"Mimic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a theatre from the stage:—it is very grand. Douglas danced among the figuranti too, and they were puzzled to find out who we were, as being more than their number. It was odd enough that Douglas Kinnaird and I should have been both at the real masquerade, and afterwards in the mimic one of the same, on the ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... the use and application of Hugh's mimic spouts. He turned one about, whistling, while he ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... concealed manner some of their original characters. Thus in the males "the upper half of the lower wing is of a pure white, whilst all the rest of the wings is barred and spotted with black, red and yellow, like the species they mimic. The females have not this white patch, and the males usually conceal it by covering it with the upper wing, so that I cannot imagine its being of any other use to them than as an attraction in courtship, when they exhibit it to the females, and thus gratify their deep-seated preference for ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... paper. The waiter soon re- appeared, and with a multitude of obsequious bows, announced his having completed the commands of the gentleman, who immediately lounged round into his box. Lord Camelford having finished his paragraph, called out in a mimic tone to that of Mr.——-, "Waiter! bring me a pair of snuffers." These were quickly brought, when his Lordship laid down his paper, walked round to the box in which Mr.——-was, snuffed out both the candles, and leisurely returned to his seat. Boiling with rage and fury, ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... said, 'Here, chicks, is a lady who's come to see you. Tell her how happy you are here.' Then Mag's freckled little face, her finger in her mouth, looked up like this. She was always afraid it might be her mother come for her. And the crippled boy jerked himself this way—I used to mimic him, and he'd laugh with the rest of them—over the bare floor. He always hoped for a penny. ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... near the stately cabinet and threw wide the doors, which, like the portals of a palace, stood between two pillars; it all seemed to be unlocked, showing within some beautiful old pictures in the panel of the doors, and a mirror, that opened a long succession of mimic halls, reflection upon reflection, ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and learning was his superior. He found no difficulty in testing these enthusiasts by the standard of the New Testament. There was nothing, he said, in their words and acts, so far as he had heard anything of them, which the devil might not do or mimic. As for their so-called ecstasies of devotion, there was nothing in all that, even though they boasted of being rapt into the third heaven. The Majesty of God was not wont to hold such familiar converse with men in old ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... mimic bud and blade, Light and shade; Tinted souls of leaf and stone, Flower and sunny bank of sand, Fairyland Calls her children to their own; Calls them back into their own Great unknown; Where the harmonies they cull On their wings ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... ere now it has probably disappeared, so perishable are all those beauties which can not be protected from the inclemency of the weather by removal. In front a stream of water pours into a basin from the wall, on which, half painted, half raised in relief, is a mimic fountain surmounted by a stag. Between the fountain and triclinium, in a line between the two pilasters which supported the trellis, was a small altar, on which the due libations might be poured by the festive party. In the other limb of the garden ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... peregrinations, has finally hit upon his real vocation: he has obtained the post of head inspector in a government institution. He is very well satisfied with his lot, and his pupils "adore" him, although they mimic him. Panshin has advanced greatly in rank, and already has a directorship in view; he walks with his back somewhat bent: it must be the cross of the Order of Vladimir, which has been conferred upon him, that drags him forward. The official in him has, decidedly, carried the day over ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... races, and other sports were chiefly or wholly diversional, and commonly mimicked the avocations of the adults. The girls played at the building and care of houses and were absorbed in dolls, while the boys played at archery, foot racing, and mimic hunting, which soon grew into the actual chase of small birds and animals. Some of the sports of the elders were unorganized diversions, leaping, racing, wrestling, and other spontaneous expressions of exuberance. Certain diversions were controlled by more persistent ...
— The Siouan Indians • W. J. McGee
... series of sermons bitterly inveighing against the theatre, as a place of amusement, and pouring forth the most awful denunciations against the frequenters thereof. Alfred Bunn, the manager, was not slow to retort. He put "The Hypocrite" on the boards, Shuter, the clever comedian and mimic, personating Mr. James in the part of Mawworm so cleverly that the piece had an immense run. The battle ended in a victory for both sides, chapel and theatre alike being crammed. If it pleased the ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... erst, ere rose the science to record In letter'd syllables the volant word; Whence chemic arts, disclosed in pictured lines, Liv'd to mankind by hieroglyphic signs; And clustering stars, pourtray'd on mimic spheres, Assumed the forms of lions, bulls, and bears; 370 —So erst, as Egypt's rude designs explain, Rose young DIONE from the shoreless main; Type of organic Nature! source of bliss! Emerging Beauty from the vast abyss! Sublime on Chaos borne, the Goddess stood, And smiled ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... in his manufacture and use of tools. So far as we know the ability to manufacture and understand the use of tools is possessed by man alone. "Monkeys may be taught a few simple operations with tools, such as cracking nuts with a stone, but usually they merely mimic a man."[1] Man's uniqueness as the exclusive maker and user of tools is made possible by two things. The first is his hand, which with its four fingers and a thumb, as contrasted with the monkey's five fingers, enables him to pick up objects. The second is his capacity for reflection, presently ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... last century. Tecumseh was born, as nearly as can be reckoned, in the year 1768, and from his earliest childhood he showed the passion for war which ruled him through life. He led his playmates in their mimic fights, and at seventeen he went on his first war party against the Kentuckians. The Indians attacked some boats on the Ohio River, and killed all the boatmen but one, whom they brought back and burned at the stake. Tecumseh was present, and though he ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... granting she should want to move, is there anything to hinder?" she asked. She wasn't a very clever woman, and was deciding privately to mimic Mrs. George B. Slade at some future occasion, and so eke out her scanty remuneration. She did not think ten dollars and expenses quite enough for such ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... sharply to the night-air sing, But there no more shall withered hags Refresh at ease their broomstick nags, Or taste those hazel-shadowed waters As beverage meet for Satan's daughters; No more their mimic tones be heard, The mew of cat, the chirp of bird, Shrill blending with the hoarser laughter Of the fell demon following after! The cautious goodman nails no more A horseshoe on his outer door, Lest some unseemly ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... wing exactly resemble Tenthredinidae, and many of the small species of Hesthesis run about on timber, and cannot be distinguished from ants. There is one genus of South American Longicorns that appears to mimic the shielded bugs of the genus Scutellera. The Gymnocerous capucinus is one of these, and is very like Pachyotris fabricii, one of the Scutelleridae. The beautiful Gymnocerous dulcissimus is also very like the ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... this mimic game of war In bands dispersed and past The royal train,—some near, some far, As day ...
— Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan • Toru Dutt
... frown. And even the impressions coming to us from our material environment have their influence on our acts. Our response to these ideas may be a conscious one, as when a boy purposely stutters in order to mimic an unfortunate companion; or it may be unconscious, as when the boy unknowingly falls into the habit of stammering from hearing this kind of speech. The child may consciously seek to keep himself neat and clean ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... follows! But few years, And we stood eminent. Great men were ours, Of virtue stern, and armed with mightiest powers! How have we sunk below our proper spheres! No Heroes, Virtues, Men! But in their place, The nimble marmozet and magpie men; Creatures that only mock and mimic, when They run astride the shoulders of the race; Democracy, in vanity elate, Clothing but sycophants in ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... had been gathering over the battle-field opened and began such a cannonade as neither side could withstand. Wind, hail, lightning, and thunder, accompanied by an ominous darkness in which friend was indistinguishable from foe, played such havoc with the puny combatants and their mimic artillery, that all were forced to seek shelter and safety from the angry elements. Thus neither side was left in possession of the field, but a third and a mightier power than either claimed the victory ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... which he conveyed to Ortensia was that of a performing bear eating strawberries; but she managed to keep her countenance, and not to mimic him when she repeated the passage herself, profiting by his instruction. It was the sort of music that rich amateurs used to write by the ream, subject to the unacknowledged 'corrections' of a well-paid professional; but the girl's ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... The best remain'g things are what I have before read, and they lose nothing by my recollection of your manner of reciting 'em, for I too bear in mind "the voice, the look" of absent friends, and can occasionally mimic their manner for the amusement of those who have seen 'em. Your impassioned manner of recitation I can recall at any time to mine own heart, and to the ears of the bystanders. I rather wish you had left the monody on C. concluding as it did abruptly. It had more of unity.—The conclusion of ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... that the redstart is a mimic is to be met with in many books about birds. I rather think that in jerking out these various little broken notes which end its strain, whether he only squeaks or succeeds in producing a pure sound, he is striving to ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... mannered; modest, deferent, And tender-hearted, though of fearless blood: No bolder horseman in the youthful band E'er rode in gay chase of the shy gazelles; No keener driver of the chariot In mimic contest scoured the palace courts: Yet in mid-play the boy would oft-times pause, Letting the deer pass free; would oft-times yield His half-won race because the laboring steeds Fetched painful breath; or if his princely mates Saddened to lose, or if some wistful dream Swept o'er his thoughts. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... self had made, To mock herself and truth to imitate, With kindly counter under mimic shade, Our ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... absence of genuine inspiration is supplied by the strong illusions of enthusiasm, and the mimic arts of imposture. If, in the time of Julian, these arts had been practised only by the pagan priests, for the support of an expiring cause, some indulgence might perhaps be allowed to the interest ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... angrily, at which Cherry exclaimed: "Now, for Heaven's sake, don't mimic Big George, or we'll never ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... the children love to come, On the bright sand to lie, Or in the gleaming water hold Their mimic revelry. ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... at this proposal, and then sank again. It seemed easier to paint a Meissonier on the spot than to win ten thousand dollars on that mimic stock exchange. Nor could I help reflecting on the singularity of such a test for a man's capacity to be a painter. I ventured even to comment ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... research and study, in all my close analysis of the masterpieces of Shakespeare, in my earnest determination to make those plays appear real on the mimic stage, I have never, and nowhere, met tragedy so real, so sublime, so magnificent as the legend of Hiram. It is substance without shadow—the manifest destiny of life which requires no picture and scarcely a word to ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... clever mimic, Miss Franklin," said he, "but you rather forgot yourself in that last speech. Anne is of too sensitive a nature to have explained herself with such a wealth ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... ill turn to Antoine. Geoffroi Le Cocq seemed never far off, wherever Antoine might be. He would lounge in the doorway of the cafe, watching for him, and sing a mocking song as he passed down the road. He would mimic his sayings among the other lads, who were not, however, very ready to join in deriding him. And once he contrived to poison the Kaudrens' bait, just when weather and season were at their best for fishing, so that Antoine brought not a single fish home. Jean, ...
— A Loose End and Other Stories • S. Elizabeth Hall
... The mimic battle begins by the two riders circling slowly round each other, waiting for an opportunity to dash in and strike ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 36, July 15, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... the scouts allowed that they made great progress. Sometimes they went out in two parties, with an officer and a scout to each, and their pouches filled with blank cartridge. Each would do its best to surprise the other; and, when they met, a mimic fight would take place, the men sheltering behind trees, and firing only when they obtained a ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty
... coarse, thick lips, M. Tabaret seemed an excellent type of the ignorant, pennywise, petty rentier class. Whenever he took his walks abroad, the juvenile street Arabs would impudently shout after him or try to mimic his favorite grimace. And yet his ungainliness did not seem to worry him in the least, while he appeared to take real pleasure in increasing his appearance of stupidity, solacing himself ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... Sudden prosperity had turned Garrick's head. Continued adversity had soured Johnson's temper. Johnson saw with more envy than became so great a man the villa, the plate, the china, the Brussels carpet, which the little mimic had got by repeating, with grimaces and gesticulations, what wiser men had written; and the exquisitely sensitive vanity of Garrick was galled by the thought that, while all the rest of the world was applauding him, he could obtain from one morose cynic, whose opinion it was impossible ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... had taken place since he had left Belleview a couple of hours before, and as he proceeded, step by step, every word carried conviction to Carteret. Tom Delamere's skill as a mimic and a negro impersonator was well known; he had himself laughed at more than one of his performances. There had been a powerful motive, and Mr. Delamere's discoveries had made clear the means. Tom's unusual departure, before breakfast, on a ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... period was mellow and flexible. He was a mimic, too; the brighter things he had seen, whether glories of nature or acts of man, had turned to pictures in this man's mind. He flashed these pictures one after another upon the trio; he peopled the soft and cushioned drawing-room with twenty different tribes and varieties of man, barbarous, ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... All business was excluded from the precincts, and here the emperor spent much of his time, wandering solitarily on foot among the trees, amusing himself with the friends of his youth, or sailing, with some of the ladies of his family, along the mimic rivers. ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 433 - Volume 17, New Series, April 17, 1852 • Various
... then turned toward the east, as though equally anxious for the appearance of light, when the form leaned against the mound, and seemed to gaze upon the glassy expanse of the waters, which, like a submarine firmament, glittered with its thousand mimic stars. The melancholy air, the hour, together with the vast frame of the man who thus leaned, musing, against the English ramparts, left no doubt as to his person in the mind of the observant spectator. Delicacy, no less than prudence, now urged him ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... with golden spears, and shields, and coats of mail; and here he received the souls of warriors killed in battle, who were to assist him in the final conflict with the giants; and here, every day, they armed themselves for battle, and rode forth by thousands to their mimic combat on the plains of Asgard, and at night they returned to Valhalla to feast on the flesh of the boar, and to drink the intoxicating mead. Here dwelt, also, the numerous virgins called the Valkyriur, or Choosers of the Slain, whom Odin sent forth to every battle-field ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... the Rhodian's mimic art arrayed The Queen of Beauty in her Cyprian shade, The happy master mingled in his piece Each look that charmed him in ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... night! I'd say the griefs, the joys, Just hinted in this mimic page, The triumphs and defeats of boys, Are but repeated in our age. I'd say, your woes were not less keen, Your hopes more vain, than those of men, Your pangs or pleasures of fifteen, ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... had often rehearsed his defense against Russian invaders. Indeed report, perhaps unfounded, described his retirement to the displeasure of the Emperor William at being badly worsted in one of these mimic combats. He had prevented the country from being cleared and the swamps from being drained, arguing that they were worth more to Germany than a dozen fortresses. A man of rugged strength, his face suggesting power and tenacity, he was to become the ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... his children. I recalled his enthusiastic accounts of the elder Booth and Edwin Forrest, and especially his descriptions of the wonderful scenic effects in Old Put and The Gold Seekers, wherein actors rode down mimic stone steps or debarked from theatrical ships which sailed into pictured wharves, and one day in the midst of my lathing and sawing, I evolved a daring plan—I decided to visit Boston and explore ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... face checked him; made him remember. This was no mimic thing. It was real; too real to need play-acting. And with that thought came recollection. All in a flash it dawned on him that this was no man-created situation; it must have something greater ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... design of their totem, especially the parts of the emu which they like best to eat, namely, the fat and the eggs. Round this painting the men sit and sing. Afterwards performers, wearing head-dresses to represent the long neck and small head of the emu, mimic the appearance of the bird as it stands aimlessly peering ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... water—river, sea, lake, or canal—he never learned to swim. Peacock also notices his habit of floating paper boats, and gives an amusing description of the boredom suffered by Hogg on occasions when Shelley would stop by the side of a pond or mere to float a mimic navy. The not altogether apocryphal story of his having once constructed a boat out of a bank-post-bill, and launched it on the lake in Kensington Gardens, deserves to be alluded to in ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... and black turbulence of the Isar, felt themselves to be by contrast most tranquil and even-tempered. The little river rushed beneath them, forming a wealth of tiny whirlpools above its stone-paved way, its waters seeming to clash and struggle in a species of mimic, liquid warfare, and then, of a sudden, victor and vanquished fled wildly on together, giving place to other waves with their other ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner
... sought the westward prairie over which wound the road to the distant post. It was nearly train-time, and three or four horsemen could be seen at various distances, while, far out towards the fort, long skirmish-lines and fluttering guidons were sweeping over the slopes in mimic war-array. ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... his little charge in Iowa, to which conference he belonged. He had chosen his proper vocation, for as a preacher he was "Native, and to the manor born," for when a wee boy, he had written and declaimed many a sermon, and had his mimic audience been a real one these efforts would have ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... they deemed to he for the best. The knotty point was, however, soon decided; and, on the appointed day, the brotherhood marched in great state, displaying sundry banners and mysterious symbols, each man with a little mimic apron before him, from a most cunningly contrived apartment in the garret of the Bold Dragoon, an inn kept by one Captain Hollister, to the site of the intended edifice. Here Richard laid the corner stone, with suitable gravity, amidst an assemblage ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... he might be; callous to the tragedy in Jean's eyes at what might have happened; unfeeling in his greedy seizure of her horror as good "stuff" for Muriel Gay to mimic. Yet the man's energy was dynamic; his callousness was born of his passion for the making of good pictures. He swept even Jean out of the emotional whirlpool and into the calm, steady current of the ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... distressed in mind to work or read, I repaired to the Mother's Room, to be as near as possible to the sufferer on whose recovery so much now depended. How lonely and desolate it seemed there, now that she was absent! Those mountain landscapes, glowing with the white radiance of mimic sunshine, still made perpetual summer; yet there seemed to be a wintry chill and death-like atmosphere which struck to the heart, and made me shiver with cold. The day dragged slowly to its close, and no rest came to the sufferer, ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... warm, a single day will work wonders. Presently each tree will be one vast plume of gray, downy tassels, while not the least speck of green foliage is visible. The first week of April these long mimic caterpillars lie all about the streets and fill ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... people, the pinch usually being when, for the benefit of Timmy, the sofa was supposed to be a stage coach of long ago on its way to London. The Tosswills had been great people for private theatricals, charades, and so on—Timmy's own mother being a really good actress and an excellent mimic, but she did not often now indulge in ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... minutes brought him to it, changed since he had seen it last. The pines, the cedars, the tamaracks were all out in their summer-dress of living green; the flower-gardens were aflame with flowers, the orchard was white with blossoms, and the red light of the sunset was reflected with mimic glory in the still, broad fish-pond. Climbing roses and honeysuckles trailed their fragrant branches round the grim stone pillars of the portico. Windows and doors stood wide to admit the cool, ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... sprang forward in companies, singing a sweet song and waving the delicate palms and white lilies. On they danced, looking faint and spiritual in the soft, sad light of the risen moon; now whirling round and round, now meeting in mimic warfare, swaying, eddying here and there, coming forward, falling back in an ordered confusion delightful to witness. At last they paused, and a beautiful young woman sprang out of the ranks and began to pirouette in front of us with a grace and vigour which would have put most ballet girls ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... to have shot such a bolt, except in imitation; yet how promptly the mimic thunder came, and how grand the beauty looked, with her dark brows, and flashing eyes, and folded arms! much grander and more inspired than poor Staines, who had only ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... represented the marching units of United States troops. The columns of bluish-grey that passed them with shorter, quicker steps, were companies of those tireless Frenchmen, who after almost three years of the front line real thing, now played at a mimic war of make-believe, with taller and ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... sartorial kings and pseudo-queens, her dukes and DuBarrys, princes and Pompadours, have strutted their brief hour upon the mimic stage, disappearing at daybreak like foul night-birds or an unclean dream—have come and gone like the rank eructation of some crapulous Sodom, a malodor from the cloacae of ancient capitals, a breath blown from the festering lips of half-forgotten ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... us to play with, not innocently, as children with dolls, but guiltily and darkly, as the idolatrous Jews with their pictures on cavern walls, which men had to dig to detect. The justice we do not execute, we mimic in the novel and on the stage; for the beauty we destroy in nature, we substitute the metamorphosis of the pantomime, and (the human nature of us imperatively requiring awe and sorrow of some kind) for the noble grief we should have borne with our fellows, and the pure tears we ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... next to man, the animals by their structure having the best means to this end, are most excellent imitators, and there is no limit to the things they can mimic. ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... that the other was trying to mimic his pronunciation of the word, and he felt resentful until a look at the boy's face showed that he intended ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
... bladed mead To chase the blue-wing'd butterfly, or play With curly streams; or, led by watchful Love, To hear the chorus of the trooping waves, When the young breezes laugh them into life! Or listen to the mimic ocean roar Within the womb of spiry sea-shell wove,— From sight and sound to catch intense delight, And infant gladness from each happy face,— These are the guileless duties of the day: And when at length reposeful Evening comes, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 336 Saturday, October 18, 1828 • Various
... played together. First, they had a mimic wedding-procession. Then they made believe that the bridegroom was killed by a robber, and they had a mock funeral. The Boy took always the lowest part. He was the hired mourner who followed the body, wailing; he was the flute-player who made music for the wedding-guests ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke
... sumptuously these bowers are lighted up With shifting gleams that softly come and go! These are the northern lights, such as thou seest In the midwinter nights, cold, wandering flames, That float, with our processions, through the air; And here, within our winter palaces, Mimic the glorious daybreak." Then she told How, when the wind, in the long winter nights, Swept the light snows into the hollow dell, She and her comrades guided to its place Each wandering flake, and piled them quaintly up, In shapely ...
— The Little People of the Snow • William Cullen Bryant
... child a mimic and singer. First visits to the theatre. Plays Lady Macbeth, her first part. To a young actress. To a young mother. Early griefs. Art her only spouse. ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... I was at times haunted by grave doubts as to whether I should not have informed the manager of his physical condition, and the possibility that he might some evening perpetrate a real tragedy on the mimic stage, but on the first performance of "The Destruction of Sennacherib," which I conscientiously attended, I was somewhat relieved. I had often been amused with the placid way in which the chorus in the opera invariably ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... less degree than these remote posterity. They are a little wilder than sheep, but they do not snuff the air at the approach of human beings, nor evince much alarm at their pretty close proximity; although, if you continue to advance, they toss their heads and take to their heels in a kind of mimic terror, or something akin to feminine skittishness, with a dim remembrance or tradition, as it were, of their having come of a wild stock. They have so long been fed and protected by man, that they must have lost many of their native instincts, and, I suppose, could not live comfortably ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... beauty of the court, with the infanta Isabella in the midst, attended by seventy noble ladies, and a hundred pages of the royal household. The cavaliers of Spain, young and old, thronged to the tournament, as eager to win laurels on the mimic theatre of war, in the presence of so brilliant an assemblage, as they had shown themselves in the sterner contests with the Moors. King Ferdinand, who broke several lances on the occasion, was among the most distinguished of the combatants for personal dexterity ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... The mimic warfare commenced. We threw out an outlying picket with supports and reserve, and the whole camp was placed in a state of defence against a ...
— A Soldier's Life - Being the Personal Reminiscences of Edwin G. Rundle • Edwin G. Rundle
... the part of Mr. Pertell; wasn't it, Ruth?" asked one of the young actresses—a pretty girl—of her sister, who stood near her in the mimic scene. ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Under the Palms - Or Lost in the Wilds of Florida • Laura Lee Hope
... easy task, for Smiles took to "manners" as readily as a chameleon adapts its exterior to suit the color of its surroundings. In the woods she had learned to mimic the note of the birds or the chattering of the squirrels; in the hotel dining-room she copied the behavior of her companion just as faithfully, and if, on occasion, she found herself perplexed as to the proper use of some strange implement ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... broke! And all shall be revealed: now list my tale:— 'Tis five months flown,—my father yet controlled The land, and bowed our necks with iron sway; Little I knew but the wild joys of arms, And mimic warfare of the chase;— One day,— Long had we tracked the boar with zealous toil On yonder woody ridge:—it chanced, pursuing A snow-white hind, far from your train I roved Amid the forest maze;—the timid beast, Along the windings of the narrow vale, Through rocky cleft ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... many years to make Benny a pretty big boy, and one of the boy-kind who always start schemes and devices among their schoolfellows. He seemed to be a born leader, with a crowd of other boys always at his heels ready to follow where he ventured, or to mimic what he did. No one ever walked ahead of him, no one ever suggested things to do or places to go, when the engineer's son was around. He was always the vanguard, but fortunately was the kind of boy who ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... pangs that flesh is heir to,' does get at the top of his profession, he can no longer bear a rival near the throne; to be second or only equal to another is to be nothing: he starts at the prospect of a successor, and retains the mimic sceptre with a convulsive grasp: perhaps as he is about to seize the first place which he has long had in his eye, an unsuspected competitor steps in before him, and carries off the prize, leaving him to ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... Dyckman went to the officers' school of application at Peekskill for a week to get a smattering of tuition under Regular Army instructors. He slept on a cot in a tent and studied map-making and military bookkeeping and mimic ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... mentioned, Johnson said, "He is not a good mimic." One of the company added, "A merry-andrew, a buffoon." Johnson. "But he has wit too, and is not deficient in ideas, or in fertility and variety of imagery, and not empty of reading; he has knowledge enough to fill up his part. One species of wit he has in an eminent degree, that ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... that he sat on that stone; for that alone he had been beaten! What he said was but the babbling of priests. All priests are alike. They have a common jargon—a common disrespect for what they dare not openly defy. These temple rats of fakirs mimic them. That is all, sahib. A whipping meets ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... of twenty years or more. One of the entries thus consulted contained these particulars: 'Hector Auguste Monbrun, son of a respectable proprietor in Normandy. Well educated; gentleman-like manners. On bad terms with his family. Character: bold, cunning, unscrupulous, self-possessed. Is a clever mimic. May be easily recognized by his striking likeness to the Baron Franval. Imprisoned at twenty for theft ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... Champion who nine years before had essayed to keep rogues in fear of his Hercules' club. Two judgments delivered by the Court are of interest. In one, due castigation is given to that incorrigible mimic and wit Foote, who was once threatened by no less a cudgel than that of Dr. Johnson himself. Foote was evading all law and order by his inimitable mimicries at the Little Theatre in the Haymarket; and for these performances at his "scandal-shop" is very properly brought ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... hundreds. Carey had a thousand and did nothing. He had never done anything definite, anything to earn a living. Yet his talents were notorious. He played the piano well for an amateur, was an extraordinarily clever mimic, acted better than most people who were not on the stage, and could write very entertaining verse with a pungent, sub-acid flavour. But he had no creative power and no perseverance. As a critic of the performances of others he was ...
— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens
... wings, all spotted over at intervals with wee speckles to imitate the tiny spots of fungi on the foliage it resembles. The well-known stick and leaf insects from the same rich neighbourhood in like manner exactly mimic the twigs and leaves of the forest among which they lurk: some of them look for all the world like little bits of walking bamboo, while others appear in all varieties of hue, as if opening buds and full-blown leaves and pieces ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... not, and makes great exertions to succeed in this object. This sentiment indeed, which is but too natural to the heart of man, does not originate in the democratic principle; but that principle applies it to material objects. To mimic virtue is of every age; but the hypocrisy of luxury belongs more particularly ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... with a succession of long bounding flights from one tall tree to another. The large woodpecker taps a hollow tree close by, his gorgeous plumage glistening like a mimic rainbow in the sun. A flight of green parrots sweep screaming above your head, the golden oriole or mango bird, the koel, with here and there a red-tufted bulbul, make a faint attempt at a chirrup; but as a rule the deep ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... person hitherto calm and collected will suddenly commence to shout, sing, and dance at the most inopportune moment, and from that time the mind of the patient becomes permanently deranged. A curious phase of this disease is the irresistible impulse to mimic the voice and actions of others. Thus I witnessed a painful scene one night in the home of an exile who had assembled some comrades to meet me, and, in the street one day, a peasant woman, born and bred ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... recesses of our establishment; and there stands a bust, in serious expectation that some one will walk out and saunter down among the rocks; but no one ever does. Just at the right is a little beach, with a few old houses, and a mimic stir of life, a little curve in the cliff, the mouth of the gorge, where the waves come in with a lazy swash. Some fishing-boats ride there; and the shallow water, as I look down this sunny morning, is thickly strewn with floating peels of oranges ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... acted, to see an old man tottering about the stage with a walking-stick, turned out of doors by his daughters in a rainy night, has nothing in it but what is painful and disgusting. The contemptible machinery by which they mimic the storm in which he goes out is not more inadequate to represent the horrors of the real elements than any actor can be to represent Lear. In the acted Othello, the black visage of the Moor is obtruded upon you; in the written Othello, his color disappears ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... we commenced our return by a different route from that of our arrival. Shaikh Ayan and Hadj 'Othman, of the quarantine, amusing themselves with jereed-playing and other mimic manoeuvres of warfare, which ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... to the middle comedy, which came next, observe what it was, and again, for what object the new comedy was introduced, which gradually sank down into a mere mimic artifice. That some good things are said even by these writers, everybody knows: but the whole plan of such poetry and dramaturgy, to what end does ...
— The Thoughts Of The Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius
... Byron called "the mimic woe" of the poet, but it was rather the grand defiance of the Indian warrior at the stake, whose proud soul can hold in hand his ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... standing face to face with the assailant. In imitating him, especially in his unreasoning state of mind, he would lift the arm opposite to the one whose action he mimics, which, in this case, would be the assailant's right. Try, for the moment, to mimic my actions. See! I lift this hand, and instinctively (nay, I detected the movement, sir, quickly as you remembered yourself), you raise the one directly opposite to it. It is like seeing yourself in a mirror. You turn your head to the ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... sayeth, Fair fell good Orpheus, that would rather be King of a molehill than a keisar's slave: Better it is 'mongst fiddlers to be chief, Than at [a] player's trencher beg relief. But is't not strange, this mimic ape should prize Unhappy scholars at a hireling rate? Vile world, that lifts them up to high degree, And treads us down in groveling misery. England affords those glorious vagabonds, That carried erst their fardles on their backs, Coursers to ride on through the gazing ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... first place, have seldom seen a man degraded but by his vices. Unaccustomed to many of the diversions of the world, they have seldom, if ever, seen him in the low condition of a hired buffoon or mimic. Men, who consent to let others degrade themselves for their sport, become degraded in their turn. And this degradation increases with the frequency of the spectacle. Persons in such habits are apt to lose sight of the dignity of mankind, and to consider them as made for administration to their ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... was a little older, and lessons and play alternated with each other, she was taught to attend to the thing in hand, and finish what she had begun, both in her studies and games. One day she was amusing herself making a little haycock when some other mimic occupation caught her volatile fancy, and she flung down her small rake ready to rush off to the fresh attraction. "No, no, Princess; you must always complete what you have commenced," said her governess, and the small haymaker ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... and the melancholy of it already present—witness the elms in Chiswick Mall splotched with raw umber and faded yellow. The tide had still about an hour to flow. The river was dull and leaden, save where, near Chiswick Eyot, the wind meeting the tide lashed the surface of it into mimic waves, the crests of which, flung upward, showed against the gloomy stretch of water beyond, like pale hands raised heavenward in despairing protest. Steam-tugs, taking advantage of the tide, laboured up-stream in the teeth of the wind, ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... clergymen and she likes great ladies, and she likes to make people like her. Of course, she is always designing; but she never stops to think, so that she doesn't know she is designing. She is an amazing mimic. Something in this room to-night made me think of Dorset House directly I came in, and I remembered that, of course, she was at the party there last night. She must have put the sofa and the palms in the middle of the room to-day. At dinner to-night she suddenly told me that she wished she had ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... odoriferous herbs. Garlands of artificial flowers were interspersed; likewise imitations in satin, silk, and gold, of various trees, herbs, and fruits, not to be found in those parts. All this had been accomplished with great pains by the ladies of the queen's mimic court, Sir John Finett superintending "The Bower of Beautie," as his peculiar province. To Sir George Goring were allotted the bears, satyrs, imps, angels, gods, and other like rabble, who were taught with much labour and difficulty, in so short ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... to enrol you amongst his chosen warriors on that day; he has marked the skill you have displayed in the mimic contests with spear or sword, your skill as a horseman, and he wishes to see whether in actual battle you will fulfil the ...
— Alfgar the Dane or the Second Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... wrote to Garrick from Copenhagen on Dec. 23, 1769:—'There is some of our retinue who, not understanding a word of your language, mimic your gesture and your action: so great an impression did it make upon their minds, the scene of daggers has been repeated in dumb show a hundred times, and those most ignorant of the English idiom ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... with my birth, been thus descended, in all probability he would have been of the same profession himself; a reply at once, sensible and witty. Mr. Wood, however, seems to be of opinion, that he was too much given to bantering, and that if he had thrown less of the buffoon or mimic into his conversation, his wit would have been very agreeable. He is charged by Wood with a higher failing, which ought indeed rather to be construed one of the blackest crimes, that is, ingratitude to those who assisted him in distress, whom, says he, he afterwards slighted. ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber
... home valley. The ground as soon became uneven and rocky, broken into little heights and hollows, and strewn all over with a bedding of stones, large and small; except where narrow foot-tracks or cowpaths wound along the mimic ravines or gently climbed the hilly ridges. Among these stones and sharing the soil with them, uprose the cedars, pines, hemlocks, and a pretty intermingling of deciduous trees; not of very tall or vigorous growth, for the land favoured ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... In my confusion I dropped the pail, which went gaily floating to the opposite side of the spring, entirely out of my reach. The strong, bubbling current bore it upward, and it danced and sparkled and turned its sides of mimic silver, first one way and then the other, as if rejoicing in ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... 1327, was often 'employed by the King in his wars in France and Scotland,' and fought at the battle of Crecy. The next year, among other 'brave Martialists,' he diverted himself by mimic battles at Eltham, and it is recorded that at this tournament the King gave him 'an Hood of White Cloth, embroidered with men in the posture of Dancers, buttoned with large Pearls.' Authorities are divided as to whether ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... quite a time of it with the mistress of the house. In his new-found enthusiasm, he went to her at once with the word that he had decided to make a subrosa invasion of the mimic world to help out poor Flanders and to lay his hand against the prejudice and ignorance that seemed to be throttling ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... visited With too-familiar elbow, swell the curse Vortiginous. The boating man returns, His rawness growing with experience— Strange union! and directs the optic glass Not unresponsive to Jemima's charms, Who wheels obdurate, in his mimic chaise Perambulant, the child. The gouty cit, Asthmatical, with elevated cane Pursues the unregarding tram, as one Who, having heard a hurdy-gurdy, girds His loins and hunts the hurdy-gurdy-man, Blaspheming. Now the clangorous bell proclaims The Times or Chronicle, ...
— Green Bays. Verses and Parodies • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... glorying in newly acquired freedom, when an institution younger by many years than themselves, an institution which had, under their own eyes, gradually received its form from the passions and interest of a court, began to mimic the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Guert, who took an active command among us, as we drew near to danger, issued his commands for every man to be on the alert, in order that there might be no confusion. We were instructed as to the manner of proceeding the moment an alarm was given; and Guert, who was a capital mimic, had previously taught us several calls and rallying signals, all of which were good imitations of the cries of different tenants of the woods, principally birds. These signals had their origin with the red-man, who often resorted to them, and were said to be more ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... private house, whereupon the eidolon of the austere saint at once invigorated himself with a reasonable share of the sweets and wine, threw the remnants to the crowd, and embraced the mighty cake securely with his right arm through the remainder of his passage. This was the attitude in which the mimic San Giovanni presented himself as the tall car jerked and vibrated on its slow way round the piazza to the northern gate ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... over, and the sun was drawing out millions of mimic suns from the drops that hung, for a moment ere they fell, from flower and bush and great tree. But Malcolm saw nothing. Perplexed with himself and more perplexed yet with the behaviour of his master, he went back to his grandfather's cottage, ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... the philosopher's stone. To persons in such circumstances, with great presumption, some talents, but no principles, the Revolution could not, with all its anarchy, confusion, and crime, but be a real blessing, as Chaptal called it in his first speech at the Jacobin Club. Wishing to mimic, at Montpellier, the taking of the Bastille at Paris, he, in May, 1790, seduced the lower classes and the suburbs to an insurrection, and to an attack on the citadel, which the governor, to avoid all effusion of blood, surrendered without resistance. ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... revere, we know In him the friend is gone, to whom we owe So much of gaiety, so much which made Life's duller round to seem in joy repaid. These little festivals by him made bright, With grateful thoughts of him renewed to-night, Remind no less of her who deigned to grace This mimic world, and fill therein her place With the sweet dignity and gracious mien The race of Hamilton has often seen; But never shown upon the wider stage Where the great "cast" is writ on History's page, More purely, nobly, than by her, whose voice Here moved ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell
... With the mimic of gaiety, Cassy laughed. "Why, you old dear, all that has gone out. Hereabouts, nowadays, a father never goes to ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... morning began as usual: calm, fair, and hazy. At about nine it began to blow, and gradually rose to a gale, causing our river ripple to mimic ocean waves, and the dust and sand to fly before us in clouds, obscuring earth and sky. About ten we approached a mountain range, which had been for some time looming on the horizon. We found we had to pass through a channel of about a quarter of a mile ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... eat un. Od-rabbit it, no mortal was ever run in such a manner; if I dodged one way, one had me; if I offered to clap back, another snapped me. 'O! certainly one of the greatest matches in England,' says one cousin (here he attempted to mimic them); 'A very advantageous offer indeed,' cries another cousin (for you must know they be all my cousins, thof I never zeed half o' um before). 'Surely,' says that fat a—se b—, my Lady Bellaston, 'cousin, ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... hurrying at the signal dread, 'Fine battered earth returns their tread. Then prelude light, of livelier tone, Expressed their merry marching on, Ere peal of closing battle rose, With mingled outcry, shrieks, and blows; And mimic din of stroke and ward, As broadsword upon target jarred; And groaning pause, ere yet again, Condensed, the battle yelled amain: The rapid charge, the rallying shout, Retreat borne headlong into rout, And bursts of triumph, to declare Clan-Alpine's ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... surintendant of the finances, pulled with all their strength, and that magic word, the finances, promised them a liberal gratification, of which they wished to prove themselves worthy. The lighter seemed to leap the mimic waves of the Loire. Magnificent weather, a sunrise that empurpled all the landscape, displayed the river in all its limpid serenity. The current and the rowers carried Fouquet along as wings carry ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... were opened, and a mimic torrent, rushing down the dark glen, soon obliterated every trace ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... Macaluba giving out bitumen, and bubbles of carbonic acid and carburetted hydrogen. The mud-volcano of Saman, in the Western Caucasus, gives off, with a continual stream of thick mud, ignited gases, accompanied with mimic earthquakes like those of the Trinidad Salses; and this out of a soil said to be full of bituminous springs, and where (as in Trinidad) the tertiary strata carry veins of asphalt, or are saturated with naphtha. At the famous sacred Fire wells of Baku, ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... Sir Charles Sedley, one learned in intrigue; Baptist May, the monarch's favourite; Tom Killigrew who jested on life's follies whilst he enjoyed them; the Countess of Shrewsbury, beautiful and amorous; and Madam Ellen, who was ready to mimic or sing, dance or act, for ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... pavilion of white silk, where she was carefully guarded by her maids in waiting, each armed with a cunningly wrought wand of ivory and gold. The bridegroom and his attendants came upon them suddenly, however, brandishing gilt maces, and after a mimic struggle, where all was mirth and laughter, the guard of love was overcome and the bride was won. This wedding feast brought joy, not only to those who actively participated in its pleasures, but also to many of the common people; for Almanzor gave dowries to a large ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... cannon, and even at this distance, the noise reverberating amongst the hills is tremendous. The sound is horrible! There is something appalling, yet humbling, in these manifestations of man's wrath and man's power, when he seems to usurp his Maker's attributes, and to mimic his thunder. The divine spark kindled within him, has taught him how to draw these metals from the earth's bosom; how to combine these simple materials, so as to produce with them an effect as terrible as the thunderbolts ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca |
