"Harlequin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... accidents of such a life he describes with such a face of rueful simplicity, and mixes up so much grave drollery and merry pathos with all he says or does, and his ubiquity is so wonderful, that he gives an idea of a character, of whose existence we had previously no conception, that of a sentimental harlequin.[139] ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... am an artist, and as such I salute madame and monsieur her son. She is greater artist than I, but I shall help her. They shall dance better this time, her harlequin and columbine. Why? Because they shall dance to my music—the music that I shall make here, on this spot, under the stars. Tiens! I shall play as if possessed. I feel that. I bet you. It is because ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the baronies of Clinton and Say, upon the death, in 1751, of Hugh, Earl and Baron Clinton.-D. (This lady was married to Lord Walpole in 1724. In a letter to the Countess of mar, written in that year, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu says:- "I have so good an opinion of your taste, to believe harlequin in person will not make you laugh so much as the Earl of Stair's furious passion for Lady Walpole, aged fourteen and some months. Mrs. Murray undertook to bring the business to bear, and provided the opportunity, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... the irons were taken off. I was then undressed, my clothes were removed to another room, and I was redressed in the prison uniform. This was a grotesque uniform indeed. The suit was red and blue, half and half, like a harlequin's, and to crown all came a hat or cap, like a fool's cap, a foot and a half high and running up to a peak. Miserable as I was, I could scarcely help smiling at the utterly absurd appearance I knew I then presented. I even ventured to remark upon ...
— Seven Wives and Seven Prisons • L.A. Abbott
... We look with jealous and grudging eyes at all those qualifications which are not essential; first, because they are superfluous, and next, because we suspect they will be prejudicial. Why does Mr. Kean play all those harlequin tricks of singing, dancing, fencing, etc.? They say, 'It is for his benefit.' It is not for his reputation. Garrick indeed shone equally in comedy and tragedy. But he was first, not second-rate in both. There is not a ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... of the latter addicts have special cheese-branding irons made with their monograms, to identify their creations, whether they be burned on the skins of Welsh Rabbits or Frying Pan Ramekins. Salamandering with an iron that has a gay, carnivalesque design can make a sort of harlequin Ramekin. ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... this trail of tears A moment's weakness left upon my cheek, And hush my heart a little ere I speak Lest the false note ring true on other ears; The music rises and the empty cheers Proclaim the harlequin, and lo! I stand The painted fool again and kiss my hand With jocund air to Folly's worshippers. So day by day life's bitter bread is earned With lips that smile and frame the mirthless joke, And frailer grows the soul that once was strong,— The joyless soul of one whose ...
— Pan and Aeolus: Poems • Charles Hamilton Musgrove
... bitterly. He was convinced that the harlequin would come home soon, replace the uniform (which was probably extremely becoming to him, as they were of a height and figure much the same), and afterward, in his ordinary dress, would sally forth to spend his last evening with Fanchon. Tom wondered how ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... play his stage was chastely beautiful. In the gaudy foliage of the exotic island, with the three chandeliers of a bygone epoch, the sharp dissonance of styles is indicated. Aubrey Beardsley would have rejoiced at this mingling of genres; at the figures of Harlequin, Scaramuccio; at the quaint and gorgeous costuming; at the Dryad, Naiad, Echo, and all the rest of seventeenth-century burlesque appanage. And yet things didn't go as they should have gone. The music ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... confidently submit them to that generous public which likes to see virtue righted, true love rewarded, and the brilliant Fairy descend out of the blazing chariot at the end of the pantomime, and make Harlequin and Columbine happy. What, if reality be not so, gentlemen and ladies; and if, after dancing a variety of jigs and antics, and jumping in and out of endless trap-doors and windows, through life's shifting scenes, no fairy comes down to make US comfortable at ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... garden, in which lived all sorts of aged nuns of various orders, the relics of cloisters destroyed in the Revolution; a reunion of all the black, gray, and white medleys of all communities and all possible varieties; what might be called, if such a coupling of words is permissible, a sort of harlequin convent. ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... But the little harlequin is as wary a bird as he was a thorn! No sooner do we touch his head with our finger than with an audible "click" he is off on a most agile jump, which he extends with buzzing wings, and is even now perhaps aping a thorn among a little group of his fellows somewhere among ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... morality or good conduct, I can say, like Harlequin, that 'tis just as it is with you; and the Turkish ladies don't commit one sin the less for not being Christians. Now I am a little acquainted with their ways, I cannot forbear admiring either the exemplary discretion or extreme ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... a luxurious couch of a street in which the afternoon lolls like a gaudy sybarite. Overhead the sky stretches itself like a holiday awning. The sun lays harlequin stripes across the building faces. The smoke plumes from the I. C. engines scribble gray, white and lavender fantasies ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... period, my mother returned from St. Petersburg, where the Empress Anne Iwanowa had not approved of the Italian comedy. The whole of the troop had already returned to Italy, and my mother had travelled with Carlin Bertinazzi, the harlequin, who died in Paris in the year 1783. As soon as she had reached Padua, she informed Doctor Gozzi of her arrival, and he lost no time in accompanying me to the inn where she had put up. We dined with her, and before bidding us adieu, she presented the doctor with a splendid fur, ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... which was kept up for several centuries.[2041] These personages, remaining unchanged in character, were put in various assumed positions and conjunctures. The actors had to invent the dialogue and work out the situation. The characters have come down to us as Punch, Harlequin, Pantaloon, etc.[2042] Punch (Pulcino, Pulcinella) is only a Neapolitan rendering of Maccus, a character in the atellans. "Maccus," in Etruscan, meant a little cock.[2043] Christian antiphonal singing, like the ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... passage from your mouth to your belly," added an elastic Harlequin, reaching an arm across the women's shoulders. "Come, Cantapresto, we'll help you line it with good wine, to the health of his most superlatively serene Highness, the heir-presumptive of Pianura; and where is that fabulous personage, ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... grave issues. The essential type of the man was presented to public gaze about two years ago, when he stood on the City Hall steps dressed from head to foot in a suit of green to review a St. Patrick's procession. He is a harlequin with the literary ambition of a Richelieu. He affects an intimacy with the stage, and has done something in the way of producing plays. He can write clearly and concisely when he will, but prefers to provoke with odd quips and far-fetched conceits. He patronizes journalists and ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... he said with a laugh. "Tell the premier that I should lose when I have five million men to their three million! What a harlequin chief of staff I should be! Excellent ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... dryness of his sharply-cut features, and increased the laughter of the audience, who showered plaudits on their favourite. The lovely Columbine was indeed kind and cordial to him; but she preferred to marry the Harlequin. It would have been too ridiculous if beauty and ugliness had in reality ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... but to the smaller race, he held several other offices in conjunction with this—those of cook and chamberlain, for example: his talent, however, seemed most to incline to that of court-fool or harlequin. ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... recurred in Mrs. Barton's thoughts as she reviewed the situation, her head leaned in the pose of the most plaintive of the pastels that Lord Dungory had commissioned his favourite artist to execute in imitation of the Lady Hamilton portraits. And now, his finger on his lip, like harlequin glancing after columbine, the old gentleman, who had entered ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... contemplation of the blue and white tiles with which the fireplaces were decorated; wherein sundry passages of Scripture were piously portrayed. Tobit and his dog figured to great advantage; Haman swung conspicuously on his gibbet; and Jonah appeared most manfully leaping from the whale's mouth, like Harlequin ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... is a steamer ticket. A boat sails for Genoa tomorrow. And here is a thousand dollars. It will buy you a vineyard in Sicily. Go home and bid the signora get ready." And then to disappear once more, like Harlequin, to flash your wand in some other corner of the human multitude. Oh, there would be fun for one's money, something worth while having ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... tunnel! and now, I presume, in the caves. Here someone, gradually assuming a palpable form, emerges from somewhere out of a dark corner, and hands to each of us a long piece of wood about the length of a harlequin's bat (note, pantomime again), only that this is an inch or so thick and quite two inches wide at one end, where presently a candle is fixed by an attendant sprite,—the slave of the tallow candle,—and the wand, so to speak, ...
— Punch, Volume 101, September 19, 1891 • Francis Burnand
... their way to the palace. Gordon came out to meet them. The whole courtyard was filled with wild, harlequin figures and sharp, glittering blades. He attempted a parley. 'Where is your master, the Mahdi?' He knew his influence over native races. Perhaps he hoped to save the lives of some of the inhabitants. Perhaps in that supreme moment imagination flashed another picture ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... banks. The whole of the day's journey, with little exception, had been over heavy sand, and, but for the rain that had fallen, it must have greatly distressed the horses and oxen. As it was, they got over it wondrous well. In a pond of this river, Mr. Stephenson caught a great number of the harlequin fish, a circumstance almost proving that this was a tributary to the Maran. We found this day a new narrow-leaved TRISTANIA[*], thirty feet high, with bark thick, soft, and fibrous. A smooth narrow-leaved ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... those horrible things about her! I know how she appears—she likes admiration. But the admiration in the world which she would most delight in just now would be yours. She plays with Captain Lovelock as a child does with a wooden harlequin, she pulls a string and he throws up his arms and legs. She has about as much intention of eloping with him as a little girl might have of eloping with a pasteboard Jim Crow. If you were to have a frank explanation with her, ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... overhead and look'd down from a tree. Then out came the Spider, with finger so fine, To show his dexterity on the tight-line, From one branch to another his cobwebs he slung, Then quick as an arrow he darted along, But just in the middle—oh! shocking to tell, From his rope, in an instant, poor Harlequin fell. Yet he touch'd not the ground, but with talons outspread, Hung suspended in air, at ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... benign face and Papal head-dress. He sits on the perch now with folded wings, but the cage door, in likeness of a portico, shows there is convenience to come forth for the purposes of benediction, when wanted. Outside, the king of Naples, dressed as Harlequin, plays the organ for instruction of the bird (unhappy penitent, doomed to penance), and, grinning with sharp teeth, observes: "He speaks in my way now." In the background a young Republican holds ready the match for a barrel ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... black curls a mouth shaped like a bud reluctant to open, blew him a kiss. Then came a cue of music like an avalanche, and quicker than Harlequin's wink ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... aspect that led the world to compare him with a medley host of personages: "within nine years," as he playfully records, "to Rousseau, Goethe, Young, Aretino, Timon of Athens, Dante, Petrarch, Satan, Shakespeare, Buonaparte, Tiberius, AEschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Harlequin, Henry VIII., Mirabeau, Michael Angelo, Diogenes, Milton, Alfieri, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... sight, he puts on a tragical face, and complains that it is a base and soulless world. At this very moment, I make no doubt, he is requiring that under the masks of a Pantaloon or a Punch there should be a soul glowing with unearthly desires and ideal aspirations, and that Harlequin should outmoralize Hamlet on the nothingness of sublunary things: and if these expectations are disappointed, as they can never fail to be, the dew is sure to rise into his eyes, and he will turn his back on the whole motley ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... black footman, or boatswain, or some such thing; but the world's so censorious. There's old Doctor Hoskins of Bath, who attended poor dear Drum in the quinsy; and poor dear old Fred Hoskins, the gouty General: I remember him as thin as a lath in the year '84, and as active as a harlequin, and in love with me—oh, how he was in ...
— The History of Samuel Titmarsh - and the Great Hoggarty Diamond • William Makepeace Thackeray
... in his heart that kept him from smiling, a strange comedy of words in his thought, a harlequin with the night sitting on his lap. There were things to remember. There were memories. Unnecessary to think. Words formed themselves into phrases. Phrases made dim pictures as if the past was struggling fitfully to remain ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... a bright copper colour, so different from black that one had painted his thighs with black chequered lines which made his skin very much resemble the dress of a harlequin. ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... Reaumur in fact calls it la Belle. The flattering title is well-deserved. On the black background of the larva, vermillion-red, chrome-yellow and chalk-white figure side by side in circles, spots, freckles and stripes, as clearly marked as the glaring patches of a harlequin's dress. ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... hurled him into the ocean. At the noise of his fall, the dying Powers sat up in their beds of pain; and stealthily advancing with furtive tread, the royal spiders made partition of Europe, and the purple of Caesar became the motley of Harlequin. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... passages of Scripture were piously portrayed: Tobit and his dog figured to great advantage; Haman swung conspicuously on his gibbet; and Jonah appeared most manfully bouncing out of the whale, like Harlequin through a barrel ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... and a "lord baron of Strabane" needed almost the alacrity in turning his coat of a harlequin or a modern politician! It is a comfort to know that at last, on the 16th of June 1655, he found rest, dying at Ballyfathen, "a Roman Catholic and a papist recusant." As we came back into the gardens and grounds, Lord Ernest showed me, imbedded in the earth, a huge anchor presented ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... after him and Nedda falls on her knees to pray for her lover's escape, while Tonio the Fool triumphs over her misery. The husband however returns defeated; panting he claims the lover's name, and Nedda's lips remaining sealed, he is about to stab his wife, when Beppo the Harlequin intervenes, and, wrenching the dagger from his unfortunate master's hands intimates, that it is time to prepare for the play. While Nedda retires, Canio breaks out into a bitter wail of his hard lot, which compels him ...
— The Standard Operaglass - Detailed Plots of One Hundred and Fifty-one Celebrated Operas • Charles Annesley
... break out into explosive action what was nothing more than an inner prompting. We are strangely mistaken as to the part played by poetic imagination, if we think it pieces together its heroes out of fragments filched from right and left, as though it were patching together a harlequin's motley. Nothing living would result from that. Life cannot be recomposed; it can only be looked at and reproduced. Poetic imagination is but a fuller view of reality. If the characters created by a poet give us the impression of life, it is only because they are the poet himself,—multiplication ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... her—dozens of them—intending to leave them at the theatre door, but never finding the courage to do it. I made up bouquets for her, over and over again, chosen from the best flowers in our neglected garden; but invariably with the same result. I hated the harlequin who presumed to put his arm about her waist. I envied the clown, whom she condescended to address as Mr. Merriman. In short, I was so desperately in love that I even tried to lie awake at night and lose my appetite; but, I am ashamed to own, failed ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... converted me into a worshipper. I was awe-struck, and believed those significations to be something more than elemental fires. It was all enchantment and a dream. No such pleasure has since visited me but in dreams.—Harlequin's Invasion followed; where, I remember, the transformation of the magistrates into reverend beldams seemed to me a piece of grave historic justice, and the tailor carrying his own head to be as sober a verity as the legend of ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... four paintings by Hogarth: one representing the Hudson's Bay Company's Porters; another, his first idea for the Modern Midnight Conversation, (differing from the print in a circumstance too broad in its humour for the graver,) and another of Harlequin and Pierot seeming to be laughing at the figure in the last picture. On the first floor was a picture of Harlow Bush Fair, covered over with paint. This information is copied from an old print picked up in our "collecting" rambles, at the foot of which it is stated to have been obtained ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 350, January 3, 1829 • Various
... philosopher, Raspe next sought to display his vocation for polite letters, by publishing an ambitious allegorical poem of the age of chivalry, entitled "Hermin and Gunilde," which was not only exceedingly well reviewed, but received the honour of a parody entitled "Harlequin and Columbine." He also wrote translations of several of the poems of Ossian, and a disquisition upon their genuineness; and then with better inspiration he wrote a considerable treatise on "Percy's Reliques of Ancient Poetry," with metrical translations, being thus the ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... matured, she would be one in a million—a mate who cheered and inspired. Every bit of that! She would presently see the real values of things; Charlie Menocal's monkey tricks would no longer amuse her, and she would perceive what a shallow harlequin he was, while she would comprehend Gretzinger's vicious, unprincipled sophistry and turn in disgust from the man. She was ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... wing, and pushed him into the Ocean. At the noise of his fall, the dying powers sat up in their beds of pain; and stealthily advancing with furtive tread, all the royal spiders made the partition of Europe, and the purple of Caesar became the frock of Harlequin. ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... number. It is too soon yet to fix upon such poems, but surely they may be found among the following: such lyrics as "An Evening Song", "My Springs", "A Ballad of Trees and the Master", "Betrayal", "Night and Day", "The Stirrup-Cup", and "Nirvana"; such sonnets as "The Mocking-Bird" and "The Harlequin of Dreams"; such nature poems as "The Song of the Chattahoochee", "The Waving of the Corn", and "From the Flats"; such poems of high seriousness as "Individuality", "Opposition", "How Love looked for Hell", and "A Florida Sunday"; such a stirring ballad as "The ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... Columbine to Pierrot. Pierrot only stared in the sky and laughed inanely. "If you persist in slighting me like this," she whispered in his ear, in a whisper which was like a hiss, "I will abandon you for ever. I will give my heart to Harlequin, and you shall never see me again." But Pierrot continued to stare at the sky, and laughed once more inanely. Then Columbine got up, her eyes flashing with rage; taking Harlequin by the arm she dragged him swiftly away. They danced across the grass semi-circle ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... Diana was disabled. She was lying against the bank under a severe fire. The waters of the bayou seemed to be boiling like a kettle. An officer came to the side of the boat to speak to me, but before he could open his mouth a shell struck him, and he disappeared as suddenly as Harlequin in a pantomine. Semmes then reported his condition. Conical shells from the enemy's Parrotts had pierced the railway iron, killed and wounded several of his gunners and crew, and cut a steam pipe. Fortunately, ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... little square room had an odd cheer in it. Much scrubbing had removed from it the objections manifest in Glad's room above. There was a small red fire in the grate, a strip of old, but gay carpet before it, two chairs and a table were covered with a harlequin patchwork made of bright odds and ends of all sizes and shapes. The fog in all its murky volume could not quite obscure the brightness of the often rubbed window and its harlequin curtain drawn across upon ...
— The Dawn of a To-morrow • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Then gold was found to be so abundant, and, at first, so easily procured, that the fever was kept up at white-heat for several years. The result of this was, as we have remarked elsewhere, that changes, worthy of Aladdin's lamp or Harlequin's wand, were wrought in the course of a few weeks, ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... hardly gain admittance to the fort in that harlequin dress," said Hector; "and I can save you the trouble of attempting it, by answering all the inquiries you ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... that destroy garden vegetables are the well-known green cabbage-worm, the harlequin cabbage-bug, the cabbage hairworm, the asparagus-beetle, the squash-bug, the squash-vine borer, the striped cucumber or melon beetle, the melon aphis, the corn boll-worm, the cornstalk ...
— Checking the Waste - A Study in Conservation • Mary Huston Gregory
... believe it, but do not wish to confirm it. There, Minha, you can take your choice between the gray mosquito, the hairy mosquito, the white-clawed mosquito, the dwarf mosquito, the trumpeter, the little fifer, the urtiquis, the harlequin, the big black, and the red of the woods; or rather they make take their choice of you for a little repast, and you will come back hardly recognizable! I fancy these bloodthirsty diptera guard the Brazilian frontier considerably better than the poverty-stricken ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... clever little fellow; and Carrie Coote, about eight, was Columbine, a very pretty graceful little thing. In a few years' time she will be just the child to act "Alice," if it is ever dramatised. The harlequin was a little girl named Gilchrist, one of the most beautiful children, in face and figure, that I have ever seen. I must get an opportunity of photographing her. Little Bertie Coote, singing "Hot Codlings," was curiously ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... HARLEQUIN QUILT, WITH TUCKS.—This is done in double knitting stitch, with six threads fleecy. The pieces are six inches square. Each square consists of about 24 stitches, and they are to be sewn together with a tuft of wool, ...
— The Ladies' Work-Table Book • Anonymous
... strings and harp, is both delicate and refined, and instinct with a tender melancholy, for which it would be vain to look in his earlier works. 'Iris' (1898), an opera on a rather unpleasant Japanese story, has met with a certain degree of favour, but 'Le Maschere' (1901), an attempt to introduce Harlequin and Columbine to the lyric stage, failed completely, nor does 'Amica' (1905) seen to have done much to rehabilitate the composer's waning reputation. Mascagni has as yet done little to justify the extravagant eulogies with which his first work was greeted, and his warmest ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... Wit, in each politer Age, Triumphant, rear'd the Trophies of the Stage: But only Farce, and Shew, will now go down, And Harlequin's the Darling of ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... Three years later he was sent by Prince Potemkin to superintend a great industrial establishment at Kritchev on a tributary of the Dnieper. There he was to be 'Jack-of-all-trades—building ships, like Harlequin, of odds and ends—a rope-maker, a sail-maker, a distiller, brewer, malster, tanner, glass-man, glass-grinder, potter, hemp-spinner, smith, and coppersmith.'[251] He was, that is, to transplant a fragment of ready-made Western civilisation into Russia. Bentham resolved ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... side, raged round the field like Castor and Pollux, and sturdy Ben Jonson enacted more wonders than when a volunteer with the army in Flanders. As to the dapper little compiler of farragos mentioned some time since, he had arrayed himself in as many patches and colors as harlequin, and there was as fierce a contention of claimants about him, as about the dead body of Patroclus. I was grieved to see many men, to whom I had been accustomed to look up with awe and reverence, fain to steal off with ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... tragedy, and so forth. They would not quite be able to keep a coach, but they might get a chariot and pasteboard dragons from Mr. Rich's theatre. The baby might be christened in Macbeth's caldron; and Harry and harlequin ought ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... strong that he found it impossible to indulge his tastes. It was de rigueur to conduct in either a frock or an evening coat, but if he had his own way he would vary his garb for every composer. For example, he would like to wear a harlequin's dress for STRAUSS, a full-bottomed wig and ruffles for BACH, HAYDN and GLUCK, a red tie and a cap of Liberty for SCHOeNBERG, and the uniform of a Cossack of the Ukraine for TCHAIKOVSKY. Instead of which the utmost liberty that he was allowed was a butterfly tie. He thought that members ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 28, 1914 • Various
... crown carried out in harlequin flannel surmounts a full brim of restful willow-green. Garnished with intertwined laurel and St. John's-Wort, and decorated with the tail feather of a Surrey fowl, it makes a comfortable and distinguished headdress for a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 22, 1920 • Various
... Assumption. The Pagliacci are a troupe of itinerant mountebanks, the characters being Nedda, the Columbine, who is wife of Canio, or Punchinello, master of the troupe; Tonio, the Clown; Beppe, the Harlequin; and Silvio, ...
— The Standard Operas (12th edition) • George P. Upton
... came after the royal carriage out-Heroded Herod by their deafening cries of loyalty. Who would have imagined these gentlemen would have played the harlequin and receive their dethroned Emperor as they did when he entered Paris again? "Put not your trust in men, particularly Frenchmen in 1814, O ye house of Bourbon, for they made ye march out of ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... to Drury Lane; the King being there to-night, very much crowded. Miss Gunning and her two sisters and a number of people of quality. 'The Tempest,' and 'Harlequin Ranger'; both very foolish to ...
— Extracts from the Diary of William Bray, Esq. 1760-1800 • William Bray
... overt guise, seemed to haunt Pierston just at this time with undignified mockery which savoured rather of Harlequin than of the torch-bearer. Two days after parting in a lone island from the girl he had so disinterestedly loved he met in Piccadilly his friend Somers, wonderfully spruced up, and hastening along with ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... agreeably surprised at meeting my friend Mr. Brooke, who had come on to Singapore to meet Sir William Parker, and had followed him up in the Wanderer, commanded by my friend Captain Henry Seymour,—that vessel, in company with the Harlequin, Captain the Hon. George Hastings, and the H. C. steamer Diana, having just returned from an expedition to Acheen, whither they had been dispatched by the commander-in-chief, to inquire into and demand redress ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... And those of maturer years, or of more meditative temperament, sitting at the pantomime, can extract out of the shifting scenes meanings suitable to themselves; for the pantomime is a symbol or adumbration of human life. Have we not all known Harlequin, who rules the roast, and has the pretty Columbine to himself? Do we not all know that rogue of a clown with his peculating fingers, who brazens out of every scrape, and who conquers the world by good humour and ready wit? And have we not seen Pantaloons not a few, whose fate it is to get ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... be told; He has not one mode, but manifold, Many fashions and addresses, Piques, reproaches, hurts, caresses. He will preach like a friar, And jump like Harlequin; He will read like a crier, And fight like a Paladin. Boundless is his memory; Plans immense his term prolong; He is not of counted age, Meaning always to be young. And his wish is intimacy, Intimater intimacy, And a stricter privacy; The impossible shall yet be done, And, being ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... made from among a wide range of different types. A variety of corn called "Harlequin" shows stripes on its kernels, and one ear may offer nearly white and nearly red seeds and all the possible intermediate steps between them. From these seeds the next generation will repeat the motley ears, but some specimens will produce ears ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... trial, Court 2. The legal call-boys bustle in the counsel and others engaged. Mr. Buzfuz, Q.C., pushes his way into Court, surrounds himself with briefs and other documents, when some mysterious harlequin of the Law Courts changes Tomkins v. Snooks to Court 4, and calls upon Brown v. Jones, who are packed away in Court 3, waiting their turn. Buzfuz gets very angry, and bustles off to Court 4. In fact, getting your case into Court reminded me forcibly of that amusing toy, so popular ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... back into the office, leaving the door ajar. Presently CATHERINE enters. In spite of her youth and girlish appearance, she is a good, thrifty housekeeper. She wears a simple summer gown, and carries a bunch of gay tulips and an old silver pitcher, from which she presently pours water into the Harlequin Delft vase on PETER GRIMM'S desk. She peeps into the office, retreating, with a smile on her lips, ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm • David Belasco
... sketching the scene to the life, but with a [6] kind of grace—a marvellous tact of omission, as my father pointed out to us, in dealing with the vulgar reality seen from one's own window—which has made trite old Harlequin, Clown, and Columbine, seem like people in some fairyland; or like infinitely clever tragic actors, who, for the humour of the thing, have put on motley for once, and are able to throw a world of serious innuendo into their burlesque looks, with ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater
... cut down in indiscriminate slaughter twenty-five thousand men, women and children. The brother of Ivan IV. was seized and thrown into prison, where he miserably perished. The archbishop was stripped of his canonical robes, clad in the dress of a harlequin, paraded through the streets on a gray mare, an object of derision to the people, and then was imprisoned for life. Such cruelty does not seem at all in accordance with the character of Ivan, while the grossest exaggeration is in accordance with the ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... and chopped sausages, or a slice of agnello, and enjoy the delicious air that breathes from the mountains. The old cardinals descend from their gilded carriages, and, accompanied by one of their household and followed by their ever-present lackeys in harlequin liveries, totter along on foot with swollen ankles, lifting their broad red hats to the passers-by who salute them, and pausing constantly in their discourse to enforce a phrase or take a pinch of snuff. Files of scholars ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... noticed into how many different shapes harlequin and columbine change their little white hats? They turn and twist them so well that they become, one after another, a spinning-top, a boat, a wine-glass, a half-moon, a cap, a basket, a fish, a whip, a dagger, a baby, and ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... instruments, delivered their melodies to the more appropriate music of the banjo. To the banjo, in a short time, were added the bones. The art had now outgrown its infancy, and, disdaining a subordinate existence, boldly seceded from the society of harlequin and the tumblers, and met the world as an independent institution. Singers organized themselves into quartet bands; added a fiddle and tambourine to their instruments—perhaps we should say implements—of music; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... creator of "Samson." He created Samsonian scandal by marrying Lady Henrietta Herbert, the only daughter of the Earl of Waldegrave; she died fourteen years later, and he built her a fine monument. Six years later he married the daughter of a harlequin. ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... the garment may have been called at the time, is so strangely illustrated that the right-hand side of the forepart is obviously the left-hand side of the backpart; and so gives a harlequin appearance to the figure, which it is not unnatural to assume was intentional, and done with ...
— Bacon is Shake-Speare • Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence
... fastened on his back a square of linoleum, with a big draught-board pattern in white and red, that he found in the middle of the dining-room of some temporary refuge. That is Pepin. We know him afar off by his harlequin placard sooner even than by his pale Apache face. Here is Barque's bulging chest-protector, carven from an eiderdown quilt, formerly pink, but now fantastically bleached and mottled by dust and rain. There, Lamuse the Huge rises like a ruined tower to which tattered ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... anything, take any liberty, without fear of dethronement. One evening, during an act in which he had not to appear on the stage, he was leaning while chatting with a comrade against that part of the wings known in French as "harlequin's cloak"—in our stage language the prompt-place. A brass knob was under his elbow. "What's this machine for?" he said, examining it. "Don't touch it, Monsieur Frederic," cried an employe: "it's the gas-regulator." "Bah! has the gas got a regulator, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... careen of 30 deg.; at 3 o'clock she floated into deep water, and was then anchored. During the forenoon of the same day the ship was towed to her former anchoring ground off Kuchin. The same night the Harlequin and Royalist arrived in the river, and a day or two afterwards a brig and schooner came over with the intention of bidding for the remains of the ship, and of stocking the officers with clothes and necessaries. This was a losing speculation, as may be ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... floods that drowned me last year all the way from Wentworth Castle. I beg my best compliments to my lady, and my best wishes that every pheasant egg and peacock egg may produce as many colours as a harlequin-jacket. ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... altogether out of consecrated ground, yet I own I was not a little scandalized at the introduction of theatrical airs and gestures into a place set apart to remind us of the saddest realities. Going nearer, I found inscribed under this harlequin figure the ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... any public theatre? You see here, behind the ostensible scenery, all the crooked working of the machinery developed and laid open to the world. You now see by what secret movement the master of the mechanism has conducted the great Indian opera,—an opera of fraud, deceptions, and harlequin tricks. You have it all laid open before you. The ostensible scene is drawn aside; it has vanished from your sight. All the strutting signors, and all the soft signoras are gone; and instead of a brilliant spectacle of descending ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... say I should find nobody I knew up here?" asks Barnes's companion. "On the contrary, there are lots of fellows I know. There's Fred Bayham, dancing like a harlequin. There's old Gandish, who used to be my drawing-master; and my Brighton friends, your uncle and cousin, Barnes. What relations are they to me? must be some relations. Fine fellow ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... harlequin!" snapped Vilas, waving his hand to a mirror across the room. "Don't I look it?" And the phrase fitted him with tragic accuracy. "You see? What a merry wedding-guest I'll be! I invite you to join ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... himself with nursing his anger without betraying it. Every now and then Monsieur raised his eyes to the ceiling, then lowered them towards the slices of pate which the chevalier was attacking, and finally, not caring to betray the resentment, he gesticulated in a manner which Harlequin might have envied. At last, however, Monsieur could control himself no longer, and at the dessert, rising from the table in excessive wrath, as we have related, he left the Chevalier de Lorraine to finish his breakfast as he pleased. Seeing Monsieur rise ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... to entertain to-night, She brings imaginary kings and queens to light, Bids Common Sense in person mount the stage, And Harlequin to storm in tragick rage. Britons, attend; and decent reverence shew To her, who made th' Athenian bosoms glow; Whom the undaunted Romans could revere, And who in Shakespeare's time was worshipp'd here: If none of these can her success presage, Your hearts at least a wonder ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... braggart and fool, most valiant in words, but constantly being drubbed by Harlequin. Scaramouch is a common character in Italian farce, originally meant in ridicule of the Spanish don, and therefore dressed in Spanish costume. Our clown is an imbecile old idiot, and wholly unlike the dashing poltroon of Italian pantomime. The best "Scaramouches" ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... at the fellow as Clown stares at Harlequin after having cut him in two, in dumb amazement at the fact that Harlequin is not in the least disturbed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... yearn; so much we felt we were masters of the type, and so almost sufficiently was that a stop-gap for London constantly deferred. We hadn't the transformation-scene, it was true, though what this really seemed to come to was clown and harlequin taking liberties with policemen—these last evidently a sharp note in a picturesqueness that we lacked, our own slouchy "officers" saying nothing to us of that sort; but we had at Niblo's harlequin and ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... the old gentleman coming after him with long, swinging strides like a man winning a mile race. But the head upon that bounding body was still pale, grave and professional, like the head of a lecturer upon the body of a harlequin. ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... say I have no vacancy in my own company at present; but would you be willing to take a part in my Christmas pantomime? I may say that I myself began life as harlequin." ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... think it makes them look ridiculous, by betraying the weakness of their nature. But why may not nature show itself in tragedy, as well as in comedy or farce? We see persons not ashamed to laugh loudly at the humour of a Falstaff,—or the tricks of a harlequin; and why should not the tear be equally allowed to flow for the misfortunes of a Juliet, or the forlornness of an Ophelia?" Sir Richard Steele records on this subject a saying of Mr. Wilks the actor, as just as ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... three black cats, but those who are really acquainted with animals know that their physiognomy is as various as that of the human race. I was perfectly well able to distinguish between these little faces, as black as Harlequin's mask, and lighted up by disks of emerald with golden gleams. Enjolras, who was much the handsomest of the three, was remarkable for his broad, leonine head and full whiskers, strong shoulders, and a superb feathery tail. There was something theatrical and pretentious in his air, like the ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow
... have that long string," said W, "but he breaks down badly here and there. Where's his six-foot-six left-handed bowler and bat? He hasn't got one. I have, though, in WOOLLEY. And where's his master of the game, practical and theoretical, in a harlequin cap? The wisest captain any county ever had and the most enthusiastic and stimulating? In short, where is H's P.F. WARNER, whom we're all so sorry to lose, but who had such a glorious ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 8th, 1920 • Various
... upon Lincoln's conduct of the war, predicated upon a private letter of General Scott, the possession of which he did not satisfactorily account for. The Tribune, referring to his campaign as "a rhetorical spree," called him a "buffoon," a "political harlequin," a "repeater of mouldy jokes,"[852] and in bitter terms denounced his "low comedy performance at Tammany," his "double-shuffle dancing at Mozart Hall," his possession of a letter "by dishonourable ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... and even I was able to go to it. We put our young sailor and our sister in the forefront, and believed that every one was as much struck with them as with the wonderful transformations of Goody-Two-Shoes under the wand of Harlequin. Brother-like, we might tease our one girl, and call her an affected little pussy cat, but our private opinion was that she excelled all other damsels with her bright blue eyes and pretty curling hair, which had the same chestnut ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... out of the coupe. Harlequin, and Colombine, and Humpty-Dumpty; shapes which came out of nowhere and instantly vanished into nothing, for all the world like the absurd pantomimes of his boyhood days. He kept close to the curb, scrutinizing ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... figure, arrayed in a harlequin jacket, with a bone, or what the painter denominates a baton, in the right hand, is generally considered designed for Mrs. Mapp, a masculine woman, daughter to one Wallin, a bone-setter at Hindon, in Wiltshire. This female Thalestris, incompatible as it may seem with her sex, adopted her father's ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... a tour to all the remarkable places in this celebrated village: saw the foundry, the Stadthouse, the Spinhuys, Vauxhall, and Count Bentinck's gardens; and in the evening went to the French comedy, which was directed by a noted harlequin, who had found means to flatter the Dutch taste so effectually, that they extolled him as the greatest actor that ever appeared in the province of Holland. This famous company did not represent regular theatrical pieces, ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... eyes have never found, Dim-panelled in the painted scene of Sleep, Thou, giant Harlequin of Dreams, dost leap Upon my spirit's stage. Then Sight and Sound, Then Space and Time, then Language, Mete and Bound, And all familiar Forms that firmly keep Man's reason in the road, change faces, peep Betwixt the legs and mock the daily ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... man, wearing a feather mantle on his back, reaching from the arm-pits down to the mid-thighs, zebra-painted on his breast and legs with black stripes, bear-skin shako on his head, and his arms stretched out at full length along a staff passing behind his neck. Accoutred in this harlequin rig, he dashes at the squaws, capering, dancing, whooping; and they and the children flee for life, keeping several hundred yards between him and themselves." It is believed that, if they were even to touch his stick, their children ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... manhood's fiery noon, To steal his laurels from the stage buffoon; His sword of lath the harlequin may wield; Behold the star upon my lifted shield Though the just critic pass my humble name, And sweeter lips have drained the cup of fame, While my gay stanza pleased the banquet's lords, The soul within was tuned to deeper chords! Say, shall my arms, ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... another,—his wretched client had been compelled to follow his quondam clerk, his present debtor, from court to court; had found his just claims met with well-invented but unfounded counter-claims, had seen his party shift his character of pursuer or defender, as often as Harlequin effects his transformations, till, in a chase so varied and so long, the unhappy litigant had lost substance, reputation, and almost the use of reason itself, and came before their lordships an object of thoughtless derision to the unreflecting, ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... hands of reverence, as one has seen Infallibility pass with uplifting of jewelled fingers through genuflexions to the Balcony. Port has this in it: that it compels obeisance, master of us; as opposed to brother and sister wines wooing us with a coy flush in the gold of them to a cursory tope or harlequin leap shimmering up the veins with a sly wink at us through eyelets. Hussy vintages swim to a cosset. We go ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... of the stage are benches. The curtain is composed of two tapestries which can be drawn aside. Above a harlequin's mantle are the royal arms. There are broad steps from the stage to the hall; on either side of these steps are the places for the ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand
... would do well to renounce the dangerous career on which they had entered. 'Not so bad!' cried Blondy, when I had finished my lecture, 'not so bad.' 'But can you, in the mean time, point out to us any apartment that we can ransack? We are, you see, like Harlequin, and have more need of cash than advice;' and they left me, laughing deridingly at me. I called them back, to profess my attachment to them, and begged them not to call again at my house. 'If that is all,' said Deluc, 'we will keep from that.'—'Oh yes, we'll keep away,' added ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... parents better;' in the twelfth, 'and educate yourself.' So by the hourly change of his principles, the father conceals their untenableness and onesidedness. As for his wife, she is neither like him, nor yet like that harlequin who came on to the stage with a bundle of papers under each arm, and answered to the inquiry, what he had under his right arm, 'orders,' and to what he had under his left arm, 'counter-orders.' But the mother might be much better compared to a giant Briareus, who had a hundred ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... glad to see you, and to know that old New Hampshire's granite hills have not faded from your memory, nor been absorbed in the quantity of swill it seems necessary to provide for the black-pig. But, I say, Frank, what harlequin-like changes politics take in a republic—now and then! Two years ago, and who'd a' thought a' seeing you here? 'Stonished you yourself, didn't it? Scarcely expected to brush old General Scott's fuss and feathers into a cock'd up hat, eh? There's nothing ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... are broke in upon, so that a Peer and a Mechanick are cloathed in the same Habits, and indulge in the same Diversions and Luxuries: When Husbands are ruin'd, Children robb'd, and Tradesmen starv'd, in order to give Estates to a French Harlequin, and Italian Eunuch, for a Shrug or a Song; [Footnote: Farinelli, an eminent Italian soprano, went to England in 1734, remained there three years, sang chiefly at the Theatre of Lincoln's-Inn-Fields, then under the direction of Porpora, ...
— The Pretentious Young Ladies • Moliere
... whitening. See with what a ferocious air the gentleman who personates the Mexican chief, paces up and down, and with what an eye of calm dignity the principal tragedian gazes on the crowd below, or converses confidentially with the harlequin! The four clowns, who are engaged in a mock broadsword combat, may be all very well for the low-minded holiday-makers; but these are the people for the reflective portion of the community. They look so noble in those Roman dresses, ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... to town at Christmas-time, And braves its icy breath, To play in that favourite pantomime, Harlequin ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... excite an attempt at my assassination, on account of politics, and a notion which the priests disseminated that I was in a league against the Germans,)—and, finally, my mother-in-law recovered last fortnight, and my play was damned last week! These are like 'the eight-and-twenty misfortunes of Harlequin.' But they must be borne. If I give in, it shall be after keeping up a spirit at least. I should not have cared so much about it, if our southern neighbours had not bungled us all out of freedom for these ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... the Moon, a Farce, acted at the Queen's theatre, and printed 4to. 1687. It is dedicated to the Marquis of Worcester. The Plot is taken from an Italian piece translated into French, under the title of Harlequin Empereur, Dans le Monde de la Lune, and acted at Paris above eighty ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... possess magic. Son, we have begun well! A girl masquerading, happy victim of the May madness—this is the jolliest thing I've struck in years—a girl, out dancing all by her lonesome under the stars—Columbine playing Harlequin!" ...
— The Madness of May • Meredith Nicholson
... exhibition of art, and too regardless of the object, to which art should be made subservient. Dancing should never be considered as a mere display of agility and muscular power. It is then degraded to a level with Harlequin's tricks, wrestling, tumbling, or such other fashionable entertainments. The main object of the art unquestionably is, to display in full perfection the beauty and grace of the human form and movements. ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... thus disagreeably, a white domino, who for a few minutes had been a very attentive spectator, suddenly came forward, and exclaiming, "I'll cross him though he blast me!" rushed upon the fiend, and grasping one of his horns, called out to a Harlequin who stood near him, "Harlequin! do you fear ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... No, by all the treasures of Mammon, I should not like to go through it a second time. Death is something more than a harlequin's leap, and its terrors are even worse than ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... carried him back to that moon-lit night of July when he made bold to climb the private stair and seek private speech with Madonna Beatrice. I can guess very well how the scene showed that night in the moonbeams—all the city stretched out below, a harlequin's coat of black and silver, according to the disposition of the homes and the open spaces with their lights and shadows. I can fancy how, through the gilded air, came the cheerful sounds of the dancing and the luting and the laughter and ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... superfluous 'be'] "be screwed to its sticking place," when we think upon the wonderous genius of the aforesaid Thomas Britton; who, in the midst of his coal cellars, could practise upon "fiddle and flute," or collate his curious volumes; and throwing away, with the agility of a harlequin, his sombre suit of business-cloths, could put on his velvet coat and bag-wig, and receive his concert visitors, at the stair-head, with the politeness of a Lord ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... cigars, and two men not a whit above the mental or moral level of the ordinary citizen. Government imposes when you meet it in respectful capitals in the public prints, but when you get a glimpse of it in its shirt sleeves, en famille, or playing harlequin upon the top of a barrel at the hustings, or tickling the yokels with bits of cheap millinery and silk stockings, and reflect that you have paid homage to that, you begin to doubt the saving ...
— The Hunted Outlaw - Donald Morrison, The Canadian Rob Roy • Anonymous
... a shoal of new arrivals—"flower girls," "strawberry girls," "match girls," "morning stars," "evening stars," "springs," "summers," "nuns," "bacchantes," etc., claimed her attention; while a troupe of "brigands," "monks," "troubadours," "clowns," "harlequin," "kings," "crusaders," et caetera, demanded ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... Woden in Scandinavia; and when his worship as a god dies out Odin survives (as Dr. Dasent has proved) in the Wild Huntsman of the Hartz, and in the Robin Hood (Oodin) of popular legend. The Hellequin of France becomes the Harlequin of our pantomimes. William Tell never existed; he is a myth; a survival of the sun-god Apollo, Indra, who was worshipped on ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... window was merely a square opening, which appeared scarcely wide enough to let a man's shoulders pass, but Mamba did not hesitate. To the amazement of Mark and his friends he took what is familiarly known as a "header" through the window—a la harlequin—and disappeared. To the still greater amazement of Mark and his friends, Laihova instantly followed suit, without a word of explanation! Indeed there was no time for that. A moment after the owner of the dwelling opened the door with ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... to him knowing that I should find opportunity for reproof, but should probably lack the will. For Pierre was my harlequin, and what man can easily censure his own amusements even when he sees their harm? Then there was more to make me lenient. The man's family had served my own for as many generations as the rooks had builded in our yews, and so, ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... poisonous, but of such retiring habits as hardly to be classed as dangerous. Most of their time is spent hidden under the sand and in the ground, but when they do come out their colors are so brilliant as not to be mistaken. On the harlequin snake the colors are bright coral-red, yellow, and black, which alternate in stripes that encircle the body. Its head is always banded with a broad yellow stripe. The coral-snake is much the same in color, and only a close observer would notice the difference. The coral-snake is also ...
— On the Trail - An Outdoor Book for Girls • Lina Beard and Adelia Belle Beard
... least two letters a week, requesting him to. . . . ,—on the strength of some youthful antic of his, which, no doubt, authorizes the intelligent constituency of autograph-hunters to address him as a harlequin? ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... water, though it made shift to get away." They also contain sundry consultations and references on the subject of fans and damasks, white and blue. And from one of them we are comforted to find that the Northampton carrier was conveying a "harlequin dog" as a present from Kitty's husband to the wife of Kitty's old admirer—showing, as is abundantly evinced in other ways, how good an after-crop of friendship may grow on the stubble fields where ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... sundry passages of Scripture were piously portrayed. Tobit and his dog figured to great advantage; Haman swung conspicuously on his gibbet; and Jonah appeared most manfully leaping from the whale's mouth, like Harlequin ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin |
