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More "Amusement" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... St. Louis tieing Boston for first place—the attendance in the West, as will be seen above, did not compare with that at the three games in the East, the terribly hard times out West greatly affecting everything in the amusement line in the Western League ...
— Spalding's Baseball Guide and Official League Book for 1895 • Edited by Henry Chadwick
... his unmethodical temperament Paragot made one fixed rule for my habits. In towns and larger villages, I went to bed at nine o'clock. What he did with himself by way of amusement in the evenings I never knew. Nor did it occur to me to conjecture. Healthily tired after a happy day I was only too glad to crawl to whatever queer resting place chance provided, and to sleep the sound sleep of boyhood. To be for ever moving amid a fairyland of ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... about the Sabbath—pretending, first, that there is a Sabbath in Christianity, and teaching people that there is a sort of piety in calling Sunday the Sabbath, and next putting this ritual observance, this abstinence from labor and amusement, on a level with moral duties! When men tithe mint, they are apt to forget justice and mercy. If Jesus were to return, after all these centuries, and were only to do and say just what he did and said about the Sabbath when ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... acquaintance was an extensive, and, in its character, a much varied one; and, for some years, Alice Horner mingled much in gay society, occasionally frequenting with her husband places of amusement, especially those in which music formed the chief attraction. But during this period, in which she may be said to have lived to herself, she was not without compunctuous visitations; and as the responsibilities of a mother ...
— The Annual Monitor for 1851 • Anonymous
... taste, neither do they imbibe classic prejudices; nor are they early disgusted with literature by pedagogues, lexicons, grammars, and all the melancholy apparatus of learning.—Women begin to taste the pleasures of reading, and the best authors in the English language are their amusement, just at the age when young men, disgusted by their studies, begin to be ashamed of alluding to literature amongst their companions. Travelling, lounging, field sports, gaming, and what is called pleasure in ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... farce in which a lady attempts to provide cultural amusement for her servants, and succeeds in breaking up the ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... about the amusements of Venice, and facetious discussions on the relative merits of French and Italian cookery, were proceeding on the other. Little by little, the sound of the talking grew fainter. The visitors, having arranged their plans of amusement for the day, were on their way out of the hotel. In a minute or two, there was silence ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... effort of the early manner. A Jewish carpenter holds his fair-haired child between his knees. The urchin holds up a bird to attract the attention of a little white dog on the floor. The mother, a dark-haired peasant woman, looks on the scene with quiet amusement. The picture is absolutely perfect in detail. It seems to be the consigne among critics to say it lacks "style." They say it is a family scene in Judaea, voila tout. Of course, and it is that very truth and nature that makes this picture ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... water half-way between the boat and the shore—to stand up in the stern and bow politely—finally, to row away singing "God save the Queen" with all our might, were feats upon which we prided ourselves very considerably at the time, and the recollection of which afforded us infinite amusement all the ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... merely that she showed herself quite human and feminine and charmingly demure. At any rate, before the meal was over, the Wallaces and Dave had recovered much of their poise and the two young men were even making awkward attempts at flirtation, much to the amusement of the girl. ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... the bank at the little inn by Sandford lock, and had a glass of ale, over which Tom confessed that it was the first time he had ever navigated a skiff by himself, and gave a detailed account of his adventures, to the great amusement of his companion. And by the time they rose to go, it was settled, at Tom's earnest request, that he should pull the sound skiff up, while his companion sat in the stern and coached him. The other consented very kindly, merely stipulating ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... weathercock humor shifted—amusement yielding to intrigued interest. After all, why not oblige the fellow? What did anything matter, now? What harm could visit him if he yielded to this corpulent adventurer's insistence? Both from experience and observation he knew this for a world plentifully peopled by soldiers ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... creek. I came suddenly upon a number of flat stones placed in rows, one upon the other. Though altogether covering about ten yards of ground, there was no appearance of any shape in their arrangement. I am still puzzled, to determine whether they were merely the results of childish amusement, or had performed their part in some magical incantation or religious ceremony of the natives. I am the more inclined to think it was the latter, as there was a native grave near, covered with the same kind of flat stones, to the height ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... fact that we can enjoy and experience a work of art frees us from Whistler's doctrine, because, if we can enjoy and experience it, we are concerned with it. Because of our enjoyment, art is for us a social activity and not a game played by the artist for his own amusement. We know also that the artist likes us to enjoy his art, in fact complains loudly if we do not; and we do not believe that the primitive artist or man was different in this respect. There is now, and always has been, some kind of relation between the artist and the public, but ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... his face the child gazed with pitying comprehension of his ignorance, and in her voice was shrill amusement. "Chicken! Did you ever price one? I have, when I'm having kings and queens taking dinner with me in my mind. People don't have chicken 'cept at Christmas, and sometimes Sundays if there hasn't been anybody out of work for a long time. Come on. I've got a box of sardines. Just think, Father, ...
— How It Happened • Kate Langley Bosher
... and Griselda, in her arm-chair by the ante-room fire, with some queer little old-fashioned books of her aunts', which she had already read more than a dozen times, beside her by way of amusement, felt that there was one comfort in her troubles—she had escaped the long ...
— The Cuckoo Clock • Mrs. Molesworth
... a short time since, while busily engaged in cow-hiding a dandy, who had insulted his daughter, being asked what he was doing, replied: "Cutting a swell;" and continued his amusement without further interruption. ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... man who courageously keeps cool throughout this first assault will find much amusement in laying bare to his wife, in a light and bantering way, the secret feelings which make her thus behave, in following her step by step through the labyrinth which she treads, and telling her in answer to her every remark, that she is false to herself, while he preserves ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac
... up at him. "You see," amusedly, "every time he put his arm around me the drum and cymbals played. It quite disconcerted him." But Philidor found no amusement in ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... with Nelson?" said Mr. Lindsay, with an expression of intense amusement. "I 'used to think,' as you say, that he ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... twisting his arm in every possible direction as if skeptical of any help from such a source, but gradually letting a look of pleased surprise spread across his face. The crowd watched in amusement, and nearly everybody laughed when the patient finally announced in a loud voice that he was cured, that it was nothing short of a miracle and that he'd buy half a dozen bottles of that witch stuff to take home ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... difficulty; for among these serious people music did not count as a serious study. Music was thought of as an agreeable art, a social accomplishment, and the idea of making it the subject of scientific teaching must have been received with some amusement. Even up to the present time, general histories of Art have refused to accord music a place, so little was thought of it; and other arts were indignant at being mentioned in the same breath with it. This is illustrated ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... was one of the few who were feeling reasonably cheerful. He was deriving a keen amusement at present from the maneuvers of Mr. Samuel Galer, of New York. This lynx-eyed man; having been instructed by Mr. McEachern to watch Jimmy, was doing so with a thoroughness that would have roused the suspicions of a ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... the shelter of the hens, on the roosts in the house. Guinea-hens—cruel, vindictive things, as they are—should never be allowed within a common poultry yard. Always quarrelsome, and never quiet, they should take to the farmyard, with the cattle, where they may range at will, and take their amusement in fisticuffs with each other, at pleasure. Neither should peacocks be allowed to come into the poultry inclosures, during the breeding season; they are anything but amiable in their manners to ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... boys bright, breezy, wholesome and instructive; full of adventure and incident, and information upon natural history. They blend instruction with amusement contain much useful and valuable information upon the habits of animals, and plenty of adventure, fun ...
— Rodney The Partisan • Harry Castlemon
... not now. Let us enjoy this bright and sunny landscape. How sharply cut are those crags yonder on the sky. Blackstonedge looks almost within a stride, or at least a good stone's-throw. Thou knowest the old legend of Robin Hood; how that he made yonder rocks his dormitory, and by way of amusement pitched or quoited huge stones at a mark on the hill just above us, being some four or five miles from his station. It is still visible along with several stones lying near, and which are evidently from the same rock as that on which it ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... so called by courtesy, was really an artificial pond, and though not large, it provided a great deal of amusement. ...
— Patty's Summer Days • Carolyn Wells
... meal Gerald had sat back silent, a faint amusement in his eye. After dinner he arose, yawned, consulted his watch, and departed, pleading an engagement. Orde lingered some time, listening to the general, in the hope that Carroll would reappear. She did not, so finally he took ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... attracts their attention. They are very critical and there is much gossip going on among them. They also laugh at the Mexicans, and say that the hair on their faces is like the fur on a bear. Squint-eyes also afford them much amusement. They are smart, attentive and patient. They have no qualms of conscience about telling an untruth, but my experience with them shows appreciation and gratitude for benefits received. An Indian whom I had occasion to treat ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... lot of rough printing for the various theatres, issuing bill posters, announcing plays, and setting up type sheets for actors and managers, in their daily concerts and dramas for the public amusement. ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... play and then, and not till then, if they disapprove, to hiss it off the stage. [8] In the times of Plautus and Ennius the spectators were probably more discriminating; but the steady depravation of the spectacles furnished for their amusement contributed afterwards to brutalise them with fearful rapidity, until at the close of the Republican period dramatic exhibitions were thought nothing of in comparison with a wild-beast fight ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... are part of a Drama undertaken for the amusement of the individuals who composed our intimate society, but left unfinished. I have preserved a sketch of the story as far as it had been shadowed in the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... to be noticed. The meeting duly took place: and I opened it by asking what was the chief lesson to be drawn from the exhibition?] "Well," [said Professor Huxley,] "the chief lesson to be drawn from the exhibition is that London is in want of some open air amusement on ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... varied experience in language teaching has convinced me that there are still, in spite of the march of science, many people who are capable of getting intellectual pleasure from word-history. I hope that to such people this little book, the amusement of occasional leisure, will not be unwelcome. It differs, I believe, from any other popular book on language in that it deals essentially with the origins of words, and makes no attempt to enforce ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... has evidently no connection with Dr. Butler's own life. I cannot use these letters, therefore, for my book, but over and above the charm of their inspired spelling, I find them of such an extremely trivial nature that I incline to hope the reader may derive as much amusement from them as I have done myself, and venture to give them the publicity here which I must refuse them in my book. The dates and signatures have, with the exception of Mrs. Newton's, been carefully erased, but I have collected that they were written by the two servants ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... the door of the house opened and a trim looking maid appeared and greeted the chauffeur familiarly as "Heinie". He replied by a wink and a series of movements with his eyebrows which threw the maid into a spasm of amusement. Then he started the limousine, with the Glow-worm still in tow, around the side of the house, presumably toward the garage, although from where we stood we saw no building. The maid held the door open for us and we stepped into an entry ...
— The Campfire Girls Go Motoring • Hildegard G. Frey
... understanding of the law, but the darkness hid his face, so his amusement was lost to the small sister ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown
... Left to his own devices he would have us smoke his particular brands, drink his labels, eat his selections, wear his kind of a cravat, overcoat, cap, hat, shoes, and underwear. And to make his proposition sound business like he would willingly pay the bills! In this little amusement we are supposed to play the part of receiver and ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... general inferiority to which he feels that he must submit. But this would be to encourage idleness and unmanly despair. Further, it is the language of men who speak of what they do not understand; who talk of Poetry as of a matter of amusement and idle pleasure; who will converse with us as gravely about a taste for Poetry, as they express it, as if it were a thing as indifferent as a taste for rope-dancing, or Frontiniac or Sherry. Aristotle, I have been told, has said, that Poetry is the most philosophic ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... that you have an interest in this remarkable mine, Mr. Whitcomb?" Parkinson inquired, a tinge of amusement in his tone. ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour
... glad that the darkness hid his smile of amusement. He knew The Oskaloosa Kid well, and he knew him as an ex-pug with a pock marked face, a bullet head, and a tin ear. The flash of lightning had revealed, upon the contrary, a slender boy with smooth skin, an oval face, and ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... hour, Alban was free to smoke his pipe, and to linger among trees and flower-beds before he returned to his hot little rooms in the village. As a relief to the drudgery of teaching the young ladies, he had been using his pencil, when the day's lessons were over, for his own amusement. It was past ten o'clock before he lighted his pipe, and began walking slowly to and fro on the path which led to the summer-house, at the southern limit of ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... ground that it was he (Roux), and not Prinsloo, that was Commander-in-Chief. One can hardly believe that he really thought it possible thus to nullify Prinsloo's act. But he certainly behaved as if he did, and his ingenuous conduct must have afforded much amusement to the ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet
... have been prolonged, to the Tartars' great amusement, had not a serious accident put an end to it. On the 10th of September the blind horse ran away, and made straight for a pit, some thirty or forty feet deep, at the side ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... extensive research is being carried on is sufficiently convincing. Italian soldiers and Arabs do not form huge earthworks in the desert for amusement," said Fenshawe. ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... children. I meant to be a fine laundress, and he was to continue with his trade as a hatter. We might have been very happy. But, you see, Lantier is extravagant; he likes expensive things and thinks of his amusement before anything else. He is not good for ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... winter. So we continued our journey until we reached a scanty meadow. Here I had my choice either to walk about for two hours, or to sit down upon the wet grass. I could find nothing better to do than to turn my back upon the wind and rain, to remain standing on one spot, to have patience, and for amusement to observe the direction in which the clouds scudded by. At the same time I discussed my frugal meal, more for want of something to do than from hunger; if I felt thirsty, I had only to turn round ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... depending upon her. To prepare herself for a like struggle with the world, a struggle which in all likelihood she would be obliged to make single-handed, she studied earnestly. Books acquired new value in her eyes. She read no longer for passing amusement, but to strengthen and cultivate her mind for future work. It cannot be doubted that under any circumstances she would, in the course of a few years, have become conscious of her power and the necessity to exercise it. But to Fanny Blood belongs ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... bread into a saucer for it and the kitten ate ravenously, almost upsetting the saucer in its eagerness, much to the amusement of the two children, who stood by watching ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... than it ever was. I appreciate its attractions more than I have done upon previous visits; but one must be exceptionally strong who can persist in leading an earnest and useful life here, where so much exists to persuade one that after all amusement is the principal thing to be sought for. Most of the American residents seem to me to sink naturally to the level of thinking most—or certainly talking most—of the newest opera, or even the best ballet, or where is to be found the best table d'hote; but, after all, ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... arises, whether we have any reason to suppose that allowing games in the open air on Sundays, or even providing the means of amusement for the humbler classes of society on that day, would be hurtful and injurious to the character ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... streets and broad avenues lined with the dwellings of a contented and thrifty people. The business blocks and hotels, the printing houses and railway and steamship offices, the stores and art galleries, the places of amusement and lecture halls, the stores and shops, the homes and the churches, fill all the spaces between those hills in a compact manner and run around them and stretch beyond them, and at your feet, as ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey
... orator, poet, pamphleteer, he had genius for all things, and was eminent in all. He was even famous for his dancing, and had composed an intelligent and philosophical treatise upon the value of that amusement, as an agent of civilisation, and as a counteractor of the grosser pleasures of the table to which Upper and Nether Germans were ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... during his visits. Then he saw his Jane in environments that made him a little anxious about the future. Surrounded by luxury, a belle and favorite in society, a constant participator in all kinds of amusement and the recipient of much attention, how would she like to settle down to the exact monotony ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... beside her and surveyed her with amusement. "Been digging holes with your head?" he asked affably. "Your hair and eyelashes look it. ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... sense—a town. It must, on the contrary, have been simply a place of common assembly, containing the seat of justice and the common sanctuary of the canton, where the members of the canton met every eighth day for purposes of intercourse and amusement, and where, in case of war, they obtained for themselves and their cattle a safer shelter from the invading enemy than in the villages: in ordinary circumstances this place of meeting was not at all or but scantily inhabited. Ancient places of ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... Rochefoucauld's correspondence throws little light on the character and person of its author at the time of his intellectual and moral conversion, we turn with satisfaction to a document which owes its existence to a social amusement, almost to a "parlour game." We have seen that La Grande Mademoiselle, anxious to amuse the friends whom she gathered round her in her salon at the Luxembourg, hit upon the notion of inducing her ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... that we were about to have a difference over a small thing—over a small thing with brown eyes. He could even stand inspecting me with a mildly amused glance, and I might have forgiven his mildness, I suppose, if it had been without amusement, and that amusement in some way at my expense. He even managed to laugh as I stood there staring at him. It was neither an honest nor a natural laugh. It merely gave me the feeling that he was trying to entrench himself behind a raw mound of mirth, ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... felt that though there was plenty of amusement to be got out of this line, it was one that I should have to leave sooner or later; I therefore left it at once for the view that machines were limbs which we had made, and carried outside our bodies ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... gets compensation for damage, and the hen-wife is paid for her stolen chickens by the hunt, The keeper is required to look after the game, and at the same time to spare his chief enemy, the fox. Indeed, the keeper's state of mind with regard to foxes has always been a source of amusement to me, and by long practice I am able to talk to him on that delicate subject in a way to make him uncomfortable and self-contradictory. There are various, quite innocent questions which the student of wild life may put to a keeper about foxes which have a disturbing effect on his brain. ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... am unwell, but this I do not write to my parents. Everybody asks what is the matter with me. I should like to answer that I have lost my good spirits. However, you know best what troubles me! Although there is no lack of entertainment and diversion here, I rarely feel inclined for amusement. ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... results of her enterprise and amusement, Pocahontas had no mind to be brought into her home as a captive, even though it be half in jest. Her father might not consider it so amusing and, moreover, she did not like to be outwitted. She was so busy thinking that she forgot to continue her game and walked quietly ahead, keeping ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... without much literary merit, but well calculated to dazzle the eye of a youth of fifteen. Not only had I never seen anything so grand, but I had never seen anything of the kind. I had never been in a theater, or even a concert room, or seen any form of public amusement. It was much the same with "Davy" McCargo, "Harry" Oliver, and "Bob" Pitcairn. We all fell under the fascination of the footlights, and every opportunity to attend the ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... and, if they last long enough, they affect the sense and the standards of modesty and propriety. Fashions of banking and trading affect standards of honesty, or definitions of cheating and gambling. Public shows, dances, punishments, and executions affect, in time, standards of decency, taste in amusement, sentiments of humanity, views as to what is interesting and attractive. Methods of argument which are fashionable may train people to flippancy, sophistry, levity of mind, and may destroy the power to think and reason correctly. Scherr[409] says that fashion served as a means to transfer to ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... history, and may serve at once to vary and to illustrate the moral lessons, which I would willingly consider as the most important part of my plan; although I am sensible how short these will fall of their aim, if I shall be found unable to mix them with amusement,—a task not quite so easy in this critical generation as it ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... back to Grimbal's Farm chuckling to himself, though he did not betray the cause of his amusement to anybody. He hunted out a hamper and packed it with cups and saucers, a methylated spirit-lamp, and other picnic requisites. On his way to the quay he stopped at the confectioner's and bought cakes and fancy biscuits. He placed these comestibles ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... you've annexed his private file, and I guess it's important or he wouldn't have been so mighty set on steeple-chasing over those roofs. I haven't done such a thing since I broke into neighbour Brown's woodshed to steal his tame 'possum, and that's forty years back. It's the first piece of genooine amusement I've struck in this game, and I haven't laughed so much since old Jim Hooker told the tale of "Cousin Sally Dillard" when we were hunting ducks in Michigan and his wife's brother had an apoplexy in the night and ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... jest of Richie Moniplies going behind the arras to get an opportunity of teasing Heriot, was a pleasantry such as James might be supposed to approve of. It was customary for those who knew his humour to contrive jests of this kind for his amusement. The celebrated Archie Armstrong, and another jester called Drummond, mounted on other people's backs, used to charge each other like knights in the tilt-yard, to the monarch's great amusement. The following is an instance of the same kind, ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... afternoons a week. Incidentally I may mention that his presence caused me a difficulty with the Comptroller, who refused to audit a bill I put in for a wrestling-mat, explaining that I could have a billiard-table, billiards being recognized as a proper Gubernatorial amusement, but that a wrestling-mat symbolized something unusual and unheard of and could not be permitted. The middleweight champion was of course so much better than I was that he could not only take care of himself but of me too and see that I was not hurt—for wrestling ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... hasten to the London Institution, Expecting some amusement in our inartistic way, And little did we reckon on the awful retribution Which Mr. HENRY BLACKBURN had in store for us ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, February 18, 1893 • Various
... to go everywhere with Aunt Susan,—she who so disliked anything savoring of the conspicuous. She could hear the sneers and laughter of Estelle Mason's set of girls and could see their looks of amusement. At first she rebelled, but the dislike of offending her grandmother and fear of disobeying her mother made her meekly submit, and ...
— How Ethel Hollister Became a Campfire Girl • Irene Elliott Benson
... different shops, etc. To-morrow I am to dine at Monsieur Grand's; but I have really felt so happy within doors, and am so pleasingly situated, that I have had little inclination to change the scene. I have not been to one public amusement as yet, not even the opera, though we have ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... although, even as a former member of the Eureka Mining Company, I was not conscious of retaining any sense of injury, yet the whole occurrence flashed back upon me with awkward distinctness. To my relief, however, he greeted me with his old cordiality; to my amusement he added to it a suggestion of the large forgiveness of conscious rectitude and amiable toleration. I thought, however, I detected, as he glanced at the paper which was still in my hand and then back ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... minds of the young directed at such seasons, not only to the truths of religion in general, but the more attractive parts of Scripture in particular, seems highly important. By a happy combination of amusement and instruction, piety is divested of her formality, and clothed with fascination: the ear is caught, and the heart gained; while the narrative interests, the best lessons become impressed even upon the gay and the trifling; and he who, when ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... Botany Bay divide the hair into small parcels, each of which they mat together with gum, and form them into lengths like the thrums of a mop. On particular occasions they ornament themselves with red and white clay, using the former when preparing to fight, the latter for the more peaceful amusement of dancing. The fashion of these ornaments was left to each person's taste; and some, when decorated in their best manner, looked perfectly horrible. Nothing could appear more terrible than a black and dismal face, with a large white circle drawn round ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... little Bella was unusually fractious with some slight childish indisposition, and Sylvia was obliged to have recourse to a never-failing piece of amusement; namely, to take the child into the shop, when the number of new, bright-coloured articles was sure to beguile the little girl out of her fretfulness. She was walking along the high terrace of the counter, kept steady by her ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... behind the rest. The fear entertained was that of having the 'famine of the farm' (gort a bhaile), in the shape of an imaginary old woman (cailleach), to feed till next harvest. Much emulation and amusement arose from the fear of this old woman. . . . The first done made a doll of some blades of corn, which was called the 'old wife,' and sent it to his nearest neighbour. He in turn, when ready, passed it to another still less expeditious, and the person it last remained ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... however, many sources of amusement open to the voyagers. They were near the coast and supplied with everything that could render their life comfortable in that latitude. They could take sleigh-rides and see in the distance the whales enjoying their diversions. The summer solstice was approaching. ...
— The Waif of the "Cynthia" • Andre Laurie and Jules Verne
... Number?"—"Can you read?" "A little." The barest suggestion of amusement in his voice caused me to look up quickly. "My library," he said, with the ghost of a weird smile, nodding his head slightly toward an unpainted shelf made of pieces of dynamite boxes, "Mine and my room-mates." The shelf was filled with four—REAL Barcelona paper editions of Hegel, Fichte, ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... offerings are addressed. The "ka" needs food, and regular gifts are made to it of all it can require; it needs guidance and instruction, and these can be conveyed to it by pictures and writings on the walls of the tomb or in the mummy-case; even its amusement and its need of society and of ministration can be to some extent met in this way. It is not peculiar to Egypt that the advantages of wealth and rank are continued after death, and that the rich can do much more, or cause much more to be done for his eternal welfare, ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... eyed him from head to foot with a grim smile that changed to a whole-hearted laugh of amusement. ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... the opportunity to say something to them about the arrangements in the new church. Among other things I suggested that they should sit together in families instead of the men on one side and the women on the other, as had been their custom. The proposal was well received and caused some amusement Shesheet said humorously that he would consider it a great privilege to be allowed to sit by his wife. Just as we were coming away the old Chief's wife, Mrs. Chief as we used to call her, came running after Mrs. Wilson ...
— Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians • Edward Francis Wilson
... chance of being happy: In connection with Huxley's work on the London School Board, his biographer says that Huxley did not regard "intellectual training only from the utilitarian point of view; he insisted, e. g., on the value of reading for amusement as one of the most valuable uses ...
— Autobiography and Selected Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... he repeated Thorvald's question. "No answer, sir." He gave the traditional reply of the Service recruit. And a little to his surprise Thorvald laughed with a tinge of real amusement. ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... in the water is a favorite amusement. She even imitates with the soles of her feet the peculiar, resonant sound that the beaver makes with her large, flat tail upon the surface of the water. She is a graceful swimmer, keeping the feet together and waving them backward and forward like the tail ...
— Indian Child Life • Charles A. Eastman
... then, and her grey eyes were so full of amusement that, incredulous as he usually was as to other people's statements, he knew that ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... and the St. Cecilia I have just used up. I'm a team in my way, you see;—run all these fashionable oppositions right into bankruptcy." Never were words spoken with more truth. Want of patronage found all places of rational amusement closed. Societies for intellectual improvement, one after another, died of poverty. Fashionable lectures had attendance only when fashionable lecturers came from the North; and the Northman was sure to regard our taste through ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... puts in the Chaplain, bending over him with half-poised fist, yet with a kind of half-amusement in his features, "don't you know that the Tall young Man, as you call him, is the poor English lad who saved your worthless little carcass from drowning this morning, and whom you offered to recompense ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... needless for me to recount here the life of busy activity that falls to a Spy in wartime. It was necessary for me to be here, there and everywhere, visiting all the best hotels, watering-places, summer resorts, theatres, and places of amusement. It was necessary, moreover, to act with the utmost caution and to assume an air of careless indolence in order to lull suspicion asleep. With this end in view I made a practice of never rising till ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock
... knights from every part of Europe have perished at different times while attending or taking part in those mimic battles. Successive popes thundered out their anathemas against all that encouraged this warlike and dangerous amusement. Those who perished in these sanguinary entertainments were denied the honour of Christian burial; and yet, so strong was the passion of the nobility of Europe for these martial sports, from a desire to display their grandeur, courage, and ...
— The Manual of Heraldry; Fifth Edition • Anonymous
... tunic, crammed his bombastian buskins, filled his hair full, and finally stuffed his mouth, so that, as he passed out, he could only wink his fat red eyes and bob to Croesus, who, when he had laughed till his sides ached, repaid his funny, but voracious guest for the amusement he had afforded him by not only confirming the gift of gold, but conferring an equal amount in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... afternoon, entertained the Governor at dinner, who declared that he could never get so good a meal in his own quarters. "Strap me, no!" I exclaimed: "and, were it not that our food was excellent, who would stay at Newgate?" For I confess that, although there are pleasure-gardens, and every sort of amusement and comfort, Newgate, at times, is decidedly damp. Then I raised a glass of punch to my lips, and wished him the same luck that I myself enjoyed. "And that I had!" quoth he. "Would I were prisoner instead of Governor. But it would not be meet. I am not a man of sufficient quality!" ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, Sept. 27, 1890 • Various
... afraid that, this might lead him to suffer such a fate as did Cinna. Therefore he issued a statement making known this fact; he was tribune at the time. For this he became the subject of much idle amusement and laughter. The uncertainty of life, however, was evidenced by the very fact that Lucius Philuscius, who had previously been proscribed by Sulla and had escaped, had his name now inscribed again ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. III • Cassius Dio
... by the next steamer, the Panama, which was long overdue. It was a favorite amusement in those days for the boys of San Francisco to go upon the hill and watch for her coming. The 4th of June they were rewarded by the sight of her. As she came into harbor a large part of the population hurried to the wharf, eager to learn the action of Congress. ...
— History of California • Helen Elliott Bandini
... that he could find occasion to be bored so soon after what had happened; but he no longer wished to occupy his mind by brooding over anything so disagreeable and wanted some sort of amusement to divert and entertain him. Vandover had so accustomed himself to that kind of self-indulgence that he could not go long without it. It had become a simple necessity for him to be amused, and just now he thought himself justified in seeking it in order to forget about ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... kind of sparring went on, to the great amusement of all parties; meanwhile, the ladies employed themselves in running up milliner's bills, and their papas employed themselves in discharging them. My father was particularly liberal to Emily in the articles of plate and jewellery, and Mr Somerville equally kind to Clara. Emily ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... to his feet. There was no anger in his face—only a huge amusement. Rose-Marie, watching his expression, knew all at once that nothing she said would have the slightest effect upon him. His sensibilities were too well concealed, beneath a tough veneer of conceit, to be wounded. His soul seemed too ...
— The Island of Faith • Margaret E. Sangster
... for its publication, although vital strength was wanting to finish a work so happily begun and so well designed. PREFACE THERE would not, perhaps, be a more pleasant or profitable study, among those which have their principal end in amusement, than that of travels or voyages, if they were wrote as they might be and ought to be, with a joint view to the entertainment and information of mankind. If the conversation of travelers be so eagerly sought after as it is, ...
— Journal of A Voyage to Lisbon • Henry Fielding
... classes are designated. The national government turns over to the various municipalities a portion of the impost on spirits and grants educational subventions to several municipalities for their primary schools. Minor sources of revenue are taxes on lotteries and raffles, vehicle licenses, amusement permits, cockpits, etc. Two towns, Santo Domingo and Santiago, have municipal lotteries. Under all these taxes a man might own scores of houses and great expanses of land without paying towards the maintenance of the state and municipality more than ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... studious men who take an intellectual interest in speculation for its own sake, the intelligence and sentiments of the whole people are given up to the material interests, and when these are provided for, to the amusement and ornamentation of private life. But to say this is to say, if the whole testimony of history is worth any thing, that the era of national decline has arrived; that is, if the nation had ever attained any thing to decline ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill
... the grass-plot and shouted with laughter, all his sympathy for Ben lost in his amusement at ...
— Harper's Young People, July 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... his marriage, visited many, if not all, parts of Scotland; knew high and low, rich and poor, with the amiable interest of his temperament and the keen observation of his genius; took part in business and amusement and conviviality (he accuses himself later of having been not quite free from the prevalent peccadillo of rather deep drinking); and still and always read. He joined the 'Speculative Society' in January 1791, ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... of them; but at last they catch him alone, each in turn threatens him with sore visitings, and then follows the direction, "Here somebody must cast fire to Iniquity"; who probably had some fireworks about his person, to explode for the amusement of the audience, ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... unfortunates, feelings of pity, disgust or amusement may be aroused, but one moment's reflection would convince us that these afflicted homeless creatures manage to exist and extort an ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... not far below. Most of New York's structures have a number of residential levels at the top, then a floor of retail stores, and below that amusement ...
— When the Sleepers Woke • Arthur Leo Zagat
... in their behaviour was as unconscious as their daily speech or fashion of eating their food—some instinct inherited, perhaps, from the days when the gentleman with the biggest muscles extracted for his daily amusement the teeth and nails of ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... To my amusement, Fibsy and Ruth were holding a tete-a-tete conversation. The kind-hearted woman had, doubtless, felt sorry for the boy's shyness, and had drawn him into chat to ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... from scrofa, "a burrowing pig," signifying the radical destruction of important glands in the body by this undermining constitutional disease. Possibly the quaint lines which nurses have long been given to repeat for the amusement of babies while fondling their infantine fingers bear a hidden meaning which pointedly imports the scrofulous taint. This nursery distich, as we remember, personates the fingers one by one as five little fabulous pigs:—the first small piggy ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... the diary of our choleric and corpulent colonel. If ever the assurance, which seems to be regarded as indispensable in the preface to works of this class, that the author "wrote the following pages purely for his own amusement," bore the stamp of unequivocal truth, it is in the present instance; and, notwithstanding the asseverations of Mr Colburn and his literary employes, it is difficult to conceive that any revision whatever can have been bestowed on the rough notes of the writer, since they ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... tea came round there were no nice young ladies to ask us if we took sugar and milk, and how many pieces of sugar; to our great amusement the tea was poured into our cups from large tin kettles carried by men who from their solemn countenances appeared fitting representatives of "Caledonia stern and wild." We thought this method a good one from the labour-saving point of view, and it was certainly ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... to be deprived of such an amusement, and they hammered away furiously wherever they could get a chance. Unable to make any impression upon them Miss Elizabeth turned fiercely upon poor Jem and said in a voice that admitted no compromise, "Take it down, I can't ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various
... cannot conceive in these days of perfect pictures. The cowpunchers were not worrying about attack, for they had outposts on duty who could warn them of the advance of the enemy in plenty of time. The amusement of the camera was a fine thing with which to ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... did the girl arise, but quickly, and the newcomer stood between them, a little amusement and some defiance struggling with the ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... books like this—the "Disquisitiones Magicae" of Delrio, the "Demonomanie" of Bodin, the "Malleus Maleficarum" of Sprengel, and the like, are at no time to be regarded merely as subjects of amusement; they have their philosophical value; they have a still greater historical value; and they show how far even upright minds may be warped by imperfect education, and slavish deference ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... Governor's office, she noticed with some amusement that the urchin at the door wrote on the card, under her name, "Nature of business: permission to have a consort." (This was indeed to ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... Jonas agreed politely. Five hundred miles away Claerten chuckled, and the linkage of minds transmitted the amusement ...
— Wizard • Laurence Mark Janifer (AKA Larry M. Harris)
... lies were brought up against me. Many things which had been said and done in moments of amusement and jocularity were remembered, as though I had said and done those things for wicked purposes. Everything that could be discovered or invented to injure me was laid to my charge. All who were against me had a ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... Louis XIV. and his obsequious Court; and in the first years of the eighteenth century a noble English lady, whom we have already mentioned, did in like manner devote no small portion of her time to recording, for the amusement and information of her daughter, her sister, and her other friends at home, the various scenes and occurrences that came under her own notice in the foreign countries in which for many years her lot was ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... Mr. Sherwood had purchased three blank books, and a double slate, for which Lawry, agreeably to the arrangement that nothing more should be forced upon him, paid the cash on the spot, to the great amusement of the ladies. The memoranda of each trip, including the time of arrival and departure, and of reaching or passing the principal points on the lake, were to be entered on the slate in the wheel-house, and afterward copied into the largest of the blank books. These were called the ...
— Haste and Waste • Oliver Optic
... not fail to remark the slight frost which had fallen on her manner and her polite and distant tone towards their guest. Well aware of the cause, and too old to be annoyed, it only gave him a little secret amusement. He had warned the girl, and that was enough. The little chill would pass off in time, ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... He found her upon his arrival in England more human than Hatteras' conversation had led him to expect, and she proved to him that she was a nice girl. For she listened for hours to him lecturing her on the proper way to treat Dick without the slightest irritation and with only a faintly visible amusement. Besides she insisted on returning with her husband to Bonny river, which was a sufficiently ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... observatory. This decision caused immense trouble and expense, but in the end it was justified, for the magnetic observations taken on board throughout the voyage [Page 25] required very little correction. And if the demands of the magnetic experts were a little exacting, some amusement was also derived from them. At one time those who lived within the circle were threatened with the necessity of shaving with brass razors; and when the ship was on her way home from New Zealand a parrot fell ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... Donald and Gum started from San Francisco by an early train on their way to Silver Creek. The appearance of the monkey in the railway carriage created much amusement among the passengers, and Donald had to stand a running-fire of questions as to whether it belonged to his great-grandfather or to a barrel-organ. The fun was stopped in a little while by the entrance of the conductor, who demanded ...
— The Monkey That Would Not Kill • Henry Drummond
... all the witty things that one man can say may be numbered on one's fingers. It was through his humour that Wilde reigned supreme. It was his humour that lent his talk its singular attraction. He was the only man I have ever met or heard of who could keep one smiling with amusement hour after hour. True, much of the humour was merely verbal, but it was always gay and genial: summer-lightning humour, I used to call it, unexpected, dazzling, full ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... amazement, question, relief struggled over her sensitive face, and finally melted into irrepressible mirth under the fine amusement of his regard. ...
— The Flying Mercury • Eleanor M. Ingram
... the tastes of a typical country gentleman, and he found ample leisure to indulge in his favourite amusement of hunting, after having ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... one day in the drawing-room at a game they had invented for their own amusement. The younger had bandaged his elder brother's eyes, and made him guess the objects he touched, and when the latter happened to guess right, they changed places. This simple game suggested to me the most complicated idea that ever crossed ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... and made us hope that not only our necessities might be there fully relieved and our diseased recovered, but that amidst those pleasing scenes which were then in view, we might procure ourselves some amusement and relaxation after the numerous fatigues ...
— Anson's Voyage Round the World - The Text Reduced • Richard Walter
... was; and just inside of it Lyster stood watching, with a certain vexation, a game of cards played there. The doctor had withdrawn, and was looking with amusement at the two players—'Tana and Captain Leek. The captain was getting the worst of it. His scattered whiskers fairly bristled with perplexity and irritation. Several times he displayed bad judgment in drawing and discarding, because of his ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... Cynic. "Popular education has done it. Fifty years ago thinking and reading went together. But nowadays reading is the most familiar amusement of the thoughtless. It is the new public that buys four hundred thousand copies of a novel in ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... all in vain; I perceive that you and I shall never see Emile with the same eyes; you will always fancy him like your own young people, hasty, impetuous, flighty, wandering from fete to fete, from amusement to amusement, never able to settle to anything. You smile when I expect to make a thinker, a philosopher, a young theologian, of an ardent, lively, eager, and fiery young man, at the most impulsive period of youth. This dreamer, you say, is always in pursuit of his fancy; when ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... discovered another amusement. The other evening he suddenly commanded me to "draw a head" on a piece of paper ...
— Harper's Young People, March 30, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... world; and (2) in what they did in response to these beliefs. The former was their creeds, the latter their cults or worships. In these worships, social organization, religious dramas and paraphernalia, amusement and gambling, and private religion or fetichism, found place. In order to obtain an intelligent grasp of the religion of tribes in their several culture provinces, it must be understood: (1) That the form of belief called animism by Tylor (more correctly ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... passed, and our fears are almost laid. Antiochus and the princes have been seen as usual frequenting the more public streets, lounging in the Portico, or at the places of amusement. And the evenings have been devoted to gayety and pleasure—Sandarion himself, and the officers of his legion, being frequent visiters at the palace of Antiochus, and at that of the Caesars, lately the ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... letters, journalists, and the habitues of the house supped there when they pleased. After supper they gambled. More than one member of both Chambers came there to buy what Paris pays for by its weight in gold,—namely, the amusement of intercourse with anomalous untrammelled women, those meteors of the Parisian firmament who are so difficult to class. There wit reigns; for all can be said, and all is said. Carabine, a rival of the no less celebrated Malaga, had finally inherited ...
— Unconscious Comedians • Honore de Balzac
... moral courage to face responsibility. Magruder had commanded the Confederate troops at Yorktown which opposed M'Clellan's advance. He told me the different dodges he had resorted to, to blind and deceive the latter as to his (Magruder's) strength; and he spoke of the intense relief and amusement with which he had at length seen M'Clellan with his magnified army begin to break ground before miserable earthworks, defended only by 8000 men. Hooker was in his regiment, and was "essentially a mean man ...
— Three Months in the Southern States, April-June 1863 • Arthur J. L. (Lieut.-Col.) Fremantle
... and the physical activity; the well-cultured fields, the beautiful lawns, the gardens brilliant and fragrant with flowers, the neatly arranged rooms, the books, the pictures and the various means of study, amusement and exercise: and around all, the gentle and loving spirit of Dawn, hovering like a halo of heavenly protection, combined to form a scene which no one could fail to admire. It taught one lesson to all, and that was: make children useful and you ...
— Dawn • Mrs. Harriet A. Adams
... interesting amusement known as the Tombola is nothing more than the game of Loto, or Lotto, 'Brobdignagified,' and played in the open air of the Papal States, in Rome on Sundays, and in the Campagna on certain saints' days, come they ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... only—a foolish choice undoubtedly, but still arguing great range of resources in Plutarch, that he should be thought of after so many myriads of modern books had widened the range of selection. Meantime, the reader is not to forget that, whatever may be his powers of amusement, a more inaccurate or faithless author as to dates, and, indeed, in all matters of research, does not exist than Plutarch. We make it a rule, whenever we see Plut. at the bottom of a dictionary article, as the ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... his services and to do him honour, and that in this Holy Land he respected persons of all religions. He directed his soldiers to skirmish up and down the sides of the mountain, charging and retreating for our amusement. The Cadi (Judge) and his son also joined our party, paying Sir Moses and Lady ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... whether it be so close at hand," answered the Old Year, gravely smiling. "You will soon grow weary of looking for that blessed consummation, and will turn for amusement (as has frequently been my own practice) to the affairs of some sober little city, like this of Salem. Here we sit on the steps of the new City Hall, which has been completed under my administration; and it would make you laugh to see how the ...
— The Sister Years (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... took a pair of pistols out of a box; one was given to Von Koren and one to Laevsky, and then there followed a difficulty which afforded a brief amusement to the zoologist and the seconds. It appeared that of all the people present not one had ever in his life been at a duel, and no one knew precisely how they ought to stand, and what the seconds ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... the money?" cried Harry, his face lighting up, his interest in the outcome outweighing his amusement over Gadgem's ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... the world of letters as those of Hamerton and Higginson have been added to the list which contains those of "Peter Parley," Jacob Abbott, "Walter Aimwell," Elijah Kellogg, Thomas Hughes, and others who have devoted their talents, not to the amusement, but to the instruction and culture of youth. The names of some of the most popular writers for young people in our day are not ranked with those mentioned above, not because their productions are positively injurious, but because they lack the positively good qualities ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... all, nothing but an old, old woman. Perhaps, he reflected, in a wave of regret, he should have realized this and made allowance for it. Then a reaction from his tense emotion swept over him, and he thought with amusement how angry she would be should she suddenly regain consciousness and find herself within ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... the vast audience which, till now, had maintained an amazed stillness, there began to sound little bursts of laughter—followed by a spluttering streak of hisses which were drowned in increasing shouts of amusement. The thing was really too absurd for ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... on, in the indefinite future. He patiently awaited the time for his marriage, forgetful of the bride, and dreaming of the new position he would then enjoy. He would leave his office, he would paint for amusement, and saunter about hither and thither. These hopes brought him night after night, to the shop in the arcade, in spite of the vague discomfort he experienced ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... how to praise a scientific execution, or to manifest disgust at simple melody. But, her importance in the world of fashion, and her friend Maria, obtained her a place. There was a reason that secretly influenced Charlotte in electing her evening's amusement, that was not known, however, even to her friend.—George Morton played on the German flute in a manner that vibrated on her nerves with an exquisite thrill that she often strove to conquer, and yet ever loved to indulge. His musical powers were far from ...
— Tales for Fifteen: or, Imagination and Heart • James Fenimore Cooper
... completely blackballed—a general spite having been taken to him in the town-hall, on account of having led the magistracy wrong, by doing what he ought to have let alone, thereby making himself and the rest a topic of amusement to the world at large, for many and many ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... scoutmaster was laughing heartily but with the greatest good humor. Pee-wee continued bravely, to the great amusement of ...
— Pee-wee Harris • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... him, and Hortensius Martius appeared just then so like a naughty child, that the look of harshness died out of the praefect's eyes, and a smile almost of amusement, certainly of indulgence, lit up for a moment the ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... that Thierry, 'the earliest of the three great French historians' (Guizot and Michelet are the two others), ascribed his interest in his subject to Ivanhoe.[631] Englishmen read Ivanhoe simply for amusement. Frenchmen could see that it threw a light upon history, or at least suggested a great historical problem. Scott, it is often said, was the first person to teach us that our ancestors were once as much alive ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume II (of 3) - James Mill • Leslie Stephen
... flavour; but what is yet stranger, whoever ascends it, sees many wonderful objects. If to-day, going to visit this orchard, we gather dates from this tree, and also see the wonders of it, it will not be unproductive of amusement." In short, she so worked upon her husband with flattering speeches and caresses, that nolens volens he went to the orchard, and at the instigation of his wife, ascended the tree. At this instant she beckoned to the bramin, who was previously seated, expectantly, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... it, before I arrived at Maule's creek; and I endeavoured, for a considerable time, to pass two gentlemen in a gig, and wearing veils, who were driving a lot of mares before them, and who seemed to derive amusement from making their mares keep pace with my ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... fine, last-season's dress, with the usual up-to-date hat on her scanty drab hair, and the twinkle of amusement at the continuous entertainment that life afforded her, was looking so well that Patricia voiced her wonder that she should have come to town for doctoring, as ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... the look of amusement deepening in his gray eyes. "And a moment ago it was all wrong. ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... satisfactory to note that in practically all cases—whether our own naval facilities provided reading, writing, and amusement facilities for the personnel or not—the Y.M.C.A. was in evidence. Their arrangements were, in many places, all that could be expected in the way of cheerful and comfortable quarters; and, in those places where the facilities were not so good, inquiry usually revealed the fact that a suitable ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... lips and with an ominous glitter in her eyes. She took up the envelope which Garthorne had laid on the table, and tossed it at him. "You know me for what I am in London, and it seems that you only look upon me as an animal to be hired for the amusement of people like you, not as a woman who still has her notions of honour. That is an insult which I cannot pardon. You behaved well, as things go, to Carol, but you have now shown me that, whatever you are in ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... would be nothing to stop us till we got to Ghent or Brussels. This was the place to drive the wedge that would cut the German line in two, and once we had Lille we would endanger the whole German lines of communication north and south. It used to be a favourite amusement among the officers of our staff in the evenings to take the map of Western Europe, which we kept hanging on the wall, and plan campaigns to drive the Germans out of Flanders. Invariably two lines of advance would be chosen. The first via Lille and Ghent, to Antwerp, along the high ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... interesting incidents occurred on our return trip, which I shall not mention now, but having safely reached our newly conquered port of Ostend, we read to our amusement in a French paper that our U-boat had been sunk in the Channel by a fleet of six ...
— The Journal of Submarine Commander von Forstner • Georg-Guenther von Forstner
... down the decks. How sleepy I am! And as for you, the night steward, who is still on duty, lifts you in his arms and carries you into your bunk, where you'll find yourself when you do wake. It's only five—time for some more hours yet. Sleeping on deck is rather an overrated amusement I think! ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... covers she could find. She did not attempt to penetrate further into the house then, because she knew that Ephraim had bolted and barred the door leading thither. She had watched him do so with some amusement, early in the evening, and had playfully asked him if he expected any burglars. He had disdained to reply further than by shaking his wise old head, but had omitted no precaution because of ...
— Dorothy's House Party • Evelyn Raymond
... our repast, various subjects of speculation were again introduced and discussed, greatly to my amusement. Wigurd displayed his usual ingenuity and ardour, and baffled all his antagonists by his vehemence and fluency. He had two great principles by which he tested the good or evil of every thing; and there were few questions in which he could not avail himself of one ...
— A Voyage to the Moon • George Tucker
... be drawn. For all the reply Fenn's knocking produced, the house might have been empty. At last, having tired his wrist and collected a small crowd of Young Eckleton, who looked as if they expected him to proceed to further efforts for their amusement, he gave it up, and retired down the High Street with what dignity he could command—which, as he was followed for the first fifty yards by the silent but obviously expectant youths, was not ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... Miss Fiske visited the village of Degala. As it was a holiday, most of the women had gone out for amusement; but a little company of twelve praying ones gathered around her, and listened in tears while she spoke of Jesus and his love. Their fervent prayers for neighbors and friends made her feel that a blessing was yet in store ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary
... King! Great Prince, the royal pleasure-grounds have been put in order. Your Majesty can resort to them for exercise and amusement whenever ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... urban districts have been lighted; streets in need of improvement have been paved; the water, light and gas systems have been extended to negro quarters and play grounds and parks have been provided for their amusement. ...
— Negro Migration during the War • Emmett J. Scott
... else but a loafer," he concluded, "prize-fighting is nix. Opera, Mr. Perlmutter, that's an amusement for a gentleman." ...
— Potash & Perlmutter - Their Copartnership Ventures and Adventures • Montague Glass
... behold their strong Castle of Doune and their extensive possessions. This 'heading hill,' as it was sometimes termed, bears commonly the less terrible name of Hurly-hacket, from its having been the scene of a courtly amusement alluded to by Sir David Lindsay, who says of the pastimes in which ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... trump cards—Anthony—could not be produced until the arrival in Cairo of the troupe, and that even then, the name of Fenton must not be used as an attraction. Lark felt confident that I was a good enough card to make his hand worth playing, and in spite of the half contemptuous amusement with which I regarded the whole scheme, I couldn't help being "on my mettle." I found myself wanting to succeed, wanting to please the big, common man whom a few hours ago ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... There is a great difference in circuits. The two northern ones, with their vast populations and immense amount of work, are the bugbear of the puisne judge. The scenery of some of the other circuits is flat, and there is not much amusement going on in the assize towns. But the Southern combines several advantages. It is far from heavy as regards work, the country in many parts is beautiful, and the train-service between the county ...
— The Queen Against Owen • Allen Upward
... raised.—We see in every-day life that certain doings of princes or other men of high position who have no unfulfilled desires left have no reference to any extraneous purpose; but proceed from mere sportfulness, as, for instance, their recreations in places of amusement. We further see that the process of inhalation and exhalation is going on without reference to any extraneous purpose, merely following the law of its own nature. Analogously, the activity of the Lord also may be supposed to be mere sport, proceeding ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... summer people. If his association with them was a business rather than a social affair, it was, none the less, interesting. The occupation of Nantucket by "off-islanders" was a matter of infinite speculation and amusement. Into the serenity of his life came restless men and women who golfed and swam and rode and danced, who chafed when it rained, and complained of the fog, who seemed endlessly trying to get something out of life and who were endlessly bored, who ...
— The Trumpeter Swan • Temple Bailey
... hilarity of the company. No restraint, but of good manners—no excess of conventionalities—genuine, hearty good-humor and enjoyment, such as pleasant, hospitable people, with just enough of the French element to add zest to anything like amusement, could furnish, to make the entertainment agreeable. In a country so new, and where, in a social gathering, the number of the company was more important than the quality, the circle was ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... thronging to {these} fanciful rites, let us, whom Pallas, a better Deity, occupies, alleviate the useful toil of our hands with varying discourse; and let us relate by turns to our disengaged ears, for the general {amusement}, something each in our turn, that will not permit the time to seem long." They approve of what she says, and her sisters bid her to be the first to tell ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... that they requested to be allowed to proceed with us. These young barbarians, who went respectively by the names of "Nojoke" and "Scowl," as being the nearest approach in English to their Sisutu names, were the greatest possible source of amusement to us, with their curious ways.[*] I never saw such fellows to sleep; it is a positive fact that Nojoke used frequently to take his rest coiled up like a boa constrictor in a box at the end of the waggon, in which ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard
... that I would never make another deduction. Then Worth came and asked me—that night at Tait's. I might say now that I never will any more...." She broke off, storm in her eyes and in her voice as she finished, "But I suppose if he wanted me to again—I'd make a little fool of myself for his amusement just as I did this time and have done all these ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... gentle, frail little body also joined our circle, adding one more pair of eyes to those whose scrutiny must have been somewhat trying to the bride. To meet these blunt, forthright folk at such a table without betraying amusement or surprise, required tact, but the New Daughter succeeded in winning them all, even Mary, the cook, who ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... them, as they value the nobleness of their own lives, and their power of doing any real good, to beware of what seems to me the altogether extravagant and excessive love, and following after, of mere amusement which characterises this day to so large an extent. Better toil than such ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... so engrossed in a pleasure at hand, or in your work, that anything which interrupted was, under the circumstances, undesirable. You may have wanted very much to play with him, but some more pressing desire—to care well for your patient, or to continue the present amusement—was stronger. Or you forgot because you did not want to play with him and had no excuse to offer at the time. You wished to forget. Perhaps he does not play a good game, or you do not like him, or at least you like some one else much more, ...
— Applied Psychology for Nurses • Mary F. Porter
... Metatmorphosis, which for a while exposed him to her Majesty's resentment, yet he was afterwards received into favour. This (says Mrs. Cooper) is not added to the rest of his works, and therefore she supposes was only meant for a Court amusement, not the entertainment of the public, or the increase of his fame. In the reign of King James I. he was created Knight of the Bath[2], and presented a manuscript to Prince Henry, called a Brief View of the State of the Church of England, as it ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume I. • Theophilus Cibber
... this feeling came from the fact that his mission had to do with strangers, with rich people from a distant country who had come to his island for pleasure, and who were now suddenly involved in tragedy in the midst of their amusement. But also he had a certain sense of personal sympathy. He had known Hermione on her former visit to Sicily and had liked her; and though this time he had seen scarcely anything of her he had seen enough ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... of the East and Middle West are not strikingly sportive, perhaps the reason is that they are impassioned theater-goers; they could not well be both, at any rate without neglecting the financial pursuits which are their chief real amusement and hobby. I mention the theaters in connection with sports, rather than in connection with the arts, because the American drama is more closely related to sporting diversions than to dramatic art. If this seems a hard saying, I will add that I am ready ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... were read by him, as other young persons peruse romances or novels, only from a puerile desire of amusement; for he had so little veneration for them, even while he studied them with most eagerness, that he often diverted his parents with recounting their ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... first time since her arrival Epimetheus had gone out without asking Pandora to accompany him. He went to gather figs and grapes for himself, or to seek whatever amusement he could find in other society than his little playfellow's. He was tired to death of hearing about the box, and heartily wished that Quicksilver, or whatever was the messenger's name, had left ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... said. "I am sure you are a good and cheerful friend to say so. Nevertheless, I have been worried and restless and this afternoon I long for amusement. Can't we do something queer and ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... he stares at her, his astonishment changes to amusement; he chuckles to himself, then bursts out laughing, as in ...
— The Faith Healer - A Play in Three Acts • William Vaughn Moody
... add, many of them gamble and drink. But I cannot do any of these things. I cannot forget what I am here for. I cannot forget that I am training to kill men. Never do I forget that soon I will face death. What a terrible, strange, vague thrill that sends shivering over me! Amusement and forgetfulness are past for Kurt Dorn. I am concerned with my soul. I am fighting that black passion which makes of me a sleepless watcher ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... and see no more. We play ecarte with Monsieur de Trefle every night; but what know we of the heart of the man—of the inward ways, thoughts, and customs of Trefle? If we have good legs, and love the amusement, we dance with Countess Flicflac, Tuesday's and Thursdays, ever since the Peace; and how far are we advanced in acquaintance with her since we first twirled her round a room? We know her velvet gown, and her diamonds (about three-fourths of them are sham, by the ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... said Cassy, coolly; "they are all out after the hunt,—that's the amusement of the evening! We'll go up stairs, by and by. Meanwhile," said she, deliberately taking a key from the pocket of a coat that Legree had thrown down in his hurry, "meanwhile I shall take something to pay ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... quiet smile. He had read the financial workings of the bookseller's mind with infinite amusement and decided to see more of him. "What can ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... had ridden away as the early evening shadows were falling and, to pass the time until the hour for seeking their bunks, the boy ranchers sought some amusement. Shooting at a mark was one form, and Nort and Dick were endeavoring to become as expert as their western cousin in the use ...
— The Boy Ranchers on the Trail • Willard F. Baker
... in a succession of caves formed of ice, with the thermometer at zero, would naturally strike one as a somewhat chilling amusement. Gardiner did not find it so. He was quite protected from the wind, which gives so much pungency to bitter cold, rendering it insupportable. Completely protected from this, and warmed by the exertion of clambering among the cakes. Roswell's blood was soon in a healthful glow; and, ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... "Queer amusement! and then the guillotine at the end of it!" He had visions of the scaffold, and ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... family of wood inlayers were the del Tasso, who came from S. Gervasio. One of the brothers, Giambattista, was a wag, and is said to have wasted much time in amusement and standing about criticizing the methods of others. He was a friend of Cellini, and all his cronies pronounce him to have been a good fellow. On one occasion he had a good dose of the spirit of criticism, himself, from a visiting abbot, who stopped to ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... might have been better able to appreciate Ixtli's amusement had he even an inkling as to how this game of hide-and-go-seek was fated to end. That an end must come, eventually, was ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... providing amusement for a pretty big audience, below there," thought Archie. "I suppose that the closer they come to us with those shells the better sport it is for those who are ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps • James R. Driscoll
... to them, probably originating in a reluctance among heads of families to add to their responsibilities. These early spring indications were belittled and laughed at; so much so that the young people them selves hardly took them seriously, but regarded them as a form of amusement almost conventional. Nothing would have surprised or embarrassed them more than to learn that their predilections had an imperative corollary, that anything should, of necessity, "come of it." Something, of course, occasionally did ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... deprived Johnson of one of his most agreeable resources for amusement in his lonely evenings; for Sheridan's well-informed, animated, and bustling mind never suffered conversation to stagnate; and Mrs. Sheridan was a most agreeable companion to an intellectual man. She was sensible, ingenious, unassuming, yet communicative. I recollect, ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... strange to the wanderer, he was educated, he had unfamiliar airs and accomplishments, but he was human and natural withal. He was totally ignorant of much that Mr. Hyde deemed fundamental, and yet he was mysteriously superior, while his indifferent good nature, his mild amusement at the antics of the world about him covered a sincere and earnest nature. He knew his business, moreover, and he revolutionized Bill's habits of hygiene in spite of ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... spasmodic attempts to talk to Sisson; but the chief conversation was Jaquetta's. She went on merrily all dinner-time, asking about ten thousand things, and hazarding opinions that elicited amusement in spite of ourselves: as when she asked, what sheep did with their other two legs, or suggested growing canary seed, as sure to be a profitable crop. Indeed, I think she had a little speculation in it on her own account in the kitchen garden—only the ...
— Lady Hester, or Ursula's Narrative • Charlotte M. Yonge
... passed in front of her house every Wednesday evening; and Marie was nearly always there, giving me this unhoped-for and ever-new delight, in spite of the fact that her social duties, her quite natural love of amusement, and her husband's position obliged her to go out a ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... the days being bright and warm but intensely cold at night, with a certain amount of frost. The opportunity was taken to issue new clothing and in connection with this it may be mentioned how the Army Ordnance Corps unconsciously gave us a little amusement. Two of the battalions in the Brigade were kilted, and the other battalions wore trews. The Ordnance people seemed to forget this and issued to all four battalions the usual winter under-clothing which, as far as the lower garments ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... meeting at the house of Mr. Parris began to perform wonders. In the dull life of the country, the excitement of the proceedings of the "circle" was welcome, no doubt, and it was always on the increase. The human mind requires amusement, as the human body requires food, exercise and rest, and when healthful and innocent amusements are denied, resort is had to the low and vicious. Mr. Parris, who preached sermons against the evils of the theatre and excommunicated the child of an actor, fostered ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... rigging and delighted themselves with a seamanlike refit. Campbell had a party over the side scrubbing the weeds off, and many of the ship's company attempted to harpoon the small sharks which came close round in shoals and provided considerable amusement. These fish were too small to be dangerous. After breakfast all the scientists and most of the officers landed and were organised by Uncle Bill into small parties to collect birds' eggs, flowers, specimens, to photograph and to sketch. A good lunch was ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... determination, and it would be impertinence in me to touch it. But would the superintendence of this work break in too much on the sweets of retirement and repose? If they would, I stop here. Your future time and wishes are sacred in my eye. If it would be only a dignified amusement to you, what a monument of your retirement would it be! It is one which would follow that of your public life, and bespeak it the work of the same great hand. I am confident, that would you either alone, or jointly with any ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... instruction in the evenings of the Christian Sabbath. To have the minds of the young directed at such seasons, not only to the truths of religion in general, but the more attractive parts of Scripture in particular, seems highly important. By a happy combination of amusement and instruction, piety is divested of her formality, and clothed with fascination: the ear is caught, and the heart gained; while the narrative interests, the best lessons become impressed even upon the gay and the trifling; and he who, when ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... you pressed Georgie into the service? Well, good luck to you all, it'll be a nice amusement for you; you can't do much harm, at ...
— Holiday Tales • Florence Wilford
... prejudices, the impatience, and the turbulence which must ever be the characteristics of a multitude orally addressed. It was evident, also, that from service in such a court, the wealthy, the eminent, and the learned, with other occupation or amusement, would soon seek to absent themselves. And the final blow to the integrity and respectability of the popular judicature was given at a later period by Pericles, when he instituted a salary, just sufficient to tempt the poor and to be ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... been twisted by the master of the revels, and the stick turned round rapidly. The fun was to jump up, and with their teeth to seize the apple. If they missed (which, of course, they did nearly every time), the bag of sand swung round and hit them on the face, to the amusement of the company. ...
— Harper's Young People, October 26, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... wish you good luck," Sudden made formal reply, and watched Johnny's stiff neck and arrogant shoulders with much secret amusement. "Oh—Mary V's out on ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... contemplative and observant, than the fiercer life of the West. The Chinese watch foreigners as we watch animals in the Zoo, to see whether they "drink water and fling up their heels over the champaign," and generally to derive amusement from their curious habits. Unlike the Y.M.C.A., they have no wish to alter the habits of the foreigners, any more than we wish to put the monkeys at the Zoo into trousers and stiff shirts. And their attitude towards each other is, as a rule, equally tolerant. When they became a Republic, ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell
... pleasures are exclusively reserved for the higher classes; the poor are admitted wherever the rich are received; and they consequently behave with propriety, and respect whatever contributes to the enjoyments in which they themselves participate. In England, where wealth has a monopoly of amusement as well as of power, complaints are made that whenever the poor happen to steal into the enclosures which are reserved for the pleasures of the rich, they commit acts of wanton mischief: can this be wondered at, since ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... have plenty of time for that," said the regent; "moreover, you have not even invented this amusement; for Charles the Fifth, who became a monk as you became a nun, without exactly knowing why, ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... during their two years at Fernhurst. Athleticism had had a disastrous effect on them. Because their house had won the Thirds, Two Cock and Three Cock, they thought themselves gods. In the tuck-shop they acted as avenging angels sent to punish a wicked world. Their chief amusement was to see a person leaning over a counter, kick his backside when he was not looking, and then run away. It was their class that were the real nuisance in the "Toe." They persecuted the girls in charge most damnably. Very often only one girl was in charge. ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... young man's question. "You won't have any trouble findin' the courthouse. There's only one street in this town an' the courthouse is down to the other end of it—you couldn't miss it if you tried." He grinned with some amusement at the young man's back as the latter with a cordial "thank you," returned to his suit cases, gripped them firmly by the handles, and strode down the wooden platform toward the street, ignoring the group of loungers at the corner ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... second cup of milk and water had to be prepared, and then Mrs. Pelby finished waiting on her company. But it soon appeared that the second cup had not really been wanted, for now that he had it, the child could not swallow more than two or three draughts. His amusement now consisted in playing in his saucer with a spoon, which being perceived by his ...
— Home Scenes, and Home Influence - A Series of Tales and Sketches • T. S. Arthur
... strong man who courageously keeps cool throughout this first assault will find much amusement in laying bare to his wife, in a light and bantering way, the secret feelings which make her thus behave, in following her step by step through the labyrinth which she treads, and telling her in answer to her every remark, that she is false to herself, while he preserves throughout a tone ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... chief might see fit to have his homestead put well in order before undertaking explorations for his amusement," replied Biarne, who was not much pleased ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... nothing more interesting in this great city of yours than to watch the people coming and going from it. All your railway stations fascinate me, especially those which are the connecting links with other countries. Perhaps it is because I am an idle man, and must needs find amusement somewhere." ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... sacrificed the evening all for nothing? As regarded the theatre or the piece to be played, he had not the slightest interest in either. The building was very pretty, no doubt; but it was only, in effect, a superior sort of booth; and as for the trivial amusement of watching a number of people strut across a stage and declaim—or perhaps make fools of themselves to raise a laugh—that was not at all to his liking. It would have been different had he been able to talk to the girl who had shown such a strange interest in the gloomy stories ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... Rastignac, Rubempre, Maxime de Trailles, Blondet and Finot; soon lost a considerable sum of money, and, laden with debts, became a boarder at Sainte-Pelagie; he then received Marsay, Rastignac and Rubempre, the latter wishing to relieve his distress, much to the amusement of Florine, afterwards Madame Nathan. [Secrets from a Courtesan's Life.] Urged by Ursule Mirouet, his ward, Denis Minoret, who was one of Savinien's neighbors at Nemours, raised the sum necessary to liquidate young Portenduere's debt, and freed him of its burden. The viscount enlisted in the marine ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... humanity some furlongs forward into Chaos,—that he should not be wise for himself,—it must even go into the world's history, that the best poet led an obscure and profane life, using his genius for the public amusement. ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... we exchanged there, in the stillness, a sound of the oddest amusement. Then I went on: "At all events, while he was ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James
... horse and rider go down before a ditch and high stone wall, I was convinced that my resolution was a discreet one. After this mishap, which luckily resulted in no harm, I hoped Sir Henry would give up the amusement, but by failure becoming only the more determined, in a second effort he cleared the wall handsomely and rode across-country to the villages. Following the road till it passed under a railway bridge, I there thought I saw a chance to gain Villiers by a short-cut, and changing my course accordingly, ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. II., Part 6 • P. H. Sheridan
... from my position with considerable amusement, thinking the command must be badly demoralized, when one man could cause a whole army to form line of battle and prepare for action. Having enjoyed the situation to my heart's content, I galloped ...
— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody
... before mentioned? There is the registrar below the judge, in wig and gown; and there are two or three maces, or petty- bags, or privy purses, or whatever they may be, in legal court suits. These are all yawning, for no crumb of amusement ever falls from Jarndyce and Jarndyce (the cause in hand), which was squeezed dry years upon years ago. The short-hand writers, the reporters of the court, and the reporters of the newspapers invariably ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... taken with regard to M. de Conde proved, however, supererogatory, the Prince having no further object in view in absenting himself from the capital than the gratification of that love of personal splendour and amusement in which he had always indulged whenever an opportunity presented itself; and thus while the Duc d'Epernon was watching all his movements with eager and anxious suspicion, M. de Conde was simply enacting ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... look, and separated only by an iron fence with sparse, fluttering vines from a mass of tired, quarrelsome, desperate men. Why! any of them might have run us through in a flash as one would lunge at a white rag for the amusement of his companions. Indoors the family were frantic, not daring to open a crack of the door for fear of violent ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow
... away from home; and these she had answered, always endeavouring to fill her sheet with some customary description of fashionable doings, with some bit of scandal such as she would have repeated for her mother's amusement,—and her own delectation in the telling of it,— had there been nothing painful in the nature of her sojourn in London. Of the Melmottes she hardly spoke. She did not say that she was taken to the houses in which it was her ambition to be seen. She would have lied directly ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... connections, the more innocent they are, afford the less variety in the long run, I was seized with that wicked distemper which seduces us to derive amusement from the torment of a beloved one, and to domineer over a girl's devotedness with wanton and tyrannical caprice. By unfounded and absurd fits of jealousy I destroyed our most delightful days, both for myself and her. She endured it for a time with incredible patience, ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... to spend the greatest portion of his time in the society of his wives, who contribute to his amusement by singing, dancing, and theatrical entertainments. The latter sometimes take place in the open air, as in the scene depicted opposite; on which the 'Grand Interior' and a select party are supposed to be looking down through the jalousies of the palace. ...
— Sketches of Japanese Manners and Customs • J. M. W. Silver
... the restaurant by half-past nine. The case wasn't there. I'd known jolly well beforehand it wasn't, and I saw Rangon's mouth twitching with amusement. ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... Mme. Malibran was shown at this time in a profusion of labors and an ardor in amusement which alarmed all her friends. When not engaged in opera, she was incessant in concert-giving, for which her terms were eighty guineas per night. She would fly to Calais and sing there, hurry back to England, thence hasten to Brussels, where she would give a concert, and then cross the ...
— Great Singers, Second Series - Malibran To Titiens • George T. Ferris
... the pistol far from him, the collie had sped in breakneck pursuit of it. Thus, always, did he delight to retrieve any object the Mistress or the Master might toss for his amusement. It was one of Laddie's favorite games, this fetching back of anything thrown. The farther it might be flung and the more difficult its landing place, the more ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... of amusement, Renaldo would have found it the longest day he had ever passed, had not his imagination been diverted by an incident which employed his attention during the remaining part of the evening. They had drunk ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... Daisy, now you and I will arrange this affair. I do not consider it wholesome for you to engage in this particular amusement at this particular time; so I shall endorse Mrs. Randolph's prohibition; but I will go round where does this girl live, ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... between Sarah and Hanlon, Rody had heard the whole conversation by accident, whilst waiting for his companions, and very judiciously furnished the groans, as he did also upon the second night, on both occasions for his own amusement. His motives for ingratiating himself through means of the box, with Sarah and Hanlon, are already known to the reader, and require ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... hoped that the following anecdote of the ways and customs of that rare animal, the modest, diffident youth (soon, naturalists assure us, to become as extinct in these islands as the Dodo), may afford a moment's amusement to the superior young people who rule journalism, politics, and ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various
... in the winter time is an arid waste. There is no throng of folk, no lighted ways, nor much amusement by their way of it; but to the countryman the winter is the time—the long dark nights for ceilidhing, the days after the rabbits and hares, and the cosiness about a steading, with the beasts at their straw and turnips, and the lassies to be coming home with, and the old stories that ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars
... fail to take it up directly, and to express by their looks the great outrage which their feelings have sustained. Perhaps this is their chief reason for absenting themselves almost entirely from places of public amusement. They go sometimes to the Exhibition of the Royal Academy;—but that is often more shocking than the stage itself, and the formal lady thinks that it really is high time Mr. Etty was prosecuted and made a public ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... the swarms of flies in that chamber, I felt little desire for repose after her simple repast; the dame was so affable and entertaining that we soon became great friends. I caused her some amusement by my efforts to understand and pronounce her language—these folk speak Albanian and Italian with equal facility—which seemed to my unpractised ears as hopeless as Finnish. Very patiently, she gave me a long lesson during which ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... circle of acquaintance; and I am assured that at Calcutta I shall find things far better. After all, the best rule in all parts of the world, as in London itself, is to be independent of other men's minds. My power of finding amusement without companions was pretty well tried on my voyage. I read insatiably; the Iliad and Odyssey, Virgil, Horace, Caesar's Commentaries, Bacon de Augmentis, Dante, Petrarch, Ariosto, Tasso, Don Quixote, Gibbon's ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... with, the rest, but Mr Caldwell, who was at the moment engaged with Mr Oswald in his private room, had asked him to remain till he came out to him again. David waited, not caring that he lost the amusement that the others sought, not caring very much for anything just at that moment, for he was tired and getting a little unhappy again, and very much ashamed of himself because ...
— The Inglises - How the Way Opened • Margaret Murray Robertson
... went on with tolerable regularity. There was plenty of amusement. Old New York did not suffer. Laura Keene thrilled them with the "Hunchback," and many another personation. Matilda Heron was doing some fine work in Milman's "Fazio," and the play of "The Stranger" held audiences spell-bound. Then there were lectures for the more ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... seized me by the arm and said, "Oh! I have no lifebelt; will you come down to my cabin and help me to find it?" I returned with them to F deck,—the lady who had addressed me holding my arm all the time in a vise-like grip, much to my amusement,—and we found a steward in her gangway who took them in and found their lifebelts. Coming upstairs again, I passed the purser's window on F deck, and noticed a light inside; when halfway up to E deck, I heard ...
— The Loss of the SS. Titanic • Lawrence Beesley
... great source of amusement as well as a very exciting and profitable employment. The boys were all taught to imitate the call of every bird and beast in the woods. The skill in imitation which they thus acquired was wonderful. Hidden in a thicket they would ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... reproach to the profession which he disgraced, grovelling in his tastes, indiscreet, if not licentious, in his habits, he lived unhonoured and died unlamented, save by those who found amusement in his wit or ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... work was very remarkable. He often laughed or grumbled at himself for the difficulty which he found in writing English, saying, for instance, that if a bad arrangement of a sentence was possible, he should be sure to adopt it. He once got much amusement and satisfaction out of the difficulty which one of the family found in writing a short circular. He had the pleasure of correcting and laughing at obscurities, involved sentences, and other defects, and thus ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... de Commines, who had gone as ambassador extraordinary to the Venetian Republic, and now announced that the enemy had forty thousand men under arms and were preparing for battle. This news produced no other effect an the king and the gentlemen of his army than to excite their amusement beyond measure; for they had conceived such a contempt for their enemy by their easy conquest, that they could not believe that any army, however numerous, would ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... slinking, sneaking, crawling nearer off there in the vague, darkling depths of the forest, they still sensed the splendid comradeship of the adventure. No longer as a toy, a chattel, an instrument of pleasure or amusement did the idea of woman now exist in the world. It had altered, grown higher, nobler, purer—it had become that of mate and equal, comrade, friend, the indissoluble other ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... Talbot dawned upon Edward by degrees; for the delay of the Highlanders in the fruitless siege of Edinburgh Castle occupied several weeks, during which Waverley had little to do, excepting to seek such amusement as society afforded. He would willingly have persuaded his new friend to become acquainted with some of his former intimates. But the Colonel, after one or two visits, shook his head, and declined further experiment. Indeed he went further, and characterized the Baron ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... nobody had heard anything. And the driver who had brought me up the valley only winked, but did not choose to speak. At last at breakfast I asked the pretty little maid who waited what was the meaning of the noise I heard in the night, and she answered, to my intense amusement, "Ah! bah! ce n'etait qu'un tremblement de terre; il y en a ici toutes les six semaines." Now the secret was out. The little maid, I found, came from the lowland far away, and did not mind telling the truth: but the good people of the place were afraid to let out that they ...
— Madam How and Lady Why - or, First Lessons in Earth Lore for Children • Charles Kingsley
... hawking has been so frequently and so fully explained, that it would be superfluous, if not arrogant, to trace its progress, or delineate its history, in this place. In the earliest periods it appears to have been exclusively practised by the nobility; and, indeed, the great expense at which the amusement was supported, seems to have been a sufficient reason for deterring persons of more moderate income, and of inferior rank, from indulging in the pursuit. In the Sports and Pastimes of Mr. Strutt, a variety of instances are given of the importance ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... suppose that these simple and often rustic missionaries had themselves invented all these exaggerated fictions; they derived them in great part from the recitals of the Indians. A fondness for narration prevails in the Missions, as it does at sea, in the East, and in every place where the mind seeks amusement. A missionary, from his vocation, is not inclined to scepticism; he imprints on his memory what the natives have so often repeated to him; and, when returned to Europe, and restored to the civilized world, he finds a pleasure in creating astonishment by a recital of facts which he thinks he has ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V2 • Alexander von Humboldt
... I had mounted the small, rocky, rhododendron-covered platform, and stood, the first of my party, on the summit of Mount Ophir. The little American flag that I had brought with me I waved frantically above my head, much to the amusement of my attendants. ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... as a form of amusement, nor having yet been driven to it by the sheer deadliness of incessant, monotonous labor, Thompson was able to save his money. When he went to Wrangel once a month he got a bath, a hair-cut, and some magazines ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... and though she had been told that violation of this code meant roasting forever as in a cannibal pit whose fires were never extinguished, her mind could perceive no reason for it. She could attach no blame to an act that seemed to her an innocent, natural, and harmless amusement. ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... at the Bagnio passed monotonously. The rat furnished the evening's amusement, and in the same degree as Benedetto was excited, Anselmo remained calm and cool. On the evening of the 24th of February, the young man's patience was exhausted, and he forgot himself so much as to call Anselmo a liar and traitor, even ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume I (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... beginning to end. This book had, perhaps, more influence upon the simple-minded country people in Scotland than any other work. It consisted entirely of relations of ghosts of murdered persons, witches, warlocks, and fairies; and as it was read as an indoor amusement in the presence of children, and followed up by unfounded tales of the same description, the youngsters were afraid to turn round in case they might be grasped by the "Old One." So strong, indeed, became this impression ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... certainly a somewhat foolish pursuit; but it may nevertheless afford us a few minutes' amusement without our making any parade of ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
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