"Antic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the gate; Hark, the monkeys, how they prate! All ye gods who rule the soul:[5] Styx, through Hell whose waters roll! Let me be allow'd to tell What I heard in yonder Hell. Near the door an entrance gapes,[6] Crowded round with antic shapes, Poverty, and Grief, and Care, Causeless Joy, and true Despair; Discord periwigg'd with snakes,'[7] See the dreadful strides she takes! By this odious crew beset,[8] I began to rage and fret, And resolved to break their pates, Ere we enter'd at the gates; Had not Clio in ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... had bought it, and I told him like a dutiful son—"Tom Carrodus's in Church Green." He summoned my mother and asked: "Mally, what dos'ta think o' this lot?" She—good woman—said it was only another antic of her boy's, and "let him have his own way." But my father, on the contrary, got rather nasty about the matter, remarking that if I didn't take the thing away he would put it into the fire. He said he was sure it would only turn out a public house "touch," ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... CIP: antic'ipate; eman'cipate (Lat. n. ma'nus, hand), literally, to take away from the hand of an owner, to free; incip'ient; munic'ipal (Lat. n. municip'ium, a free town; mu'nia, official duties, and cap'ere, to take); partic'ipate (Lat. ...
— New Word-Analysis - Or, School Etymology of English Derivative Words • William Swinton
... tear-drops, unashamed. He turned sharply aside, and for some moments neither spoke. Cornelia was seeing, as in a picture, the lonely ranch, with the solitary figure, sitting with his face towards the East, thinking, thinking. ... Guest was reflecting with amaze on the strange antic of fate, which ordained that it should be in the eyes of this Yankee stranger that he should see the first woman's tears shed on his behalf! She cried like a child; simply, involuntarily, without thought of appearance; the tears rising from a pure well of sympathy. To ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... yes, let other men Love Elia for his antic pen, And watch with dilettante eyes His page for every quaint surprise, Curious of caviare phrase. Yea; these who will not also praise? We surely must, but which is more The motley that his sorrow wore, Or the great heart whose valorous beat Upheld his brave unfaltering ...
— English Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... now currently annexed. It was originally adapted from the Moors, and is still known by the name of Morris-dancing, or Moresc-dance. It is danced with swords, by persons odly disguised, with a great deal of antic rural merriment: it is true that this diversion is now almost exploded, being entirely confined to the lower classes of life, and only kept up in some counties. What the reason may be of its going out of use, I cannot say; but am very sure, there was not ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... the spirit of their wildness or frenzy appears even in the mode and way in which they do it. Either the things themselves which they make use of for that purpose are very toys and trifles; or if they seem to be better, they are put on after an antic manner, rather to the rendering of them ridiculous, than to bespeak them sober, judicious, or wise; and so do natural men array themselves with what they would be accepted in with God. Would one in his wits think to make himself fine or acceptable to men ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... an hour they are subjected to the heat and the human smells from so many crowding, perspiring people, and if they are not made to recite the rosary they must remain quiet, bored, or asleep. At each movement or antic that may soil their clothing they are pinched and scolded, so the fact is that they do not laugh or feel happy, while in their round eyes can be read a protest against so much embroidery and a longing for the ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... shadows, little shadows, Dancing on the chamber wall, While I sit beside the hearthstone Where the red flames rise and fall. Caps and nightgowns, caps and nightgowns, My three antic shadows wear; And no sound they make in playing, For the ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... it hard not to laugh in the fool's face for his antic assumption of the regal carriage, but her mind seemed instantly illuminated with knowledge. Now she understood the presence of the fool in her palace. This was Robert's ugliest revenge. He had sent this hideous thing to prey upon Perpetua, ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... greenwood eaves, Like mirthful eyes that laugh upon the leaves; Where every bush and tree in all the scene, In wind-kiss'd wavings shake their wings of green, And all the objects round about dispense Reviving freshness to the awakened sense; The golden corslet of the humble bee, The antic kid that frolics round the lea; Or purple lance-flies circling round the place, On their light shards of green, an airy race; Or squirrel glancing from the nut-wood shade An arch black eye, half pleas'd and half afraid; Or bird quick darting through the foliage dim, Or perched and twittering ...
— The Culprit Fay - and Other Poems • Joseph Rodman Drake
... locality. The pageant called The Fool Plough, which consists of a number of sword-dancers dragging a plough with music, was anciently observed in the North of England, not only at Christmas time, but also in the beginning of Lent. Wallis thinks that the Sword Dance is the antic dance, or chorus armatus of the Romans. Brand supposes that it is a composition made up of the gleaning of several obsolete customs anciently followed in England and other countries. The Germans still practise the Sword Dance at Christmas ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... a transformer by some careless and exuberant antic; hence the mutual doghouse. Scolding was wasted effort, so Denver merely sighed and made a ...
— Master of the Moondog • Stanley Mullen
... its richest vesture, Sparkling stars—etherial blue; Fairies dance with antic gesture; Or ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... men in person, and they waded with infinite toil for about three miles, the water often up to their chins; and they then camped on a hillock for the night. Clark kept the troops cheered up by every possible means, and records that he was much assisted by "a little antic drummer," a young boy who did good service by making the men laugh with his pranks and jokes. [Footnote: Law, in his "Vincennes" (p. 32), makes the deeds of the drummer the basis for a traditional story that is somewhat too highly colored. Thus he makes Clark's men at one time mutiny, and refuse ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... of the Merry Men. I have heard it said that they run fifty feet high; but that must be the green water only, for the spray runs twice as high as that. Whether they got the name from their movements, which are swift and antic, or from the shouting they make about the turn of the tide, so that all Aros shakes with it, is more than I ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... it may almost be said, "keeps death his antic court." It comprises biographies of celebrated persons, who have died within the year, as well as a General Biographical List of others lower in the roll of fame. The biographies are 31 in number: among ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 530, January 21, 1832 • Various
... which knowingly answered his look with a winking and blinking of its great bright eye, that seemed to say, "Well, Uncle Juvinell, what shall we do for the entertainment or instruction of these little people to-night? Shall we tell them of that crew of antic goblins we wot of, who are wont to meet by moonlight, to play at football with the hanged man's head, among the tombstones of an old graveyard? Or may be that dreadful ogre, with the one fiery eye in the middle of his forehead, who was in the ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... Such bright perfections in a female mind? What Phoenix-woman breathes the vital air, So greatly greatly good, and so divinely fair? Sure, not the gay and fashionable train, Licentious, proud, immoral and prophane; Who spend their golden hours in antic dress, Malicious whispers, ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... warm sand Deposited her eggs, which the sun hatch'd: Hence the young brood, that never knew a parent, Unburrow'd and by instinct sought the sea; Nature herself, with her own gentle hand, Dropping them one by one into the flood, And laughing to behold their antic joy, When launch'd in their maternal element. The vision of that brooding world went on; Millions of beings yet more admirable Than all that went before them now appear'd; Flocking from every point of heaven, and filling Eye, ear, and mind, with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 286, December 8, 1827 • Various
... exultation, so I walked over to a bronze statue of Bacchus, about my size—that is, height—put my hat—which I had been carrying under my arm—on his head, cut a few capers in an entirely new and equally antic step, and then drew back and knocked that Bacchus down. Jane thought I had gone stark mad, and her eyes grew big with wonder, but I walked proudly back to her after my victory over Bacchus, and reassured ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... Kings: How some have been depos'd, some slain in war; Some haunted by the ghosts they dispossess'd; Some poison'd by their wives, some sleeping kili'd; All murder'd:—for within the hollow crown, That rounds the mortal temples of a king, Keeps death his court: and there the antic sits, Scoffing his state, and grinning at his pomp! Allowing him a breath, a little scene To monarchize, be fear'd, and kill with looks; Infusing him with self and vain conceit— As if this flesh, which ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... by a venerable oak now hung with garlands, while underneath danced the chateau servants with their families, to the music of a pipe played by little Friedel. As the gentlefolk approached, the revel stopped, but the major, who was in an antic mood and disposed to be gracious, bade Friedel play on, and as Mrs. Cumberland refused his hand with a glance at her weeds, the major turned to the Count's buxom housekeeper, and besought her to waltz with him. She assented, and away they went as nimbly as the best. Amy laughed, but stopped ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... nodding, assented to obey, while Fergusano and the German, with each a wand in their hands, struck against the unformed rocks that finished the end of the cave, muttering a thousand incantations, with voices dreadful, and motions antic; and, after a mighty stroke of thunder that shook the earth, the rude rock divided, and opened a space that discovered a most magnificent apartment; in which was presented a young hero, attended with military officers; his pages dressing him for the field all in gilded armour. The Prince began ...
— Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister • Aphra Behn
... the great exchange of all discourse, and no business whatsoever but is here stirring and a-foot. It is the synod of all pates politick, jointed and laid together in most serious posture, and they are not half so busy at the parliament. It is the antic of tails to tails, and backs to backs, and for vizards you need go no farther than faces. It is the market of young lecturers, whom you may cheapen here at all rates and sizes. It is the general mint of all famous lies, which ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... you have heard, long ago, How the snakes, in a manner quite antic, He marched from the County Mayo And trundled them into the Atlantic. So not to use water for drink, The people of Ireland determined. And for a mighty good reason, I think, Since St. Patrick has filled it with vermin And vipers ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore
... on my eyelids laid; And, as I wake, sweet music breathe Above, about, or underneath, Sent by some Spirit to mortals good, Or the unseen Genius of the wood. But let my due feet never fail To walk the studious cloisters pale, And love the high embowed roof, With antic pillars massy-proof And storied windows richly dight, Casting a dim religious light. There let the pealing organ blow, To the full-voiced quire below, In service high, and anthems clear, As may with sweetness, through mine ear, Dissolve me into ecstasies, And bring all Heaven before ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... life's late day, With tottering step, and locks of gray, Essay'st each trick of antic glee, Oh! my heart ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... was offended, why did it not mark its sense of Josiah's failure to read the future by electing another Mayor? The answer is, that while all were agreed that his antic was inexcusable, all were equally agreed to pretend that it was a mere trifle of no importance; you cannot deprive a man of his prescriptive right for a mere trifle of no importance. Besides, nobody could be so foolish as to imagine that ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... of this trying day Clark had kept up the spirits of his men in every way he could. In telling about it later, he said: "I received much help from a little antic drummer, a boy with such a fun-loving spirit that he made the men laugh, in spite of their weariness, at ...
— Stories of Later American History • Wilbur F. Gordy
... deep for mirth! O posturing apes that rant, and dare This antic attitude! O Earth, With your wild jest of ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... And, where I language want, my signs The bird upon the bough divines. No leaf does tremble in the wind, Which I returning cannot find. Out of these scattered Sibyl's leaves, Strange prophecies my fancy weaves: What Rome, Greece, Palestine, e'er said, I in this light Mosaic read. Under this antic cope I move, Like some great prelate of the grove; Then, languishing at ease, I toss On pallets thick with velvet moss; While the wind, cooling through the boughs, Flatters with air my panting brows. Thanks for my rest, ye mossy banks! And unto you, cool ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... leave our downy Diminutive browny Alone, near his "diggings;" Ever free to pursue, Rush round, and renew His loved vaulting Unhalting, His whirling, And curling, And twirling, And swirling, And his ways, on the whole So unsteady! 'Pon my soul, Having gazed Quite amazed, On each wonderful antic And summersault frantic, For just a bare minute, My head, it feels whizzy; My eyesight's grown dizzy; And both legs, unstable As a ghost's tipping table, Seem ...
— On the Tree Top • Clara Doty Bates
... in, drawn as background, and a showman to talk for all the characters. Still better puppets are doll heads and arms of various sorts, dressed in flowing robes and provided with holes for two fingers and a thumb of the operator, who moves them from below. They can be made to dance and antic as you like on a stage above the showman's head, as Punch and Judy have always done. The more elaborate marionettes are worked with strings from above, so that they can open and close their mouths and otherwise act most realistically; these are, of course, more difficult, but quite ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... Music and poetry is his delight; Therefore I'll have Italian masks by night, Sweet speeches, comedies, and pleasing shows; And in the day, when he shall walk abroad, Like sylvan nymphs my pages shall be clad; My men, like satyrs grazing on the lawns, Shall with their goat-feet dance the antic hay; Sometime a lovely boy in Dian's shape, With hair that gilds the water as it glides Crownets of pearl about his naked arms, And in his sportful hands an olive-tree, To hide those parts which men delight to see, Shall bathe him in a spring; and there, hard ...
— Edward II. - Marlowe's Plays • Christopher Marlowe
... which places so high in the general scale of values accomplishments which he cannot practise, shrinking from the suave devices of gesture and expression which in his own case might quickly pass into antic or grimace, he withdraws more and more from the places where such arts win esteem to live in a private world of inner sentiment. As he leaves this sure retreat but rarely himself, so he forbids ingress to others; and becoming yearly a greater recluse, he confines ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... Fontenelle asleep;[214] Let them with Browne contrive, to vulgar trick, To cure the dead, and make the living sick;[215] Let them in charity to Murphy give Some old French piece, that he may steal and live; Let them with antic Foote subscriptions get, And advertise a Summer-house of Wit. Thus, or in any better way they please, With these great men, or with great men like these, Let them their appetite for laughter feed; I on my Journey ...
— English Satires • Various
... the fullest with significance—this would seem to be the aim and end of Mr. Meredith's ambition. Of simplicity in his own person he appears incapable. The texture of his expression must be stiff with allusion, or he deems it ill spun; there must be something of antic in his speech, or he cannot believe he is addressing himself to the Immortals; he has praised with perfect understanding the lucidity, the elegance, the ease, of Moliere, and yet his aim in art (it would appear) ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... asked, "How sayst thou, O my lady? Shall I sell thee to my lord Sharif al-Din here for nine hundred and fifty gold pieces?" She looked at him and, seeing him to be an old man with a dyed beard, said to the broker, "Art thou silly, that thou wouldst sell me to this worn out Father Antic? Am I cotton refuse or threadbare rags that thou marchest me about from greybeard to greybeard, each like a wall ready to fall or an Ifrit smitten down of a fire-ball? As for the first, the poet had him in mind when he ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... Mathewson could or could not dance the "Irish Washerwoman," or any other antic dance improvised to that live air; she had only to yield herself to Red Pepper Burns's hands and steps, and let him disport himself around her. A most startlingly hilarious performance was immediately and ...
— Red Pepper Burns • Grace S. Richmond
... the mundal, dancing, and mimicry, that the roy's son was charmed with their performances. At length they each drew a dagger, and, like the dancers of Dekkan, continued to flourish them for some time, making a thousand antic postures in advancing, retreating, and turning round. At last, suddenly rushing upon the roy's son, they plunged both the daggers into his breast, afterwards attacking his companions. Their remaining friends, who were watching without the tent, on hearing an alarm, ripped ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... but several fresh spectators were yet to see the sight; and though the exhausted animals were but little inclined to perform their antic feats, their master twitched the rope, that was fastened round their necks, so violently, that they were compelled ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... the practice of these medical gentlemen of the forest: "He approaches his patient with a variety of contortions and gestures, and performs by his side, and over him, all the antic tricks that his imagination can suggest. He breathes on him, blows in his mouth, and often makes an external application of the medicines which he has prepared, by throwing them over in his face, mouth, and ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... procured (a ring-tailed opossum), making signs for us to take it up: in a short time another native came towards us, when the other descended from the tree. They trembled excessively, and, if the expression may be used, were absolutely INTOXICATED with fear, displayed in a thousand antic motions, convulsive laughing, and singular motions of the head. They were both youths not exceeding twenty years of age, of good countenance and figure, but most horribly marked by the skin and flesh ...
— Journals of Two Expeditions into the Interior of New South Wales • John Oxley
... passion, and called to him with curses to come down. The figure drew back at the first cry, with an agitated movement so abrupt as almost to be called an antic. The next moment the man seemed to reconsider and collect himself, and began to come down the zigzag garden path, but with obvious reluctance, his feet falling in slower and slower rhythm. Through March's mind were throbbing the phrases ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... on the mind of men, and wailing went the weather, Yea, a sick cloud upon the soul when we were boys together. Science announced nonentity and art admired decay; The world was old and ended: but you and I were gay; Round us in antic order their crippled vices came— Lust that had lost its laughter, fear that had lost its shame. Like the white lock of Whistler, that lit our aimless gloom, Men showed their own white feather as proudly as a plume. Life was a fly that faded, and death a drone that stung; The world was very old ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... Now when the four heard the Goodwife speaking these words each of them said to himself, "Indeed I am a dead man and 'tis the intention of this woman to peach upon me." Presently her husband asked her, "What be these four histories?" and answered she, "I saw four men each and every of whom was an antic fellow, a droll, a buffoon; furthermore, O my lord, one and all of them were garbed in gaberdine and bonnet."—And Shahrazad was surprised by the dawn of day and fell silent and ceased saying her permitted say. Then quoth her sister Dunyazad, "How sweet and tasteful is ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... veranda. The abrupt transition from violent and erratic motion to a solid and substantial footing affected him unpleasantly, with an undeniable qualm; the earth seemed to rock and flow beneath him as if under the influence of an antic earthquake. He was for some seconds occupied with the problem of regaining his poise, and it was not until he heard an Englishwoman's voice uplifted in accents of anger, that he remembered the other wayfarer with whom he was to share his tonga, or associated the white-clad figure ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... fantastic idea of irregular grace and bewildered melancholy any one can play Hamlet, as we have seen it played, with strut, and stare, and antic right-angled sharp-pointed gestures, it is difficult to say, unless it be that Hamlet is not bound, by the prompter's cue, to study the part of Ophelia. The account of Ophelia's ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... my way down to the sea-shore, and used to pretend to be busy in picking up shells, and in stringing them together into necklaces and bracelets for my own adornment. Then I made others, which I presented, with many a strange antic, to anybody I met. Day after day did I continue this employment, my eye wandering anxiously over the blue sea in search ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... TALBOT. Thou antic Death, which laugh'st us here to scorn, Anon, from thy insulting tyranny, Coupled in bonds of perpetuity, Two Talbots, winged through the lither sky, In thy despite shall 'scape mortality. O thou, whose ...
— King Henry VI, First Part • William Shakespeare [Aldus edition]
... ended, mats were brought from the houses, whereon the guests were seated, and given to eat bread made of maize, and tobacco to smoke. The savages also entertained them with dancing and singing and antic tricks and grimaces. They were naked except a covering of skins about the loins, and many were painted in black and red, with artificial knots of lovely colors, beautiful and pleasing to the eye. The 4th of May they were entertained ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Extravagant Travel Alley Concur Travail Fee Attention Apprehend Superb Magnanimity Lewd Adroit Altruism Instigation Quite Benevolence Complexion Urchin Charity Bishop Thoroughfare Unction Starve Naughty Speed Cunning Moral Success Decent Antic Crafty Handsome Savage Usury Solemn Uncouth Costume Parlor Window Presumption Bombastic Colleague Petty ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... Now, if all goes well and his song is clear, if his crest and gorgeous splashes of tints and shades are fresh and shining with the gloss of health, then the feathered lover may hope, indeed, that the little brown mate may look with favour upon dance, song, or antic—and the home is become a reality. In some instances this home is for only one short season, when the two part, probably forever; but in other cases the ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... acorns," Paula laughed, her arms about her sisters, the three of them smilingly expectant of an inevitable antic. ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... you speak truth: I never yet saw man, How wise, how noble, young, how rarely featur'd, But she would spell him backward: if fair-fac'd, She would swear the gentleman should be her sister; If black, why, Nature, drawing of an antic, Made a foul blot: if tall, a lance ill-headed; If low, an agate very vilely cut; If speaking, why, a vane blown with all winds; If silent, why, a block moved with none. So turns she every man the wrong side out; And never gives to truth and virtue that Which simpleness ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Knight edition]
... when he awakened again, and while I was milking my goats hard by, out he runs from the cave towards me in my inclosure, and laying himself down on the ground, in the lowest prostration, made all the antic gestures imaginable, to express his thankfulness to me for being his deliverer. I confess though the manner of his behaviour seemed to be ludicrous enough to occasion, laughter, yet I was very much moved at his affection, so that my heart melted within me, fearing ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... way. The London solicitor, professionally consulted by the dishonest firm, gave his opinion that such a work publicly issued would be a boon to the Society for the Suppression of Vice, and would not escape the unsavoury attentions of old Father Antic—the Law. ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... had in the enclosure just by: when he espied me he came running to me, laying himself down again upon the ground, with all the possible signs of an humble, thankful disposition, making a great many antic gestures to show it. At last he lays his head flat upon the ground, close to my foot, and sets my other foot upon his head, as he had done before; and after this made all the signs to me of subjection, servitude, ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... (But stop,—first let me kiss away that tear)— Thou tiny image of myself! (My love, he's poking peas into his ear!) Thou merry, laughing sprite! With spirits feather-light, Untouch'd by sorrow, and unsoil'd by sin— (Good heavens! the child is swallowing a pin!) Thou little tricksy Puck! With antic toys so funnily bestuck, Light as the singing bird that wings the air— (The door! the door! he'll tumble down the stair!) Thou darling of thy sire! (Why, Jane, he'll set his pinafore a-fire!) Thou imp of ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... meaning, in which it, and it only, moves. For example, 'divers' implies difference only, but 'diverse' difference with opposition; thus the several Evangelists narrate the same event in 'divers' manner, but not in 'diverse'. 'Antique' is ancient, but 'antic', is now the ancient regarded as overlived, out of date, and so in our days grotesque, ridiculous; and then, with a dropping of the reference to age, the grotesque, the ridiculous alone. 'Human' is what every man is, 'humane' is what every man ought to be; for Johnson's suggestion ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... to press me for further particulars of the Amalgamated subscriptions. We all know the story of the comedian informed in the midst of a performance of his beloved wife's death, who yet must laugh and antic to the end of the play. I appreciated the heavy-hearted actor's plight as I surveyed the little throng so vitally interested in their dollar affairs. I longed to mount a chair and tell them how they had been duped, but my role called for different lines. It was my part to feign satisfaction and ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... my old Spad through every antic we two had ever done together. The observers in the balloons must have thought me crazy, a pilot running amuck from aerial shell shock. I had discovered a new meaning for that "grand and glorious feeling" which is so often ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... retorted. "I recall one antic, just before you left us—" He broke off to meditate. Clicking his tongue against his teeth, he gazed at me almost with resentment, as if I were responsible for this depressing work of time. "No!" he exclaimed, looking at me in gloomy speculation, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... good will, and admirable effect did he lace Mr. Hourigan, that the latter worthy, after cutting some very antic capers, and exhibiting in a good many other respects several proofs of his agility that could scarcely be expected from his heavy and ungainly figure, was at last fairly obliged to sing out,—"Oh, Misther John, Misther John! you will—Misther ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... face with caressing fondness, whispered something smilingly in his ear, and in this manner smoothed the wrinkles that were gathering on his brow. But the moment after, some wild whim would make her resume her antic movements; and all went ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... dignity; they get obeyed; they are good and charitable to their dependants. But they have no notion of PLAY of mind: no conception that the charm of society depends upon it. They think cleverness an antic, and have a constant though needless horror of being thought to have any of it. So much does this stiff dignity give the tone, that the few Englishmen capable of social brilliancy mostly secrete it. They reserve it for persons whom they can trust, and whom they know to be capable of appreciating ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... Innocents by Le Brun, the Swiss observed, that it was un beau morceau, and Mr. Pallet replied,—"Yes, yes, one may see with half an eye, that it can be the production of no other; for Bomorso's style both in colouring and drapery, is altogether peculiar: then his design is tame, and his expression antic and unnatural. Doctor, you have seen my judgment of Solomon; I think I may, without presumption—but, I don't choose to make comparisons; I leave that odious task to other people, and let my works speak for themselves. France, to be sure, is rich in the arts; ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... or reason for hoping, antic-ipation. 5. Breast'ed (pro. brest'ed), opposed courageously. 6. Numb, without the power of feeling or motion. Re-laxed', loosened. 12. ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... out for my lady's amusement!" said the stranger, smiling; "you make rare sport with your antic tricks, at the fort yonder, ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... new-stablished would stand, and be No longer vext of this infirmity. And so that night, ere lying down to sleep, There came on him, half making him to weep And half to laugh that such a thing should be, A mad conceit and antic fantasy (And yet more sad than merry was the whim) To crave this boon of Sleep, beseeching him To send the dream of dreams most coveted. And ere he lay him down upon his bed, A soft sweet song was born within his thought; But if he sang the song, ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... years' exhaustive study of these antic spirits (approaching them always from the naturalistic side), Maxwell deduces certain helpful rules: 'Use a small room,' he says, 'and have it warm. Medium and sitters must not have ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... jumped to a conclusion—to which the late Lord Salisbury also jumped years ago at a very memorable British Association meeting—that a species is modified by the sudden appearance of eccentric individuals here and there in the general mass who interbreed—preferentially. Helped by a streak of antic egotism in themselves, they conceived of the superman as a posturing personage, misunderstood by the vulgar, fantastic, wonderful. But the antic Personage, the thing I have called the Effigy, is not new but old, the oldest ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... a good day's journey from his master's house he sat down, and being weary he fell asleep. No sooner had slumber taken full possession of him, and closed his long-opened eyelids, but he thought he saw many goodly proper personages in antic measures tripping about him, and withal he heard such music as he thought that Orpheus, that famous Greek fiddler (had he been alive), compared to one of these, had been as infamous as a Welsh harper that plays for cheese and onions. As delights commonly last not ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... flaring red geraniums, which looked as if they were painted; and across the circle of smooth lawn in front of the piazza the name of the hotel was printed in alleged ornamental plants letters two feet long, immensely ugly. Hose had been elevated to the office of postmaster, and lived in a Queen Antic cottage on the main street. Little Billy Ransom had grown up into a very interesting young man, with a decided musical genius, and a tenor voice, which being discovered by an enterprising patron ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... the dance, obey, Temper'd to thy warbled lay. O'er Idalia's velvet-green The rosy-crowned Loves are seen On Cytherea's day, With antic Sport, and blue-eyed Pleasures, Frisking light in frolic measures; Now pursuing, now retreating, Now in circling troops they meet: To brisk notes in cadence beating Glance their many-twinkling feet. Slow-melting strains their Queen's approach declare: ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... I'm asthounded at yer ignorance of gogerfy! Thim little fish grow in the Atla-antic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean, the Injun Ocean, the Airctic Ocean, an'—oh, in all them oceans. An' the big fish, such as the whale, the halleybut, the shairk, an' all o' thim, they live ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces
... the two kinds of kittens, but what difference always puzzled her. She would clean up a kitten and comb it slick, then turn to one of the squirrels and wash it, but rarely, if ever, completing the work because of some disconcerting un-catlike antic. As the squirrels grew older they also grew friskier, and soon took the washing as the signal for a frolic. As well try to wash a bubble. They were bundles of live springs, twisting out of her paws, dancing over her back, leaping, ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... it did not appear as if the huge walrus realised the danger approaching so steadily, for every now and then, while performing some antic, the bear continued to lessen the distance between it and its prey, while simulating the greatest innocence and assuming to be thinking of anything but making an attack. So playful a creature, enjoying itself thoroughly in the sunshine, could never have ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... Old Father Antic the Law as lavish a letter of recommendation as the Legal Profession ever received, and he gave it for the very natural reason that he had no use for the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... For one thing, her sense of humor had quickened. Joe had often maintained she had none. If Joe could see her now! No; that was not her meaning precisely; but at any rate, it had quickened. How every antic of the comedians appealed to her! The excessively tall and the excessively short Germans who talked into one another's teeth; the young person who sang coon songs in a fashion not negro, but all her own; the giant with a boutonniere ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... antic is right. Yet they are too sorry a crew, and too small to do mischief. They suspect us of carrying treasure aboard, and your friend the captain, I take it, is the roundest villain of ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... which was so good a bit of irony that it made him smile, flashed across him: he might borrow it of Mrs. Bowen. She was, in fact, the only person in Florence with whom he was at all on borrowing terms, and a sad sense of the sweetness of her lost friendship followed upon the antic notion. No; for once he could not go to Mrs. Bowen. He recollected now the many pleasant talks they had had together, confidential in virtue of their old acquaintance, and harmlessly intimate in many things. He recalled how, when he was feeling dull from the Florentine air, ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... Dashing them back against the hills, kept on With their reverberations. And these spots The neighbouring country-side doth feign to be Haunts of the goat-foot satyrs and the nymphs; And tells ye there be fauns, by whose night noise And antic revels yonder they declare The voiceless silences are broken oft, And tones of strings are made and wailings sweet Which the pipe, beat by players' finger-tips, Pours out; and far and wide the farmer-race Begins to hear, when, ...
— Of The Nature of Things • [Titus Lucretius Carus] Lucretius
... the queen was to be conducted, but the uproar and confusion was indescribable; strange and antic figures hurrying to and fro, seeking their companions, and crying lustily for their places. Sir John Finett and Sir George Goring fulfilled the office of whippers-in, attempting to establish order out of these undisciplined elements. Grace drew back; but suddenly there came forth an ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... by the pavement linger Under the rooms where once she played, Who from the feast would rise to fling her One poor sou for her serenade? One short laugh for the antic finger Thrumming ...
— The Vigil of Venus and Other Poems by "Q" • Q
... from him that the hour for luncheon had arrived. Although I was at work within sound of his voice, these came nearly always in the form of a note, delivered with an unvarying grin by the office-boy, who would drop any other errand, however pressing, to do Field's antic bidding. These notes were generally flung into the waste-paper basket, much to my present regret, for of themselves they would have made a most remarkable exhibit. Sometimes the summons would be in the form of a bar of music like ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... they trim their lanterns, confident of the ludicrous to come. So confident that their grip of an English gentleman, in whom they have spied their game, never relaxes until he begins insensibly to frolic and antic, unknown to himself, and comes out in the native steam which is their scent of the chase. Instantly off they scour, Egoist and imps. They will, it is known of them, dog a great House for centuries, and be at the birth of all the new heirs in succession, diligently taking ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... knee-high through a dust of story— A dust of terror and torture, grief and crime; Ghosts that are ENGLAND'S wonder, and shame, and glory Throng where he walks, an antic of old time; A sense of long immedicable tears Were ever with him, could his ears but heed; The stern Hic Jacets of our bloodiest years Are for his reading, had he eyes to read, But here, where CROOKBACK raged, and CRANMER ...
— Hawthorn and Lavender - with Other Verses • William Ernest Henley
... of this man, through a long life on the sea, to the motion of the sea. There is a rhythm to this chaos of crossing, buffeting waves. I sense this rhythm, although I cannot solve it. But Mr. Pike knows it. Again and again, as we paced up and down this afternoon, when to me nothing unusually antic seemed impending, he would seize my arm as I lost balance, and as the Elsinore smashed down on her side and heeled over and over with a colossal roll that seemed never to end, and that always ended with an abrupt, snap-of-the-whip effect as she began ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... most of the company made the best of it. Mlle. Frahender grew pale and ill, and her hair flew about in the most comic disarray. Cosily ensconced in a corner, Maurice sketched the various attitudes his companions assumed with every antic of the lightly-laden, wave-tossed Soulacroup. Hunched up on the seat, Esperance clung to the rigging. Genevieve clutched at her when a wave pitched the boat too far over. The others, well muffled up, waited in silence. Jean ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... children's toys, for what they contain, but not the less do they buzz at our understandings and insist that they break or we, and, in either case, to show a mere foolish idle rattle in hollowness. Nor have the antic bobbings— ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 19, 1891 • Various
... too much swipes at a funeral the night before, nothing of which contributed to make me less irritable. My head ached. The sun- glare on the water made my eyes ache, while I was suffering more than half a touch of mal de mer from the antic conduct of the outrigger on the blobby sea. The air was stagnant. In the lee of Waihee, between the white beach and the roof, no whisper of breeze eased the still sultriness. I really think I was too miserable to summon the resolution to give up the fishing ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... engage again in the antic whirl I have a special exhibit to show you outside the ballroom. Spare me ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... disembarking crew turned her back. They were all in varying stages of liquor—from two or three who had to be hauled over the float and up to the bunkhouse like sacks of bran, to others who were so happily under the influence of John Barleycorn that every move was some silly antic. She retreated in disgust. When Charlie reached the cabin, he himself proved to be fairly mellow, in the best of spirits—speaking truly ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Generally he gave out the number of the short anthem which accompanied this manoeuvre, but today he made no such announcement. A discreet curtain hid the organist from the congregation, and veiled his gymnastics with the stops and his antic dancing on the pedals, and now when Mr Rumbold moved from his stall, there came from the organ the short introduction to Bach's "Mein Glaubige Herz," which even Lucia had allowed to be nearly "equal" to Beethoven. And then came ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... of old were logs of wood, And worship was to puppets paid; In antic dress the idol stood, And priests ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... the dance, obey, 25 Temper'd to thy warbled lay. O'er Idalia's velvet-green The rosy-crowned Loves are seen On Cytherea's day With antic Sports, and blue-eyed Pleasures, 30 Frisking light in frolic measures; Now pursuing, now retreating, Now in circling troops they meet: To brisk notes in cadence beating, Glance their many-twinkling feet. 35 Slow melting strains their Queen's approach declare: Where'er ...
— Select Poems of Thomas Gray • Thomas Gray
... value; after which came the three times nine horses and mules, the latter being very handsome, but the horses had lost their beauty and condition, as, except one or two, they were very unfit for being sent or accepted between princes. This done, the Persian returned, with many antic tricks, to his place, which was far inferior to mine, as I stood alone, and above all the subjects, though Asaph Khan at first wanted to put me from it, but I maintained it as my right, having been appointed me by the king. This was only the first act of the play presented by the Persian ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... or this is it,—an expression by which they assert the verity of the Christian religion. After they had by these religious circulations and clamours turned their heads and inflamed their madness, they began to act the moat antic tricks and postures in a thousand shapes of distraction. Sometimes they dragged one another along the floor all round the Sepulchre; sometimes they set one man upright upon another's shoulders, and in this ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... Punchinello With the pretty, laughing fellow; Even the second mate gave sly winks At the noisy mid-day high jinks. Never was a crew so happy With a curly-headed chappy, Never were such sports gigantic, Never dog with joy more antic. ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... function, an idiot by breeding, and a solicitor by presumption," is the third propulsion; after which we lose reckoning of the number of the kicks, they come sometimes so ingeniously fast. "Basest and hungriest inditer," "groom," "rank pettifogger," "mere and arrant pettifogger," "no antic hobnail at a morris but is more handsomely facetious;" "a boar in a vineyard," "a snout in this pickle," "the serving-man at Addlegate" (suggested by 'the maids at Aldgate'), "this odious fool," "the noisome stench ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... own average experience,—that besides these gloomy associations, the name of Venice will conjure up scenes of brilliant and wanton gayety, and that in the foreground of the brightest picture will be the Carnival of Venice, full of antic delight, romantic adventure, and lawless prank. But the carnival, with all the old merry- making life of the city, is now utterly obsolete, and, in this way, the conventional, masquerading, pleasure-loving ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... lions, tigers, leopards, by those who from long management of them possessed the same power over them as the groom over his horse, or else drawn along upon low platforms, upon which they were made to perform a thousand antic tricks for the amusement of the gaping and wondering crowds. Then came not many fewer than two thousand gladiators in pairs, all arranged in such a manner as to display to the greatest advantage their well-knit joints, and projecting and swollen muscles. Of ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... land instantly after its disappearance becoming a fair field, in which arts, sciences, and all the amiable virtues flourished, instead of being a pestilent marsh where swine-like ignorance wallowed, and artful hypocrites, like so many wills-o'-the-wisp, played antic gambols about, around and ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... group of Preludes. What is there to say about him? Nothing. Surely never, since Chopin went from us, has Chopin been so played. The memory of my Fleet Street dinner vanished. The hall vanished. All surroundings vanished. Vladimir, the antic, took us by the hand and led us forth into a new country: a country like nothing that we have seen or dreamed of, and therefore a country of which not the vaguest image can be created. It was a country, or, perhaps, ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... it's so funny he has to laugh when he thinks of it. They go up an alley where they won't be overheard, and Herman at last manages to keep his laughter down long enough to tell it. It's a comical antic ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... hours, therefore, not of furnishing instruction to the hungry and inquiring mind—ah, no!—but of a desperately sustained struggle in which, with every faculty on the alert to discover the truest expedients, with every nerve strained to the utmost, I strove for the mastery over this antic, untamed animal, until I could throw the reins loose at night, and drop my head down on my desk in the deserted ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... crafty, ever encouraged and urged me in my antic course that brought Kim's favour, not alone to me, but through me to Hendrik Hamel and all our company. I here mention Hendrik Hamel as my adviser, for it has a bearing on much that followed at Keijo in the winning of Yunsan's ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... stands the Alms-House; a building of an antic order of architecture; still known by its original title to the paynobility and indigentry of the surrounding country, several of whose ancestors abode there in the days before voting was a certain livelihood; although now bearing a door-plate inscribed, ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 12 , June 18,1870 • Various
... famous in battle, joust and tourney, a potent lord of noble heritage, known to the world as Sir Pertinax of Shene Castle and divers rich manors and demesnes. Furthermore, I that do seem a sorry jesting-fellow, I that in antic habit go, that cut ye capers with ass's ears a-dangle and languish here your fellow in bonds, am yet no antic, no poor, motley Fool, but a duke and lord of many fair towns and rich cities beyond Morfeville and the Southward ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... performed by three dancing-masters, who were painted all over of various colors, with long sticks in their hands, upon the ends of which were fastened long feathers of swans and other birds, neatly woven in the shape of a fowl's wing; in this disguise they performed many antic tricks, waving their sticks and feathers about with great skill, to imitate the flying and fluttering of birds, keeping exact time with their music." This music was the measured thumping of an Indian drum. From time to time, a warrior would leap up, and the drum and ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... by Shakespeare's tragedies,—again in varying degrees. Perhaps they are the very strongest of the emotions awakened by the early tragedy of Richard II., where they receive a concentrated expression in Richard's famous speech about the antic Death, who ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... I plod through miry ways Of antic wit, and quibbling mazes drear, Let not thy shade malignant censure fear, If aught of inward mirth my search betrays. Long slept that mirth in dust of ancient days, Erewhile to Guise or wanton Valois ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... thousand antic shapes I take; The stoutest heart at my touch will quake. The miser dreams of a bag of gold, Or a ponderous chest on his bosom rolled. The drunkard groans 'neath a cask of wine; The reveller swelts 'neath a weighty chine. The recreant turns, by his foes assailed, ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... their opinion, only worthy of a barbarian. But the most forward and tormenting of them all is my quondam friend, the Count; who is half a lunatic, but of so diverting a kind that, ere a man has time to be angry, he either cuts a caper, utters an absurdity, or acts some mad antic or other, ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... the tents had been pitched, the Indians came forward with their formal salutations. In front advanced, with antic dancings, the "medicine man," bearing in each hand a spread fan of white feathers fastened to a rod hung from top to bottom with little bells; marching behind this jingling symbol of peace and friendship, came the King and Queen, followed by about twenty others, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... If I could have deluded myself into a belief of this kind, I should have been far more satisfied. But my brain, tenacious of its reason, refused to lend itself to such imaginations—and though I endeavoured to play the antic to myself, I knew that I, the offspring of man, during long years one among many—now remained sole ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... persons only; but all the variety would appear, in a short succession of moments, in one and the same person. A man that we saw this minute dumb, and, as it were, stupid and confounded, would the next minute be dancing and hallooing like an antic; and the next moment be tearing his hair, or pulling his clothes to pieces, and stamping them under his feet like a madman; in a few moments after that we would have him all in tears, then sick, swooning, and, had ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... Sword in the other: She was robed in white, and her brow was ornamented with a sparkling Diadem. After her appeared St. Genevieve, surrounded by a number of Imps, who putting themselves into grotesque attitudes, drawing her by the robe, and sporting round her with antic gestures, endeavoured to distract her attention from the Book, on which her eyes were constantly fixed. These merry Devils greatly entertained the Spectators, who testified their pleasure by repeated ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... in truth, yet doubtless in the conviction that such an exhibition showed the superiority of anointed kings even over death—he ordered his servants to place a golden crown. And thus, during the whole of his long illness, the Antic held his state, while the poor mortal representative of absolute power lay living still, but slowly ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... prepared to kindle by long seclusion and the fervor of strict Calvinistic notions. In the glooms of Charnwood he was assailed by illusions similar in kind to those which are related of the famous Anthony of Padua. Wild antic faces would ever and anon protrude themselves upon his sensorium. Whether he shut his eyes or kept them open, the same illusions operated. The darker and more profound were his cogitations, the droller and more whimsical ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... retreating, and striking their clubs together, keeping exact time to the music; while one, whimsically crowned with a fox's skin, the tail of which flaunted down his back, kept capering round the skirts of the dance, and rattling a Christmas-box with many antic gesticulations. ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... vain joys in which their wills consume Such powers of wit and soul as are of force To raise their beings to eternity, May be converted on works fitting men; And for the practice of a forced look, An antic gesture, or a fustian phrase, Study the native frame of a true heart, An inward comeliness of bounty, knowledge, And spirit that may conform them actually To God's high figures, which they have ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... feeling in the agitated suspense was not so much that the prisoner should go free, as that the prisoner's counsel should win his case. It was as if Charley Steele were on trial instead of the prisoner. He was the imminent figure; it was his fate that was in the balance—such was the antic irony of suggestion. And the truth was, that the fates of both prisoner and counsel had been weighed in the balance that ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... for I read the papers at this period daily; but from some general dread and fear, that was begotten, like a vapour out of the fermentation of all sorts of opinions; most people of any sagacity thinking that the state of things in France being so much of an antic, poetical, and playactor-like guise, that it would never obtain that respect, far less that reverence from the world, which is necessary to the maintenance of all beneficial government. The consequence of this was a great ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... windows, while groans—such was the dark fancy of the author—issued from a windy tower. But there was one supreme chapter in which the hero was locked in a haunted room and saw a candle at a chink of the wall. It belonged to the villain, who nightly played there a ghostly antic to frighten honest folk ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... she was as intimate with him as if he had been her brother. One night he came home just a trifle tipsy. She noted at last what was wrong with him, and her heart yearned over the sinner. There were five or six glasses inside of him, and each was the father of an antic. He was an opera company, a gymnasium, and a menagerie at once, all tinged with a certain hilarious unsteadiness which was fascinating. But at last he got to his bed, which was more ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... words "wanken" and "schweben" are not easily translated. The English words, by which we attempt to render them, are either vulgar or antic, or not of sufficiently general application. So "der Wolken Zug"—The Draft, the Procession of Clouds. The Masses of the Clouds sweep onward in ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... eventful history; nor even to pity the breathless, flushed, and overheated Babette, who was so ill the next day, as to be unable to quit her bed; nor can we detail the jokes, the merriment, and the songs which went round, the peals of laughter, the loud choruses, the antic feats performed by the company; still more impossible would it be to give an idea of the three tremendous cheers, which shook the Lust Haus to its foundations, when Corporal and Mistress Van Spitter, upon their retiring, bade farewell to the ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... them, as they recovered themselves, came and worshipped us (taking us for gods or devils, I know not which, nor did it much matter to us): some kneeling, some throwing themselves flat on the ground, made a thousand antic gestures, but all with tokens of the most profound submission. It presently came into my head, that we might now, by the law of arms, take as many prisoners as we would, and make them travel with us, and carry ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... ragman, and I'm for any man that insults me! log-leg or leather-breeches, green-shirt or blanket-coat, land-trotter or river-roller,—I'm the man for a massacree!" Then giving himself a twirl upon his foot that would have done credit to a dancing-master, he proceeded to other antic demonstrations of hostility, which when performed in after years on the banks of the Lower Mississippi, by himself and his worthy imitators, were, we suspect, the cause of their receiving the name ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... booty for a moment. Our seamen put on him a jacket and trowsers, which produced great merriment, for he had all the gestures of a monkey newly dressed: We also gave him bread, which he eat with a voracious appetite, and after having played a thousand antic tricks, he leaped overboard, jacket and trowsers and all, and swam back again to his proa; after this several others swam to the ship, ran up the side of the gun-room ports, and having crept in, snatched up whatever lay in their reach, and immediately ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... was somewhat peculiar, at least to Captain Delano, nor, as he saw the two thus postured, could he resist the vagary, that in the black he saw a headsman, and in the white a man at the block. But this was one of those antic conceits, appearing and vanishing in a breath, from which, perhaps, the best regulated mind is ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... propped in the window-seat of her bedchamber, book in hand, was gazing vacantly out over the rainy seas that washed the Golden Gate, and whispering to herself, "How different he is from poor Burley, with his empty head and his single little antic ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... concealed in the bushes...They were all perfectly naked except one young fellow who had a bunch of grass fastened round his waist which came up behind like the tail of a kangaroo. He was very merry, and from his gestures, possessed a keen sense of humour. "He would throw himself into a thousand antic shapes, ...
— The Logbooks of the Lady Nelson - With The Journal Of Her First Commander Lieutenant James Grant, R.N • Ida Lee
... with gold, and Time itself doth drowse; The little stream, too indolent to pass, Loiters below the cloudy willow boughs, That build amid the glare a shadowy house, And with a Paradisal freshness brims Amid cool-rooted reeds with glossy blade; The antic water-fly above it skims, And cows stand shadow-like in the green shade, Or knee-deep ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne
... was teaching them in his own tongue from apparently vague recollections of the manual of arms. I do not insist that we profited by the occasion; I only say that life likes a motley wear, and that he who rejects the antic aspects it so often inappropriately puts on ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... that he found the subject too absorbing to allow of his giving much attention to old Father Antic the Law. At any rate, he was never called to the Bar, and posterity cannot be too thankful that his great mind was not lost in 'the abyss of legal eminence' which has received so many men who might have adorned their country. ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... I see some crooked mimic jeer, And tax my Muse with this fantastic grace; Turning my papers asks, "What have we here?" Making withal some filthy antic face. I fear no censure nor what thou canst say, Nor shall my spirit one jot of vigour lose. Think'st thou, my wit shall keep the packhorse way, That every dudgeon low invention goes? Since sonnets thus in bundles are ...
— Elizabethan Sonnet Cycles - Idea, by Michael Drayton; Fidessa, by Bartholomew Griffin; Chloris, by William Smith • Michael Drayton, Bartholomew Griffin, and William Smith
... Max declared. "A second-hand store is got old furniture from two years old oder ten years old, understand me; aber an antic store carries old furniture from a hundred years ...
— Elkan Lubliner, American • Montague Glass
... belly laugh, hearty laugh; guffaw; burst of laughter, fit of laughter, shout of laughter, roar of laughter, peal of laughter; cachinnation[obs3]; Kentish fire; tiger. play; game, game at romps; gambol, romp, prank, antic, rig, lark, spree, skylarking, vagary, monkey trick, gambade, fredaine[obs3], escapade, echappee[Fr], bout, espieglerie[Fr]; practical joke &c. (ridicule) 856. dance; hop, reel, rigadoon[obs3], saraband[obs3], hornpipe, bolero, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... she by the pavement linger Under the rooms where once she played, Who from the feast would rise and fling her One poor sou for her serenade? One poor laugh from the antic finger Thrumming a ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Scotchman from the New Hebrides. It was a great drinking. He died of it, and we laded him aboard ship, pickled in a cask of trade rum, and sent him back to his own place. A sample, a fair sample, of the antic tricks we cut up on the beach ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... Yure rather more Roon than Octo, I take it," sed I, fur I never seed a puttier gal in the hull endoorin time of my life. She had on a More Antic Barsk & a Poplin Nubier with Berage trimmins onto it, while her ise & kurls was enuff to make a man jump into a mill pond without biddin his relashuns good-by. I pittid the Octoroon from the inmost ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... eyes . . . And lo! A flickering snatch of memory that floats Upon the face of a pool of darkness five And thirty dead years deep, Antic in girlish broideries And skirts and silly shoes with straps And a broad-ribanded leghorn, he walks Plain in the shadow of a church (St. Michael's: in whose brazen call To curfew his first wails of wrath were whelmed), ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... not; I will not skip like an antic, and show thee my poor little spindle legs. If I were a woman grown I should scarce show so much as the ankle of my foot. Besides, thou laughest at my hopping and jumping amongst these foolish woolly beasts, and I would not ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris
... had called "Ben Butler" was not so easily subdued. It was "Ben Butler's" special antic to fall over backward. He was a sullen, evil-eyed brute, with a curve in his nose and a droop in his nostrils, which gave him a ridiculous resemblance to the presidential candidate of the Anti-Monopoly Party. He was a great man-killing bronco, with a treacherous streak, and ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... about him, but met much the same reception as before. Those faces, alien alike to sympathy or surprise, seemed patiently to say, "We are travelers; and, as such, must expect to meet, and quietly put up with, many antic ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... harm which appearingly they have power to do; nor are they perceived to be in great pain, save that they are usually silent and sullen. They are said to have many pleasant toyish books; but the operation of these pieces only appears in some paroxysms of antic, corybantic jollity, as if ravished and prompted by a new spirit entering into them at that instant, lighter and merrier than their own. Other books they have of involved, abstruse sense, much like the Rosurcian [Rosicrucian] style. They have nothing of the ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... a very difficult task, as the packages were so awkward and heavy, the object being to make them secure against any antic on the part of the mules if they became restive, and also to guard against the corners of the plates rubbing the ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... hollow crown That rounds the mortal temples of a king Keeps Death his court; and there the antic sits, Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp; Allowing him a breath, a little scene To monarchize, be feared, and kill with looks; Infusing him with self and vain conceit, As if this flesh which walls about our life Were brass impregnable; and humored thus, Comes ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... effect; or alternately handling his own nose and Mordecai's as if to test the relation of their masses. Under all this the fervid reciter would not pause, satisfied if the young organs of speech would submit themselves. But most commonly a sudden impulse sent Jacob leaping away into some antic or active amusement, when, instead of following the recitation he would return upon the foregoing words most ready to his tongue, and mouth or gabble, with a see-saw suited to the action of his limbs, a verse on which Mordecai had spent ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... winds blow loud! At leisure, thence, through tracts of thin resort, And sights and sounds that come at intervals, We take our way. A raree-show is here, With children gathered round; another street 175 Presents a company of dancing dogs, Or dromedary, with an antic pair Of monkeys on his back; a minstrel band Of Savoyards; or, single and alone, An English ballad-singer. Private courts, 180 Gloomy as coffins, and unsightly lanes Thrilled by some female vendor's scream, belike The very shrillest of all London cries, May then entangle our ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... and scorns at all you are! And yet was what you are; from ear to ear It laughs not—there is now no fleshy bar So called; the Antic long hath ceased to hear, But still he smiles; and whether near or far, He strips from man that mantle (far more dear Than even the tailor's), his incarnate skin,[iv] White, black, or copper—the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron |
