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More "Amusing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Nero; and my brother had a young kangaroo, which hopped in and out with the utmost confidence, coming up to any one who happened to be eating, and insisting upon having pieces of bread given to it. Full of fun and spirits, it would sport about as playfully as a kitten; and it was very amusing to see how it would tease the dogs, pulling them about with its sharp claws, and trying to roll them over on the ground. The dogs, who were in the daily habit of killing kangaroos, never attempted to bite Minny, who sometimes teased them so heartily, that they would put their ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... gained him a place in the song and story of Japan. Of the tales told of him there is one whose poetic significance has given it a fixed place in the legendary lore of the land. One day, when the commandant was amusing himself in the sport of hawking, a shower of rain fell suddenly and heavily, forcing him to stop at a house near by and request the loan of a grass rain-coat,—a mino, to ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... whole field of African discovery, and in this way will often serve to refresh the memory of the reader. The mode of locomotion is, of course, purely imaginary, and the incidents and adventures fictitious. The latter are abundantly amusing, and, in view of the wonderful "travellers' tales" with which we have been entertained by African explorers, they can scarcely be considered extravagant; while the ingenuity and invention of the author will be sure to excite the surprise and the admiration of the reader, who will find M. VERNE ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... as soon as he arrived at the gates of the palace he sent a message to the King saying that he was there, and had brought him a present according to custom. And the King, being at that time at leisure and amusing himself with his wives, bade him enter; and as soon as he was come to where he stood, he presented to the King a golden bowl in which he had placed a dagger steeped in poison, with which he wounded him in many places; ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... Bonanni was talking of, but she supposed her teacher would tell her in due time; and, after all, he might not come. Margaret hoped that he would, however, for she had never spoken to a royalty in her life and thought it would be very amusing to see a real, live king in the ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... site of his former plantation at Keahumoe. At Waianae the two travellers were treated affably by the people of the district. In reply to the questions put them, they said they were going sight-seeing. As they went along they met a party of boys amusing themselves with darting arrows; one of them asked permission to join their party. This was given, and the three turned inland and journeyed till they reached a plain of soft, whitish rock, where they all refreshed ...
— Hawaiian Folk Tales - A Collection of Native Legends • Various
... he echoed,—"Yes? What of her? She seems to be the only person talked about in Cairo. Everybody in this hotel, at any rate, begins conversation with precisely the same words as you do,—'the Princess Ziska!' Upon my life, it is very amusing!" ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... in her toils. Did you catch the fine oratory of the glance she threw us? It said, 'Dorothy Gwynne, how dare you appropriate Dr. Kemp for ten long minutes? Hand him over; pass him around. I want him; you are only boring him, though you seem to be amusing yourself." ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... resolutions melted more quickly than snow beneath an April sun. She tortured him; but she had also the power to make him forget all by a smile, a tear, or a kiss. Away from the enchantress, reason returned at intervals, and, in his lucid moments, he said to himself, "She does not love me. She is amusing herself at my expense!" But the belief in her love had taken such deep root in his heart that he could not pluck it forth. He made himself a monster of jealousy, and then argued with himself respecting her fidelity. On several occasions he had strong ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... idea how many strange, amusing fancies played around me whilst I wandered along; nor how delighted I was with the novelty of my situation. But a few days ago, thought I within myself, I was in the midst of all the tumult and uproar of London: now, as if by some magic influence, I am transported to a city equally ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... controversy: a final point of interest is a psychological one. G.K. admits his difficulty in using in his arguments the reverent solemnity of the Agnostic. He realizes that he is thought flippant because he is amusing on a subject where he is more certain than "of the existence of the moon. . . . Christianity is itself so jolly a thing that it fills the possessor of it with a certain silly exuberance, which sad and ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... selecting a book of fairy tales, he read aloud all the rest of the afternoon. It was delightful to hear Uncle Steve read, for he would stop now and then to discuss the story, or he would put in some funny little jokes of his own, and he made it all so amusing and entertaining that the afternoon flew by as ...
— Marjorie's Vacation • Carolyn Wells
... been gleaned chiefly from old newspapers of Boston and Salem, sources not easily accessible, and while not professing to be history, the volumes contain much material for history, so combined and presented as to be both amusing and instructive. The titles of some of the volumes indicate their scope and ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 1: Curiosities of the Old Lottery • Henry M. Brooks
... saw her young friend again. Indeed, it required some clever diplomacy to heal the breach made, and even in her most amusing and affectionate moods, she often felt afterward that she was treated with a reserve which ...
— "Le Monsieur De La Petite Dame" • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... have put me on my guard. But, either out of deference to the holiday spirit, as manifested in the fictitious gayety of our few fellow passengers, or because the young man in a knowing, impertinent way was most amusing, I listened to him from dinner time until midnight, when the chief officer, hung with snow and icicles, was blown in from the deck and wished all a ...
— Somewhere in France • Richard Harding Davis
... sinners," according to No. 1 (June 14, 1879), and if bitter biting personalities can be called fun, the publication was certainty an amusing one, ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... society; very much at home in European courts, especially in that of England; the friend of Thackeray, at whose house, when in London, he made his abode. Lady Ritchie—Anne Thackeray—told me many amusing stories of his whimsies. He was a man among brainy men and a ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... we found that the boys had just been sacrificing; and this part of the festival was nearly at an end. They were all in their white array, and games at dice were going on among them. Most of them were in the outer court amusing themselves; but some were in a corner of the Apodyterium playing at odd and even with a number of dice, which they took out of little wicker baskets. There was also a circle of lookers-on; among them was Lysis. He was standing with the other boys and youths, having a crown upon his ...
— Lysis • Plato
... Lady Chutny re-entered her home on the plantation. Judge then of her indignation to find that during her absence the favourite mistresses had been re-established in their old comfortable quarters, for, while she had been amusing herself at the Capital with balls and parties, they had regained their ascendency over Sir Lexicon, who, not expecting her ladyship's return for several weeks, had consented to their returning to ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... course I have from Stein. He gave me their names and a short sketch of the life and character of each. He was as full of information about native states as an official report, but infinitely more amusing. He had to know. He traded in so many, and in some districts—as in Patusan, for instance—his firm was the only one to have an agency by special permit from the Dutch authorities. The Government trusted his discretion, ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... Comstock, and others, are amusing themselves with the folly of inventing new "Phonetic Alphabets," or of overturning all orthography to furnish "a character for each of the 38 elementary sounds," more or fewer, one of the acutest observers among our grammarians can fix on no number more definite or more considerable ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... gently. So that the water tells no tales. There's a channel to cross. Softly, softly. Here, brother, are serious people. They are quite capable of amusing themselves with a gun, They could raise a fine lump on your forehead before you'd have time to ...
— Twenty-six and One and Other Stories • Maksim Gorky
... t'neighbourhood. Nah what is thur grander ner a lot o' local singers at Kersmas time chanting i' t'streets; it's ommost like bein' i' heaven, especially when you're warm i' bed. But there's another thing at's varry amusing abaght our local singers, when they meet together ther is some demi-semi-quavering, when ther's sharps, flats, an' naturals;—an' t'best ale an' crotchets mix'd, that's the time ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright
... the duplex pattern, in one of the buildings just off Central Park West. She knew pretty nearly every one in that indescribable society in New York that is drawn from all levels, and that imposes but one condition for membership—to be amusing. She knew every one and no one knew her. No one knew beyond the vaguest rumors her history or her means. No one had ever heard of a Mr. Kildair. There was always about her a certain defensive reserve the moment the limits of acquaintanceship had ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson
... bless Heaven for it! How my great-grandmother ever happened to marry—see this!" Hastings went on, incoherently catching her arm and waving his other over the exquisite array of her "colonial" chamber. "Now, this, to you, is—well—it's as 'amusing' as if you'd tried to furnish a room to imitate one in Cinderella's palace, as 'interesting' as if you'd done it Louis Sixteenth, or—or—its meaning is hardly more personal to you than the room you furnished in Munich that winter."—She blushed admiringly at memory of their first meeting.—"The ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... said. "In this state, without a body, I have nothing to laugh with. Still you are right, for you see that I should be laughing if I could. Your story of the stout lady and the dogs and the china is very amusing." ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... well that we are blessed with elastic spirits, for "a merry heart doeth good like a medicine." All sadness for the dead must be concealed for the sake of the living. As we cheerfully meet at dinner-time, an occasional letter in the following strain is not without a salutary and amusing effect:— ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... The German censor's task is here a relatively simple one, for German war correspondents never allow professional enthusiasm to run away with practical patriotism, and you note the—to an American—amusing and yet suggestive spectacle of war correspondents specializing in descriptions of sunsets ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... shoulders. "I am too old, mon ami. Les femmes like me not. I haf had mes affairs—ah, yis. Conceive—" and he rattled out an adventure of his youth which was more amusing than moral. ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume
... the heavens when my cousin walked up to the door, and the light smote full upon the imposing facade of the house. He was delighted with the old-fashioned aspect of the place, and promised himself a thoroughly satisfactory and amusing stay in an inn so typical ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary • Montague Rhodes James
... London clubs) who can always tell with circumstance how the duchess came to have a black baby, and the exact composition of the party at which Midas played at 'strip poker.' But he was, like many of his kind, an amusing enough companion for the idle moment, and his description of Dr Forman is probably fairly ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... laugh reached us just then. Several men were standing over her chair. She was the centre of what seemed to be a very amusing conversation. Arthur was standing on the outskirts of the group, ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... left her for only a few moments, that she herself has sent him upon an errand; and, if possible, the minds of observers must be directed toward a conclusion that this errand of her devising is an amusing one; at all events, she is alone temporarily and of choice, not deserted. She awaits a devoted man who may ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... recreation of the patients. The Bowling Green Hotel in its heyday was a place of much importance; for being so close to the theatre, it was the chosen hostelry for many great theatrical stars—Mrs. Charles Kean and others. Many amusing anecdotes are told of the guests in a booklet on "Old Norfolk Inns," published by Messrs. Jarrold in 1888, but now unfortunately out of print. Borrow gives an account of the mixed assemblage at this inn, gathered for the great fight of July 17th, 1820, between Ned Painter ("Ned Flatnose"), ...
— Souvenir of the George Borrow Celebration - Norwich, July 5th, 1913 • James Hooper
... once more my position as aide-de-camp to Marshal Augereau, a very easy task, as it consisted of going every month to spend one or two weeks at La Houssaye, where daily life was always so amusing. Thus rolled by the end of the summer and the autumn; during which time the Emperor's policies were leading towards fresh events and storms whose terrible commotions would nearly swallow me up; me, a very small personage, who, in his carefree youth, thought of nothing but ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... myself,—to books, "the immortal children" of "the understanding, courage, and abilities" of the wise and good,—ay! and to inane, drivelling, doting books, the bastard progeny of vanity and ignorance,—books over which one dawdles in an amusing dream and pleasant spasm of amazement, and which teach us wisdom as tipsy Helots taught the Spartan boys sobriety. Montaigne "never travelled without books, either in peace or war"; and as I found them pleasant in happier days, so I find them pleasant now. Of course, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... her with a face of curious perplexity. She did not, indeed, speak much; the conversation was always general, and chiefly maintained by Lord Montfort, who, though usually silent and reserved, made on this occasion successful efforts to be amusing. His attention to Ferdinand too was remarkable; it was impossible to resist such genuine and unaffected kindness. It smote Ferdinand's heart that he had received his lordship's first advances so ungraciously. Compunction rendered him now doubly ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... affect my scheme, for want of that technical knowledge which further detail would require—and having accomplished my favourite determination of planning a town without winding streets or crooked lanes. I offer it to the MIRROR as an amusing novelty for the entertainment of its numerous readers. I think it would be not inappropriate to call it ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 385, Saturday, August 15, 1829. • Various
... form his 'Dealings with the Firm of Dombey and Son, Wholesale, Retail, and for Exportation,' published in book form in 1847. Here we have the pathetic story of Little Paul, the tragic fate of Carker, the amusing episode of Jack Bunsby with his designing widow, and the devotion of Susan Nipper, Mr. Toots, Captain Cuttle, and Sol Gills to ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... noisily and uproariously that the burros brayed again; and they kept up this amusing concert until Amy had brought each an armful of hay, and had directed her companion where to find a pail and ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond
... been forbidden to leave Lochias, but Epaphroditus permitted them to receive visitors. The Nubian's merry, amusing talk had made friends for her among the Roman guards, who allowed her to pass in and out unmolested. On her return, of course, she was searched with the utmost care, like every ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... aimless movement of furniture. Annoyance is sometimes caused also by intention, on the part of those who think it is humorous to play pranks. It must be remembered that passing on to the astral life does not improve one's common sense. If while living here, he thought it amusing to astonish or delude somebody, or trick a friend into seriously accepting some absurd assertion as a fact, he still regards the same course as entertaining. This accounts for many of the foolish, and ...
— Elementary Theosophy • L. W. Rogers
... would have to make up for the loss of the revenue by submitting to some other mode of direct or indirect taxation. There is an inconsistency in the statements of the Court of Directors, which is absolutely amusing. "The free cultivation of the poppy," say the Directors, "would doubtless lead to the larger outlay of capital, and to greater economy in production; but the poppy requires the richest description ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... and even in politics to a limited extent, and generally advocated progressive and liberal sentiments,—unless some of their relatives were employed in some way or other in noble houses, in which case their loyalty to the crown and admiration of rank were excessive and amusing. They read good books when they read at all, educated their children, some of whom became governesses, travelled a little in the summer, were hospitable to their limited circle of friends, were kind and obliging, put on no airs, and were on the whole useful and worthy people, if we can not call them ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... elite of the district. The show opened: the curtain was rung up. The first part was a representation of "The Babes in the Wood," which went very smoothly, and appeared to suit the general taste of the spectators. Then followed a "skeleton dance," and next we gave with the puppets an amusing harlequinade by clown, pantaloon, and butterfly. Yes, and here the real fun of the evening came in. The butterfly took a great deal of catching. Mr Howard and his good lady and myself were leaning over a rail (behind ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... word about amusing the two girls. They were not allowed the time to make themselves unhappy, restless or discontented. This Sunday afternoon he set out with a pair of the fastest horses to be got in the neighborhood, and if these did not go several times over the cliff, it was, as Strong had said, rather their ...
— Esther • Henry Adams
... laying my sword upon the scoundrel, while the Frenchman was shewing the same dexterity upon the back of his companion, but the two cowards took to their heels, and there was nothing for us to do but to sheathe our weapons. Thus did the duel end in a manner even more amusing ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... describing the ceremonies of her marriage and coronation. The nobility of both sexes, the clergy in their various orders, all the vassals of the crown and the citizens are assigned their several places and offices, with an amusing precision; nor does he forget the trumpet's clang, or the minstrel's pipe: the various banners that streamed in the procession; or the viands and wines of the banquet. Eleanor, the pride of the day, was a queen amongst beauties—the whole world, he says in conclusion, might ...
— Coronation Anecdotes • Giles Gossip
... words characterized the disputes of the abolitionists at Ephesus about slavery. It is amusing and painful to see the questions and strifes of words in the piece of my correspondent. Many of these questions are about our property right in slaves. The substance of them is this: that the present title is not good, because the original ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... very much alive to morality; and they were both very much more under the influence of their own admirable rhetoric than they knew. Huxley, especially, was much more a literary than a scientific man. It is amusing to note that when Huxley was charged with being rhetorical, he expressed his horror of "plastering the fair face of truth with that pestilent cosmetic, rhetoric," which is itself about as well-plastered a piece of rhetoric as Ruskin himself ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... An amusing incident of the inquest was the attempt made by Goldberger to heckle Godfrey, evidently at ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... pale little face and eager eyes with a real heartache. Her rapture when at the end of the long dull afternoons her mother returned to her was touching. Paris was very triste to poor Amy, with all her happy facility for amusing herself; and Katy felt that the sooner they got away from it the better it would be. So, in spite of the delight which her brief glimpses at the Louvre gave her, and the fun it was to go about with Mrs. Ashe and see her buy pretty things, and the real ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge
... her dress is not that of the circle to which she aspires. Many a woman indifferently gowned has been made to feel her difference from the elegant she found herself among. If she is sure of herself and has a sense of humor, this may be an amusing experience. To many, however, it ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... away out of her sight, racing on their ponies over the great down; then bathing in the sea, Edward teaching his little brother to swim; then he had given him lessons in tree-climbing, and now, tired of all these exertions, and for variety's sake, they were amusing themselves by standing on their heads. Little Ethelred had tried and failed repeatedly, then at last, with hands and head firmly planted on the sward, he had succeeded in throwing his legs up and keeping them in a vertical position for a few seconds, ...
— Dead Man's Plack and an Old Thorn • William Henry Hudson
... work with the greatest alacrity, and my daughter was enabled, towards the close of the day, to enjoy the pleasure of again amusing the ship's company. I repeat it, that no present was ever received by me with more sincere gratitude. I greatly reproach myself for having neglected to make inquiries after the worthy seaman, who was only ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... has no passion, but is not devoid of sensibility, has a way of his own of telling and saying things; he has a turn of his own; he is, in a word, the agreeable man, the gentleman-like man, who is bound to be pleasant and amusing, and who discharges his duty with an ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... way,' said Haig at last 'I suppose a man's got to humor his lawyer, if he doesn't want to lose a plain case some day. But I warn you. I'm not very amusing, ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... Platsburgh, an enterprise easy of achievement, and which would have placed the captured ships, and the victorious but disabled American flotilla, at the mercy of the British. But we have not space to follow the Ranger across the Atlantic, nor is it essential so to do; for, although he gives some amusing sketches of Canada and the Canadians, the earlier portion of his book is by far the most interesting, and certainly the most carefully written. We could almost quarrel with him for defacing his second volume with perpetual and not very successful ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... A Practical Guide to the English Kindergarten (Children's Garden), for the use of Mothers, Governesses, and Infant Teachers: being an exposition of Froebel's system of Infant Training: accompanied by a variety of Instructive and Amusing Games, Industrial and Gymnastic Exercises, also Numerous Songs set to Music, 11th ed. 4to, pp. 80, and 71 plates. London, ...
— Autobiography of Friedrich Froebel • Friedrich Froebel
... Secretary of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Liverpool. Their interest was aroused in the subject of Thought-Transference, and they carried out a very large number of experiments with some of the young ladies employed in Mr. Guthrie's establishment, who, "amusing themselves after business hours, found that certain of their number, when blindfolded, were able to name very correctly figures selected from an almanack suspended on the wall of the room, when their companions ...
— Psychic Phenomena - A Brief Account of the Physical Manifestations Observed - in Psychical Research • Edward T. Bennett
... without success. In my youth I was always striving—how hard!—to feel religiously and aesthetically. Here, said I to myself, are two tremendously important and exciting emotions. Life would be richer, warmer, brighter, altogether more amusing, if I could feel them. I try to feel them. I read the works of the mystics. They seemed to me nothing but the most deplorable claptrap—as indeed they always must to anyone who does not feel the same emotion as the ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... an instant, then fell as though he would not disguise that he recollected and understood. I liked him for his good taste. I liked him for his tacit sympathy, and better still for the amusing disappointment in his gallant, ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... a moment, for Barby immediately began to tell about an amusing experience she had on her way home, and started upstairs to take off her hat, with Georgina tagging after to ask a thousand questions, just as she had been tagging ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... sea-port, they met with some of their own species from all parts of the world, the language of most of whom they could not understand."—He travels in the pocket of a captain to Edinburgh. His adventures in this city are very amusing. He next sails ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 343, November 29, 1828 • Various
... the lower dividend, and this Pillin business. And his tongue curled. For if he had a natural contempt for his Board, with the exception of the chairman, he had a still more natural contempt for his shareholders. Amusing spectacle when you came to think of it, a general meeting! Unique! Eighty or a hundred men, and five women, assembled through sheer devotion to their money. Was any other function in the world so single-hearted. Church was nothing to it—so many ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... know is having to give orders to my Chinese boy in house-keeping generally. I am thankful to God for past experiences in my life, though they were rather rough; for here I find they come in very usefully. I had to teach my boy how to cook and do things generally. It was rather an amusing piece of work, seeing that I knew nothing of the language. Each order I gave him was a comedy in two or three acts, all played out in dumb show. In telling him what I wished purchased I was obliged to imitate sounds which are peculiar to certain beasts and birds, which when he understood, he ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... various sources, that the discourses of the missionaries, being calculated to engage the attention of their simple auditors, were, naturally enough, of a rather amusing description to strangers; in short, that they had much to say about steamboats, lord mayor's coaches, and the way fires are put out in London, I had taken care to provide myself with a good interpreter, in the person of an intelligent ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... nervousness, which was now beginning to return. To have a man with a tin box in his hand tell me he had been looking for me for thirteen years longer than I had lived, and then to have him add that it was not, however, me as myself that he wanted, was amusing in a sense, and yet I could not help feeling that it would be a relief to know that the tin box did hold a drinking-cup, and ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... the two Indias by dethroning a king. Once Calcutta was in extremis, it was dying of the blues; the East India company was rich but not amusing; with all its treasure it could not buy one smile for Calcutta, so Paris sent Robert le Diable, La Muette de Portici, a drama or two of Hugo and Dumas. Calcutta became convalescent and recovered. Its neighbor, ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... nature worshippers are amusing as well as being instructive. The Ojebway Indians believe in the mortality of the sun, for when an eclipse takes place the whole tribe, in the hope of rekindling the obscured light, keep up a continual discharge of fire-tipped arrows ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... Pool is pool with three balls and twelve little skittles, placed in order round the table. A stake is determined on, and a price paid out of the pool for every skittle knocked over after striking a ball. An amusing game for a party of ladies ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... with sticks on a piece of wood. All the girls decorate themselves with coloured leaves, and their bodies, arms and legs glisten as in Samoa with coconut-oil, really a very clean custom in these hot countries, though it does not look prepossessing. Our two Samoans in the crew were most amusing; they came in dressed up only in leaves, and took off the Fijians to perfection with the addition of numerous extravagant gestures. I laughed till my sides ached, but the Fijians never even smiled. However, our Samoans gave them a bit of Samoan "siva-siva" and plenty of Samoan ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker
... obliterated, complained bitterly that Yanhamu had refused him a passage through his territories, although he showed the royal summons to Court. This, indeed, may have been an indirect favour to his correspondent. Very amusing is a group of three synoptic letters, written by one scribe for Biri ... (the name is imperfect) of Hashab, Ildaya ... of Hazi, and another. These vassals had evidently taken the field together. They recite their tale like a chorus of schoolboys ...
— The Tell El Amarna Period • Carl Niebuhr
... agitation in this air, the surface of it, (which still continues to be exactly defined) is thrown into the form of waves, which it is very amusing to look upon; and if, by this agitation, any of the fixed air be thrown over the side of the vessel, the smoke, which is mixed with it, will fall to the ground, as if it was so much water, the fixed air being heavier than ...
— Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air • Joseph Priestley
... been on the subject of land, and the present disorders, and there must have been something amusing said, for the old man had begun to laugh at ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... other hand, the very first object of the Americans, after a law has been passed, is to find out how they can evade it; this exercises their ingenuity, and it is very amusing to observe how cleverly they sometimes manage it. Every state enactment to uphold the morals, or for the better regulation of society, is immediately opposed by the ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... "Oh, how very amusing it must have been! I think I shall turn milliner, Eleanor, for the fun of divining every one's little failings from their ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... with their husbands and children, while the maids passed the night in large sleeping-barracks adjoining the worksheds. They were now enjoying the evening respite and had gathered in two groups. One party were watching an Egyptian girl who was scribbling sketches on a tablet; the others were amusing themselves with a simple game. This consisted in each one in turn flinging her shoe over her head. If it flew beyond a chalk-line to which she turned her back she was destined soon to marry the man she loved; ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... enmity of the higher powers toward transgressors of the law of morality of this time, we find an amusing (some will say shocking) mention in Smith's "revelation" of October 25, 1831 (Sec. 66). This "revelation" (announced as the words of "the Lord your Redeemer, the Saviour of the world") was addressed to W. E. McLellin ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... of Bedford was now sole Regent of France, whilst a council of prelates and peers, with the Duke of Gloucester at its head, governed England in the baby King's name, making use of the amusing fiction of issuing all their decrees and mandates as though they were dictated by the mouth of ...
— Harper's Young People, March 23, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... ago) we cannot, out of that slender material, build up a hearty fraternal conversation of to-day. And with advancing years we find that the old subjects that we spent hours of mirth over, a life-time ago, are not amusing to-day, if indeed our defective memories can recall them. Ah! how little it took to furnish youth with mirth, that common standing ground upon which all so easily form acquaintance and friendship. I trust I may be forgiven, seeing that I ...
— Observations of a Retired Veteran • Henry C. Tinsley
... other time, this would have been amusing; now, it might be serious. Mrs. Dolan's account of the wailing became suddenly significant, for perhaps it meant that one of Fu-Manchu's dacoit followers was watching the house, to give warning of any stranger's approach! Warning to whom? It was unlikely that I should forget the dark eyes ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... is not," said the lady, who bore Mrs. Marchbold's deprecatory stare with the most complete indifference. "He is not quite a gentleman, and my brother the vicar knows that very well; but he is a clever, amusing man, and his reading will help on the society. On the whole, though, I think it's quite as well he should leave before long, for I'm certain idling about in Chewton will do him no good, especially as he has already kept us up late two nights, because a deputation ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer
... this handsome friend of Ward, had gone riding with her, and had shown such charming sympathy for her dark mood. They had had tea at the Country Club, and Tony, as she had begun at once to call him, had been wonderfully amusing and soothing. Isabelle, when they came back to the house, had turned impulsively in the hall, had laid her small hand, in its dashing gauntlet, upon ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... history of Staffordshire tells of an idiot who, living near a town clock, and always amusing himself by counting the hour of the day whenever the clock struck, continued to strike and count the hour correctly without its aid, when at one time it happened to be ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... Mrs. Briskow discovered that she possessed another amazing accomplishment—viz., the ability to walk on a ceiling, upside down, like a fly. It was extremely amusing, for it enabled a person to see right into everything. Pa and Allie looked very funny ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... one and the same capacity. The way to move great masses of men is to shew that you yourself are moved. In a private circle, a ready repartee, a shrewd cross-question, ridicule and banter, a caustic remark or an amusing anecdote, whatever sets off the individual to advantage, or gratifies the curiosity or piques the self-love of the hearers, keeps attention alive, and secures the triumph of the speaker—it is a personal ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... out there is one of the few who can help in this situation. He's going to have to work out counter stories—amusing stories—about all those magical creatures his people tell about. He's going to have to hint at the possibilities of close co-ordination and co-operation between members of his own species. And he's going to have to suggest the possibility ...
— Indirection • Everett B. Cole
... calculate, accordingly, how high Theodor Koerner's services to the comedy should be rated, provided he has actually succeeded with his smaller things, The Nightwatchman, The Green Domino, etc., in furnishing amusing farces. To accomplish this, nothing was required but natural gaiety combined with a talent for representation, and many men who were anything but poets ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... interested in spite of himself in this gay, humorous young outlaw, who was so evidently superior to his brutal companions, and he would have liked to let him come to the point in his own amusing way, but the sun was getting low, and he feared to waste more time. "Cut out your nonsense and come to the point," he said curtly. "What do you ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... perceived no resistance in their minds to the deliberative processes of the game of chess, was, even to the Telfers themselves, a source of unmitigated gaiety. Nothing seemed to them funnier than that any one should credit them with any mental capacity; and they had inexhaustibly amusing ways of drawing out and showing off each ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... Socrates while in prison amused himself by turning some of them into verse. Aristophanes cites them in his plays; and he tells how certain suitors once tried to win favor of a judge by repeating to him some of the amusing stories of Aesop. The Athenians even erected a statue in his honor. At a later period, the fables were gathered together and published by the Athenian statesman and orator, Demetrius Phalereus, in B.C. 320, and were versified by Babrius (of uncertain date), whose collection is the ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... gives an amusing receipt for those who wish to know what the water at Godar-i-Chah is like without having the trouble of going there. "Take the first nasty-looking water you can find. Mix salt with it until it tastes as nasty as it looks, then impregnate ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... doctor, choosing his words with great care: "that you call off the gentleman who has been dogging my footsteps to-day. It was amusing at first but now it is becoming annoying. Some of my patients have complained of this ...
— The Green Rust • Edgar Wallace
... think of it, Haredale did not find it amusing in the slightest degree. Julius Rohscheimer was an octopus whose tentacles were fastened upon the heart of society. Haredale was so closely in the coils that, short of handing in his papers, he had no alternative but to appear as Rohscheimer's social ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... As an instance in point, I may cite Jules Verne's 'Voyage to the Moon,' where (apart, of course, from the inherent and intentional absurdity of the scheme itself), the circumstances which are described are calculated to give entirely erroneous ideas about the laws of motion. Nothing could be more amusing, but at the same time nothing more scientifically absurd, than the story of the dead dog Satellite, which, flung out of the travelling projectile, becomes a veritable satellite, moving always beside the voyagers; for, with whatever velocity the dog had been expelled by ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... unambitious of University distinctions and was not in the technical sense a reading man, but he passed through his course in a leisurely manner, amusing himself with music and drawing and poetry, and modestly went out in the Poll in January 1830, after a period of suspense during which he was apprehensive of not passing at all. Immediately after taking his degree he went ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... in the corner room of the Palazzo Santonini, a dim and beautiful old library with faded furnishings whose west arch of doorway looked into the pretentious reception room where the fiances were amusing themselves with their music and their whisperings. It was quite advanced, this allowing them to be so alone, but the Contessa Santonini was an American and, moreover, the wedding was ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... delightful at the eyrie. Cecil and Miss Violet have made fast friends, and Duke, the greyhound, looks on approvingly, though with an amusing tint of jealousy. The child has forgotten her wounds, has had some berries, cake, and milk, ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... persons, who are expected to be inseparable after marriage, should never show themselves together in public immediately before, Ronayne had after parade ascended the rampart, with Maria Heywood leaning upon his arm, occasionally glancing at the group of gaily-costumed Indians, who were amusing themselves on the green, but oftener admiring the lovely view, softened by distance, which was presented in various points, and particularly towards the farm—the theatre of events which the otherwise happy girl, could not at that moment ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... which conveys the chief supply of water to the capital. The new and populous quarter of Buenos Ayres (so called from its being considered the healthiest situation around the capital,) covers the steep hills situated in the angle formed by the Alcantara valley and the Tagus. Miss Baillie, in her amusing Letters, describes Buenos Ayres as "a suburb of Lisbon, standing upon higher ground than the city itself, and a favourite resort of the English, being generally considered as a cooler and more cleanly (or rather a less filthy) situation than the latter." The splendid ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 569 - Volume XX., No. 569. Saturday, October 6, 1832 • Various
... consent to pardon you—for they are very kind and good—-I will not take you to the lock-up. I confess that I do not care to furnish a subject for the gallows. Besides, your stratagem is really very ingenious and amusing—a capital farce to play at the expense of cowardly travellers—who have doubtless paid you well for the entertainment, eh? As an actor, I appreciate the joke, and your ingenuity inclines me to be indulgent. You are not simply and brutally a robber, and it would certainly ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... said he did not often get an opportunity of talking to a man like myself—he told me that he and your mother, when they travel together, are always mistaken for a honeymoon couple. Some of the experiences he related to me were really quite amusing." The stranger laughed at recollection of them—"that even here, in this place, they are generally referred to as ...
— Passing of the Third Floor Back • Jerome K. Jerome
... tracts in public walks and concealed Testaments in ruins and other queer places, where robbers might go, might find them, and might be improved by their perusal, has he not written a most marvellous and amusing account for the benefit of generations present and to come? Notwithstanding, however, his missionary avocations and Munchausenish tendencies, we have a sneaking kindness for friend Borrow, having collected ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... studied in books—an object of curiosity, a personage in the fashion, no longer a popular hero, a demi-god, wearing boots for his country, as in the days when Norvins and Beranger, Charlet and Raffet were composing his legend; but a curious personage, an amusing type in his living infinity, a figure whose style is pleasant to artists, ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... "What deliciously amusing names," she sighed, changing her position beneath the lace with the swift suppleness of a kitten. "And what luck hunting?" she asked, as she loosened the ribbon at ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... attendance of parents and friends of the scholars, though some did not come in till late, like Mrs. Walton. It is not my intention to speak of the examination in detail. My readers know too little of the scholars to make that interesting. Ephraim Higgins made some amusing mistakes, but that didn't excite any surprise, for his scholarship was correctly estimated in the village. Tom Walton did passably well, but was not likely to make his parents proud of his performances. Harry, ...
— Bound to Rise • Horatio Alger
... she said with a touch of contempt. "And such a man! You were fond of him I know. But he was a sham. He used to look on me, I remember, as an amusing sort of animal out of the Zoological Gardens. It never occurred to him that I had ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... a whole year soon slipped away, and Fortunatus was so busy amusing himself that he never once remembered his parents whom he had left behind in Cyprus. But though he was thoughtless, he was not bad-hearted. As soon as their existence crossed his mind, he set about making preparations to visit them, ...
— The Grey Fairy Book • Various
... He commends Jane Austen, whose novels he has just finished reading. "Her flights," he remarks, "are not lofty, she does not soar on eagle's wings, but she is pleasing, interesting, equable, and yet amusing." He laments that he "can no longer debate and yet cannot apply his mind to anything else." One recalls Darwin's similar lament that his scientific work had deprived him of all liking ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... good ship Nutty (Proprietor Ford), Herman Bernstein and Inez Milholland Boissevain, likewise of the crew, have been here. Their stories are most amusing. Apparently, now, the nuttiest have voted to remain a permanent committee at The Hague; salary (five thousand suggested) to each to be paid by Ford—with washing ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... an amusing account of seeing a barber's shop leading the parade; this was closely followed by a large yellow cottage, with a cat, who had refused to leave her home, still seated on ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 16, February 25, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... "Only a few months." His embarrassment wearing off, he began to consider the situation very amusing. He gazed at M. de Marelle, serious and dignified, and felt a desire to laugh aloud. At that moment Mme. de Marelle entered and approached Duroy, who in the presence of her husband dared not kiss her hand. Laurine entered next, and ...
— Bel Ami • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... What I had learned made me eager to search his face, but I did not dare show any increased interest. I had always been a little off-hand with him, for I had never much liked him, so I had to keep on the same manner. He was as merry as a grig, full of chat and very friendly and amusing. I remember he picked up the book I had brought off that morning to read in the train—the second volume of Hazlitt's Essays, the last of my English classics—and discoursed so wisely about books that I wished I had spent more time in his ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... thought his song so very funny after all. It might even have struck you as vulgar, since it depended for its humour upon gorgonzola cheese, the eldest son of the German Emperor, mal-de-mer, and a number of other things not considered amusing in polite society. But the sailor's susceptibilities are peculiar: they were there to enjoy themselves, and again and again a great gust of laughter swept over the audience as an autumn gale convulses the trees on the outskirts of a forest. The singer's topical allusions, sly incomprehensibilities, ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... begins an amusing sketch of our city with the words, "Queer old Quebec,—of all the cities on the Continent of America, the quaintest." He concludes his humorous picture by expressing the wish that it may remain so without being disturbed by the ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... instance, Synge's masterpiece, "The Playboy of the Western World!" There is flower of author! What is it for mankind at large? An attack on the Irish character! A pretty piece of writing! An amusing farce! Enigmatic cynicism leading nowhere! A puzzling fellow wrote it! Mankind at large has little patience ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... where I first met my most worthy old friend, George Sinclair Brodie, so well known for ten years after as the leading Melbourne auctioneer, or rather "broker," for that is nearer the home equivalent. He was the salesman, while a genial and amusing good fellow, John Carey, from Guernsey, was manager. The company had just paid 20 per cent dividend—the first as well as the last in that way. In the jolly days up to that time every buyer got credit, and there was plenty of business; but when ...
— Personal Recollections of Early Melbourne & Victoria • William Westgarth
... and innumerable were the sage labours of avocats and procureurs which rushed into type before the trial was over, and did duty, very much to the reader's satisfaction, as a tale of fashionable life. In fact, a very amusing collection might be made, of the memorials of counsel which appeared in Paris about the middle of last century. The writings, for instance, which secured the fame of witty Beaumarchais among the gossips ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... that any railway proposal received such a searching criticism from its opponents. It was very amusing to see an immense map of Queensland hung in the chamber, and one of the Central members with a long pointer showing the boundaries of the several districts, and how Rockhampton rights would be encroached upon. However, in spite of all, the line eventually reached Winton, but that was the only part ...
— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield
... the governments and their press organs nobody placed the slightest confidence. Their testimony was discredited in advance, on grounds which they were unable to weaken. The following example is at once amusing and instructive. The French Parliamentary Committee of the Budget, having asked the government for communication of the section of the Peace Treaty dealing with finances, were told that their demand could not be entertained, every clause ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... to amuse, but in addition to amusing, a good game, played in the right spirit, may have ...
— Entertainments for Home, Church and School • Frederica Seeger
... is soporific as a general rule, but in his polite sortie against me, he is more amusing than is usual. His malice is so keen that it very nearly causes ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja
... civilization which had existed throughout the Middle Ages because of Latin and of the Church. If they thought they were really making Latin a vehicle for daily international use, they overrated their power. It was, no doubt, an amusing fancy and a witty exercise to plan, in such an international milieu as the Parisian student world, such models of sports and games in Latin as the Colloquiorum formulae offered. But can Erasmus have ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... obtain the services of one who might prove useful as an interpreter, consented to receive him among the crew. Our ship's company gave him at first the name of Tar, and hence he soon became known among them as Tom Tar. He proves an amusing, and seemingly a good-natured fellow till he is angered, and then he will cast off his clothes, and seizing a billet of wood or whatever comes to hand, will flourish it, threatening the lives of all near him, exhibiting his ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... was fast melting into darkness, when I heard the outer door, that which communicated with the guard-room in which the officers had been amusing themselves, opened and locked again upon ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume III. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... Tavistock, Lord John Russell's eldest brother, afterwards Duke of Bedford. Lord John has since held almost every Cabinet office: his brother's notion that his health was unequal to the War Office in 1830 is amusing.] ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... them. Do you not blush that a handful of turbulent men, who appear numerous because they are united and make a noise, should constrain you to do their pleasure, by telling you it is your own, and by amusing your puerile curiosity by unworthy spectacles? In a city that respected itself, such a fete would find before it silence and solitude, the streets and public places abandoned, the houses shut up, the windows deserted, and the flight and scorn of ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... with Mrs. Paulsberg, who held her glass in a peculiar masculine fashion. They moved over to the sofa on account of the draught, and told each other amusing anecdotes. Mrs. Paulsberg knew a story concerning Grande and one of Pastor B.'s daughters. She had reached the ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... stories, as well as tragic ones, are related of the Black Forest; and one of the most popular legends of enchantment, the Hen Trench, is as absurd as it is amusing. Children like this story, for among German children the industrious and useful hen is something of a pet. Where, except in Germany, did there ever originate an heroic ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... crushed down under the weight of his own gold. There was a mute apology, an attitude of deprecation in his manner and speech, which was strangely at variance with the immense power which he wielded. To Robert the whole whimsical incident had been intensely interesting and amusing. His artistic nature blossomed out in this atmosphere of perfect luxury and comfort, and he was conscious of a sense of repose and of absolute sensual contentment such as he ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the man say, "Your Glory is such a glorious——" and then he lowered his voice, and appeared to say something that was very amusing, for the other girl ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... "An amusing analogy and rather correct. However I prefer the one used years ago by Dr. Willy Ley, who observed that analysis is fine, but you can't learn how a locomotive is built by melting it down and ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... will see this room all full of ill-disposed and hostile people, who will think to find you here; and I make no doubt that they will bring the body here before interment, and they will begin to search for you under the seats and the beds. It will be amusing for a man who is not afraid when he sees people searching so fruitlessly, for they will all be so blind, so undone, and so misguided that they will be beside themselves with rage. I cannot tell you more ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... to himself, to whom a green home and a family circle were agreeable sights, after his bachelor-life at college. He had been a great favourite with Charles and his sisters as children, though now his popularity with them for the most part rested on the memory of the past. When he told them amusing stories, or allowed them to climb his knee and take off his spectacles, he did all that was necessary to gain their childish hearts; more is necessary to conciliate the affection of young men and women; and thus it is not surprising that he lived ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... consecrated for church purposes, and put under the cathedral, in a deep cell, from which it might again be brought forth if occasion required it.' The Doctor's description of the present state of Vanity Fair is very deeply interesting and amusing—(ED). When religion is counted honourable, we shall not want professors; but trying times are sifting times. As the chaff flies before the wind, so will the formal professors before a storm of persecution—(J.B.). ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... story, full of the faults of my youth and ignorance, but with some one passage in it that would put heart and hope into some one person, than all that brilliant barren stuff. And I'm going to write for women, not for men. I don't care about amusing men. Let them see to their own amusements, they think of nothing else. Men entertain each other with intellectual ingenuities and Art and Style, while women are busy with the great problems of life, and are striving might and main to ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... Amusing himself with these and other cogitations, our hero in the afternoon reached the place of his destination, and, entering the inn where Timothy had been left at sick quarters, chanced to meet the apothecary retiring precipitately in a very unsavoury pickle from the chamber of his patient. ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... introducing people. Then, too, they wrap your change up in paper—and some of their dress materials have quite a style of their own. My husband bought me a poplin dress at the Exposition—Oh, mamma, I have quite decided about my cloak. I was at Alberic's—it's most amusing. He lets one of the girls put a cloak over your shoulders and then he walks round you and just marks with an ebony ruler the places where it does not fit; he scarcely touches you with it, but just gives little taps—like that—and the girl marks each tap with chalk. Oh, he certainly has a lot of ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... harmoniously by its assimilation; her rich and unexpected mind putting forth even richer and more unexpected details. Whereas think of Tom, Dick, or Harry, their natural good parts watered down with other folks' notions, their imagination worn threadbare by the friction of experience; men who ought to be so amusing, ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... the prairie, who told us that the Indians had changed their plans, and would not come within three days; still he persisted that they were going to the war. Taking along with us this messenger of evil tidings, we retraced our footsteps to the camp, amusing ourselves by the way with execrating Indian inconstancy. When we came in sight of our little white tent under the big tree, we saw that it no longer stood alone. A huge old lodge was erected close by its side, discolored by rain and storms, rotted with age, ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... now to take the whole thing as an amusing imposture; but presently, watching his face and the curious "seeing" expression of his eyes, and noting the exactitude of one or two of his pictures, I began to feel that, however much he might be inventing or elaborating, ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... man, and it was, of course, ridiculous to dislike him because he was older than she and was getting fat. He was an amusing talker and a good sportsman, but now and then one got a hint of hardness and cunning. Somehow, so to speak, he did not ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... that Lieutenant Ives made his interesting and valuable exploration, another military post was established on the Colorado, and called Fort Mohave, just about where the California line intersects the stream. Lower down, Colorado City had been laid out several years before (1854) under amusing circumstances. The Yuma ferry at that time was operated by a German, thrifty after his kind, and on the lookout for a "good thing." A party of indigent prospectors, returning from the survey of a mine in Mexico, reached the Arizona bank with ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... first published in Latin (1760), then in French (1764), and afterward in nearly all European languages. He regarded masturbation as a crime, and as "an act of suicide." His book is a production of amusing exaggeration and rhetoric, zealously setting forth the prodigious evils of masturbation in a style which combines, as Christian remarks, the strains of Rousseau with a vein of religious piety. Tissot included only manual self-abuse ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... seventeenth century that a learned divine of the Church of England was shocked to hear one of his flock repeat the evidence of his pagan beliefs in language which is as explicit as it is amusing; and I shall not be accused of trifling with religious susceptibilities if I quote a passage from a sermon delivered and printed in 1659—a passage which shows not a departure from Christianity either through ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... themselves in the water beyond the First Lock, when the constable appeared on the tow-path, suddenly, as if he and his horse had come up out of the ground. He told them that he had got them now, and he ordered them to come along with him; he remained there amusing himself with their tears, their prayers, and then vanished again. Heaven knows how they lived through it; but they must have got safely home in the usual way, and life must have gone on as before. No doubt the man did not realize the torture he put them to; but it was a cruel ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... when I go after wild flowers. I live in the country, and I think it is a very pretty place to live. I have no canary, but the birds sing very sweetly out-of-doors, and I like that much better than having one in a cage. I think Misfits are very amusing. I have no sister, and only ...
— Harper's Young People, July 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... nightly bath. It was impossible for Mr Blackshaw to quit his arduous and responsible post before seven o'clock in the evening. Later on, when things were going more smoothly, he might be able to get away; but then, later on, his son's bath would not be so amusing and agreeable as it then, by all reports, was. The baby was, of course, bathed on Saturday nights, but Sunday afternoon and evening Mr Blackshaw was obliged to spend with his invalid mother at Longshaw. It was on the sole condition of his weekly ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... growth of the society were at first amusing; then the announcement of its housing excited loud laughter; but when its votaries attached the high sounding term Temple to their place of meeting, the clergy and all the devoutly inclined looked sober. In their view the word savored of outright ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... the altar to keep the fire alive. He changed the beasts he killed into meat by the fire on the altar. He kept himself alive by eating meat. His meal cost him a day's glorious health-giving sport and an hour's amusing play with the fire. You learnt nothing from him: you drudged and drudged and drudged, and dug and dug and dug, and made me do the same. I envied his happiness, his freedom. I despised myself for not doing as he did instead of what you did. He became so happy that he ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... there's Eleanor, we know she's popular because she is such a brick. There ought to be another word for her kind of popularity. Genevieve is clever, you know, and she's awfully funny," she continued, smiling as she remembered Genevieve mimicking Miss Langton in a temper; "anybody who is amusing can be popular," she ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... your play, Mr. More,' he said, 'but I'm told it's the most amusing thing in London at the present time. A friend of mine, Ogilvy'—I suppose that's Ogilvy & Ogilvy, who do so many divorces, Vee?—'was speaking very highly of it—very highly!'" He smiled ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... reporter that he was born in the shadow of the Parthenon. This mixing up of one's peculiarities, habits, and nationality with those of the illustrious individual whose name he bears, is capable of being given many laughable twists and has been taken advantage of in many amusing skits. ...
— The Brochure Series of Architectural Illustration, Vol. 1, No. 10, October 1895. - French Farmhouses. • Various
... upon Mr. Talbot; he was of a very social disposition, and we engaged for a short time in a lively conversation. Mrs. Talbot was present, and, strange to tell, once actually laughed at some amusing remark made by her husband. He soon after left the room, and her countenance resumed its usual doleful expression as she addressed me, saying, "I wish I could have any hopes of Mr. Talbot; but I am afraid the last state of that man will be worse than the first." I questioned her as to her meaning; ...
— Stories and Sketches • Harriet S. Caswell
... them all you would have been quite sure that here were no masterpieces—here were passably amusing stories, a bit out of date now, but doubtless the sort that would then have whiled away a dreary half hour in a dental office. The man who did them was of good intelligence, talented, glib, probably young. In the samples of his work you found there would have been ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... mistress and all her friends can laugh at what I say, so may you too, I should think. It is a great fault to have no taste for what is witty or amusing—come, let us be men." ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... established. In Polynesia the central pillar of a temple was placed on the body of a human victim. In Scotland there is the legend that St. Columba buried the body of St. Oran under his monastery to make the building secure. Any country will supply stories of a similar kind. Finally, we have the amusing story of the manner in which Sir Richard Burton narrowly escaped deification. Exploring in Afghanistan in the disguise of a Mohammedan fakir, he received a friendly hint that he would do well to get off without delay. He expressed surprise, ...
— Theism or Atheism - The Great Alternative • Chapman Cohen
... of banter in these observations, which is extremely amusing. They are from the Athenaeum of last week, which, by the way, has more of the intellectual gladiatorship in its columns than any of its ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 479, March 5, 1831 • Various
... like Jews. That's not against him—rather the contrary these days. But he pushes himself. The General tells me he's deathly keen to get into the Jockey Club. [Taking off his tie] It's amusing to see him trying to get round ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... "There was the usual grenade fighting at———. We made appreciable advance at———," &c. The original material comes in sheaves and sheaves, where individual character and temperament have full and amusing play. It is reduced for domestic consumption like an overwhelming electric current. Otherwise we could not take it in. But at closer range one realizes that the Front never sleeps; never ceases from trying new ideas and weapons which, so soon as the Boche thinks he has mastered them, are discarded ...
— France At War - On the Frontier of Civilization • Rudyard Kipling
... relates the story of Dago, a pet monkey, owned jointly by two brothers. Dago tells his own story, and the account of his haps and mishaps is both interesting and amusing. ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... A very amusing scene was presented at the crossing of Hazel River (a branch of the Rappahannock) last fall, when the Army of the Potomac first marched to Culpepper. The stream was at least three feet deep, and at various places four—the current very rapid—the bottom filled with large stones, and the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... use a favourite expression of Louth's. Soon the weary, middle-aged woman must claim her miserable rights: the right to be tired occasionally, the right to "slack off" at certain hours of the day, the right to find certain things neither suitable nor amusing to her, the right, in fact, to be now and then a middle-aged woman. Certainly something in her said to Lady Sellingworth: "In your marriage, if you marry, you will have to act even better, even more strenuously, than you are acting now. Being in love as you are, you will never be able to dare ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... Dalberg, for prudent reasons, dissuaded its performance. It being known, however, that a dramatic exhibition was intended, not to disappoint those who were anxiously expecting it, Reuchlin hastily availed himself of the very amusing old farce of Maistre Pierre Patelin, and produced his Scaenica Progymnasmata, in which the Rustic Henno is the principal character. It varies much, however, from its prototype, is very laughable, and severely satirical upon the ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 6. Saturday, December 8, 1849 • Various
... to us beyond the gravelled playground; all being now given over to monks and nuns. Then I recollect how a rarely-dark annular eclipse of the sun convulsed the whole school, bringing smoked glass to a high premium; and there was a notable boy's library of amusing travels and stories, all eagerly devoured; and old Phulax the house-dog, and good Mr. Whitmore an usher, who gave a certain small boy a diamond prayer-book, greatly prized then, though long since lost, and suitably inscribed for him "Parvum parva decent;" and the speech days, wherein the ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... two days' growth of stubbly beard, told them briefly to help themselves, and then take their sacks to the barn and fill them with hay. Preparing their own mattresses was a new experience, but an amusing one. It was fun stuffing the sweet-smelling hay into the rough canvas bags, and more fun still carrying the bulky bedding back over fields and stiles to the tents. Here, amid a chaos of unpacking, they at last disposed their ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... intoxication by a profligate and extravagant grant of the public money to Wellington, who was also created a Duke. While this was going on within the walls of Parliament, the farmers were drunk and mad without, and were amusing themselves by burning and hanging Napoleon in effigy. Deputies had already arrived in England, to invite Louis the Eighteenth to return to France. He entered London on the 20th of April, with great pomp and state; ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... observed a crowd of children assembled round an elderly sailor, who was amusing and caressing them. He had been on duty outside the tent ever since our arrival at the islands; and as the Russians are particularly fond of children, these little creatures had grown quite sociable with him. ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... was sitting in the palace feeling rather dull and lonely, and suddenly she began to wonder what the servants were doing, and whether it was not more amusing down in their quarters. The king was at his council and the queen was ill in bed, so there was no one to stop the princess, and she hastily ran across the gardens to the houses where the servants lived. Outside she noticed a youth who was handsomer than any prince she had ever seen, and in a moment ...
— The Crimson Fairy Book • Various
... find you so well," Sally announced as she shook hands. It was difficult to confuse Sally. She had a great deal of poise of her own kind and a little superior air of detachment which was oddly amusing. ...
— The Campfire Girls on the Field of Honor • Margaret Vandercook
... course, you know, we're on rations now—yet we suffer no inconvenience on that score. But these queer people (they are the most amusing and confusing and contradictory of all God's creatures, these English, whose possibilities are infinite and whose actualities, in many ways, are pitiful)—these queer people are fiercely pursuing food-economy by discussing in the newspapers whether a hen consumes more ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... was living alone at Rockville, fifty miles away, and editing a newspaper. But that originality he had displayed when dealing with the problems of his own private life, when applied to politics in the columns of The Rockville Vanguard was singularly unsuccessful. An amusing exaggeration, purporting to be an exact account of the manner in which the opposing candidate had murdered his Chinese laundryman, was, I regret to say, answered only by assault and battery. A gratuitous and purely imaginative description of a great religious revival in Calaveras, in ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... amazing pliancy to the will and pleasure of those whom nature has given them for masters; soaring at one time into the boundless sphere of their thought and in turn stooping to the simple task of amusing them as if they were children; understanding well the inconsistencies of masculine and violent souls, understanding also their slightest word, their most puzzling looks; happy in silence, happy also in the midst of loquacity; and well aware that the pleasures, the ideas ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... care about tiresome Society? I am laughing at something quite different, something extremely amusing. Tell me, Doctor Rank, are all the people who are employed in the Bank dependent on ...
— A Doll's House • Henrik Ibsen
... motive in its mind, and thus attain what they think knowledge of human nature. They will encourage themselves to live among dramatic fictions, as when absorbed in a novel; and having made themselves at home in this upper story of their universe, they will find it amusing to deny that it has a ground floor. The chance of conceiving, by these partial reversals of science, a world composed entirely without troublesome machinery is too tempting not to be taken up, whatever the ulterior risks; and accordingly, ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... are nearly all Indians (we rarely see one except market days), that our noses are really blue in color, that our houses are covered with codfish-skins, and that our only article of diet is fish. This seems all very amusing to us. We are going to celebrate the Queen's Jubilee here next month. One feature of the celebration will be a grand Military Tournament. I saw one last year, and it was grand. At the close there was a mimic battle between the British and the Arabs; it was very exciting. I was so interested ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 30, June 3, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... the twinkling of an eye the body of the snake, and, describing a zigzag in the air, it fell again to the bottom. After a while it appeared a second time and again fell. The children, reaching the brink, saw with amazement that their new friend, the elephant, was amusing himself in this manner, for having first despatched the snake twice upon an aerial journey, at present he was crushing its head with his prodigious foot which resembled a log. Having finished this operation, ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... uninteresting; but it is distinctly less so than the part relating to the proceedings of Hoche. Several of the many plans submitted by private persons, who here describe them in their own words, are worth examination; and some, it may be mentioned, are amusing in the naivete of their Anglophobia and in their obvious indifference to the elementary principles of naval strategy. In this indifference they ...
— Sea-Power and Other Studies • Admiral Sir Cyprian Bridge
... authors have charged against these sagacious animals, viz. dragging the fishermen's nets out of the water, during their absence, and then robbing them of the fish they contained. Mr Bingley's Animal Biography, where this piece of pilfering is mentioned, may be advantageously consulted for several amusing notices respecting the habits and capabilities of this creature, which are quite in ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... animated at dinner. The prospect of actually appearing in court as counsel in a case had evidently worked upon him like a powerful tonic. Always able to be amusing when he chose, he displayed to-night a new something—was it a hint of personal dignity?—which Dion had not hitherto found in him. "Dear old Daventry," the agreeable, and obviously clever, nobody, who was a ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... always indicative of energy, he preserves an ascendence over the other characters, and escapes detection and disgrace, until poetical justice, and the conclusion of the play, called for his punishment. We have a natural indulgence for an amusing libertine; and, I believe, that, as most readers commiserate the disgrace of Falstaff, a few may be found to wish that Dominic's penance had been of a nature more decent and more theatrical than the poet has ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... a greater delight in the very learning of truths and duties this way. There is something so amusing and entertaining in rhymes and metre, that will incline children to make this part of their business a diversion. And you may turn their very duty into a reward, by giving them the privilege of learning one of these songs every week, if they fulfil the business of ...
— Divine Songs • Isaac Watts
... of rulers met them and headed the long procession of soldiers toward the palace of the High Ki. First came a band of music, in which many queer sorts of instruments were played in pairs by twin musicians; and it was amusing to Nerle to see the twin drummers roll their twin drums exactly at the same time and the twin trumpets peal out twin notes. After the band marched the double Ki-Ki and the double Ki, their four bodies side by side in a straight line. The Ki-Ki had left their musical instruments in the palace, ...
— The Enchanted Island of Yew • L. Frank Baum
... certainly, and offered such prospects of adventure as commended it to bold spirits who were prepared for hardship, and had a well-filled purse. The last requirement was very necessary. In the bad old days, amusing days though they were without doubt, no fixed charge was made to cover such breakages, or damage to an aeroplane, as a pupil might be guilty of during his period of instruction. These items of damage—broken propellers, planes, or landing gear—were all entered up very carefully on ...
— Learning to Fly - A Practical Manual for Beginners • Claude Grahame-White
... is infinitely amusing," said the princess, continuing to laugh; "there lie my vassals, and what vassals! Herr Lestocq, a physician; Herr Grunstein, a bankrupt shopkeeper and now under-officer; Herr Woronzow, chamberlain; and Alexis ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... "An amusing incident occurred when we halted, after crossing the river. When the fires were lighted our line presented the appearance of a checker-board—alternate black and white men. The latter belonged to the Second Corps, ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... epigrams are frequently amusing, but never malicious, nor to the point. He slays nobody with a single word; he has no knowledge of men and of their foibles, because all his life he has been interested in nobody but himself. His aim is to make himself the hero of a novel. He ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... think, notwithstanding, that I am not much the better for it. The Cold I had before Christmas, returns, or lurks about me: and I cannot resolve on my usual out-of-door liberty. Enough of that. I suppose that I shall have some Company at Easter; my poor London Clerk, if he can find no more amusing place to go to for his short Holyday; probably Aldis Wright, who always comes into these parts at these Seasons—his 'Nazione' being Beccles. Perhaps also a learned Nephew of mine—John De Soyres—now Professor of some History at Queen's ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... Barbara are amusing. She was four or five years older than he, but being a woman had not had his opportunities. He begins by trying to teach her Latin. But the difficulties were many, and apparently she did not progress far enough to write in the tongue. At any rate, Ellenbog copied none of her letters ...
— The Age of Erasmus - Lectures Delivered in the Universities of Oxford and London • P. S. Allen
... I stole forth cautiously and reconnoitred. Near the house there is a small stream, over which a plank had been thrown by way of a bridge. The visitor was rapidly approaching this bridge when an amusing incident occurred: The elder girl came out in haste to meet him, and was passing the bridge, when the skirt of her dress caught in something, and she well-nigh fell into the water. 'Confound that bridge, what a bad Katzragi,'[54] she cried, and suddenly turned pale. How amusing ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... to my seat, I found the conductor and two or three other persons amusing themselves very much respecting my running away. So the guard said, "Boy, what did your master want?"* I replied, "He merely wished to know what had become of me." "No," said the man, "that was not it; he thought you had taken French leave, for parts unknown. I never saw ...
— Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom • William and Ellen Craft
... marvellously enriched this quaint story. It may be found amusing to trace the genesis of the tale. In Boswell it runs: "Mr. Fitzherbert, who loved buttered muffins, but durst not eat them because they disagreed with his stomach, resolved to shoot himself, and then eat three buttered muffins for breakfast, knowing that he should not be troubled with ...
— Pickwickian Manners and Customs • Percy Fitzgerald
... the subject. But I confess I like to expound my Hebdomads to myself, and would rather bury my speculations in my own memory than share them with any of those pert and frivolous persons who will not tolerate an argument unless it is made amusing. Wherefore do not you take objection to the obscurity that waits on brevity; for obscurity is the sure treasure-house of secret doctrine and has the further advantage that it speaks a language understood ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... followed had been peaceful and amusing. He could not detect in any one of them a sign of the approaching shadow. They had been lazy days. His duties had been much more simple than he had anticipated. He had not known, before he tried it, that it was possible to be a prince with so small an expenditure of ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... herself still more ridiculous in the eyes of the world, by the frenzy which came over her people for the love of Tulips. Melancholy as all these delusions were in their ultimate results, their history is most amusing. A more ludicrous and yet painful spectacle, than that which Holland presented in the years 1635 and 1636, or France in 1719 and 1720, can hardly be imagined. Taking them in the order of their importance, we shall commence our history with John Law and the ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... Chartres was rising,—is unlike any other, and shows how much the French architects valued their lovely French creation. On its octagonal faces, it carries upright batons, or lances, as a device for relieving the severity of the outlines; a device both intelligent and amusing, though it was never imitated. A little farther from Paris, at Senlis, is another fleche, which shows still more plainly the effort of the French architects to vary and elaborate the Chartres scheme. As for Laon, which is interesting ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... in his native habitat. There he has been visited by hundreds of curious and observant foreigners, who have left on record a whole literature of bewildered and bewildering, irritating and flattering and amusing testimony concerning the Americans. Settlers like Crevecoeur in the glowing dawn of the Republic, poets like Tom Moore, novelists like Charles Dickens,—other novelists like Mr. Arnold Bennett,—professional travellers like Captain Basil Hall, students of contemporary ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... The permission of the manager had been obtained and this was Teddy's first appearance as assistant to Shivers. Teddy was considerably smaller, of course, and made up as the exact counterpart of Shivers trailing along after him like a shadow, the lad made a most amusing appearance. Every move that the clown made, Teddy mimicked as the two minced ...
— The Circus Boys In Dixie Land • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... contact between the free air and that which was forced from the pipe, made use of this principle in the construction of the first water organs. He also devised methods of raising water, automatic contrivances, and amusing things of many kinds, including among them the construction of water clocks. He began by making an orifice in a piece of gold, or by perforating a gem, because these substances are not worn by the action of water, and do not collect dirt so ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... bad as usual," said Beaton. After a moment he added, ironically, for he found Fulkerson's misery a kind of relief from his own, and was willing to protract it as long as it was amusing, "Why not try an envoy extraordinary and ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... immense series of drawings for the illustrated papers, drawings as remarkable in themselves as they are, through their legends, bitterly sarcastic in spirit. These drawings form a synthesis of the defects of the bourgeoisie, which is at the same time amusing and grave. They also concern, though less happily, the political world, in which the artist, a little intoxicated with his success, has thought himself able to exercise an influence by scoffing at the parliamentary regime. Forain's drawing has a nervous character which does, however, ...
— The French Impressionists (1860-1900) • Camille Mauclair
... means left us of finishing a painful scene, and of beguiling the weary hours yet remaining before the diligence started, for it was in vain to think of rest or sleep that night. The theatre was very crowded, the play an amusing piece of diablerie, called the "Pata de Cabra" (the goat's foot), badly got up, of course, as its effect depends upon scenery and machinery. I believe it was very entertaining, but I cannot say we felt inclined to enter ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... adornment. Ransacking a dirty cupboard, the Subaltern drew forth in triumph a promising-looking bottle, and having pulled the cork, smelt at the contents with caution. It contained a curious sort of liquor, apparently home made, which saved their lives that morning. Then the Doctor, after many amusing efforts to clean himself in a bucket, went off to the improvised hospital that had been set up ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... is," said Cap, "I'm not witty nor amusing, nor will it pay to sit out in the night air to hear me talk; but, since you wish it, and since you were so good as to guard me through these woods, and since I promised, why, damp as it is, I will even get off ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... Provide a long table, sheets of fancy paper, flowers, pictures, paste, scissors and watercolors and ask each to make an original valentine. The game of hearts, the auction of hearts and the auction of valentines are old but excellent ways of amusing a company. For the auction of hearts the girls are in a separate room and a clever auctioneer calls off their charms and merits and knocks them down to the highest bidder, who does not know who he has bought until all are sold. A fancy dress party, each girl representing a valentine, ...
— Breakfasts and Teas - Novel Suggestions for Social Occasions • Paul Pierce
... into town. The price of lots had increased a third. But Carol could discover no more pictures nor interesting food nor gracious voices nor amusing conversation nor questing minds. She could, she asserted, endure a shabby but modest town; the town shabby and egomaniac she could not endure. She could nurse Champ Perry, and warm to the neighborliness of Sam Clark, but she could not sit ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... English government, engaged in some new movement for the suppression of slavery. They could not divine what a "missionario" had to do with the latitudes and longitudes, which I was intent on observing. When we became a little familiar, the questions put were rather amusing: "Is it common for missionaries to be doctors?" "Are you a doctor of medicine and a 'doutor mathematico' too? You must be more than a missionary to know how to calculate the longitude! Come, tell us at once what rank you ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... was very amusing, yet, somehow, it set me thinking, long and sadly; and some gentle remarks from Dr. Amboyne (he called yesterday) have also turned my mind the same way. Time has softened the terrible blow that estranged my brother and myself, and I ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... are exposed by Justinian, (Institut. t. i. tit. x.;) and the laws and manners of the different nations of antiquity concerning forbidden degrees, &c., are copiously explained by Dr. Taylor in his Elements of Civil Law, (p. 108, 314—339,) a work of amusing, though various reading; but which cannot ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... was fascinated by these dancing shadows. They seemed familiar and friendly. He sat sipping his brandy, now, with a quieter, more leisurely air. The shadows were indescribably fascinating; they were so horrible and amusing! He began to wonder whether their antics would move him to laughter if he sat and drank long enough. He had a feeling that laughter and sleep went hand in hand. If he could but laugh again he was quite sure that he would fall asleep. But he discovered a truth while he sat there. Amusement and laughter ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... But, unfortunately, when you try not to speak in jest you are amusing—just as when you wish to avoid seriousness you sometimes ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... in this country. The boldness of his attacks on rules which are considered as sacred by the French critics, and on works of which the French nation in general have long been proud, called forth a more than ordinary degree of indignation against his work in France. It was amusing enough to observe the hostility carried on against him in the Parisian Journals. The writers in these Journals found it much easier to condemn M. SCHLEGEL than to refute him: they allowed that what he said was very ingenious, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... blue, and refused to help me to preserves because I was making Will mad! But Waller helped me, and I drank my own milk to Mr. Carter's health with my sweetest smile. "Confound that milkman! I wish he had cut his throat before I stumbled over him," he exclaimed after tea. But I had more amusing game than to make him angry then; I wanted to laugh to get rid of the phantom that pursued ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... hard luck was becoming amusing and he wondered how long it would last. He had counted on that hundred dollars to get away from Nome, hoping to shake misfortune from his heels, but a match in the hands of a child, like that broken propeller shaft, had worked havoc with his ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... you as very amusing?—I don't know what other reason you should have to laugh, Langheinrich. When people are hardworking and ambitious and a fright like this comes to them—a visitation from God—we might properly say: God protect ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... the narrator, "he continued the inglorious tool of the king's cruel and wanton humour, assisting him with his musket in time of war, and in peace frequently amusing the monarch by shooting at his subjects at a distance, or gratifying his revenge by despatching, with a pistol, those who had incurred ...
— Captain Cook - His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries • W.H.G. Kingston
... coming again"—there you have the whole philosophy of the matter. The young fellow found Toots amusing when he first laid eyes on him. He wanted to see him again, and it must always ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... occasionally at the Ancient Concerts and the Philharmonic, and his glees are still favourites after public dinners, and are sung by those old bacchanalians, in chestnut wigs, who attend for the purpose of amusing the guests on such occasions of festivity. The great old people at the gloomy old concerts before mentioned always pay Sir George marked respect; and, indeed, from the old gentleman's peculiar ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... political economy, such a source of income is worse than precarious—it's frankly impossible. "It takes all sorts to make a world." A community entirely composed of scientific men would fail to feed itself, clothe itself, house itself, and keep itself supplied with amusing light literature. In one word, education in science produces specialists; and specialists, though most useful and valuable persons in their proper place, are no more the staple of a civilised ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... It is amusing to note that 'this narrative gave equal satisfaction to the Cavaliers and Roundheads: the former conceiving that the licence given to the demons was in consequence of this impious desecration of the King's furniture ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... Abstracts would be very amusing if they did not indicate an almost total failure of educational training in the matter of thinking for one's self. Recently a Pupil brought me a work on Physiology, written for general readers, and pointing to a paragraph ...
— Assimilative Memory - or, How to Attend and Never Forget • Marcus Dwight Larrowe (AKA Prof. A. Loisette)
... would be amusing if it had not been so disastrous. Because war depends ultimately on money, therefore (said Dundas) the Chancellor of the Exchequer ought to control its operations and act virtually as Secretary of State for War. Then why not also as ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... commenced our journey over this desert or plain of Africa, and at the end of many weeks found ourselves approaching that part of the country near the equator in which the gorilla is said to dwell. On the way we had many adventures, some of an amusing, some of a dangerous character, and I made many additions to my collection of animals, besides making a number of valuable and interesting notes in my journal; but all this I am constrained to pass over, in order to introduce ...
— The Gorilla Hunters • R.M. Ballantyne
... to make new ones. He commends Jane Austen, whose novels he has just finished reading. "Her flights," he remarks, "are not lofty, she does not soar on eagle's wings, but she is pleasing, interesting, equable, and yet amusing." He laments that he "can no longer debate and yet cannot apply his mind to anything else." One recalls Darwin's similar lament that his scientific work had deprived him ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... were closed by a tub race, every one being desirous of seeing Billy Manners in another of these amusing contests. ...
— The Hilltop Boys on the River • Cyril Burleigh
... Leveson Gower her recollections of the painter: "His manners were what is called extremely 'polished' (not the fault of the present times). He wore a large cravat, and had a tinge about him of the time of George IV., pervading his general demeanor.... I should not say he was amusing, but what struck me most, during my two hours sitting in Russell Square, was the perfection of the drawing of his portraits. Before any color was put on, the drawing itself was so perfectly beautiful that it seemed almost ...
— Some Old Time Beauties - After Portraits by the English Masters, with Embellishment and Comment • Thomson Willing
... meet his eye, with the other trophies, Now outside the hall, now in it, To sit thus, stand thus, see and be seen, At the proper place in the proper minute, 190 And die away the life between. And it was amusing enough, each infraction Of rule—(but for after-sadness that came) To hear the consummate self-satisfaction With which the young Duke and the old dame 195 Would let her advise, and criticize, And, being a fool, instruct the wise, And, child-like, ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... late spring packet. Among these turned up a new and fine edition of "Captain Gulliver's Travels," by Mr. Dean Swift. I lit first, among these famous adventures, on an extraordinary passage, so wonderful, indeed, and so amusing, that I heard not the entrance of my father, who at the door had met my aunt, and with her some fine ladies of the governor's set. There were Mrs. Ferguson, too well known in the politics of later years, but now only a beautiful and gay woman, Madam Allen, and ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... a trade I rather like. It is, after all, first cousin to gossip, which no one can deny to be amusing. For instance, if I were to tell you that the Princess and the Baron rode out together daily to inspect the cannon, it is either a piece of politics or scandal, as I turn my phrase. I am the alchemist that makes the transmutation. They have been everywhere together since you left,' ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... first brought into the cave by the poor child amid whose mouldering remains Mr. Swanson found it. The little pellet of gray hair spoke of feeble old age involved in this wholesale massacre with the vigorous manhood of the island; and here was a story of unsuspecting infancy amusing itself on the eve of destruction with its toys. Alas, for man! "Should not I spare Nineveh, that great city," said God to the angry prophet, "wherein are more than six score thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left?" God's image must have been ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... bit advanced nor modern, nor anything. I have no forward ideas in my head. I am just tired of trying to please my husband; I want some one to please me. It does not seem to offer you much for your pains, does it? But you may find me fairly amusing." ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... not been figured, accurately enough on the whole, in Le Palais de Scaurus, by Mazois, published at Paris in 1822. The sarcophagus had passed through the hands of several collectors since Mazois figured it, and I had a long and amusing search for it. ...
— The Care of Books • John Willis Clark
... fawn, Nimble, kept close beside her. Slowly as his mother moved, he found the traveling none too easy. And he was glad when she stopped in a pocket-like clearing. There she spoke to a proud speckled bird who was sitting on a log and amusing himself by spreading his tail feathers into ...
— The Tale of Nimble Deer - Sleepy-Time Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... her, the mother made her education studiously practical and orderly. She had, like most Scotch matrons of her type, too good a gift for telling family stories, and too high a respect for ancestral traditions, to have quite kept herself from amusing her daughter's childhood with tales of the de Vandaleur greatness. But after her husband discovered his young relative, and as their daughter grew up, she purposely avoided the subject, which had, probably, the sole effect of increasing her daughter's ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... But they detest Venice as a place of residence, being naturally averse to living in the midst of a people who shun them like a pestilence. Other foreigners, as I said, are obliged to take sides for or against the Venetians, and it is amusing enough to find the few English residents divided into Austriacanti and Italianissimi. [Footnote: Austriacanti are people of Austrian politics, though not of Austrian birth. Italianissimi are those who favor union with Italy at ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... father," she said, "but the boys say he has gone out riding. I can't find anybody. When you have been summoned from a long way off and travelled post-haste, rather to your own inconvenience, it is amusing, isn't it?" ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... the accompanying crowd, a woman stood with her back to the brick wall, horror-stricken at the sight. She had a pale, refined face, and was dressed in black. Her self-imposed mission was among these people, but she had never seen Joe taken to the station before, and the sight, which was so amusing to the neighbourhood, was shocking to her. She enquired about Joe, and heard the usual story that he was no man's enemy but his own, although they might in justice have added the police. Still, a policeman was hardly looked ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... order to prevent inadequate performance of the comedy; but this precaution was attended with the worst results. The stage long suffered from the variety of defective copies of the work that obtained circulation. The late Mr. John Bernard, the actor, in his amusing "Retrospections of the Stage," has confessed that, tempted by an addition of ten shillings a-week to his salary, he undertook to compile, in a week, an edition of "The School for Scandal" for the Exeter Theatre, upon the express understanding that the manuscript ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... as something of higher and stronger nature than themselves. Darry silently attended me now from house to house of the quarters; introducing and explaining and doing all he could to make my progress interesting and amusing. Interested I was; but most certainly not amused. I did not like the look of things any better than I had done at first. The places were not "nice;" there was a coarse, uncared-for air of everything within, although the outside was in such well-dressed condition. No litter on ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... was appointed minister to Mexico by Mr. Lincoln. In December, 1865, he attended a party of his Ohio friends, at which I was present. He was the center of attraction, and, apparently, in good health and spirits. He was telling amusing anecdotes of life in Ohio "in the olden times," to the many friends who gathered around him, when, without warning, he suffered a stroke of apoplexy and died within two or three days, leaving behind him none but friends. Tom Corwin, ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... has kindly sent me the following amusing 'lesson of wysedome' to 'all maner chyldryn', signed Symon, which he found in the Bodleian. Mr G.Parker has read the proof with the MS. Lydgate sinned against most of its precepts. It makes the rod the great ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... such a bigot to Slawkenbergius as my father;—there is a fund in him, no doubt: but in my opinion, the best, I don't say the most profitable, but the most amusing part of Hafen Slawkenbergius, is his tales—and, considering he was a German, many of them told not without fancy:—these take up his second book, containing nearly one half of his folio, and are comprehended in ten ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... but in this I was mistaken, for by the first of May they commenced to come to the Fort on their way to the mines, and by the first of June one could see the trains stringing along for miles, and what was very amusing to me, when I asked them where they were going, they invariably answered, ...
— Chief of Scouts • W.F. Drannan
... and see my nevy, while you and Peter are amusing each other," he ses at last. "I'll ask 'im to come round to-morrow and then you can give 'im ...
— Night Watches • W.W. Jacobs
... There was an amusing, off-hand directness in Theodora's tone which pleased her stepmother. Already she felt more at home and on cordial terms with the outspoken girl than with the gentle, courteous Hope; yet she realized that her own course ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray
... box at the Museum, and they were making such a noise and laughter that the pit was scandalised, and many indignant voices were bawling out silence so loudly, that Wagg wondered the police did not interfere to take the rascals out. Wenham was amusing the party in the box with extracts from a private letter which he had received from Major Pendennis, whose absence in the country at the full London season had been remarked, and of course ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Heaven for it! How my great-grandmother ever happened to marry—see this!" Hastings went on, incoherently catching her arm and waving his other over the exquisite array of her "colonial" chamber. "Now, this, to you, is—well—it's as 'amusing' as if you'd tried to furnish a room to imitate one in Cinderella's palace, as 'interesting' as if you'd done it Louis Sixteenth, or—or—its meaning is hardly more personal to you than the room you furnished in Munich ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Pitman, Comstock, and others, are amusing themselves with the folly of inventing new "Phonetic Alphabets," or of overturning all orthography to furnish "a character for each of the 38 elementary sounds," more or fewer, one of the acutest observers among our grammarians can fix on no number more definite or more considerable than ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... hard beds, and useful employment. The diet may be improved by animal broths, roasted meats, fresh beef, mutton, chicken, or eggs, and the dress should be comfortable, warm, and permit freedom of motion. The patient should indulge in amusing exercises, walking, swinging, riding, games of croquet, traveling, singing, percussing the expanded chest, or engage in healthful calisthenic exercises. The hygienic treatment of this form of amenorrhea, then, consists in physical ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... together, and we spent the time sitting on the grassy rocks at the foot of our garden, from whence we could see a vast extent of the Firth of Forth with Edinburgh and its picturesque hills. It was very amusing, for we occasionally saw three or four whales spouting, and shoals of porpoises at play. However, we did not escape reproof, for I recollect the servant coming to tell us that the minister had sent to inquire whether Mr. and Miss Fairfax had been taken ill, as he had not seen them at ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... beauty of stitchery. Quaint little maps of England are often seen, surrounded with floral borders, but it remained to the early nineteenth century to show how the Sampler became reduced to absurdity. One of the quaintest and most amusing Samplers at South Kensington is a 12-inch by 8-inch example in woollen canvas and embroidered with coloured silk. At the lower end is a soldier, a tiny realistic house, a dovecot, any number of flowering plants, ...
— Chats on Old Lace and Needlework • Emily Leigh Lowes
... that by his bright and lovable nature he contributed greatly to the happiness of his sister Jane. She tells us that he could not help being amusing, and she was so good a judge of that quality that we accept her opinion of Henry's humour without demur; but he became so grandiloquent when wishing to be serious that he certainly must have wanted that last and rarest gift of a humorist—the ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... or more of plays which captivated both the learned and the uneducated by their truth to the life that they depicted, and they held their high reputation long after the death of the author. Moderns have also attested their merit, and our great dramatist in his amusing Comedy of Errors imitated the Menoechmi of this early play-wright. [Footnote: Rude farces, known as Atellan Fabula, were introduced into Rome after the contact with the Campanians, from one ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... Mr Ewing when he called, but talked to him at the gate when he went past—and he went past several times a day. Now, when the situation at home had grown desperate, and she was looking all ways for means to save herself, his amusing infatuation became a matter for serious thought. COULD she? She was a hard case, but even she wavered. He was probably sixty, and she was eighteen. Oh, she couldn't! But when, after Miss Keene's departure, Deb told her they could no longer afford hired help, and that she (Frances) must give up ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... a severe shock in the death of his wife, he retired from business, and devoted himself to a quiet, unostentatious life. He is an excellent man, of thoroughly sterling character: not of quick apprehension, and not without some amusing prejudices, which I shall leave to their own development. He holds us all in profound veneration; but Jack Redburn he esteems as a kind of pleasant wonder, that he may venture to approach familiarly. He believes, not only that no man ever lived who could ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... Oahu, and had described to him the site of his former plantation at Keahumoe. At Waianae the two travellers were treated affably by the people of the district. In reply to the questions put them, they said they were going sight-seeing. As they went along they met a party of boys amusing themselves with darting arrows; one of them asked permission to join their party. This was given, and the three turned inland and journeyed till they reached a plain of soft, whitish rock, where they all refreshed themselves with food. Then they ...
— Hawaiian Folk Tales - A Collection of Native Legends • Various
... analogy of sound alone, but seeks also for analogy of significance. Generally there is a subtile coincidence between his meaning and what the sound of the pun signifies, and thus the pun becomes an amusing or illustrative image, or a most emphatic and striking condensation of his thought. "Take care of your cough," he writes to his engraver, "lest you go to coughy-pot, as I said before; but I did not say before, that nobody is so likely as a wood-engraver ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... gentle censure with liberal eulogy. The contrast struck Voltaire, always partial to England, and always eager to expose the abuses of the Parliaments of France. Indeed he seems, at this time, to have meditated a history of the conquest of Bengal. He mentioned his design to Dr. Moore, when that amusing writer visited him at Ferney. Wedderburne took great interest in the matter, and pressed Clive to furnish materials. Had the plan been carried into execution, we have no doubt that Voltaire would have produced a book containing much lively and picturesque narrative, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of the New Year. Mr. Arlington, who was quite learned on the subject, had been amusing us with an account of its various modes of celebration in various countries. He was perfectly brilliant in a description of New-York as seen under the sun of a clear, frosty New-Year's morning, with snow enough to make the sleighing good. The gay, fantastic sleighs, dashing hither and thither, and ...
— Evenings at Donaldson Manor - Or, The Christmas Guest • Maria J. McIntosh
... her pocket-handkerchief. The king, who was also on the watch, suspected that a snare was being laid for him. He rose and pushed his chair, without affectation, near Mademoiselle de Chatillon, with whom he began to talk in a light tone. They were amusing themselves in making rhymes; from Mademoiselle de Chatillon he went to Montalais, and then to Mademoiselle de Tonnay-Charente. And thus, by this skillful maneuver, he found himself seated opposite to La Valliere, whom he completely concealed. Madame pretended to be greatly occupied: ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... of the earliest of the dramatic autobiographers, is also one of the most amusing. He flourished in wig and embroidery, player, poet, and manager, during the Augustan age of Queen Anne, somewhat earlier and somewhat later. A most egregious fop, according to all accounts, he was, but a very pleasant one notwithstanding, as your fop of parts is apt to be. Pope gained but little ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... With those bright eyes reading her unwomanly and foolish heart, was he amusing himself, as an entomologist impales a feeble worm, and from its writhing deduces the exact character of ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... time, were as much opposed to harmless recreations and healthful amusements as those of the present day, and it is amusing to observe that each in their generation, advance precisely the same description of arguments. In the British Museum, there is a curious pamphlet got up by the Agnews of Charles's time, entitled 'A Divine Tragedie lately acted, or a Collection of sundry memorable examples ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... modern quay of Luxor, where I disembark at ten o'clock in the morning in clear and radiant sunshine, is not without its amusing side. ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... but a trifle, as things go nowadays—a bagatelle—but amusing. It passes the time. The boy thinks great things of it, but he is young, you know, and imaginative; lacks the experience which comes of handling large affairs, and which tempers the fancy and perfects the judgment. ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... listening. They looked perfectly happy and contented with themselves. One lolling back with his legs stretched out, who was evidently the orator of the party, and thought no small beer of himself, was spinning an interesting yarn or making some amusing jokes. ...
— Voyages and Travels of Count Funnibos and Baron Stilkin • William H. G. Kingston
... of his power for amusing himself, days like these would have gone far harder had it not been for two devoted people, his mother and his nurse, Alison Cunningham or "Cummie" as he called her. His mother was devoted to him in every way and encouraged his love for reading and story-making. ...
— The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls • Jacqueline M. Overton
... correspondence. And, finally, Pope himself, as his earlier friends died off, and his own understanding acquired strength, laid it aside altogether. One reason doubtless was, that he found it too fatiguing; since in this way of letter-writing he was put to as much expense of wit in amusing an individual correspondent, as would for an equal extent have sufficed to delight the whole world. A funambulist may harass his muscles and risk his neck on the tight-rope, but hardly to entertain his own family. ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... very amusing it must have been! I think I shall turn milliner, Eleanor, for the fun of divining every one's little failings from ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... a few amusing results followed. Among a certain class in England a regular panic broke out, and in Holland and Belgium even the masses of the people became suspicious of gold and disliked to take it in payment. In the latter country a few traders ...
— If Not Silver, What? • John W. Bookwalter
... even clapped her hands, so amusing Bazarov's request seemed to her. She laughed, and at the same time felt flattered. Bazarov was looking intently ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... who, then, so poor he cannot afford one? To see a man going out in the rain umbrella-less excites as much mirth as ever did the sight of those who first—wiser than their generation—availed themselves of this now universal shelter. Yet still a touch of the amusing clings to the "Gamp," as it is sarcastically called. 'What says Douglas Jerrold on the subject? "There are three things that no man but a fool lends, or, having lent, is not in the most helpless state of mental crassitude if he ever hopes ...
— Umbrellas and their History • William Sangster
... necessary, laments were of no use, so we dined with as much appetite as if nothing had happened, and some of the regular 'boys' took to 'Yooka,' to kill the time. They were regular hands, to be sure, but I was myself trump No. 1. Pity we have no cards with us; it would be amusing to be the first man introducing that game into the western prairies. Well, I looked on, and by-and-bye, I got tired of being merely a spectator. My nose itched, my fingers too. I twisted my five-dollar ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... interminable narrative. "When Hilda was blown into the arms of Harold Garth at the windy corner of the Woolworth building, neither guessed at what was to follow. Beginning with this amusing situation, the author of 'The Yellow Moon' develops a very interesting plot. Garth was the nephew of Miles Harrison, Mayor of New York. After graduating from Williams, etc., etc., etc." This is what he calls summarizing ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... recite in the midst of tears, the life and deeds of the dead, beginning with the moment of his birth, and dealing with the whole course of his life, recounting his strength, his height, his beauty, in a word, all that can in any way do him honour. If some amusing action occur in the recital, the company begin to laugh as if they would split their sides; then on a sudden they drink and are again drowned in tears. There are sometimes two hundred persons present at these absurd anniversaries." When the Spanish crew arrived at the Philippines, ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne
... "he was quick and resolute." Then reserving the rest of her thoughts, she added: "His friend's amusing." ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... she said, and they parted. Her last words kept ringing in his ears as he made his way homeward. "Good-bye, sir—Philip" —the child's arrangement of words was odd and amusing, and at the same time suggested something more. "Good-bye, Sir Philip," had a different meaning, though the words were ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... coquettes avec lesquelles il faut entretenir un commerce de galanterie, et dont il ne faut jamais songer a faire ni sa femme ni son ministre." Men will listen to your views about the Unknowable with a composure that instantly disappears if your argument comes too near to the Rates and Taxes. It is amusing, as we read the newspapers to-day, to think that Mr. Harrison's powerful defence of Trades Unions fifteen years ago caused the Review to be regarded as an incendiary publication. Some papers that appeared here on National Education were thought to indicate ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... who spoke French so well, and sang little French chansonettes so sweetly, and got herself up in such a charming manner, giving so much "chic" and style even to the simplest of toilettes, was just the person to take upon herself the task of amusing the uninteresting invalid. ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... edge of the terrace. The troops were already debouching in good order. They were young soldiers, beardless boys for the most part, and looked almost like children amusing themselves by marching in file. But he saw an unaccustomed expression of anxiety and doubt on their faces. They marched in silence, hanging their heads and as though bent by the fatigue of ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... less amusing about it when the Thompsons arrived with four flatirons wrapped in brown paper. And Potts' face actually looked grave when the three Johnson girls were ushered into the parlor carrying a flatiron apiece. Each one of the succeeding sixty guests brought flatirons, and there ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... from within. "I am so sorry I disturbed you! But the reason is rather an amusing one: I fell asleep and dreamt that I was fighting that fellow again who insulted you, and the noise you heard was my pummelling away with my fists at my portmanteau, which I pulled out to-day for packing. I am occasionally liable to these freaks in ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... this stage of the proceedings that I came to H——; and it was highly amusing to see how hundreds of people stood round about the garden and raised a loud shout whenever the stones flew out and a new window appeared where nobody had for a moment expected it. And in the same ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... New Lady Audley is rather late in the half-century as a "skit" on Miss BRADDON's celebrated novel. Now and then I found an amusing bit in it, but, on the whole, poor stuff, says THE ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 24, 1891. • Various
... equalling that of the schools. What higher lessons in botany I might take, day by day exploring the secrets of plant life! I went back to the house in a happier mood than I had left it. At the dinner table I expressed, no doubt with amusing enthusiasm, my gladness at this garden ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... so congenial to the dwarf's humour, and so exquisitely amusing to him, that he laughed as he went along until the tears ran down his cheeks; and more than once, when he found himself in a bye-street, vented his delight in a shrill scream, which greatly terrifying any lonely ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... was very fond of this sprightly cousin of his, who was so amusing, so kindly, and so sisterly in her ways. She had more ease of manner, as well as brightness of temperament, than her sisters, and her company had been a source of great pleasure to him. The girl saw the look of sympathetic curiosity upon his face, and ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... of a boy-page in the U.S. Senate,—containing much political information, both instructive and amusing. ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 6, March, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... damper to their merriment, however, Mr. Schnackenberger addressed a few words to them from time to time:—'You laugh, gentlemen,' said he; 'and, doubtless, there's something or other very amusing,—no doubt, infinitely amusing, if one could but find it out. However, I could make your appetites for laughing vanish—aye, vanish in one moment. For, understand me now, one word—one little word from me to Juno, ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... rose-wood color. If it is not dangerous then a pleasure and more than any other if it is cheap is not cheaper. The amusing side is that the sooner there are no fewer the more certain is the necessity dwindled. Supposing that the case contained rose-wood and a color. Supposing that there was no reason for a distress and more likely for a number, supposing that ...
— Tender Buttons - Objects—Food—Rooms • Gertrude Stein
... that doesn't get us anywhere. What I am trying to get at is this: what would the Circle Bar bring in cash if the Cattlemen's Association ceased to be a factor in the county?" Dunlavey grinned broadly. "For a tenderfoot you're real amusing," he derided. "There ain't nobody out here crazy enough to think that the Cattlemen's Association will ever be put ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... ladies, and, to prevent disappointment, made the happy suggestion that they should keep the festival in their own grounds. So each spring the three divisions of the school vied with one another in producing some fresh surprise, and had a very interesting and amusing afternoon in the garden or gymnasium, and were too busily occupied to feel any regret at being deprived of the sight of what was ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... to search his face, but I did not dare show any increased interest. I had always been a little off-hand with him, for I had never much liked him, so I had to keep on the same manner. He was as merry as a grig, full of chat and very friendly and amusing. I remember he picked up the book I had brought off that morning to read in the train—the second volume of Hazlitt's Essays, the last of my English classics—and discoursed so wisely about books that I wished I had spent more time in his ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... way of writing books may turn out to be the best. The first author, it is plain, could not have taken anything from books, since there were no books for him to copy from; he looked at things for himself. Anyhow the modern system fails, for where are the amusing books from voracious ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... me," he said, brushing his sleeve with the deliberate will to offend. Then he turned and bowed to Auriole. "Your friends are amusing but I'm afraid they are going to waste a lot of time. ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... reception-rooms which a winter garden prolonged; and there, up above, occupying all the central part of the first floor, was Seguin's former "cabinet," the vast apartment with lofty windows of old stained glass. Mathieu could well remember that room with its profuse and amusing display of "antiquities," old brocades, old goldsmith's ware and old pottery, and its richly bound books, and its famous modern pewters. And he remembered it also at a later date, in the abandonment to which it had fallen, the aspect of ruin which it had assumed, covered, as it was, with gray ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... Hutchison, and published by the Oxford University Press, in two volumes for four shillings the pair!) There is no reason why you should not become a modest specialist in Lamb. He is the very man for you; neither voluminous, nor difficult, nor uncomfortably lofty; always either amusing or touching; and—most important— himself passionately addicted to literature. You cannot like Lamb without liking literature in general. And you cannot read Lamb without learning about literature in general; for books were his hobby, and he was a critic of the first rank. His letters are full ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... most exciting to run down the steps and slip into the lovely clear green water. She had undressed with such record speed that she was actually the first, but she was very soon joined by a bevy of laughing, squealing maidens. It was an amusing, but not a picturesque sight. The Fifth Form attired in bathing costumes were about as different from the academy pictures of classical nymphs as a man in the street from a statue of Apollo. Instead of floating about in graceful attitudes, with the "amber dropping hair" of Milton's Sabrina, ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... was amusing to note that his voice had assumed almost an authoritative tone, "reach me that piece of string. That's right. Here, hold your finger across the knot. There! Now, then, a bit of beeswax. What? No beeswax? ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock
... lies amusing. He would repeat to one the oath which he had just uttered to the other, send them bouquets of the same sort, write to them at the same time, and then would institute a comparison between them. There was a third always present in his thoughts. The impossibility of ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... them. They are driven now by one, now by the other, and the changes of speech and action made by the different motives surging up, alternately or together, within their will, are so swift and baffling that an audience would be utterly bewildered. It is amusing to follow the prestidigitation of Browning's intellect creating this confused battle in souls as long as one reads the play at home, though even then we wonder why he cannot, at least in a drama, make a ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... St. Sulpice. He stops short in his writing to make such reflections as these: "My courage is at times utterly cast down when I see what impertinences I have been writing. They must, I think, be a great waste of time for my good director, whom I am afraid of amusing. I pity him for having to spend his time in reading them, and it seems to me that he ought to stop my writing this intolerable frivolity ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... a fair-sized library. Criticisms on his novels abound, and his contemporaries have provided us with several amusing volumes dealing in a humorous spirit with his eccentricities, and conveying the impression that the author of "La Cousine Bette" and "Le Pere Goriot" was nothing more ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... big cake of honey-soap, mother's contributions to the undertaking. The washing was quite a frolic. Norah cried a little at having her hair pulled, but Mary was gentle and pleasant, and made the affair so amusing that the children thought it pleasant to be clean, instead of disliking it. She rewarded their patience by a kiss all round. Kathleen threw her arms about Mary's neck and gave her a great hug. "You're iver so nice," she said, ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... reading-room, and it is pleasant to note the eagerness with which its pages are devoured by the boys and girls who daily throng our rooms. The paper is doing a noble work among them, not only in amusing them, but by giving them solid information upon a great variety of subjects in a most delightful way, thus giving them a taste for a class of reading almost always pronounced "dry" by the youngsters. It supplies a long-felt ...
— Harper's Young People, July 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... by along comes little Red Riding-Hood, who had been amusing herself by gathering nuts, running after ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... cried she carelessly, "for it's the dullest thing in the world. I always thought it was owing to that you were so little amusing;—really I beg your pardon, Sir, I meant to say so ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... quotations illustrate further the list of unusual prepositions: "And she would be often weeping inside the room while George was amusing himself without."—Anna Ross, p. 81. "Several nuts grow closely together, inside this prickly covering."—Jacob Abbot. "An other boy asked why the peachstone was not outside the peach."—Id. "As if listening to the sounds withinside ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... occasions he often had nobody to attend him but John Lamb. There was a place where there was a fallen tree, which formed a good seat, at a spot which afforded a commanding view of the castle and of the surrounding country. He used often to go and sit upon this tree while his hair was combed, amusing himself the while in watching to see what was going on in the castle, and to observe if there were any signs that the garrison were going ...
— Richard II - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
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