"Lisp" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... below medium height, a slight, delicate-looking boy; although, as a matter of fact, extremely strong, with blue eyes, many freckles, and hair which threatened to be a decided red, but which now has lost its fierceness. When he spoke it was with a lisp, which also has changed, and which now appears to be merely an ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... seen by comparing his portrait with that of his mother. His expression was placid, benign, but very far from inert; for his half-closed eyes twinkled with quiet mirth. His voice was soft and harmonious, with just a trace of a lisp, or rather of that peculiar intonation which is commonly described as "short-tongued." His bearing was the very perfection of courteous ease, equally remote from stiffness and from familiarity. His manners ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... Farewell, Monsieur Traveller: Look, you lisp, and wear/ Strange suits; disable all the benefits of your own country; be out of love/ with your Nativity, and almost chide God for making you that countenance/ you are; or I will scarce think that you have swam in a GONDOLA./ AS YOU LIKE IT, Act iv. Sc. 1./ Annotation ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Vol. 7. - Poetry • George Gordon Byron
... too, instead Of his own grave, respected head, Might wear (for aught I see that bars) Old Lady WILHELMINA FRUMP'S— So while the hand signed Circulars, The head might lisp out "What is trumps?"— The REGENT'S brains could we transfer To some robust man-milliner, The shop, the shears, the lace, and ribbon Would go, I doubt not, quite as glib on; And, vice versa, take the pains To give the PRINCE the shopman's brains, One only change from thence would ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... what I now am, you know also. Not more fixed is fate than my purpose. Your brother dies even on the spot on which my nephew died; and you, Clara, shall be my bride; and the first thing your children shall be taught to lisp shall be curses on the vile name ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... early fields of corn, The living silence dwelleth, and the gray Sweet earth-mist, while afar the lisp of spray Breathes from the ocean like a Triton's horn. Open thy lattice, for the gage is won For which this earth has journeyed though the dust Of shattered systems, cold about the sun; And proved by sin, by mighty lives ...
— ANTHOLOGY OF MASSACHUSETTS POETS • WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE
... loveliness of her placid brow. He knelt by her side. It was his little Beatrice, this strange, cold, marble statue—his little baby Beatrice, who had leaped in his arms years ago, who had cried and laughed, who had learned in pretty accents to lisp his name—his beautiful child, his proud, bright daughter, who had kissed him the previous night while he spoke jesting words to her about her lover. And he had never heard her voice since—never would hear it ...
— Dora Thorne • Charlotte M. Braeme
... a wonderful illusion of arrested youth as she stood with one hand grasping the collar of her gorgeous mandarin coat. But Claire was more interested in the turquoise pendants than in her aunt. She had never seen the jewels before, but she had heard about them almost from the time she was able to lisp. ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... horse-racing for a little time, feeling myself somewhat tired, I went up to one of the tents, and laid myself down on the grass. There was much noise in the tent. "Who will stand me?" said a voice with a slight tendency to lisp. "Will you, my lord?" "Yes," said another voice. Then there was a sound as of a piece of money banging on a table. "Lost! lost! lost!" cried several voices; and then the banging down of the money, and the "lost! lost! lost!" were frequently repeated; at last the second voice exclaimed: ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... them, the playlet writer must give peculiar individuality to every word spoken by the chief characters. By this I do not mean that, merely to show that a character is different, a hero or heroine should be made to talk with a lisp or to use some catch-word—though this is sometimes done with admirable effect. What I mean is that the words given to the chief characters must possess an individuality rising from their inner differences; their speech should show them as not ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... civilization. {16} The new century was not long in, the Regent Philip of Orleans had not long been in power, before France showed that Versailles had ceased to control her literature. A new Rabelais with an 18th century lisp, Montesquieu, by seasoning his Lettres Persanes with a sauce piquante compounded of indecency and style, succeeded in making the public swallow some incendiary morsels. The King of France, he declared, drew his power from the vanity of his subjects, while the Pope was "an old idol to ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... not lisp their suspicions that Violet might have fled from an uncongenial marriage to a suicide's fate; but Lord Cameron, who remembered his last interview with his betrothed, had a terrible fear that such might be the case; while Lady Cameron, having told him of Violet's ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... able to read, by the tales of genii, sorcerers, demons, ghouls, enchanted caves and castles, and monsters and monstrosities of every name. The exceedingly impressible and poetical nature of children (for all children are poets and talk poetry as soon as they can lisp) appropriates and absorbs with intense relish these fanciful myths, and for years they believe more firmly in their truth than in the realities of the actual world. And I more than suspect that this child-credulity rather slumbers in the grown man, smothered beneath superimposed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... time the diggers at Bulteel's pan were as miscellaneous as the audience at Drury Lane Theatre, only mixed more closely; the gallery folk and the stalls worked cheek by jowl. Here a gentleman with an affected lisp, and close by an honest fellow, who could not deliver a sentence without an oath, or some still more horrible expletive that meant nothing at all in reality, but served to make respectable flesh creep: interspersed with these, Hottentots, Kafirs, and ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... without clammy-cold shroud on it Hitherward comes, or a flower-like star! Only the hiss of the tempest is loud on it— Hiss, and the moan of a bitter sea bar. Here on this waste, and to left and to right of it, Never is lisp or the ripple of rain: Fierce is the daytime and wild is the night of it, Flame without limit and frost without wane! Trees half alive, with the sense of a curse on them, Shudder and shrink from the black heavy gale; Ghastly, with boughs like the plumes of a hearse on them: ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... God is, perhaps, among the first that vibrate on the ear of man; it is reiterated to him incessantly; he is taught to lisp it with respect; to listen to it with fear; to bend the knee when it is reverberated: by dint of repetition, by listening to the fables of antiquity, by hearing it pronounced by all ranks and persuasions, he seriously believes all men bring the idea with them into the world; he ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... for this idle trade; No duty broke, no father disobey'd; While yet a child, ere yet a fool to fame, I lisp'd in numbers, for the numbers ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... weep. Her tears fell on her lover's face, but they were tears of joy; and with them were mingled tiny bursts of laughter and a thousand endearing words without sense, like the lisp of a little child. She quite forgot that the sight of her joy might sadden the ...
— Honey-Bee - 1911 • Anatole France
... the people on account of weights and measures, and as they are never inspected, they cannot be right. It is also believed that some of easy consciences have two sets of them, but we cannot affirm the fact. As to the corn measure, the Company itself has always been suspected, but who dare lisp it? The payment in zeewant, which is the currency here, has never been placed upon a good footing, although the commonalty requested it, and showed how it should be regulated, assigning numerous reasons therefor. But there is always misunderstanding ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • J. F. Jameson, Editor
... he has heard and to translate into the terms of modern speech what he has received in confidence, as it were, he almost blushes, as if he had been guilty of spying on Adam and Eve in their nuptial bower. Alas, if one could but muffle his speech with the unconscious lisp of infancy, or veil and tone his picture to correspond to the perspective of antiquity, he might feel at least that, like Watteau, he had dealt worthily, if not truly, with that ideal age which we ever think of as the ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... slumbers. The captain rose hurriedly, dressed himself and inquired for the child, who had been resigned to the care of the cook. She was brought to him, a bright, cheerful little thing, just beginning to lisp unintelligible words. For a few days she missed her mother and wore a look of expectation on her infantile face, occasionally crying out; but anon this passed away, and she became cheerful and happy. The captain spent as much of his time with her as he could spare from ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... precedence of the brutes? That Elephantis is at war With savage hosts of Rhinocer? You know these realms, not void of fame?' 'I joy to learn them now by name,' Return'd Sir Gill, 'for, first or last, No lisp of them has ever pass'd Throughout our dome so blue and vast.' Abash'd, the elephant replied, 'What came you, then, to do?—' 'Between two emmets to divide A spire of grass in two. We take of all a care; ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... his own expression, "never saw any use in quarreling with either side which held the town." His kindness and benevolence made him very popular with people of both sides. As Colonel Morgan rode into town, this old gentleman stopped him, and said, with the strong lisp which those who know him can supply, "Well, John, you are a curious fellow! How are Kirby Smith and Gracie? Well, John, when we don't look for you, it's the very time ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... handkerchief from the island-edge, for she divined that I had gone to seek her, and she was watching for me: and when I took her hand, what did she say to me, the Biblical simpleton?—'Oh you of little Faith!' says she. And she had adventures to lisp, with all the r's liquefied into l's, and I was with her all ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... over free with the meat and the drink, though I must say of him that he was a clever fellow, and perfect master of his trade, by which he made a power of money, and bating his not being able to learn Irish, and a certain Jewish lisp which he had, a great master of his tongue, of which he was very proud, so much so that he once told me that when he had saved a certain sum of money he meant to leave off the thimbling business, and enter Parliament, into which he said he could get at any ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... great man, a great diplomatist, a great tactician and an illustrious citizen and patriot. His name and his deeds will be cherished and admired as long as the English language is read or spoken, and as long as human lips lisp the name of liberty. ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... purchase of the pearls by Deep-water Peter, and shivered. His voice passed into a wail. Little by little he stumbled through the hemlock grove, beseeching each tree to yield up out of obdurate shadow that beloved form, to vouchsafe him the lisp of flying feet over dead beech leaves. But the trees stood mournfully ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... struggle between a restless body, a restless mind, and a restless soul, all tending in different directions, and at last they stood in a row before their aunt to recite their morning's task. Even little Jamie had his verse of Scripture to lisp, and was patted on the head when ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... spring was melting into summer, and you, my little companion, began to smile—that smile made hope bud out afresh, assuring me the world was not a desert. Your gestures were ever present to my fancy; and I dwelt on the joy I should feel when you would begin to walk and lisp. Watching your wakening mind, and shielding from every rude blast my tender blossom, I recovered my spirits—I dreamed not of the frost—'the killing frost,' to which you were destined to be exposed.—But I lose all patience—and execrate the injustice of ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... Lawrence stood erect, but rose to a shrill overtone when he bent his head: sometimes one would have thought the river was going down in spate, and then the volume of sound dwindled to a mere thread, a lisp in the air. Lawrence was observing these phenomena with a mind vacant of thought when he heard footsteps brushing through the grass by the field path from the village. Val had ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... confessed them to be inimitable. Simplicity is the distinguishing feature of these odes, and they interest by their innocence, as much as they fascinate by their beauty. They may be said, indeed, to be the very infants of the Muses, and to lisp in numbers. ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... I could make you come." The girl spoke in a low tone, a kind of half-whisper. She did not lisp, yet her articulation of one or two consonants was not ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... from her morning's reading as Magsie did. The three most influential papers did not comment upon Miss Clay's acting at all. In two more, little Miss Elsie Eaton and Bryan Masters shared the honors. The Sun remarked frankly that Miss Clay's amateurish acting, her baby lisp, her utter unacquaintance with whatever made for dramatic art, would undoubtedly insure the play a long run. Rachael knew that Warren would see all these papers, but she cut out all the pleasanter reviews and put them on ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... wandering paces, upon the verge of the great universe of thought. His little eye sparkles with some vague fancy that comes upon him first by language. Madge teaches him the words of affection and of thankfulness; and she teaches him to lisp infant prayer; and by secret pains (how could she be so secret?) instructs him in some little phrase of endearment that she knows will touch your heart; and then she watches your coming; and the little fellow runs toward you, and warbles out his lesson of love in tones that forbid ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... the old, old melody of youth and home! Again we are around the old hearthstone. Again do we kneel at mother's knee to lisp the evening prayer. Again she takes us in her arms, and sings to her tired child the soft, low lullaby of childhood's happy days.—Oh, Music, Music! Art Divine! Thou dost move and stir the heart as nothing ...
— Masonic Monitor of the Degrees of Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft and Master Mason • George Thornburgh
... to them? And what was her hidden face and bowed head? — a preaching the like of which they were never to hear from mortal voices. But not a word, not a lisp, fell from one of them. Winifred had run off; the rest hardly stirred; till Mrs. Landholm rose up, and gravely kissing one and the other ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... are!" she greeted her. "Goody! What a relief! I've been worrying about what you'd be like, and just praying you wouldn't have spectacles and talk with a lisp. Miss Todd gave me to understand you were a peach, and I might think myself in luck to room with you, but you never can trust head mistresses till you see for yourself. She's told me the truth, though, after all. Yes, I like you right straight ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... Revel, who knows all the actors, persuaded Mr Y—- (you know whom I mean, the great tragic actor) to come here, and give his opinion of her recitation. Mr Y—- was excessively polite; declared that she was a young lady of great talent; but that a slight lisp, which she has, unfitted her most decidedly for tragedy. Of course it was abandoned for comedy, which she studied some time; and when we considered her competent, Mr Revel had interest enough to induce ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... what I am because I was what I was last year; and next year I will be what I will be, because I am now what I ata. These were truths which were, very early in life, familiar to John Bright. Before he could speak without a childish lisp, his mother taught him to decide on his own actions. "I don't want to study; can't I go and wade in the brook?" once asked little John ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... Patsy, "it is all arranged, and I'm the captain. And is it agreed that we won't lisp a word to ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... newly discovered beauty gives me, and keeping up my dignity and coherence with an effort. My attention is constantly being distracted to note how prettily she moves, to wonder why it is I never noticed the sweet fall, the faint delightful whisper of a lisp in ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... own appeal might fail, taught her cooing baby to lisp the father's name, thinking that surely the Great Father's heart would not be able to resist a baby's prayer. The widowed mother prayed that if it were consistent with God's will he would spare her son. She laid her heart, ...
— An Echo Of Antietam - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... flitted through the corridors and galleries of the Louvre and the Palais Royal, and whenever he had sought to point her out to some one, to discover her name, lo, she was gone! Tormenting mystery! Ah, that soft lisp of hers, those enchanting caprices, those amazing extravagances of fancy, that wit which possessed the sparkle of white chambertin! He would never forget that summer night when, dressed as a boy, she had gone with him swashbuckling along the quays. ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... him, sympathize with man. Save as dumb fellow-prisoners through a wall; Answer ye rather to my call, Strong poets of a more unconscious day, When Nature spake nor sought nice reasons why, Too much for softer arts forgotten since That teach our forthright tongue to lisp and mince, 70 And drown in music the heart's bitter cry! Lead me some steps in your directer way, Teach me those words that strike a solid root Within the ears of men; Ye chiefly, virile both to think and feel, Deep-chested Chapman ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... on the stage for nothing," I assured him. "I'll change my voice very little, not enough to make it difficult to keep up—throw in a lisp or something of that kind. You can trust me to ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... there is in it a simple elegance. It has no carpets, but a shining mahogany floor, for there are few carpets in this land of heat. It is a place where music and mirth and family voices would be fitting; but there are no family voices here, save such as speak with a negro lisp and oracularly. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... had always been his misfortune to fail of his designs. Not a scrap of a warrant or other process could he obtain. Not the lisp of a word or oath would the good Squire take from his lying lips. "Get rid of your passion; go home, and work, and help me keep the peace," was Fabens' reply to ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... existence—one is inclined to the opinion that it must have many enemies. The valves are frail and brittle, and only when they gape are they revealed, and the gape is self consciously polite. The sponge embraces the slender mollusc so maternally that rude yawning is forbidden. It may lisp only and in smooth phrases, such as "prunes" and "prisms"; and, moreover, the host further insures it against molestation by the diffusion of an exceptionally powerful odour, which, though to my sense of ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... A clean canty hame, An' smilin' sweet babies To lisp the dear name; Wi' plenty o' labour, An' health to endure, Make time to row round aye The ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... a little hammock slung beside his own—the books in which he taught her made a large part of his library; and he who had seen her kneel beside her father to lisp her childish prayer, or who had heard the simple, beautiful faith with which she commended herself to the care of her Father in Heaven, when the waves roared and the winds howled around her floating home, would have felt, perhaps, ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... iverything, but what he professed to know th' mooast abaat wor dogs an rats. Noa daat he had a bit o' knowledge, but what wor far more sarviceable to him nor owt else wor a simple luk 'at he could put on, an' a bit ov a lisp 'at he had, made him seem soa harmless an simple 'at yo wodn't believe it possible for him to do owt wrang. He worn't varry big, but he wor varry wiry, an as full o' pluck as ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley
... the few peccadilloes Alluded to), ere he lept into the billows Possess'd irreproachable morals, began To feel rather queer, as a modest young man; When forth stepp'd a dame, whom he recognized soon As the one he had seen by the light of the moon, And lisp'd, while a soft smile attended each sentence, "Sir Rupert, I'm happy to make your acquaintance; My name is Lurline, And the ladies you've seen, All do me the honor to call me their Queen; I'm delighted to see you, sir, down in the Rhine here And hope you ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... blossoms, and it was under their arching boughs that the girls stopped when they had entered the garden. Ever since Virginia could remember, she had heard threats of cutting down the paulownias because of the litter the falling petals made in the spring, and ever since she could lisp at all she had begged her father to spare them for the sake of the enormous roots, into which she had loved to cuddle ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... own misfortune, and the unspeakable vexation of most persons who came within the sphere of her observation, her little tongue was as active as her hands. She learned to talk very early, and so speedy was her improvement in the art of prattling, that, before she was three years old, she could lisp out a tale in very intelligible language. Her parents were so unwise as to encourage her in this mischievous kind of ingenuity, not only from the pleasure they took in hearing how fast she learned to speak, but because they considered it as an infallible ...
— Vice in its Proper Shape • Anonymous
... so that any be Known guilty here of incivility: Let what is graceless, discompos'd, and rude, With sweetness, smoothness, softness, be endu'd. Teach it to blush, to curtsy, lisp, and show Demure, but yet full of temptation, too. Numbers ne'er tickle, or but lightly please, Unless they have some wanton carriages. This if ye do, each piece will here be good, And graceful ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... and dialogue, and the pure, sweet flow of his language, place him at the head of narrators. He reminds us of a delightful child. There is a grace beyond the reach of affectation in his awkwardness, a malice in his innocence, an intelligence in his nonsense, and an insinuating eloquence in his lisp. We know of no other writer who makes such interest for himself and his book in the heart of the reader. He has written an incomparable book. He has written something better, perhaps, than the best history; but he has not written a really good history; for ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... look that lighted up the velvety eyes in the joy of salvation. It is doubtful if he even heard half of the program of his future existence. There was something irresistible in the softness of her eyes and the fascinating lisp. He was face to face at last with a good influence. He had met, not the type of girl that men play with lightly or madly for a month or a day, but a woman, the kind rough coarse men look up to as to a polar star, the kind of woman you think of winning after years of struggle, that keeps men straight ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... of wit we here behold As porcelain earth, more precious, 'cause more old; Who, like an aged oak, so long hath stood, And art religion now as well as food: Though thy grey Muse grew up with elder times, And our deceased grandsires lisp'd thy rhymes; Yet we can sing thee too, and make the lays Which deck thy brow look fresher with thy praise. * * * * * Though these, your happy births, have silent past More years than some abortive wits shall last; ...
— Notes and Queries 1850.02.23 • Various
... the imitative arts. Foote's mimicry was exquisitely ludicrous, but it was all caricature. He could take off only some strange peculiarity, a stammer or a lisp, a Northumbrian burr or an Irish brogue, a stoop or a shuffle. "If a man," said Johnson, "hops on one leg, Foote can hop on one leg." Garrick, on the other hand, could seize those differences of manner and pronunciation, which, though highly ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... make a propothition," says a long, thin, young Gold Leaguer, with a yellow beard and a slight lisp. "I rise to suggest that we send down to Reiley's for all hith bottled beer, and drink the health ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... whisper or lisp from the waters: the skies were not silenter. Peace Was between them; a passionless rapture of respite as soft as release. Not a sound, but a sense that possessed and pervaded with patient delight The soul and the body, clothed round ...
— Astrophel and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne, Vol. VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... you home, you merry lads! Tell your mammies and your dads, And all those that news desire, How you saw a walking fire. Wenches, that do smile and lisp Use to call me Willy Wisp. If that you but weary he, It is sport alone for me. Away: unto your houses go And I'll go laughing ho, ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... see her alone, from day to day, to be obliged to hide his affection for her, to have to kiss her coldly like the others, and more coldly than the others, not to be able to call her the child of his heart, not to hear her lisp the tender name of father, sometimes saddened him to a point of despair. On one or two occasions he had been allowed to take her to the Grange. Then he passed hours in ecstasy, holding her on his knees, and caressing ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... the spring of the panther; and his soft hand should become the clammy hand of a wasted skeleton; while suddenly from his heart would burst in crackling and all-devouring fury the unquenchable flames; and in the affected lisp of his tongue would come the hiss of ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... with glass, it is at once a conservatory, a vinery, and tropical aviary. Room here for trees even, for miniature palms, while birds of the rarest plumage flit silently from bough to bough among the oranges, or lisp out the sweet lilts that have descended to them from sires that sang in foreign lands. Yonder a fountain plays and casts its spray over the most lovely feathery ferns. The roof is very spacious, and ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... the thickish lisp and slurring of the consonants that distinguished his utterance when he sought to appear more simple and candid ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... a being. Its peculiar simplicity gives even to the most forcible reasoning and the most brilliant wit an infantine air, generally delightful, but to a foreign reader sometimes a little ludicrous. Heroes and statesmen seem to lisp when they use it. It becomes Nicias incomparably, and renders all his silliness infinitely more silly. We may add, that the verses with which the Mandragola is interspersed, appear to us to be the most spirited and correct of all that Machiavelli has written in metre. He seems to have entertained ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... bound by ties of human affection to look after their spiritual welfare; to see that they imbibed no erroneous opinions on the subject of religion; that they run into no excessive improprieties of belief as well as conduct. The child would have its father or mother to teach it to lisp the name of its Creator in prayer, or hymn His praise. But in this experimental school of instruction, if the orphans have any friends or connections able to look after their welfare, it shuts them out. It is made the duty of the ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... sister dear, parting word and parting tear Never pass'd between us;—let me bear the blame, Are you living, girl, or dead? bitter tears since then I've shed For the lips that lisp'd with mine ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... from his plough; they laid hands on maidens and boys "who had never heard of any other religion than that which they were called on to abjure;"[663] old men tottering into the grave, and children whose lips could but just lisp the articles of their creed; and of these they made their burnt-offerings; with these they crowded their prisons, and when filth and famine killed them, they flung them out to rot. How long England would have endured ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... nurse you, and rear you, when you are unable to help yourselves; to guide your first steps, and teach you to lisp your first syllables. For this purpose, God has given her qualities that attract sympathy and engender love. She is so constituted as to impart a charm to your lives, to share in your labors, to soothe you when you are ruffled, to smooth your pillow when you are ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... he said, not without effort, and our progress gradually became smoother, till he had no need to speak at all. The only sound now was one like the gentle simmer of a saucepan away to port—the lisp of surf I knew it to be—and the muffled grunt of the rowlocks. I broke the silence once to say 'It's very shallow.' I had touched sand with my ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... of that soft voice, in which sounded sometimes a sort of gentle lisp, like the hissing of ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... hung them up, heard her sweet voice again as she wondered over and over if Santa really would forget them. He heard the mother, in a choking voice; tell her treasures to get ready for bed; heard them lisp their childish prayers, the little girl concluding: "And, O, Lord! please tell good Santa Claus that we are very poor; but that we love him as much as rich children do, for dear ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... Woman, 'Drawn by Reverence and coloured by Love,' she thinks beautiful, and repeats it, tossing up pretty eyes. Also the lover's petition: 'Give me purity to be worthy the good in her, and grant her patience to reach the good in me.' 'Tis quite taking to hear her lisp it. Be sure that I am repeating the petition! I make her read me her choice passages. She has not ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... acorn song skinned to death. Listen! This is the song of the little East-sider, on her first trip to the country under the auspices of her Sunday School. She's quite young. Pay particular attention to her lisp." ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... leather shoes he could not walk in, and pants he could not sit down in—dressed like a grasshopper! Well, this human cricket came up to the clerk's desk just as I came in. He adjusted his unseeing eye-glass in this wise and lisped to the clerk, because it's "Hinglish, you know," to lisp: "Thir, thir, will you have the kindness to fuhnish me with thome papah and thome envelopehs!" The clerk measured that man quick, and he pulled out a drawer and took some envelopes and paper and cast them across the counter and turned away to his ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... Once begun in a family, it rears itself, like a hooded snake, all along the line in generation after generation and appears to be an ineradicable evil. It spreads, too, as specks in a garnered fruit. We are startled by seeing it in children by the time they can lisp a lie, and we note in them, with a sickening at heart, the father's or grandfather's tendency to secretiveness or deceit, or the mother's penchant for false excuses. We can scarcely bequeath a greater sorrow to our offspring than to curse them before their ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... a look of swift surprise From the depths of childish eyes, Yet my soul to judgment came, Cowering, as before a flame. Not a word, a lisp of blame: Just a look of swift surprise ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... to her mother, went on without heeding. She affected her enunciation at times with a slight lisp; spoke preciously and over-exquisitely, purposely mincing the letter R, at the same time assuming a manner of artificial distinction and conscious elegance which never failed to produce in her brother ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... the sun; To revel in the bright young eyes, Whose lustre sparkled through The sable fringe of Southern skies Or gleamed in Saxon blue! How oft I heard another's name Called in some truant's tone; Sweet accents! which I longed to claim, To learn and lisp ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... their cousins the Persians, have fancies more luminous occurred. The Persians so polished their dreams that they entranced the world that was. Poets can do no more. The Hindus too were poets. They were children as well. Their first lisp, the first recorded stammer of Indo-European speech, is audible still in the Rig-Veda, a bundle of hymns tied together, four thousand years ago, for the greater glory of Fire. The worship of the latter led to that of the ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... shoulder," the Port Security Officer said. "Won't you Earthmen ever learn?" The splay-tongued reptile-humanoids of Irwadi always spoke Interstellar Coine with a pronounced lisp which Ramsey found annoying, especially since it went so well with the officious and underhanded behavior for which the Irwadians were ...
— Equation of Doom • Gerald Vance
... such natural inclinations the body will retain a certain bent, without our knowledge or consent. It was an affectation conformable with his beauty that made Alexander carry his head on one side, and caused Alcibiades to lisp; Julius Caesar scratched his head with one finger, which is the fashion of a man full of troublesome thoughts; and Cicero, as I remember, was wont to pucker up his nose, a sign of a man given to scoffing; such motions as these ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... shrouded no more its lustrous jewel—the wondering eyes dilated, as they met her lover's—and she murmured something with that sweet Venetian lisp, in which the Greek women breathe their Italian. But, as she saw the stranger, her face and neck became suffused with crimson, and her small hand wrapped the snowy sheet ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... this somewhat, for it was white and always stood gaily on end, defying brush and comb. Daniel Arker, a sturdy black-haired lad, would have done fuller justice to the passage that fell to Abraham, for the Spiker boy with his gentle lisp never shone in elocution; but our reading class is a lottery, as we go from scholar to scholar down the line. The lot falling to him, Abraham pushed himself up from the bench, grasped his book fiercely with both hands, and fixed his eyes intently ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... like that fluent sweet-tongu'd Greek, Who lisp'd at first, in future times speak plain By Art he gladly found what he did seek A full requital of his, striving pain Art can do much, but this maxima's most sure A weak or wounded brain admits ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... quite as much as Katy herself, Aunt Betsy bringing from the woodshed chamber a cradle which nearly forty years before had rocked the deacon's only child, the little boy, who died just as he had learned to lisp his mother's name. As a momento of those days the cradle had been kept, Katy using it sometimes for her kittens and her dolls, until she grew too old for that, when it was put away beneath the eaves whence Aunt Betsy dragged ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... there it stands as yet,—though its obituary was long ago written after one of the terrible storms that tore its branches,—leafing out hopefully in April as if it were trying in its dumb language to lisp "Our Father," and dropping its slender burden of foliage in October as softly as if ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Look you lisp, and wear strange suits; disable all the benefits of your own country; be out of love with your nativity, and almost chide God for making you that countenance you are; or I will scarce think you have swam ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... got the name, I cannot tell—was four or five years older than Rita. He was a manly boy, and when my little friend could hardly lisp his name she would run to him with the unerring instinct of childhood and nestle in his arms or cling to his helpful finger. The little fellow was so sturdy, strong, and brave, and his dark gray eyes were so steadfast and true, that she feared no evil from him, though ordinarily ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... Milton, and Pope, might be said "to lisp in numbers;" and have given such early proofs, not only of powers of language, but of comprehension of things, as, to more tardy minds, seems scarcely credible. But of the learned puerilities of Cowley there is no doubt, since a volume of his poems was not only written, ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... ended she nodded to Georgie, and Georgie nodded in return. He spoke no more than was necessary till bedtime, but meditated on new colors and sounds and lights and music and things as far as he understood them; the deep-mouthed agony of Mr. Pepper mingling with the little girl's lisp. That night he made a new tale, from which he shamelessly removed the Rapunzel-Rapunzel-let-down-your-hair princess, gold crown, Grimm edition, and all, and put a new Annieanlouise in her place. ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... to toss bread crumbs to the scarlet fish, laughing to himself in an ugly way. "I wish to punish you? Why, Alixe, only look at him!—Look at his gold wristlets; listen to his simper, his lisp. Little girl—oh, little girl, what have you done to yourself?—for you have done nothing to me, child, that can ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... race my feet have run, Since first I trod thy banks with alders crowned, And thought my way was all through fairy ground, Beneath thy azure sky and golden sun, Where first my Muse to lisp her notes begun! While pensive Memory traces back the round, Which fills the varied interval between; Much pleasure, more of sorrow, marks the scene. Sweet native stream! those skies and suns so pure No more return, to cheer my evening road! Yet still one joy remains: ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... spring are on winter's traces, The mother of months in meadow or plain Fills the shadows and windy places With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain; And the brown bright nightingale amorous Is half assuaged for Itylus, For the Thracian ships and the foreign faces, The tongueless vigil, and ...
— Atalanta in Calydon • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... stammering he perform'd his part, And look'd the rage that rankled in his heart; (So will each lover inly curse his fate, Too soon made happy and made wise too late:) I saw his features take a savage gloom, And deeply threaten for the days to come. Low spake the lass, and lisp'd and minced the while, Look'd on the lad, and faintly tried to smile; With soften'd speech and humbled tone she strove To stir the embers of departed love: While he, a tyrant, frowning walk'd before, Felt the poor purse, and sought the public door, She sadly following, in submission ...
— The Parish Register • George Crabbe
... keep silence for a time, but generally ended by addressing to some person older than herself a question which showed that her mind had been working under the influence of a new impression. She very soon got over her childish lisp, and even before she was four years old she spoke with perfect distinctness. She was afraid of her father. As for her mother, she regarded her with a feeling which she could scarcely define, not being afraid of her, but not behaving towards her caressingly. As for that, she did ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... The saying of Euripides, that all beauties have a beautiful autumn of their charms, is not universally true, but it was so in the case of Alkibiades and of a few other persons because of the symmetry and vigour of their frames. Even his lisp is said to have added a charm to his speech, and to have made his talk more persuasive. His lisp is mentioned by Aristophanes in the verses in which he satirises Theorus, in which Alkibiades calls him Theolus, for he pronounced ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... itself. But against your friend your hands are tied. He has injured you. He has disgusted you. He has infuriated you. But it was most Christianly done. You can not hurl a thunderbolt, or pull a trigger, or lisp a syllable against those amiable monsters who, with tenderest fingers, are sticking pins all over you. So you shut fast the doors of your lips, and inwardly sigh for a good, stout, brawny, malignant foe, who, under any and every circumstance, will design you harm, and on whom ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... Muse! guid auld Scotch drink; Whether thro' wimplin' worms thou jink, Or, richly brown, ream o'er the brink, In glorious faem, Inspire me, till I lisp an' wink, ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... cool, green shadows beneath the bungalow. But oftener the government Sikhs had to be appealed to, and Kampong Glam in Singapore searched from the great market to the courtyards of Sultan Ali. It was useless to whip him, for whippings seemed only to make Baboo grow. He would lisp serenely as Aboo Din took down the rattan withe from above the door, "Baboo baniak jahat!" (Baboo very bad!) and there was something so charmingly impersonal in all his mischief, that we came between his own brown body and the rod, time and again. There ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... unthought of, half forgotten; and yet when he does come to think and will and do for himself,—and let no man dream that day will never come,—then the part he plays will not be one of sudden learning, but words and thoughts he has been taught to lisp in his race-childhood. To-day the ferment of his striving toward self-realization is to the strife of the white world like a wheel within a wheel: beyond the Veil are smaller but like problems of ideals, of leaders and the led, of serfdom, of poverty, of order ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... "Do not seek to appear over-eloquent, nor trifle with verse, nor make yourself gay with lyric songs. And do not, out of affectation, follow the sickly taste of married ladies, who now pressing their teeth together, now keeping their lips wide apart, speak with a lisp, and purposely clip their words, because they fancy that to pronounce them naturally is a mark of ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... the word 'prank,' just like he'd never had one single advantage of foreign travel. 'He does indeed—one of those Hammersmith twin louts was with him—the speckled devil with the lisp, I gather—and praise God his bones, at least, ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... lamentable fact, that factions have arisen up in several states which are determined to prostrate every man who might be capable of opposing them, or dared to lisp one expression of dissent to the machinations of favouritism. But, though I have borne too much, I am unalterably resolved to adhere inflexibly to the ground I have taken, and stand or fall in the ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... human nosegay was more gorgeous of apparel and glow of cheek than the Ayrshire rose or the twisted eglantine. Then suddenly the children gathered about a single portrait of remarkable rich colouring, and little Lady Margaret came running and saying with a lisp,— ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... hamlet, and the roll of honour in the little grey stone church grows longer and longer. In the big house on the hill, at sunrise and at sunset, the young Lady of the Manor stands at the bedside of her little son, and hears him lisp his simple prayers to God, and they always end ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 15, 1916 • Various
... go down and talk things over with the pal when he comes," said another voice that was very smooth, and had a lisp. Clo deduced that it was the ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... this, I would go upstairs, and stand before the ikons, and say with a rapturous feeling, "God bless Papa and Mamma!" and repeat a prayer for my beloved mother which my childish lips had learnt to lisp-the love of God and of her blending strangely in a ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... the huge blot by which his memory is besmirched starts up before the mind in all its hideousness. Take Cain, for example. He occupies the foremost rank as regards fame; his name is one of the first that children learn to lisp; and yet what do we know about him? Very little indeed; our knowledge, in fact, is limited to a single act—an act which is the most horrible of human crimes. His name is suggestive only of violence, murder, the shedding of innocent blood—the foulest deeds that man can possibly commit. Or take ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... spoke in a low, eager voice, with a curious lisp in her utterance. "But for God's sake do what I ask you. Go back and never set foot upon ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... is flushed and graceful. Twenty-two, with a short upper lip, a straight nose, dark hair, and glowing eyes. She wears bright colours, and has a slow, musical voice, with a slight lisp. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy |
