"Comically" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lightness; his feet hardly touched the ground—he ran and leaped. It did him good to tantalize his hunger, for that would make his relish of the feast all the keener. Oh, but how they would stare when he would give his order, and how comically they would hang back, and how amazed they would be when he would throw a few thousands of dollars on the counter and tell them to take their money out of it and keep the change! Really, it was worth while to be so hungry as that, for then eating became an unspeakable luxury. And ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... she protested; and his face at once became comically grave. "You didn't have him for a bug-a-boo when you were little, as I did. That doctor of his gave orders that no one was to see him just now, and I am glad Gertrude will be back before we are admitted. With Gertrude to back me up ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... no. I did marry a Greek girl once, but she ran away. Just my luck." And he blinked his eyes and sighed with an expression so comically sad ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... came comically from the man who had just made the Tories swallow Household Suffrage; and Disraeli's sanguineness was ill-founded. The election resulted in a majority of one hundred for Irish Disestablishment; Disraeli resigned, and Gladstone became for the ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... backwards like a crab, he felt his way down the precarious slope. Odin followed. Once his foot slipped and he sent a shower of stones down upon the dwarf. Gunnar caught them like a juggler and held them in place so comically that Jack Odin laughed for the first time since he ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam
... to hinder amusement when at dinner Sir Jasper comically described the procession as he met it. Kalliope White, looking only too like Minerva, or some of those Greek goddess statues they used to draw about, sitting straight and upright in her triumphal car, drawn by her votary; while poor Gillian came behind with the pony ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... "Esquire," informed me that he was "after" reading a great book of ghost stories, but several letters of mine failed to elicit any subsequent information. Another person offered to sell me ghost stories, while several proffered tales that had been worked up comically. One lady addressed a ...
— True Irish Ghost Stories • St John D Seymour
... The reforms in legislation for Ireland were, in her estimation, owing to her novel of Florence Macarthy. She professed to have taught Taglioni the Irish jig: of her toilette, made largely by her own hands, she was comically vain. In The Fraserians, a charming off-hand description of the contributors to that magazine, Lady Morgan is depicted trying on a big, showy bonnet before a mirror with a funny mixture of satisfaction and anxiety ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... indeed at all their compliments, the conduct of Pietro Vanucci was peculiar. That signor had left off staring, and gaping bewildered; and now sat coiled up snake-like, on each, his mouth muffled, and two bright eyes fixed on the' lady, and twinkling and scintillating most comically. ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... not in Queen Zarah, where the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough, Godolphln, and Queen Anne were to be leading characters. But her sometime-friend Richard Steele could. Having laughed in The Tender Husband (1705) at a girl whose judgment of life was seriously—or, rather, comically—warped by her reading of heroic romances, Steele made a positive plea in Tatler No. 172 for histories of "such adventures as befall persons not exalted above the common level." Books of this sort, still rare in 1710, would be of great value to "the ordinary ...
— Prefaces to Fiction • Various
... flashing swoop, he was grovelling under the wires, making frantic efforts to reach a baby bottle of whisky that had rolled from within the marrow away beyond the fence. "Cognac!" he gasped, as he struggled, and then, as shouts greeted his speedy success, he sat up, adding comically: "My word! Me close up smash him Cognac." At the thought came his inevitable laughter, and as he leant against the fence post, surrounded by the shattered marrow, he sat hopelessly gurgling, and ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... the wilderness, a joy and a delight. They gave her flour-wash, and Isak himself saw to it there was no stint of flour, though he had carried it all the way himself, on his back. And there lay a pretty calf, a beauty, red-flanked like her mother, and comically bewildered at the miracle of coming into the world. In a couple of years she would be having calves ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... the duel in a dark room, where the more considerate combatant, firing up the chimney, brings down his adversary);[38]—and he speaks of Dickens as mimicking Rogers's "calm, low-pitched, drawling voice and dry biting manner very comically."[39] At the same time, it must be remembered that these reminiscences relate to Rogers in his old age. He was over seventy when Dickens published his first book, Sketches by Boz; and, though it is possible that Rogers's voice was always rather sepulchral, ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... whisked his tail incessantly; he arched his pretty neck; he was perfectly delightful; he was charmingly naughty. There was not an atom of vice in that performance; no savage baring of teeth and laying back of ears. On the contrary, he pricked them forward in a comically aggressive manner. He was totally unmoral and lovable; I would have liked to give him bread, sugar, carrots. But life is a stern thing and the sense of duty the only safe guide. So I steeled my heart, and from my elevated position on the ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... And Denry himself said to the audience of policemen, with his own natural tone, smile and gesture, colloquially, informally, comically: ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... Morse as he passed, then bore down upon the women who were vigorously discussing the all-absorbing topic. The old man walked out to the edge of the sidewalk, squinted his eyes and came slowly up to where the women stood, comically pointing his index finger at them: "Look yer," said he, "yuna ta'k too much!" raising his voice. "Yuna mouts g'wine ter git yuna inter trouble; hear me? Did yuna see Jedge Morse when he go by? Did yuna see 'im stop ter listen at you? Le' me tell yuna sumthin' right good." ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... businesslike and solid even my untrained eye could see. Many of the deck fittings seemed disproportionately substantial. The anchor-chain looked contemptuous of its charge; the binnacle with its compass was of a size and prominence almost comically impressive, and was, moreover the only piece of brass which was burnished and showed traces of reverent care. Two huge coils of stout and dingy warp lay just abaft the mainmast, and summed up the weather-beaten aspect of the ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... and Mary exchanged one or two anxious glances with Angus. But on reaching the cottage again, his spirits revived. Seated in his accustomed chair, he smiled as the little dog, Charlie, jumped on his knee, and peered with a comically affectionate ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... was opened and Deane entered. He wore a comically apologetic look, and carried an oblong metal vessel in ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... a vicious prod with the fork. It might easily have proved fatal, but Jim was near enough to seize the man's arm and wrest the fork from him. The fat man was white with rage. He blustered a good deal and finally went off sputtering comically ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... lost his tongue. Everything in the wagon seemed beautiful and precious to them. But the most desirable things of all were the unknown articles of which they could not guess either use or reason: as for example the bowls polished like mirrors that reflected your face comically deformed; paintings of Epinol, covered with faces more lively than reality; needle cases and mysterious boxes that contained ...
— Our Children - Scenes from the Country and the Town • Anatole France
... concealment, I ask you to render me a dangerous and delicate service; dangerous because you may run the hazard of your lives, and delicate because I must ask an absolute discretion upon all that you shall see or hear. From an utter stranger the request is almost comically extravagant; I am well aware of this; and I would add at once, if there be any one present who has heard enough, if there be one among the party who recoils from a dangerous confidence and a piece of ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... her cold tea slowly, leaning on the table's edge and gazing down into the amber liquid that she did not mean to drink. For suddenly and comically her face puckered up like a child's. Her head came down among the supper things with a little crash that set the teacups, and the greasy plates to jingling, and she sobbed as she lay there, with great tearing, ugly sobs that ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... and motion added to the pink tights made him comically frog-like, and even the abattis of medals on his breast could ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... been a very imperfectly educated woman. Nothing could be droller than to see her with Mrs. Siddons, of whom she looked like a clumsy, badly finished, fair imitation. Her vehement gestures and violent objurgations contrasted comically with her sister's majestic stillness of manner; and when occasionally Mrs. Siddons would interrupt her with, "Elizabeth, your wig is on one side," and the other replied, "Oh, is it?" and giving the offending head-gear a shove put it quite as crooked in the other direction, and proceeded ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... was in this case no charter to hoodwink the public. Loaves of six pounds' weight, cut in four quarters, made good the promise of "bread at discretion." Such was the plenty of the establishment, that Moliere would have celebrated it if it had been in existence in his day, so comically appropriate is ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... comically, but hope began to live again in his eyes. "If the senor would write what he wishes to say while I am making ready for the start, he will then have more time to think of what is best. The moon will ride clear ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... in this communication to his old friend are distinctly pathetic. In parts he is comically peevish and decidedly restrained. He mixes his fierce wrath against the hapless General Brereton with the generalizing of essentials, and transparently holds back the crushing thoughts of misadventure for which he may be held responsible by the misanthropic, ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... fully comprehended the prodigious powers of the holy personage he had ventured to chaff. In spite of his howls and frantic efforts to escape, the iron shoe is remorselessly fitted, and nail after nail driven into the quick. Imagine the sufferings of that poor devil; observe his comically distorted countenance as he bellows with agony and impotent rage; how his tail curls round his leg in the extremity of his anguish! The worst perhaps has to follow, for in spite of the agony of his crippled hoof, a deed will have ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... himself. Come to dinner. Half-past seven. Then you can have a long evening together without keeping him up too late. For Theo is still high-handed with him about sleep and rest. But really he has made astonishing progress since we got him over here. Dr O'Malley is quite comically elated over his recuperative power. Says he has seldom seen such a rapid and vigorous convalescence after concussion; and takes more than half the credit to himself; but I am convinced that it is you who are mainly responsible ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... Boarded-up House sped Goliath, his enemy yapping at his heels, and into the tangled thicket of bushes about the nearer wing. Into the bushes also plunged Bates' pup, and there ensued the sound of sundry baffled yelps. Then, after a moment, Bates's pup emerged, one ear comically cocked, and ambled away in search of other entertainment. Nothing else happened, and the girls resumed their seat on the veranda ...
— The Boarded-Up House • Augusta Huiell Seaman
... knowledge of good and evil.' At the end of the narrative, the Eleatic asks his companion whether this life of innocence, or that which men live at present, is the better of the two. He wants to distinguish between the mere animal life of innocence, the 'city of pigs,' as it is comically termed by Glaucon in the Republic, and the higher life of reason and philosophy. But as no one can determine the state of man in the world before the Fall, 'the question must remain unanswered.' Similar questions have occupied ...
— Statesman • Plato
... society when I got him into it. I lacked the touch of the literary diner-out; and I had, as the reader will probably find to his cost, the classical tradition which makes all the persons in a novel, except the comically vernacular ones, or the speakers of phonetically spelt dialect, utter themselves in the formal phrases and studied syntax of eighteenth century rhetoric. In short, I wrote in the style of Scott and Dickens; and as fashionable society then spoke and behaved, as it still does, in no style at all, my ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... simple, kind-hearted, and truly religious. In addition to all, he is a considerable bit of a humorist; when the good man's mind is easy, his humor is kindly, rich, and mellow; but, when any way in dudgeon, it is comically sarcastic." ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... of the simplest kind. But when he saw the girl's beauty and great qualities, when he had known inexpressible and unlooked-for happiness with her, he began to dote upon her; and longed to adorn his idol. Then Aquilina's toilette was so comically out of keeping with her poor abode, that for both their sakes it was clearly incumbent on him to move. The change swallowed up almost all Castanier's savings, for he furnished his domestic paradise with all the prodigality that is lavished on a kept mistress. A pretty woman must have ...
— Melmoth Reconciled • Honore de Balzac
... made her great effect of the pregnant pause. The listener, who had sobered wonderfully, sat gazing at her, his blue eyes comically rueful. ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing
... birds flew back to heaven, the moon split herself back to her ears, and the stars giggled behind their cloud-fans." The planetary system only revolved to frisky rhythms, and the earth herself, like a mad top, hummed comically about the horrified sun. En avant la musique! and the old edifice crumbled in dust around the musician. To Bergerat Offenbach was the great disillusioner of the age, the incarnation of what he conceived to be the spirit of the nineteenth ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... of the piano. He passes his hand over his bald pate—gives an extra polish to his eyeglasses—beams with an irresistibly funny expression upon his audience—coughs—whistles—passes a few remarks, and then, adjusting his glasses on his stubby red nose, looks serio-comically over his roll of music. He is dressed in a long, black frock-coat reaching nearly to his heels. This coat, with its velvet collar, discloses a frilled white shirt and a white flowing bow scarf; these, with a pair of black-and-white check trousers, ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith
... growing so extremely old?" he asked with a comically rueful look. "Really, I had flattered myself that I was still a vigorous man, capable of ...
— The Two Elsies - A Sequel to Elsie at Nantucket, Book 10 • Martha Finley
... not," interrupted the other, glancing comically at the various burned, lumpy, and muddy failures with which the stove was covered; "but I'll do the trick for you if you will look ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe
... on the selfsame stage of a mountainous road had grown displeasing and devoid of all romance. Two were wounded. One, with a dent in the helmet that hung from his arm by the chin-strap, lay leaning against a rock; refused food, and slowly bled to death, his white face almost comically disappointed. ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy
... did the clarin. He went deliberately to the floor where they were, took one berry daintily in the tip of his beak, returned with it to the upper perch, fixed his eyes upon me, and suddenly, without a movement, let it slip down his throat, his eyes still upon me, with the most comically solemn expression of "Who says I swallowed a berry?" Then he stood with an air of defiant innocence, as if it were a crime to eat berries, not wiping his bill nor moving a feather till he wanted another berry, when he ate it in exactly the ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... Dick flung the treasured packet into the fire, punched it well down among the coals, flung away the poker, and turned about with a look and gesture which would have been comically tragic if they had not been decidedly pathetic, for, in spite of his years, a very tender heart beat under the blue jacket, and it was grievously wounded at the perfidy of the gentle little divinity whom he worshipped with daily increasing ardor. ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott
... her finger, she drew our attention to the small figure of a man working upon a dizzy height some three thousand feet above us, his legs, like a pair of compasses, comically revealing a triangle of blue sky between them, whilst we with difficulty made out the figures ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... town, abandoning what is without, they have shut themselves up in the passions, using only it seems, and not asserting it is, of things without. And therefore they cannot, as Colotes says of them, live or have the use of things. And then speaking comically of them, he adds: "These deny that there is a man, a horse, a wall; but say that they themselves (as it were) become walls, horses, men," or "take on the images of walls, horses, or men." In which he first ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... You'll only knock me down again!" and Franz grinned comically and grotesquely upward, through the gap in his mouth where two of his teeth had been punched out earlier in ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... soon as I'd arranged to take the rooms and pay four guineas a week for them, which was a guinea more than she asked me, Miss Blake would hardly let me come in at all unless I could at once produce my luggage." He looked comically puzzled. "I thought at first," he continued, gazing earnestly at Philip, "the good lady was afraid I wouldn't pay her what I'd agreed, and would go away and leave her in the lurch without a penny,—which ...
— The British Barbarians • Grant Allen
... up and caught her in his arms; his face was so comically compunctious that she calmed down at once. She thought over her words afterwards and regretted them. All the same, Rosek was a sneak and a cold sensualist, she was sure. And the thought that he had been spying at their little house tarnished her ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Jonson was an indefatigable collector of books. He told Drummond that "the Earl of Pembroke sent him 20 pounds every first day of the new year to buy new books." Unhappily, in 1623, his library was destroyed by fire, an accident serio-comically described in his witty poem, "An Execration upon Vulcan." Yet even now a book turns up from time to time in which is inscribed, in fair large Italian lettering, the name, Ben Jonson. With respect to Jonson's use of his material, Dryden said memorably of him: "[He] was not only a professed ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson
... performances was not diminished by the fact that he detested her views and thought the whole business a poor perversity. He understood her now very well (since his visit to Cambridge); he saw she was honest and natural; she had queer, bad lecture-blood in her veins, and a comically false idea of the aptitude of little girls for conducting movements; but her enthusiasm was of the purest, her illusions had a fragrance, and so far as the mania for producing herself personally was concerned, ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... look like it?" he asked half comically, suddenly glancing down at his muddy, greasy garments and ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... little—stealthily. One goes out a little way with him on his long journey—feels bound in with him at last—actually bound in with him (it is like a promise) for ever. The more one knows about people's lives in this world, the more indefinitely, the more irrelevantly,—sometimes almost comically, or as a kind of an aside, or a bit of repartee,—they end them. Suddenly, sometimes while we laugh or look, they turn upon us, fling their souls upon the invisible, and are gone. It is like a last wistful haunting pleasantry—death is—from ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... a spring clean?" he asked comically, as he glanced about him. "The place looks so ...
— The Story of Jessie • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... comically from above a quaint and nondescript garment, to which she had given a certain daintiness with a cleverly placed ribbon or two and an adroit use of pins. Privately, Hal considered that she looked delightfully pretty, with her provocative eyes and ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... sure." Whereon, at a closer touch of her hand, he looked comically up. Her head moved, ever so slightly, towards him. He dropped his eyeglass with a smart click and kissed her cheek. She shivered, and started back. A blank dismay fell upon her; her heart seemed to stop. ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... the "100" means ten. The hero is a black Skye, long-haired, plume-tailed and soft-eyed. What his views were upon removal from the back alley of his youth to a well-appointed though by no means luxurious home he never said, but his investigation was comically thorough, winding up in dumb amaze at the discovery of himself in a long mirror. His experience of feminine humanity being limited to the variety that rolls its sleeves above its elbows and comports ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... happens that the struggle between the poetry of the heart and the opposing prose of outward circumstances is for the novel one of the commonest and most suitable conflicts. This struggle may end comically, or tragically, or in a reconciliation of the opposing forces. In the last case the characters who at first oppose the ordinary world-order may, by learning to recognize the true and abiding elements in it, become reconciled to the existing circumstances, ...
— An Estimate of the Value and Influence of Works of Fiction in Modern Times • Thomas Hill Green
... was made easy for him by the friendly character of his immediate superior—the chief. Powell could not defend himself from some sympathy for that thick, bald man, comically shaped, with his crimson complexion and something pathetic in the rolling of his very movable black eyes in an apparently immovable head, who was so tactfully ready to take his competency ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... first lieutenant, sharply; and the men screwed up their faces and looked comically solemn on the instant, but ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn
... perceptible effort to shake off the sense of the operatic, to accept the thing as genuine. Ruskin contended (in that olla podrida called "Modern Painters") that the Swiss peasants do not really dance and sing happily in the market-place; and hence he argued—comically enough—that the money spent on the stage reproduction of their happiness should be spent in really promoting their happiness. With my Italian peasants I feel the opposite: that such excellent picturesque effects should not be wasted on mere reality, but should be turned to real use upon ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... for Sam certainly was a spectacle to convulse the soberest person. Perched unsteadily on the gnarled stump, with his muddy legs drawn up, his dismal face splashed with mud, and the whole lower half of his body as black as if he had been dipped in an inkstand, he presented such a comically doleful object that Ben danced about, laughing like a naughty will-o'-the-wisp who, having led a traveler astray, then fell to ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... he had to stand in the middle of the floor, a spectacle unto the school, folded in his father's coat, which had, alas! two buttons torn off, and a three-cornered rag hanging from one tail, which fluttered comically in the draught from the door; but nobody dared laugh. There was infinite respect, if not approbation, for Jerome in the school that day. Some of the big boys scowled, and one girl said out loud, "It's a shame!" ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... at him with eyebrows comically working. "It is rather a hole—that cabin of yours," he conceded. "You can lie on the couch in my stateroom if you like. Don't get up to mischief, that's all! ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... me to go to roost. I will have my gruel abed," said my Lord Mohun: and limped off comically on Harry Esmond's arm. "By George, that woman is a pearl!" he said; "and 'tis only a pig that wouldn't value her. Have you seen the vulgar trapesing orange-girl whom Esmond"—but here Mr. Esmond interrupted him, saying, that these were not ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Solivet looked comically dismayed to hear such independent sentiments coming out of my mouth; I know now that he was extremely afraid that M. de Poligny would be terrified out of is bargain. If I had only guessed at his purpose, and that such an effect might be produced, I would almost have gone the length of ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sight when Mr. Fordyce and his son and daughter- in-law were announced; she was so comically stiff between her deference to her hosts and her allegiance to her poor dear uncle; but her coldness melted before the charms of old Mr. Fordyce, who was one of the most delightful people in the world. She even was his partner at whist, and won the game, and ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... broad, round-shouldered, one-sided old fellow in mourning, coming comically ambling towards the corner, dressed in a pea over-coat, and carrying a large stick. He wore thick shoes, and thick leather gaiters, and thick gloves like a hedger's. Both as to his dress and to himself, he was of an overlapping rhinoceros build, ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... aristocratic babies. The lovely little creatures were as tame as kittens and allowed the girls to fondle them to their hearts' content. Sometimes a pair of polished horns would come poking between a calf and the visitors, and a soft-eyed cow would view the proceedings with a comically anxious face, and then it was easy to tell which ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... hall and turning to the right entered the big sitting room. Its lone occupant sat up with a jerk, wiping the drowsiness out of his eyes with the back of his hand. He had been taking a cat nap on his ancient sofa; his long white back hair was tousled up comically behind his bald ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... it against his cheek. It was a little fellow with a smutty face and paws, with staring vacant eyes of a brilliant electric blue and a little tail like a carrot. When he was put down he took a step towards his mother and then sat down very comically. ...
— Lady Into Fox • David Garnett
... waddled slowly down the trail, pausing to grin at me comically. Two beavers splashed downstream, following the water, diving through the deeper pools and lumbering through the shallows of the brook. Other animals crashed through the woods, but I ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... at me: do I look like a poor clergyman's wife? Do survey me dispassionately." She holds herself at arm's length from him, and looks comically up and down the length of her gray skirts. "Think of the yards and yards of stuff it takes to clothe me; and should not a woman as tall as I am be always in velvet and point lace, Eustace? What ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... sturdily. "Why, if Monsieur Parole d'Honneur took a house, would that be any reason for his getting married? Ah, I know, Frank, who has put all this nonsense in your head! It is that gossiping old Shuffler. I'll give him a lecture when I next catch him," and she shook her fist comically in the air, to the intense wonderment of Miss Spight, ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... persons claimed to have recognized each other from past incarnations; but Lida did not believe that stuff, she had told herself. As to the mutual remembrance of the daisy chain—that was different—it seemed quite natural. She could remember just how comically that boy's nose twitched when she was waking him up with a ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... stop!" Anstice's comically regretful tone made Chloe smile. "I shall have to go home and see my patients. And if ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... used by the Turks in past days as a test for eyesight. Soldiers who could not sight those two stars were disqualified for fighting. But in these times I don't believe a little thing like bad eyes will hold up a Turk from fighting!" said Julie, comically. ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... and water. This done, she refolded the handkerchief with its soiled side innermost, and tied it neatly round the wounded head, leaving two long ends which stood up like rabbit's ears. A gust of April wind wagged them comically, and made mock of the sorrowful, grubby face underneath. Even Frances, who was only nine herself, must have seen that the sorrow was not the ordinary childish thing that came and went, leaving no trace. In a way it was always there. When he was not laughing and shouting you saw ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... Hal said, waving his hand comically, like a duke in a comic opera. "Run along, little girls, run along," he said, rolling his r's in real stage fashion, and holding the pond ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at the Seashore • Laura Lee Hope
... mountains are plum-colored or not, you'd better take somebody along who knows that a carrot-weed's a flower, and that stumps and stones are stumps and stones. You'd better take a person—like me, you know," he said, winking comically at Hetty—"who won't mistake a frightened squirrel for the king of the brown elves off on a hunting spree, or for anything else that never was born, except ...
— Harper's Young People, March 16, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... need to copyright the sentence just quoted, its English would protect it. None but she would have shovelled that comically superfluous "all" in there. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... sailors gathered them all together in one lot, when they inspected one another funnily; twisting about their throats, to be seen under all aspects. They comically waddled about like so many lame people, or suddenly started off in a great hurry for some unknown destination; and some fell down in their excitement. And there were monkeys, learning tricks of all kinds, another ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... her manner, and in a tone comically like Ethelinda's, Mary answered, "You may. Miss Lewis gave me that bit of information, and for the rest I looked her up in Burke's Peerage. She comes of a very illustrious and noble family, so of course she feels perfectly sure of her position, and doesn't have ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... however, Dolly showed all her dimples, and laughed so comically that Mrs. Eberstein, right or wrong, was obliged ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... "Oh, never mind—go farther on—any—long meter," uttered his interlocutor, and he forthwith made a sanguine dash into the centre of the book, and gave out a hymn. The company got into a "peculiar metre" tune at once, and the singing was about the most comically wretched we ever heard. The lad who came in with the elderly men tried every range of voice in every verse, and thought that he had a right to do just as he liked with the music; the elderly men near him hammed out something in a weak and ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... Julian with a comically resigned air—"I shall never be of sufficient importance for that! No one would waste a penny stamp on me! All I can ever hope to win is the unanimous abuse of the press. That will at least give me an ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... managed to extract from him the statement that if he had voted at the election of 1844—as, in fact, he had not—it would have been for Clay rather than for Polk; and this admission they proceeded, rather comically, to trumpet to the world as a sufficient guarantee from "a consistent and truth-speaking man" of the candidate's lifelong devotion to "Whig" principles. Nothing further than the above remark and the frank acknowledgment that he was a slave-owner ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... great fun to see the motorman's angry face turn scared, when he thought I was going to be shaved this time sure. It was amusing, too, to watch the side door of the saloon, which opened right opposite the grocery store, and see a drunken man put out by the bartender. The fellow would whine so comically, and cling to the doorpost so like a damp leaf to a twig, and blubber so like a red-faced baby, that it was really funny to ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... the German youth calmly. "Ven dem udder fellers makes up pad verses I vos fine dem a tollar, und ven I gits enough tollars I skip me to Canada or Mexigo, hey?" And he said this so comically ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht • Edward Stratemeyer
... Child was answering every one of Bud's mute questions. Lying there in his "Daddy Bud's" arms, wrapped comically in his Daddy Bud's softest undershirt, Lovin Child was proving to his Daddy Bud that his own man-child was strong and beautiful and had a keen little brain behind those twinkling blue eyes. He was telling why he cried. He wanted Marie to take him and rock him to sleep, just as she had rocked ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... cheerful; they are many of them agreeable women, and having seen Dr. Johnson with me when I was last abroad, inquired much for him: Mrs, Fermor, the Prioress, niece to Belinda in the Rape of the Lock, taking occasion to tell me, comically enough, 'that she believed there was but little comfort to be found in a house that harboured poets; for that she remembered Mr. Pope's praise made her aunt very troublesome and conceited, while his numberless caprices would have employed ten servants ...
— Autobiography, Letters and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale) (2nd ed.) (2 vols.) • Mrs. Hester Lynch Piozzi
... confounded, and unable to explain them; till Mr. Johnson, having picked out the meaning by little and little, said to the man, "Heb is a preposition, I believe, Sir, is it not?" My countryman recovering some spirits upon the sudden question, cried out, "So I humbly presume, Sir," very comically.' Piozzi's Anec. p. 238. The Welsh words, which are the Myddelton motto, mean, 'Without God, without all. God is all-sufficient.' Piozzi MS. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... they both had a light-headed burst of celestial sensation when the door was burst in the roof, as if a door had been burst in the sky, and they could climb out on to the very roof of the universe. They were both men who had long been unconsciously imprisoned in the commonplace, though one took it comically, and the other seriously. They were both men, nevertheless, in whom sentiment had never died. But Mr. Moses Gould had an equal contempt for their suicidal athletics and their subconscious transcendentalism, and he stood and laughed ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... out after a stone had fallen nearly on my head, it was to find two boys calmly waiting for me to approach them. Their school caps showed them to be two boys of the grammar-school. The interview went comically. Upon being told crossly that they were a nuisance, the boys apologized—an act which seemed to put me in the wrong. In my annoyance at that, I hinted ironically that, in fact, I was a benevolent person, quite willing to admit boys inside the hedge to ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... their superiors, the honest working folk of Speyside occasionally forget themselves comically in their passionate ardour that a hooked salmon shall be brought to bank. Lord Elgin, now in his Indian satrapy, far away from what Sir Noel Paton in his fine elegy on the late Sir Alexander Gordon Cumming ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... I was stabbed, but I think I was even more amused. I felt sorry for the poor things. I certainly never saw a more comically naked exhibition of human nature. It was worth coming to America for. Nor do I blame them. No doubt I should have felt the same at their age—although I hope I should even then have expressed myself in a fashion a trifle more subtle, ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... dun. 'Kaze bumbye, so long tam, folks come fetch-a we nuncle 'tretch out. 'E is bin-a tek wit' da' hecup; 'e t'row 'e head dis way; 'e t'row 'e head dat way." Daddy Jack comically suited the action to the word. "'E is bin tek-a da' hecup; da' hecup is bin tek um—da' cramp is bin fetch um. I is bin see mo' dead ghos', but me no spot um ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... answered Fred comically, whereupon the doctor and his wife laughed heartily, and, the ice being broken, Nellie and Fred joined in the merriment, though it ...
— Under Fire - A Tale of New England Village Life • Frank A. Munsey
... through the ordeal of an inspection, but he had heard about it. He stood now staring at the teller, comically. ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... part of the second act of "Die Meistersinger" is taken up with Beckmesser's serenade, comically interrupted by the songs and the hammering of Hans Sachs the cobbler. Toward the end the apprentice David sees Beckmesser, and imagining he is serenading his sweetheart, assaults and beats him most unmercifully. The noise attracts the neighbors, who ...
— Chopin and Other Musical Essays • Henry T. Finck
... protest I don't see how it is to be done. It is "all a muddle," in my mind. I cannot even affirm that the banditti were ever hanged; and I am quite sure that the unlucky Dutch merchant, whose goods were so comically mixed up with this whole history, never had any poetical or material justice for his loss of them. But it is as much the reader's business as mine to settle these casuistries. I only undertook ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... sentence four times before going on to the next. She shook her head as she recited her part; her hair-pins fell down and all over the room. When she could not recollect sometimes some word she was as impatient as a naughty child; sometimes she swore comically or she would use big words;—one word with which she apostrophized herself was very big and very short. Christophe was astonished by the mixture of talent and childishness in her. She would produce moving tones of voice quite aptly, ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... on deck, sir," he said. "This drinkin's all to the bad." He leered comically through his closed and blackened eyelids, and tried to smile; but it was too painful, and his ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... then they grew more numerous, until we came on a large camp near our graveyard, filled with soldiers and cannon. From first to last none refrained from laughing at us; not aloud, but they would grin and be inwardly convulsed with laughter as we passed. One laughed so comically that I dropped my veil hastily for fear he would see me smile. I could not help it; if any one smiled at me while I was dying, I believe I would return it. We passed crowds, for it was now five o'clock, and all seemed to be promenading. ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... bird descended in a droll way and posed on the paving stones in the middle of the street. A ring on which it was suspended, and which allowed it to slip freely the length of the string, was not visible because of the dim light, and from time to time I made the crow hop and skip comically about on ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... old friends and relatives, with a full account of my new home. Rather a comically-expressed account too, I fancy, from the bits Uncle Buller used to quote in after years. I got charming letters from him, piquant with his dry humour, and full of affection. Matilda generally added a note ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... same mountains, or nearly so. One obtained the influence over a woman's heart which the other possesses over the mind of an old man. Both governed unscrupulously, and both have merited and obtained the hatred of their contemporaries. They have talked French comically, without being insensible to any of the ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... said, comically, 'I see you don't believe me! That's what comes of telling so many small fibs. But it's true, I assure you. (And the brown eyes did look particularly truthful.) Barn-door owls do make a noise that is very ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... recalls the story of a boy's school essay which the late Mr. W. E. Gladstone was fond of telling—albeit, the great Commoner had no very lively sense of humour. The "G.O.M.'s" comically-mixed youthful historian wrote—"Oliver Cromwell began his career by cutting off the head of his king, and when he was dying he said, 'Had I served my God with half the zeal I have served my king, he would not in mine age have left ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... go in blood and tears; but whether they are bad wars, or what are comically called good wars, they are of one ...
— Widger's Quotations from the Works of William Dean Howells • David Widger
... after five I went below to set the cabin table, but I hardly knew what I did, for my eyes and my brain were filled with the vision of a man, white-faced and trembling, comically like a bug, clinging to the thrashing gaff. At six o'clock, when I served supper, going on deck to get the food from the galley, I saw Harrison, still in the same position. The conversation at the table was of other things. Nobody seemed interested in the wantonly imperilled life. But making ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... Lucian's rooms in Victoria Street, where the men had passed what remained of the night in a mild game of cards. They had all breakfasted together by lamplight at the hotel, and Selincourt had seen his sister into the Chilmark train. Nothing could have been more circumspect— comically circumspect! between Selincourt and Isabel and the chambermaid, malice itself was put to silence. But Lawrence was fever-fretted by the secret sense ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... Deliberately she tore open the envelope, spread out the brief letter it contained, and with a comically important air, read the few short lines. Then beginning with the heading, she read it the second time, her face growing graver at each word, until impatient Inez could stand the strain no longer, and burst out, "Well, what's it all about? Does it take you all ...
— Tabitha's Vacation • Ruth Alberta Brown
... later the little attorney stepped, with a sigh of relief, on to the King's highway. Going and pace had tried him pretty hard, and he was simply streaming with sweat. He pushed back his hat and blew out his cheeks comically. Then he set down his bag and started ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... falsifications, doctrinal and jocular, he has a genuine comic sense of character. "Most French critics," M. Hamon tells us ... "declare that Bernard Shaw does depict characters. M. Remy de Gourmont writes: 'Moliere has never drawn a doctor more comically "the doctor" than Paramore, nor more characteristic figures of women than those in the same play, The Philanderer. The character-drawing is admirable.'" M. Hamon himself goes on, however, to suggest an important contrast between the characterization ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... urchin of twelve who was busy carrying chairs round the corner of the barn, to the tiny house where Wilson meant to live. He was a red-haired boy with an upturned nose, dressed in shirt and knickerbockers only. The cross of his braces came comically near his neck—so short was the space of shirt between the top line of his breeches and his shoulders. His knickers were open at the knee, and the black stockings below them were wrinkled slackly down his thin legs, being tied loosely ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... his friend Bertram, and tells him of his having had "live crows, hawks, and owls; opossums, squirrels, snakes, lizards," &c. He tells him that his room sometimes reminded him of Noah's ark, and comically adds, "but Noah had a wife in one corner of it, and in this particular our parallel does not altogether tally. I receive every subject of natural history that is brought to me; and, though they do not march into my ark from all quarters, as they did into that of our ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... know!" said Fleda, shaking her head comically;—"I am told 'The wind's voices' have blown it here, but privately I am afraid it is a windfall ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... buff!" said the doctor shrugging his shoulders comically. "Barbarous! I would rather 'go off' too—but anything to please you, Mrs. Stoutenburgh. A game to see how much a man without his five senses can do against other people who have them." But the doctor gallantly stepped up to ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... resumed Ben, "that all the—all the—how comically persons do dress here, to be sure! Just look at those men and women with their sugarloaf hats. And see this woman ahead of us with a straw bonnet like a scoop shovel tapering to a point in the back. Did ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... years delivered speeches against the Macedonian, and warned his countrymen, who would not listen to him! The gods were with the Macedonian, and condemned Hellas to be overthrown. Demosthenes was imprisoned. Comically enough, he was accused of having been bribed by the same Macedonian. That was, of course, a lie. This patriot who sacrificed himself for the salvation of his fatherland, who believed he was fighting on the gods' side, ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... by woman; it was part of his creed and not to be questioned. So I think that we must simply take it as it is, accepting Wagner's creed for the moment as a necessary convention. At the same time let us realize that it is an illogical development of the drama and not, as the Wagnerites comically insist, the symbol of an eternal verity. Allowing for the time occupied in mediaeval days by the journey from Rome to the heart of Germany, the pope's staff must have burst into leaf and flower long, long before ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... latter shape, as it very often does, it is not philosophic in the technical meaning of the word. There is really nothing in the play to show that Hamlet ever was 'a student of philosophies,' unless it be the famous lines which, comically enough, exhibit this supposed victim of philosophy ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... nodding; and there is daddy-longlegs, working his legs gymnastically; and the three pairs of gallant grey stallions, galloping grandly neck to neck; and those two ridiculous beings, rubbing their palms together, round and round: each preoccupied, comically solemn, busied about its own quaint ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... they were not quite comprehensible till Don Ippolito explained that he had made them from such prints of the subjects as he could get, and had colored them after his own fancy. All this, in a city whose art had been the glory of the world for nigh half a thousand years, struck Ferris as yet more comically pathetic than the frescoed grape-arbor; he stared about him for some sort of escape from the pictures, and his eye fell upon a piano and a melodeon placed end to end in a right angle. Don Ippolito, seeing his look of inquiry, sat down and briefly ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... intellectual horizon had become a comparatively narrow one, and, what was worse, the clerical and aristocratic Bavarian party feared it would lose its power if a man like Wagner were to remain permanently about the king. George Herwegh has described comically enough the Witches-Sabbath, which that party, in 1865, with the aid of other hostile factions, enacted, and which forced Wagner once ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... "There ain't any. Looka this!" He turned up his foot, and you saw the bare sole, blackened and horrible, and fringed, comically, by ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... were detained to drink tea. The cricketers' mirth must have been fast and furious if it exceeded that at home, for the Doctor thought himself bound to make up for the loss to Leonard, put forth all his powers of entertainment, and was comically confidential about 'these Etonians that ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... who pass with a curious steadfastness and knowing skepticism of gaze, not pleasing in the dim eyes of age; certainly, the last persons who bear any likeness to the lasagnone are the Germans, with their honest, heavy faces comically anglicized by leg-of- mutton whiskers. The truth is, the lasagnone does not flourish in the best caffe; he comes to perfection in cheaper resorts, for he is commonly not rich. It often happens that ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... dead, barn-sprinkled background. I could observe her easily without her knowledge, for she was looking up, as we so often used to at twilight, to the old plank high above the sagging mill, where the turkeys fly to roost towards evening, so awkwardly and comically, with a great breathless whirring of wings. I saw her lift her arms to them with a swift, urging gesture, as though to steady their ungainly flight, and I could not be certain that she was not talking to them. Again a pang for the contracting loneliness of those bitter winters that ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... sooner had the compradore withdrawn, than a singular little coolie shuffled into the room. Lean and shriveled as an opium-smoker, he wore loose clothes of dirty blue,—one trousers-leg rolled up. The brown face, thin and comically small, wore a mask of inky shadow under a wicker bowl hat. His eyes were cast down in a strange fashion, unlike the bold, inquisitive peering of his countrymen,—the more strange, in that he spoke harshly and abruptly, like ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... the great writer. It is thus that we know Hugh Vereker, throughout whose twenty volumes was woven that message, or meaning, that 'figure in the carpet,' which eluded even the elect. It is thus that we know Neil Paraday, the MS. of whose last book was mislaid and lost so tragically, so comically. And it is also through Paraday's disciple that we make incidental acquaintance with Guy Walsingham, the young lady who wrote OBSESSIONS, and with Dora Forbes, the burly man with a red moustache, who wrote THE ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... broke out on her vehemently in French, very comically mingling her upbraidings of her charge, her abuse of the little girl, and her apprehension ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page
... temptation to add the comically bombastic Dedication of these Sonatas to the Elector, which may very possibly have been written by Neefe, who loved ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... and sat down sullenly at the end of the table, keeping his eyes on Yvonne. She drew the knitting out of the pocket of her apron and holding it up comically between two fingers, glanced towards the dark corner of the room where an old woman with a lace cap on her head sat asleep, and then let herself ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... with the fundamental principle of accepting the universe. The thing we know best and most directly is human nature in all its breadth. It is indeed the one thing immediately known and knowable. Like R.L. Stevenson, he perceives how tragically and comically astonishing a phenomenon is man. "What a monstrous spectre is this man," says Stevenson, "the disease of the agglutinated dust, lifting alternate feet or lying drugged with slumber; killing, feeding, ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... picture which Miss Ware had drawn of Jim's dreadful isolation and misery and her own indignant sympathy rushed upon Farnsworth's mind, and were so comically out of relation with the facts that he sank weakly into the nearest ...
— The Calico Cat • Charles Miner Thompson
... Strasburg on the Place de la Concorde. These displays of patriotic feeling are forbidden, but they come to the fore all the same. Here, as elsewhere, the clinging to the old country is pathetically—sometimes comically—apparent. A rough peasant girl, employed as chambermaid in the hotel at which we stayed, amused me not a little by her tirades against the Prussians, spoken in a language that was neither German nor French, but a mixture of both—the delectable ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... geographical degree, the progress of as many homeward-bound packets. The word "Cape" rises across the face of a dial; a gong strikes: the South African mid-weekly mail is in at the Highgate Receiving Towers. That is all. It reminds one comically of the traitorous little bell which in pigeon-fanciers' lofts notifies the return of ...
— With The Night Mail - A Story of 2000 A.D. (Together with extracts from the - comtemporary magazine in which it appeared) • Rudyard Kipling
... should hold it in such horror. It is very much the same thing as a squirrel or a guinea-pig, which we keep in our rooms and pet and play with; nay, it is cleverer far than they. What a delicate little snout it has, what sweet little ears, what wee little pets of feet! And then its comically big moustache, and its quick black eyes like sparkling diamonds! And when it plays, when it squeaks, when it stands up to beat the air on its hind legs, it is as clever and as comely as any other animal in the world. Nobody is horrified ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai
... a twenty-two hid around in your pocket nowhere?" the inquisitor pressed, with comically feigned surprise. Morgan denied the ownership of even a twenty-two. "I'll have to feel over you and see—I never saw a granger in my life that didn't tote a twenty-two," the Texan declared, stepping up to Morgan to put his ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... old Battle. And with this resolve he at once repaired to the carriage, in which he took a seat with the three gentlemen of the committee, leaving me to pick my way as best I could, and drove away for the hotel, (followed at a respectful distance by the loquacious alderman, thus comically mounted,) with this strange string of cattle. And this wonderful cortge was followed by scores of hooting and ragged urchins, who switched old Battle's gambrels, and annoyed him in so many ways, that the alderman at length lost ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... laughed at the comically significant gesture that accompanied this speech, and felt in ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... country that beggars one's powers of description. We rode part of the way through an open forest, many of whose trees were of great height. One of these had, on a single large branch thrust out from the trunk at a height of sixty feet or so, as many bird's-nest ferns as could crowd upon it, looking comically like a row of hens roosting for the night. From the ground, about fifteen feet from the root of this same tree, rose a single-stem liana, joining the main trunk at the branch just mentioned; to this liana a huge bird-nest fern had attached itself twenty ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... during his seventh or eighth year. It was soon discovered that he could improvise on the piano; indeed he could sketch the disposition of his companions by certain figures on the piano, so exactly and comically that every one burst out laughing at the portraits. He was fond of reading too, much to his father's delight, and early tried his hand at authorship. He wrote robber plays, which he staged with the aid of the family and such of his youthful friends as were qualified. The father now ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... is not (I think I may assert on his behalf) puffed up with foolish illusions as to his place in the scheme of things. It is a humble place, and he knows it. His work is almost comically unromantic, painfully unpicturesque. Moreover—let us be frank—much of it is uninteresting, after the first novelty has worn off. Work in the wards has its compensations: here there is the human element. But only a portion ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... one excludes the mere story-tellers from our consideration, witness to this uneasy realisation of changes that call for effort and of the lack of that effort. In a thousand aspects, now tragically, now comically, now with a funny affectation of divine detachment, a countless host of witnesses tell their story of lives fretting between dreams and limitations. Now one laughs, now one weeps, now one reads with a blank astonishment at this ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... round the drive. Between the lamps of the charitable gateway the slow cortege reappeared, lighted up for a moment, the short, thick man limping busily, with the horse's head held aloft in his fist, the lank animal walking in stiff and forlorn dignity, the dark, low box on wheels rolling behind comically with an air of waddling. They turned to the left. There was a pub down the street, within fifty ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... injured, are much prized by them. These shoes are made out of a warm English cloth called duffle, and are in shape like a large mit without a thumb. An old dog that has once become accustomed to dog shoes, is ever hankering after them when on a long cold trip. Sometimes, they will come and most comically hold up their feet to be shod. At other times, they have been known to come into camp and there lie down on their backs, and, holding up their four feet, plead most ludicrously and importunately for these warm woollen shoes. ...
— On the Indian Trail - Stories of Missionary Work among Cree and Salteaux Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... Jim nodded comically and Oscar with a sudden roar of laughter shook hands with Jim. "And women think they need the vote!" he said, ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... the room. There was, at that moment, something tender about her. She even lowered her voice and softened it. It took on, almost comically, the refinements ...
— The Confession • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... had embodied the idea in pen and ink, but against the possible truth that the idea represented. Was it really the case that people grew in time to resemble the animals they kept as pets, and had he unconsciously become more and more like the comically solemn bird that was his constant companion? Groby was unusually silent as he walked to the train with his escort of chattering nephews and nieces, and during the short railway journey his mind was more and more possessed with an ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... deftness. We notice, also, a distinct improvement in workmanship. Scenes move more easily; dramatic values become coherent; characters stand out from the "chorus" on the stage. Pamela is a flesh-and-blood girl; Jules is real; Joseph is comically individual; Dupre is almost a strong creation, and nearly every one of the ...
— Introduction to the Dramas of Balzac • Epiphanius Wilson and J. Walker McSpadden
... is gone to the mirror, and is arranging the finest auburn hair in the world in the most tasteful manner. The little lady watches every motion as comically as ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... kissed enough, they made up games. Ilka Leipke showed great talent in showing the happily giggling Mechenmal how her friends would behave in corresponding positions. She bent herself into the most surprising positions. She grimaced comically. Mechenmal was able make up fictitious names by the hour, with which he could make reference to certain parts of her body in the presence of other people, without their being able to tell what he meant. So the evenings and the nights that Ilka Leipke had set aside for her friend ...
— The Prose of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... answered Tom. "I can tell you I paid up for going to sleep on the trait!" he added half comically. The meeting made his heart ten times lighter than it ...
— The Rover Boys out West • Arthur M. Winfield
... if only they would read my works! I'm not sure even if I may say so, that Remenham himself wouldn't be the better." Remenham, however, smilingly indicated that he had read them. Whereat Coryat rather comically remarked, "Oh, well! Yes! Perhaps then my poetry isn't quite good enough. But there's Shakespeare, and Milton, and—I don't care who it is, so long as it has the essential of all great poetry, and that is to make you feel the worth ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson
... She peered comically around the dark playground and said gaily, "I see no wooden horse. There should be one, I know. Master Dryden says so, and he knows all ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... by a French artist and his pupil, I was led to observe more closely than I might otherwise have done, a great number of votive offerings with which the walls of the different chapels were profusely hung. I will not say decorated, for they were very roughly and comically got up; most likely by poor sign- painters, who eke out their living in that way. They were all little pictures: each representing some sickness or calamity from which the person placing it there, had escaped, through the interposition of his or her patron saint, or of the Madonna; and ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... climbed up on her rump, almost burying themselves in her long wool; while two or three others fastened themselves about her neck and shoulders. It was a most singular sight to see the little creatures holding on with "tails, teeth, and toe-nails," while some peeped comically out of the great breast-pocket.' Burdened in this way, she climbed the tree, and then taking hold of the young 'possums, one by one, with her mouth, she made them twist their tails round a branch, and hang with their heads downwards. 'Five or ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 422, New Series, January 31, 1852 • Various
... have paid it back. The bank was a bit awkward at first, but I was able to come to an arrangement with them a day or two ago, and I have repaid Laura what she lent me." He paused again, looking at her almost comically: "There, ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... and forfeits last night at White's. Davy Roberts's pretty little daughter is there for a week, with her husband, Bicknell's son. There was a dinner first to say good-bye to Danby, who goes to other clergyman's-duty, and we were very merry. Mrs. White unchanging; White comically various in his moods. Talfourd comes down next Tuesday, and we think of going over to Ryde on Monday, visiting the play, sleeping there (I don't mean at the play), and bringing the Judge back. Browne is coming down when he has done his month's work. Should you like to go to Alum Bay while ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... that has fixed itself upon his finger? To Friedrich Wilhelm's enchanted sense it seems a bird-of-paradise, trustfully perching there; but it is of the whip-snake kind, or a worse; and will stick to him tragically, if also comically, for years to come. The world has seen the comedy of it, and has howled scornful laughter upon Friedrich Wilhelm for it: but there is a tragic side, not so well seen into, where tears are due to the poor King; and to certain others horsewhips, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... silly in her naughtiness. It was left to an abnormal critic like George Gissing to point out the glaring fact that in the remarkable set of life studies of XIXth century women to be found in the novels of Dickens, the most convincingly real ones are either vilely unamiable or comically contemptible; whilst his attempts to manufacture admirable heroines by idealizations of home-bred womanhood are not only absurd but not even pleasantly absurd: one has no ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... appearance and his spirits, and at last we got him to bed. But he could not sleep, and so we sat at his bedside and talked to him until far into the night, Jerry propped up on his pillows, his bad eye comically decorated with a part ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... having gone to the barber's, was clean-shaven, and revealed himself as one of the most comically ugly of ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke |
