"Merriment" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Rutland, who had made a somewhat insolent remark, the Lord Chancellor quietly replied, 'Honores mutant mores'—Honours change manners. Sir Thomas's humour was what may be called quiet, because its effect did not immediately show itself in boisterous merriment, but would undoubtedly remain long in the remembrance of those to whom it was addressed. Made with as much courtesy as irony, is it likely his keeper in the Tower would ever forget his remark? "Assure ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... difficulty in deciding to whom the butter prize was to be awarded, and at last a committee of ladies was formed; they all tasted, solemnly, of each sample all round, and then they each gave their verdict differently, so that it had all to be done over again amidst a good deal of laughter and merriment. ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... the boat was only a sorrowful blank to Ellen's recollection. She did not see the frowns that passed between her companions on her account. She did not know that her white bonnet was such a matter of merriment to Margaret Dunscombe and the maid, that they could hardly contain themselves. She did not find out that Miss Margaret's fingers were busy with her paper of sweets, which only a good string and a sound knot kept her from rifling. Yet she felt very well that ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... gone through a great deal in these few months; and, used to good shelter and regular meals, he was less inured to bodily hardship than many a cottage boy. His utter neglect of his person was telling on him; he was less healthy and strong than he had been, and though high spirits, merriment, and the pleasure of freedom and independence, had made all light to him in the summer, yet now the cold weather, with his insufficient food and scanty clothing, was dulling him and deadening him, and hard work and unkind usage seemed to be grinding his very senses ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge
... followed the casting of the brick. Amzi lifted his hand to stay the tumult, but in his seersucker coat and straw hat his appearance was calculated to provoke merriment. ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... he lay, enshrouded;—the genius and the demon of the scene. Alas! he bore no portion in our mirth, save that his countenance, distorted with the plague, and his eyes in which Death had but half extinguished the fire of the pestilence, seemed to take such an interest in our merriment as the dead may haply take in the merriment of those who are to die. But although I, Oinos, felt that the eyes of the departed were upon me, still I forced myself not to perceive the bitterness of their expression, and gazing down steadily ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... verse, she looked at Sharrkan and found him lost to existence, and he lay for a while stretched at full length and prone among the maidens.[FN191] Then he revived and, remembering the songs, again inclined to mirth and merriment; and the twain returned to their wine and wassail, and continued their playing and toying, their pastime and pleasure till day ceased illuminating and night drooped her wing. Then the damsel went off to her dormitory and when Sharrkan asked after her they answered, "She ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... the Clerk was all a-quake, Went to an upper casement that o'er-looked The whole of Bread Street. Heywood knew their ways, And parleyed with them till their anger turned To shouts of merriment. Then, like one deep bell His voice rang out, in ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... you get to like him too much—as Lady Verner hinted," continued Lionel, his eyes dancing with merriment at his ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... with which we wind up our eventful history; nor even to pity the breathless, flushed, and overheated Babette, who was so ill the next day, as to be unable to quit her bed; nor can we detail the jokes, the merriment, and the songs which went round, the peals of laughter, the loud choruses, the antic feats performed by the company; still more impossible would it be to give an idea of the three tremendous cheers, which shook the Lust Haus to its foundations, ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Ellis, in his "Original Letters," gives a curious application from the Council for the household of the Lady Mary to the Cardinal Wolsey, to obtain his directions and leave to celebrate the ensuing Christmas. In this letter the reader is reminded of the long train of sports and merriment which made Christmas cheerful to our ancestors. The Cardinal, at the same time that he established a household for the young Duke of Richmond, had also "ordained a council, and stablished another household for the Lady Mary, then being ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... incidents of life which happen day after day—the little child snatched from us in all its beauty and its innocence: the bright lad shot upon the field of battle in a moment, taken away with all his brightness, and his laughter, and his merriment; the man who loses in middle life his money and has to begin the hard struggle of saving all over again—how are we to explain it? What can we say to light up in any degree so vast a problem? There is, my dear ...
— The After-glow of a Great Reign - Four Addresses Delivered in St. Paul's Cathedral • A. F. Winnington Ingram
... his deerskin coat, however, it would have done him no good for he could neither read nor write. Weeks and months passed. Winter came. Finally after many adventures young Arthur started on the long journey back to Virginia. As he drew near Colonel Wood's home he heard merriment within and the voice of his master wishing his household a merry Christmas. Not till then did the young adventurer know how ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... of mind just now, I reckon," he admitted. "Seems to me that a lot of folks, including myself, are getting kicked. I'm smarting! I have a fellow-feeling for the oppressed." He laughed, but there was no merriment in his tones. "It's the little children who will suffer most in this, Miss Candage," he went on. "They are ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... and devotion of the men rose equal to every hardship and privation, and the very intensity of their sufferings became a source of merriment. Instead of growling and deserting, they laughed at their own bare feet, ragged clothes and pinched faces; and weak, hungry, cold, wet, worried with vermin and itch, dirty, with no hope of reward or rest, ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy
... it is so much the nature of laughter to communicate itself that when it no longer communicates itself it ceases to exist. One might say that outbursts of merriment need to be encouraged, that they are not self-sufficient. Not to share them is to blow upon them and extinguish them. When, in an animated and mirthful group, some one remains cold or gloomy, the laughter ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... The merriment in the middle of the room was now going on at its height. Private Clegg, who was an excellent storyteller, was relating one of his very very best, and it ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... he likewise my not setting down the many curious jests which were made on Adams; some of them declaring that parson-hunting was the best sport in the world; others commending his standing at bay, which they said he had done as well as any badger; with such like merriment, which, though it would ill become the dignity of this history, afforded much laughter and diversion to the squire and his ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... gave us a meal so good that I have remembered it, and her husband, the Judge, strove his best that we should eat it in merriment. He poured out his anecdotes like wine, and we should have quickly warmed to them; but Dr. MacBride sat among us, giving occasional heavy ha-ha's, which produced, as Miss Molly Wood whispered to me, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... her a look that quenched her merriment, and, she declared, made her feel queer all the evening; and when, in the dressing-room later, she tried to make it up with Rosanne, she was coldly snubbed. She then angrily remarked that it was the last time she would chaperon a jealous and bad-tempered girl to a dance, ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... departed for Guadalajara, Vitoriano having been already despatched there under a guard. On his arrival he presented his letters to the individuals for whom they were intended. The Civil Governor was convulsed with merriment on hearing Antonio's account of the adventure. Vitoriano was set at liberty and the books were placed in embargo at Guadalajara: the Governor stating, however, that though it was his duty to detain ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... dark eyes narrowed with merriment and his gentle laugh and attractive voice sounded pleasantly in ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... Saturday, but she came on Friday evening, having suddenly remembered that it was Shakespeare's birthday, and bringing with her from Arezzo a bottle of wine to 'drink to his memory with two other poets,' so there was a great deal of merriment, as you may fancy, and Robert played Shakespeare's favorite air, 'The Light of Love,' and everybody was delighted to meet everybody, and Roman news and Pisan dullness were properly discussed on every side. She saw a good deal of Cobden in Rome, and went with him to the Sistine Chapel. He has ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... dry thorns Under a pot, bubbling without use in the desert of dreary platitudes. The story he told was spiced and garnished with profane words, Whereat the Leaders laughed in their cups, making great show of merriment, So that the banquet-hall rang, and wine was spilt on the linen. Wine as red as blood—the blood of the shattered miner, Blood of the boy in the rifle-pits, blood of the coughing child-slave, Blood of the mangled trainman, blood that the ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... years he had been keeping the tavern, and no one either of the peasants or of the gentry had ever made complaint against him to his landlord. Of what should they complain? He had good drinks to choose from; he kept his accounts strictly, but without any knavery; he did not forbid merriment, but would not endure drunkenness. He was a great lover of entertainments; at his tavern marriages and christenings were celebrated; every Sunday he had musicians come from the village, including a bass viol ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... Mr Allaby to his man-servant, "shut the gate;" and he went indoors with a sigh of relief which seemed to say: "I have done it, and I am alive." This was the reaction after a burst of enthusiastic merriment during which the old gentleman had run twenty yards after the carriage to fling a slipper at it—which he ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... operated on their minds to people it with living and moving beings. They could see at times men of monstrous stature moving rapidly over the island, and at all seasons in the calm evening, or when the winds blew from it, could hear sounds of anger or wailing, or of music and merriment, proceeding from its gloomy shades. And some pretended to have seen distinctly the form of a tall man wading into the water to grasp whales. The forced visit to its shores of Tackanash, the Pawkunnawkut, made them see it was not the dream ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... broadly in reply; and the pie dogs sniff round us in a friendly way. The other day we met a boy who, on beholding me, stood stock still, threw back his head, and shouted with laughter. I never heard more whole-hearted merriment. I had to join in. Whether it was that he had never seen anyone with fair hair before, or whether there is something particularly droll in my appearance, I don't know, but he evidently found me the funniest thing he had met with for a long time. It is generally Topsy who is ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... feast and rejoice. Night comes and as the sun sets the sentries cast a look around. Nothing is in sight. There is nothing to fear. They join the merry-makers, and care and their suits of mail are laid aside, and merriment prevails. The Indians' hour has come. Over the walls swarm a red horde, creeping towards the unsuspecting feasters. One long war-whoop, a shower of arrows, cries of agony, and all ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... here sober hearts, full of anxious portent for the future, but on the surface at least was naught but merriment. The gayest abandon prevailed. Strathspey and reel and Highland fling alternated with the graceful dances of France and the rollicking jigs of Ireland. Plainly this was no state ceremonial, rather an international ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... this salutation. The Queen then took him by the hand, led him about the gallery, and asked him many questions, the answers to which kept the party in an uninterrupted strain of merriment. The General familiarly informed the Queen that her picture gallery was "first-rate," and told her he should like to see the Prince of Wales. The Queen replied that the Prince had retired to rest, but that he should see him on some future occasion. ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... fancy that I now see Elder William Brewster entering the door at the further end of this hall. A tall and erect figure, of plain dress, of no elegance of manner beyond a respectful bow, mild and cheerful, but of no merriment that reaches beyond a smile. Let me suppose that his image stood now before us, or that it was looking ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... sitting around the red-hot stove, they make the evening jolly with songs and yarns of tie-drives, and of wild rides down the long "V" flume. A happy, light-hearted set of fellows are these "tie-men," and not an evening but their rude shanty resounds with merriment galore. Fun is in the air to-night, and "Beaver" (so dubbed on account of an unfortunate tendency to fall into every hole of water he goes anywhere near) is the unlucky wight upon whom the rude witticisms concentrate; for he has fallen into the water again to- day, ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... took the fiddle and played. But there was no merriment in it now. It was only the breath of sorrow and loss and disappointment that breathed from the shivering strings. The fairies did not dance; they only stood and listened, pale and still. In a few moments the King gave the sign for ...
— Fairies and Folk of Ireland • William Henry Frost
... watching the men, who, collected under a tent, were shooting with crossbows at the target. Every lucky shot was greeted with a cheer, every unlucky one with derisive laughter; and the prizes which were assigned to the fortunate marksmen only served to increase the joy and merriment ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... this point Hazel gave way and laughed. Such a ring of appreciation and merriment and gladness of heart, as was good to hear. The soft notes made Mrs. Powder smile; but poor Josephine, who could not laugh so, turned aside quick to hide the very different change which came over her face. Before anything further could be said, the door opened again ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner
... Tilton, think it over: and what merriment you will miss, and of how I shall miss you, if you ...
— A Heart-Song of To-day • Annie Gregg Savigny
... were lifted as we approached. Here and there a coif, or cotton cap, nodded, and the slit of a smile would gape between the nose and the meeting chin. A high good humor appeared to reign among the groups; a carnival of merriment laughed itself out in coarse, cracked laughter; loud was the play of the jests, hoarse and guttural the gibes that were abroad on the still air, from old mouths that ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... starting into temptation, he had gathered fragments of all these things, in order to avoid lying. And though his jest did not take aught of the truth out of the story, the answer was greeted with shouts of merriment from the bystanders. The maiden, too, when questioned on the matter, declared that he had done no such thing; and her denial was the more readily credited when it was found that the escort had not witnessed ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... be misleading, perhaps, to leave Brooke's poetry with the echo of this solemn note. No understanding of the man would be complete without mentioning the vehement gladness and merriment he found in all the commonplaces of life. Poignant to all cherishers of the precious details of existence must be his poem The Great Lover where he catalogues a sort of trade order list of his stock in life. The lines ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... not a depressing, but a most elevating state to which I allude. And, certainly, it is easy to understand, that many states of pleasure, and in particular the highest, are the most of all removed from merriment. The day on which a Roman triumphed was the most gladsome day of his existence; it was the crown and consummation of his prosperity; yet assuredly it was also to him the most solemn of his days. Festal music, of a rich and passionate character, is the most remote of any from vulgar ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... the denials of fortune matter for merriment. They are so still; or they were so certainly in the day when a great novelist found the smallness of some South German States to be the subject of unsating banter. The German scenes at the end of "Vanity Fair," for example, may prove how much the ridicule of mere smallness, fewness, ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... gray and taciturn each year, mellowed into some resemblance to his former benevolent, though stately, self. He had not yet heard of Ned's treason. His lady, still graceful and slender, resumed her youth. Fanny, who had ever forced herself to the diffusion of merriment when there was cheerlessness to be dispelled, reflected with happy eyes the old-time jocundity now reawakened. My mother, always a cheerful, self-reliant, outspoken soul, imparted the cordiality of her presence to the household, and both Tom ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... was charmed with Rawdon's gallantry. If he was surly, she never was. Whether friends were present or absent, she had always a kind smile for him and was attentive to his pleasure and comfort. It was the early days of their marriage over again: the same good humour, prevenances, merriment, and artless confidence and regard. "How much pleasanter it is," she would say, "to have you by my side in the carriage than that foolish old Briggs! Let us always go on so, dear Rawdon. How nice it would be, and how happy we ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... moment little part in the chatter and merriment, for she had received a considerable shock, stood talking with Copley. Ruth had given him her hand again and Chess clung to it rather more warmly—so the watchful Tom thought—than was needful. But the girl felt that she really had a great ...
— Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence - The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands • Alice B. Emerson
... turned and went quickly out of the tent. Baroudi spoke again to the girl, joined in her merriment, then followed Mrs. Armine. She turned upon him and took hold of his cloak with both her hands, and her hands ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... neck, and made the night echoes ring again with their shouts of welcome. I could hear that old Eli had got down his fiddle, and between the faint squeaking strains I could distinguish choruses of happy guffaws and bursts of child-like merriment. Tulp's return ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... understood—belly-bands and diapers and irrational length of skirts. Sometimes, when Corydon was quite exhausted, the attending to these matters fell to Thyrsis, who became for the time a most domestic poet. He once sent an editorial-room into roars of merriment by offering to review a book upon the feeding of infants. But he told himself that even the hilarious editors had been infants once upon a time; and he had divined that there were secrets about life to be learned, ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... have! I never let the men get it before me. All I want is a chance and a means! And they ate him up—took every trace away except the bones; and no one knew it, nor no sound of him was ever heard!' Here she broke into a chuckling fit of the ghastliest merriment which it was ever my lot to hear and see. A great poetess describes her heroine singing: 'Oh! to see or hear her singing! Scarce I ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... Ballantyne, the publisher, was so called by Sir W. Scott. He was "a quick, active, intrepid little fellow, full of fun and merriment ... all over quaintness and ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... formidable kinds, such as lions, tigers, leopards, and bears, many domestic animals, or animals capable of being turned to domestic use, such as the ass, buffalo, sheep, goat, dog, and dromedary, and the camel with two humps, whose gait caused so much merriment among the Ninevite idlers when they beheld it in the triumphal processions of their kings; there were, moreover, several breeds of horses, amongst which the Nisasan steed was greatly prized on account of its size, strength, and agility.* In short, Media was large enough and rich enough ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... to explain the marvelous popularity of Pickwick Papers. Certainly its honest fun, its merriment, its quaintness, good humor and charity appealed to every reader. More than all, it made people acquainted with a new company of characters, none of whom had ever existed, or could ever exist, and yet ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... impotent as those of an infant. The slave, again, on his side, is described as so thoroughly degraded, that he makes the disfiguration of his own person by the knout, the cancellation of his back by stripes and scars—a subject of continual merriment. Between two parties thus incapacitated by law and usage for manly intercourse, the result was exactly such by consummation as on many parts of the Continent it still is by tendency. The master welcomed from his slave that spirit of familiar impertinence which stirred the dull surface of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... corridors we were traversing, we heard the voice of merriment, and found a gay party of young people and children amusing themselves at games. I thought what a grand hide-and-go-seek place the castle must be—whole companies might lose themselves among the rooms. The central hall of the building goes up to the roof, and is surmounted by a dome. The ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... be what it might, he had as soon die of a wound as of thirst; but as the day wore on, it seemed as if the whole nature of the man were becoming changed. Sometimes he was boisterously loud in his merriment, sometimes sullen and silent; and when Eustace, unwearied, reiterated his arguments, he replied to him, not only with complete want of the deference he was usually so scrupulous in paying to his dignity, but with rude and scurril taunts and jests ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... celebrated. Six earth-worms shone as well as they could. In other respects the whole went off very quietly, for the old folks could not bear noise and merriment; but old Dame Snail made a brilliant speech. Father Snail could not speak, he was too much affected; and so they gave them as a dowry and inheritance, the whole forest of burdocks, and said—what they had always said—that it was the best in the world; and if they lived ...
— A Christmas Greeting • Hans Christian Andersen
... was apparently engrossed by other thoughts than those of the mirth and merriment around; for in the midst of all he would turn suddenly from the others, and devote himself to a number of scattered sheets of paper, upon which he had written some lines, but whose crossed and blotted sentences attested ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... absurd to advance into the presence of savage royalty after the fashion of an Irishman driving a pig to market, for that is what we looked like, and the idea nearly made me burst out laughing then and there. I had to work off my dangerous tendency to unseemly merriment by blowing my nose, a proceeding which filled old Billali with horror, for he looked over his shoulder and made a ghastly face at me, and I heard him murmur, ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... quite what I remember it. But we were of different professions and habits. I will say nothing of the chief sport of Dee, its salmon-fishing. However fascinating, the rod is a silent companion, and wants the jovial merriment, shout and halloo, that give life and cheerfulness to the sport of the hunter. My recollection of Deeside is in its autumn decking, and shows me old Sir Robert and my lady, two gentle daughters and four tall stalwart sons—they ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... child saw "more gentlemen than she had ever seen before in one place, all on horseback, in armour, and dripping wet—and that Kinmont Willie, who sat woman-fashion behind one of them, was the biggest carle she ever saw—and there was much merriment in the party." ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... she laughed until she seemed the goddess of all merriment come to earth, laughed till she also wept, then said—"Why, what ingratitude is this? Thou, my Leo, didst wish to see the wonders that I work, and thou, O Holly, didst come unbidden after I bade thee stay behind, and now both of you are rude and ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... envious of this success, made ostentatious preparations for doing the like; and then, taking the preliminary run with immense energy, stopped short on reaching the first horse, and pretended to wipe some dust from its haunches. In the majority of the spectators, merriment was excited; but in my friend, wound up by the expectation of the coming leap to a state of great nervous tension, the effect of the baulk was to produce indignation. Experience thus proves what the theory implies: namely, that the discharge of arrested feelings into the muscular system, ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... of the prince's ruined mind made all the hearts about him ache; but the sad sight moved none to merriment. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... days, but most agreed that it was only three hours. Be that as it may, AEgir's thralls, Funfeng and Elder, brewed great store of ale in the kettle which Thor had brought; and, when the guests were seated at the table, the foaming liquor passed itself around to each, and there was much merriment and glad good cheer. And old AEgir was so happy in the pleasant company of the Asa-folk, that men say that he forgot to blow and bluster for a full ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... but others of them had tears in their eyes; and I noticed that in the midst of the merriment the fellow Hamby got up and slipped out of the room. Not long after that the company began to disperse for various reasons. Karlin explained that his old horse had been working all day, and had had ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... when we go into the business, and that it does not work according to our expectations, we can denounce the whole as a very mean affair, and the Book which describes it as not worth reading. If one wants some new subject for merriment, and does not mind making a fool of himself, and is not to be terrified by old-fashioned notions about God Almighty, and is perfectly confident that God can tell him nothing that he does not know better already, and merely wants to see whether he is not trying to pass ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... all laughed, the lady most, and sometimes all spoke at once. Notwithstanding these outbreakings, Miss Ring did most of the talking, and once or twice, as a young man would gape after a most exhilarating show of merriment, and discover an inclination to retreat, she managed to recall him to his allegiance, by some remark particularly pertinent to himself, or ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... console the bereaved landlady, and the result was as usual. And when, long years after, Johnson would solemnly explain that it was a pure love-match on both sides, the statement never failed to excite much needless and ill-suppressed merriment on the part of the listeners. In mimicking the endearments of Johnson and his "pretty creature"—so the admiring husband called her—Garrick many years later added ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... halfway of half that continent, made no merriment in their turn. Their wounded and their sick were with them. The blazing sun tried them sore. Before them also lay they ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... the larder with which to do it. Smith with George Percy and Francis West and others went again to the Indians for corn. Christmas found them weather-bound at Kecoughtan. "Wherever an Englishman may be, and in whatever part of the world, he must keep Christmas with feasting and merriment! And, indeed, we were never more merrie, nor fedde on more plentie of good oysters, fish, flesh, wild fowle and good bread; nor never had better fires in England than in the ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... this juncture of affairs she caught sight of Mr. Earnest's eyes peering at her above his paper. Had they been filled with tears or dark with remorse she might have relented, but, shocking to relate, they were fairly twinkling with merriment, and Nannie perceived that she was amusing her auditor hugely, instead of reading him a terrible lesson, and in her anger she all but lost ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... puppet-shows, bowls, horse-racing, betting, rope-dancing, romping under the mistletoe on Christmas, eating boars' heads, attending the theatres, health-drinking,—all these old-fashioned ways, in which the English sought merriment, were restored. The evil was chiefly in the excess to which these pleasures were carried; and every thing, which bore any resemblance to the Puritans, was ridiculed and despised. The nation, as a nation, did not love Puritanism, or any thing pertaining to it, after the deep religious ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... mounts aloft, the rest of the fast fellows keeping a lookout for donkeys; when one is seen, a hideous imitative bray is set up by the man of music, and his quadrupedal brother, attracted by the congenial sound, rushes to the roadside—mutual recognition, with much merriment, is the result. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... Three spits were turning, loaded with chickens, with pigeons and with joints of mutton, and a delectable odor of roast meat and of gravy flowing ever crisp brown skin arose from the hearth, kindled merriment, caused ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... over his head, and his face marked. With unearthly howls and shrieks, a l'Indien, he pranced about the room, incidentally giving Edison a scare that made him jump up from his work. He saw the joke quickly, however, and joined in the general merriment ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... addressing one and another with jocularity, laying his hands on some and pushing them on with assumed playfulness, keeping up the fire of raillery with desperate resistance. When screams were heard now and then from below, he made it appear to be only excited feminine merriment, directing attention to it, and calling out to ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... as it was a surprise to them it is still a surprise to all who read and write about Milton's life to this day. With the new wife came several of her friends, and so the quiet house was made gay with feasting and merriment for a few days; for strange to say, Milton, the stern Puritan, had married a Royalist lady, the daughter of a cavalier. After these few merry days the gay friends left, and the young bride remained behind with her grave and learned husband, in her new quiet home. But to poor little Mary ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... and pressed his hands to his mouth. His shoulders heaved, and a curious muffled sound emerged from his lips. He tried to strangle it, tried to frown, to choke the inclination in his throat, but it was of no avail: laugh he must, and laugh he did, his slight form shaking with merriment, the tears rising in the tired eyes and streaming down his cheeks. Nan laughed afresh at the comical spectacle, and as she looked a door behind the couch was pushed gently open, and a startled face peered round the corner. It was the face ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... with the same hideous merriment at the same idea, and then both remained in a withering silence, meant to express the utter contempt of each for the other, both in family and in person. They passed the Lodge, and ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... nature of the Pyramus and Thisbe interlude in the Midsummer Night's Dream, and flavoured with something of the comic rusticity of Greene's Carmela eclogue in Menaphon. It is needless here to summarize the plot of the 'merriment' which the ingenious author, no doubt a student of St. John's, evolved from Ovid's account in the third book of the Metamorphoses, and which runs to the respectable length of some eight hundred lines.[342] I may be allowed, ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... on occasion, blaze out into sheet-lightning, like her own beautiful skies, which, lovely as they are, can thunder and sulk with terrible earnestness when the fit takes them. At present, however, her face was running over with mischievous merriment, as she slyly pinched ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... he was usually the life and soul. No man could invent so many practical jokes or carry them on with such refinement of humour as he. Therefore, if the hostess wished to impart merriment among her guests, she sought out and sent a pressing invitation to "Jimmy" Flockart. A first-class shot, an excellent tennis-player, a good golfer, and quite a good hand at putting a stone in curling, he was an all-round ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... was the first to realize that even harmless merriment was in ill accord with the presence of death, for the body of Adelaide Melhuish lay within forty yards of the place where ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... to shine upon him, you may be sure that there was no single friend whom he did not call upon to bask with him in these fleeting rays. And what a glorious laugh he had; not a loud guffaw that splits your tympanum and crushes merriment flat, but an irrepressible, helpless, irresistible infectious laugh, in which his whole body became involved. I have seen a whole roomful of strangers rolling on their chairs without in the least knowing why, while JOHNNIE, with his head thrown back, his jolly face ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 103, November 26, 1892 • Various
... restrain a chuckle at the recollection of his first appearance there, and, as if his merriment or his words interested her, the ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... essentially apart from all other human beings, than by calling it a habit of intense and continual thought, pervading even his most trivial actions—intruding upon his moments of dalliance—and interweaving itself with his very flashes of merriment—like adders which writhe from out the eyes of the grinning masks in the cornices around the temples ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... then lay down on the cushions, listening eagerly if he might perchance hear any sound. But all was silent; for every soul had retired, and the vast mansion presented a striking contrast to the noisy merriment which a little while before ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... state of those who were already old, and of those who had continued their beneficent lives into the time when there is no pleasure in the years, and yet had given honor and blessing through them all. They fell to laughing together, and two or three cried a little on the heels of merriment. ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... his wife," replied the grave digger, looking up from his occupation with a dry smile that wrinkled his sallow cheek and distorted his shrunken lips. Perceiving that his merriment was not infectious, he resumed his employment, and that so assiduously, that in a very short time he had hollowed the last resting-place of Deacon Giles's consort. This done, he ascended from the trench with a lightness that surprised me, and walking a few paces from the ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... counter was a copy of the National Reformer, and, attracted by the title, I bought it. I read it placidly in the omnibus on my way to Victoria Station, and found it excellent, and was sent into convulsions of inward merriment when, glancing up, I saw an old gentleman gazing at me, with horror speaking from every line of his countenance. To see a young woman, respectably dressed in crape, reading an Atheistic journal, had evidently upset ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... only possible sport for M.F.H.'s at this time of the year must be "hunt—the slipper!" If the point of this "good thing" is not immediately obvious, the fault will be with SIDNEY SMITH, and not with you. And this quaint oddity should satiate your audience with mirth and merriment until ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 24, 1891. • Various
... her laughter. At the look of surprise on his face, she burst forth in such a gale of merriment that the little glade was filled with the music of her glee; while, in spite of himself, the ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... manoeuvre on the part of the guide, at once put, an end to the merriment of his companions; and the next moment, instead of enjoying a laugh at Ossaroo's expense, both of themselves exhibited a spectacle equally ludicrous. The bees, on perceiving these new enemies, at once ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... But censure, praise, merriment, scorn and indifference were all one—or, rather, all nothing—to David Swan. He had slept only a few moments when a brown carriage drawn by a handsome pair of horses bowled easily along and was brought to a standstill nearly in front of David's resting-place. A ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... she stands to avouch it—Nay, blush not, kinswoman, there is no shame in loving a courtly knight better than a country franklin—and do not laugh neither, Rowena, for grave-clothes and a thin visage are, God knows, no matter of merriment—Nay, an thou wilt needs laugh, I will find thee a better jest—Give me thy hand, or rather lend it me, for I but ask it in the way of friendship.—Here, cousin Wilfred of Ivanhoe, in thy favour I renounce and abjure—-Hey! by Saint Dunstan, our cousin Wilfred hath vanished!—Yet, unless my eyes ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... incessantly, Louie, the eldest, by an attitude of assurance and superiority so stiff and hard that it seemed invulnerable; Emmy by sudden jerky enthusiasms, exaltations, intensities; Edie by an exaggerated animation, a false excitement. Edie would drop from a childish merriment to a childish pathos, when she would call herself "Poor me," and demand pity for being tired, for missing a train, for cold ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... exacting critic may say, there is Napoleon! But I would have him bear in mind, that while Napoleon sent terror to the very heart of nations, the presence of General Potter was a sign of feasting and merriment, which things are blessings, mankind stand much ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... know that he regarded himself as the best talker in the world. But just as the play at the end turns from love-making and gay courtesies to thoughts of death and "world-without-end" pledges, so Biron's merriment is only the effervescence of youth, and love brings out ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... Free, jovial, genial, manly, and happy times they were, when, after a hard-fought field-day of professional antagonisms in court, the evening hours were crowded with social amenities, and winged with wit and merriment, with pathos, sentiment ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... do you know, at the beginning of your travels? We shall have Cocky-locky, and Turkey-lurky, and Goosie-poosie, and all the rest of them, before we get much farther. Don't breathe a word, girls," she went on, turning toward them all, and brimming over with merriment and mischief;—"but there's the best joke brewing. It's just like a farce. Is the door shut, Elinor? And are the Thoresbys gone upstairs? They're going with us, you know? And there's nothing to be said about it? And ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... wanted to get the reins in our own hands, as young people will, she would say, 'Gently, gently, girls; you may be grown up, but you will never be as old as your parents—'" But here Bessie stopped, on seeing that her companion was struggling with suppressed merriment. ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... the story of this great captain's end. He died at Kioto, the victim of treason. Among his captains was one named Akechi, a brave man, but proud. One day, in a moment of merriment, Nobunaga put the head of the captain under his arm and played on it with his fan, saying that he would make a drum of it. This pleasantry was not to the taste of the haughty captain, who nursed a desire for revenge,—behind which perhaps lay a wish ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris |
