koran, a vein of true direct insight, of what we might almost call poetry, is found straggling. The body of the Book is made-up of mere tradition, and as it were vehement enthusiastic extempore preaching. He returns forever to the old stories of the Prophets as they went current in the Arab memory: how Prophet after Prophet, the Prophet Abraham, the Prophet Hud, the Prophet Moses, Christian and other real and fabulous Prophets, had come to this Tribe and to that, warning men ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... published, is in order to mark more definitely this limitation of my subject; but in other respects the Lectures have been amplified in arranging them for the press, and the portions of them trusted at the time to extempore delivery, (not through indolence, but because explanations of detail are always most intelligible when most familiar,) have been in substance to the best of my power set down, and in what I said ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... part of Africa are also attended by a band carrying drums, and singing extempore songs, a translation of one of which is subjoined from "Denham's Travels," whence the engraving ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 10, Issue 285, December 1, 1827 • Various
... was desired to make a pun extempore. "Upon what subject?" said Daniel. "The king," answered the other. "O, sir," said he, "the king is ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... prejudice, describes the condition of things. "I have heard painters acknowledge that they could do better without nature than with her, or, as they expressed themselves, it only put them out. Our neighbours, the French, are much in this practice of extempore invention, and their dexterity is such as even to excite admiration, if not envy; but how rarely can this praise be given to their finished pictures!" Twelfth Discourse, ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... of extempore preaching, and was unwilling to listen to the delivery of a written sermon." (Indeed, if we had more people like him in this day, we would hear far more of the gospel and far less of politics and jokes which so demoralize ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... the major numbers of mankind are too little self-reverent to dispense with the services of self-conceit, they like to think themselves equal, and very easily equal, to any truth, and habitually assume their extempore, off-hand notion of its significance as a perfect measure of the fact. As if a man hollowed his hand, and, dipping it full out of Lake Superior, said, "Lake Superior just fills my hand!" To how many are the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... quiet, and the extempore official proceeded—with greater solemnity than many another judge of more regular appointment exhibits ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... lecturer failed us at the last moment without giving us notice. Then J. and I had to run an entertainment of an instructive kind extempore. J. was strong on personal hygiene. He might start with saluting or the theft of Miss N.'s purse, our great club scandal, but he worked round in the end to soap and tooth brushes. My own business, if we were utterly driven against the wall, ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... of the paper for the same year are some extempore lines on Brighton, dated from East Street, which ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... faith to every circumstance of his story, which indeed could not well be supposed to be invented extempore; the ring was immediately restored, and our adventurer took his leave, congratulating himself upon his signal deliverance from the snare in which ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... to the top; the rest of the box was then filled with the birds, displayed in regular rows, with heads and tails alternating, and a thin coat of clean dry wheaten straw between each layer, until but a few inches' depth remained between the noble pile and the lid of this extempore refrigerator; this space being filled in with flannel packed close and folded tightly, the box was locked and thrust into the accurately fitting boot by dint of the exertion of Timothy's ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... group to another, groping in slippery tangle for the wreck of ships, wading in pools after the abominable creatures of the sea, and ever with an eye cast backward on the march of the tide and the menaced line of your retreat. And then you might go Crusoeing, a word that covers all extempore eating in the open air: digging perhaps a house under the margin of the links, kindling a fire of the sea-ware, and cooking apples there—if they were truly apples, for I sometimes suppose the merchant must have ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of tenderness, truth, or courage. The oratorio has already lost its relation to the morning, to the sun, and the earth, but that persuading voice is in tune with these. All works of art should not be detached, but extempore performances. A great man is a new statue in every attitude and action. A beautiful woman is a picture which drives all beholders nobly mad. Life may be lyric or epic, as well as ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... fortunately to be concealed in a rugged piece of ground where horses could not act. As the Indians were riding away he shot the horse that bore the pastor, and at the same time uttered a series of yells and extempore war-whoops so appalling that the savages gave him credit for being at least a dozen foes, and fled over a ridge before turning to see what had happened. The fall of the horse had stunned the pastor, but the Indian leaped ...
— The Thorogood Family • R.M. Ballantyne
... the experimenter prostrates himself in front of the fire and prays to the Great Spirit of the Unknown to confer on him the property of metamorphosing, nocturnally, into a werwolf. His prayers take no one particular form, but are quite extempore; though he usually adds to them some such recognised ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... beautifulle is our Liturgie! I grudge at the Puritans for having abolished it; and though I felt not its comprehensive Fullessse [Transcriber's note: Fullnesse?] before I married, nor indeed till now, yet I wearied to Death in London at the puritanicall Ordinances and Conscience-meetings and extempore Prayers, wherein it was soe oft the Speaker's Care to show Men how godly he was. Nay, I think Mr. Milton altogether wrong in the View he takes of praying to God in other Men's Words; for doth he not doe soe, everie Time he followeth the Sense of another Man's extempore Prayer, ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... and nothing is more probable than that disappointment may have made that noxious climate more deadly. Hints of poisoning were thrown out, but this is a surmise easily and often lightly made. "Thus," says Fuller, in his "Holy State," "an extempore performance, scarce heard to be begun before we hear it is ended, comes off with better applause, or miscarries with less disgrace, than a long-studied and openly premeditated action. Besides, we see how great spirits, having mounted up to the highest pitch of performance, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... following treatise remains in the exact form in which it was read at Manchester; but the more familiar passages of it, which were trusted to extempore delivery, have been written with greater explicitness and fulness than I could give them in speaking; and a considerable number of notes are added, to explain the points which could not be sufficiently considered in the time I had at my disposal ...
— A Joy For Ever - (And Its Price in the Market) • John Ruskin
... cried I; "indeed I have nothing to propose." He would not, however, be refused; but urged me so much to say something, that at last, not to make him wait any longer, I ventured to propose an extempore couplet upon some given subject. Mr. Coverley instantly made me a bow, or, according to Mrs. Selwyn, a shrug, crying, "Thank you, Ma'am; egad, that's my forte!-why, my Lord, the Fates ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... hasty breakfast, we went to meeting. My foster-father looked excessively wild. Mr Cate was raving in the midst of an extempore prayer, when a heavy fall was heard in the chapel. The minister descended from his desk, and came and prayed over the prostrate victim of intoxication, and, perhaps, of epilepsy, and he pronounced that brother ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... Rorie, and the beginning of our meal, did not detach him from his train of thought beyond a moment. He condescended, indeed, to ask me some questions as to my success at college, but I thought it was with half his mind; and even in his extempore grace, which was, as usual, long and wandering, I could find the trace of his preoccupation, praying, as he did, that God would 'remember in mercy fower puir, feckless, fiddling, sinful creatures here by their lee-lane beside the great ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... first for fear of the law, counterfeited a distraction, and by his own family it was spread about the city that he was mad. He then secretly composed some elegiac verses, and getting them by heart, that it might seem extempore, ran out into the market-place with a cap upon his head, and, the people gathering about him, got upon the herald's stand, and sang that elegy ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... Beau's, his numerals, which is rare nowadays, were very clearly and very beautifully formed. The Prince of Beaux was fastidious in his penmanship as in everything else. Sir Ralph's half- yearly speeches to the shareholders, though delivered extempore, were models of perspicuity. He used the scantiest notes, mere headings of subjects, and a few scraps of paper containing figures which he usually remembered without their aid. Of his memory he was proud. One day, at a meeting ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow
... fellow damned first, and had directed a deed of separation to be prepared, which should provide for the complete payment of Fiorsen's existing debts on condition that he left Gyp and the baby in peace. After telling Gyp this, he took an opportunity of going to the extempore nursery and standing by the baby's cradle. Until then, the little creature had only been of interest as part of Gyp; now it had for him an existence of its own—this tiny, dark-eyed creature, lying there, watching him so gravely, clutching his finger. Suddenly the baby smiled—not ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... afterward, with an inexplicable disappointment, that her husband had not been talking extempore, but was freely quoting his "Compiler's Foreword" just as it figured ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... the congregation joined in, and the singing went off pretty well. After praying and reading a chapter in the Bible, Odell sat down to collect his thoughts for the sermon, which was, of course, to be extempore, as Methodist sermons usually are. It is customary for the choir, if there is one, to sing an anthem during this pause; or, where no singers are set apart, for some members to strike up an appropriate hymn, in which the congregation joins. On this occasion, all was ...
— Off-Hand Sketches - a Little Dashed with Humor • T. S. Arthur
... in rusty black, and bearing in his hand a small plain Bible from which he selects some passage for his text, while the hymn is concluding. The congregation fall upon their knees, and are hushed into profound stillness as he delivers an extempore prayer, in which he calls upon the Sacred Founder of the Christian faith to bless his ministry, in terms of disgusting and impious familiarity not to be described. He begins his oration in a drawling tone, and his hearers listen with silent attention. ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... to be the birthday of the marquis's valet de chambre. The servants had dined more sumptuously than usual. They had toasts and songs over their dessert; and at the conclusion of the repast, they amused themselves by an extempore ball. ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... the pulpit. Failing to understand that the use of "the paper" could interfere in the remotest degree with the due and proper effect of the pulpit, and knowing that he could not do either himself or his congregation adequate justice by extempore preaching, Dr. Anderson continued to adhere to written sermons, until the Presbytery at last gave way, leaving him master of the situation. The feud between Dr. Anderson and his Presbytery has been described by himself as "the eleven months of anguish to which I was subjected ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... sort of letter of form on the occasion, for there is nothing worth telling you. The event that has made most noise since my last, is the extempore wedding of the youngest of the two Gunnings, who have made so vehement a noise. Lord Coventry,(295) a grave young lord, of the remains of the patriot breed, has long dangled after the eldest, virtuously with regard to her virtue, not very honourably with regard to his own ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... former Palaces of Pleasure, because comparisons are odious, and because they contain histories, translated out of grave authors and learned writers; and this containeth discourses devised by a green youthful capacity, and repeated in a manner extempore."[310] It was, again, the personal preference of the individual or the extent of his linguistic knowledge that determined whether the translator should employ the original Italian or Spanish versions of some collections or should content ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... boots,[18] all snugly laced, So that henceforth it can creep ahead On the road of thought with a cautious tread. And not at random shoot and strike, Zig-zagging Jack-o'-lanthorn-like. Then will you many a day be taught That what you once to do had thought Like eating and drinking, extempore, Requires the rule of one, two, three. It is, to be sure, with the fabric of thought, As with the chef d'oeuvre by weavers wrought, Where a thousand threads one treadle plies, Backward and forward the shuttles keep going, Invisibly the threads keep flowing, ...
— Faust • Goethe
... No. 2 is of a similar kind. The binary form is of the later type, i.e. there is a return to the principal theme in the second section. No. 3 opens with a Prelude, and a note states that "in this and other Preludes, which are meant as extempore touches before the Lesson begins, neither the composer nor performer are oblig'd to a Strictness of Tune." The pleasing Allegro which follows shows the influence of Scarlatti-Handel. The sonata concludes with an attractive Minuet and variations. No. 5, with its graceful Gavotta, and No. 7 ...
— The Pianoforte Sonata - Its Origin and Development • J.S. Shedlock
... and generally disreputable aspect. He usually handles a short stick; and, when drummer and piper are absent, he carries a tiny tom-tom shaped like an hour- glass, upon which he taps the periods. This Scealuidhe, as the Irish call him, opens the drama with extempore prayer, proving that he and the audience are good Moslems: he speaks slowly and with emphasis, varying the diction with breaks of animation, abundant action and the most comical grimace: he advances, retires and wheels about, illustrating every point with pantomime; and his features, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... Brothers must be perfect companions for amateurs, and know all about charades and extempore costumes. ...
— Happy-Thought Hall • F. C. Burnand
... Doctor went on, "the Devil can never prevent me preaching from that text. I could speak extempore upon it for hours, it was the very first command both to Adam and also to Noah when he came out of the ark. Dear Mrs. Etheridge, let me touch that divine cunt of yours. I can't make out what your husband has been about ...
— The Power of Mesmerism - A Highly Erotic Narrative of Voluptuous Facts and Fancies • Anonymous
... A short extempore program written to meet an immediate, transient need. Often written in BASIC, rarely more than a dozen lines long, and containing no subroutines. The largest amount of code that can be written off the top of one's head, that does not need any editing, and that ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... I have a pretty wit. I can rhyme you extempore; I can convulse you with quip and conundrum;I have the lighter philosophies at my tongue's tip; I can be merry, wise, quaint, grim, and sardonic, one by one, or all at once; I have a pretty turn for anecdote; I know all the jests— ancient and modern— past, present, ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... last years of my being at school, I was of the highest form in the school, and chiefest of that form; I could then speak Latin as well as English; could make extempore verses upon any theme; all kinds of verses, hexameter, pentameter, phaleuciacks, iambicks, sapphicks, &c. so that if any scholars from remote schools came to dispute, I was ringleader to dispute with them; I could cap verses, &c. If any ...
— William Lilly's History of His Life and Times - From the Year 1602 to 1681 • William Lilly
... Committee on Literature was made by its chairman, Miss Caroline Ruutz-Rees, showing the usual careful selection of valuable matter for publication. Two important compilations she had made herself—Ten Extempore Answers to Questions by Dr. Shaw and extracts from a number of her speeches, gleaned from scattered reports; also an eloquent address made at Birmingham, Ala., the preceding April. So little from Dr. Shaw existed in printed form that these ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... company I go, I am obliged to be the figurante of the circle. Yesterday I preached twice, and, indeed, performed the whole service, morning and afternoon. There were about fourteen hundred persons present, and my sermons (great part extempore) were preciously peppered with Politics. I have here, at least, double the number of subscribers, ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... he was somewhat subject to extempore bursts of passion, which were rather unpleasant to his favorites and attendants, whose perceptions he was apt to quicken, after the manner of his illustrious imitator, Peter the Great, by anointing their ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... I mean to hear some of the course but lectures are not much to my taste, whatever the lecturer may be. If read, they are dismal flat, and you can't think why you are brought together to hear a man read his works, which you could read so much better at leisure yourself. If delivered extempore I am always in pain lest the gift of utterance should suddenly fail the orator in the middle, as it did me at the dinner given in honour of me at the London tavern.[117] "Gentlemen," said I, and ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... this little extempore speech,— applause accompanied by an odorous rain of flowers. There were many women in the crowd, and these had pressed eagerly forward to catch every word that dropped from the Poet-Laureate's mellifluous lips,—now, moved by one common impulse, they hastily ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... take the decanter and the glass, and be off to the back chamber looking on the Meadows, where he toiled on his cases till the hours were small. There was no "fuller man" on the bench; his memory was marvellous, though wholly legal; if he had to "advise" extempore, none did it better; yet there was none who more earnestly prepared. As he thus watched in the night, or sat at table and forgot the presence of his son, no doubt but he tasted deeply of recondite ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of the Dunlop family: it was printed from a hasty sketch, which the poet called extempore. The major whom it mentions, was General Andrew Dunlop, who died in 1804: Rachel Dunlop was afterwards married to Robert Glasgow, Esq. Another of the Dunlops served with distinction in India, where he rose to the rank of General. They were a gallant ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... and sorrow would cease! Animated by his subject, his voice gradually became bolder and more spirited, as well as his performance, and without any hesitation he sung with much facility two or three stanzas composed extempore. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various |
