"Gaiety" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Book of Revelation, showed a company of the heavenly host as a background to a buffet-table crowded with refreshments. The constant movements and the brilliant lights provided a fitting air of gaiety to the scene. It was Mrs. Ogilvie's whim to have her rooms illuminated in a manner as nearly as possible to represent the effect of tempered sunlight. 'No woman cares to see,' she used to say, 'she wants to be seen.' And so the lights ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... that is great fun to the reader, but exquisite torture to the victim." At the same time, his wit was always governed by commonsense (its most prevailing distinction); and, though almost unique among humorists for his personal gaiety, "his best work was done in promoting practical ends, and his wit in its airiest gambols never escaped his control." There was, in fact, considerable independence—and even courage—in his seriously inspired attacks ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... through again (which thank Heaven, I will never be called upon to endure again), I would follow Brother's advice as implicitly then as I did before. He is right, and without seeing, I believe. They tell me of his altered looks, and of his forced, reckless gaiety which, so strangely out of keeping with his natural character, but makes his assumed part more conspicuous. No matter! He will recover! Nothing like a sea voyage for disorders of all kinds. And we will never meet again; that is ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... many untimely trials and injurious customs, that that very respect is fearful. A young girl, fresh from childhood, blossoming into a woman, rosy health in her veins, innocence in her heart, caroling gaiety in her laugh, buoyant life in her step, the rich glance of an opening soul in her eye, grace in her form with the casket of mind richly jeweled, is indeed an object of beauty. He who can behold it and not feel a benevolent interest ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... of the joy, the gaiety, the elan of the French soldier, to be seen in the faces of the men thus summoned to the Eagles. They came, indeed, they answered the call, but with black looks and sullen faces and a manner almost despairing. They had fought and fought ...
— The Eagle of the Empire - A Story of Waterloo • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... of gold-dust, still surrounded by haggard gamblers; daybreak would gleam sickly upon the tawdry finery of the poor Spanish singers and dancers, whose weary night's work would enable them to live upon the travellers' bounty for the next week or so. These few hours of gaiety and excitement were to provide the Cruces people with food and clothing for as many days; and while their transitory sun shone, I will do them the justice to say they gathered in their hay busily. In the exciting race for gold, we need not be surprised ...
— Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands • Mary Seacole
... nature. For if you come to that, what novel has more human nature? not studied with the microscope, but seen largely, in plain daylight, with the natural eye? What novel has more good sense, and gaiety, and wit, and unflagging, admirable literary skill? Good souls, I suppose, must sometimes read it in the blackguard travesty of a translation. But there is no style so untranslatable; light as a whipped ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... singer who had lost her high notes. She never drooped nor sighed nor looked unutterable things; she dealt no sarcastic digs at her fate; she had in short none of the conscious graces of the woman wronged. Only Longmore was sure that her gentle gaiety was but the milder or sharper flush of a settled ache, and that she but tried to interest herself in his thoughts in order to escape from her own. If she had wished to irritate his curiosity and lead him to take her confidence ...
— Madame de Mauves • Henry James
... which it was truthfully described as a serious family. From that fortress of gloom he had escaped with two saintly gifts somehow unspoiled: an inexhaustible kindness of heart and a capacity for innocent gaiety which owed nothing to humor. In an earlier day and with a clerical training he might have risen to the scarlet hat. He was, in fact, a highly regarded member of the London Positivist Society, a retired ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... pair of goggles; and royalty in goggles suggested some ludicrous ideas. But it was in the adornment of the fair person of his dark-complexioned spouse that the tailors of the fleet had evinced the gaiety of their national taste. She was habited in a gaudy tissue of scarlet cloth, trimmed with yellow silk, which, descending a little below the knees, exposed to view her bare legs, embellished with spiral tattooing, and somewhat resembling two miniature ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... beautiful night!" The same night was not yet at an end, the same yapiya was still warbling, the same south breeze still blew into the roam, making the bed-curtain shiver; the same moonlight lay on the bed next the open window, sleeping like a beautiful heroine exhausted with gaiety. All this was unreal! Love was more falsely dissembling ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore
... travellers; while its famous oysters, the true natives, now driven by the silting up of their ancient beds to Whitstable, were as much in repute with Roman epicures as their descendants are to-day with the young Luculluses of the Gaiety and the Criterion. ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... Issy. The departure was what all departures of marching battalions must fatally be—copious and multiplied libations between parting friends, paternal handshakings in cabarets, patriotic and bacchic songs, loose and indecent choruses—in a word, the picturesque exhibition of all that arsenal of gaiety and courage which is the appanage of an ancient Gallic race. The old troopers, who pretend to govern us by the sword, do not approve of this joyous mode of regarding death; and all the writers whose pens are dipped in the ink of reaction and ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... though he maintained a cheerful air, and the knowledge that he had been so instrumental in saving the party lightened his heart of a load, and disposed him even to gaiety, was not without some lingering remains of uneasiness. He remembered the boats of the Dane, and, as he thought it more than probable Captain Truck had fallen into the hands of the barbarians, he feared that the latter might yet find the ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... a cab stopped at Number Nineteen. It was a railway cab, less worn and ghastly than those vehicles in general, but not bringing much evidence of gaiety or wealth for all that. Its inmates were a widow and a boy of about fifteen; and all the possessions they had with them were contained in one trunk of very moderate dimensions, a cage with a canary bird twittering inside, some pots of flowers, and a little white rabbit, one of ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 451 - Volume 18, New Series, August 21, 1852 • Various
... estate was one rich garden, more picturesque, more dreamily beautiful, than the American commercial mind was usually able to compass, even when possessed of millions. The hotel of itself was a pleasure palace—wholly unostentatious, full of gaiety and charm, offering lovely chambers for guests and residents, and every opportunity for healthful amusement. There was the rare luxury of a big swimming-pool; there were billiard rooms, card rooms, reading rooms, lounging rooms and ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... drawn tightly over her forehead increased the clear paleness of the face; the just perceptible tint of colour which I recollect being now altogether withdrawn. But she was not haggard, and evidently not vanquished. There was even a gaiety on her face, perhaps a trifle enforced, and although the darkness of sorrow gleamed behind it, the sorrow did not seem to be ultimate, but to be in front of a final background, if not of joy, at least of resignation. ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... his head. He would not think of the means; he dipped into his money-bags as if they could be refilled indefinitely; he deliberately shut his eyes to the inevitable results of the system. In that dissipated set, in the continual whirl of gaiety, people take the actors in their brilliant costumes as they find them, no one inquires whether a man can afford to make the figure he does, there is nothing in worse taste than inquiries as to ways and means. A man ought to ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... persistently at every turn. He never blamed himself when rash speculations failed, and he never profited by bitter experience. Simply, he was by nature a spendthrift, high-spirited, impulsive, weak, with little thought for the future and none at all for the past. Wherever he went he was popular. His gaiety and spontaneity won him favour. But no one took him very seriously. No one ever dreamed that his ill-luck was a cause for ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... the diners were in a bit of a funk, but Pfaff's excellent meats and cool, sparkling wines soon set free in each a scintillant human spirit, and the banquet took on almost an air of gaiety. ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... noble assembly; too happy would he be if, after having been bandied and knocked about with the utmost unanimity as a greenhorn, only one skirt should be left in the hands of these youthful beauties, who, in the fervour of gaiety, rather roar out ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 377, June 27, 1829 • Various
... of the most absorbing. Its attraction seems to be irresistible. Once an astronomer, always an astronomer; the stars, we may fancy, will not relax the spell they lay upon their votary. He willingly withdraws himself from the din and gaiety of social life, to shut himself up in his chamber, and, with the magic tube due to the genius of a Galileo, survey with ever-new delight the celestial wonders. So was it with Tycho Brahe, and Copernicus, and Kepler; so was it, ...
— The Story of the Herschels • Anonymous
... all improve this state of things; gentle and quiet though her manner was. Mr Pecksniff's situation was peculiarly trying; for, what with having constantly to keep the peace between his daughters; to maintain a reasonable show of affection and unity in his household; to curb the growing ease and gaiety of Jonas, which vented itself in sundry insolences towards Mr Pinch, and an indefinable coarseness of manner in reference to Mary (they being the two dependants); to make no mention at all of his having perpetually to conciliate ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... career. Of these three groups the tales of the Norman peasantry perhaps rank highest. He depicts the Norman farmer in surprisingly free and bold strokes, revealing him in all his caution, astuteness, rough gaiety, and ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... information received on a mummy case, we were travelling in search of a mummy, of course we laid in a case of Mumm, which was often a source of gaiety in our darkest hours. The wine was procured, as I would advise every African traveller to ...
— HE • Andrew Lang
... were on either side of her. When the sumptuous meal was ended, and the dessert served, the doors were opened—according to the good old German custom—to let the common people look in and have their share in the gaiety of the rich. The attendants offered wine and cake to the assembled crowd. Huldbrand and Bertalda were eagerly watching for the promised disclosure, and both kept their eyes fixed upon Undine. But she was still silent; her cheeks dimpled occasionally with a bright, conscious smile. Those ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... amid the most melancholy surroundings, of the sense of personal importance—not in any egotistical sense, but as a sheer matter of fact—had robbed a nervous and sensitive temperament of natural stores of gaiety and elasticity which it could ill do without. Aldous Raeburn had been too much thought for and too painfully loved. But for Edward Hallin he might well have acquiesced at manhood in a certain impaired vitality, in the scholar's ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... sensitiveness of a woman to recognize a lover's hostile feeling beneath the spoken words, was acutely conscious of the annoyance; she ignored the modicum of sympathy. To conceal her hurt, she had resort to a fictitious gaiety that was ill calculated, however, to deceive, for the stress of her ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... The music and gaiety begin again, and in an hour the young man is shot."—And so in most of the other pachalics; if any head mentally condemned by the pacha escapes or does not fall soon enough, the latter is indignant ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... homeless old woman had often haunted me. The rain-blackened little house did certainly look dreary, and a whole lifetime of patient toil had left few traces. The pucker-pear tree was in full bloom, however, and gave a welcome gaiety ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... tints of soft pinks and grayish blues. Charles went from window to window, letting down the heavy canvas awnings. Then he crossed to the shady side to open the ventilators. He was applauded by cries and hand clapping and a rough sort of gaiety spread around. Soon even the last ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... upstairs and surveys of household gear, carried up with difficulty, and reviews of linen and much talk of it, and small meals, taken at the open windows that looked over the Rhone valley and commanded the sunset view. Such times were times of gaiety though not of prosperity, and far from the worst hours of life—had ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... intently and curiously, and, despite himself, that bleak and desolate outlook sobered the gaiety of his mood. On three sides the rock reared skyward, bare and black, with never ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... purposes of murder and rapine argues the final abyss of arachnoid perfidy. It reminds one of that charming and amiable young lady in Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson's 'Dynamiter,' who amused herself in moments of temporary gaiety by blowing up inhabited houses, inmates and all, out of pure lightness of heart and girlish frivolity. An Indian mantis or praying insect, a little less wicked, though no less cruel than the spiders, deceives the flies who come to his arms under the false pretence ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... Dick walked home through the silent streets and all pretence of gaiety fell away from Joan. She walked without speaking, head held very high, moving beside him, her face scarce discernible under the shadow of her hat. It was not to be believed that she was quite conscious of all she meant to this man; but ...
— To Love • Margaret Peterson
... sobered me down somewhat, and to a certain extent subdued my hilarious spirits; but they rose again as, upon gaining the deck, I looked round and saw the cheerful yet resolute faces of the captain and officers, and noted the gaiety with which the men ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... a very agreeable evening in the house of one of the richest inhabitants, Don Antonio Padron, where we found assembled at a tertulia all the good company of Trinidad. We were again struck with the gaiety and vivacity that distinguish the women of Cuba. These are happy gifts of nature to which the refinements of European civilization might lend additional charms but which, nevertheless, please in their primitive simplicity. We ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... and ward will defend Al-Mihrjan and would I wot if this fortalice will fend off Fate and what fain must be." Then she enjoined her women to high diet and the drinking of wine and listening to intimate converse and the hearing of songs and musical instruments and gladness and gaiety for a while of time; and she felt herself safe from the shifts of chance and change. Such was her case but now we will recount (Inshallah!) what further befel her.[FN200] In the land of Sind was a King hight Sahl[FN201] and he was of the Monarchs of might, endowed with puissance ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... is a prime necessity. It is otherwise with us, where life presents us with a daily problem, and there is a serious interest, and some of the heat of conflict, in the mere continuing to be. So, in certain atolls, where there is no great gaiety, but man must bestir himself with some vigour for his daily bread, public health and the population are maintained; but in the lotos islands, with the decay of pleasures, life itself decays. It is from this ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... talking with charming earnestness to the man on her other hand. The amber radiance flickered over the beautiful curves of her shoulders and cast a warm shadow at the base of her throat. She smiled at her son; and her face, in spite of its present gaiety, held a definite reminder of her years, almost fifty; but when she turned again her profile, with slightly tilted nose and delightfully fresh lips and chin, was that of a girl no older than Caroline. Howat had often noticed this. It was amazing—with that slight movement ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... fear it caus'd you pain to see me intrude again. I sent a groom to Holmes twice yesterday morning, to prevent his going to you, or giving you a letter full of flippant jokes, written in one moment of gaiety, which is quite gone since. I am so afraid he has been to you; if so, I entreat you to forgive it, and to do just what you think ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... honestly to render something of the colour, the gaiety, and the graciousness of the town and the island, but only found myself piling up unbelievable adjectives, and so let it go with a hundred other wonders and repented that I had wasted my time and yours on the anxious-eyed ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... scarcely wonder that, even among the most beautiful women in England, the French "Mademoiselle," as she was called, was hailed as a new revelation of female fascination, especially as she brought with her the bubbling gaiety and passionate zest of life of the land ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... after a repast, during which he affected much gaiety and cheerfulness, suddenly retired, and threw himself upon a sofa, apparently in the same state in which he had been the night before. Achib, who never lost sight of him, supposing he was asleep, entered the apartment ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... governor-general, the commander-in-chief, and others of less note, some 40,000 men, with 100 guns, were man[oe]uvred on the great plain. On this grand tableau the curtain fell; and the year opportunely closed in gaiety ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 425 - Volume 17, New Series, February 21, 1852 • Various
... embellishments of his theatre. On these occasions he always wore his best light-comedy suit of brown and gold, his inevitable wig, and a little three-cornered hat cocked on one side, "giving the septuagenarian an air of gaiety that well accorded with his known attachment to the rakes and heroes of the drama; one hand was knuckled in his side—his favourite position—and the other raised a pinch of snuff to his nose; and as he passed along he nodded and bowed to all about him, and seemed greatly pleased with the attention ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... you, Mr. Oldbuckalways happy to see my friends in fair weather or foul," said the poor Baronet, struggling not for composure, but for gaietyan affectation which was strongly contrasted by the nervous and protracted grasp of his hand, and the agitation of his whole demeanour"I am happy to see you. You are riding, I seeI hope in this confusion your horses are taken good care ofI always like to have ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... recklessly up to freedom and the good-fellowship of men of the same stamp as himself—idlers having neither relatives nor home nor family, nothing, in short, save the free sky and the eternal revel of their souls. This gave rise to that wild gaiety which could not have sprung from any other source. The tales and talk current among the assembled crowd, reposing lazily on the ground, were often so droll, and breathed such power of vivid narration, that it required all the nonchalance of ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... all at once so happy, his heart was filled with such childish gaiety at the thought, that here, after all, the dreams had come true to which he had abandoned himself not long ago in these very rooms, his whole being was in such a turmoil that he went quickly out into the shop. He felt a great desire, come what might, to ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... 10th of April, might well have reminded Sterne of the strange way in which he had carried out his intention of "wintering in the South." He insists, however, upon the curative effects of his winter of gaiety in Paris. "I am recovered greatly," he says; "and if I could spend one whole winter at Toulouse, I should be fortified in my inner man beyond all danger of relapsing." There was another, too, for whom ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... made tolerable the quiet glens, the town people had many occasions of social intercourse in each other's homes, where the winter nights, that otherwise had been long and dreary, passed in harmless gaiety. The women would put on their green Josephs and gaudiest quilted petticoats or their tabinet gowns of Waterloo whose splendour kirk or market poorly revealed for the shawls that must cover them. The men donned their best figured waistcoats and their newest ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... more cause for uneasiness on account of her looking ill, as they had scarcely entered the ball-room before her brilliant color had returned. Isabel was decidedly the belle of the evening; and for this, Grace Arlington never forgave her. Everard saw that Isabel's gaiety was assumed, and he would have given much to know the cause. Harry was not so keen an observer, and only thought how much she was enjoying herself, and how much he had been mistaken in thinking that she cared ...
— Isabel Leicester - A Romance • Clotilda Jennings
... 80, and several were close upon 90; the average age at death there is 76 years. As for me, I have no use for that place; it is too healthy. Seventy is old enough—after that, there is too much risk. Youth and gaiety might vanish, any day—and then, what is left? Death in life; death without its privileges, death without its benefits. There were 185 women in that Refuge, and 81 of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... he was always animated and merry, and this jocoseness was partly natural, partly intentional. In the darkest hours of his country's trial, he affected a serenity which he was far from feeling, so that his apparent gaiety at momentous epochs was even censured by dullards, who could not comprehend its philosophy, nor applaud the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... dishonour attaching to the loss of entire provinces and the reorganisation of what remained at the bidding of the stranger, there seems to have been no sense in the political circles of the day. The collapse of the Empire was viewed rather as a subject of merriment. A gaiety of life and language prevailed, impossible among men who did not consider themselves as the spectators of a comedy. Cobenzl, the chief Austrian plenipotentiary, took his travels in a fly, because his mistress, the citoyenne Hyacinthe, had decamped with all his ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... London on my way to Germany, I met the young Grand Duke of Mecklenburg Strelitz in the Ritz Hotel where he was dining with an English earl and his beautiful wife. As I happened to have a box for the Gaiety Theatre, we all went there together and paid a visit to George Grossmith behind the scenes and talked with Emmy Wehlen, the Austrian actress, who was appearing in the comic opera then running. But in all the time that I was in Germany I never once saw or heard of the ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... full of feeling and reverence were more impressive falling from lips usually sparkling with gaiety and wit. We walked in silence up the gradual ascent, till we came to a fine old elm, branching out by the way-side, and we paused to rest under its boughs. As we did so, we turned towards the valley we were leaving behind, and beheld it stretching, a magnificent panorama, to the east ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... and leave her in peace,' suggested Ted, almost himself again, though a pensive haze still partially obscured his native gaiety. ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... of October, that Mr. Green, after strolling some distance from the Hotel de Leon, entered a burial ground, and wandered along, alone among the silent dead, gazing upon the many green graves and marble tombstones of those who once moved on the theatre of busy life, and whose sounds of gaiety once fell upon the ear of man. All nature around was hushed in silence, and seemed to partake of the general melancholy which hung over the quiet resting-place of departed mortals. After tracing the varied inscriptions which told the characters or ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown
... coming to a really awful state of things in the Strand! A friend of mine (who does not wish his name mentioned) assures me that he was proceeding from the Gaiety Restaurant, where he had been lunching, towards Charing Cross, when he was "attacked by VERTIGO" in broad day-light! Comment is needless. If dangerous foreign bandits like this VERTIGO—who from his name must be an Italian—are ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 10, 1892 • Various
... always sad and dispirited; never welcoming the glad sunshine, but ever calling for leaden skies and a weeping Heaven. Others again, little coquettes with village green, white palings everywhere, bright gravel roads, and an irrepressible air of brightness and gaiety. ...
— The Aeroplane Speaks - Fifth Edition • H. Barber
... friends sat beside their fire eating their supper of boiled maize and buffalo meat, they laughed and talked as carelessly as ever; but the gaiety was assumed, for they were at the time planning their escape from a tribe which, they foresaw, would not long refrain from carrying out their wishes, ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... a vanished civilization. Greek statues, the devotional pictures of the early Florentines, the work of the later Italian realists, stand, in "Old Pictures in Florence," as representatives of the life and thought that produced them. In "A Toccata of Galuppi's" the music revivifies the superficial gaiety, the undertone of fear, in the life of eighteenth century Venice. Highly significant in this connection are the poems in which he traces the evolution of art. Running through "Old Pictures in Florence" and "Fra Lippo Lippi" we find an ordered statement ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... and pleasure mounted into her cheeks and eyes, and flushed her with young gaiety, that all who loved her, being grafted with good superstition, nearly spoiled their Christmas-time by serious sagacity. She, however, in the wealth of all she had to think of, heeded none who trod the line of prudence and ...
— Frida, or, The Lover's Leap, A Legend Of The West Country - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore
... Passengers sit at the long tables, reading or chatting. Other groups are playing cards or chess. In the cushioned corners, young men and maidens are exchanging banter with words and glances. A young lady is playing the piano, and over all this scene of life, and light, and gaiety, the electric lamps gleam in ...
— Story of Chester Lawrence • Nephi Anderson
... son's resolution, which, he declared, displayed a degree of prudence and sagacity remarkable at his age. But his mother, who still retained a vivid recollection of the pleasures and gaiety of a town life, from which she had long been banished by her avaricious lord, listened to the sordid sentiments expressed by her first-born with contempt, and transferred all her maternal regard to his brother, whom she secretly determined should be ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... he was bid, and the body of Colonel Belmont was laid out between the two rows of young people, whose gaiety ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... pale golden light, akin in hue to the flaxen tresses of a child, was streaming down like rain, filling the atmosphere with the warm quiver of its sparkle. It was like a festival of the infinite, instinct with sovereign peacefulness and gentle gaiety, whilst the city, chequered with golden beams, still remained lazy and sleepy, unwilling to reveal itself by casting off ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... fete to-day. Natives were riding about in pairs, in the cleanest of bright cotton dresses and the freshest of leis and garlands. Our own men from the yacht contributed not a little to the gaiety of the scene. They were all on shore, and the greater part of them were galloping about on horseback, tumbling off, scrambling on again, laughing, flirting, joking, and enjoying themselves generally after a fashion peculiar to English sailors. As far as we ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... talk all the way. These eccentricities of attire were merely a part of the rather attractive vanity of a clever youth, whose exuberance of spirits was, in spite of much bad health, at that time so great that he was often merry with a gaiety that was as child-like as it was amusing. In later life he gradually modified his ideas as to dress, and in the Vailima Letters he writes of himself in Samoa as going to Apia to social amusements in most orthodox coats ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Margaret Moyes Black
... virtues, and, besides, as he told himself the next instant, trifling as the sum was, it would at least tide him over financially until he received the next payment for his reviewing. "I'd better go, it's getting late," he said with a return of his old gaiety, while he bent over to kiss her. He was half ashamed of the kiss—not because he was self-conscious about kissing, since he had long since lost that mark of provincialism—but because of the look of passionate gratitude which glowed in her face. Gratitude ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... conversing at a short distance, "Marshal de Saxe has few the equals of these in his camp, my Lord Count!" And well was the compliment deserved: they were gallant men, intelligent in looks, polished in manners, and brave to a fault, and all full of that natural gaiety that sits so gracefully on a ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... young girl is the dance-hall, which is truly the ante-room to hell itself. Here indeed, is the beginning of the white slave traffic in many instances. A girl may in her country home have danced a little, but here, 'mid the blazing lights, gaiety and so-called happiness, she enters. She is told she is awkward and will become more graceful, no harm in it. You know ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... is it?" the stranger rejoined with his former gaiety. "And now enough: where will you ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... the strongest and most beneficial influence—though, like all strong and good things, it might be perverted—on fiction generally. In this all sorts of nice things, as in the original prescription for what girls are made of, were included—variety, gaiety, colour, surprise, a complete contempt of the contemptible, or of that large part of it which contains priggishness, propriety, "prunes, and prism" generally. Moreover (and here I fear that the above promised abstinence from the contentious must be for a little time ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... deliberately, as he says in his prefaces; but Will took the insular oracle of Delphos from Greene, inserted Giulio Romano "for his personal diversion," never heard of Ottocar (no more than I), and made a delightful congeries of errors in gaiety of heart. Nobody shall convince me that Francis Bacon was so charmingly irresponsible; but I cannot speak so confidently of Mr. Greenwood's Great Unknown, a severe scholar, but perhaps a frisky soul. There was no region called Bohemia when the Delphic oracle was in vigour;—this ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... thoroughly happy; happy in the freedom of her life, and in the keen enjoyment of the investigation that broadened its field day by day. She was in high spirits when she came home to spend First Days; the house was full of her gaiety and her merry laugh, and the children wished that Ruth would never go away again. But her mother noticed, with a little anxiety, the sometimes flushed face, and the sign of an eager spirit in the kindling eyes, and, as well, the serious ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 2. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... being holiday time, that there would be more gaiety; but Ostend just now perhaps a little lacking in liveliness—hotels, villas, and even the Kursaal all closely boarded up with lead-coloured shutters. Only other person on Promenade a fisher-boy scrooping over the tiles in sabots. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 4, 1892 • Various
... employed to ends so unhuman, that in the effect, they appear almost as means without an end. The ingredients too are mixed in the happiest proportion, so as to uphold and relieve each other—more especially in that constant interpoise of wit, gaiety, and social generosity, which prevents the criminal, even in his most atrocious moments, from sinking into the mere ruffian, as far at least, as our imagination sits in judgment. Above all, the fine suffusion through ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... of relief as she went upstairs. She was glad to escape the further questions concerning Mary which her mother seemed disposed to ask. Her gaiety had been evanescent and she now experienced a feeling of positive gloom as she entered her pretty room and prepared to bathe and dress for the evening. She could not resist a thrill of pleasure at the sheer beauty of the white chiffon frock spread out on her bed. She wondered if Mary ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... frottole appear in the Petrucci collection, showing that he was acquainted with this Italian form, and that his productions in it were known and admired in Italy. His frottole are distinguished by uncommon grace and gaiety, for the frottola was generally rather passionate and melancholy, and full of what ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... lo these four years I have energetically preyed, and been preyed upon. When I was your age, I was impatient to break away from my governess, and soar into the flowery pastures of fashionable gaiety, with the crowd of other butterflies that seemed so happy, so lovely; but now that I have bruised my pretty wings, and tarnished the gilding, and rubbed off the fresh enamelling, I would if I could crawl back into a safe brown cocoon, or hide in some quiet and forgotten chrysalis. Did you ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... that?" she cried, and then laughed with sudden gaiety as she rose to her feet. "But this is not a debating class, and I've work to do—a house to build, a meal to cook—a hundred tasks appealing to an amateur. I must go, Mr. Stane, and if you are a wise man ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... with many misgivings, to go forth and appeal to the people. He looked round with a sad countenance on those he had lately seen so full of life and gaiety. ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... in Milton's monody. Yet these opposites, instead of neutralising each other, are blended into one harmonious whole by the presiding, but invisible, genius of the poet. The conflict between the old cavalier world—the years of gaiety and festivity of a splendid and pleasure-loving court, and the new puritan world into which love and pleasure were not to enter—this conflict which was commencing in the social life of England, is also begun in Milton's own breast, ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison
... me dark red speaks of something tender, heart-searching, mysterious." Here Mr. Hochman illustrated his words at the piano with an expressive fragment full of deep feeling. "On the other hand, the shades of yellow express gaiety and brightness"; here the illustrations were all life and fire, in crisp, brilliant staccatos. Other colors were just ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... emancipated at last from the severity and restraint of a college education, repairs to the capital disposed to every sort of excess. The play-house becomes his favourite amusement, and he is enchanted with the gaiety and splendour of the chief personages. The disgust which vice gives him at first, soon wears off to make way for new notions, more liberal in his opinion, by which a sovereign contempt of religion, and a declared war upon the chastity of wives, ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... been scrupulously careful to take no unfair advantage of his opportunity, when he had removed her from the meeting, and when they had walked together, with hardly a creature to observe them, in the lonely outskirts of the town. Emily's gaiety and good humor had not led him astray: he knew that these were bad signs, viewed in the interests of love. His one hope of touching her deeper sympathies was to wait for the help that might yet come from time and chance. With a bitter sigh, ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... is true that Siena looks out beyond her own gardens and vineyards upon a desert, but it is a very different desolation upon which Rye gazes all day long, out of which she rises with all the confidence, grace, and gaiety of a flower, and over which she rules ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... that lingers in your memory. In that tomb one sees proclaimed with a marvellous ingenuity and expressiveness the joy and the activity of life. Thi must have loved life; loved prayer and sacrifice, loved sport and war, loved feasting and gaiety, labor of the hands and of the head, loved the arts, the music of flute and harp, singing by the lingering and plaintive voices which seem to express the essence of the east, loved sweet odors, loved sweet women—do we not see him sitting to receive offerings with ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... eventful year of 1914, perhaps by accident, perhaps by design, for the truth may never be known, the review had a different aspect. There was no gaiety. The number of ships assembled this time was greater than ever before—216 actual fighting ships passed slowly before the royal yacht—there were no flags, no bunting, no holiday crowds, no smart dress for officers and men. Instead, the fleet was drawn ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... language, should still remain the best in a style which so many great poets have since attempted. The Bright and the Thoughtful aspects of Nature are their subjects: but each is preceded by a mythological introduction in a mixed Classical and Italian manner. The meaning of the first is that Gaiety is the child of Nature; of the second, that Pensiveness is the daughter ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... and a lot of love! I suppose that's the line that's caught the chaps. Behind all their smiling and their boyish gaiety they know that they'll need both patience and love to meet the balance of existence with sweetness and soldierly courage. It won't be so easy to be soldiers when they get back into mufti and go out into the world cripples. Here in their ...
— The Glory of the Trenches • Coningsby Dawson
... mind keeps beneath the windows of others is queer enough. Now distracted by brown panelling; now by a fern in a pot; here improvising a few phrases to dance with the barrel-organ; again snatching a detached gaiety from a drunken man; then altogether absorbed by words the poor shout across the street at each other (so outright, so lusty)—yet all the while having for centre, for magnet, a young man alone in ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... dispassionately and not in the least as though his reserve troubled her; but Anna was rather absent and distrait the rest of the day. She had watched Malcolm narrowly and had come to the conclusion that he had something on his mind. All his attempts at gaiety, his little jokes, his badinage, did not deceive her for a moment. Trouble had come to him. In some ways he was a changed man: he looked older, graver, and in repose his features had a care-worn expression, as of one who has worked hard ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... knocked silly by Ella. He honestly imagined her to be the wonderfullest woman on the earth's surface, with her dark eyes and her expressive sympathetic gestures, and her alterations of seriousness and gaiety. It astounded him that a girl of twenty-one could have thought so deeply upon life as she had. The inexplicable thing was that she looked up to HIM. She evidently admired HIM. He wanted to tell her that she was quite wrong about ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... laureate, who writes nothing but the annual receipt for his pension. Why not transfer the office to a Boswell? why not establish a Cabinet-dinner Boswell? a Buckingham-palace Boswell? a Windsor Boswell? with orders to make their weekly returns of gaiety and gossipry to the Home Department; to be thence issued by instalments of anecdote, in volumes, like "Lord Campbell's Lives of the Chancellors," or in columns, like the protocols of the Montpensier marriage, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... that had been my chosen haunts in summer! Then, too, the unwonted colour would come back to his pale cheek, and the smile to his lips, and while the ramble and the sunshine lasted he would be all jest and gaiety, pelting me with dead leaves, chasing me in and out of the plantations, and telling me strange stories, half pathetic, half grotesque, of Dryads, and Fauns, and Satyrs—of Bacchus, and Pan, and Polyphemus—of ...
— Monsieur Maurice • Amelia B. Edwards
... day their tongues were loosened; with the sun gaiety revived. It was like the eve of a battle; the heart beat, the eyes laughed, and they felt that the life they were perhaps going to lose, was, after all, a ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... no misgiving about her lover's good intentions, and this gave her the confidence which naturally she lacked. Besides, she had never thought Anne Hilton important. Anne, seeing the handsome room, the gaiety of Jane, and affection of Burton, found herself wishing that there were no reason why it should not continue so, to all appearance a happy home of newly-married people. She saw none of the signs of shame in Jane which she ...
— Women of the Country • Gertrude Bone |
