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More "Mirth" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... (said a fourth); I hope they'll bring the Fiddlers with 'em, added the first: Don't you love Musick, Madam? (ask'd the old Lady Beldam) Sometimes, Madam, (reply'd Philadelphia) but now I am out o'tune myself. A little harmless Mirth will chear your drooping Spirits, my dear, (return'd t'other, taking her by the Hand) come! These are all my Relations, as I told you, Madam; and so consequently are their Husbands. Are these Ladies all marry'd, Madam? Philadelphia ask'd. All, all, my dear Soul! (reply'd the insinuating ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... beat them unmercifully and habitually vent on them the most dreadful and disgusting imprecations. There are other inconveniences which, though keenly felt during the day's journey, are speedily forgotten when stretched out in the encampment before a large fire, you enjoy the social mirth of your companions who usually pass the evening in recounting their former feats in travelling. At this time the Canadians are always cheerful and merry and the only bar to their comfort arises from the frequent interruption occasioned ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... of women who are fixing things up at home so they can come in the morning. So don't you worry, Miss Spencer, this strike isn't going to hurt you none, but—Ha-ha-ha!—Excuse me," she said, suddenly checking her mirth again and looking ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston
... her O good brown earth, Make merry! 'Tis hard on Spring; Make merry; my love is doubly worth All worship your fields can bring! Let the hind that tills you feel my mirth ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... edges of their characters and wore them down, as the weather rusted out more rapidly than anywhere else all the iron tools and implements of the colony. The gentler traits of the African character, mirth and jollity, affectionateness, domestic love, regard and even reverence for considerate masters, were the least impaired; for these, with a powerful religiosity, are indigenous, like the baobab and palm, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... thoroughfares diverging from this extensive public square were also thronged with young and old. The trees were covered with fresh green foliage, and multitudes of blooming flowers adorned the Piazza and the windows of the adjacent palaces and humble dwellings. Sounds of joy and mirth were heard on every side, while now and then strains of soft music were audible. It was truly a most inspiring scene of light and life. Flirtations were frequent between beautiful dark-visaged girls, with hair and eyes like night, in their ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... with our delights, but that we have some intervals of reflecting upon, and considering how many several ways this jollity of ours tends to death, and with how many dangers it threatens it. The Egyptians were wont to do after this manner, who in the height of their feasting and mirth, caused a dried skeleton of a man to be brought into the room to serve for ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... which you pretty well know—the pang of disappointment, the sting of pride, with some wandering stabs of remorse, which never fail to settle on my vitals like vultures, when attention is not called away by the calls of society, or the vagaries of the muse. Even in the hour of social mirth, my gaiety is the madness of an intoxicated criminal under the hands of the executioner. All these reasons urge me to go abroad, and to all these reasons I have only one answer—the feelings of a father. This, in the present mood I am in, overbalances everything that can be ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... entirely; dark of skin, or rather olive, as you find men and women among a Celtic people; dark of eye to the point of a scowl, behind which, however, there was a well of mirth; dark of hair and dark of beard. His hair he wore long, not being always within reach of scissors, and his beard had that silky texture which comes of never ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... too well to believe he would allow famishing damsels to faint for lack of sustenance." It was Mrs. Garrison, of course, who spoke. "I simply set Frank and his fellows to work, with the result that tea and biscuit, light and warmth, mirth and merriment, faith, hope and charity sprang up like magic in this gloomy old tent, and here we are still. Now, say you're glad I came, General, for these stupid boys—Oh! I quite forgot! Let me present the slaves of the lamp—the spirit ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... that falls from the windows of the Neighborhood Guild, in Delancey Street, makes a white path across the asphalt pavement. Within, there is mirth and laughter. The Tenth Ward Social Reform Club is having its Christmas festival. Its members, poor mothers, scrubwomen,—the president is the janitress of a tenement near by,—have brought their little ones, a few their ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... Cicero was by natural temper very much disposed to mirth and pleasantry, and always appeared with a smiling and serene countenance. But Demosthenes had constant care and thoughtfulness in his look, and a serious anxiety which he seldom, if ever, laid aside; and, therefore, was accounted ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... Royal Academy Exhibition, and of course found it closed. If any one could have seen me before the closed doors, knowing that I had come all the way from Lancashire in the expectation of finding them open, he might have derived some innocent mirth from my disappointment. ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... received letters from them both, written by secretaries and signed very shakily, asking me to cooperate with them in suppressing Lalage. O'Donoghue, who was apparently not quite so ill as Vittie was, also suggested that we should publish, over our three names, a dignified rejoinder to the mirth of the press. He enclosed a rough draft of the dignified rejoinder and invited criticism and amendment from me. My proper course of action was obvious enough. I made my nurse reply with a bulletin, dictated by me, signed by her and McMeekin, to the effect that I was too ill to read ...
— Lalage's Lovers - 1911 • George A. Birmingham
... the union of Miss Petty and Mr. Meydam in the | |holy bonds of wedlock, the beautiful bride and | |handsome groom and all the knights and ladies | |present repaired to the dining-room, where a | |bounteous supper interspersed with mirth and song | |awaited them. After which they tripped the light | |fantastic toe until the wee small hours of the | |morning, when all repaired to their beds of rest and| |wrapt themselves in the arms ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... laughed loud at the gathering crowd, While he held his sides in mirth, To see old Kris in a plight like this, Toiling ...
— The Goblins' Christmas • Elizabeth Anderson
... was the Governor's chair of state, and Alce and Molly he must needs seat beside him. Not one of his gay company but seemed an adept in the high-flown compliment of the age; out of very idleness and the mirth born of that summer hour they followed his Excellency's lead, and plied the two simple women with all the wordy ammunition that a tolerable acquaintance with the mythology of the ancients and the polite literature ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... spread in honor of the slaying of the Stoorworm. All who chose to come were welcome, and all was mirth and rejoicing. ...
— Tales of Folk and Fairies • Katharine Pyle
... their efforts to support themselves, that at this time they had all a taste of happiness and enjoyment. They were beginning to feel conscious of their powers, they were rich in each other's companionship, their health was good, their spirits were high, there was often joyousness and mirth; they commented on what they read; analysed articles and their writers also; the perfection of unrestrained talk and intelligence brightened the close of the days which were passing all too swiftly. The ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... the elastic spirit of the bondman. That spirit will rise and walk abroad, despite of whips and chains, and extract from the cup of nature occasional drops of joy and gladness. No thanks to the slaveholder, nor to slavery, that the{341} vivacious captive may sometimes dance in his chains; his very mirth in such circumstances stands before God as an ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... undissembling dales, The laughing-places of the juvenile earth. For lo! the wills of man and woman meet, Meet and are moved, each unto each endeared As once in Eden's prodigal bowers befell, To share his shameless, elemental mirth In one great act of faith, while deep and strong, Incomparably nerved and cheered, The enormous heart of London joys to beat To the measures of his rough, majestic song: The lewd, perennial, overmastering spell That keeps ...
— The Song of the Sword - and Other Verses • W. E. Henley
... in time to come and reckon it of thy good deeds on the Day of Doom!' So saying, he took from me the food and wine and shut the door in my face. His words enraged me and I knew not what to do, but he stood behind the door, shaking for mirth; and, when he saw me thus, he said to me, 'I conjure thee on my life, O Abu Ali, tell who it was composed ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... very lively young people, and Hetty, afterwards a copious poet, "was gay and sprightly, full of mirth, good-humour, and keen wit. She indulged this disposition so much that it was said to have given great uneasiness to her parents." The servants, Robin Brown, Betty Massy and Nancy Marshall, were recent comers, but were acquitted by Mrs. Wesley of any share in the mischief. The family, though, ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... till the tears came. I was ready to cry, too, but from quite a different reason. A lump rose in my throat, and I could not speak. I gazed at him with wild eyes, and this only increased his mirth. He rolled on the ground, holding his sides. As for me, I could not get over the insult—for a bitter insult it was. Those—few, I hope—who will understand it, from having had a similar experience in their lives, ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... opal upon Maya's finger grew dim, but she moved toward the unlit wood, and at her approach the false pretence betrayed itself; the ice glared before her, and chilled her to the soul, as its shroud of bark fell off. She fled over the threshold, and the house-spirit laughed with bitter mirth; but the Spark ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... roguish eyes Claim no proud lineage of the skies, No starry blue; but of good earth The reckless witchery and mirth. ...
— Poems • Madison Cawein
... the "help"; in fact, its absurdity convulsed them. The man laughed loudly; the cook buried her ebony face in her apron; the second girl bent double with mirth. Here was a quaint gentleman, indeed, and a great joker. But the gentleman was not joking. On the contrary, he brought this levity to an abrupt end, then, gravely, ceremoniously, he seated the trio. They sobered quickly enough at this; they ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... she said. "He was the 'shock'! How perfectly ridiculous! Robin had never played with a boy before and she fell in love with him. The little thing's actually pining away for him." She dropped the grapes and gave herself up to delicate mirth. "He was taken away and disappeared. Perhaps she fainted and fell into the wet flower bed and spoiled her frock, when she first realized that ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Interpreter. He afterwards visited the Queen, and also Cardinal Richelieu, who took the right hand of him; he offered it indeed to Oxenstiern; but he in civility refused it. They were together at this visit three hours, but said not a word of business; nothing passed but compliments and mirth, says the Mercure Francois. Both spoke in Latin. Two days after, that is to say, on the 29th, the Cardinal returned the High Chancellor's visit: his Eminence was booted as if he were returning from the country, that ...
— The Life of the Truly Eminent and Learned Hugo Grotius • Jean Levesque de Burigny
... every thing, whether it was a fight or a pic nic, was unanimously elected caterer, and in that capacity he was most brilliant. I must digress a little to bestow upon that officer the meed of universal opinion; for his kindness, mirth, and goodness of heart, have rendered him a favourite wherever he has been known, not only a favourite with the officers, but even more so, if possible, with the men. In the expeditions in which Keppell has been commanding officer, where the men were worn out with continued exertion at ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... my king, and the love for me," she whispered, as he led her to her horse. "Your fortune!" said she, pointing to them. "But I also have brought a dowry—fancy, five hundred crowns!" and her mirth and happiness burst out in a laugh. It was so deliciously little, five ...
— McClure's Magazine, Volume VI, No. 3. February 1896 • Various
... gravel, over Davy's toes. The said toes were sticking quite bare through great holes in an old pair of woman's boots. Then he began to tease him rather roughly. But Davy took all his banter with just the same complacency and mirth with which he had received the kindliness of the ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald
... he! Ye rogue—he! he!" and he shook his fist waggishly at the unconscious gray dog. "I owe ye anither grudge for this—ye've anteecipated me"—and he leant back and shook this way and that in convulsive mirth. ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... question or impediment; and yet a good part of the time, I walked under and in sight, as I may say, of my brother's study window, where both he and my sister happened to be. And I am sure they saw me, by the loud mirth they affected, by way of insult, ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... should come. She laughed ever so slightly; the experience was novel; who before had ever weighed the pros and cons when extended this privilege? Then, the next moment, the blue eyes lost some of their mirth; perhaps his manner made her feel the frank informality she had unconsciously been guilty of; she ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... the reply, with the sad abortive laugh which was Mr. Hood's nearest approach to mirth, 'fortunately he left me alone, and spoke neither well nor ill. He didn't look angry, I thought, so much as ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... heavenly residence, and passing into the Olympian Gardens, throw himself on a vernal bank. She seized this opportunity to become familiar with the god. The frolicsome deity honoured her with his caresses; and from this amour sprung the god of Love, who resembles his father in jollity and mirth, and his mother in his nudity. The allegory is ingenious. The union of poverty with riches must inevitably produce the most ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... I was indignant, which is not a state of mind in which there is any absurdity; but the shop-keeper suddenly burst into a storm of laughter. He laughed till he seemed almost to fall into convulsions, with a harsh mirth which reminded me of the old image of the crackling of thorns, and had neither amusement nor warmth in it; and presently this was echoed all around, and looking up, I saw grinning faces full of derision bent upon me ...
— The Little Pilgrim: Further Experiences. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... increased the mirth of that grinning multitude. I shook my clenched, up-stretched fists against them. And when at last their ghastly merriment ceased, I raised my ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... neighbour's bread across the table at someone else, and he throwing his table napkin back at you, and yelling and screaming with mirth; and it often ends with being mauled and pulled about, and water ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... upon him, threw him to the ground, and calmly sat astride him while they went through his pockets. August Naab roared his merriment and Hare laughed till he cried. The incident was as surprising to him as it was amusing. These serious Mormons and silent Navajos were capable of mirth. ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... another wrinkle. His mirth always increased wrinkle by wrinkle, until at times it appeared as if he were actually going to screw his own neck by sheer force ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... Paris build round about public monuments that remain unbuilt; the grotesque aspect of the mart as a whole was in keeping with the seething traffic of various kinds carried on within it; for here in this shameless, unblushing haunt, amid wild mirth and a babel of talk, an immense amount of business was transacted between the Revolution of 1789 and the Revolution ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... during the summer months but now colorless, seemed ironical amid the clumps of bare trees as gloomy as cemetery yews, exhaling a sinister, forsaken spirit as if this solitude were full of extinct songs, defunct graces, phantoms, and last year's mirth. And Vaudrey felt a strangely delicious sensation even in his bitterness at this impression of solitude, as if he might have been lost, forgotten forever, in the very emptiness of ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... lowest order of wine houses where balls were going forward; the only payment required for entrance was the purchase of a bottle of wine, costing six sous. We expected to see a good deal of uproarious mirth and all kinds of pranks going forward, but were quite astonished to find the order that prevailed; the men appeared as if they were in such a hurry for a dance that they had not waited until they washed their hands and faces, but had just come directly from their ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... mirth, and while Bob Chowne was growing more and more absurd by putting on indignant airs, the hatchway was darkened again by the French skipper's petticoats and boots, and directly after he stood before us ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn
... table, as I have so often seen them, on hundreds and hundreds of occasions?" Lucy's spirits had sometimes caused her to laugh merrily; and her musical voice once used to mingle with Rupert's and my own more manly and deeper notes, in something like audible mirth; not that Lucy was ever boisterous or loud; but, in early girlhood, she had been gay and animated, to a degree that often blended with the noisier clamour of us boys. With Grace, this had never happened. She seldom spoke, ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... them, apparently unintentionally. He hesitated and paused when Peter looked up. Peter saw no grin upon his lips. They were set in a firm, straight line. His long arms were folded behind his back, and his eyes were empty of mirth—or malice. They simply expressed nothing. He looked at Peter shortly, and favored Miss Vost with a ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... the august De Castro that during the remainder of the evening's entertainment she should occupy herself more with her neighbors than with the opera. She aroused M. Renard to a secret ecstasy of mirth by the sharp steadiness of her observation of the inmates of the box opposite to them. She talked about them, too, in a tone not too well modulated, criticising the beautifully dressed little woman, her hair, her eyes, her Greek nose and mouth, and, more than all, her indifferent ...
— "Le Monsieur De La Petite Dame" • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Mr. Miller's high, cackling laugh was heard in an explosion of mirth. Mr. Carlyon had made some delightfully obvious joke for his delectation and amidst a smiling company Miss La Sarthe rose with dignity to leave the gentlemen alone with ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... torches carried about by hand lend a wavering and picturesque light to the scene. By eight o'clock in the evening, crowds begin to fill the Piazza and the adjacent streets. Long before one arrives, the squeak of penny-trumpets is heard at intervals; but in the Piazza itself the mirth is wild and furious, and the din that salutes one's ears on entering is almost deafening. The object of every one is to make as much noise as possible, and every kind of instrument for this purpose is sold at the booths. There are drums beating, tamburelli thumping and jingling, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... mouth of Larrimer writhed silently from mirth to astonishment, and then sinister rage. And though he was in the shadow against the door, Terry saw the slow gleam in the face of the tall man—then his hand whipped for the gun. It came cleanly out. There was no flap to his holster, and the sight had been filed away to ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... sent word to Foote: "that the theatre being intended for the reformation of vice, he would step from the boxes on the stage, and correct him before the audience." Foote knew the intrepidity of his antagonist, and abandoned the design. No ill will ensued. Johnson used to say: "that for broad-faced mirth, ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... with their battle arms, Derided, jeered, and scorned our tears; Required mirth, diversion's charms, To thus allay ...
— The Mountain Spring And Other Poems • Nannie R. Glass
... aureole Day left the earth, Faded, a twilight soul, Memory, had birth: Young were her sister souls, Sorrow and Mirth. ...
— Songs, Sonnets & Miscellaneous Poems • Thomas Runciman
... all of you, O irritated readers, he, with outstretched arms and open heart, will wave a kind farewell. Thou too, miraculous Entity, who namest thyself YORKE and OLIVER, and with thy vivacities and genialities, with thy all-too Irish mirth and madness, and odour of palled punch, makest such strange work, farewell; long as thou canst, fare-well! Have we not, in the course of Eternity, travelled some months of our Life-journey in partial sight of one ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... silly swain (and silly swains Are men of meanest grace): Had yet the grace (O gracious gift!) To hap on such a face. He pity cried, and pity came And pitied so his pain, As dying would not let him die But gave him life again. For joy whereof he made such mirth As all the woods did ring; And Pan with all his swains came forth To hear the shepherd sing; But such a song sung never was, Nor shall be sung again, Of Phyllida the shepherds' queen, And Corydon the swain. Fair Phyllis is the shepherds' queen, (Was never such a queen as she,) And Corydon her only ...
— Pastoral Poems by Nicholas Breton, - Selected Poetry by George Wither, and - Pastoral Poetry by William Browne (of Tavistock) • Nicholas Breton, George Wither, William Browne (of Tavistock)
... storm. While yet the long, bright afternoons are warm, Under this stainless arch of azure sky The air is filled with gathering wings for flight; Yet with the shrill mirth and the loud delight Comes the foreboding sorrow of this cry— "Till the storm scatter and the gloom ...
— In Divers Tones • Charles G. D. Roberts
... Longstreet as the two came down from the ranch-house. Thereafter Longstreet beamed upon his daughter while Yellow Barbee, his hat far back upon the blonde cluster of curls, turned his insolent eyes upon her. Helen, deeming him overbold, sought to 'squelch' him with a look. Instead she saw both mirth and admiration shining in the baby-blue eyes. She turned her back upon El Joven, who retaliated by turning his back upon her and swaggering away into the stable, whistling through his teeth as he went. Howard went with him ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... poor humanity is subject have given themselves a rendezvous in their pages. I am not for disputing the point, and I can understand how one man may be saddened by their perusal, while another extracts therefrom some gleams of mirth. For my part, I merely verify this fact: the native has been fed with this stuff for centuries, and if we desire to enter into his feelings, we must feed ourselves likewise—up to a point. The past is the key to the present. That ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... Her rare laugh was too sudden and loud to be very musical, but it was immensely infectious, like a man's hearty mirth. "I didn't hear her say it—but I can imagine that she did. Well, what of ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... James, although marvelling at their being so much troubled by the death of merely a servant, was roused by the tale to the duty of his profession; and although his heart had never yet drawn him either to the house of mourning or the house of mirth, he judged it becoming to pay another visit to Stonecross, thinking it, however, rather hard that he should have to go again so soon. It pleased the soutar to see him face about at once, however, and start for the farm with a quicker stride than, since ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... and, at the contempt in his mirth, she rose, no longer flushed, but white with wrath. "I won't have it!" Her voice was almost a scream, and she brought her hands down so violently on the table that, as she momentarily broke the circuit of ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... Museum of Mirth; forming the most complete collection of ancient and modern songs in the English language, with a classified Index... Embellished with a Frontispiece and wood cuts, designed by George Cruikshank etc. 3vols. ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... in Adam Bay, and the meeting is likely to be long remembered by some and not without pleasant recollections, for although at the time it was justly looked upon as a serious affair, it afterwards proved a great source of mirth. No one could recall to mind, without laughing, the ludicrous figure necessarily cut by our shipmates, when to amuse the natives they figured on the light fantastic toe; they ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... remark, following upon the resolution he had expressed with so much energy but a minute before, struck us both at the same instant, and occasioned a fit of laughter, which we did not check till we recollected with what dissonance any approach to mirth must strike the ear of the prisoner (for such he was in fact, if not in ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... Loud bells, and song! "And this same Child," PUNCH said, "Twelve moons shall reign, nor will I part with him Till these be told." And saying this the Sage, The Modern MERLIN of the motley coat, Wizard of Wit and Seer of Sunny Mirth, Took up the wave-borne youngster in his arms, His nurse, his champion, his Mentor wise, And bare him shoreward out of wind and wet, Into his sanctum, where choice fare was spread, And cosy comfort ready to receive ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, Jan. 2, 1892 • Various
... can sorrow o'er little children Disinherited from their birth, The wee waifs and toddlers neglected, Robbed of sunshine, music and mirth. ...
— Poems • Frances E. W. Harper
... monstrous doctrines concerning evil spirits and punishments in the next life; painted the Deity as cruel and jealous; discovered sinfulness hateful to God in the most harmless acts; punished the same with arbitrary and savage penalties; and so crushed out of Scotland all mirth and ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... company: but he himself is generally the greatest original at his table. He is very good-humoured, talks much, and laughs without ceasing. I am told that all the use he makes of his understanding at present, is to excite mirth, by exhibiting his guests in ludicrous attitudes. I know not how far we may furnish him with entertainment of this kind, but I am resolved to beat up his quarters, partly with a view to laugh with the knight himself, and partly to pay my respects ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... the Belle, "Dear, how lucky!" and turns From her mirror to watch the flakes fall, Like the first rose of summer, her dimpled cheek burns! While musing on sleigh ride and ball: There are visions of conquests, of splendor, and mirth, Floating over each drear winter's day; But the tintings of Hope, on this storm-beaten earth, Will melt like the snowflakes away. Turn, then thee to Heaven, fair maiden, for bliss; That world has a pure fount ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... the rude printing-press productions, inexpressibly quaint, grotesque, a kind of literary horse-play, yet with a certain squint-eyed, sprawling genius in it, and innocent childish Rabelaisian mirth of a sort. At all events I cannot look at the slight memorials of that time, which I still possess, without laughing afresh till my eyes are dewy. Stevenson, as I understood, began Treasure Island more ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... not disappoint. He had entertained and interested the vast assemblage, which frequently rang with cheers and shouts of applause as the gestures and the mirth-provoking look emphasised the racy hits that punctuated the address. "No man," said the Tribune, "ever before made such an impression on his first appeal to a New York audience. He ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... horse. Run away quick. Hu-hu!" and Sarah's rich mockery sounded again. No tragedy had happened this time, and the squaw narrated her story greatly to the relish of Mr. Long. This veteran of trails and mines had seen too much of life's bleakness not to cherish whatever of mirth his ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... over the stairs. It was clear that they stood in no great fear of their mother's chastisement. They knew by experience that her hand was very soft, and the force of its fall tempered by mirth and tender considerateness; their grandmother's fleshless and muscular old ...
— Jane Field - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... who when they came, and saw him again alive, circled with their fellows, no expression can tell what joy they felt; they even cried out with rapture, and to have seen their frantic expressions of mirth a man might have supposed that they were just in sight of their country earth, the cliffs of rocky Ithaca. Only Eurylochus would hardly be persuaded to enter that palace of wonders, for he remembered with a kind of horror how his ...
— THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES • CHARLES LAMB
... scarcely had these myriad lamps gone out, The sounds of revelry had scarcely died, When coming from the palace in hot haste, One cried, "Maya, the gentle queen, is dead." Then mirth was changed to sadness, joy to grief, For all had learned to love the gentle queen— But at Siddartha's birth this ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... vizier told him in vain that it was some women a merry-making; that, without question, their heads were warm with wine; and that it would not be proper he should expose himself to be affronted by them; besides, it was not yet an unlawful hour, and therefore he ought not to disturb them in their mirth. No matter, said the caliph, I command you to knock. So it was that the grand vizier Giafar knocked at the ladies' gate by the caliph's order, because he himself would not be known. Safie opened the gate, and the vizier perceived, by the light that she held in her hand, that she was ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Volume 1 • Anonymous
... distinctly what it thought as it lay there, and it was this: "I gave them wine, and they give me bog-water; but it was well meant." It could no more see the betrothed young couple, or the happy old people; but it heard in the distance the sounds of music and of mirth. Then came two little peasant children peering among the reeds. They saw the bottle, and carried it off with them: so ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... principal figure, but in their way they are no less life-like; the braggart—that inevitable foil to the hero in a saga—was never better represented than in the Gisli of our tale; the thrall Noise, with his carelessness, and thriftless, untrustworthy mirth, is the very pattern of a slave; Snorri the Godi, little though there is of him, fully sustains the prudent and crafty character which follows him in all the Sagas; Thorbiorn Oxmain is a good specimen of the overbearing and sour ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris
... a tall and slender trunk, and so Effi may be the ivy destined to twine about it." At these words the betrothed couple looked at each other somewhat embarrassed, Effi's face showing at the same time an expression of childlike mirth, but Mrs. von Briest said: "Say what you like, Briest, and formulate your toasts to suit your own taste, but if you will allow me one request, avoid poetic imagery; it is beyond your sphere." These silencing words were received by von Briest with more assent than dissent. "It is possible ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... little cause for mirth, and when he had struggled an hour longer, something like despair began to creep into his heart. Worse than all, he became aware that his torch was nearly exhausted, and, under the most favorable circumstances, could not last ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne
... mart Where goat-legged buyers throng. I see not plain:- My meaning is, it must not be again. Great God! the maddest gambler throws his heart. If any state be enviable on earth, 'Tis yon born idiot's, who, as days go by, Still rubs his hands before him, like a fly, In a queer sort of meditative mirth. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... sunny morns With opening flowers; Upon the cross; And thought the loss Of all that earth Contained—of mirth, Of loves, and fame, And pleasures' name— No sacrifice To win the prize, Which Christ secured, When He endured For us the load— The wrath of God! With many a tear, And many a fear, With many a sigh And heart-wrung cry Of timid faith, Where intervenes No ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar
... mentions, in his preface, that Stevenson's talk was irresistibly sympathetic and inspiring, full of matter and mirth. It cannot be denied that between correspondence and conversation, regarded as fine arts, there is a close kinship; and very similar reasons have been alleged for the common belief that both are on the decline. Whether such a belief has any solid foundation in the case of letter-writing, ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... nothing to hope or fear from them; he filled a quiet place among the violoncellists, and had attained his twenty-eighth year without displaying any violent talent or tendency to distinguish himself, otherwise than by getting as much mirth out of life as possible and living in a ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... drawn together. Yes, she was afraid, afraid in every fiber of her being, but there was a difference, wasn't there, between being afraid and being a coward? Her small, gloved hands clenched, her lips parted slightly. She laughed a little now, low, without mirth. Upon what she did or did not do, upon the margin between fear and cowardice as applied to herself, there hung a man's life. Danglar was disappearing around the side of Shluker's shop. She moved out from the wall, and swiftly, silently, crossed the courtyard, gained the side of the junk ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... caricature of something that had once been human.... John Schuyler had hands—not nerveless, shaking talons.... This sunken-eyed, sunken- cheeked, wrinkled thing was not John Schuyler—this thing that crawled, quiveringly—from the loose, pendulous lips of which came mirth that was more bitter to hear than the sobs of a ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... March, when winds are strong, And snow returns to hide the earth; But still he warms his heart with mirth, And waits for May. He lingers long While flowers fade; and every day Repeats his small, contented lay; As if to say, we need not fear The season's change, if love is here With "Sweet—sweet—sweet—very ...
— Songs Out of Doors • Henry Van Dyke
... sentinels the distant hum, The mirth of feasts, the clang of burnish'd arms, The braying trumpet, and the hoarser drum, Unite in concert with ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... she spake. Then Ralph comforted her and trimmed his countenance to a look of mirth, but inwardly he was ill ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... with a collar and a little handkerchief at the neck, and a pair of short trousers buttoned on to the jacket. He is barefoot. He is tanned but not burnt. His complexion is of a rich dark brown. He is always fresh and clean. But the great charm about him is the expression of infinite fun and mirth that is always upon his face. Never for a moment while he is awake is his face still. Always the same, yet always shifting, with a thousand varying shades of roguish joy. Quick, bright, full of boyish repartee, full of shouts and laughter. And the same incessant ...
— By The Sea - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin
... in the garret were having a wild time of mirth and excitement. There was no time for any one to think, no time for any one to do aught but enjoy. The lateness of the hour, the stealthy gathering, the excellent supper, and, finally, the gay songs, ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... himself in this long Fit of Stupidity, and construing it as a Contempt of the College, ordered him to retire into the Place prepared for such Companions. He was no sooner got into it, but his Wit and Mirth returned upon him in so violent a manner, that he shook the whole Infirmary with the Noise of it, and had so good an Effect upon the rest of the Patients, that he brought them all out to Dinner with ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... to be gathering courage. She laughed very softly, as though amused at his earnestness. There was little enough of mirth in her laughter, yet ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... a good thing for the giver of the IOU that the mirth the whole transaction created did not permit the old admiral to be so severe with his "whys," as he would have been. He, however, told the culprit's captain, whom he had just brought on shore in the barge, to give me the ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... gold) 'The age of love, and innocence, and joy, 'When all were great and free! man's sole employ 'To deck the bosom of his parent earth; 'Or toward his bower the murmuring stream decoy, 'To aid the floweret's long-expected birth, 'And lull the bed of peace, and crown the board of mirth. ...
— The Minstrel; or the Progress of Genius - with some other poems • James Beattie
... the minds of the beholders, and make that appear so dreadful with which armies, who have an opportunity of being thoroughly acquainted and often seeing him without any of these black and dismal disguises, converse familiarly, and meet with mirth and gaiety. ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... crest and crowning of all good, life's final star is brotherhood; For it will bring again to Earth her long-lost Poesy and Mirth; Will send new light on every face, a kingly power upon the race. And till it come, we men are slaves, and travel downward to dust of graves. Come, clear the way, then, clear the way: blind creeds ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... leaves on the trees. The musicians were the life of the wedding, wandering through the pleasant grounds in separate bands, some dancing, others singing, others playing the various instruments already mentioned. In short, it seemed as though mirth and gaiety were frisking and gambolling all over the meadow. Several other persons were engaged in erecting raised benches from which people might conveniently see the plays and dances that were to be performed the next day on the spot dedicated to the celebration of the marriage of Camacho the ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... nothing compared with the laughter of the girl. It went through him like the flash and point of Le Balafr's long sword. He was helpless before that sound of mirth. He wanted to hold up his hands and cower away from her and from her dancing eyes. So he stood, ponderous, tortured, and the three pairs of clear eyes watched him and enjoyed his torture. Better, far better, that dark ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... Happy also all who have such women to love! At one moment Ginevra would draw herself up—bridle her grandmother would have called it—with involuntary recoil from doubtful approach; the next, Ginny would burst out in a merry laugh at something in which only a child could have perceived the mirth-causing element; then again the woman would seem suddenly to re-enter and rebuke the child, for the sparkle would fade from her eyes, and she would look solemn, and even a little sad. The people about the place loved her, ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... style,) and, at last, falling back, and shutting my eyes, placing my left hand to my forehead, as if in profound reflection, I exclaimed languidly, and with a forced sigh, "Ah, I can't tell, you are all so pretty!" This created an explosion of mirth, some of the more knowing ones intimating by their looks, "It's lucky for you that you have got out of the scrape." But an old lady, close by me, was very angry with me;—"You fool, Christian, take one of the young ones; here's my daughter." It is necessary to explain, ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... fearful sneering mirth, which was never excited in his breast, but by things perilous and terrible and hateful. In a moment, however, he repressed ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... right!" cried he, with boisterous mirth. "I dare say all that long story of yours may interest those black fellows; but for me, I care nothing about it. It's all rubbish. Be quiet, you young fool, I say; it's too early yet for buffets. Here, ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... a jolly, musical sound of real mirth, and he heard Dermott's voice dominating and directing on the upper floor. Immediately after there came a silence, and then, from the turn in the stairs, he heard the same voice, with a touch of insolence, speaking to the servant to whom he had given ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane
... upon brought home to them still more cruelly their intellectual poverty. Augustin, in his official position as municipal orator, had just delivered the official panegyric of the Emperor. The new year was opening: the whole city was given over to mirth. And yet he was cast down, knowing well that he had just uttered many an untruth, and chiefly because he despaired of ever being happy. His friends were walking with him. Suddenly, as they crossed the street, they came upon a beggar, quite drunk, who was indulging in the jolliest ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... sorts of provisions to regale their expected mistresses, with whom they sat down to a plentiful repast, which was heightened by a store of wines which the lady had brought in her boats from the ship. Mirth and jollity prevailed; but the fumes of the liquors, in which the politic lady had infused strong opiates, suddenly operated upon their senses, and they fell down one and all in a state of stupefaction. She then with her companions drew the sabres ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... enlightenment, endurance, self-control, Truthfulness, equability, and grief or joy of soul, And birth and death, and fearfulness, and fearlessness, and shame, And honour, and sweet harmlessness,[FN17] and peace which is the same Whate'er befalls, and mirth, and tears, and piety, and thrift, And wish to give, and will to help,—all cometh of My gift! The Seven Chief Saints, the Elders Four, the Lordly Manus set— Sharing My work—to rule the worlds, these too did ...
— The Bhagavad-Gita • Sir Edwin Arnold
... colloquy, but a chasing, impossible to say which flies, which follows, or what the topic, so interlinguistic are they and rapidly counterchanging. After their conversation of an hour before, Laetitia watched Miss Middleton in surprise at her lightness of mind. Clara bathed in mirth. A boy in a summer stream shows not heartier refreshment of his whole being. Laetitia could now understand Vernon's idea of her wit. And it seemed that she also had Irish blood. Speaking of Ireland, Miss Middleton said she had cousins there, her ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... her head a little higher out of the water, and again he saw, or fancied he saw, mirth ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... joy to all who hear they bring, Sweet to recite and sweet to sing. For music's sevenfold notes are there, And triple measure,(57) wrought with care With melody and tone and time, And flavours(58) that enhance the rime; Heroic might has ample place, And loathing of the false and base, With anger, mirth, and terror, blent With tenderness, surprise, content. When, half the hermit's grace to gain, And half because they loved the strain, The youth within their hearts had stored The poem that his lips outpoured, Valmiki kissed them on the head, As at his ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... the flower-vine, trailing screen; A fluttering in of doves. Then a launch abroad of shrinking doves Over the waste where no hope is seen Of open hands: Dance in and out Small-bosomed girls of the spring of love, With a bubble of laughter, and shrilly shout Of mirth; then the dripping of tears ...
— Amores - Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... of the fish still hung at Toddie's finger, and Mrs. Burton spoiled a pair of four-button kids in detaching it, while Budge continued to laugh. At length, however, mirth gave place to brotherly love, and Budge ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... of captive fairies. All this is easy to be understood. How disconsolate the poor lover stands! regardless of the rain that threatens an exceeding damage to his well-fashioned habiliments, till he catches a backward glance of mirth from a bright eye, and turns away with ...
— Sights From A Steeple (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... obey' had been from birth The law of all around her; to fulfill All phantasies which yielded joy or mirth, Had been her slaves' chief pleasure, as her will; Her blood was high, her beauty scarce of earth: Judge, then, if her caprices e'er stood still; Had she but been a Christian, I 've a notion We should have found out ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... dart of fancy to the parlour of Edinburgh, back to the warm town, back to places of gaiety, and youth, and enterprise, back to soft manners, the lip gossiping at the ear, shoes gliding upon waxen floors, music, dance, and mirth. Her heart throbbed as to a revelation, and she could have taken him in her arms for the sake of that brave ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... next in degree to Daini. The daughter of this nurse, Tayu-no-Miobu, was in Court service. She was still young, and full of mirth and life. Genji was wont to make her useful when in the palace. Her father, who had been remotely connected with the Royal blood, was an official in the War Department. Her mother, however, had been ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... looked closely at his companion. It was very odd, Markheim did not appear to be laughing; there was something in his face like an eager sparkle of hope, but nothing of mirth. ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the manuscript-book with a certain easy carelessness on the table by her side, and glanced up with a twinkle of mirth in ...
— A World of Girls - The Story of a School • L. T. Meade
... had gone a half mile in his noiseless flight he stopped, and, listening intently, heard the faint echo of a long-drawn, whining cry. After that came silence, heavy and ominous. But Henry only laughed in noiseless mirth. All this he had expected. He knew that the larger party to which the two warriors belonged would find the bodies, with hasty pursuit to follow after the single cry. That was why he lingered. He wanted them to pursue, to hang upon his trail in the vain hope that they could catch him; ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... had almost shouted the words. "Nicholas Danver! God bless my soul!" And he had leant back in his chair and shaken with laughter. Henry Parsons, true to his role, had chuckled at intervals, but feebly. For the life of him he could see no cause for mirth. ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... your sister, then?" Cuthbert inquired, with apparent-innocence, but with the slight twinkle of his eye, which told of inward mirth. Janetta was again growing indignant, and was about to answer rather sharply, when he once more changed his tone. "There," he said, "I have teased you quite enough, haven't I? I have been presuming on our relationship ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... drown in riot and debauchery, as I have seen happen in a besieged place, the remembrance of the enemy which stalked abroad in the sunshine. Our sudden appearance, while it put a stop to the mimicry of mirth, brought out a score of men and women in every stage of drunkenness and dishevelment, of whom some, with hiccoughs and loose gestures, cried to us to join them, while others swore horridly at being recalled to the present, which, with the future, ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... a basket of breadfruit, prepared to follow me. In this order we advanced to the Arreoy and laid the whole down before him. I then spoke several sentences dictated to me by Tinah, the meaning of which I did not understand and, my pronunciation not being very exact, caused a great deal of mirth. This speech being finished I was shown another Arreoy, who had come from Ulietea, and to him likewise I was required to deliver an oration. Tinah understanding from me that I had children in my own country ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... there was no suggestion of mirth in the curl of her lips. Her eyes all the time sought his questioningly. ...
— Havoc • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... has not written a word; nor yet what prudence and magnanimity was in his heart, accompanied with meekness, moderation, and modesty. But having made mention of one of those little sentences he was wont in mirth and raillery to object against the sophisters, he does, without alleging any reason against it or solving the subtlety of the objection, stir up a terrible tragedy against Stilpo, saying that the life of man ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... and shaken and apologetic. "POOR Mr. Maltby! REALLY—!" the Duchess wailed for me in this latest of my mishaps. Some other lady chased my straw hat, which had bowled far ahead. Two others helped to brush me. They were all very kind, with a quaver of mirth in their concern for me. I looked furtively around for Braxton, but he was gone. The palms of my hands were abraded with gravel. The Duchess said I must on no account come to church NOW. I was utterly determined to reach that sanctuary. I marched firmly on with the Duchess. ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... periods of much autogenous mirth, Sir Joseph Bullion dropped an H. But he never noticed it. It was a sort of unconscious reverberation of former days; as if his lowly past, especially that portion of it which had been spent with the first and ungrammatical Mrs. Bullion, insisted on revealing ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... and desirous of promoting mirth by a facetious and humorous conversation; he was never soured by calumny and detraction, nor ever thought it necessary to confute them; "for they are sparks," said he, "which, if you do not blow them, will ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... against the cab cushion and laughed, silently. His mirth grew. His laughter was almost beyond control. This was the thing that had bothered him, the "hidden angle" that had escaped him. He laughed until he shook. He had to put his hand to his mouth to prevent bursting into prolonged, ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.
... every few feet to sneeze. With tears streaming down her cheeks Mrs. Gammit watched their retreat, till suddenly some of the vagrant pepper was wafted back to her own nostrils, and she herself was shaken with a mighty sneeze. This checked her mirth on the instant. Her face grew grave, and drawing back with a mortified air she ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... Ethelinde, noble snake Etta, home rule Eucaria, happy hand Eucharis, happy grace Eudora, happy gift Eugenia, well-born Eugenie, well-born Eulalia, fair speed Eunice, happy victory Euphemia, fair fame Euphrasia, mirth Eva, life Evangeline, happy herald Eve, life-giving Eveleen, pleasant Evelina, little Eve Eveline, pleasant Eveline, little Eve Everhilda, battle-maid Fanny, free, liberal Faith, faith Faustina, lucky Felicia, ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... Mr. STANLEY LUPINO bore the brunt, was here and there a little thin, and it is time that somebody let the Management of Drury Lane into the open secret that the pun, as an instrument of mirth, has long been a portion of the dreadful past. Mr. WILL EVANS, as the Baroness Beauxchamps, seldom let himself go, being no doubt held in restraint by a consciousness of his resemblance to Miss ELLEN TERRY. Not enough chance was given to Miss LILY LONG ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CLVIII, January 7, 1920 • Various
... life. Indeed there are men whom I have known who are never kind or sympathetic till they are in some wearing trouble of their own; when they are prosperous and cheerful, they are frankly intolerable, because their mirth ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the pleasures ye design, And cheer your hearts with songs and wine, Enjoy the day of mirth; but know There is a day of ...
— Hymns and Spiritual Songs • Isaac Watts
... felt him shake. My head on his chest shook; his right arm fell away, his left dropped the knife, and he leaned with both hands on my shoulder—shaking—shaking! I turned me round. No need to put my foot on his knife. The man was speechless with laughter—honest craftsman's mirth. The first time I'd ever seen him laugh. You know the mirth that cuts off the very breath, while ye stamp and snatch at the short ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... heed nor to be vexed at my mirth. "Laugh if you like," he said, good-humoredly, "but I learned what love might mean then, as I peeped over the red breast of the rose at the little maiden. She was younger than I was; she had hair like woven ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... be to send it to the stupid old Boldwood, and how he would wonder!" said the irrepressible Liddy, lifting her eyebrows, and indulging in an awful mirth on the verge of fear as she thought of the moral and social ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... dear," he said, "I think we've fallen pretty low. I've never felt such a poor, shabby ruffian before. Good heavens! To think of our immortal souls being moved to mirth by such a thing as this,—so stupid, so barren of all reason of laughter. And then the cruelty of it! What ferocious imbeciles we are! Whom have I married? A woman with neither heart ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Prince Bahman, "what is become of all your mirth and gaiety? Are you not well? or has some misfortune befallen you? Tell us, that we may know how to act, and give you some relief. If any one has affronted you, ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... only increased the mirth of that grinning multitude. I shook my clenched, up-stretched fists against them. And when at last their ghastly merriment ceased, I raised my voice once ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... rise from her bed, meet her parents and her neighbours with her usual smile of vivacity, and voice of mirth, was impossible: to leave her bed at all, to creep downstairs, and reply in a faint, broken voice to questions asked, were, in her state of mind, mighty efforts; and they were all to which her struggles could ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... elegant Ball and Supper were given at Menut's Tavern by the Gentlemen who served in the Garrison during that Memorable Winter. The Company, consisting of upwards of two hundred and thirty Ladies and Gentlemen, made a grand and brilliant appearance, and nothing but mirth and good humour reigned all night long. About half-past six, His Excellency, Sir Guy Carleton, Knight of the Bath, our worthy Governor and Successful General, dressed in the militia uniform, (which added lustre ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... the which age none of my fourteen brethren came? And yet, I thank God, I eat, I drink, I sleep, as well as I did these thirty years bygone, and better than when I was younger—in ipso flore adolescentiae. Only the gravel now and then seasons my mirth with some little pain, which I have felt only since the beginning of March the last year, a month before my deliverance from prison. I feel, thank God, no abatement of the alacrity and ardour of my mind for the propagation of the truth. Neither use I spectacles now more than ...
— Andrew Melville - Famous Scots Series • William Morison
... shocked—Mr. Pyecroft, that the—er—last sacred trust of a dying widow—perhaps the holiest trust that can be conceived by man—the care and welfare of her helpless orphaned girl—should be made the subject of mirth, sir, by yourself and the members of the Sacramento bar! I shall not allude, sir, to my own feelings in regard to Dick Stannard, one of my most cherished friends," continued the colonel, in a voice charged with emotion, ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... were bright with pleasure, her cheeks flushed with health, her lips smiling in mirth, her step was so light that she seemed to dance along the sands, and her voice was so fresh and cheerful that it was impossible to believe that she cherished any other feeling on the subject of her broken marriage than one of delight at ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... slippery pavement. This new spectacle was the absolutely undreamed-of to Nora, who was no scientist. Her laughter was irrepressible. In a trice the precedents of years were gone. Nora felt the empire of her dignity slipping away, but none the less could not repress her mirth. And more than this; as she gazed into the honest, blue-eyed face before her she felt a lessening of her desire to retain her icy pedestal, and she struggled the less against her laughter. Indeed, with a sudden fright, she found her laughter growing nervous. She, the head ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... herself into pieces. The idea struck this creature in so ludicrous a light that she nearly went into convulsions. She, alas, had never been troubled by such a weakness. I watched my opportunity, when she was doubled up with mirth, to snatch the revolver ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... of wild mirth in the Middle Ages, held on 1st January, in which the Ass of Scripture celebrity played a chief part, and in which many of the rites and ceremonies of the Church ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... gone wrong, should take it less hard than Mother, and could break the same to Mother more gentler than we. To say truth, I was feared—and yet I scarce knew why—of that man we met on Saint Hubert's Isle. I had noted that Milly never named him, though he were somewhat cause of mirth betwixt Helen and me: and when an other so did, she seemed as though she essayed to speak as careless as ever she could. This liked me not: nor did it like me that twice I had met Milly coming from the garden, and she went red as fire when she saw me. From all this I feared some secret ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt
... angry honk-honk of an approaching motor sounded from down the road. Their eyes met and they began to laugh. They laughed as children do when they can not contain themselves, and can not explain the cause of their mirth to grown people, but share it perfectly together. When Clara Vavrika sat down at the piano after he was gone, she felt that she had laughed away a dozen years. She practised as if the house were burning over ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... got pickled to the eyebrows!" He laughed happily. "I don't mean that that was a unique occurrence and so forth, because, when I was a bachelor, it was rather a habit of mine to get a trifle submerged every now and again on occasions of decent mirth and festivity. But the rummy thing that night was that I showed it. Up till then, I've been told by experts, I was a chappie in whom it was absolutely impossible to detect the symptoms. You might get a bit suspicious ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... his party are descending to the city to spend the evening in honest mirth and feasting, but we are fain to linger, watching the slow course of the shadows as they stretch across the Attic hills. Sea, sky, plain, mountains, and city are all before us, but we will not spend words upon them now. Only for the buildings, wrought ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... Scotland occupied when on their periodical visits of homage to England. Now, during this time of Scotland's independence, the Prince of Wales had taken up his lodging in the old palace, and made it noisy with the mad, boisterous mirth of his court. ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... the drawing room and saw the company seated as she had described to her Nurse, she felt very much disposed to laugh again, but made an effort and composed herself. Still her face was beaming with mirth and fun, and when some ladies said "What a happy looking little girl," they were quite sincere. That sort of face too worked wonders, and her Mamma's friends liked her much and talked pleasantly to her, and she was pleased and happy and quite ...
— The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales • Mrs. Alfred Gatty
... courtyard it was like a triumphal procession as they passed to their horses. Men laughed aloud, they knew not why. A spirit of mirth was abroad, which had taken possession of all ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... his cigar toward the First National, and then pointed it at his own door, but this bit of pantomime only renewed the mirth of the assemblage. It seemed to be the impression that he was trying to advertise his bank, in the fashion of a "demonstrator" in a shop-window. The disorder ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... fresh spring-clouds across all earth their glistening pearls profuse now sow; The flowers, too, all appearing, forth the radiance of their beauty show; Of mirth and joy 'tis now the time, the hour, to wander to and fro; The palm-tree o'er the fair ones' pic-nic gay its grateful shade ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... the main entrance into the Abbey. Round this the party collected: a hamper of smuggled claret, which they had fortunately intercepted on its road from the abbey, was unpacked: wine and the genial warmth of the fire disposed all present except the prisoner to mirth and festivity; and not one soul but seemed to regard it as a point of conscience to reward their fatigue and celebrate their success by ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. II. • Thomas De Quincey
... then entertained with a lecture, with threats of turning out, and sending to the station-house. Three or four of the most unruly were dragged away to bed and the rest left, with strong injunctions to enjoy nothing but harmless mirth. ...
— Sinks of London Laid Open • Unknown
... of this system, which moved the mirth of Voltaire and, according to Milton, of the Almighty, was such as to make it doubted by some thinkers even in antiquity. Several men thought the earth revolved on its axis, but the hypothesis was rejected by Aristotle and ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... contracted brow, he is evidently a profound critic, and much too wise to laugh. He must indisputably be a very great critic; for, like Voltaire's Poccocurante, nothing can please him; and, while those around open every avenue of their minds to mirth, and are willing to be delighted, though they do not well know why, he analyses the drama by the laws of Aristotle, and finding those laws are violated, determines that the author ought to be hissed, instead of being applauded. This it is to ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... hail the summer day whereon a light was born Whence the sun grew brighter, seeing the world less dark and sad. Man of men by right divine of boyhood everlasting, France incarnate, France immortal in her deathless boy, Brighter birthday never shone than thine on earth, forecasting More of strenuous mirth in manhood, more of manful joy. Child of warriors, friend of warriors, Garibaldi's friend, Even thy name is as the splendour of a sunbright sword: While the boy's heart beats in man, thy fame shall find not end: Time and dark oblivion bow before thee as their lord. Youth acclaims thee gladdest ...
— A Channel Passage and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... as there are of rouge on an old duchess' cheek. In the middle of this broad and fantastically carved joist there was an old painting representing a cat playing rackets. This picture was what moved the young man to mirth. But it must be said that the wittiest of modern painters could not invent so comical a caricature. The animal held in one of its forepaws a racket as big as itself, and stood on its hind legs to aim at hitting ...
— At the Sign of the Cat and Racket • Honore de Balzac
... having been described by Dioscorides. An old Latin distich thus celebrates its virtues: Enula campana reddit proecordia sana—"Elecampane will the spirits sustain." "Julia Augusta," said Pliny, "let no day pass without eating some of the roots of Enula condired, to help digestion, and cause mirth." ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... and a faraway look in the eyes, which were utterly unlike the Lincoln of other days.... I confess that I was so pained that I could almost have shed tears.... By and by, when I knew him better, his face was often full of mirth and enjoyment; and even when he was pensive or gloomy, his features were lighted up very much as a clouded alabaster vase might be softly illuminated by a ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... her, and had her own private reasons for thinking that she was no good friend to Cecilia: but now, in consequence either of the wear and tear of London life, or of a disappointment in love or matrimony, she had lost the fresh plumpness of youth; and gone too was that spirit of mirth, if not of good humour, which used to enliven her countenance. Thin and sallow, the sharp features remained, and the sarcastic without the arch expression; still she had a very fashionable air. Her ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... quite different. When it rains porridge I have no spoon. I am always to play merry pranks, and make faces which force people to laugh, and if they give me an apple, and I bite into it, why it is sour! How often sadness hides itself behind mirth! I shall never be able to hold out for thirty years." God was gracious ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... in the human article make scrupulous and systematic efforts to promote noisy mirth among them, as a means of drowning reflection, and rendering them insensible to their condition. The whole object of the training to which the negro is put, from the time he is sold in the northern market till he arrives south, is systematically directed towards making ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... "That's down," he remarked, and the three green front teeth of his quiet grin were stamped on the impressionable vision of the girls in such a way that they looked at one another with a bare bitter smile. Once it would have been mirth. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... talked at once, with lively gesticulation. A few faces had the strained look that indicates the conscientious listener; but most of these young musicians were under the influence of a stimulant more potent than wine, which manifested itself in a nervous garrulity and a nervous mirth. ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... deplorable trousers, his dilapidated waistcoat, his imitation gold pin, and battered shoes, the strings of which were plastered in mud? Who will see all that but the Parisian? The unfortunate man of Paris is the unfortunate man in toto, for he has still enough mirth to know the extent of his misfortune. The mulatto was like an executioner of Louis XI. leading a man ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... where he has striven and failed. The students met him with tolerant hilarity, and Tom Bassett, who would have kicked the Declaration of Independence across the campus in lieu of a ball, watched him with secret mirth and open championship. There had sprung up a strong friendship between the two—one of those rare affections which bend but do not break. Dudley Webb, the most brilliant member of his class and the light of his mother's eyes, began life, as he would end it, with the ready grasp of good-fellowship. ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... has another, not broken." The speaker was so solemn that, with mirth in every drop of her blood, the inquirer contrived to be ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... of the street, the dwelling, the court, the camp, man in his common joys and sorrows, his vices, crimes, miseries, his loftiest aspirations and most ideal state—may be so copied that the picture will express all its beauty and sweetness, all its happiness and mirth, all its dignity, and all its moral admonition and significance, for the benefit of the world. Such a dramatic stock-company, for example (and this is but one of the commendable products of the modern stage), has grown up and ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... them in the worldly riotousness and pleasures any longer, and because he is saved from such a course they speak evil of him. This is the substance of 1 Pet. 4:1-4. The gay scenes of a worldly life with their pleasures and mirth have no delight for the heart filled with Christian love. He who loves God has no love for worldly sports. The pleasurable society of Jesus destroys all taste for the society of the world. The Christian's ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... having wetted his great heart with a draught which I have no doubt measured a full pint, fell, entirely regardless of the day, to performing his most spirited hoe-down, while the most of us looked on with a mirth that ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... sad song, Abbess," Isabeau sighed, and her face seemed to have paled beneath its false colours and the lines about her mouth and eyes to have grown older in surrender to inevitable thoughts. She whom the girl called Abbess laughed, and her mirth sounded harshly after the ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... College Gate, its pillars so artfully, invitingly rounded by William of Wykeham, drew us in again. We were stirred by William Byrd's "Praise our Lord, all ye Gentiles," and taken to Oxford by Gibbons's "What is our life? A play of passion. Our mirth? The music of division." Purcell recalled our gracious English landscape, and English life, "When Myra sings we seek the enchanting sound"; and Thomas Morley with "Now is the month of maying." Then there was rollicking Tom Bateson, ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... was, I felt my spirits rising rapidly. The freedom of movement and the exhilarating air gave my mind a new sense of liberty, and Jacqueline, who had been watching me anxiously, seeing the gloom disappear from my face, tried, first to tempt me to mirth, and then to match me in it. Sometimes we would run a little way, and then we would fall back into our steady, ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... table, where Ulick was talking what he would have called blarney to Miss Susan Northover and Miss Mary Anne Higgins, both at once, till he excited them into a perpetual giggle. Mr. Dusautoy was delighted, and evidently thought this brilliant success; Mrs. Dusautoy was less at her ease—the mirth was less sober and more exclusive than she had intended; and Sophy, finding nothing could be made of Miss Jane, turned round to her other neighbour, Mr. Hope, and asked his opinion of the Whewell and Brewster controversy on the ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... course not, old chap," answered Jack, manfully struggling to suppress his mirth; "awfully annoying it must have been, I'm sure. Well, ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... He then chose law for a profession, in 1692 graduated as LL.D., and was admitted an Advocate at Doctor's Commons. He kept a light heart and a lighter purse than beseemed one of his fraternity, publishing playful satires, at times showing an earnest mind under his mirth. In or soon after the year 1702 Dr. King went to Ireland as judge of the High Court of Admiralty, sole Commissioner of the Prizes, Vicar-General to the Lord Primate, and Keeper of the Records in Birmingham's Tower, in which office he was succeeded in 1708 ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... pride in planning this distressing festivity was so ludicrous that Lloyd Pryor's disgust changed into involuntary mirth. But Helena was plainly nervous. "Thank you; you are very kind; but I am ...
— The Awakening of Helena Richie • Margaret Deland
... their contents were removed; no one felt that he was expected to eat. Graydon, after his first attempt to really eat of the third course, subsided with a look of amazement at his hostess. She smiled and whispered something into his ear. He grew very red and choked with—was it confusion or mirth? ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... to the already lacerated feelings of the injured man. He had been brought thither to be scoffed at and scorned at, that he might be a laughing-stock to his enemies, and food for mirth to the vile-minded. He swelled with noble anger till he would have burst, had it not been for the opportune padding of ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... Here, in the month of February, 1317, the new King of Ireland had the gratification of welcoming his brother of Scotland, at the head of a powerful auxiliary force, and here, according to Barbour's Chronicle, they feasted for three days, in mirth and jollity, before entering on the third campaign ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... of delight and mirth, Scorn'd and slighted upon earth! Herald of a mighty band, Of a joyous train ensuing, 60 Singing at my heart's command, In the lanes my thoughts pursuing, I will sing, as doth behove, Hymns in praise of what ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 1 • William Wordsworth
... guests came, right royal was the welcome that they had. For Gunther and Brunhild rode forth from the city to meet them, and greeted them most heartily. All was mirth and jollity. By the day there were tilts and tournaments and sports of every kind, and at night there was feasting in the hall. And so they ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... would seem as if art had so much of eternity in it, that it must take its dye from the close rather than the course of life:—"In such laughter the heart of man is sorrowful, and the end of that mirth is heaviness." ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume II (of 3) • John Ruskin
... attacked by a fit of melancholy he would go to the bridge foot at Oxford and shake his sides with laughter to hear the bargemen swearing at one another, just as Democritus used to walk down to the haven at Abdera and pick matter for mirth out of the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... raged to himself that this was a world in which it was given to Drumanno to please, and to himself only to stand aside and envy. He seemed excluded, as of right, from the favour of such society—seemed to extinguish mirth wherever he came, and was quick to feel the wound, and desist, and retire into solitude. If he had but understood the figure he presented, and the impression he made on these bright eyes and tender hearts; if he had but guessed that the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Nor rivalling, as now, the Trumpet's sound, But slender, simple, and its stops but few, Breath'd to the Chorus; and was useful too: For feats extended, and extending still, Requir'd not pow'rful blasts their space to fill; When the thin audience, pious, frugal, chaste, With modest mirth indulg'd their sober taste. But soon as the proud Victor spurns all bounds, And growing Rome a wider wall surrounds; When noontide cups, and the diurnal bowl, Licence on holidays a flow of soul; Accessit numerisque ...
— The Art Of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos - Q. Horatii Flacci Epistola Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica. • Horace
... passed from human sight, Save only once, forgetting he was by And half forgetting too her care and woes, Unto her lips some idle jest arose. "Winona," said the Raven, in a tone Of stern reproof that on the instant froze All thought of mirth, and when she met his eye, As by a serpent's charm it fixed her own; The hate and anger of a soul intense Were all compressed in that remorseless glance, The coldly cruel meaning of whose sense Smote down the shield of her false innocence. ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... eyes, now dimm'd with frequent weeping, see The infant's pure and rosy ark, the stripling's sanctuary? When will these throbbing hearts grow calm around its lighted hearth?— Quench'd is the fire within its walls, and hush'd the voice of mirth! ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 357 - Vol. XIII, No. 357., Saturday, February 21, 1829 • Various
... and a book of cigarette paper. Deliberately he wraps the pearl in one of the tissue leaves, and, looking steadily at me, pushes the new treasure far into a corner of the crested case. There is more significance than mirth in the laugh with which ...
— Under the Southern Cross • Elizabeth Robins
... as a convict in Siberia. His hair turned white as snow, and his beard grew long, thin, and grey. All his mirth went; he stooped; he walked slowly, spoke little, and never laughed, but ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... him, but they could see that there was something more hidden under the mirth of Joe and Fuz as they walked away; and they were hardly out of hearing before Dab ...
— Dab Kinzer - A Story of a Growing Boy • William O. Stoddard
... perhaps not inordinate, but unseemly mirth, which he had swallowed at the reference to the setting hen and the Berlin wool antimacassar, momentarily got the better of him, despite his efforts to cough it down, and broke forth ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... There she stood, receiving the greetings of the members of the party; every gentleman bearing a torch, which lighted up a rosy face at his side. Such happiness as they enjoyed—such spirit and such mirth! It was worth witnessing. I found that everybody of note in Stockbridge dearly loves our friend, Mr. O'Sullivan. He is the "pet" and "darling" and "the angelic" with them all. And through him we were known ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... in the red squirrel. He pauses on the fence or on the rail before me, and goes through a series of antics and poses and hilarious gestures, giving out the while a stream of snickering, staccato sounds that suggest unmistakably that I am a source of mirth and ridicule to him. His gestures and attitudes are all those of mingled mirth, curiosity, defiance, and contempt—seldom those of fear. He comes spinning along on the stone wall in front of me, with those abrupt, nervous pauses every few yards that characterize all his movements. ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... night, and though she paid us frequent visits, she was Cousin Susan's for life. I fear indulgence dulled her moral sense. She was an immense happiness to her mistress, whose silent and lonely days she made glad with her oddity and mirth. And yet the small creature, old, toothless, and blind, domineered over her gentle friend—threatening her sometimes if she presumed to remove the small Fury from the inside of her own bed, into which it pleased her to creep. Indeed, I believe ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... to and fro of those unrivalled engines of destruction, the hospital and War Office motors. Many shops have reopened, a few theatres are tentatively producing patriotic drama or mixed programmes seasonal with sentiment and mirth, and the cinema ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... entirely strange, for he was a terror to the female element in his household—they soon noted that there was an unnatural wildness in his amusement at their discomfiture. Now he would talk of nothing but O'Iwa. From this hysterical mirth he passed to an hysterical fear. Afraid of visions of the Lady of Tamiya he stayed awake at night. To be alone appalled him. He would have others keep awake with him. He was now at the gibbering stage. "Night in the house of Kwaiba is to be turned into day. The day shall be the time for ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... in which part of these lines were repeated was irresistibly funny. To Eurie it was explosively so; she laughed until the seat shook with mirth. To be sure, she knew nothing about modern Sunday-schools; for aught that she was certain of, they might have sung that very hymn in the First Church Sunday-school the Sabbath before; and it made not the least atom of difference whether they did or not; the way in which Dr. Eggleston ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... knows not, from south to north, That Laeghaire to-morrow his birthday keeps? No fire may be lit upon hill or hearth Till the King's strong fire in its kingly mirth Up rushes from ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... testifies. The company was much tossed about in the rough waves of the bay, and had great difficulty in procuring drinking-water. They entered the Wighcocomoco, on the east side, where the natives first threatened and then received them with songs, dancing, and mirth. A point on the mainland where they found a pond of fresh water they named "Poynt Ployer in honer of the most honorable house of Monsay, in Britaine, that in an extreme extremitie once relieved our Captain." This reference ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... to laugh, so long as they believed their guide to be in real danger; but now that they saw what it was, they could no more restrain their mirth, and both simultaneously broke out into a fit of cachinnation, that caused ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... are an inch taller," she admitted, with mock reluctance. And then she said, with a ripple of mirth: "You are taller than I am—I give up; I won't go ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... possesses them. A booty of L10 looks as great in the eye of a bridle-cull, and gives as much real happiness to his fancy, as that of as many thousands to the statesman; and doth not the former lay out his acquisitions in whores and fiddles with much greater joy and mirth than the latter in palaces and pictures? What are the flattery, the false compliments of his gang to the statesman, when he himself must condemn his own blunders, and is obliged against his will to give fortune the whole honour of success? What is the pride resulting ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... substituted, by those enemies of innocent mirth, the Puritans, for the original carols, which were festal chansons for enlivening the merriment of the Christmas celebrity; and not such religious songs as are current at this day, with the common people, under ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. - 582, Saturday, December 22, 1832 • Various
... has achieved a greater national reputation for books of genuine humor and mirth than GEORGE W. PECK, author of "Peck's Bad Boy ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... same time. Knowing the ford well, and that it is shallow, with a firm bottom, they ride boldly on; their followers straggled out behind, these innocent of the foul conspiracy being hatched so near; still keeping up their rollicky mirth, and flinging about jeux d'esprit as the spray drops are tossed from the fetlocks of ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... could easily gain the spot. Wherever the shadows fell upon the brake a glow-worm made a point of exhibiting itself, and the bright August moon sailed slowly above, pleased to look down upon so charming a scene of merriment; for they wrong the moon who assert that she has an objection to mirth,—with the mirth of fairies she has all possible sympathy. Here and there in the thicket the scarce honeysuckles—in August honeysuckles are somewhat out of season—hung their rich festoons, and at that moment they were crowded with the elderly fairies, who had ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... embellishment of her charms, there was something so lively in her person, that the Chevalier de Grammont was caught at first sight; her wit and humour corresponded with her other qualities, being quite easy and perfectly charming; she was all mirth, all life, all complaisance and politeness, and all was natural, and always the ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... of these tales, he is still the father of this class of modern Italian literature, since he was the first to transplant into the world of letters what had hitherto been only the subject of social mirth. These tales have in their turn been repeated anew in almost every language of Europe, and have afforded reputations to numerous imitators. One of the most beautiful and unexceptionable tales in the Decameron is that of "Griselda," the last in the collection. It ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... ameliorate the situation, and after the servants were fairly at work would have taken his wife apart and pointed out to her, in well-chosen language, that here was only another instance of his superior wisdom. One of a more virulent type, but still a philosopher, might have indulged in mirth—quiet sarcastic mirth. No person of a truly philosophic cast of mind and with a rooted antipathy to damning would have sworn lustily ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... Fourth" was always a holiday on every Southern plantation, and, of course, Major Waldron's was no exception to the rule. His negroes not only had holiday, but a barbecue, and it was a day of general mirth and festivity. ...
— Diddie, Dumps, and Tot • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle
... with the gouty stomach under his left arm.' Nat was now so full of freaks and fun, that our little room rang with laughter night after night. Patrick used to sit on the floor sometimes, with his broad Irish mouth stiffened into a perpetual grin at the sight of the mirth, which, though he could not comprehend ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... out, and which nothing could withstand. When he was alone with Venetia, he would imitate the old maids of Morpeth, and all the ceremonies of a provincial tea party, with so much life and genuine fun, that Venetia was often obliged to stop in their rambles to indulge her overwhelming mirth. When they were alone, and he was gloomy, she was often accustomed to say, 'Now, dear Plantagenet, tell me how the old ladies at ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... sure, excuse my mirth, my dear Colonel Gerard,' said he. 'The fact is, that the expression upon your face when you grasped the situation was just a little funny. I have no doubt that you are an excellent soldier, but I hardly think that you are fit to measure wits with the Marshal Millefleurs, as ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to the name of Frank Haywood was a rather chunky, well set-up lad of about sixteen. He had blue eyes, that were usually sparkling with mirth; and a mop of yellow hair; while his skin was darkened by long exposure ...
— The Saddle Boys of the Rockies - Lost on Thunder Mountain • James Carson
... wrote the third act of The Wild Duck, where so horrible a luncheon party—"we'll all keep a corner"—gloats over the herring salad, he indulged again and again in those puffs of soundless and formidable mirth which Mr. Johan Paulsen describes as so surprising an ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... the old priest laid his book upon the table and took up the smoky oil-lamp. As he did so, Punch could see his face plainly, for it was lit up by the lamp, and the boy could perceive the mocking mirth in his eyes as he raised it above his head with his left hand, and walked slowly towards the door which covered the ladder-like staircase; and then as Punch felt that all was over, the old man slowly passed the light ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn
... Temple of Memory avail? One moment of practical happiness is worth a thousand years of imaginary in such Temple.—Is the lot of high people so very sweet, then? Pleasure, gentle ease, true and hearty mirth, have always fled from the great and their peculiar ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... scents and sounds and sights of a day's tramp, out of the meditative leafiness and spiritual temper of natural things, into the garishly lit street of some little provincial town, animated with the clumsy mirth of silly young country folks, aping so drearily the ribaldry, say, of Elmira, is a painful anticlimax to the spirit. Had it only been real Summer, instead of Indian Summer, we should, of course, have been real gypsies, and made our beds under the stars, but, as ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne
... a man who always amuses me. Ordinarily he is a somewhat grim-looking individual; but when there is any fighting going on his whole manner changes, and he beams and mantles with a sort of suppressed mirth. He comes swaggering up now as the guns are opening, looking like a man who has just been told the best story he ever heard in his life, and is still chuckling over it. "They're on to us again," he bubbles out, knocking his boot with his whip in irrepressible glee. "What! what! they're ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... earth do dwell Sing to the Lord with cheerful voice; Him serve with mirth, his praise forth tell— Come ye before him ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... friend would have felt of her that she joked about it now, had not her scale from grave to gay been a thing of such unnamable shades that her contrasts were never sharp. She made up for failures of gravity by failures of mirth; if she hadn't, that is, been at times as earnest as might have been liked, so she was certain not to be at other times as easy as she would like herself. "I must face the music. It isn't, at any rate, its 'coming out,'" she added; "it's ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... to it, but I go not," said the young Athenian; "slaughter in the daytime, feasting at night—blood on the hands—wine at the lips—I hate, I loathe this union of massacre and mirth! Go you and enjoy the revel in the palace of your king; were I present, I should see at the banquet the shadowy forms of that glorious matron and her sons; I should hear above the laughter, the shout, and the song, the thrilling tones of voices confessing unshaken confidence in the power and ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... the light 50 Their loves might cover or extenuate it, And high in her worst fate make pity sit. She married them; and in the banquet came, Borne by the virgins. Hero striv'd to frame Her thoughts to mirth: ay me! but hard it is To imitate a false and forced bliss; Ill may a sad mind forge a merry face, Nor hath constrained laughter any grace. Then laid she wine on cares to make them sink: Who fears the threats of Fortune, let him drink.[94] ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... was much in his life to depress him, for in the triple solitude of age, eccentricity, and deafness, he went about much pestered by children. It was for this very reason perhaps that he ever recommended mirth and hopefulness. He was fond, for instance, of telling how Collumcille cheered up his mother. "How are you to-day, mother?" said the saint. "Worse," replied the mother. "May you be worse to-morrow," said the saint. ...
— The Celtic Twilight • W. B. Yeats
... another in this way of life—and the old woman there is as knowing a gipsy as any in the country, and can tell your fortune, sir, if you like to hear it."—His character of the elder gipsy, who resembled Munden's witch in Macbeth, produced considerable mirth in the whole party; and the old woman, who was engaged in smoking her pipe, took it from her mouth, and said: "I ayn't told so many gentlefolks their fortunes to no purpose, and I'll tell your's, sir, if you'll give me something to fill my pipe." I smiled, and told her I thanked her; but, as ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... friendship, and that it is through friendship that he occasionally calls on me, and brings, into the silence of my library, his youthful exuberance of spirits, the contagion of his enthusiasm, and the mirth of a man for whom destiny has naught ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... BRIDGES has a very versatile pen and in most of the twenty-one pieces of Jetsam (MILLS AND BOON) which he has recovered from the waves of monthly magazines and elsewhere there is a certain amount of material for mirth. I do not however find him a startlingly original humorist, whether on the river Thames, where he seems to follow in the wake of Mr. JEROME K. JEROME, or in a Chelsea "pub," where his manners are reminiscent of the characters of Messrs. W. W. JACOBS and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 29, 1914 • Various
... and add variety to the dull routine of their life, Champlain contrived what he called L'ORDRE DE BON TEMPS, or The Rule of Mirth, which was introduced and carried out with spirit and success. The fifteen gentlemen who sat at the table of De Poutrincourt, the governor, comprising the whole number of the order, took turns in performing the duties of steward and caterer, each holding ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain
... was a soft landscape of mild earth, Where all was harmony, and calm, and quiet, Luxuriant, budding; cheerful without mirth, Which, if not happiness, is much more nigh it Than are your mighty passions and so forth, Which some call 'the sublime:' I wish they'd try it: I've seen your stormy seas and stormy women, And pity lovers rather ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... haunted house, but I hear there are such things; That they hold the talk of spirits, their mirth and sorrowings. I know that house isn't haunted and I wish it were, I do, For it wouldn't be so lonely if it ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... kept them from evil, he did not remain aloof, dining with them each day in the public hall, and even while they sat long over the wine, remaining with them, pledging them good-humoredly in a little cup, which he pretended to taste, and ruminating on the Psalms in the midst of their noisy mirth. ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... to the laws which governed his nature. And judged by the changes in his expression as he listened, one must have inferred that his personal standards were savage beyond belief. At first he showed only amusement, as if presently he might snort with mirth. His mouth worked like a worm, stretching in a grin, then a sneer. But when at last the three-cornered conversation within ended and the Judge's voice alone reached him, his whole body seemed to stiffen. He clenched his fat fists. Amazement fled before rage upon that furious face, perspiration ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... mix'd reason with pleasure, and wisdom with mirth: If he had any faults, he has left ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... answered very well indeed so long as prices were high. While the harvests were large and the markets inflated; while cattle fetched good money; while men's hearts were full of mirth—all went well. It is whispered now that the grand Frank has secretly borrowed 25l. of a little cottage shopkeeper in the adjacent village—a man who sells farthing candles and ounces of tea—to pay his reapers. It is also currently whispered that Frank ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... view, perhaps he is,' returned Gaston, with a faint sneer; 'but he's not a man given to exuberant mirth.' ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... Bernarda, the personification of austere, uncompromising virtue, chased the mirth from every face ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... and returns the ring the whole truth flashes upon her. She is in love with Orsino—this she knows. Olivia, she believes, is in love with her. The edge of the situation, the dawn of this entanglement, excites her mirth. In this scene she becomes charming—an impersonation of Spring. Her laughter is as natural and musical as the song of a brook. So, in the scene with Olivia in which she cries, "Make me a willow cabin at your gate!" she is the embodiment of grace, and her ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... of our knowledge of the Nipe's mind that we are prepared to enter into the next phase of our program. Within a very short while, if we are correct, we shall, with your help, arrest the most feared arch-criminal that Earth has ever known." He chuckled, but there was little mirth in it. "I dare say that the public will be extremely happy to hear of his death, and I know that Colonel Mannheim and the rest of us will be glad to know that he will ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... his guests were an attractive group of men with pleasant faces and winning manners, clad in many garments of richly figured silk of bright, attractive, but unobtrusive, colors, who talked, seriously or in mirth, almost incessantly. They took the train about one o'clock and lunch was immediately served in Chinese style, but the last course was not brought until nearly four o'clock. At every station soldiers stood in line in the attitude of salute until the ...
— Farmers of Forty Centuries - or, Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan • F. H. King
... side pocket a small booklet entitled, 'Knallerbsen; oder du sollst und wirst lachen!' (Squibs; or you must and shall laugh!) began reading the funny anecdotes of which the little book was full. He read them twelve specimens; he aroused very little mirth, however; only Sanin smiled, from politeness, and he himself, Herr Klueber, after each anecdote, gave vent to a brief, business-like, but still condescending laugh. At twelve o'clock the whole party returned to Soden to the best ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... Wherever it listeth there to flee: To go, when a joyful fancy calls, Dashing down, 'mong the waterfalls; Then wheeling about, with its mates at play, Above and below, and among the spray, Hither and thither, with screams as wild As the laughing mirth of a ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... his being the most tractable of children; and with such a love and knowledge of the Bible that, when only five years old, his father could consult him like a little Concordance, and withal full of boyish mirth and daring. When sent to school at Neasdon, he was so excited by the story of an African traveller overawing a wild bull by the calm defiance of the eye, as to attempt the like process upon one that he found grazing in a field, but ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... palaces, stately and tall pavilions, Roofs flashing back the sunlight, music and gladness and mirth, Whose streets were full of the hum and roar of the toiling millions, Whose merchantmen were princes, and the honourable ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... contempt but to our sport inclined Smile on us, shades of Judges short and tall Portrayed on windows of the Temple Hall; There was a time that ye grave thoughts resigned, Then, warm with sack, the Serjeants' hearts waxed kind, In mirth Lords Keepers danced the galliard all, Not ...
— Briefless Ballads and Legal Lyrics - Second Series • James Williams
... dreamed!' and commenced reckoning and counting to employ my mind; but that did no good, and it nearly drove me mad! I sprang out of bed, and then I found out the trick: but how Laender grinned! he was swollen and red in the face with his mirth." ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... accompanying the "woven paces and waving hands" of Court bedayas, in their spangled pink robes, now echoes to the tread of alien feet; the dim arcades teem with ghostly memories, and the mournful desolation of the Taman Sarie borrows fresh poignancy in the former scene of mirth and music. A moss-grown and slippery stairway leads to the green twilight of a subterranean grotto, containing the richly-carved stone bedstead of the Sultan, who sought this cool retreat from the ardour of a tropical sun. A silvery curtain of murmuring water fell before his ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... Nor dreads that worst of ills, a noisy wife." "Oh! place me, Jove, where none but women come, And thunders worse than thine afflict the room, Where one eternal nothing flutters round, And senseless titt'ring sense of mirth confound; Or lead me bound to garret, Babel-high, Where frantic poet rolls his crazy eye, Tiring the ear with oft-repeated chimes, And smiling at the never-ending rhymes: E'en here, or there, I'll be as blest as Jove, Give me tobacco, ...
— Inebriety and the Candidate • George Crabbe
... Napoleon's health and appetite were on the whole excellent, and he suffered less than the rest from sea-sickness. The delicate Las Cases, who had donned his naval uniform, was in such distress as to move the mirth of the crew, whereupon Napoleon sharply bade him appear in plain clothes so as not to disgrace the French navy. For the great man himself the crew soon felt a very real regard, witness the final confession of one of them to Maitland: ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
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