"Farce" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... on Monday. Call upon Mr. Morille same day. Leave card at Colonel Digby's on Tuesday. Theatre Friday night—Richard III. and new farce. Present letter at Miss L——'s on Tuesday. Call on Sampson & Wilt, Friday. Get my draft on London cashed. Write home by the Princess. Letter bag ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... of the more popular places, was crowded; and the boisterous absurdity of the farce was at its height. Rainham at first felt quite disconcerted by the proximity of the ludicrous figure in bathing dress who was leaning over the footlights, and declaiming his woes with a directness of appeal to the audience which alone would have marked ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... neighborhood of Aix, had had occasion to visit the grotto of Ceyzeriat, recently adopted as the meeting-place of the Companions of Jehu. At the preceding meetings he had occasion to explore only the windings and intricacies of the Chartreuse of Seillon, which he now knew so well that in the farce played before Roland the part of ghost was intrusted to him. Everything was, therefore, curious and unknown to him in this new domicile, where he now expected to take his first sleep, and which seemed likely to be, for some ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... But now here is Michael showing that he has got tastes. Can you wonder that I'm delighted? And not only has he got tastes, but he has the strength of character to back them. Michael, in the Guards too! It was a perfect farce, and he's had the sense to see it. He hated his duties, and he hated his diversions. ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... laugh. Then what is it that the world outside must have laughed with a very self-conscious wisdom? Its laughter was nothing to us then, and to-day is to me as nothing. Is it not always ready to weep at a farce and ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... by degrees gliding into my troubled senses, and lulling them into a treacherous security. "Just so," I reasoned, "shock and countershock. The terrible scourge has by this time exhausted its strength. It was only a farce, after all. Much ado about nothing. The people of this town have become so familiar with the earthquake that they make a carnival of it. By this time they are perhaps feasting and rioting under their booths. Ho! am I the only craven here? And had I not my desire? Am I not now on speaking terms ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... the underling, the tool, the servile, brainless, little fetcher-and-carrier of these men, was punished—was hanged, and upon the narrow shoulders of this pitiful scapegoat was packed the entire sin of Jefferson Davis and his crew. What a farce! ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... very moment he was declaiming violently, "You have all the vices of the last century, and none of its amenities. Honor is a mere name. Love is a farce. You have ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... the anguish of it—all alike were bent on play, and persisted pitifully in the cruel farce. The little bare feet pattered up and down the steps—but ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... consuls were commanded to divide the management of the war between them; that the Volscians should be the province of the one, the AEquans that of the other. The tribunes cried out to their faces in the forum, "That the Volscian war was all a concerted farce: that the Hernicians were instructed to act their parts; that the liberty of the Roman people was now no longer crushed by manly efforts, but that it was baffled by cunning; because all probability was now gone that the Volscians, who were almost exterminated, and the AEquans, would ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... become young again. The happy day arrived: the Calabrian boor approached the castle; the king received him at the gate, fell at his feet, and asked him for life and health. The Calabrian played his part in so ridiculous a manner, that Faustus could not avoid laughing aloud at the farce. Tristan and his myrmidons were advancing to seize him, and he would doubtlessly have paid for laughing with his life, had not the Devil rescued him from their claws, and flown away with him. When they arrived at Paris, ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... sooner spoken than the musicians, who had orders to attend, entered, and answered fully the expectations the princes had been led to entertain of their abilities. After the concerts, an excellent farce was acted, and the entertainment was concluded by dancers of ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... various useful branches of literature, among whom Didymus, surnamed Chalcenterus, a man celebrated for his writings on many subjects of science, deserves especial mention; who, in the six books in which he, sometimes incorrectly, attacks Cicero, imitating those malignant farce writers, is justly blamed by the learned as a puppy barking from a distance with puny voice against the mighty roar of ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... good as a three-act farce," he cried. "Yes, you turnip, I am quite sure. I had the sense to make a duplicate of the right parcel, and now, my friend, you've got the duplicate and I've got the jewels. An old dodge, Father Brown—a ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... when strung together without the life which makes them real. It should be remembered that what is an accident in life ceases to be an accident when it is invented in a story. A writer must needs supply from the imagination something which may give the artistic effect of accident. Even farce misses its true effects if it contains no verisimilitude. To see your friend sitting on a pat of butter is amusing; to listen to an invented account of besmeared garments is not amusing; for it misses the amusing point—which was ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... slowly; "I think she is too good even for you, and you have done all that any one could have expected of you, without keeping up the farce any longer. I am glad you did not ask if I believed you—because I could scarcely have forgiven you that question. Do you think I ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... strongly that he liked those plays least in which Fanny performed. Off the stage her character had so little romance, that he could not deceive himself into the romance of her character before the lamps. Luckily, however, Fanny did not attempt Shakspeare. She was inimitable in vaudeville, in farce, and in the lighter comedy; but she had prudently abandoned tragedy in deserting the barn. She was a girl of much talent and quickness, and discovered exactly the paths in which her vanity could walk without being wounded. And there was a simplicity, ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Here was one cause of his disinclination to meet his wife—having to keep up the farce of Dr. Ashton's action. It seemed, however, that there would no longer be any farce to keep up. Had it exploded? He said nothing. Maude gazing at him from the sofa on which she sat, her dark eyes ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... confess, the precaution was superfluous, the managers having apparently entered into league to ensure me as much obscurity as I had any use for. But at length in an unguarded moment the manager of the Duke of Cornwall's Theatre (formerly the Euterpe) accepted a three-act farce. It was poorly acted, yet for some reason it took the town. 'Larks in Aspic, a Farcical Comedy by George Anthony,' ran for a solid three hundred nights; and before it ceased my unsuspecting uncle had closed his earthly career, leaving me with seventy ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... understand it at all. In my days girls went wherever it pleased people to ask them, without this farce of bursting out in all their new fine clothes at some public place. I don't mean but what the gentry took their daughters to York, or Matlock, or Bath to give them a taste of gay society when they were growing up; ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... a capacity for wit, but, as he was fond of saying himself, no sympathy with farce or mere high spirits. I doubt even if he had a sense of humour in the ordinary meaning of that term, or in the Frenchman's definition: "la mlancholie gaie que les Anglais nomment 'humour.'" To say ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... germicide plebescite self-determination covenant layman purloin soviet ethiopian morale querulous vers libre farce nectar renegade zoom ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... this:—'Whatever Sheridan has done or chosen to do has been, par excellence, always the best of its kind. He has written the best comedy (School for Scandal), the best drama (in my mind, far before that St. Giles's lampoon, the Beggars Opera), the best farce (the Critic—it is only too good for a farce), and the best Address ('Monologue on Garrick'), and, to crown all, delivered the very best Oration (the famous Begum Speech) ever conceived or heard in this country.'"—Journal, December 17, 1813, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... ground. He wheeled about, retracing his steps, as if he might so catch in his face at least the stirred air of some other quick revolution. It was indeed true that his fully dislocalised thought of these manoeuvres recalled to him Pantaloon, at the Christmas farce, buffeted and tricked from behind by ubiquitous Harlequin; but it left intact the influence of the conditions themselves each time he was re- exposed to them, so that in fact this association, had he suffered it to become constant, would on a certain ...
— The Jolly Corner • Henry James
... took an Englishman to a theater. An actor in the farce, about to die, exclaimed: "Please, dear wife, don't ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... had set her going, as if I had touched a spring—and there he was at the door himself, rushing back. He, too, had remembered. It was almost a collision, and nothing but their good Southern breeding, the way they took it, saved it from being like a rowdy farce. ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... the laughable farce of a trial of the 'Enossis' on board a vessel lying in port (I dare not land), which of ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... not know what to make of such extraordinary and unexpected questions. He blushed, tried to write, fingered his curls, and then gave himself over to despair; whereupon Mr. Bouncer was seized with an immoderate fit of laughter, which brought the farce almost ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... rankly, though my very growth disturb this dull equanimity,—though it be with struggle through long, dark, muggy nights or seasons of gloom. It would be well, if all our lives were a divine tragedy even, instead of this trivial comedy or farce. Dante, Bunyan, and others, appear to have been exercised in their minds more than we: they were subjected to a kind of culture such as our district schools and colleges do not contemplate. Even Mahomet, though many may scream at his name, had a good deal more to ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... laughter. "No, no," said he, "such a farce is beyond belief! It's the finest smack given to justice and common-sense that I know of. Ah! if the marriage can also be annulled by the civil courts, and if my friend whom you see yonder be only willing, we shall amuse ourselves in Rome! Yes, indeed, I'd marry her at Santa Maria Maggiore ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... of a station at Catsville. You and I do not think it candid to say that when we are at one end of a telephone we have no sort of connection with the other end. These things have got into the region of farce; and should be dealt with farcically, not ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton
... brilliant street, from the gay crowds rolling on in search of witless farce-comedy and trite melodrama, the brooding idealist climbed one night to the gallery to overlook a gloomy, empty auditorium. Concealing himself as best he could, he sat through the performance, tortured by some indefinable appeal in Helen's voice, ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... unfortunately for the young king, the fashion at the new court to despise and distrust the Greeks, to underrate their exploits, and to declaim against their honesty. The revolution was treated as a war of words, the defence of Missolonghi as a trifle, and the naval warfare as a farce. The Greeks have since, on the mountains of Maina, and on the plain of Phthiotis, shown themselves so far superior to the Bavarians when engaged in the field, that we shall say nothing on that subject. Their honesty has been generally considered more questionable than their courage; for though ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... under a candlestick on the mantel for later consideration. At luncheon she had referred to it, and now it evidently had caused her to be thoughtful and a little troubled. An open book was in her lap; she and Alix had gone through the farce of saying that they would read without speaking until Peter had finished some business telephoning; now he had joined them, but still she did not read and seemed disinclined ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... put my name down, that I must go, but you know I had much rather give the money outright. It is a farce to call ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... man who assumed the Supreme Being becoming nearly suffocated by the paint applied to his face, it was wisely announced that for the future the Deity should be covered by a cloud. These plays, carried about the country, taken up by the baser sort of people, descended through all degrees of farce to obscenity, and, in England, becoming entangled in politics, at length disappeared. It is said they linger in Italy, and are annually reproduced ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... reason, quite confounded by this multiplicity of reefs, the wind intermits, squalls are frequent from the west and south-west, hurricanes are known. The currents are, besides, inextricably intermixed; dead reckoning becomes a farce; the charts are not to be trusted; and such is the number and similarity of these islands that, even when you have picked one up, you may be none the wiser. The reputation of the place is consequently infamous; insurance offices exclude it from their ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... each face of which was strained a distinct picture, one for tragedy, consisting of large buildings, with columns, statues, and other corresponding ornaments; a second face, with houses, windows, and balconies, for comedy; a third applied to farce, with cottages, grottoes, and rural scenes. There were the scenae versatiles of Servius. Besides these, there were scenae ductiles, which drew backwards and forwards, and opened a view of the house, which was built upon the stage, and contained apartments for ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... Pizarros to translating fools; Give, as thy last memorial to the age, One classic drama, and reform the stage. Gods! o'er those boards shall Folly rear her head, Where Garrick trod, and Kemble lives to tread? On those shall Farce display Buffoonery's mask, And Hook conceal his heroes in a cask? Shall sapient managers new scenes produce From Cherry, Skeffington, and Mother Goose? While Shakspeare, Otway, Massinger, forgot, On stalls ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... a gigantic farce of the most ingenious construction. The whole comedy hinges on a huge joke, played by a heartless nephew on his misanthropic uncle, who is induced to take to himself a wife, young, fair, and warranted silent, but who, in the end, turns out neither silent nor a woman at all. In "The Alchemist," again, ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson
... from the war. In the autumn last past but two shows had a war motive: One "General Post," a story of the fall of caste from English life during the war, telling how a tailor became a general; the other "The Better 'Ole," a farce comedy, with a few musical skits in it, staged entirely "at the front." "The Better 'Ole" could be put on in any American town and the fun would raise the roof! There is no story to it; the show is but a series of dialogues ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... I recollect. You told me that, my poor Bourdin; it was very funny. The best of the farce was that the portress of the house emptied on your backs ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... undoubtedly without it he could never have gained the impulse to write the drama at all. It gives the note of seriousness, even sadness, without which all humour is the crackling of thorns under the pot, without which the play would be farce with a trite love adventure thrown in. We may grant that, and then ask ourselves whence came the impulse to work the thing up into one of the longest of Wagner's operas. The impulse was the vision of old Nuremberg—a ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... one's self lionized in a city where one has visited quietly for years; to see the doors of fashionable mansions open wide to receive you, which never opened before. I suspect that the whole corps of science laughs in its sleeves at the farce. ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... said Mr. Travers. "The man wouldn't be above plundering the natives. . . ." He sat down heavily on the chest. "A most appropriate costume for this farce," he continued. "But do you mean to wear it in open daylight about ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... irritably. "All our medicine is but a contrivance to keep up the farce, to continue the ills of humanity, to keep the wretched and diseased where they have no right ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... "What a farce it all is, Frank!" she broke out. "There's something wrong in a system that gives a girl millions of dollars to do just as she likes with. I don't care what they say to the contrary; I believe women were meant to belong to men, to live in semi-slavery and do what they are told, to bring up ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... right. Let it go at that. I guess you're right. What I want to know now is whether you're going to stand for Pasquale's play. He's got one wife already—half a dozen, far as I know. You going to let him put this wedding farce over without ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... ruin it, these clumsy English, after their own fashion," said Queen Mary, among her ladies. "It was the unpremeditated grace and innocent audacity of the little ones that gave the charm. Now it will be a mere broad farce, worthy of Bess of Hardwicke. Mais ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... lucky, therefore, in escaping from such ridicule," said Hardenberg, gravely. "A minister who is taken home by his servants vi et armis, because he takes the liberty not to return at an early hour—what a splendid farce that would be! Pray be kind enough to tell my servants that their anxiety was very foolish. The greatest cordiality prevails between myself and the French gentlemen, and never before has there been such a friendly understanding between France and Prussia. My servants should ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... of his verses in the Dorset County Chronicle. His chief studies, however, were philological; and in 1829 he published An Etymological Glossary of English Words of Foreign Derivation. In 1832 a strolling company of actors visited Mere, and Barnes wrote a farce, The Honest Thief, which they produced, and a comedy which was played at Wincanton. Barnes also wrote a number of educational books, such as Elements of Perspective, Outlines of Geography, and in 1833 first began his poems in the Dorsetshire ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... went herself, and stood in the garden doorway with her back to me. I obeyed. I sat down. But though I had eaten nothing since the afternoon of the day before, I could not swallow. I fumbled with my knife, and drank; and grew hot and angry at this farce; and then looked through the window at the dripping bushes, and the rain and the distant ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... the way the farce usually ends! The man always gets the girl and they live happily ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... caricature. To this we owe the full-length portrait of Major Gahagan, and a whole gallery of other drawings, usually of Irishmen, which have been the delight of innumerable readers. The striking alternation between two extremes of character and conduct, between tragedy and farce, between ridiculous meanness and pathetic unselfishness, is to be found in all his novels, though in his later and finer work it is controlled and tempered to more artistic proportions. But in the productions of his youth the darker tints so predominate as to disconcert the judgment of a generation ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... now," he said; "this is all very nice, but rather like a farce. Don't be uneasy," he added, turning to Solomin. "I shall not interfere with your people. I'll try my tongue on the folk around about and will tell you all about it when I come back, Mariana, if there is anything to tell. ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... nothing else to do. The situation sums itself up in the attitude of self-defence. "It may be (as no one needs to point out), that the teaching of literature, as at present conducted in college, is a somewhat faithful and dogged farce, but whatever may be the faults of modern college-teaching in literature, it is as good as our pupils deserve." In other words, the teachers are not respecting their pupils. It may be said to be the constitution and ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... the Fun Club. Fun is like cant, like humour, a word which is untranslatable. Fun is to farce what pepper is to salt. To get into a house and break a valuable mirror, slash the family portraits, poison the dog, put the cat in the aviary, is called "cutting a bit of fun." To give bad news which is untrue, whereby people put on mourning by mistake, is fun. It ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... Another twenty minutes and the hotel would loom up before them, and the little farce, comedy, or tragedy, whichever it might be, would be finished. The curtain would fall, and the ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... weights, gave way in a splintering flurry of broken legs under the pressure of the master of the house: and Sally's mood underwent an abrupt change. There are few situations in life which do not hold equal potentialities for both tragedy and farce, and it was the ludicrous side of this drama that chanced to appeal to Sally at this moment. Her sense of humour was tickled. It was, if she could have analysed her feelings, at herself that she was mocking—at the feeble sentimental Sally who had once ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... was against the treasonable liquor traffic. Had there been no liquor dispensing there had been no smashing. This the liquorized courts would not admit for a moment. Every ruling was a burlesque on civil law, a travesty on justice and a contemptible farce. The whole proceedings from beginning to end were ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... is, youngster, we have played this farce long enough," Tom proceeded, in a rage. "I want you to understand that I am not to be trifled with. You may make a fool of the old man, but you can't ...
— Seek and Find - or The Adventures of a Smart Boy • Oliver Optic
... something very different from what it was generally supposed to be: he saw the futility of popular morals and popular metaphysics; but he neither swallowed the conventions nor threw up his hands in despair, declaring the whole thing to be an idiotic farce. He knew that truth and goodness had nothing to do with law and custom; but he never doubted that there were such things; and he went beneath the surface to find them. It was Ibsen's revelation of a new world, in which moral ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... no sting in the blows this time; all the zest seemed to have gone out of the affair; and, but for the whack the Biffer gave, Jimmy never felt anything. The third time down was a farce, for, after Jimmy had deliberately stopped opposite the Biffer in order to let him have as many as his injured soul required, no one touched him. In fact they were all shaking hands with Jimmy, who was ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 5, 1916 • Various
... La Baudraye to her two visitors, and the farce was duly played out of remembering the papers left by Bianchon in his room at Anzy. Gatien flew off at a gallop to obey his sovereign; Madame Piedefer went to do some shopping in Sancerre; and Dinah went on to Cosne alone with the two friends. Lousteau took his seat ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... her protege, yet she was possessed, as her customers emphatically remarked, "of the devil's own temper;" and her native coarseness never having been softened by those pictures of gay society which had, in many a novel and comic farce, refined the temperament of the romantic Paul, her manner of venting her maternal reproaches was certainly not a little revolting to a lad of some delicacy of feeling. Indeed, it often occurred to him ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... satisfactory sense; he could only multiply monsters who were exaggerations of his enemies or exaggerations of himself. Dickens was personal in a more godlike sense; he could multiply persons. He could create all the farce and tragedy of his age over again, with creatures unborn to sin and creatures unborn to suffer. That which had not been achieved by the fierce facts of Cobbett, the burning dreams of Carlyle, the ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... has always been a dread of it. They had seen it come in England, and had watched anxiously the way it had been introduced and applied, and the farce of the Tribunals, whose action, in the words of the Freeman's Journal, would have been sufficient to cause a revolution had they behaved in Ireland as they ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard
... Here are the ploughs right here, in sight of the land they have got to be used on, the season just ready for them, and we can't touch them. Oh," he exclaimed in deep disgust, "isn't it a pretty mess! Isn't it a farce! ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... spare the life of her precious brother she should not have done so in the same tone with which she would have asked a tradesman for his bill. The fact that I knew, since I meant to fire in the air, that the duel was a farce, made it still more difficult for ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... any of the three,—Festus, Agrippa, or Bernice. If this strange man was going to shake their consciences in that fashion, it was high time to end what was, after all, as far as the rendering of justice was concerned, something like a farce. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... the garrison of Washington was a brigade of infantry and a battery of artillery. I never doubted Mr. Johnson's sincerity in wishing to befriend me, but this was the broadest kind of a farce, or meant mischief. I therefore appealed to him by letter to allow me to remain where I was, and where I could do service, real service, and received his most ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... "Harmonious throng" that I have kept in petto Now to produce in a "divine sestetto"!! "While Poesy," with these delightful doxies, "Sustains her part" in all the "upper" boxes! "Thus lifted gloriously, you'll sweep along," Borne in the vast balloon of Busby's song; 40 "Shine in your farce, masque, scenery, and play" (For this last line George had a holiday). "Old Drury never, never soar'd so high," So says the Manager, and so say I. "But hold," you say, "this self-complacent boast;" Is this the Poem which the public lost? "True—true—that ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... missed in battle. The sudden swelling of rivers and downpour of rain stopped all movement at once, and the "Mud March" came to an end. A Federal general could retain his hold on the men after a reverse, but not after a farce: Burnside was replaced by General Joseph Hooker, who had a splendid reputation as a subordinate leader. The new commander displayed great energy in reorganizing the Army of the Potomac, the discipline of which had ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... not pay. The authorities put all his worldly goods, which they valued at twenty thousand francs, up at auction, and went, on the day of the sale, belted with their official scarfes and armed with pretentions, and commenced the farce of the auction. An old kitchen table was the first thing to be sold. Two francs were offered. "Going, going, go—!" when a voice struck in, "Twenty-five thousand francs." This sudden turn nonplussed the authorities. The auction was called off ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... all is finished, that nothing remains, that the people is a slave! What! you say to me: "Since you are sovereign, you shall give yourself a master; since you are France, you shall become Haiti!" What an abominable farce! ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... the slightest effort for his relief. At last Caddy, taking compassion upon his forlorn condition, procured a basin of water, and assisted him to wash from his woolly pate what had been intended for the next day's meal. "This is the farce after what was almost a tragedy," said Mr. Walters, as they ascended the stairs again; "I wonder what we ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... length the farce is played—away with those slaves whom I have forced through the difficult gates of Joy!" and she clapped her hands. But when they had borne the bodies thence she drew me to her, ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... among the Ojibwes seemed to Peter Grant not only singular, but rude. "The lover begins his first addresses by gently pelting his mistress with bits of clay, snowballs, small sticks, or anything he may happen to have in his hand. If she returns the compliment, he is encouraged to continue the farce, and repeat it for a considerable time, after which more direct proposals of marriage are made by word ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... time, a farce was performed under the title of "Fire and Water."—"I predict its fate," said he. "What fate?" whispered the anxious author at his side. "What fate!" said Bannister; "why, what can fire and water produce ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... confessors like them should share its evil deeds. The Egyptian bishops protested. Alexander of Thessalonica denounced the plot to the Emperor's representative. Athanasius himself took ship for Constantinople without waiting for the end of the farce, and the council condemned him by default. This done, the bishops went on to Jerusalem for the proper ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin
... read in the Practice of their Lives, and their Sentiments of Religion from this Saying of a certain Cardinal, Quantum Lucrum ex ista fabula Christi! which many of 'em may say, tho' they are not so foolish. For my Part, I am quite tir'd of the Farce, and will lay hold on the first Opportunity to throw off this masquerading Habit; for, by Reason of my Age, I must act an under Part many Years; and before I can rise to share the Spoils of the People, ...
— Of Captain Mission • Daniel Defoe
... I—I thank you. But I can't do it. In the first place, I can't rest in peace until Louise is found, or I know her fate. Secondly, I'm game to give an account for all my deeds, now that I've played the farce out, and lost. I—I really haven't the ambition, Fogerty, to make a new start in life, and try to reform. What's ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne
... only reasonable thing to do. Our present mode of life is a farce. We are drifting farther apart every day. Perhaps I have changed. I know you have. We are two strangers chained together. We have made a muddle of it, and the best thing we can do ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... this picture are not charged. To assert that all these cases are common would be an exaggeration, but to say that an unfeeling landlord will do all this with impunity, is to keep strictly to truth: and what is liberty but a farce and a jest, if its blessings are received as the favour of kindness and humanity, instead of being the ...
— A Tour in Ireland - 1776-1779 • Arthur Young
... dazed to understand how completely Arthur had rescued him in the nick of time. To the lad's inexperience this cheap attempt of Claire to overcome his innocence by a modified badger game might have the aspect of a tragedy. Moreover, he remained ignorant of the farce into which ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... softly, it was such an age since she had laughed, and it was such a happy, contented little sound that she was quite startled thereat. The custom-house officials were going through the farce of examining the luggage, and while the rest of the passengers groaned and lamented at the delay, Jack and his companion stood together in the background, blissfully unconscious ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... the evidence, that is, of those possessed. The court heeded this injunction all too little, but by and by it had weight with the public, who judged that, as the trials appeared to be proceeding on devil's evidence alone, the farce ought to cease. The Superior Court met in Boston, April 25, 1693, and the grand Jury declined to find any more bills against persons accused of sorcery. King William vetoed the Witchcraft Act, and by the middle of 1693 all ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... time out of mind, and is, indeed, the only one that can do any thing with him. Sometimes, however, they have a complete quarrel, and a dispute for mastery, and then, I am told, it is as good as a farce to see the heat they both get into, and the wrong-headed contest that ensues; for they are quite knowing in each other's ways, and in the art of teasing and fretting each other. Notwithstanding these doughty brawls, however, there is nothing that nettles old Christy sooner ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... the poor minor seemed to have lost both his love and his property. But how can I touch off my feelings, when, in the fourth act; the villain was detected; and all ended as it should! And, oh! Tibbie, mommy enjoyed it nearly as much as I, though the farce at the end vastly shocked her—and, indeed, Tibbie, 't was most indelicate, and made me blush a scarlet, and all the more that Sir William whispered that he enjoyed the broad parts through my cheeks—and she says if dadda insists, we'll go again, though not to stay to the farce. We had to ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... expenditures he had caused his father, but over the fact that Roger had treated him like a boy—and had done it all so briefly. He blushed, too, for the vulgar ending of the episode (if ended, indeed, it were); for it seemed to outrage all literary and artistic precedent. No farce at the Palais Royal had ever developed so grotesque a denouement; no novel of Veron, of Belot, of Montepin had ever come to so sordid an ending; no Mimi, no Musette could have ever followed a line of conduct so little spirituel as that taken by Sophie Leppin. What, then; were the books wrong, ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... through various antics that surpassed even the wildest notions of our highly civilized community: all this while the troops were manoeuvring as vehemently as ever, and the boys were dancing as fantastically; and the whole thing was so eminently ridiculous and looked so very like a farce, that it was difficult to maintain that dignified and sedate appearance which was expected from the spectators of a ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... went on with nervous haste, "I can't give any reasons, but quite suddenly the—the farce has grown unbearable. I used not to think—used not even to care—but suddenly things have changed—or I have changed." She paused, confused and distressed. "Why should it be? Why should things change?" She ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... operations west of the Rio Grande were only a miserable and ridiculous farce. Valois, leaving failure behind him, learns on nearing the Louisiana line, that the proud Pelican flag floats no longer over the Crescent City. It lies now helpless under the guns of fearless Farragut's fleet. So he cannot even revisit the home of his youth. ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... Sir Edward, it was with a startling candor that he added, "But woman's a riddle indeed if Elizabeth would give her shoe-tie for Cecil." Lady Angleby was so amazed and shocked that she made no answer whatever. The squire went on: "The farce had better pause—or end. Elizabeth is sensitive and shrewd enough. Cecil has no heart to give her, and she will never give hers unless in fair exchange. I have observed her all along, and that is ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... either shot at rovers, and therefore missed; or their powder was so weak that I might safely stand them at the nearest distance. I answered not the "Rehearsal" because I knew the author sat to himself when he drew the picture, and was the very Bayes of his own farce; because also I knew that my betters were more concerned than I was in that satire; and, lastly, because Mr. Smith and Mr. Johnson, the main pillars of it, were two such languishing gentlemen in their conversation ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... procuring the necessary papers. The expense was great, as money was demanded at every step I had to take, though I was simply complying in this instance with the orders of the Spanish government in removing prohibited books from Spain. The farce did not end until my arrival at Gibraltar, where I paid the Spanish consul a dollar for certifying on the back of the pass, which I had to return to Cadiz, that the books were arrived at the former ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... true, quite true. I always was that sort of chap. I'm very sorry. But now that you've found that life isn't a farce, but something quite sensible and serious, what further obstacle is there to ...
— Arms and the Man • George Bernard Shaw
... seminaries—I grant you, they're a nuisance! They swarm over us like locusts, ready for any bit of mischief against the Government. But the Government will win!—Italy will win! Manisty first of all takes the thing too tragically. He doesn't see the farce in it. We do. We Italians understand each other. Why, the Vatican raves and scolds—and all the while, as the Prefect of Police told me only the other day, there is a whole code of signals ready between the police ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... practice was foregone that afternoon as, under the conditions, it would have been simply a farce, and the players made their way moodily off the field, chewing the bitter cud of their reflections. Sympathy with Ellis and consternation over this new blow to their prospects filled their minds to the ...
— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield
... by helping do house-work—scullion-work—for it, and eating and living with them, I might try; but I know from experience I'm not. I haven't the need, and to pretend that I have, to forego my comforts and luxuries in a make-believe that I haven't them, would be too ghastly a farce, and I won't." ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... committee laughed and answered: "That old joke is still alive. She writes me now and then and tells me what she is doing in the way of preparation. It's really a foolish little farce we have been playing in—a kind of courtship to avoid marriage. We have ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... that everything is ridiculous. The humour of his subjects is still a part and not the whole of those subjects in his art, and this was all to the glory of the great comic paper in which he drew, for the humour of nothing in the world is the whole of that thing. Farce represents it so to be. Du Maurier had no genius for Farce. He responded to actual life; Farce is artificial; it is thus that the beauty and charm as well as the humour of life ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... time mentioned had expired, we had reached a depth of five feet, and yet no signs of any treasure became manifest. A general pause ensued, and I began to hope that the farce was at an end. Legrand, however, although evidently much disconcerted, wiped his brow thoughtfully and recommenced. We had excavated the entire circle of four feet diameter, and now we slightly enlarged the limit, and went to the farther depth of two feet. Still nothing appeared. ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... Charles adds his scene in the farce: "La Plessis said to Rahuel (he was the concierge) yesterday that she had been gratified at dinner to find that Madame had turned the child out of her seat and put herself in the place of honour. And Rahuel, in his Breton way: 'Nay, Miss, there's no ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... the Harold Bell Wright type is receiving his share of ridicule, as well as praise, at present. A farce, Fame and the Poet, by Lord Dunsany, advertises the adulation by feminine readers resulting from a poet's pose as a "man's man." And Ezra Pound, who began his career as an exemplar of virility,[Footnote: ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... Our burlesques and pantomimes are nothing to it. Satan knew Jesus, and Jesus knew Satan. Jesus knew that Satan would tempt him, and Satan knew that Jesus knew it. Jesus knew that Satan could not succeed, and Satan knew so too. Yet they kept the farce up night and day, for no one knows how long; and our great Milton in his "Paradise Regained" represents this precious pair arguing all day long, Satan retiring after sunset, and Jesus lying down hungry, cold and ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote
... itself, in the main, into a prolonged and unsuccessful tussle with the difficulties of the Greek and Latin languages, the mastering of which is regarded as an end in itself instead of as the gateway to the wonder-worlds of ancient life and thought; and the study of Science is, as a rule, a pure farce.[28] Not one, then, of the expansive instincts of the average boy receives any training during the nine or ten years of his school life; and as, in his struggle for the "Pass" degree of his University, he will follow the lines on which he has been accustomed ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... Rouletabille," he replied; "well, young man, I'll teach you what comes of making a farce of justice. By virtue of my discretionary power, I hold you ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux
... morning better provisions were sent to them, and not long afterwards they were again marched up to the court-house. The same farce as on the previous day was gone through, and no interpreter appearing, the judge and his assistants left the court as wise as they entered it, while the prisoners were unable to make out of what crime they were accused. It was ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... that it requires more wit to perform the part of the fool in a farce than that of the master. Without intending any offence to the fool by the comparison, we may remark, that qualities of an elevated character are required for the support of the role of a man of fashion in ...
— The Laws of Etiquette • A Gentleman
... evening, Miss Harvey, radiant in her diamonds—they cost twenty-two hundred dollars—the price would intrude itself—and Miss Gardiner, almost guiltless of foreign ornament, were thrown into immediate contact. But Miss Gardiner was not recognized by the haughty wearer of gems. It was the old farce of pretence, seeking, by borrowed attractions, to outshine the imperishable radiance of truth. I looked on, and read the lesson her conduct gave, and wondered that any were deceived into even a transient admiration. "Rich and rare were the gems she wore," but they had in them no significance ...
— All's for the Best • T. S. Arthur
... We have the progress of that self-education which struck out an untried path of its own, from the time Moliere had not yet acquired his art to the glorious days when he gave his country a Plautus in his farce, a Terence in his composition, and a Menander in his moral truths. But the difficulties overcome, and the disappointments incurred, his modesty and his confidence, and, what was not less extraordinary, his own domestic life ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... thing presently in shorthand; but, God knows, I have paid dear for it in my eyes. To the King's house, to see the first day of Lacy's "Monsieur Ragou," now new acted. The King and Court all there and mighty merry: a farce. The month ends mighty sadly with me, my eyes being now past all use almost; and I am mighty hot upon trying the late printed ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... appreciating Christophe's extravagance, who with head down hurled himself upon everything without keeping any line of retreat, or preparing any refuge for the future. As for Mannheim he was royally amused by the farce: it seemed to him a good joke to have introduced this madman among these correct people, and he rocked with laughter both at the blows which Christophe dealt and at those which he received. Although under his sister's influence he was beginning to think that Christophe was decidedly ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... end of her performance Emily stated that this circus, being modern and up-to-date in all respects, had substituted for the conventional after-concert, "a side-splitting farce which would appeal to all intelligent and literary persons and make them laugh and cry with mirth." So everybody, wishing to appear intelligent and literary, went in to see the little play which Madeline Ayres had written. It was called "The Animal Fair," and ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... powers in a churchwarden version of the stage-parson with a tiresome wife. Miss HILDA MOORE looked charmingly wicked and acted with intelligence. The too serious role tossed lightly by the author into the broadest farce presents an impossible problem. Miss ELLEN O'MALLEY never mishandles a part. Sometimes, as here, a part is not too kind to her. As George's sister she could be no more than a competent peg. Miss MARIE HEMINGWAY had merely to look perplexed and pretty, which she did with complete ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 12, 1916 • Various
... conditions. This is as well and as distinctly shown in the map of Mitchell as in the map of the British commission. It would therefore appear, if, these views be correct, that the framers of the treaty of 1783 went through the solemn farce of binding their respective Governments to a boundary which they well knew did ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... 'Inconnu. Ahmed Ben Hassan.' And since that day his hatred of the English had been a monomania, and he has never spoken a word of English. Later on, when we used to travel together, his obvious avoidance of English people was at times both awkward and embarrassing, and I have often had to go through the farce of translating into French or Arabic remarks made to him by English fellow-travellers, that is, when he condescended to notice the remarks, which was not often. From the day he learned the truth about ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... did quite right. What an escape those poor ladies have had! Another quarter of an hour, we might have been too late, for those villains would not have kept up the farce long." ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty
... Sundays, and occasionally at nights, to prevent illegal assemblies of negroes, and also to prevent them from being at large without permission of their masters. But this system had dwindled down to a farce, and was only engaged in by some of the youngsters, more in a spirit of fun and frolic than to keep order in the neighborhood. The real duties of the militia of the State consisted of an annual battalion and regimental parade, called "battalion muster" and "general muster." This occasioned ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... the phallus offensive? For more than two thousand years the most obscene figure we know was used by the clown in popular farce and by athletes as an emblem of their profession. It raised a laugh, but was not otherwise noticed. An interesting question arises whether there ever was any protest against it, or any evidence that anybody thought it offensive. ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... through the solemn farce of an examination in a court, extemporized in the jail, Garrison was discharged from arrest as a disturber of the peace! But the authorities, dreading a repetition of the scenes of the day before, prayed him to leave the city for a few days, which he did, a deputy sheriff driving ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... as well as the judges that his trial was a merely perfunctory formality. The verdict was decided ere it began, and, indeed, so eager was Megales to get the farce over with that several times he interrupted the ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... word an hundred clenches makes, And ductile Dulness new meanders takes; There motley images her fancy strike, Figures ill paired, and similes unlike. She sees a mob of metaphors advance, Pleased with the madness of the mazy dance; How Tragedy and Comedy embrace; How Farce and Epic get a jumbled race; How Time himself stands still at her command, Realms shift their place, and ocean turns to land. Here gay description Egypt glads with showers, Or gives to Zembla fruits, to Barca flowers; ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... wilderness of London's night. In this theatrical business there was, to my mind, something ridiculous—almost childish—and I could have laughed heartily had it not been that grim tragedy lurked so near to farce. ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... course you have," he said. "Life's a bit of a farce, but one's got to play it. See here, I believe in facing facts and getting one's eyes open, but not in making oneself a ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable |
