"Anecdote" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Mayors and Sheriffs, p. 77. This anecdote is inserted in the margin of Fitz-Thedmar's chronicle, the writer expressing his horror at the "wondrous and unheard of" conduct of "this ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe
... narrating with great exultation how he had purchased his own Stradivarius, which was worth at least five hundred guineas, at a Jew broker's in Tottenham Court Road for fifty-five shillings. This led him to Paganini, and we sat for an hour over a bottle of claret while he told me anecdote after anecdote of that extraordinary man. The afternoon was far advanced and the hot glare had softened into a mellow glow before we found ourselves at the police-station. Lestrade was waiting ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... moreover, showed myself willing to be "drawn" on the subject of my explorations. I even went so far as to relate an adventure at some length (a thing I am thankful to say I have never been guilty of before or since), told an anecdote which made the young man laugh, and flattered him to the best of my ability, by asking his opinion about an American political crisis of the day. Then, by gradual steps, I led the talk toward the great West in general, Colorado silver mines in particular, and ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... represented with half-closed eyes and tightly shut lips, as signs of modesty, and how some Spaniards still honour this expression in life, while German art prefers lips pouting as for a kiss. His lively sense of anecdote, to which he gives the rein in ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... Madge's and Phil's own heedlessness had caused their skiff to be overturned. Somehow, the tale of the throwing of the ball on board Roy Dennis's yacht and of frightening Mabel Farrar had also gone abroad in Cape May. Lillian had confided the anecdote to Ethel Swann under promise of the greatest secrecy. The story had seemed to Ethel too ridiculous to keep to herself, so she had repeated it to another friend, after demanding the same promise that ...
— Madge Morton's Victory • Amy D.V. Chalmers
... be added that Mirabeau, as we learn from an anecdote told by an eyewitness and recorded by Legouve, had a very hairy chest, while the same is recorded of ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... benevolent old fellow, however, who had kept his hat on, and had a single vice—that of coming to the Board-room with a brown paper parcel tied up with string—murmured: "We must make all allowances," and started an anecdote about his youth. He was gently called to order by his secretary. Scorrier was asked for his opinion. He looked at Hemmings. "My importance is concerned," was written all over the secretary's face. Moved by an impulse of loyalty to ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... prayer, still more would come. Also, that Friends had been very kind and attentive to them in every way, and never said a discouraging word to them. She then discourses a little on phrenology, at that time quite a new thing in this country, and relates an anecdote of "Brother "Weld," ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... Pennsylvania line. Ellsworth himself made a narrow escape by swimming the Ohio River with the aid of an army mule. Yet we can well appreciate the unimpressionable way in which some of the men did their work, from an anecdote that Mr. Edison tells of that awful night of Friday, April 14, 1865: "I noticed," he says, "an immense crowd gathering in the street outside a newspaper office. I called the attention of the other operators to the crowd, and we sent a messenger boy ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... use has been made of anecdote and incident, so as to quicken the interest and hold the attention to the end. These anecdotes have been selected from every available quarter, and no claim of originality is made concerning ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... at the time of signing the warrant, must be received with some suspicion. He smeared Henry Marten's face with the ink of his pen, and Marten in return smeared his, say the narratives. Probably so. With reference to this anecdote it has been wisely observed, "Such 'toys of desperation' commonly bubble up from a deep flowing stream below." Another anecdote is told by Clarendon; that Colonel Ingoldsby, one who signed the warrant, was forced to do so with ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... Weems (Mason Locke Weems, 1759-1825), in an honest effort to teach a high patriotism, nobility, and morality, sometimes embellished or exaggerated his stories to the point of falsehood, as with his invention of the cherry tree anecdote in his Life of Washington. It seems strange that such a devotion to moral teaching should use falsehoods to reach its audience, but he apparently felt the ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... as Horace Walpole terms it, reached the ears of George II. "He would not say so," observed the king, dryly, "if he had been used to hear many." [Footnote: This anecdote has hitherto rested on the authority of Horace Walpole, who gives it in his memoirs of George II., and in his correspondence. He cites the rodomontade as contained in the express despatched by Washington, whom he pronounces a "brave braggart." As no despatch of Washington contains ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving
... being remarkably conversible over our meal—though, as usual, his conversation had a sternly moral tone, adapted to the improvement of what he persisted in considering my "infant" mind. It had reference to an anecdote Dr. Jessop had just been telling him—about a little girl, one of our doctor's patients, who in some passionate struggle had hurt herself ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... to was ready enough to repeat his anecdote, which had to do with a bold cyclist, who, after dining more than well, rode his machine down a steep hill and escaped destruction only by miracle. Christian laughed desperately, and declared that he had never heard anything ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... for several Letters which I have not acknowledged. The Anecdote you gave me in one of them relating to a Mr Mercer & Colo Griffin in Virginia was very diverting to me. The People in this part of the Continent would never have fixed upon the Names of La Le or A1 to hold ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... have narrated this anecdote; it has little in itself, but somehow, to me it brings back in all its fulness the recollection of ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... translation of "The Talisman," and other pieces from the Russian of Alexander Pushkin. He also edited the Gospel in the Mandchou Tartar dialect while residing in that city. In connection with the latter undertaking there is an anecdote told of which, like the story of his making horse-shoes, shows his resources, and redounds to his credit. It runs thus:—"It was known that a fountain of types in the Mandchou Tartar character existed at a certain house in the ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... assisting his master's designs or carrying out his own fancies of monsters, old myths, and classic fairy stories. No doubt the two boys, Mariotto and Baccio, found little companionship in this abstracted young man always dreaming over his own ideas. If they told him an anecdote, he would look up vacantly at the end not having heard a word; at other times every little noise or burst of laughter would annoy him, and he would be immoderately angry with ...
— Fra Bartolommeo • Leader Scott (Re-Edited By Horace Shipp And Flora Kendrick)
... might note How the popular vote, As shown in all legends and anecdote, Declares that a breach Of trust to o'erreach The devil is something quite proper for each. And, really, if you Give the devil his due In spite of the proverb—it's something you'll rue. But to lie and deceive him, To use and to leave ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... being accosted, he looked vaguely and somewhat moodily at Maurice. The next moment, however, he laid a hand on the lappel of Maurice's coat, and, without preamble, burst into a witty and obscene anecdote, which had evidently been in his mind when they met. This story, and the fact that, by the North Sea, he had stood before breakers twenty feet high, were the only particulars Maurice bore away from their interview. His previous impatience ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... Conjugal Affection.—Napoleon used to relate an anecdote shewing the conjugal affection of some women who accompanied his troops when he was at Col de Tende. To enter this mountainous and difficult country, it was necessary for the soldiers to pass over a narrow bridge, and, as the enterprise was a hazardous one, Napoleon had given orders that ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... The stone was sent after me that evening with a request for my cheque, and I sold it for a hundred two days afterwards.[1] You see old Van Harmer's training has come in very handy. I just tell you this little anecdote to let you see that though I'm new in the work I'm not to be done. Nothing in the papers here from Russia. I am ready, come when it may. What would you do if there should be any hitch and the affair did not come ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... {heisenbug}s into {Bohr bug}s. As in "Your program is DEADBEEF" (meaning gone, aborted, flushed from memory); if you start from an odd half-word boundary, of course, you have BEEFDEAD. See also the anecdote under {fool}. ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... borrow it?" You glance over the newspaper, with the quietest tone you can command: "That! oh! that is mine. Have you not seen it before? It has been in the house these two months." and you rush on with anecdote and incident, and point out the binding, and that peculiar trick of gilding, and everything else you can think of; but it all will not do; you cannot rub out that roguish, arithmetical smile. People may talk about the equality of ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... the audience came with the expectation of hearing the rhetorical fire-works of a Western stump-speaker of the "half-horse, half-alligator" variety, they met novelty of an unlooked for kind. In Lincoln's entire address he neither introduced an anecdote nor essayed a witticism; and the first half of it does not contain even an illustrative figure or a poetical fancy. It was the quiet, searching exposition of the historian, and the terse, compact reasoning of the statesman, ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... the Ayan el-Muluk, the "Evil of Kings" (gout), in the gloomy form as well as the gay; and whisky-cum-soda became popular as upon the banks of the Thames and the Tweed. As happens on dark days, the money-digger was abroad, and one anecdote deserves record. Many years ago, an old widow body had been dunned into buying, for a few piastres, a ragged little manuscript from a pauper Maghrabi. These West Africans are, par excellence, the magicians of modern Egypt and Syria; and here they find treasure, ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... from you," grunted Red Bill, without the trace of a smile at this little anecdote, "let's git down to bizness. Those folks leave here to-morrow. They'll go early in the morning. "We can't follow them too close without excitin' suspicion. The problem is to keep track of them without they're ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... she was happy. The supper proceeded, and the lights, the surrounding gaiety, the champagne, made everyone more lively. Their host was in uproarious spirits. He told a story or two at which everyone laughed. Oliver Haddo had an amusing anecdote handy. It was a little risky, but it was so funnily narrated that everyone roared but Arthur, who remained in perfect silence. Margaret had been drinking glass after glass of wine, and no sooner had her husband finished than she capped his story with another. But whereas his was wittily immoral, ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... historically reviewed, a paper read before the Central Asian Society by Baron Suyematsu on January 11, 1905; F. Hirth, Ancient History of China (New York, 1908); Prof. Herbert A. Giles's Chinese Biographical Dictionary (1897) is a storehouse of biographical detail and anecdote. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... At times her tongue thrilled, silently as yet, to certain dicta of the experienced Aunt who had superintended her youth, to the intent that a lazy man is a nuisance to himself and to everybody else; and, at last, she disguised this saying as an anecdote and repeated ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... consider nothing a sin that used to be sins. Many gentlemen, who come to our shop, have found out that Victoire is very handsome, and tell her so; but she is so modest and prudent that I am not afraid for her. I could tell you, madame, a good anecdote on this subject, but my paper will not allow, and, besides, my writing ...
— Murad the Unlucky and Other Tales • Maria Edgeworth
... on the table, and in this hush she heard the voice of Colonel Buffington telling a story in dialect. It was an immemorial anecdote of Cousin Jimmy's—she had heard him tell it a dozen times—and while she listened, it made her ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... face from the carving of a tart with wonderfully constructed towering walls. Behind a second turreted marvel of pastry, Mistress Lettice and Mr. Frederick Jones sighed and ogled with antique grace. Sir Charles Carew, fingering his cherries, told a piquant little court anecdote to Mistress Betty Carrington, and was lazily amused at the blush and veiled eyelids with which the young lady received it. Young Mr. Peyton, on her other side, ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... upon the public interest. Excepting General Jackson, who was a fighter and not a talker, their public men, with Henry Clay and Felix Grundy in the lead, were "stump orators." He who could not relate and impersonate an anecdote to illustrate and clinch his argument, nor "make the welkin ring" with the clarion tones of his voice, was politically good for nothing. James K. Polk and James C. Jones led the van of stump orators in Tennessee, Ben Hardin, ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... an old and respectable family of the Society of Friends, and a pair of the elder branches of it were the original "Darby and Joan," whose names are so well known throughout the whole kingdom. I had this anecdote from one of the sons of Mr. Reynolds,[7] and have no doubt of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII., No. 324, July 26, 1828 • Various
... somehow as if he were riding into the room upon his high horse; and he had orders, too, such a number that no one would have believed it; but that was not his fault. As a young man he had taken part in the great autumn reviews which were held in those days. He had an anecdote that he told about those days, the only one he knew. A subaltern under his orders had cut off one of the princes, and taken him prisoner, and the Prince had been obliged to ride through the town with a little band of captured soldiers, himself ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... This anecdote for various reasons distressed Mary beyond relief. It increased her detestation of young M'Clutchy to the highest possible pitch, and rendered the very thought of him doubly odious to her heart. Her understanding became bewildered, and for a while she knew not what she said or did. Taking a candle ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... driven to find shelter and sustenance for himself in this his first venture into London! Many years afterward, in the days of his social elevation, he startled a polite circle at Sir Joshua Reynolds' by humorously dating an anecdote about the time he "lived among the beggars of Axe Lane." Such may have been the desolate quarters with which he was fain to content himself when thus adrift upon the town, with but a ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... news contained in the letter he has just received from his wife—that news may be the revelation of her own miserable past! (Approaching the Counsel for the Defence.) Ah, my old and valued friend, let me cheer you up with an amusing anecdote. You must know that once upon a time a man was seated before the kitchen-fire watching a leg of mutton! His dog was seated ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, January 25th, 1890 • Various
... NF.17: If at any time)—Ver. 1. This is not a Fable; it is merely an anecdote in natural history, and one not very unlikely to have ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... travelling companion. He had lived many years in the country, had been with General Cass on his expedition to the head-waters of the Mississippi, and had a vast fund of anecdote regarding early times, customs, ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... doubt the worthy gentleman was accusing himself of telling tales out of school and had come to a timely repentance). "Our dinner, I hope, will be different. Jack Binnie will take care of that. That fellow is full of anecdote and fun. You will meet one or two more of our service; Sir Thomas de Boots, who is not a bad chap over a glass of wine; Mr. Pendennis's chum, Mr. Warrington, and my nephew, Barnes Newcome—a dry fellow at first, but I dare say he has good about him when you know ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... heap of mud opposite your door, thick and firm enough to hold them upright. Here then will I set them all up, and light them." When Michael Angelo heard this he gave way: "Lay them down; I do not mean you to play pranks at my house door." Vasari tells another anecdote about the Deposition. Pope Julius III. sent him late one evening to Michael Angelo's house for a certain drawing. The aged master came down with a lantern, and, hearing what was wanted, told Urbino to look for the design. Meanwhile, Vasari turned his attention to one of the legs of the Christ, which ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... and concentration held the physician's approving glance, but the wave of hair under the white cap and against the smooth, clear skin lingered in the memory of the man long after he forgot Moffatt's amusing anecdote. ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... the top floor of the building, ordinarily unused——' What story was it that Alma Frothingham told last night, of her visit to the office of Stock and Share? Rolfe had not paid much attention to it at the time; now he recalled the anecdote, and was more impressed by its significance. That room, his first place of business, the scene of poor beginnings, Bennet Frothingham had chosen for his place of death. Perhaps he had long foreseen this possibility, had mused upon the dramatic ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... chapel Mary Crossley, a Revivalist, occasionally preached here. Possibly the services at this time were rather too demonstrative, as they were not unfrequently interrupted by roughs, and the sect acquired the name of "The Ranters." {72} An amusing anecdote is related of Mr. Butcher; he was a somewhat eccentric character, and in the discharge of his intinerant ministrations he usually rode on a donkey, sometimes accompanied by her foal; and a waggish ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... with anecdote and joke, and the old seaman laughed till he cried, and went to bed vowing that there never was such a pleasant fellow on earth, and he ought to ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... one day about Franklin, Landor said: "Ah, Franklin was a great man; and I can tell you an anecdote of him that has never been in print, and which I had directly from a personal friend of Franklin's, who was acting as private secretary to Lord Auckland, the English ambassador at Paris during Franklin's visit to the French Court. On one occasion, when Franklin presented himself before Louis, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... handing him a cup of tea she was raising to her lips. "With all my heart and soul, and God reward you for it," was the answer; and he swallowed the delicious draught. Who can fail of being reminded, upon reading this anecdote, of those gracious and beautiful words of his Redeemer—"Whosoever shall give you a cup of water to drink in my name, because ye belong to Christ, verily I say unto you, he shall not lose ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... that Mr. Evarts was embarrassed at the anecdote and discovered afterwards that the distinguished guest had recently had a similar stroke on his left side and could propel his left arm and hand only with the ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... I find of the every-day life of Longfellow when a youth is a little anecdote told by him, in humorous illustration of the woes of young authors. I quote from a brief diary. "Longfellow amused us to-day by talking of his youth, and especially with a description of the first poem he ever wrote, called 'The Battle of Lovell's Pond.' It was printed ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... you would," was my companion's reply; "but that is not the matter in consideration at present. I merely wish to tell you an anecdote of Lieutenant Flixton. He is very easily roused, but soon calms again. On this hint I spoke; and in the evening of the day of the river business, as he and I were sitting together, I delicately hinted to him the amusement he had afforded to Miss Vernon in the morning. I wish you had seen him: ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... only in the border towns, but even in the interior of the Pale, the students of German literature and secular science were not few, and Doctor Loewe discovered in Hebron an exceptional German scholar in the person of an immigrant from Vilna.[31] The tendency of the time is well illustrated by an anecdote told by Slonimsky, to the effect that when he went to ask the approval of Rabbi Abele of Zaslava on his Mosde Hokmah, he found that those who came to be examined for ordination received their award without delay, while he was put off from week to week. Ill at ease, ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... This anecdote will be a good one for Parke Davis' friends to read, for how he ever stayed out of that talk-fest ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... Proceedings, which tells what he knew." So, indeed, there was a letter by Watson. Oddly enough it left out all that was of direct importance; but it left in this statement, that he, an authentic person, wrote the dear old "American Anecdote" story. That was something. So then I gratefully confessed ignorance again, and again, and again. And I have many friends, so that there were many brave men, and many fair women, who were extending the various tentacula of their feeling processes into the different ...
— How To Do It • Edward Everett Hale
... Athenians received the news of this fatal siege with the deepest sorrow, and Herodotus records an anecdote illustrative of the character of that impassioned people, and interesting to the history of their early letters. Phrynichus, a disciple of Thespis, represented on the stage the capture of Miletus, ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... study in Russian scandal, and the growth and development of stories, this anecdote of Lord Lyttelton deserves attention. So first we must glance at the previous history of the hero. Thomas Lord Lyttelton was born, says Mr. Coulton (in the 'Quarterly Review,' No. 179, p. 111), on January 30, 1744.* ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... his time at Oby Hall, in Norfolk, the then residence of his father, and distant about eight miles from Yarmouth, in shooting, fishing, and driving a tandem-cart about the country, built of unusual height; and an anecdote is related of him, that, after driving it awhile, he went to Mr. Clements, the builder at Norwich, and said, "Well, Clements, you have built a machine to surprise all the world, and I am come to surprise you by paying you for ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper
... d'Azeglio, partly out of hatred to the Countess, who was rather severe and acrimonious upon his youthful free-and-easiness, partly out of a desire to amuse his readers, has introduced into his autobiography an anecdote told him by Mme. de Prie (the niece of Alfieri's famous Turin mistress, and the lady who took it upon herself to send him a priest without consulting the Countess), to the effect that she had watched Fabre making eyes, kissing his fingers, and generally exchanging signals with ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... finished his anecdote a resplendent butterfly of enormous size rose from the bushes, and Mark, to whom it was quite a new specimen, bounded after it, but ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... authority on all that related to the Temple, and he delighted in a friend in whom he might confide; and to walk about the courts with Hall or Sands, stopping now and then to note some curious piece of sculpture or date, and forthwith to relate an anecdote that brought back some of the fragrance and colour of old time, and to tell how he intended to work such curious facts into the book he was writing on the Temple, was the essence and the soul of this ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... The following anecdote, curiously illustrative of the state of affairs in Wallenstein's camp, is related by Schiller in his History of the Thirty Years' War, a work containing a full account of the life and actions of this extraordinary ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... a monarchist, but for a monarchy bottomed on corruption. In proof of this, I will relate an anecdote, for the truth of which I attest the God who made me. Before the President set out on his southern tour in April, 1791, he addressed a letter of the fourth of that month, from Mount Vernon, to the Secretaries of State, Treasury, and War, desiring ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... given Mr. Gallatin has its counterpart in that with which he is also said to have turned upon Gouverneur Morris, when accosted by him familiarly with a touch on the shoulder. Bartlett, in his recollection of the anecdote, adds that Washington, about this period, inquired after the forward young man, and urged him to become his land agent,—an ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens
... talked several learned languages, which she had heard her former master, a scholar, declaim! Where did she live? Who vouches for her, who heard her, who understood her? There is, you know, no evidence at all; the anecdote is told by Coleridge: the phenomena are said by him to have been observed "in a Roman Catholic town in Germany, a year or two before my arrival at Goettingen.... Many eminent physiologists and psychologists visited the town." ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... is a curious anecdote of this affair," (about the Jews thinking Oliver Cromwell to be the Messiah,) "in Raguenet's Histoire d'Oliver Cromwell, which I will give the reader at length. About the time Rabbi Manasseh Ben Israel came to England to solicit the Jews' admission, the Asiatic Jews sent ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 32, June 8, 1850 • Various
... regions of the north the wolf is black, and sometimes black and gray: others are quite white; but the black wolf is always the fiercest. The black is also found in the south of Europe, and particularly in the Pyrennees. Colonel Hamilton Smith relates an anecdote illustrative of its great size and weight. At a battue in the mountains near Madrid, one of these wolves, which came bounding through the high grass towards an English gentleman who was present, was so large that he mistook it for a donkey; and whatever visions of a ride home might have floated ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... This anecdote may give some idea of the respect with which the Invalides regarded Marshal Hulot, whose Republican proclivities secured him the popular sympathy of the ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... to a gossiping and ever most welcome New Haven friend for the following anecdote of one of the men who, clothed in a little brief authority, 'go about ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... Pasquerel alone of the witnesses mentions this (Trial, vol. iii, p. 103). Cf. the anecdote of the Sire de Boissy related by P. Sala in his collection, Les hardiesses des grands rois et empereurs (Trial, ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... merchants tell you in the most candid way that 'you must get out of a bad bargain as best you can'—a motto for the most unscrupulous rascality. Blondet has given you an account of the Lyons affair, its causes and effects, and I proceed in my turn to illustrate my theory with an anecdote:—There was once a woolen weaver, an ambitious man, burdened with a large family of children by a wife too much beloved. He put too much faith in the Republic, laid in a stock of scarlet wool, and manufactured those red-knitted caps that you may have noticed on the heads of ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... her chief act of heroism the following anecdote has been told me:—Three American soldiers called at her log house at Queenston to ask for water. One of them said, 'You have a nice place here, missis, when we come for good to this country we'll divide the land, and I'll take this here ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... his hand when he said, 'A friend of our friend's here. We discovered this morning that our friend was connected with the theatre in this place, though he is not desirous to have it generally known, and this gentleman is a member of the same profession. He was about to favour us with a little anecdote connected with it, when ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... eagerly employed herself for half an hour in stringing them that not one might be lost; which proved that, where her own gratification or interest were concerned, Okotook's illness was not suffered to interfere. This anecdote shows, in a strong light, that deep-rooted selfishness, which, in numberless instances, notwithstanding the superiority of Iligliuk's understanding, detracted from the amiability of her disposition. The fact was, that she did not feel inclined ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... to state that the fairness of mind and generosity attributed to St. Clare are not without a parallel, as the following anecdote will show. A few years since, a young southern gentleman was in Cincinnati, with a favorite servant, who had been his personal attendant from a boy. The young man took advantage of this opportunity to secure his own freedom, and fled to the protection ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... seat himself on a bench and read his work. Scarcely had he read a few verses, when Caecilius, struck by the excellence of the style, invited his visitor to join him at table; and having listened to the rest of the play with admiration, at once pronounced a verdict in his favour. This anecdote, whatever be its pretensions to historical accuracy, represents, at all events, the conception entertained of Caecilius's position and influence as introducer of dramatic poets to the Roman public. The date of his death is uncertain: he seems not to ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... Pictures representing a mother and child, a pair of lovers, a family group, festival, tavern scene, or battle charge are illustrations. In Dutch painting the social life of Holland in the seventeenth century found its record; yet there is little or no anecdote. The genre, the representation of a group of people united by some common interest and with an appropriate background, has the same legitimacy, if not the same eminence, as the portrait. It does not possess ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... of The Minstrelsy. Lockhart describes the enthusiasm of dukes, fine ladies, and antiquarians. In the end of April 1803 the third volume appeared, including ballads obtained through Hogg and Laidlaw in spring 1802. Scott, by his store of historic anecdote in his introductions and notes, by his way of vivifying the past, and by his method of editing, revived, but did not create, the interest in ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang
... man who had made a merited reputation when Fadge was still on the lower rungs of journalism. Amy smiled and told another anecdote of the great editor. Whilst speaking, she caught her husband's eye, and perhaps this was the reason why her story, at the close, seemed rather amiably pointless—not a ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... acquainted with the leading facts about the Andes, the Apennines, and the Appalachians; he had nothing in particular to say about Ararat, Ben Nevis, and various other mountains that were mentioned. By and by some Revolutionary anecdote came up, and he showed singular familiarity with the lives of the Adamses, and gave many details relating to Major Andre. A point of Natural History being suggested, he gave an excellent account of the air-bladder of fishes. He was very full upon the subject of agriculture, but retired from ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... lacking nerve, but he had suddenly remembered that letter to Sheriff Hardenberg, regarding which he had long ago obtained confirmation from Pop Daggett. If he could rely on the meaning of Stratton's little anecdote—and he had an uncomfortable conviction that he could—the letter would be opened in case Buck met his death by violence. And once it was opened by the sheriff, only Tex Lynch how very much the fat ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... The tragic anecdote which Swinburne has told in Rosamund, Queen of the Lombards, is told with a directness and conciseness unusual in his dramatic or lyric work. The story, simple, barbarous, and cruel—a story of the year 573—acts itself out before ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... Very told the following anecdote: "Some time ago I crossed the Ohio River into the State of Illinois where I had some preaching engagements. On one of my tours I met a local preacher who was a small, good natured, pious and withal a useful preacher. He had a wife who was ...
— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick
... probably be in dispute. I merely say, therefore, that when I say "novel," I mean a fictitious narrative (almost invariably, but not necessarily, in prose) of which the essential is that the story is not told for the sake of its naked pointedness as an anecdote, or for the sake of the irrelevant landscapes and visions that can be caught up in it, but for the sake of some study of the difference between human beings. There are several things that make this mode of art unique. ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... warm-hearted, compassionate, irascible, liberal, witty, easy speaker and fine conversationist, with an inexhaustible fund of sense, anecdote, candor, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... attained to a great popularity: volumes that have been always delightful to the young and ardent inquirer after knowledge. They offer as a whole a diversified miscellany of literary, artistic, and political history, of critical disquisition and biographic anecdote, such as it is believed cannot be elsewhere found gathered together in a form so agreeable and so attainable. To this edition is appended a Life of the Author by his son, also original notes, which serve to illustrate ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... deed dishonorable, Or aught unseemly. I remember well Her reverend image: I remember, too, With what a zeal she served her master's house; And how the prattling tongue of garrulous age Delighted to recount the oft-told tale Or anecdote domestic. Wise she was, And wondrous skilled in genealogies, And could in apt and voluble terms discourse Of births, of titles, and alliances; Of marriages, and intermarriages; Relationship remote, or near of kin; Of friends offended, family disgraced— Maiden high-born, but wayward, disobeying ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... of trading with the enemy is no idle anecdote is evident from the circumstance, based on official Russian statistics, that during ten months from August to May, while the war was being waged relentlessly between the two empires, Russia bought from Germany no less than 36,000,000 ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... birth was a feeling common alike to mother and son, and, at times, even became a point of rivalry between them, from their respective claims, English and Scotch, to high lineage. In a letter written by him from Italy, referring to some anecdote which his mother had told him, he says,—"My mother, who was as haughty as Lucifer with her descent from the Stuarts, and her right line from the old Gordons,—not the Seyton Gordons, as she disdainfully termed the ducal branch,—told me the story, always reminding me ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... of the Mogul Empire. [W. H. S.] The author seems to have used either the London edition of 1671, entitled The History of the Late Revolution of the Empire of the Great Mogul, or one of the reprints of that edition. The anecdote referred to is called by Bernier 'an uncommonly good story'. Aurangzeb made a long speech, ending by dismissing the unlucky pedagogue with the words: 'Go! withdraw to thy native village. Henceforth let no man know either who thou art, or what is become of thee.' (Bernier, Travels ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... wanted liveliness and anecdote. So the Santissima Hermandad, and all the extraneous history, were sent to him; and then he was well content, and only wanted me to leave out all the Christian chivalry—all I ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Struts in some spendthrift's vain array; Around his awkward doxy shine The treasures of Golconda's mine; Each neighbour, with a jealous glare, Beholds her folly publish'd there. Garments well saved, (an anecdote Which we can prove, or would not quote) 1140 Garments well saved, which first were made When tailors, to promote their trade, Against the Picts in arms arose, And drove them out, or made them clothes; Garments immortal, without end, Like names and titles, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... troubled with a conscience—even with one unusually poignant. An anecdote from his twentieth year depicts this feature of the man. He and Narramore were walking one night in a very poor part of Birmingham, and for some reason they chanced to pause by a shop-window—a small window, lighted with one gas-jet, and laid out with a miserable ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing
... of the purposes of these stories to make the mind of the pupil familiar with some of the leading figures in the history of our country by means of personal anecdote. Some of the stories are those that every American child ought to know, because they have become a kind of national folklore. Such, for example, are "Putnam and the Wolf" and the story of "Franklin's Whistle." ...
— Stories of Great Americans for Little Americans • Edward Eggleston
... though in other respects of most kindly and liberal heart, showed the aversion that the white man soon learns to feel for the Indian on whom he encroaches, the aversion of the injurer for him he has degraded. After telling the anecdote of his seeing the Indian gazing at the seat ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... speak approvingly of suicide, and there is a story, which has, however, little authority, that once in a company of friends he drew a pistol from his pocket, put it to his head, and exclaimed 'Now if one had but the courage to pull the trigger!' This anecdote—if not in fact true—illustrates very well the gloomy depression of spirit which alternated with those outbursts of feverish energy in which his poems were composed. And he had much to make him miserable when with ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton
... an anecdote of Stuart, related in Dunlap's History of the Arts of Design,—a most entertaining book to the general reader, and a deeply interesting one, we should ...
— The Prophetic Pictures (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... at night. He was so restless on one occasion that his wife became seriously alarmed. "What's the matter wi' ye, John? are ye ill?" "On no," replied the doctor, "it's only that confounded Bounder Clay!" This domestic anecdote brought down the house, and the meeting terminated in a ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... Sir George brought up an apt anecdote, 'been promised the natives that their laws and customs should not be interfered with. After I introduced the courts, a chief was discovered to have put one of his tribe to death for witchcraft. I had the ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... early companions as a wit and story-teller. The women complained because at their parties all the men were drawn off to hear Abe Lincoln's stories. When he came to be a public speaker, he feathered the shafts of his argument with jest and anecdote. The vein of humor in him was rich and deep; it helped him through the hard places. When as President he announced to his cabinet the Emancipation Proclamation, he first refreshed himself by reading to them ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... conceded, "but I've always liked that specious anecdote attributed to Sheridan who paid his gambling debts and let his tailor wait. You remember it, of course? When the tailor demanded the reason for this Sheridan told him that a gambling debt was a debt of honor and a tailor's bill was not, since ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... only man in Besancon who wore trouser-straps; this will account for the young man's being regarded as a lion. And a little anecdote will enable you to understand the ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac
... not be supplied so soon as was desirable, adding, "The money cannot be raised for some days." "It is already gone! it left London by to-night's mail!" was Sir John's triumphant reply; and in afterwards relating the anecdote he added, with a smile of pleasure, "Pitt was as much startled as if I had stabbed him." To the last this great, good man worked on usefully and cheerfully, setting a great example for his family and for his country. In so laboriously seeking others' ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles |
