"Comical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... offspring." Eleanor giggled. It was fun to be with Uncle Jimmie in a restaurant again. He always called for something new and unexpected when he spoke of her to the waiter, and he was always what Albertina would consider "very comical" when he talked to him. "But stay," he added holding up an admonitory finger, "I think we'll give the little one eau rougie this time. Wouldn't you like eau rougie, tinted water, Eleanor, the way the French ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... there flashed before her baby-pictures from the realm of her mother-memories—Loll, curly-headed, grey-eyed and laughing, holding out chubby arms as he took his first unsteady steps; Loll's plump, diminutive legs, dancing "tippy-toe" with comical baby joyousness before he would consent to be buttoned into his nightie; Loll asleep, his little tousled head on the pillow beside that of "Shut-eye" an absurd and dilapidated doll dear to his infant heart. . . . And once, when she had impatiently slapped his ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... is a sober side to this apparently comical picture. The common undertone to many of these stories "hot from the lips of a spaceman" is Utopia. On these other worlds there is no illness, they've learned how to cure all diseases. There are no wars, they've learned how to live peaceably. There is no poverty, everyone has everything he wants. ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... security Into futurity, Sum up your history, Clear up a mystery, Humour proclivity For a nativity. With mirrors so magical, Tetrapods tragical, Bogies spectacular, Answers oracular, Facts astronomical, Solemn or comical, And, if you want it, he Makes a reduction on taking a quantity! Oh! If any one anything lacks, He'll find it all ready in stacks, If he'll only look in On the resident Djinn, Number seventy, ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... don't know whether a giant ever worked with it," the policeman said, with a comical smile; "anyhow, that's what they call the needle. It's come a long way to England, and belonged to a lady called Mrs. Cleopatra. What she did with it isn't exactly known; but I reckon she didn't make her gowns ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... stockings and knee breeches, and leaving his buggy by the side of the road, he walked rapidly forward and caught up with the boys, who turned and faced him as he approached. Displeased as he was, Mr. Ford could hardly resist a hearty laugh at the comical appearance of the runaways. Chips carried the big, heavy ham, and Johnnie was keeping firm hold of a hen, who stretched her neck and looked very uncomfortable in ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham
... ears, and thatched with thick, straight hair of the ashy-brown just the other side of blonde. His eyes were of the shade politely called gray, though yellow or green might be said with equal truth, had not those colours unpleasant associations. His nose was longish, and he had a comical trick of seeming to look down it, at which she greatly desired to laugh. His mouth was well cut, and decisively finished at the corners; and he had a chin to match. In spite of her irritation with him, she was reminded of a picture she had seen of Henry Fifth looking out from his helmet ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... town, I would say, where we had the mutton chops and where we heard the bullfrogs on the bridge. Or that town may be circumstanced in cherry pie, a comical face at the next table, a friendly dog with hair-trigger tail, or some immortal glass of beer on a bench outside a road-inn. These things make that town as a flame in the darkness, a flame on a hillside to overtop my course. Many years can go grinding ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... unsolved problem, for the solution of which they need all the help they can possibly get. Of course this taking of the parent into partnership would be no easy matter. Readers of that wise and humorous tale, "The Lanchester Tradition," will remember the comical failure of the head master's attempt at a "Parents' Committee." Still, all this being so, the fact emerges that the important factor in the problem of the moment is not the real parent but the traditional parent, and the false image of the traditional ...
— The School and the World • Victor Gollancz and David Somervell
... again until the following morning at breakfast. He had recovered his bird-like manner, and was full of a mysterious assassination that had just taken place in New York, all the thrilling details of which were at his fingers' ends. It was at once comical and sad to see this harmless old gentleman, with his naive, benevolent countenance, and his thin hair flaming up in a semicircle, like the footlights at a theatre, reveling in the intricacies of the ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... him, and after some comical quizzing, they decided, to their own complete satisfaction, that although the bushman's "missus" was the "littlest of all little 'uns, straight up and down," the Maluka's "knocked spots ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... became at once more confused and ludicrous: he poised himself alternately on either foot, and scratched his head vigorously, while his facial expression was something too comical for description. Finally, through a series of embarrassed chuckles and gurgles, he rippled into a broad guffaw, articulating indistinctly between its paroxysms, "Bress de Lord, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... drolleries were coming out. When he spoke of clap-trap books exciting astonishment 'in the minds of foolish persons,' the evident halting at the word 'fools,' and the smoothing of his hair, as if he must be decorous, which preceded the change to 'foolish persons,' were exceedingly comical. As for the flaming bursts, they took shape in grand tones, whose impression was made deeper, not by raising, but by lowering the voice. Your correspondent here declares that he should hold it worth his coming all the way from London in the rain in the Sunday ...
— On the Choice of Books • Thomas Carlyle
... have a secret charm in them to allay the heats and tumults of our spirits, and to make a man forget his restless resentment. The main design of this weekly paper will be to entertain the town with the most comical and diverting incidents of human life, which, in so large a place as Boston, will not fail of a universal exemplification. Nor shall we be wanting to fill up these papers with a grateful interspersion of more ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... sometimes called, Robin Goodfellow) was a shrewd and knavish sprite, that used to play comical pranks in the neighbouring villages; sometimes getting into the dairies and skimming the milk, sometimes plunging his light and airy form into the butter-churn, and while he was dancing his fantastic shape in the vessel, in vain the dairy-maid would labour to change her cream into ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... private life, I wonder? I wonder if she wears that costume all the time, and if she springs to her meals from a horizontal bar. Of course she rocks the baby to sleep on the trapeze." And Van Twiller went on making comical domestic tableaux of Mademoiselle Zabriski, like the clever, satirical dog he was, until the ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... comical that I lost my nervousness and laughed outright at her belligerency. The laugh was not a loud one, but it evidently was audible to the man entering the door, for he turned and cast a quick, sharp look upon me before ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... left standing. And if the matter had been less serious, it would have been comical to see us thus deserted upon mine own ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... much entitled to be protected in their lives, their families, and their little properties, as those who roll in luxury, ease, and affluence in the great and opulent Atlantic cities,"—for in frontier eyes the little seaboard trading-towns assumed a rather comical aspect of magnificence. The address was on the whole dignified in tone, and it undoubtedly set forth both the wrong and the remedy with entire accuracy. The Tennesseeans felt bitterly that the Federal Government ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... Their attention is so captivated by it that they do not utter a word, but follow with particular care the most minute details of the conflict. Almost all of them train up a cock, and treat him for several years with comical tenderness, when one reflects that this animal, taken as much care of as a child, is destined by its master to perish the first day it fights. I also found that it was necessary to provide some amusement compatible ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... duplicates, if you will be so generous, but nothing unique, I insist." He finally accepted one gem in the collection,—a towering structure of feathers that formed "a most delightful head-dress, quite irresistibly fascinating," tried it on before a mirror that gave back faithfully the comical reflection, and incidentally delivered a lecture on the head-ornaments of many savage and civilized nations of every age, though not at all in the style ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... servant. What she saw comforted her not a little, indeed she thought herself like to die of joy. He wondered again that such delicate little hands should have been reared on Spurnt Heath, and endured the service of the lowest; it was a half-comical content that made him send her a smiling acknowledgment; but she took it for a friendly message between them, and though the laughter in his eyes brought a mist over hers she was content. Prosper dropped asleep. Through the soft veil of her happiness she ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... The comical way in which Bandy-legs said this caused a general laugh; why, even the wondering prisoner on the floor, who, of course, could hardly understand the joke, had to grin at the humorous expression on the ...
— At Whispering Pine Lodge • Lawrence J. Leslie
... where by Mr. Blagrave's means I got into his pew, and heard Dr. Creeton, the great Scotchman, preach before the King, and Duke and Duchess, upon the words of Micah:—"Roule yourselves in dust." He made a most learned sermon upon the words; but, in his application, the most comical man that ever I heard in my life. Just such a man as Hugh Peters; saying that it had been better for the poor Cavalier never to have come with the King into England again; for he that hath the impudence to deny ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... broke the silence once more. "Well," she drawled, coughing genteelly at the same time, "better late than never, as the saying is. I wonder who it is gits up all them comical sayings?" Apparently she had no genuine desire for light upon this mystery, as she continued, immediately: "I have a gen'leman friend that's always gittin' 'em off. 'Well,' he says, 'the best of friends must part,' and, 'Thou strikest me to ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... and Pellicanus, to conceal his own emotion, looked at him with a comical grimace, and then said very kindly, though not without a feeling of satisfaction at ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... could be one of the most agreeable and amiable men in the world; but it was first necessary that he should be intimately acquainted with persons. He used to joke in a very comical and amusing manner. ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... fantastically carved joist there was an old painting representing a cat playing rackets. This picture was what moved the young man to mirth. But it must be said that the wittiest of modern painters could not invent so comical a caricature. The animal held in one of its forepaws a racket as big as itself, and stood on its hind legs to aim at hitting an enormous ball, returned by a man in a fine embroidered coat. Drawing, color, and accessories, all were treated in such a way as to suggest that the artist had ...
— At the Sign of the Cat and Racket • Honore de Balzac
... another, and it was almost comical to see the same curve in the legs, the same wide-awake style of wearing the hat, the same sparkle of the eye, good-natured smile and agile motion of every limb. Old Ben carried the bag in one hand while young Ben held the other fast, looking a little shame-faced at his own emotion now, for ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, October 1878, No. 12 • Various
... have no one to cook for you." "Ah, no, I guess not," replied Joe; "Indian never starve in bush." "Why not?" asked Mrs. Wilson. "Oh," said Joe, shaking his head humorously; "lots of squirrels." Old Antoine Rodd, or Shesheet, as he was more generally called, was a huge portly man, and was often very comical in his remarks, his good-natured face beaming with fun. One day Mrs. Wilson nearly slipped into a large puddle while threading her way along the ill-kept road, "What would you have done if I had been drowned?" she asked jokingly, as the old man helped her out of her difficulty. ...
— Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians • Edward Francis Wilson
... lad?" he said kindly. "I've an inquisitive turn of mind, and after that performance with the barrel—and it was a monstrous comical sight, Ellery, to see the little alderman skip out of the way when the barrel made straight for his shins, but not so funny when he pulls at the shock head sticking out and finds it belongs to his own ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... you would like to imitate Squire Atherton and take two pews in church for your sons and daughters and walk up the aisle every Sunday before them. It is comical to watch them. And poor Mrs. Atherton! Once she was the beauty of the West Riding! Now she is a faded, draggled skeleton, carelessly and unfashionably dressed, following meekly the long procession of her ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... your hard opinions.' Rowe asserts that 'Queen Elizabeth was so well pleased with that admirable character of Falstaff in the two parts of "Henry IV" that she commanded him to continue it for one play more, and to show him in love.' Dennis, in the dedication of 'The Comical Gallant' (1702), noted that the 'Merry Wives' was written at the Queen's 'command and by her direction; and she was so eager to see it acted that she commanded it to be finished in fourteen days, and was afterwards, ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... there, which lost none of their value from being transferred to his pages. Next to his private readings which he gave us there, the most notable recollection is that of his intense amusement at some comical songs which our young people used to sing, developing a sense of humor which a superficial observer would hardly have discovered, but which you and I know he possessed in ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... along the path to the water. The watcher soon saw that his precautions had been in a manner wasted. The leading goat marched gravely into the springe, which, catching him round his neck, released the bent rod, and sprang him off his legs into the air. He uttered a comical bleat, and then hung kicking. Rufus Dawes, though the success of the scheme was a matter of life and death, burst out laughing at the antics of the beast. The other goats bounded off at this sudden elevation of their leader, and three more were entrapped ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... round to Montes with a tragic look, patted him kindly on the head, looked at him for a moment with comical admiration, ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... any one could be blamed for laughing. Jimmy was a comical object. In carrying away a chimney which did not belong to him, he had of course torn his clothes frightfully and left big pieces sticking on the broken wires of the roof. A more "raggety" boy never ...
— Jimmy, Lucy, and All • Sophie May
... you see," he explained with an assumption of comical chagrin, "but with limitations. She's got to say she's sorry, ...
— Emmy Lou - Her Book and Heart • George Madden Martin
... the rest) can hardly be Porson's, for Mr. Langton amused Johnson, Boswell, and a dinner party at General Oglethorpe's, on the 14th of April, 1778, with some macaronic Greek "by Joshua Barnes, in which are to be found such comical Anglo-hellenisms as [Greek: klubboisin ebagchthae] they were banged with clubs." Boswell's ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 37. Saturday, July 13, 1850 • Various
... you," they squeaked in comical English, "How do you do? I love you. Please kiss me. ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... terrible slur it would be upon the glorious annals of French-African conquest, if such a brave officer should show himself fonder of stuffing birds for an English demoiselle than running swords through ungrateful Arabs!" and the General looked round with a very comical expression ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... a certain varnish of civilisation, and a German Sappho who poured forth a stream of pretentious and at the same time ludicrous complaints. The play unwittingly performed by these unpaid actors was enjoyed by our friend with all the zest the feeling of superiority can give. What a tragi-comical arrangement it is that in this world of ours everybody is laughing at everybody else! The scientists of the congress afforded Chopin an almost unlimited scope for the exercise of his wit. Among them he found so many curious and various specimens that he was ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... trying for the reward?" asked Reyburn with a comical smile. "What is it, anyway?" And he began ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill
... his cab at the door, looked up at the imposing facia with a frown. Entering the broad vestibule, he handed his card to the waiting attendant and took a seat in a well-furnished waiting room. Five minutes later he was ushered into the presence of "The Man Who Knew." Mr. Mann, a comical little figure at a very large writing table, jumped up and went halfway across the big room to meet his visitor. He beamed through his big spectacles as he waved John Minute to ...
— The Man Who Knew • Edgar Wallace
... candidate gratified his constituents, and mounted his singular rostrum. I was told by a person, who professed to be an eye witness, that the whole affair presented a singular mixture of the terrible and the comical. Prentiss was, as usual, eloquent, and, as if ignorant of the novel circumstances with which he was surrounded, went deeply into the matter in hand, his election. For a while the audience and the animals were quiet, ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... small, fierce, and blue. They appeared to emit heat as well as light; for it was a frequent trick of their proprietor's to snatch at his spectacles and wipe the mist from them with a bandana handkerchief. Unglazed, his eyes showed a blank and indiscriminate ferocity which Manvers found exceedingly comical. ...
— The Spanish Jade • Maurice Hewlett
... other incidents of his greatness, of the glory that now struck him as rarely comical; he hoped he hadn't taken it too seriously then, in the flush of his youth. Maybe, after all, he had been a, big-headed boy, but he must have bottled up his conceit tightly enough, or the other boys would have detected ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... of the press! If they had been natives of the Island of Frozen Sounds, along the shore of which Pantagruel and Panurge coasted, they would have stood up to their chins in scurrilous epithets. The comical sketch of their rhetoric in "Salmagundi" is literally true:—"Every day have these slangwhangers made furious attacks on each other and upon their respective adherents, discharging their heavy artillery, consisting of large sheets ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... know how thoughtless I can be, and how often I give trouble to Klea, who never scolds me for it, you would be far from comparing me with a goddess. Little old Krates, too, often compares me to all sorts of pretty things, but that always sounds so comical that I cannot help laughing. I had much rather listen to you when you ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... little of Arabic, and least of what is most wanted, the dialect of Egypt and Syria. His prose is so conscientious as to offer up spirit at the shrine of letter; and his verse, always whimsical, has at times a manner of Hibernian whoop which is comical when it should be pathetic. Lastly he printed only one volume of a series which completed would have ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... me want to howl. Yes, it is a kind of comical thing that hurts me," answered Denoisel, picking up a Review that was next the album. "Caricatures are like petrified jokes to me. I can never see one on a table without thinking of a lot of dismal things, such as the wit of the Directory, Carle Vernet's drawings, and ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... seem ludicrous; and no doubt if I had been there I must have been strongly tempted to laugh at the comical spectacle those six pigs must have presented. But it is the spirit of the thing that looks so bad. Growdy never harmed a boy in his life, he says, and only wants to be let alone; but they went out of their way to play a malicious trick on the old man. It took him the whole of Sunday to scrape that ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... Bear from the man in the moon. 'Tis all dark to me. I don't believe there is any comet at all. Who ever heard of a comet without a tail, I should like to know? It isn't natural; but the printers will make a tale for it fast enough, for they are always getting up comical stories." ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... fishing mit der poys," replied Snyder, laying his finger tenderly against his proboscis; "the sun it pese hot like ash never vas, und I purns my nose. Nice nose, don't it?" And Snyder viewed it with a look of comical sadness in the little mirror back of his bar. It entered at once into the head of the mischievous fellow in front of the bar to play a joke upon Snyder; so he went out and collected half a dozen of his comrades, with whom he arranged that they should drop in ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... leg!" cried Dumlow, with so comical a look of disgust on his countenance that I was obliged to laugh; "whatcher want to take off my leg for? Can't you stop ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... husband following her, she turned round and laughed heartily as she saw him coming along, pale, and holding on to his horse's mane as it bounced him up and down. His very appearance of a "beau cavalier" made his awkwardness and timidity all the more comical. ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... in several of the newly erected cabins; the village was given over for the comfort of the frontiersmen. Edwards conducted Captain Williamson through the shops and schools, and the old borderman's weather-beaten face expressed a comical surprise. ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... long and elaborate epics, like Roland, and the romances in verse and prose, there were numberless short stories in verse (the fabliaux), which usually dealt with the incidents of everyday life, especially with the comical ones. Then there were the fables, the most famous of which are the stories of Reynard the Fox, which were satires upon the customs of the time, particularly the weaknesses ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... Board of Education. Though still primitive to my city eyes, they no longer appeared remote. Something in their names and voices touched me nearly. They were American. Their militant social democracy was at once comical and corrective. ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... the other, coldly. "The young lady might have had my friendship if she had chosen. She did not choose. I suppose she is old enough—and proud enough—to choose her own friends. Yes, yes, friend Calabressa, I have heard. But we will say nothing more: now listen to this comical fellow." ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... sea, a most romantic and salutary situation. One other flash broke from him in this retirement. His novel, called the Expedition of Humphry Clinker, which he sent to England to be printed in 1770, though abounding in portraitures of exquisite drollery, and in situations highly comical, has not the full zest and flavour of his earlier works. The story does not move on with the same impetuosity. The characters have more the appearance of being broad caricatures from real life, than the creatures ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... the rifle, Neal," said Cyrus. "I'll pick up the jack. Did you ever see anything so absurdly comical as it looks, dodging off on its own hook like ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... doubt as to whether the naivete of the contributor is comical or tragical, but at all events he has no right to join in the discussion"—[Throwing down the paper.] Oh, that is contemptible! It is a ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... exceedingly exhilarated in spirits, yet kept his eyes down, and appeared at times very absent minded. Whatever his thoughts were, it was evident they were pleasing ones; for he would smile to himself, and occasionally display a comical nervousness, as though he had some very important secret to make known, yet was not ready to communicate it. This had been observed in him through the day; and was so different from his usual manner, and so much beyond ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... and fro with an air which might have been comical, had not Marishka's need been so desperate. But she read him easily, a vile, blackmailing rogue who held no allegiance higher than what he got from it—a man who, for all his fine flow of talk, ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... the like. Let anti-masques not be long; they have been commonly of fools, satyrs, baboons, wild-men, antics, beasts, sprites, witches, Ethiops, pigmies, turquets, nymphs, rustics, Cupids, statuas moving, and the like. As for angels, it is not comical enough, to put them in anti-masques; and anything that is hideous, as devils, giants, is on the other side as unfit. But chiefly, let the music of them be recreative, and with some strange changes. Some sweet odors suddenly coming forth, without any drops falling, ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... actually face to face with the problem of answering Mary's letter in ten words the youth's hand refused to write, and he stood looking at the yellow slip of paper with an intensity that was comical to the clerk. Plainly this cowboy was ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... learned, polished, like some other cities, yet they are civil, good-natured, and fond of the English-. Their little partiality for themselves, opposed to the violent vanity of the French, makes them very amiable in my eyes. I can give you a comical instance of their great prejudice about nobility; it happened yesterday. While we were at dinner at Mr. Mann'S. (180) word was brought by his secretary, that a cavalier demanded audience of him upon an affair of honour. Gray and I flew behind the curtain of the door. An elderly ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... (loc. cit.) gives a comical description of the Prince assuming the dress of an astrologer-doctor, clapping an old book under his arm, fumbling a rosary of beads, enlarging his turband, lengthening his sleeves and blackening his eyelids with antimony. Here, however, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... adventure occurred to myself, which, in the illiberality of my heart, I could not but regard as strikingly characteristic of the character of the people to whom we were now opposed, and which, as at the time it had something in it truly comical, I cannot resist the inclination of repeating, though aware that its title to drollery must in a great measure be lost in the relation. Having been informed that in a certain part of the forest a company of riflemen had passed the night, I took with me a party of soldiers, ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... his lecture on George the Fourth, turned this record to most amusing account, and delighted his audience by a comical description of the King's paternal benediction imprinted in kisses on the cheeks of Wellington, Lyndhurst, and Peel. But when the kissing was over and the three statesmen had departed, the King began to find that ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... candle-snuffer the piece would lose half its embellishments." But there has always been forthcoming a very abundant supply of stories of this kind, not always to be understood literally, however, concerning the drama under difficulties, and the comical side of the player's indigence, distresses, and quaint artifices to ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... dim old shop, while the gay, lightsome step passed among the dusty treasures. Now she seldom smiled or sang, and among the few bits of comedy in her sad days, were the visits of Kit Nubbles, her grandfather's errand boy, a shock-headed, shambling, comical lad, whose devotion to the beautiful child verged on worship. Appreciating Nell's loneliness, Kit visited the shop as often as possible, and the exquisite oddity and awkwardness of his manner so amused her that at sight of him she would give ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... vocal music, the Professor had very little voice himself, but he knew how to make the best possible use of what he did possess. But the patriotic sentiment of the words, the eccentric make-up of the singer his comical contortions and odd grimaces, and what was really a bright, tuneful melody won a marked success for both song and singer. Encore followed encore. Like many more cultured audiences in large cities the one assembled in Eastborough Town Hall seemed ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... confined to the mothers, for it is perfectly proper for them to do that thing; but when it comes to a grandma who hasn't a drop of Irish blood in her veins, I beg to be excused, and, what is more, I won't stand it," protested Felix, making a very comical face. ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... of the big room. And the crowds would go from tank to tank, looking in at us through the glass—with their mouths open, like half-witted flounders. We got so sick of it that we used to open our mouths back at them; and this they seemed to think highly comical. ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... without, sur," said Michel, putting his comical head in at the library door, "there's a gintleman without, sur," and he emphasized ...
— Daisy's Necklace - And What Came of It • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... the customary formality. The eleven prisoners sat silently at the bar, reading their morning papers, or a book, or enjoying a moment of luxurious idleness, oblivious of the comical ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... have the right to more sweetmeats than we get. A wanderer's advice: no superstition. What is life's? All. But what is yours? Is fame? Oh, tell us why! A man should not so insist on what is "his." It is comical; a wanderer laughs at any one who can be so comical. I remember one who could not give up that "his." He started to lay a fire in his stove at noon, and by evening he got it to burn at last. He couldn't leave the comfortable ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... up to some trick,' said De Stancy, not, however, suspecting the actual truth in these unsuggestive circumstances, and with a comfortable resignation, produced by the potent liquor, which would have been comical to an outsider, but which, to one who had known the history and relationship of the two speakers, would have worn a sadder significance. 'I am too big a fool about you to keep you down as I ought; that's the fault of ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... I did, however, so far revert to the subject that I related to the priest how that, several years before, exactly the same sort of mischance befell me in one of Anfossi's arias as had just befallen him. I painted the period of my connection with the sisters in tragi-comical colours, and, distributing many a keen side-blow, I let them feel the superiority, which the ripe experiences, both of life and of art, of the years that had elapsed in the interval had given me over them. 'And a good thing it was,' I concluded, 'that I did cut short that fermata, ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... leaving of stray leaves and stalks in teacups are considered sure indications of past or coming events, even by the large and enlightened public who pass their lives on dry land. There are few things more comical than to see the nautical person studiously avoid passing under a shore ladder. The penalty of it has a terror for him; and yet his whole life is spent in passing to and fro under rope ladders aboard ship without any suspicion of evil consequences. But the landsman's belief in mystic tokens and ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... me! what is a man to do when he falleth into the ditch o' this manner?" said he, with a comical look. "Mrs Rose, I am an ass by nature, and shall find little hardship in braying. I do beseech you of pardon, for that I meant not to offend you; and in very deed, I scarce ever do remember that you are not my countrywoman. You are good enough for an English woman, ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... are very amusing if well carried out, and even with little preparation may be made very pretty or very comical, whichever may be desired. It is perhaps better to attempt comical ones if you have not much time in which to arrange them, as the costumes are generally easier to manage, and if you are obliged to use garments ...
— My Book of Indoor Games • Clarence Squareman
... tombstones and flowers, where the old custodian saw us and took off his hat. "Howdy, Daddy Ben!" John Mayrant returned pleasantly, and then resuming to me: "No more can I believe everything." Then he gave a brief, comical laugh. "And I hope my aunts won't find that out! They would think me gone to perdition indeed. But I always go to church here" (he pointed to the quiet building, which, for all its modest size and simplicity, had a stately and inexpressible charm), "because I like to kneel where my mother said ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister
... numerous flounces, was distended behind by many hoops. He walked with short steps, and with exaggerated swaying of the hips, while his folded arms and crossed hands were distorted into pretensions of comical coquetry. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... corner me and throw me into the canal. He made me do all the work of taking care of our bunks, and cuffed my ears whenever he got a chance. He made me do his share as well as my own of the labor of cleaning the stables, and feeding and caring for the horses, sitting by and giving orders with a comical exaggeration of the manner of Captain Sproule. In short, he was hazing me unmercifully—as every one on the boat knew, though some of the things he did to me I do not think the captain would have permitted if he had ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... in mamma's clothes. The stool made him so full that the dress was of just the right length. Then Uncle Ned, telling him to stand straight and firm, carried him, stool and all, into the parlor. I wish you could have heard the girls and boys laugh! He had such a comical look—with his tall body and little round face—just like some of those French Parian figures. One little girl handed him a fan, and then it was too funny to see the tall lady fan herself affectedly with her very small, dimpled hands. All the boys ...
— The Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56, No. 2, January 12, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... It was comical work trying to make out what they meant as they began to talk to me about the terrible wild beasts I should meet, and, above all, about the orang-outangs, which they assured me were eight or nine feet high, and would look ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... to be accounted for; "I must prepare to meet this Queen Aurora. But," it added in a kind of afterthought, "the procession will soon be over; come back shortly and see me, if you please." The keen diamond eye twinkled with a humorous, comical expression when these last words were uttered; as much as to say, "I shall manage to cheat you, old fellow, ...
— The Story of a Dewdrop • J. R. Macduff
... who, owing to the reputation for seriousness his secretiveness had earned for him, was one of the candidates undergoing preparation with Old Tring. He had apparently outgrown his fits of unbalanced talkativeness, and had become, with the difficult years, one of those boys who speak with almost comical rarity, and then with unemotional gruffness. This power of reticence never fails to win respect, if of a half-irritated, half-resentful order, and Ishmael held a certain position in the school. Also as the ward ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... hours at a stretch they roll about, and chase tails, and pounce upon the quiet old mother with fierce little barks. One climbs laboriously up the rock behind the den, and sits on his tail, gravely surveying the great landscape with a comical little air of importance, as if he owned it all. When called to come down he is afraid, and makes a great to-do about it. Another has been crouching for five minutes behind a tuft of grass, watching like a cat at a rat-hole for some one to come by and be pounced upon. ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... magnificent, and the enthusiasm of the audience must be witnessed in order to understand the underlying potentialities of the Portuguese character. The vile abuse of a bull who will not show fight is comical to listen to. Probably, in such a case, the bull has been through it all before, and he does not care to make wild rushes at cloaks which have nothing substantial behind them. So he paws up the sand and looks theatrical, ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... presently saw a little dark head, with bright eyes, looking out at us from among the boughs; then another, and another came; and as we did not move they gained courage, and crept nearer and nearer. They looked so comical that Marian could not help bursting into a fit of laughter, in which I joined; but no sooner did the monkeys hear our voices than off they scampered to the end of a bough which stretched a considerable way across the stream. They now, almost with the rapidity of lightning, formed a chain ...
— The Wanderers - Adventures in the Wilds of Trinidad and Orinoco • W.H.G. Kingston
... wiles in the conduct of his wooing. Giovanni, by some intuition usually foreign to his dull nature, seemed to divine what manner of man would be Madonna Paola's ideal, and strove to pass himself off as possessed of the attributes of that ideal, with an ardour that was pitiably comical. He became an actor by the side of whom those comedians that played impromptus for his delectation were the merest bunglers with the art. He gathered that Madonna Paola loved the poets and their stately ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... ignorance and recklessness, merely as themes for immoral and inhuman laughter. Jonson was by no means the only poet of that day to whom the hordes of profligate and heathen nomads which infested England were only a comical phase of humanity, instead of being, as they would be now, objects of national shame and sorrow, of pity and love, which would call out in the attempt to redeem them the talents and energies of good men. But Jonson certainly sins more in this respect than any of his ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... possibility of this proving to be a success caused the boy to smile, though he looked almost comical while so doing, because his heart still hung ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... burst out into a laugh. "Ah, Mark, my boy," said he, with a serious, comical air, "it will do very well for you to talk,—you will find out, sooner or later, that all men have to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... entertains me during the evening with a dancing deer; a comical affair of wood, made to dance on a table by jerking a string. The luti plays a sort of "whangadoodle" tune on a guitar, and manipulates the string so as to make the deer keep time to the tune. He tells me he obtained ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... sheriff for attempted bribery, had been obliged to remain for a considerable time in hiding to avoid criminal charges of exerting corrupt influence on legislation, and whom both political parties naturally disowned. Comical as all this was, it was pathetic to see a man like Greeley in such a cave ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... another of Des Periers' comical tales at the expense of the clerical orders: There was a priest of a village who was as proud as might be because he had seen a little more than his Cato. And this made him set up his feathers and talk very grand, using words that filled his mouth ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... surpasses the Falstaff of Shakspeare; clear and prompt, he might have stood up against Dr Johnson in close and peremptory argument; fertile and copious, he might have rivalled Burke in amplitude of declamation; while his opulent imagination and powers of comical description invest all that he utters, either with a picturesque mildness or a graphic quaintness peculiarly his own." These remarks, applicable to the Shepherd of the "Noctes," would, indeed, be much overstrained ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... A comical potato race next sent the crowds into convulsions of laughter. And of course Paulding had to win that. How the others did rub it into the advocates of the down-river school; but they only grinned, and accepted the ...
— Fred Fenton on the Track - or, The Athletes of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... and Will, to whom the whole conversation had appeared very comical, joined in in the same key. Herr von Wallmoden took no part in this sudden explosion of gaiety; he only winced again, as though his nerves were affected, and ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... ever, gesticulated with such comical vehemence and such remarkable contortions that even the tall clerk smiled, for which, however, he took himself severely to task on going to bed ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... so comical in the question, and in the manner and look of the man who propounded it, that Dolores could not keep from a smile, and indeed could hardly prevent the smile from rippling into a laugh. For Captain Sarrasin threw back his head, stiffened up his frame, opened widely his grey eyes, compressed his ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... shall see!" cried Chicot, putting himself in such a comical attitude of defense that ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas
... the day was over Cousin Monty was about as popular as a hornet. "How long is he going to stay?" the girls asked each other in comical dismay. "A week? Oh, my gracious, how can we ever stand ...
— The Campfire Girls at Camp Keewaydin • Hildegard G. Frey
... love. It is most comical, is it not? With you I thought I should find peace, and happiness and a re-birth of the intellect that was being smothered in the splendor and artificiality and the restrictions of my life there. Well, I was wrong. But wrong. Now ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... something comical in the extreme self-complacency with which he asserts that he is very handsome and will never become blue and no one with him is ever lonely. As before stated, white signifies peace and happiness, while blue is the emblem of ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney
... greeted us, but the proverbial feather would have felled any one of her guests when Payson offered his arm to Mrs. Frank Mayo, who rose out of a shadowy corner in a high-throated gown and led us to the dining-room. I caught Sallie's eye as she laid her hand on Frank Mayo's arm, and she gave me a comical ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... great difficulty, and she rebuked him with most comical gravity, treating him as a child. He used to say that when he came to Alibi Crackaby he broke down, and Pin-Pan, Musky-Dan, Tweedle-um Twoddle-um made him roar with laughter. He said Musky-Dan especially was beyond endurance, bringing up an Irishman ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... writer's circumstances. Of a truth, her own poems are not such as would justify any great rigour of criticism. They are often, as poems, actually inferior to Anne's, her manner of dragging in a tale or a moral at the end of a lyric having quite a comical effect; yet, on the whole, her share of the book clearly distinguishes her as an eloquent and imaginative raconteuse, at the same time that it denies her the least sprout, the smallest leaf, of that flowerless wreath of bays which Emily might ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... sometimes, in baskets fitted to their shoulders. A woman came by, while Rollo and his father and mother were sitting upon the logs, with her child taking a ride in such a basket on her back. As soon as this woman was past, Rollo was so much struck with the comical appearance that the child made, sitting upright in the basket, and looking around, that he took out some paper and a pencil immediately from his portfolio, and asked his mother to make a drawing of the woman, with the child ...
— Rollo in Geneva • Jacob Abbott
... however, above the Abbe's waist, and when he rose his look of furious misery was too comical for any pity. The water streamed in a cataract from his wig over his elongated countenance and ruined clothes. He had screwed his face into the black slime of the bottom; it was now besides distorted with his efforts to breathe, and he unconsciously ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... lost your senses?" and as he spoke, he held her at arm's length from him to get a better look at her. "What are you dressed up in this style for?" he continued, as he surveyed her from head to foot; and then bursting into a loud laugh at her comical appearance, he released her, and she made the quickest possible retreat into the house by ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... whether it was at my words, or at the somewhat comical manner I had assumed—a manner in which simplicity was tant soit peu blended with irony—I shall not pretend to say. As for the father, his simplicity was of proof; and, after civilly waiting until my interruption was done, he resumed ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... at what she had done, but Stella's face, as she viewed the catastrophe, was so comical that Marjorie went off into peals of laughter. Molly joined in this, and the two girls laughed ...
— Marjorie's Vacation • Carolyn Wells
... and stick his legs in the sleeves and button the coat tightly in front and tie it on round his waist with a string. This he did, but when he had to walk he could only take the very shortest of steps. This, with the comical picture he made, sent the boys into peals of laughter, and they rolled on the ground and held their sides for pain from laughing when he stubbed his toe and fell head over heels, or when he tried to ...
— Billy Whiskers - The Autobiography of a Goat • Frances Trego Montgomery
... make his face as smooth as his art could do, and a woman's gown and other female accoutrements of the largest size were provided for him. Having jumped into his petticoats, pinned a large dowde under his chin, and put a high-crowned hat on his head, he made a figure so comical that even Hogarth's humour can scarcely parallel; yet our hero thought himself of something else to render his disguise more impenetrable: he therefore borrowed a little hump-backed child of a tinker, and two more of some others ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... whistled in his efforts to keep his composure, in a way that was irresistibly ludicrous. In the midst of his distress the poor fellow could not help being comical. Even in the suffering which was so terribly real to him he made ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... world did you expect, Ruthie? I declare, you are too comical! I verily believe you expected Brussels carpets, and mirrors in which you could admire yourself all the while you ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... the enraged breathing of Chester, who was unable to retort. Moses Hatch laughed. The discreet departure of these gentlemen certainly had its comical side. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... out with the other boys and vent his emotions in whoops of delight. He knew that some little plot was being concocted for his birthday, but never dreamed of anything so grand as asking the whole school, Teacher and all. The effect of the invitation was seen with comical rapidity, for the boys became overpowering in their friendly attentions to Ben. Even Sam, fearing he might be left out, promptly offered the peaceful olive-branch in the shape of a big apple, warm from his pocket, and Mose proposed a trade in jack-knives which would be greatly ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... a serious problem to solve, and their ideas of its solution were almost comical. Thus, one statesman recommended the organization of a special force recruited from the ranks of vagrants and criminals and stationed permanently in the northern islands, A more practical programme was the formation of a local militia. ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi |
