"Mirth" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... is! I thought I should get through with three parts. But Christmas is a time when a man can not avoid a tendency to long stories. One can not quite control one's self in a time of mirth, and here my history has grown until I shall have to put on a mansard roof to accommodate it. For in all these three parts I have told you about everything but what my title promised. If you have ever ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... the old spirit was no longer the same. The light-hearted mirth had gone. Indeed, Rosebud was a child no longer. She was a woman, and it would have surprised these folk to know how serious-minded the last two days had ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... representative appear in the very castle of Hechnahoul with his trouser-legs capering beneath an ill-hung petticoat of tartan. And, to make matters worse in their canvas eyes, his own shameless laugh rang loudest in the mirth that ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston
... blue eyes ray out Swift sympathy, or sudden mirth; That ever mobile mouth give birth To frolic whim, or friendly flout? Our hearts will miss thee to the end, Amphitryon ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 22, 1892 • Various
... a little green hat, walking up Michigan Avenue of a bright winter's afternoon, trying to take the curb with a jaunty youthfulness against which every one of his fat-encased muscles rebelled, was a sight for mirth or pity, depending ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Quickly mirth of Pocahontas died away, And her lightning glance at once did stray Meeting gaze direct and true, yet fond withal, Of those eyes whose strange, mysterious power cast Spell upon her heart, that thrilled to swift response. Dark eyes softened, flashed again with sudden fire, Pocahontas stood entranced, ...
— Pocahontas. - A Poem • Virginia Carter Castleman
... one mad little, glad little trill. Never had the old gray-green house among its enfolding orchards known a blither, merrier afternoon. All the old jests and quips that must have done duty at weddings since Eden were served up, and seemed as new and brilliant and mirth-provoking as if they had never been uttered before. Laughter and joy had their way; and when Anne and Gilbert left to catch the Carmody train, with Paul as driver, the twins were ready with rice and old shoes, ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... jest, were thrown The half-gnaw'd rib, and marrow bone: Or listen'd all, in grim delight. While Scalds yell'd out the joys of fight. Then forth, in frenzy, would they hie, While wildly-loose their red locks fly, And dancing round the blazing pile, They make such barbarous mirth the while, As best might to the mind recall The boisterous joys ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... a heifer cow does her calf." Roberts laughed softly, as though from some fund of inner mirth. "He's kinda hopin' you'll prove stubborn so as to give him a chance to come ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... strides of old age knocking daily at our door, and threateningly telling us, we are not only mortal, but must expect ere long to take our leave of our ancient cottage, and lie down in our last dormitory. Pray pardon my neglect to answer yours: let us hear sooner from you, to augment the mirth of the Christmas holidays. Wishing you all the pleasures of the approaching season, I am, dear Son, with ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... taken a dozen steps, however, before I was overtaken. My companion of a few minutes before was again by my side. All traces of his recent preoccupation seemed to have vanished. He was smoking a fresh cigarette, and his bright, deep-set eyes were lit with gentle mirth. ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... chuckle, more expressive of malignity than mirth, the man turned himself round, applied vigorously to his pipe, and sank into a silence which, as mile after mile glided past the wheels, he did not seem disposed to break. Neither was Philip inclined to be communicative. Considerations for his ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the monarch, and his commands were gladly obeyed. Telemachos and the servants went their way to the baths and arrayed themselves in splendid clothing. The bard took his harp and woke the pleasing strains, and the palace halls resounded with mirth and dancing. ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer
... one fond heart! I talk of things that are not; and if prayers By night and day availed from my weak lips, Then should they never be! till I was gone, Before the friends I loved, to my long home. Oh pardon me, if e'er I say too much; my mind Too often strangely turns to ribald mirth, As though I had no doubt nor hope beyond— Or brooding melancholy cloys my soul With thoughts of days misspent, of wasted time And bitter feelings swallowed up in jests. Then strange and fearful thoughts flit o'er my brain By indistinctness made ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley
... intended to get the silver if it took the whole night, and nothing could have pleased me more. I lay in my comfortable bed fairly shaking with suppressed laughter, and had to stuff a corner of a pillow in my mouth to smother the sound of my mirth. I did not allow the least pity for the unfortunate fellow to ...
— The Water Goats and Other Troubles • Ellis Parker Butler
... that so much of the good music of Germany is performed in the beer-gardens. The too free use of the glass and the pipe cannot tend to make the nation strong for the future; and one cannot long be charmed with the music and mirth of such places without fearing for ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... rest—and what if thou withdraw Unheeded by the living—and no friend Take note of thy departure? All that breathe Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care Plod on, and each one as before will chase His favorite phantom; yet all these shall leave Their mirth and their employment, and shall come And make their bed with thee. As the long train Of ages glide away, the sons of men, The youth in life's green spring, and he who goes In the full strength of years, ...
— Graded Memory Selections • Various
... knew him for a sluggard in the morning; but, as it drew on towards noon, I lost my patience. To say the truth, I had promised myself to break my fast in the pavilion, and hunger began to prick me sharply. It was a pity to let the opportunity go by without some cause for mirth; but the grosser appetite prevailed, and I relinquished my jest with regret, and sallied from ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... By this time they had got round to the steps leading from the garden to the house. "I think I'll go in, Mr. Poojean." She did go in, and Mr. Poojean was left looking at the moon all alone, as though he had separated himself from all mirth and society for that melancholy but pleasing occupation. He stood there gazing upwards with his thumbs beneath his waistcoat. "Grand,—is it not?" he said to the first ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... ask'd it, ever thinking thee Not mortal, but of heavenly progeny, As still I do. Hast any mortal name, Fit appellation for this dazzling frame? Or friends or kinsfolk on the citied earth, 90 To share our marriage feast and nuptial mirth?" "I have no friends," said Lamia, "no, not one; My presence in wide Corinth hardly known: My parents' bones are in their dusty urns Sepulchred, where no kindled incense burns, Seeing all their luckless race are dead, save me, And I neglect ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... marched to Silchester, and held there his husting of all his British thanes, all the Britons came to the meeting, and took Constantin the noble, and made him king of Britain— much was then the mirth that was among men. And afterwards they gave him a wife, one wondrous fair, born of the highest, of Britain the best of all. By this noble wife Constantin had in this land three little sons. The first son had well nigh his father's name; Constantin ...
— Brut • Layamon
... flowers, fresh flowers for the bride to wear; They were born to blush in her shining hair; She's leaving the home of her childhood's mirth; She hath bid farewell to her father's hearth; Her place is now by another's side; Bring flowers for the locks of the ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley
... could rise from her bed, meet her parents and her neighbours with her usual smile of vivacity, and voice of mirth, was impossible: to leave her bed at all, to creep downstairs, and reply in a faint, broken voice to questions asked, were, in her state of mind, mighty efforts; and they were all to which her struggles could ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... medley of luxury and vice, of refinement and cruelty, recalled the days of Imperial Rome. But the balmy breath of these Southern climes, the soft luxuriant spell of blue seas and groves of palm and cassia, sank deep into the child's being, and something of the fire and passion, the mirth and gaiety, of the dwellers in this delicious land passed into her soul, and helped to mould her nature during these years that she spent far from mother and sister at ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... now her own. But she told herself that that blackness was an injury to her, and not a benefit, and that it had now become a duty to her for his sake, if not for her own to dispel its shadows rather than encourage them. She would go down to him full of joy, though not full of mirth, and would confess to him frankly, that in receiving the assurance of his love, she had received everything that had seemed to have any value for ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... vaguely conjecturing their date, their circumstances; some of them may have dwelt in the old time on this very spot of ground now covered by the Museum. Like other people who grow too rich and comfortable, the citizens of Tarentum loved mirth and mockery; their Greek theatre was remarkable for irreverent farce, for parodies of the great drama of Athens. And here is testimony to the fact: all manner of comic masks, of grotesque visages; mouths distorted into impossible ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... Zashue could not control his mirth at the sight of the men in such guise; he broke out in a ringing laugh, pointed at them, and shouted, "Puyatye!" then to ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... all that day resounded with roars of laughter; and the only thoroughly grave man on the ground was he who occasioned the mirth of all ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... an entirely different matter. The moment you begin to "paddle your own canoe," lively and—to the lookers-on—mirth-provoking exercises ensue. When you stick your hand under to make a stroke your feet decline to stay anywhere but on top; and when, after an exciting tussle with your refractory pedal extremities, you again get them beneath the surface, your hands fly out with the splash ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... lay back in her steamer chair, her hand abandoned to him. And when her mirth had passed a slight sense of fatigue left her silent, inert, staring ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... contestants they were too intent upon the race to perceive the strange turn of affairs until the wild mirth upon the "mainland" apprised them of it. They must have looked funny enough from the shore frantically pursuing the fugitive turning post, and the unhallowed joy of the spectators was only increased by Pee-wee's heroic efforts in the emergency ...
— Pee-Wee Harris Adrift • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... then I was fit for any drawing-room. I should like you to tell me how many fathers, lay and clerical, go upstairs every day with a face like a lobster and cod's eyes—and are dull, upon the back of it—not even mirth for the money! No, if that's what she runs for, all I ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... gladness lurks a fear, In all her mirth there breathes a sigh, So soon her pretty flowers are gone— And ah! she is too young ...
— The Lonely Dancer and Other Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... for us. One seems to see the picture of the unknown friend who has charmed us so long—charmed away dull hours, created neighbours and companions for us in lonely places, conferring happiness and harmless mirth upon generations to come. One can picture her as she sits erect, with her long and graceful figure, her full round face, her bright eyes cast down,—Jane Austen, 'the woman of whom England is justly proud'—whose method generous Macaulay has placed near Shakespeare. ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... drop my slippers in the sink And leave them there to soak. That's very laughable, you think But I can't see the joke You take my hat outdoors with you And fill it full of earth; You seem to think that's witty, too, But I'm not moved to mirth. ...
— Bib Ballads • Ring W. Lardner
... that night, and there was much mirth in the little house, such mirth as there had not been since Henri went away. The Belgians called it a bal masque, and putting them on bowed before one another and requested dances, and even flirted coyly with each other over their ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Maria, thy mirth was away When Christ on cross thy Son did die Full dolefully on Good Friday, That many a mother's son it sye. His blood us brought from care and strife, His watery wounds us wisshe from woe. The third day from ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... the poor bare bipes implumis, a forked creature, waiting to be forked supererogatively; ay, and risibilis to boot, if ever all concomitants of the hearty old festival were properly provocative of decent mirth. Thus then return we to our muttons, and time enough, quotha: literary pundit, (whose is the notable saying?) thy definition is bomb-proof, thy fancy unscaleable, thy thought too deep for undermining; that notion is at the head of the poll, a candidate ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... beyond the force Of the most forward soules; all must submit Untill they reach these Mysteries of Wit. The Intellectuall Language here's exprest, Admir'd in better times, and dares the Test Of Ours; for from Wit, Sweetnesse, Mirth, and Sence, This Volume springs a new ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher in Ten Volumes - Volume I. • Beaumont and Fletcher
... cuddle doon at nicht. Wi' mirth that's dear to me; But sune the big warl's cark an' care Will quaten doon their glee. Yet come what will to ilka ane May He who sits aboon, Aye whisper, though their pows be bauld, "Oh, bairnies, ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... time mostly in my room. They did not, of course, invite me to join parties, but they would often urge me to join a few friends in their own parlor; but I always replied that my deep mourning must be my excuse. I had no taste for company or mirth. ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... at the serious face upon the youngster, but the conviction which he threw into his words choked my mirth. Whether it was the little brush with the Kanaka or the gloomy forebodings of the boy I couldn't tell, but I felt a trifle anxious after my ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... of pure poetic fancy in each of the tales, and the sunbeams here invested with life and tiny human forms, are lovable and mirth-provoking imps.... The children, too, are real children, and there is no mawkish sentimentality, but an unforced, tender pathos in the story of little Tom Riley, who was 'mos twelve,' but who had a heart big enough for a man, and so skilfully is it told that a child may ...
— The Angel of the Tenement • George Madden Martin
... her face in her hands. "And in that dress!" she ejaculated in the midst of her mirth. But she suddenly ceased laughing and ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... letters. "Should we wonder," he writes, "if carpenters were to remonstrate that since the Peace there is no demand for wooden legs?" The wags of the period could not allow the opportunity to pass without attempting to provoke more mirth out of the matter, and a petition was published purporting to come from the body-carpenters imploring his Majesty to wear a wooden leg, and to enjoin his servants to appear in his royal presence ...
— At the Sign of the Barber's Pole - Studies In Hirsute History • William Andrews
... poor tireman, rail the musick out of tune, and sweat for every venial trespass we commit as some author would." While, in the Induction to his "Staple of News," Jonson has clearly portrayed himself. "Yonder he is," says Mirth, in reply to some remark touching the poet of the performance, "within—I was in the tiring-house awhile, to see the actors dressed—rolling himself up and down like a tun in the midst of them ... never ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... comic paper is Life, which is modelled on the lines of the Muenchener Fliegende Blaetter, perhaps the funniest and most mirth-provoking of all professedly humorous weeklies. Among the most attractive features are the graceful and dignified drawings of Mr. Charles Dana Gibson, who has in its pages done for American society what Mr. Du Maurier has done for England by his scenes in Punch; the ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... by fits of deep melancholy. One day he was walking with a lady, who was also subject to depression of spirits, and he said to her: "Tell me why I am like a Jew?" She could not answer and he replied: "Because I am sad-you-see" Tears and mirth dwelt very closely together in his keen, fervid, sensitive spirit. It is remarkable that one who devoted himself so assiduously to his exacting profession should have been able to master such an immense amount of miscellaneous reading, and to have won such a splendid name in ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... robust man might face with calm valiancy if he could be spared the cheering influence of the homely scene or the unchanged presence of his familiars and friends. I have sat in companies and put on an affected mirth, and laughed and sung with the most buoyant of all around, and yet ever and anon I chilled at the intruding notion ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... interest, the scandal continued to increase. The draughts of liquor were repeated with much frequency; the tongue unloosed itself; oaths mingled themselves with jests, while loud laughter made the edifice to tremble. The vow of poverty did not escape from the sacrilegious mirth. One of the San Franciscans, who had often touched money with his fingers and placed it on the table, when he gained any considerable sum, in order to divert the company, opened his broad sleeve, and with the hem he swept the table ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... was carried out with tremendous enthusiasm. The girl chums were applauded to the echo for their capable handling of the honors assigned them. Nora in particular rose to heights of fame, her clever grinds provoking wholesale mirth. ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... course not, old chap," answered Jack, manfully struggling to suppress his mirth; "awfully annoying it must have been, I'm sure. ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... porcupig." How the frisking red rogue seemed to enjoy what he had found! He looked in at the door and snickered, then in at the window, then peeked down from between the rafters and cachinnated till his sides must have ached; then struck an attitude upon the chimney, and fairly squealed with mirth and ridicule. In fact, he grew so obstreperous, and so disturbed our repose, that we had to "shoo" him away with one of our boots. He declared most plainly that he had never before seen so preposterous a figure as we cut lying there in the corner ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... But the mirth passed away directly, for the matter was too serious, and he now lay with knitted brows, listening to his cousin's breathing, ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... festival of wild mirth in the Middle Ages, held on 1st January, in which the Ass of Scripture celebrity played a chief part, and in which many of the rites and ceremonies ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... What it was she failed to imagine, but it dawned upon her gradually that people were looking her way. Knots of the older students were watching her; bewildered newcomers were trying, like herself, to discover the cause of mirth. At first she smiled sympathetically; then suddenly, with a thrill of mortification, she perceived that she was ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... ill, young 'uns," he said. "But them Indians 'ud be pretty sick if they knowed what they run from. That there object cavortin' round that there bonfire is old Sanchez, and he's drunk. Oh, Lord!" And once more Hill gave way to mirth. ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton
... it is necessary to practice before the mirror in order to see that this facial expression is present and that it is not exaggerated; that the face is not contorted by lines of suffering or by the lines of mirth. ...
— Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing • Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini
... hilarity prevailed in the camp, so different from the prison of the krepost, where the daily drill, the appointed roll of the drum, and the enforced dance and song but poorly relieved the still, dull monotony. But the mirth was often ill-timed; for when refreshed by the evening's pottage and his cup of wodka, the Cossack sat carolling a ditty or meditating on the charms of the fair one left behind on the Don, suddenly a ball from the rifle ...
— Life of Schamyl - And Narrative of the Circassian War of Independence Against Russia • John Milton Mackie
... village, and commenced their search for a cottage, that would afford a night's lodging. In several, which they entered, ignorance, poverty, and mirth seemed equally to prevail; and the owners eyed St. Aubert with a mixture of curiosity and timidity. Nothing like a bed could be found, and he had ceased to enquire for one, when Emily joined him, who observed the languor of her father's countenance, and lamented, that ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... gave, as we went along, The faith that to-day we keep; And those April days were for mirth and song, While the nights ...
— The Miracle and Other Poems • Virna Sheard
... his true soul hath taught him, which hath come to him from his noble sires. Darken not thou the light of one who springeth from the same stock of Kallianax. Surely with the joys of Eratidai the whole city maketh mirth. But the varying breezes even at the same point of time speed each upon their ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar
... new soft broom. Sometimes she would shy things at me—but not often. There seemed always laughter round and about her—all three of us would share hysterics at times—and on one occasion the two of them came home from church shockingly ashamed of themselves, because of a storm of mirth during the sermon. The vicar, it seems, had tried to blow his nose with a black glove as well as the customary pocket-handkerchief. And afterwards she had picked up her own glove by the finger, and looking innocently but intently sideways, had suddenly by this ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... m., joyous carrying-on in social entertainment, mirth, social gaiety: acc. sg. ...
— Beowulf • James A. Harrison and Robert Sharp, eds.
... was in his diversions we know not; here was no room for such things. It was no time for mirth. Neither can I say I ever saw him smile. Those who speak so positively of his being like King James the Seventh, must excuse me for saying that it seems to say they either never saw this person or never saw King James the Seventh; and ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... me more, than to see Men Laugh so freely at a Comedy, and yet account it a silly weakness to Weep at a Tragedy. For is it less natural for a Man's Heart to relent upon a Scene of Pity, than to be transported with Joy upon one of Mirth and Humour? Or is it only the alteration of the Features of one's Face that makes us forbear Crying? But this alteration is undoubtedly as great in an immoderate Laughter, as in a most desperate Grief; and good Breeding teaches us to avoid the one as well as the other, ...
— The Present State of Wit (1711) - In A Letter To A Friend In The Country • John Gay
... the 7,800th Time, by way of Mirth-Provoking Rejoinder, Zendavesta kicked Zoroaster in the Stomach, after which the Slap-Stick was introduced ...
— Fables in Slang • George Ade
... absurd in the old gentleman's appearance and method of address, that Miss Ogilvy, who had a sense of humour, was obliged to turn away to hide her mirth. Recovering, ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... are an inch taller," she admitted, with mock reluctance. And then she said, with a ripple of mirth: "You are taller than I am—I give up; I ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... transition, now of foolish persons and now of real lunatics. They are happiest of all, he makes Stultitia say: they are not frightened by spectres and apparitions; they are not tortured by the fear of impending calamities; everywhere they bring mirth, jests, frolic and laughter. Evidently he here means harmless imbeciles, who, indeed, were often used as jesters. This identification of denseness and insanity is kept up, however, like the confusion of the comic and the simply ridiculous, and all this is well calculated to make us feel how wide ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... the peripatetic definition, is to be found in energy; it accords, therefore, with the nature and etymology of the drama, which is, in truth, not less natural than agreeable. Its grand divisions correspond, moreover, with those of time; the contemplation of the present is Comedy—mirth for the most part being connected with the present only—and the past and the future are the dominions ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction, No. 391 - Vol. 14, No. 391, Saturday, September 26, 1829 • Various
... At meals the aunt assigned the child her coarse food without a word, and on the way to chapel and back there had been a stony silence between them. It was evident, even to his dull mind, that the girl was white and thin, and that between her wild temper and mischief and the mirth of other children there was a great difference. Moreover, certain passages in the chapel prayers that morning had come home sharply to a mind whereof the only definite gift was a true religious sensitiveness. The text of the sermon especially—'Whoso loveth not his brother, whom he hath seen, ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... too much. I am neither melancholy, nor morose, nor austere, nor distant, nor reserved, nor sullen. I am always cheerful, ready and eager to join in any merriment. I am not clouded with sadness, nor absent in mind, nor deficient in action. No; take me when I am most foolish at home and extend mirth into childishness; yet all the time I am shuddering at myself.' There spake the future author of the immortal sermons. There spake a mind and a heart that have deepened the minds and the hearts of Christian men more than any other influence of the century; a mind and ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... disguised like face-ache, sauced; (Too gaily for that bandaged cheek, thought I); But they, whose business was to think, Were quite contented, let the hussy pass, Returned her kisses blown back down the road, And crowned the mirth of their outwitter's heart. As the steep road wound clear above the town, Fewer became those little comedies To which encounters roused him: till, at last, He scarcely knew we passed some vine-dressers: And I could see the sun's heat, lack of sleep, And his late ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... harbour where the rest of the fleet lay moored. Joyful were the greetings of their comrades, who had given them up for lost; and a merry feast they made on the flesh of the fat sheep, though their mirth was checkered by sadness when they thought of the brave six who had come to so horrible an end in the ...
— Stories from the Odyssey • H. L. Havell
... the silence grow around her. She saw the whole school drop its mirth and its employments to watch this duel ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... Ursula invariably brought blinding, bitter tears to the eyes of those assembled at picnics and hunt balls. It had an opposite effect upon Dorothea's auditors. With apparently one accord they burst into hilarious mirth, ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... off that uncomfortable speculation. The baby began loudly to demand its morning meal; and the three-year-old, having run through its mirth, began to whimper for its mother. Altogether Jeffreys had a busy ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... life to me, his death the greater payne: His life in Christ so surelie set, doth glad my hearte agayne: His life so good, his death better, do mingle mirth with care, My spirit with ioye, my flesh with grief, so deare a frend to spare. Thus God the good, while they be good, doth take, and leaues vs ill, That we should mend our sinfull life, in life to tary still. Thus, we well left, be better rest, in heauen to take his place, That by ...
— The Schoolmaster • Roger Ascham
... my dear old grandmother brought me up, and I said no more; colouring, I believe, a little, at my own folly. Even uncle Ro joined in the mirth, though I could see he wished Mary Warren even safely translated along with her father, and that the latter was Archbishop of Canterbury. I must acknowledge that I felt a good deal ashamed of the weakness ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... point we children, stifling our laughter, rush headlong from the room, to vent our mirth in safety in ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... Naylor, "the carpet!" Fresh moans of mirth shook the table; for having tasted the wine of laughter, all wanted as much more as they could get. When Scruff and his traces were effaced, Herr Paul took a ladle in ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Dr. Douglass laughed a low, quick laugh, as if he found it quite impossible to restrain his mirth, and then became ...
— Ester Ried • Pansy (aka. Isabella M. Alden)
... accidental structure of which the value is purely relative, seriously. When once a man has touched the absolute, all that might be other than what it is seems to him indifferent. All these ants pursuing their private ends excite his mirth. He looks down from the moon upon his hovel; he beholds the earth from the heights of the sun; he considers his life from the point of view of the Hindoo pondering the days of Brahma; he sees the finite from the distance of the infinite, and thenceforward the insignificance of ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... redress the dolours of the unjustly afflicted. No, brethren, let us be assured, that the right hand of the Lord will change the state of things that are most desperate. In our God there is wisdom and power, in a moment to change the joy and mirth of our enemies into everlasting mourning, and our sorrows into joy and gladness ...
— The Pulpit Of The Reformation, Nos. 1, 2 and 3. • John Welch, Bishop Latimer and John Knox
... amazement of his companions, he addressed a speech to Stalker in language so broken with stuttering and stammering that the marauders around could scarcely avoid laughing, though their chief seemed to be in no mood to tolerate mirth. Tom and Fred did not at first understand, though it soon dawned upon them that by this means he escaped being recognised by the man with whom he had so recently conversed through the keyhole of ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... he stay, And long lock'd in silence his tongue; Then he humm'd an elegiac lay, Or a Psalm penitential he sung: But if with his Friends he regal'd, His Mirth, as his Griefs, knew no bounds; In no Tale of Mark Sargent he sail'd, Nor in all ...
— An Essay on War, in Blank Verse; Honington Green, a Ballad; The - Culprit, an Elegy; and Other Poems, on Various Subjects • Nathaniel Bloomfield
... May-poles too, with garlands grac't, Thy morris-dance, thy Whitsun-ale, Thy sheering feast, which never faile, Thy harvest home, thy wassaile bowle, That's tost up after Foxi'th'hole, Thy mummeries, thy twelfth-tide kings, And quenes, thy Christmas revellings, Thy nut-browne mirth, thy russet wit, And no man pays too deare ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... gather wild fruits for the voyage. We found quinces, peaches, and figs, and the children gathered a basket of each. It takes very little to please children, and these little ones, never hearing a word in their lives except Spanish, made the hills ring with mirth at the sound of words in English. They asked me the names of all manner of things on the island. We came to a wild fig-tree loaded with fruit, of which I gave them the English name. "Figgies, figgies!" they cried, while ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... face. His jet-black eyebrows met in the center of his scowling forehead, and under them gleamed eyes cold and dangerous. A thin wisp of a dark mustache contrasted with the quick gleam of his strong, white teeth. On the rare occasions when he laughed, his mirth was like the ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... take from them the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, the sound of the millstones, and the light of the lamp. And this whole land shall be a desolation and an astonishment; and these nations shall ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman
... him. A chuckle from Arthur Chester caused him to turn his eyes that way. He scrutinized his guests in turn, and detected signs of mirth. Winifred Chester's pretty shoulders were shaking. Martha Macauley's lips were pressed close together. The ...
— Red Pepper's Patients - With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in Particular • Grace S. Richmond
... lying In the buried past of the earth, Built Nineveh with our sighing, And Babel itself with our mirth; And o'erthrew them with prophesying To the old of the new world's worth; For each age is a dream that is dying, Or one ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... called the 'friends' or companions 'of the bridegroom.' According to the Jewish wedding ceremonial it was their business to conduct the bride to the home of her husband, and there to spend seven days in festivity and rejoicing, which were to be so entirely devoted to mirth and feasting that the companions of the bridegroom were by the Talmudic ritual absolved even from prayer and from worship, and had for their one ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... rate there are your shoes, Ferguson, and I hope you'll have a good game!" The Chief went out, rather annoyed at having wasted so much time. At tea that evening there was mirth at the ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... of the earth Hath quickly found what empire means; For while he scoffs with bitter mirth, And curses, after Eden's scenes, ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... blessed children of the jocund day! What mean these mysteries of love and birth? Caught up like solemn words by babes at play, Who know not what they babble in their mirth. ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... the seventh officer's story, they were moved to exceeding mirth, and El Melik ez Zahir Bibers rejoiced in that which he heard and said, 'By Allah, there betide things in this world, from which kings are shut out, by reason of their exalted station!" Then came forward another man from amongst ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... fascinated and repelled by them. Mrs. Hunter's bearing was the subject of constant and delighted meditation, while the cold carefulness of it was a terrorizing nightmare. The girl kept up a conversation with Aunt Susan on the sewing, or a fire of mirth and jollity with Nathan or Luther, with this undercurrent of thought always going on. How was she to emulate that polish with so little experience in social affairs she would ask herself one moment, and the next would be harassed by the ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... sound that is ringing in his ears is no longer of the brass-band that he had heard in the theatre. It is quite different. It has all the ghastly mirth of that song that Norman Ogilvie used to sing in the old, half-forgotten days. What is ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... his race, as from his car The glorious sun illumes the subject earth More than the silver moon or lesser star; So far all others he transcends in worth. I see this captain, ill bested for war, Go forth afflicted, and return in mirth: Backed by few foot, and fewer cavaliers, He homeward ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... praising, in giving and receiving, In eating and drinking, in singing and making merry, In parents' gladness and in children's mirth, In dear memories of those who have departed, In good comradeship with those who are here, In kind wishes for those who are far away, In patient waiting, sweet contentment, generous cheer, God bless us every one, with ...
— The Spirit of Christmas • Henry Van Dyke
... out. He had no voice in being carried into the South, but he will have a very loud voice in any attempt to put him out. The expatriation of 5,000,000 to 6,000,000 people to an alien country needs only to be suggested to create mirth and ridicule. The white men of the South had better make up their minds that the black men will remain in the South just as long as corn will tassel and cotton will bloom into whiteness. The talk about the black people being brought to this country to prepare themselves ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... was not unmusical, was never pleasant. It did not seem to come from the heart, and was the farthest in the world removed from mirth. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... us Delight in simple things, And Mirth that has no bitter springs; Forgiveness free of evil done, And Love to all men 'neath ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold
... notice; and, being a lad with a keen appreciation of humour, it was with difficulty that he conquered an almost irresistible inclination to laugh aloud while he reflected upon the situation. By an effort of will, however, he conquered the desire to indulge in untimely mirth—for he fully realised that he and his followers were standing upon the crumbling brink of a volcano, and said, with an air ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... unpremeditated and coarse jests in such rude verses as were used by the Fescennini, but of satires, accompanied with music set to the flute, recited with suitable gestures. After satires, which had afforded the people subject of coarse mirth and laughter, were, by this regulation, reduced to form and acting, by degrees became an art, the Roman youth left it to players by profession, and began, as formerly, to act farces at the end of their regular pieces. These ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... a sailor, was invited to spend a week with his sister in Northamptonshire before he went to sea. Their eager affection in meeting, their exquisite delight in being together, their hours of happy mirth, and moments of serious conference, may be imagined; as well as the sanguine views and spirits of the boy even to the last, and the misery of the girl when he left her. Luckily the visit happened in the Christmas ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... the piece had begun. It was one of those impossibly amusing Paris farces, on the borderland of all convention but so intensely comic that none could help their mirth, and Tristram shook with laughter and forgot for the time that he was a most miserable young man. And even Zara laughed. But it did not melt things between them. Tristram's feelings had been too wounded for any ordinary circumstances to ...
— The Reason Why • Elinor Glyn
... thought Uncle Remus was making him the victim of one of his jokes; but the youngster was never more mistaken. The old man was serious. Nevertheless, he failed to rebuke the ill-timed mirth of the child, appearing to be altogether engrossed in his work. After ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris
... back, for he had already begun his retreat; and after sending two or three more with all the vigour produced by anger, Peter Pegg lay back on the roof, listening to the distant pattering of feet, and laughing with suppressed mirth till the tears ran ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... 1563. See a notice of him prefixed to his Diary, published by the Camden Society.——An account of John Stradling, the epigrammatist, will be found in Wood's Athenae (Bliss), vol. ii. p. 396.——Hockday, or Hokeday, is a high-day, a day of feasting and mirth, formerly held in England the second Tuesday after Easter, to commemorate the destruction of the Danes in the time of Ethelred.——For notices of George Wither in the Gentleman's Mag., see vol. lxxxvi. pt. ii. 32. 201.; vol. lxxxvii. pt. i. 42.; vol. lxxxviii. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 238, May 20, 1854 • Various
... it is quite different. When it rains porridge I have no spoon. I am always to play merry pranks, and make faces which force people to laugh, and if they give me an apple, and I bite into it, why it is sour! How often sadness hides itself behind mirth! I shall never be able to hold out for thirty years." God was gracious ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... embrace, and gave way to endearing epithets. Madame Wang laughed, and pointed at lady Feng with her finger; but as for saying a word, she could not. Mrs. Hseh had much difficulty in curbing her mirth, and she sputtered the tea, with which her mouth was full, all over T'an Ch'un's petticoat. T'an Ch'un threw the contents of the teacup, she held in her hand, over Ying Ch'un; while Hsi Ch'un quitted her seat, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... was with the multitude, And gladness on the earth, The tongue of every living thing Rang with a sound of mirth. All that stern Wisdom could desire, Or Fancy fair engage— Danger-defying youth was there, And calm experienced age. It seemed as though earth's very best To that brave barque were given— Science for nature's mysteries, And childlike ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 452 - Volume 18, New Series, August 28, 1852 • Various
... at random, in speaking against these, that their origin is objectionable. It is no where insisted upon, that there is evil in them considered abstractedly by themselves, or that they may not be used innocently, or that they may not be made the occasion of innocent mirth. The evil is candidly stated to arise from their abuse. The nature of this evil is unfolded. Thus the malevolent passions, such as anger, envy, hatred, revenge, and even avarice, are stirred up, where they should be particularly ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... the line of battle, seen from a distance, is a red horizon, ominous and threatening, fringing a land of broken homes, ruined villages, and blazing funeral pyres. There the mirth of yesteryear lives only in a soldier's dreams, and the harvest of last autumn rots with withering men on the field ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... knew, as well as the boy knew, that we were trapped, that before us now were the awful chances of unequal Plains warfare. A mere handful of us had been hurrying after a host, whose numbers the broad beaten road told us was legion. There was no mirth in that little camp that night in mid-September, and I thought of other things besides my strange vision at the gorge. The camp was the only mark of human habitation in all that wide and utterly desolate land. For days we had noted even the absence of all game—strong evidence ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... the most mirth-provoking of Irish novels published in the last few years, and Mr. Birmingham's new book is a worthy successor. Once more the admirable red-haired curate, "J. J.," appears, and his wild energy turns a peaceful ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... in dreams' projections, While the world of gain and appearance and mirth goes on, So soon what is over forgotten, and waves wash the imprints off the sand, In nature's reverie sad, with hinged knees returning, I enter the doors—(while for you up there, Whoever you are, follow me without ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... woman did not even attempt an answer. Nor did she apparently even try to control her mirth. But, after a while, when she had laughed until she was tired, she suddenly rose to her feet, and as she gathered up a handful of wet garments, and began rubbing them on the wash-board, she ...
— Moriah's Mourning and Other Half-Hour Sketches • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... which in boyhood we seldom beheld through tears. And therefore have we chosen the gayest day of all the year, when all life is rejoicing, from the grasshopper among our feet to the lark in the cloud. Melancholy, and not mirth, doth he hope to find, who after a life of wandering—and maybe not without sorrow—comes back to gaze on the banks and braes whereon, to his eyes, once grew the flowers of Paradise. Flowers of Paradise are ye still—for, praise be to Heaven! the sense of beauty is still strong within ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... company, they visited the bonfire, taunting the others if inferior in any respect to themselves. After the fire was burned out they returned home, where a feast was prepared, and the remainder of the evening was spent in mirth and diversions of various kinds. Next morning they repaired betimes to the bonfire, where the situation of the stones was examined with much attention. If any of them were misplaced, or if the print of a foot could be discerned near any particular stone, it was imagined ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... great stage where the wild games of the satyrs are being performed by choruses, hurried on in the unrestrained wantonness of intoxication. When she saw thus for the first time an entire people given up to the wildest and most unfettered mirth and enjoyment, she woke up from her silent brooding thoughts and began to weep again, as in the first days after ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... asked, laying down the proofs on Paul's enquiring of him how soon the work would be published. And when the young man answered "Oh yes, always," he was moved to mirth again by something he caught in his manner of saying that. "You go to see your grandmother on her birthday—and very proper it is, especially as she won't last for ever. She has lost every faculty and every sense; she neither sees, nor hears, nor speaks; but all customary pieties ...
— The Lesson of the Master • Henry James
... uncontrollable laughter. "That is the best thing I ever heard in all my life. I don't think I ever heard anything that amused me more. The grotesqueness of the whole thing." Seeing that Mike was annoyed he hastened to explain his mirth. "The inexplicableness of human action always amuses me; the inexplicable is romance, at least that is the only way I can understand romance. When you reduce life to a logical sequence you destroy all poetry, and, I think, all reality. We do things constantly, ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... rapidly pondered the situation. She felt like laughing outrageously at the prank Cupid had played on them, but she dared not utter a sound of mirth because that might spoil everything. And there might be a possible chance of saving the day, ...
— Polly's Business Venture • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... away," he said quietly, peering down at the strange face that looked up at him from its hooded gray, and then she laughed at him with insane mirth. It would have done severe damage to less hardy nerves than those which our "hero" possessed. Jim regarded her with unwavering kindness, which seemed to reach through the gray cloud of her unhappy condition, much as the ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... shock with which he realized that she was, unknown to herself, already in the throes of a romantic attachment for Wilson; and, long, long after, when he had gone down to the depths with her and saved her by his steady hand, with something of mirth for the untoward happening that ...
— K • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... they will never obtain, and that is, happiness independent of God. Some tell us that they mean to make the most of life, and to be happy while they live; therefore, begone, reflection! religion is not for the spring-tide of youth; mirth and merry days are for the young; soberness and the russet garb of autumn belong to the decline of life, which certainly to them, they think, is far off;—as though every material necessary for their last, long sleep, may not at this moment be in the warerooms and shops; as though ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... harm in trying: Wonder 'tis how little mirth Keeps the bones of man from lying On ...
— A Shropshire Lad • A. E. Housman
... temper with the world, and society, and his nearest kin. But with the demand and response of real cash the jovial frivolity of the scene departed. A lurid colour seemed to fill the tent, and change the aspect of all therein. The mirth-wrinkles left the listeners' faces, and they ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... diverted immediately from the teacher to the face of the sweet pupil. Women have a quick appreciation of beauty in their own sex; and women who are themselves beautiful, not the least. Irresistibly Lady Montfort felt attracted towards that innocent countenance so lively in its mirth, and yet so softly gay. Sir Isaac, who had hitherto lain perdu, watching the movements of a thrush amidst a holly-bush, now started up with a bark. Waife rose; Sophy turned half ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Boat Song: but the comic always carries off the palm; "Jim along Josey," "Lucy Long," "Old Dan Tucker," and a hundred others of the same character, are listened to delightedly by the crowd of men and boys collected round the fore-hatch, and always ready to join in the choruses. Thus a sound of mirth floats far and wide over the twilight sea, and would seem to indicate that all goes ...
— Journal of an African Cruiser • Horatio Bridge
... come upon them, apparently unintentionally. He hesitated and paused when Peter looked up. Peter saw no grin upon his lips. They were set in a firm, straight line. His long arms were folded behind his back, and his eyes were empty of mirth—or malice. They simply expressed nothing. He looked at Peter shortly, and favored Miss Vost with a ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... or on shore, Piety, learning, fond affection, Holy welcome and kind protection.... I found in Munster unfettered of any Kings and queens and poets a many, Poets well skilled in music and measure; Prosperous doings, mirth and pleasure. I found in Connacht the just, redundance Of riches, milk in lavish abundance; Hospitality, vigor, fame, In Crimean's land of heroic name.... I found in Ulster, from hill to glen, Hardy warriors, resolute men. Beauty that bloomed when ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... till the tears came. I was ready to cry, too, but from quite a different reason. A lump rose in my throat, and I could not speak. I gazed at him with wild eyes, and this only increased his mirth. He rolled on the ground, holding his sides. As for me, I could not get over the insult—for a bitter insult it was. Those—few, I hope—who will understand it, from having had a similar experience in their lives, will recall all the bitterness ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... still more inclined to cry, so touching was it to witness the old dog's clumsy playfulness and the little sufferer's spasmodic merriment—for spasmodic it needs must be, as yet, though so hearty, heart-easing and wholesome. Indeed, there are few things more pathetical than the innocent mirth of the young heart, over whose dawning existence has already fallen, though but for a brief space, the shadow of the inevitable hour. And I will venture to affirm, upon the strength of my own experience and observation, that if you, my gentle reader, had been present ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... he sets his bones To bask i' the sun, and thrusts out knees and feet For the ripple to run over in its mirth; Listening the while, where on the heap of stones The white breast of the ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... wine, his manner blithe and boyish; yet beneath all this fair and guileless exposition of carelessness lay the sober integrity of caste. It looked out through the steady, unswerving eyes, even when they twinkled with mirth; it met the gaze of the world with a serene imperiousness that gave way before no mortal influence; it told without boastfulness a story of centuries. For he was the son of a princess royal, and the blood of ten score ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... borne by men on horseback, made of pieces of hollow wood with a brass mouth-piece, usually precede the sovereign on any important visit. The costume and attitude of the musician are highly characteristic of savage mirth. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 10, Issue 285, December 1, 1827 • Various
... upon him with the blackness of his look lightening into a smile as different from mirth as the brassy gleam behind a thundercloud is from sunshine. "What concerns your lordship?" he asked contemptuously. "Do you imagine that ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1 • Various
... for tryin' your hand at prospecting," Sam said, with a laugh, and Fred arose to his feet with a rueful look on his face, which caused his companion yet more mirth. ...
— Down the Slope • James Otis
... come to regard him in an altered light. It was not simply that he looked to be older, and because his face was careworn. It was not only that he had lost that look of an Apollo which Lily had once in her mirth attributed to him. I think it was chiefly that she herself was older, and could no longer see a god in such a man. She had never regarded John Eames as being gifted with divinity, and had therefore always been making comparisons to his discredit. ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... after that, and so Bill Cowan sang "Billy of the Wild Wood," and Terence McCann wailed an Irish jig, stamping the water out of the spongy ground amidst storms of mirth. As he desisted, breathless and panting, he flung me up in the firelight before the eyes of them ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the Grasshopper's Feasts Excited the spleen of the Birds and the Beasts: For their mirth and good cheer—of the Bee was the theme, And the Gnat blew his horn, as he danc'd in the beam. 'Twas humm'd by the Beetle, 'twas buzz'd by the Fly, And sung by the myriads that sport through the sky. The Quadrupeds listen'd with sullen displeasure, But the tenants of air were enraged ...
— The Peacock 'At Home:' - A Sequel to the Butterfly's Ball • Catherine Ann Dorset
... upper oil springs on Oil Creek, by boring in the rock. But it was labor pursued under difficulties. To have announced the intention of boring for petroleum into the bowels of the earth, would have been to provoke mirth and ridicule. The enterprise would have appeared quite as visionary as that of Noah to the antediluvians in building his ark against an anticipated inundation. It was generally supposed that the search was for salt water; and perhaps the idea was a complex one even in the mind ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... six-and-thirty years afterward that I found that out, and then—oh, then I only cried when that picture of young care-free mirth rose before me out of the blur and mists of that long-vanished time; for there had come a day between, when God's good gift of laughter had gone out from me to come again no more in ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... his barrow, which was full of gravel, over Davy's toes. The said toes were sticking quite bare through great holes in an old pair of woman's boots. Then he began to tease him rather roughly. But Davy took all his banter with just the same complacency and mirth with which he had received the kindliness of the ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald
... appeared indifference, frivolity, and mirth; this being considered, especially by the females, as conducive to health. Seldom was the body followed by even ten or twelve attendants; and instead of the usual bearers and sextons, hirelings of the lowest of the populace undertook the office for the sake ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... not been for that untimely mirth of O'Brien's probably nothing of what followed would have passed into the history ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... being the inventor of all, or even any of these tales, he is still the father of this class of modern Italian literature, since he was the first to transplant into the world of letters what had hitherto been only the subject of social mirth. These tales have in their turn been repeated anew in almost every language of Europe, and have afforded reputations to numerous imitators. One of the most beautiful and unexceptionable tales in the Decameron is that of "Griselda," the last in ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... tale would be too long for your patience. The result of it would be to make you feel that I am no longer fit to enter in upon a new home. I should bring showers instead of sunshine, melancholy in lieu of mirth. ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... in voice, visage, and manners, the ruffians and drabs of maturer growth? Or why should not the young men and women collect in clusters, or range about or beyond the neighborhood in bands, for revel, frolic, and all kinds of coarse mirth; to come back late at night to quarrel with their wretched elders, who perhaps envy them their capacity for such wild gaieties and strollings, while rating them for their disorderly habits? We say where can be the harm of all this? What reasonable and benevolent man would think of making ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... all gone this morning, and have left me much more at liberty than I have been of late, therefore I believe this will be a long letter; perhaps too long, at least if my letters are as little entertaining as my company is. I was carried yesterday abroad to a dinner that was designed for mirth, but it seems one ill-humoured person in the company is enough to put all the rest out of tune; for I never saw people perform what they intended worse, and could not forbear telling them so: but to ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... of my childhood days, But bear in mind the courage of thy mirth. Remember all the virtues of thy father And let them live again in thine own heart. Thou must not yield to weakness and lamenting, Tend to life's duties: Go and call me Channa, Bid him to saddle Kanthaka, my steed, And let him ready be for a ...
— The Buddha - A Drama in Five Acts and Four Interludes • Paul Carus
... the pride of her stately rivers, Cleaving their way to the far-off sea; Glory of strength in their deep-mouth'd music— Glory of mirth in their tameless glee. Hark! 'tis the roar of the tumbling rapids; Deep unto deep through the dead night calls; Truly, I hear but the voice of Freedom Shouting her ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... himself. He seized the doctor's cocked hat and put it on, while the doctor did the same with his hatchee-matchee. The oddity of the Chief's appearance produced by this change overcame the gravity of the attendants, and the mirth became general; nor was the joke relished by any body more than the Chief's two sons, who stood by his chair during all the entertainment: they were pretty little boys, with gaudy dresses, and their hair ...
— Account of a Voyage of Discovery - to the West Coast of Corea, and the Great Loo-Choo Island • Captain Basil Hall
... until the lights flashed about madly and there was a scent of burning feathers. The circle stood its ground bravely, but there were shrieks and mocking laughter as they danced around, sometimes making a lunge out at the spectators, who would draw back in affright, a signal for roars of mirth. ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas |
