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Harlequin   Listen
verb
Harlequin  v. t.  To remove or conjure away, as by a harlequin's trick. "And kitten, if the humor hit Has harlequined away the fit."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Harlequin" Quotes from Famous Books



... black nadir of Despair: for He is nimble as a weasel, and He twists like Proteus, and His solstices and equinoxes, His tropics and turning-points and recurrences are innate in Being, and when He falls He falls like harlequin and shuttlecocks, shivering plumb to His feet, and each third day, lo, He is risen again, and His defeats are but the stepping-stones and rough scaffolding from which He builds His Parthenons, and from the densest basalt gush His rills, and the last end of this ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel

... Cabbage with Sausages Cabbages, Harlequin Cake, Mocha Calf's Liver a la Bourgeoise Carbonade, Flemish Carbonade of Flanders Carbonades done with Beer Carrots, Belgian " Brussels " Flemish " Stuffed Carrots and Eggs Cauliflower a la Reine Elizabeth Cauliflower and Shrimps Cauliflower, Dressed ...
— The Belgian Cookbook • various various

... necessaries of life. Then gold was found to be so abundant, and, at first, so easily procured, that the fever was kept up at white-heat for several years. The result of this was, as we have remarked elsewhere, that changes, worthy of Aladdin's lamp or Harlequin's wand, were wrought in the course of a few weeks, ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne

... pray for her lover's escape, while Tonio the Fool triumphs over her misery. The husband however returns defeated; panting he claims the lover's name, and Nedda's lips remaining sealed, he is about to stab his wife, when Beppo the Harlequin intervenes, and, wrenching the dagger from his unfortunate master's hands intimates, that it is time to prepare for the play. While Nedda retires, Canio breaks out into a bitter wail of his hard lot, which compels him to take part in the farce, which for him ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley

... fact calls it la Belle. The flattering title is well-deserved. On the black background of the larva, vermillion-red, chrome-yellow and chalk-white figure side by side in circles, spots, freckles and stripes, as clearly marked as the glaring patches of a harlequin's dress. ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre

... shut players altogether out of consecrated ground, yet I own I was not a little scandalized at the introduction of theatrical airs and gestures into a place set apart to remind us of the saddest realities. Going nearer, I found inscribed under this harlequin figure the following lines:— ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb

... underground are generally associated with suchlike warmint. At last—out of the tunnel! and now, I presume, in the caves. Here someone, gradually assuming a palpable form, emerges from somewhere out of a dark corner, and hands to each of us a long piece of wood about the length of a harlequin's bat (note, pantomime again), only that this is an inch or so thick and quite two inches wide at one end, where presently a candle is fixed by an attendant sprite,—the slave of the tallow candle,—and the wand, so to speak, tapers off ...
— Punch, Volume 101, September 19, 1891 • Francis Burnand

... important to quicken the circulation after a cold bath," said Mr. Merryweather, taking up a leather strap from the table. The boys shrieked, and vanished through the window in a fine harlequin act. ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards

... eyes beaming. "I remember the columbine and the harlequin and the pantaloon in Drury Lane one boxing week when I was in London with my grandfather. Was a ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon

... the huntsman's legging? Withal, he is a merry, lively little fellow, with a good nose for the scent of a rabbit or a hare, and, when in fit condition, is able to follow, follow, follow, if needed, from earliest dawn till the coming of night. The chase being ended, he with his companions, Harlequin and Columbine, and all the stragglers of the panting pack, will surround the tired hare, and will wait, bellowing lustily, but without molesting the quarry, till the Master appears and calls them ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees

... work on in security for ten days. One of them is a man named Jourdain, a lawyer of Lisieux, and, like most of his brethren, a demagogue in principles; the other is a strolling actor from Paris named Bordier, famous in the part of harlequin,[1319] a bully in a house of ill-fame, "a night-rover and drunkard, and who, fearing neither God nor devil," has taken up patriotism, and comes down into the provinces to play tragedy, and that, tragedy in real life. The fifth ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... moving in effect, he would be delightful to the general, and that without sacrificing on the vile and filthy altar of popularity. Here he is successfully himself, and what more is there to say? You clap for Harlequin, and you kneel to Apollo. Mr. Meredith doubles the parts, and is irresistible in both. Such fire, such vision, such energy on the one hand and on the other such agility and athletic grace are ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley

... tell, and afraid he will not be the first to tell it. When he discovers us watching, he sets up his clamorous cry of "Thief! Thief!" and hurries away to spread the alarm. A mighty borrower of trouble, this gayly dressed harlequin of the woods, and yet the forest would not seem complete without his gay ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson

... Wit, in each politer Age, Triumphant, rear'd the Trophies of the Stage: But only Farce, and Shew, will now go down, And Harlequin's the Darling ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson

... Lincoln's conduct of the war, predicated upon a private letter of General Scott, the possession of which he did not satisfactorily account for. The Tribune, referring to his campaign as "a rhetorical spree," called him a "buffoon," a "political harlequin," a "repeater of mouldy jokes,"[852] and in bitter terms denounced his "low comedy performance at Tammany," his "double-shuffle dancing at Mozart Hall," his possession of a letter "by dishonourable means for a dishonourable ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... the Foreign Office, again, one still less knows. Seizures of Sapienza, and the like sudden appearances of Britain in the character of Hercules-Harlequin, waving, with big bully-voice, her huge sword-of-sharpness over field-mice, and in the air making horrid circles (horrid catherine-wheels and death-disks of metallic terror from said huge sword), to see how they will like it,—do from time to time astonish the ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle

... the god Odin or Woden in Scandinavia; and when his worship as a god dies out Odin survives (as Dr. Dasent has proved) in the Wild Huntsman of the Hartz, and in the Robin Hood (Oodin) of popular legend. The Hellequin of France becomes the Harlequin of our pantomimes. William Tell never existed; he is a myth; a survival of the sun-god Apollo, Indra, who was worshipped on the altars ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly

... was heard coming to the door. York entered, his arms loaded with eggs and bacon, and a glass or two the merrier. A Deaf-Burke-made fellow, an Irishman, half labourer and half beggar, who went under the name of Harlequin, reeled by his side in a state of high elevation, with two or three hangers-on, that trod close to their heels. Harlequin, filled with drink and overflowing with vanity, overwhelmed every one with ...
— Sinks of London Laid Open • Unknown

... Indeed, one readily perceives that he is not free from the trammels of contemporary convention. But how easily he wears them, and if no "severe pains and birth-throes" accompany the evolution of his conceptions, how graceful these conceptions are! They are perhaps of the Canova family; the "Harlequin," for instance, which has had such a prodigious success, is essentially Milanese sculpture; essentially even the "Genius Guarding the Secret of the Tomb" is a fantastic rather than an original work. But how the manner, the treatment, triumphs over the Canova insipidity! ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell

... took a house in these parts not long ago, and who stuck fast in HER carriage in a lane; and as it was impossible to open one of the doors, she was obliged to submit to the indignity of being hauled through one of the little front windows, like a harlequin. ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens

... laugh hysterically. Clara laughed, too, but from genuine amusement. The world certainly did look very funny from the detachment now forced upon her: deliciously funny, and Charles appeared in her thoughts as a kind of Harlequin dancing through the world, peering into the houses where people were captive, tapping the doors with his wand so that they opened, but no ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan

... aridity of summer. In the open spaces on the slope, beyond the farthest shadow-reach of the manzanita, poised the mariposa lilies, like so many flights of jewelled moths suddenly arrested and on the verge of trembling into flight again. Here and there that woods harlequin, the madrone, permitting itself to be caught in the act of changing its pea-green trunk to madder-red, breathed its fragrance into the air from great clusters of waxen bells. Creamy white were these bells, shaped like ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London

... buffooneries. Now the reason why Addison and cultivated men in general do not laugh at buffooneries and place them in the catalogue of false humour, is simply because they do not present to their minds any complication. When harlequin knocks the clown and pantaloon over on their backs, "the gods" burst with laughter, unable to understand the catastrophe, but those who have seen such things often, and consider that men make a living by such tricks, see ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... passed along, touched him with the tip of his wing, and pushed him into the Ocean. At the noise of his fall, the dying powers sat up in their beds of pain; and stealthily advancing with furtive tread, all the royal spiders made the partition of Europe, and the purple of Caesar became the frock of Harlequin. ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset

... "he takes life so strangely; at times tremendously seriously; at others as if it meant nothing at all. Now he plays the solemn and mysterious, and again he assumes the role of the irresponsible harlequin. I don't think anyone ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson

... he said to himself, as course followed course, and, while bandying compliments with her, he watched and listened. "As soon set a harlequin to lead a forlorn hope. Well it's to be trusted her husband's some use for her—that's more than I have anyhow, so the sooner we see her off the premises the better. Suppose I shall have to fall back on Ormiston. Bit ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... irritating to the legal fraternity. Tomkins v. Snooks is down for trial, Court 2. The legal call-boys bustle in the counsel and others engaged. Mr. Buzfuz, Q.C., pushes his way into Court, surrounds himself with briefs and other documents, when some mysterious harlequin of the Law Courts changes Tomkins v. Snooks to Court 4, and calls upon Brown v. Jones, who are packed away in Court 3, waiting their turn. Buzfuz gets very angry, and bustles off to Court 4. In fact, getting ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss

... harmful influence. William Lloyd Garrison wrote Susan of his regret and astonishment that she and Mrs. Stanton had so taken leave of their senses as to be infatuated with the Democratic party and to be associated with that "crack-brained harlequin and semi-lunatic," George Francis Train. She published his letter in The Revolution with an answer by Mrs. Stanton which not only pointed out how often the Republicans had failed women but reminded Garrison how he had welcomed into his antislavery ranks anyone and everyone who believed in ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz

... were unheard. He was looking up at a window, with a couple of sooty scarlet geraniums in it. This was the court where Dame Dutton dwelt. He glided up her narrow stair and let himself in by the latch; and with his cane made a smacking like a harlequin's sword upon the old woman's deal table, crying: 'Mrs. Dutton; Mrs. Dutton. Is Mrs. ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... play his stage was chastely beautiful. In the gaudy foliage of the exotic island, with the three chandeliers of a bygone epoch, the sharp dissonance of styles is indicated. Aubrey Beardsley would have rejoiced at this mingling of genres; at the figures of Harlequin, Scaramuccio; at the quaint and gorgeous costuming; at the Dryad, Naiad, Echo, and all the rest of seventeenth-century burlesque appanage. And yet things didn't go as they should have gone. The music is sparkling for the minor characters, and for Zerbinetta Strauss has planned ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker

... have perhaps the first germ of the Commedia dell' arte, the improvisatory farce with standing masks. A striking affinity between the latter and the Atellanae consists in the employment of dialects to produce a ludicrous effect. But how would Harlequin and Pulcinello be astonished were they to be told that they descended in a direct line from the buffoons of the ancient Romans, and even from the Oscans!—With what drollery would they requite the labours of the antiquarian who should trace their glorious pedigree to such a root! From the figures ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel

... jewel that deserved a cover of gold to preserve it from external injuries. An Italian painter, perceiving a small part of the roof repaired by modern French masonry, tore his hair, and exclaimed in a rage, "Zounds! what do I see? harlequin's hat on ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett

... identified with their gambling lords, their black-leg baronets, their insolvent honourables, and the seedy set of Chevaliers Diddlerowski and Counts Scaramouchi, who caper on the platform outside for their living? The populace would pelt these harlequin horse-jockeys of fashionable life off their stage, if there was nothing better to be seen inside; but it fortunately ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various

... forensic eloquence, and of which the first and most distinguished practitioner was Cerberus;{2} bear-garden meetings of mismanaged companies, in which directors and shareholders abuse each other in choice terms, not all to be found even in Rabelais; burstings of bank bubbles, which, like a touch of harlequin's wand, strip off their masks and dominoes from 'highly respectable' gentlemen, and leave them in their true figures of cheats and pickpockets; societies of all sorts, for teaching everybody everything, meddling with everybody's business, and mending everybody's morals; mountebank advertisements ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock

... own hands. She is an expert in beautiful costumes. I venture to promise you, Mr Savoyard, that what you are about to see will be like a Louis Quatorze ballet painted by Watteau. The heroine will be an exquisite Columbine, her lover a dainty Harlequin, her father a picturesque Pantaloon, and the valet who hoodwinks the father and brings about the happiness of the lovers a grotesque but perfectly tasteful Punchinello or Mascarille ...
— Fanny's First Play • George Bernard Shaw

... and daggers of every size Which nations of militant men could devise. Poisoned spears from tropic seas, That natives, under banana trees, Smear with the juice of some deadly snake. Blood-dipped arrows, which savages make And tip with feathers, orange and green, A quivering death, in harlequin sheen. High up, a fan of glancing steel Was formed of claymores in a wheel. Jewelled swords worn at kings' levees Were suspended next midshipmen's dirks, and these Elbowed stilettos come from Spain, Chased with some splendid Hidalgo's name. There were Samurai swords from ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell

... this wand—worn like a harlequin's at his side—that the fairy Maya was walking up the terrace; he had changed himself to a handsome young forester, dressed in a suit of green, with bugle by his side, a cap with black feathers hanging ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat

... was romantic. In 1732 he married the Lady Henrietta, daughter of James, Earl of Waldegrave, and widow of Lord Edward Herbert, second son of the Marquis of Powis. In 1759 he took as his second wife Charlotte, daughter of John Rich, the harlequin."—Rockstro. ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton

... than anything in the world, except talking. My father formed a hundred good wishes for her: first, when he heard her tell a story, she used such admirable variety of action, that he wished her on the stage: then when she waited at supper, with all the nimbleness and dexterity of a female harlequin, he wished that she was married to Jack Langan, that she might keep the new inn at Edgeworthstown: but his last and best wish for her was that she should be waiting-maid to you and Aunt Mary. He thought she would please you both ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth

... harlequin, fat boy, jester, funny rustic, vied with each other in mirth-provoking antics so aptly described by the circus press agent as a "merry-hodgepodge of fun-provoking, acrobatic idiosyncrasies ...
— The Circus Boys In Dixie Land • Edgar B. P. Darlington

... decorated; wherein sundry passages of Scripture were piously portrayed. Tobit and his dog figured to great advantage; Haman swung conspicuously on his gibbet; and Jonah appeared most manfully leaping from the whale's mouth, like Harlequin through a barrel ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin

... soulless world. At this very moment, I make no doubt, he is requiring that under the masks of a Pantaloon or a Punch there should be a soul glowing with unearthly desires and ideal aspirations, and that Harlequin should outmoralize Hamlet on the nothingness of sublunary things: and if these expectations are disappointed, as they can never fail to be, the dew is sure to rise into his eyes, and he will turn his back on the whole ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck

... black cats and nothing more. But an observing eye makes no such mistake. The physiognomies of animals are as different as those of men, and I could always tell to which particular cat belonged the black face, as black as Harlequin's mask, and lighted by emerald ...
— My Private Menagerie - from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19 • Theophile Gautier

... scenery, all the crooked working of the machinery developed and laid open to the world. You now see by what secret movement the master of the mechanism has conducted the great Indian opera,—an opera of fraud, deceptions, and harlequin tricks. You have it all laid open before you. The ostensible scene is drawn aside; it has vanished from your sight. All the strutting signors, and all the soft signoras are gone; and instead of a brilliant spectacle of descending chariots, gods, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... up on the bank lying full length on the sweet-scented grass, gasping in company with my first salmon caught, played, and landed on an eight-ounce rod. My hands were cut and bleeding. I was dripping with sweat, spangled like harlequin with scales, wet from the waist down, nose peeled by the sun, but utterly, supremely, and consummately happy. He, the beauty, the daisy, the darling, my Salmon Bahadur, weighed twelve pounds, and I had been seven ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester

... opening, which appeared scarcely wide enough to let a man's shoulders pass, but Mamba did not hesitate. To the amazement of Mark and his friends he took what is familiarly known as a "header" through the window—a la harlequin—and disappeared. To the still greater amazement of Mark and his friends, Laihova instantly followed suit, without a word of explanation! Indeed there was no time for that. A moment after the owner of the dwelling opened the ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne

... disseminated that I was in a league against the Germans,)—and, finally, my mother-in-law recovered last fortnight, and my play was damned last week! These are like 'the eight-and-twenty misfortunes of Harlequin.' But they must be borne. If I give in, it shall be after keeping up a spirit at least. I should not have cared so much about it, if our southern neighbours had not bungled us all out of freedom for these five hundred years ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron

... into the hall a rout of wildly gay and dancing maskers: Harlequin, Columbine, a Pig, Pantaloon, an enormously tall Ghost, Clowns, a Skeleton, Ballet-girls, Oriental Princesses, Monks, Courtiers, Turks and Jew Pedlers. The first few attempt to draw back on seeing the chairs and the four old men; but they are pushed on by those behind. ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke

... so often, those were the only things that didn't make us yearn; so much we felt we were masters of the type, and so almost sufficiently was that a stop-gap for London constantly deferred. We hadn't the transformation-scene, it was true, though what this really seemed to come to was clown and harlequin taking liberties with policemen—these last evidently a sharp note in a picturesqueness that we lacked, our own slouchy "officers" saying nothing to us of that sort; but we had at Niblo's harlequin and columbine, albeit of less pure a tradition, and we knew moreover ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James

... look with jealous and grudging eyes at all those qualifications which are not essential; first, because they are superfluous, and next, because we suspect they will be prejudicial. Why does Mr. Kean play all those harlequin tricks of singing, dancing, fencing, etc.? They say, 'It is for his benefit.' It is not for his reputation. Garrick indeed shone equally in comedy and tragedy. But he was first, not second-rate in both. There is not ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... Guetary, and De Lucia taking the principal parts. The scene is laid in Calabria during the Feast of the Assumption. The Pagliacci are a troupe of itinerant mountebanks, the characters being Nedda, the Columbine, who is wife of Canio, or Punchinello, master of the troupe; Tonio, the Clown; Beppe, the Harlequin; and ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton

... said he, with solemn frown, "I tremble for each dancing frater, Like unregenerated clown And harlequin ...
— The Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert

... that I should find opportunity for reproof, but should probably lack the will. For Pierre was my harlequin, and what man can easily censure his own amusements even when he sees their harm? Then there was more to make me lenient. The man's family had served my own for as many generations as the rooks had ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith

... and get things ready for our outing." But afterwards—when the boy had gone and he was alone in the room—he walked back to the potted rose bush and touched its buds lovingly, and stood leaning over it and saying nothing for a long time. And though the necktie that hung on its branches was a harlequin thing of red and green and violent purple, when he came to dress for that promised outing he put it on and adjusted it as tenderly, wore it as proudly as ever knight of old wore the colours ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew

... bird is dubbed clown or harlequin, so peculiar are his antics or somersaults in the air; and by others "mischief maker," because of his ventriloquistic and imitating powers, and the variety of his notes. In the latter direction he is ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [December, 1897], Vol 2. No 6. • Various

... from Braithwaite's face, leaving the chalky mask of a tragic harlequin. When he spoke again it was humbly. "You can't blame me for not believing you. You jump about. You say several things which seem to point to a definite conclusion and then at the last moment you ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson

... after midnight an organization called the comparzas comes upon the scene. It is composed of men, boys, and women, all masked, who have practiced for the occasion some emblematic dance to perform for their own and the public amusement. The other dancers give way and the new-comers perform, in harlequin fashion, their allotted parts. Towards morning a large paper globe is suspended from the ceiling and lowered to within a certain height from the floor. Blindfolded volunteers of both sexes, furnished with sticks, are permitted to walk towards and try to hit it. Scores fail, ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou

... and indifferent observer, three black cats are just three black cats, but those who are really acquainted with animals know that their physiognomy is as various as that of the human race. I was perfectly well able to distinguish between these little faces, as black as Harlequin's mask, and lighted up by disks of emerald with golden gleams. Enjolras, who was much the handsomest of the three, was remarkable for his broad, leonine head and full whiskers, strong shoulders, and a superb feathery tail. There was something theatrical and pretentious in his air, ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow

... should have devoted not only his days, but his nights, to gleaning the scanty portion of actual information that he scatters through his volumes; they will have a much more substantive foundation than those of the theologian, who shall construct his morality upon the harlequin scenery of systems that so frequently change, even in his own distempered brain. If the atheist, as they please to call those who differ in opinion with themselves, objects to the correctness, of—their systems, he cannot deny his own existence, nor that of beings similar ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach

... jocantries of the inimitable Blunt, Nick Fetherfool, and the antique Petronella Elenora, are all alive with the genius of Astrea, although it may be possibly objected that some of the episodes with the two Monsters and the pranks of Harlequin are apt to trench a little too nearly ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn

... and fool, most valiant in words, but constantly being drubbed by Harlequin. Scaramouch is a common character in Italian farce, originally meant in ridicule of the Spanish don, and therefore dressed in Spanish costume. Our clown is an imbecile old idiot, and wholly unlike the dashing poltroon of Italian pantomime. The best "Scaramouches" that ever lived were Tiberio Fiurelli, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... flaxen hair, imagined she could act. Mrs. Timberlake, a fat, indulgent mother, rather agreed with her. The whole idea, after a few discursive performances of Milton's "The Masque of Comus," "Pyramus and Thisbe," and an improved Harlequin and Columbine, written by one of the members, was transferred to the realm of the studios, then quartered in the New Arts Building. An artist by the name of Lane Cross, a portrait-painter, who was much less of an artist than he was a stage director, and not much of ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser

... Anthony eyes swimming with tenderness, put up consoling lips.... The entrance of Polichinelle, however, cudgel and all, in the shape of a little white dog, dragging a bough with him, spoiled her game. Harlequin Sun, too, flashed out of hiding—before his cue, really, for the ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates

... good conduct, I can say, like Harlequin, that 'tis just as 'tis with you; and the Turkish ladies don't commit one sin the less for not being Christians. Now, that I am a little acquainted with their ways, I cannot forbear admiring, either the exemplary discretion, or extreme stupidity of all the writers that have given accounts ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague

... collected. It was brilliantly lighted, as well by patent lamps, as by a chandelier in the middle. The furniture had a resemblance to what I had seen in fashionable houses in England. The carpet was of red baize with a Turkish border, and figured in the middle like an harlequin's jacket. The principal novelty was a blue ribbon which divided the room lengthways, the one side of it being for the dancers, the other for the card-players. The ribbon was supported at proper distances by white staves, similar to those ...
— Travels through the South of France and the Interior of Provinces of Provence and Languedoc in the Years 1807 and 1808 • Lt-Col. Pinkney

... great artist in prose, faultless in tact, flawless in technique, that great man of letters, to whom every lover of 'prose as a fine art' looks up with an admiration which may well become despair. What is it in this style, this way of putting things, so occasional, so variegated, so like his own harlequin in his 'ghastly vest of white patchwork,' 'the apparition of a dead rainbow'; what is it that gives to a style, which no man can analyse, its 'terseness, its jocular pathos, which makes one feel in laughter?' Those are his own words, not used of himself; but do they ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons

... had been accustomed to throw confectionery and flowers on this day, but this time the day was to be made memorable by a shower of stones and bullets; this time they were not to appear in the harlequin jacket, but in their true form, earnest, grand, ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach

... Harlequin Circle.—An original, very entertaining, and instructive pastime, with a book giving 64 colored illustrations of the "Harlequin Circle." Put up in handsome box. ...
— The Nursery, January 1877, Volume XXI, No. 1 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various

... same old passage from your mouth to your belly," added an elastic Harlequin, reaching an arm across the women's shoulders. "Come, Cantapresto, we'll help you line it with good wine, to the health of his most superlatively serene Highness, the heir-presumptive of Pianura; and where is that ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton

... "I regret to say that another change has overtaken us. Have you ever heard of 'harlequin fate'? 'Tis a very buffoon of mischief and irony that is often permitted to dog our earthly footsteps and prevent us from becoming too content with our lot. For a time you and I, little maid, good comrades though we have been, must tread different ...
— Mary Louise • Edith van Dyne (one of L. Frank Baum's pen names)

... doctor bent forward, with head perilously near her own, and whispered: "There she is, between that harlequin and the Norman peasant maiden! You can see the pins gleaming in her hair. ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola

... carriages. It was not without mortification that the King observed the Queen's adoption of this style of dress: she was never so lovely in his eyes as when unadorned by art. One day Carlin, performing at Court as harlequin, stuck in his hat, instead of the rabbit's tail, its prescribed ornament, a peacock's feather of excessive length. This new appendage, which repeatedly got entangled among the scenery, gave him an opportunity for a great deal of buffoonery. There was some ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... all sorts of flags.... Then they lay a board between two boats, and on this two of the youngest and spryest wrestle till one falls into the water.... But all the fun's gone now. When I was young, there was different sport going. That was a sight! the corporation procession with the banners and the harlequin atop, and at Shrovetide, when the butchers led about an ox decked with ribbons and carnival twigs, with a boy on his back with wings and a little shirt.... All that's past now, people are got so fine. St. Knud's Fair is not what ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner

... finest of a cruel series. M. Eugene Montrosier says of it that "The drawing is masterly, incomparably firm, the composition superb, the general impression quite of the first order." It exhibits a pair of lean, hungry mountebanks, a clown and a harlequin beating the drum and trying a comic attitude to attract the crowd, at a fair, to a poor booth in front of which a painted canvas, offering to view a simpering fat woman, is suspended. But the crowd doesn't come, and the battered tumblers, ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James

... the chalk slipped from his fingers, and fell on the coffee-cup, which broke. The china, said Leighton, was expensive. He believed it was impossible to match it now. Each cup was different. It was a harlequin set. The saucer, without the cup, was therefore useless. Would Mr. Elliot please explain to ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster

... seized Packy, or some stage in the game made such action desirable, he would leap the barrier, and jumping up and down like a harlequin in front of the bleacher benches, start his cohort into a combined school yell that must make the hot blood leap through the veins of everyone who called Chester his ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton

... me to the level of a harlequin, to be laughed with, and laughed at. Who are my friends? Are they the idle boys who send me bouquets and never mention my name without looking unutterable things? Have I no tastes, no likings, no feelings, no emotions? In the name of God, ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong

... hand, General,' I demanded in reply; 'right glad to see you, and to know that old New Hampshire's granite hills have not faded from your memory, nor been absorbed in the quantity of swill it seems necessary to provide for the black-pig. But, I say, Frank, what harlequin-like changes politics take in a republic—now and then! Two years ago, and who'd a' thought a' seeing you here? 'Stonished you yourself, didn't it? Scarcely expected to brush old General Scott's fuss and feathers into a cock'd up hat, eh? There's nothing like a man keeping his mouth shut ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton

... appeals to his heart, avowing her passionate love in dumb show, and presenting him with her bouquet; and a hundred other nonsensicalities, among which the rudest and simplest are not the least effective. A resounding thump on the back with a harlequin's sword, or a rattling blow with a bladder half full of dried pease or corn, answers a very good purpose. There was a good deal of absurdity one day in a figure in a crinoline petticoat, riding on an ass and almost filling the Corso with the circumference of crinoline ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne

... the ropes were being cast off, Jolivet appeared, tearing along. The steamer was already sheering off, the gangway had been drawn onto the quay, but Alcide Jolivet would not stick at such a little thing as that, so, with a bound like a harlequin, he alighted on the deck of the Caucasus almost in his ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne

... deeply enough into human nature found it in the man, but superficial observers saw only the mocking man of the world. When suddenly observed, his face always had a sad, grave aspect, and it was often hard for him to throw off this seriousness and to put on his harlequin's mask. Upon religious matters he was always reticent, but reverent. Only upon rare occasions would he discuss serious subjects at all, and only with a chosen few. In one letter which has been published he departs from ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold

... boulevardier, in touch with some smart journalists, made free of a few newspaper offices, and welcomed in the pleasure haunts of pressmen. This life, whose dreary superficiality is covered by the glitter of universal blague, like the stupid clowning of a harlequin by the spangles of a motley costume, induced in him a Frenchified—but most un-French—cosmopolitanism, in reality a mere barren indifferentism posing as intellectual superiority. Of his own country he used to say to his French associates: "Imagine an atmosphere ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad

... homage to the "Aristophanes of Heaven." Indeed, had it not always run through his work, this conception of humor in the grotesqueries of history, "the dream of an intoxicated divinity"? But his amusement thereat had been genial. "Like a mad harlequin," he had written of Byron, the man to whom he felt himself most related, "he strikes a dagger into his own heart, to sprinkle mockingly with the jetting black blood the ladies and gentlemen around.... My blood is not so splenetically black; my bitterness ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... influences. Unfortunately the force of tradition was so strong that he found it impossible to indulge his tastes. It was de rigueur to conduct in either a frock or an evening coat, but if he had his own way he would vary his garb for every composer. For example, he would like to wear a harlequin's dress for STRAUSS, a full-bottomed wig and ruffles for BACH, HAYDN and GLUCK, a red tie and a cap of Liberty for SCHOeNBERG, and the uniform of a Cossack of the Ukraine for TCHAIKOVSKY. Instead of which the utmost liberty that he was allowed was ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 28, 1914 • Various

... him back to that moon-lit night of July when he made bold to climb the private stair and seek private speech with Madonna Beatrice. I can guess very well how the scene showed that night in the moonbeams—all the city stretched out below, a harlequin's coat of black and silver, according to the disposition of the homes and the open spaces with their lights and shadows. I can fancy how, through the gilded air, came the cheerful sounds of the dancing and the luting ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... once she watch'd heaven, fearing God and the rain— Or gaz'd o'er her bleach-field so fairly engross'd, Till the lines wander'd idle from pillar to post! Ah, where are the playful young pinners—ah, where The harlequin quilts that cut capers in air— The brisk waltzing stockings—the white and the black, That danced on the tight-rope, or swung on the slack— The light sylph-like garments, so tenderly pinn'd, That blew into shape, and embodied ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... stage Harlequin and Punch were as usual quarrelling with each other and threatening every moment to come ...
— Pinocchio - The Tale of a Puppet • C. Collodi

... sunshine with the inexhaustible wit and vivacity that lights his clear and subtle intellect. "He is a treasure on rainy days," says Diderot. "If they made him at the toy shops everybody would want one for the country." "He was the nicest little harlequin that Italy has produced," says Marmontel, "but upon the shoulders of this harlequin was the head of a Machiavelli. Epicurean in his philosophy and with a melancholy soul, seeing everything on the ridiculous ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason

... one, Who behind the scenes hath been, Caught Life with his make-up off, Found him but a harlequin Cast to play a tragic part— And the two laughed, heart ...
— The Broadway Anthology • Edward L. Bernays, Samuel Hoffenstein, Walter J. Kingsley, Murdock Pemberton

... within these nine years, to Rousseau, Goethe, Young, Aretine, Timon of Athens, Dante, Petrarch, 'an alabaster vase, lighted up within,' Satan, Shakspeare, Buonaparte, Tiberius, AEschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Harlequin, the Clown, Sternhold and Hopkins, to the phantasmagoria, to Henry the Eighth, to Chenier, to Mirabeau, to young R. Dallas (the schoolboy), to Michael Angelo, to Raphael, to a petit-maitre, to Diogenes, to Childe Harold, to Lara, to the Count in Beppo, to Milton, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... fever, and the revel of death. Has he the enigma of modern times to solve, Napoleon I? In Napoleon, who in the sphere of action is to Modern History what Shakespeare is in the sphere of art, Tolstoi sees no more than the clerical harlequin, Abbe de Pradt, sees, a stage conqueror, a charlatan devoured by vanity, without greatness, dignity, without genius for war yet impatient of peace, shallow of intellect, tricking and tricked by all around him, dooming ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb

... corner by the police, and say: "Would you like to go back to Italy? Here is a steamer ticket. A boat sails for Genoa tomorrow. And here is a thousand dollars. It will buy you a vineyard in Sicily. Go home and bid the signora get ready." And then to disappear once more, like Harlequin, to flash your wand in some other corner of the human multitude. Oh, there would be fun for one's money, something worth while having ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne

... All this gay company is gone who have made her sides split with their laughter. Here is Harlequin's dress, lying in one of the wardrooms, but there is nobody to dance Harlequin's dances. "Here is a lovely clear day,—surely to-day they will come on deck and take a meridian!" No, nobody comes. ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale

... about you think that way—if one can call the process thinking? You don't think, do you, that it is a sign of superiority to be narrow, to be ignorant, to be out of touch with the great masses of one's fellow-beings, to play the part of a harlequin or a ballet-girl on the stage of life? I understand how a stupid ass can fritter away his one chance to live in saying and hearing and doing silly things. But ought not an intelligent person try to enjoy life, try to get something substantial out of it, try to possess himself of its ideas and ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)

... forcible presentation of grave issues. The essential type of the man was presented to public gaze about two years ago, when he stood on the City Hall steps dressed from head to foot in a suit of green to review a St. Patrick's procession. He is a harlequin with the literary ambition of a Richelieu. He affects an intimacy with the stage, and has done something in the way of producing plays. He can write clearly and concisely when he will, but prefers to ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe

... intended. As Thackeray explains clearly what he means by a humorist, I may as well here repeat the passage: "If humour only meant laughter, you would scarcely feel more interest about humorous writers than about the private life of poor Harlequin just mentioned, who possesses in common with these the power of making you laugh. But the men regarding whose lives and stories your kind presence here shows that you have curiosity and sympathy, appeal to a great number of ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope

... head-dress. He sits on the perch now with folded wings, but the cage door, in likeness of a portico, shows there is convenience to come forth for the purposes of benediction, when wanted. Outside, the king of Naples, dressed as Harlequin, plays the organ for instruction of the bird (unhappy penitent, doomed to penance), and, grinning with sharp teeth, observes: "He speaks in my way now." In the background a young Republican holds ready the match for a barrel of gunpowder, but looks at his watch, waiting ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... the same whom we saw two years ago in Vera Cruz. They are drawing away various persons from the principal theatre. Their object seems to be to make people laugh, and they succeed. On Christmas-eve we went there to see the gracioso (harlequin) in a woman's dress, dance Tripili, an old Spanish dance, accompanied with singing. They introduced some appropriate lines concerning the late troubles about the copper, which were received with great applause. Just as they were concluding ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca

... ran chaotically together into a wild turbulent sea! A wild turbulent sea, indeed, over whose foaming waves the ghosts of the departed madly chased one another, their white shrouds floating in the wind, while behind all, goading them on with cracking whip, ran a many-colored harlequin—and I was the harlequin! Suddenly from the black waves the sea monsters raised their misshapen heads, snatched at me with extended claws, and I ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... brought back with them some shred of territory. But now that princesses receive their dowers in hard cash, recourse is had to violent measures in order to procure pieces of material; they are seized by soldiers; and there are some large stains of blood upon this harlequin's cloak! ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About

... Spider, with finger so fine, To show his dexterity on the tight-line, From one branch to another his cobwebs he slung, Then quick as an arrow he darted along, But just in the middle—oh! shocking to tell, From his rope, in an instant, poor Harlequin fell. Yet he touch'd not the ground, but with talons outspread, Hung suspended in air, at the end of ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... do not fetter that exalted principle imbued in her very nature. It is true, her tender and feeling heart may often be moved (as she is thus constituted), but she is not conquered, she has not given up to the harlequin of disappointments, her energies have not become clouded in the last movement of misfortune, but she is continually invigorated by the archetype of her affections. She may bury her face in her hands, and let the tear of anguish roll, she may promenade the delightful walks of some garden, ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain

... sides of the stage are benches. The curtain is composed of two tapestries which can be drawn aside. Above a harlequin's mantle are the royal arms. There are broad steps from the stage to the hall; on either side of these steps are the places ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand

... same unless it happened to be of "the blue willow pattern." The practice, however, of using for the dessert-service plates of Worcester china painted by hand, and the execution of many of which as works of art call for our admiration as much as any enamel, created a taste for forming what are called harlequin sets, among which, if a few ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker

... chair as easily as if he were a doll, appears in two minds whether or no to shake all future power of cushioning out of him and shake him into his grave. Resisting the temptation, but agitating him violently enough to make his head roll like a harlequin's, he puts him smartly down in his chair again and adjusts his skull-cap with such a rub that the old man winks with both ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... surely they may be found among the following: such lyrics as "An Evening Song", "My Springs", "A Ballad of Trees and the Master", "Betrayal", "Night and Day", "The Stirrup-Cup", and "Nirvana"; such sonnets as "The Mocking-Bird" and "The Harlequin of Dreams"; such nature poems as "The Song of the Chattahoochee", "The Waving of the Corn", and "From the Flats"; such poems of high seriousness as "Individuality", "Opposition", "How Love looked for Hell", and "A Florida Sunday"; such a stirring ballad as "The Revenge of Hamish"; ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims

... and gentlemen. Here you will see the performing seal, the Circassian beauty, the Chinese giant, and the smallest dwarf in the world." Next to those attractions came the circus, outside of which, on a raised platform, stood harlequin, clown, and columbine, all in a row, and in ...
— Penelope and the Others - Story of Five Country Children • Amy Walton

... graver tragic known (Though his best part long since was done), Still on the stage desires to tarry; And he who played the Harlequin, After the jest still loads the scene, Unwilling ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis

... by storm; and cut down in indiscriminate slaughter twenty-five thousand men, women and children. The brother of Ivan IV. was seized and thrown into prison, where he miserably perished. The archbishop was stripped of his canonical robes, clad in the dress of a harlequin, paraded through the streets on a gray mare, an object of derision to the people, and then was imprisoned for life. Such cruelty does not seem at all in accordance with the character of Ivan, while the grossest exaggeration ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott

... less of solid matter within their grasp whereof to mould any judicious and moderate expectation of good. Thus, all the while Hepzibah was perfecting the scheme of her little shop, she had cherished an unacknowledged idea that some harlequin trick of fortune would intervene in her favor. For example, an uncle—who had sailed for India fifty years before, and never been heard of since—might yet return, and adopt her to be the comfort of ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... costumes; along the lane which skirts the meadow and leads through the great gate of the old fortress, donkeys are crowded together, and keeping up a constant and outrageous concert; saltimbanci, in harlequin suits, are making faces or haranguing from a platform, and inviting everybody into their penny-show. From inside their booths is heard the sound of the invariable pipes and drum, and from the lifted curtain now and then peers forth ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various

... position in the country?" some one asks the Senate. "We are charged with the preservation of public liberty."—"What is your business in this city?" Pierrot demands of Harlequin.—"My business," replies Harlequin, "is ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo

... them are; there is a great colony of Blackbirds I want you to see, for our next family is a very interesting one. It contains a harlequin, a tramp, a soldier, a tent-maker, a hammock-maker, and a basket-maker; and we shall probably see them all, sooner or later, but certainly one or ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues

... Parisians fresh from the Boulevards; Amsterdam children in charity uniforms; girls from the Roman-Catholic Orphan-House, in sable gowns and white headbands; boys from the Burgher Asylum, with their black tights and short-skirted, harlequin coats. [Footnote: This is not said in derision. Both the boys and girls of this institution wear garments quartered in red and black alternately. By making the dress thus conspicuous, the children are, in a measure, ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various

... don't pull off one or the other; but they don't. They shall see the shows, and stand all in a crowd before them, with open eyes and open mouths, wondering at the beauty of the dancing-women, and their gowns all over spangles, and at all the wit and grimaces, and somersets of harlequin and clown. They have had a merry dinner and a dance, like a dance of elephants ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various

... Panic makes Harlequin three-quarters of us all. For one who had never played Rugby football George handled the situation well. He drew the defence with a feint to the left, then, swerving to the right, shot past into the friendly darkness. From behind came the ringing of ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse

... and which, with few exceptions, may perhaps be extended to most of their civil and moral institutions, "that they exist more in state maxims, than in the minds of the people." As, however, a Chinese might be led to make similar reflexions on the exhibition of Harlequin Skeleton, and those numerous representations that of late years have crept upon our own stage, where ghosts, hobgoblins, and bleeding statues are called in aid of the spectacle, I should hesitate to draw any general conclusion, with regard to their taste, from the particular ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow

... benefactor,—by one honest man to another,—his wretched client had been compelled to follow his quondam clerk, his present debtor, from court to court; had found his just claims met with well-invented but unfounded counter-claims, had seen his party shift his character of pursuer or defender, as often as Harlequin effects his transformations, till, in a chase so varied and so long, the unhappy litigant had lost substance, reputation, and almost the use of reason itself, and came before their lordships an object ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott

... statue," cried the Canadian, as he came back, radiant, from the telephone. "There, we are all fitted. Mr. Crook shall be clown; he's a journalist and knows all the oldest jokes. I can be harlequin, that only wants long legs and jumping about. My friend Florian 'phones he's bringing the police costume; he's changing on the way. We can act it in this very hall, the audience sitting on those broad stairs opposite, one row above another. These front doors ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton

... story which is substantially the foundation of the slender plot of most modern scenic pantomimes preliminary to the bursting forth from their chrysalides of Harlequin, Columbine, Pantaloon, and company. A young girl, with the consent of her parents, has for some time promised her hand to an honest youth. The old mother, in despite of her word, has taken a caprice to give her daughter ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery

... a thing of literature, no other sort of book admits of such variety of topics, style, and treatment as the novel. As diverse in talent and quality as the story-teller himself,—now harlequin, now gossip, now threnodist,—with weird ghostliness, moping melancholy, uncouth laughter, or gentle serious smile,—now relating the story, with childlike interest in it, now with a good heart and now with a bad heart ridiculing mankind, now allegorical ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various

... protesting, and denouncing, and saying those horrible things about her! I know how she appears—she likes admiration. But the admiration in the world which she would most delight in just now would be yours. She plays with Captain Lovelock as a child does with a wooden harlequin, she pulls a string and he throws up his arms and legs. She has about as much intention of eloping with him as a little girl might have of eloping with a pasteboard Jim Crow. If you were to have a frank explanation with her, ...
— Confidence • Henry James

... and those elemental disturbances were reproduced in miniature in the broker's offices. Maxwell shoved his chair against the wall and transacted business after the manner of a toe dancer. He jumped from ticker to 'phone, from desk to door with the trained agility of a harlequin. ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry

... spread out my pinions, and sprang on my perch— 'Twas the dragon on Bow, that odd sign of the church, The episcopal centre of action; All Cheapside was crowded with black, brown, and fair, Like a harlequin's jacket, or French rocquelaire, A legitimate ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 400, November 21, 1829 • Various

... again fell in with the admiral; and I was most agreeably surprised at meeting my friend Mr. Brooke, who had come on to Singapore to meet Sir William Parker, and had followed him up in the Wanderer, commanded by my friend Captain Henry Seymour,—that vessel, in company with the Harlequin, Captain the Hon. George Hastings, and the H. C. steamer Diana, having just returned from an expedition to Acheen, whither they had been dispatched by the commander-in-chief, to inquire into and demand redress for an act ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel

... even incapable of a decent makeup, they writhe from morning till night on the boards of the stage, and, dying the most real death, suffering the most real sufferings, they bring into their deathly convulsions the cheap art of the harlequin. Even their crooks are not real; they only play the roles of crooks, while remaining honest people; and the role of honest people is played by rogues, and played poorly, and the public sees it, but ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev

... among a wide range of different types. A variety of corn called "Harlequin" shows stripes on its kernels, and one ear may offer nearly white and nearly red seeds and all the possible intermediate steps between them. From these seeds the next generation will repeat the motley ears, but some specimens will produce ears of uniform ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries

... mental or moral level of the ordinary citizen. Government imposes when you meet it in respectful capitals in the public prints, but when you get a glimpse of it in its shirt sleeves, en famille, or playing harlequin upon the top of a barrel at the hustings, or tickling the yokels with bits of cheap millinery and silk stockings, and reflect that you have paid homage to that, you begin to doubt the saving efficacy ...
— The Hunted Outlaw - Donald Morrison, The Canadian Rob Roy • Anonymous

... Cataneo," said Capraja, "you have exacted the last drop of physical enjoyment, and there you are, hanging on a wire like a cardboard harlequin, patterned with scars, and never moving unless the string is pulled of a ...
— Massimilla Doni • Honore de Balzac

... might easily find herself with a dislocated shoulder or a mangled leg in return for a simple visit which was perhaps prompted by no evil intention. Each for herself in her own stronghold. But let a parasite appear, meditating foul play: that's a very different thing. She can wear the trappings of Harlequin or of a church-beadle; she can be the Clerus-beetle, in wing-cases of vermilion with blue trimmings, or the Dioxys-bee, with a red scarf across her black abdomen, and the mistress of the house will let her have her way, or, if she become ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre

... Pierrot only stared in the sky and laughed inanely. "If you persist in slighting me like this," she whispered in his ear, in a whisper which was like a hiss, "I will abandon you for ever. I will give my heart to Harlequin, and you shall never see me again." But Pierrot continued to stare at the sky, and laughed once more inanely. Then Columbine got up, her eyes flashing with rage; taking Harlequin by the arm she dragged him swiftly away. They danced across the grass semi-circle ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring

... California had taken my place in the shallows, his fish hard held. I was up the bank lying full length on the sweet-scented grass and gasping in company with my first salmon caught, played and landed on an eight-ounce rod. My hands were cut and bleeding, I was dripping with sweat, spangled like a harlequin with scales, water from my waist down, nose peeled by the sun, but utterly, ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling

... it for a baby harlequin, this cap? Made of gray stuff, with peaks of green and black fustian, and a bedtick lining!" This description of the cap was received with ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue

... the catalogue it is labeled "Actress"—just "Actress." A young woman in the costume of a harlequin, over which she has draped a Greek toga, while at her feet lie a confused heap of masks. With her staring glance turned toward the spectators, she stands there all alone on an empty, dusky stage, surrounded by odd pieces of misfit scenery—one wall of a room, a forest piece, ...
— The Lonely Way—Intermezzo—Countess Mizzie - Three Plays • Arthur Schnitzler

... carried out in harlequin flannel surmounts a full brim of restful willow-green. Garnished with intertwined laurel and St. John's-Wort, and decorated with the tail feather of a Surrey fowl, it makes a comfortable and distinguished headdress for a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 22, 1920 • Various

... had to become a Pulcinella. His very sorrow and melancholy did but increase the comic dryness of his sharply-cut features, and increased the laughter of the audience, who showered plaudits on their favourite. The lovely Columbine was indeed kind and cordial to him; but she preferred to marry the Harlequin. It would have been too ridiculous if beauty and ugliness ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen

... secret or overt guise, seemed to haunt Pierston just at this time with undignified mockery which savoured rather of Harlequin than of the torch-bearer. Two days after parting in a lone island from the girl he had so disinterestedly loved he met in Piccadilly his friend Somers, wonderfully spruced up, and hastening ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy

... to find an harlequin at the court of Attila? Yet such is the origin of these buffoons. The colour of the black slaves, the strangeness of their face and manners, caused them to be sought after as excellent ministers of mirth; to complete the singularity, Zercho ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 70, March 1, 1851 • Various

... very portly man who had passed the maturity of manhood, but active as Harlequin. He had a well-favoured countenance; fair, good-humoured, but very sly. He was dressed like the head butler of the London Tavern, and was particular as to his white waistcoats and black silk stockings, punctilious as to his knee-buckles, ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli

... situation, her head leaned in the pose of the most plaintive of the pastels that Lord Dungory had commissioned his favourite artist to execute in imitation of the Lady Hamilton portraits. And now, his finger on his lip, like harlequin glancing after columbine, the old gentleman, who ...
— Muslin • George Moore

... I fear you will find too long, harlequinades would seem rather to be derived from the wanton pranks of sprites than the coarse gambols of buffoons; and this derivation would certainly best agree with the accepted character of the modern harlequin. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 76, April 12, 1851 • Various

... from Venice the last summer, and taking Bergamo in my way homeward to England, it was my hap, sojourning there some four or five days, to light in fellowship with that famous Francattip Harlequin, who, perceiving me to be an Englishman by my habit and speech, asked me many particulars of the order and manner of our plays, which he termed by the name of representations. Amongst other talk he enquired of me if I knew any such Parabolano here in ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various

... disagreeably, a white domino, who for a few minutes had been a very attentive spectator, suddenly came forward, and exclaiming, "I'll cross him though he blast me!" rushed upon the fiend, and grasping one of his horns, called out to a Harlequin who stood near him, "Harlequin! do you fear to ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney

... alarm yourself unnecessarily. But may I ask what all this means, and why you were hiding behind my curtains as though you were a burglar or a Bashi-Bazouk? But that the pantomime season is over, I should say you were practicing for the Harlequin's window trick." ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton

... absolute and heartrending despair, terminating in an appeal to the heavens to come to her aid. Enter R. an important-looking personage with a long white beard, wearing a costume which might be, called a commissionaire's if it wasn't so like a harlequin's. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 14, 1920 • Various

... Blue-Winged Teal Cinnamon Teal Green-Winged Teal Wood Duck Black Duck Diving Ducks Canvasback Redheads Ringneck Scaup Goldeneye Bufflehead Ruddy Red-Breasted Merganser Common Merganser Hooded Merganser Whistling Ducks White-Winged Scoter Surf Scoter Black Scoter Common Eider Oldsquaw Harlequin Swans Canada Geese Brant Snow White-Fronted Geese At a Glance Guide Comparative Sizes Of Waterfowl Wetlands Attract Wildlife ...
— Ducks at a Distance - A Waterfowl Identification Guide • Robert W. Hines

... bitterly. He was convinced that the harlequin would come home soon, replace the uniform (which was probably extremely becoming to him, as they were of a height and figure much the same), and afterward, in his ordinary dress, would sally forth to spend his last evening with Fanchon. ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington

... the burning idol of their devotion almost converted me into a worshipper. I was awe-struck, and believed those significations to be something more than elemental fires. It was all enchantment and a dream. No such pleasure has since visited me but in dreams.—Harlequin's Invasion followed; where, I remember, the transformation of the magistrates into reverend beldams seemed to me a piece of grave historic justice, and the tailor carrying his own head to be as sober a verity as ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb

... terrors of burnt cork. I was delighted, too, to see the distressed damsel in faded silk and dirty muslin, who had trembled under his tyranny, and afflicted me so much by her sorrows, now seated familiarly on his knee, and quaffing from the same tankard. Harlequin lay asleep on one of the benches; and monks, satyrs, and Vestal virgins were grouped together, laughing outrageously at a broad story told by an unhappy count, who had been barbarously murdered in the tragedy. This was, indeed, novelty to me. It was a ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving

... fame that a pantomime entertainment, called "Harlequin Jack Sheppard," was devised by one Thurmond, and brought out with great success at Drury Lane Theatre. All the scenes were painted from nature, including the public-house that the robber frequented in Claremarket, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay

... but do not wish to confirm it. There, Minha, you can take your choice between the gray mosquito, the hairy mosquito, the white-clawed mosquito, the dwarf mosquito, the trumpeter, the little fifer, the urtiquis, the harlequin, the big black, and the red of the woods; or rather they make take their choice of you for a little repast, and you will come back hardly recognizable! I fancy these bloodthirsty diptera guard the Brazilian ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne

... leaned out of the box in the grandstand. Her relations with the doctor were almost common talk. That was amply proved by the fury with which the gentlemen of her coterie pulled him to pieces, declaring that he was an idiot and that his book was a Harlequin's coat, a series of excerpts from other men, poorly basted together, with the daring of ignorance. They, too, were stung by envy, in their senile, silent love, by the triumph of that stripling who carried off their idol, whom ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... progress and prejudice and dreams; says 'I told you so!' with an air, as if after a double somersault in the circus ring; grows wistful, even tender, with emotions always genuine ... always ... as becomes the harlequin-philosopher, entertaining." ...
— Contemporary American Literature - Bibliographies and Study Outlines • John Matthews Manly and Edith Rickert

... and plunged up to the neck in the snow-drift; which brought his career to an abrupt conclusion. The sudden stoppage of the horse was one thing, but the arresting of Master Charley was another and quite a different thing. The instant his charger landed, he left the saddle like a harlequin, described an extensive curve in the air, and fell head foremost into the drift, above which his boots and three inches of his legs alone ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne

... man, breathing of opulence in air and attire, came briskly forward and held up his hand to receive both sticks, with a harlequin bow from the dark-eyed Oriental, who wore a spruce black broadcloth suit, in honour of America, and a red fez, in loyalty, doubtless, to the land of the Sultan; and then my interest ...
— Against Odds - A Detective Story • Lawrence L. Lynch

... themselves with a frittata of eggs and chopped sausages, or a slice of agnello, and enjoy the delicious air that breathes from the mountains. The old cardinals descend from their gilded carriages, and, accompanied by one of their household and followed by their ever-present lackeys in harlequin liveries, totter along on foot with swollen ankles, lifting their broad red hats to the passers-by who salute them, and pausing constantly in their discourse to enforce a phrase or take a pinch of snuff. Files of scholars from the Propaganda stream along, now and then, two ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various



Words linked to "Harlequin" :   harlequin-snake, goof, goofball, cloud, clown



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