"Antic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Then he asked me where I had bought it, and I told him like a dutiful son—"Tom Carrodus's in Church Green." He summoned my mother and asked: "Mally, what dos'ta think o' this lot?" She—good woman—said it was only another antic of her boy's, and "let him have his own way." But my father, on the contrary, got rather nasty about the matter, remarking that if I didn't take the thing away he would put it into the fire. He said he was sure it would only turn out a public house "touch," and informed ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... or reason for hoping, antic-ipation. 5. Breast'ed (pro. brest'ed), opposed courageously. 6. Numb, without the power of feeling or motion. Re-laxed', loosened. 12. ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... several such late or last chapters that one would gladly cut away: that of Mercy Pecksniff's pathos, for example; that of Mr. Dombey's installation in his daughter's home; that which undeceives us as to Mr. Boffin's antic disposition. But how true and how whole a heart it was that urged these unlucky conclusions! How shall we venture to complain? The hand that made its Pecksniff in pure wit, has it not the right to belabour him in earnest—albeit a kind ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell
... CIP: antic'ipate; eman'cipate (Lat. n. ma'nus, hand), literally, to take away from the hand of an owner, to free; incip'ient; munic'ipal (Lat. n. municip'ium, a free town; mu'nia, official duties, and ...
— New Word-Analysis - Or, School Etymology of English Derivative Words • William Swinton
... pursue, Rush round, and renew His loved vaulting Unhalting, His whirling, And curling, And twirling, And swirling, And his ways, on the whole So unsteady! 'Pon my soul, Having gazed Quite amazed, On each wonderful antic And summersault frantic, For just a bare minute, My head, it feels whizzy; My eyesight's grown dizzy; And both legs, unstable As a ghost's tipping table, Seem ...
— On the Tree Top • Clara Doty Bates
... comprehensive in scope, as those of the most versatile negro minstrel. He cuts as many capers in a lifetime as there are stars in heaven or grains of sand in a barrel of sugar. Everything is fish that comes to his net. If a discovery in science is announced, he will execute you an antic upon it before it gets fairly cold. Is a new theory advanced-ten to one while you are trying to get it through your head he will stand on his own and make mouths at it. A great invention provokes him into a whirlwind of flip-flaps absolutely bewildering to the secular eye; ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... cakes and ale, and antic ring Well tiptoed to the tabor string, And many a buss below the holly, And flout at sable melancholy— So, with a ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris
... the street, come out of Harrow Alley, a populous conjunction or collection of alleys, courts, and passages in the Butcher Row in Whitechappel,—I say, what could be more affecting than to see this poor man come out into the open street, run dancing and singing and making a thousand antic gestures, with five or six women and children running after him, crying and calling upon him for the Lord's sake to come back, and entreating the help of others to bring him back, but all in vain, nobody daring to lay a hand upon him ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe
... conclusion—to which the late Lord Salisbury also jumped years ago at a very memorable British Association meeting—that a species is modified by the sudden appearance of eccentric individuals here and there in the general mass who interbreed—preferentially. Helped by a streak of antic egotism in themselves, they conceived of the superman as a posturing personage, misunderstood by the vulgar, fantastic, wonderful. But the antic Personage, the thing I have called the Effigy, is not new ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... Fairies, blithe and antic, Of dimensions not gigantic, Though the moonshine mostly keep us, Oft in orchards ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... the characters. Still better puppets are doll heads and arms of various sorts, dressed in flowing robes and provided with holes for two fingers and a thumb of the operator, who moves them from below. They can be made to dance and antic as you like on a stage above the showman's head, as Punch and Judy have always done. The more elaborate marionettes are worked with strings from above, so that they can open and close their mouths and otherwise act most realistically; these are, of ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... Scotchman from the New Hebrides. It was a great drinking. He died of it, and we laded him aboard ship, pickled in a cask of trade rum, and sent him back to his own place. A sample, a fair sample, of the antic tricks we cut up ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... rose and followed, kicking off my slippers that I might go quietly. He was running, running fast, across the lawns in the direction of the Grove—an odd shapeless antic in the moonlight. I stopped, for there was no cover, and I feared for his reason if he saw me. When I looked again he ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... and thus burdened they are carried to the high mass, where for almost an hour they are subjected to the heat and the human smells from so many crowding, perspiring people, and if they are not made to recite the rosary they must remain quiet, bored, or asleep. At each movement or antic that may soil their clothing they are pinched and scolded, so the fact is that they do not laugh or feel happy, while in their round eyes can be read a protest against so much embroidery and a longing for the old shirt ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... thickens," declaimed Emma as the three paused in the middle of the room. "Hurrah for the old guard! Like Macbeth's immortal witches, I'll perform my antic round, just to show how jubilant I feel." She executed a few fantastic steps about Patience, then paused beside her, one hand on her shoulder. "Where ...
— Grace Harlowe's Return to Overton Campus • Jessie Graham Flower
... I please: Music and poetry is his delight; Therefore I'll have Italian masks by night, Sweet speeches, comedies, and pleasing shows; And in the day, when he shall walk abroad, Like sylvan nymphs my pages shall be clad; My men, like satyrs grazing on the lawns, Shall with their goat-feet dance the antic hay; Sometime a lovely boy in Dian's shape, With hair that gilds the water as it glides Crownets of pearl about his naked arms, And in his sportful hands an olive-tree, To hide those parts which men delight to see, Shall bathe him in a spring; ...
— Edward II. - Marlowe's Plays • Christopher Marlowe
... sudden passion, and called to him with curses to come down. The figure drew back at the first cry, with an agitated movement so abrupt as almost to be called an antic. The next moment the man seemed to reconsider and collect himself, and began to come down the zigzag garden path, but with obvious reluctance, his feet falling in slower and slower rhythm. Through March's ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... of a tipsy Frenchman, who had found some boys playing at soldiers, and was teaching them in his own tongue from apparently vague recollections of the manual of arms. I do not insist that we profited by the occasion; I only say that life likes a motley wear, and that he who rejects the antic aspects it so often inappropriately puts on ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... together, keeping exact time to the music; while one, whimsically crowned with a fox's skin, the tail of which flaunted down his back, kept capering round the skirts of the dance, and rattling a Christmas-box with many antic gesticulations. ...
— Old Christmas From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving • Washington Irving
... cloud was on the mind of men, and wailing went the weather, Yea, a sick cloud upon the soul when we were boys together. Science announced nonentity and art admired decay; The world was old and ended: but you and I were gay; Round us in antic order their crippled vices came— Lust that had lost its laughter, fear that had lost its shame. Like the white lock of Whistler, that lit our aimless gloom, Men showed their own white feather as proudly as a plume. Life was a fly that faded, and death a drone that stung; The world ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... I'm asthounded at yer ignorance of gogerfy! Thim little fish grow in the Atla-antic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean, the Injun Ocean, the Airctic Ocean, an'—oh, in all them oceans. An' the big fish, such as the whale, the halleybut, the shairk, an' all o' thim, they ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces
... thoughts bearing the mark of every age and nation, silly thoughts and wise thoughts, thoughts of people, of things, and of nothing, good thoughts, impish thoughts, and large, gracious thoughts. There they went swinging hand-in-hand in corkscrew fashion. An antic jester in green and gold led the dance. The guests followed no order or precedent. No two thoughts were related to each other even by the fortieth cousinship. There was not so much as an international alliance between them. Each thought behaved like ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... veteran! that in life's late day, With tottering step, and locks of gray, Essay'st each trick of antic glee, Oh! my heart bleeds ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... of Preludes. What is there to say about him? Nothing. Surely never, since Chopin went from us, has Chopin been so played. The memory of my Fleet Street dinner vanished. The hall vanished. All surroundings vanished. Vladimir, the antic, took us by the hand and led us forth into a new country: a country like nothing that we have seen or dreamed of, and therefore a country of which not the vaguest image can be created. It was a country, or, perhaps, a street of pale shadows ... ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... decorous dulness. They maintain their dignity; they get obeyed; they are good and charitable to their dependants. But they have no notion of PLAY of mind: no conception that the charm of society depends upon it. They think cleverness an antic, and have a constant though needless horror of being thought to have any of it. So much does this stiff dignity give the tone, that the few Englishmen capable of social brilliancy mostly secrete it. They reserve it for persons whom they can trust, and whom they know ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... of the shore, ten natives were counted, half of whom were probably women, from their keeping behind the others. The men made many antic gestures to our people. One had a green branch in his hand, which he waved to and fro at the extent of his arm, from the ground on one side of him to that on the other; and some of them would run into the water ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... truth: I never yet saw man, How wise, how noble, young, how rarely featur'd, But she would spell him backward: if fair-fac'd, She would swear the gentleman should be her sister; If black, why, Nature, drawing of an antic, Made a foul blot: if tall, a lance ill-headed; If low, an agate very vilely cut; If speaking, why, a vane blown with all winds; If silent, why, a block moved with none. So turns she every man the wrong side out; And never gives to truth and virtue that Which ...
— Much Ado About Nothing • William Shakespeare [Knight edition]
... becoming a fair field, in which arts, sciences, and all the amiable virtues flourished, instead of being a pestilent marsh where swine-like ignorance wallowed, and artful hypocrites, like so many wills-o'-the-wisp, played antic gambols about, around and above ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... logs of wood, And worship was to puppets paid; In antic dress the idol stood, And priests and people bowed ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... voice, the dance, obey, Temper'd to thy warbled lay. O'er Idalia's velvet-green The rosy-crowned Loves are seen On Cytherea's day, With antic Sport, and blue-eyed Pleasures, Frisking light in frolic measures; Now pursuing, now retreating, Now in circling troops they meet: To brisk notes in cadence beating Glance their many-twinkling feet. Slow-melting strains their Queen's approach declare: ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... the appearance), yet to do justice to them, and not to load the women with the reproach, as if it were wholly theirs, it must be acknowledged the men have their share in dress, as the times go now, though, it is true, not so antic and gay as in former days; but do we not see fine wigs, fine Holland shirts of six to seven shillings an ell, and perhaps laced also, all lately brought down to the level of the apron, and become ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... and a bauble made of a toasting fork stuck through an apple. When he pranced into the hall the soldiers yelled with surprise and delight. Behind him at a discreet distance came a small boy, also attired in antic fashion, carrying carefully in both hands a huge pie. The cook was peeping through the screen to see ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... Another antic those naughty nerves often indulged in, was nervous headache; when anything specially annoying took place, they met in convention in the top of the poor head, and held an indignation meeting; at such times Mrs. Murray was obliged ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... gate; Hark, the monkeys, how they prate! All ye gods who rule the soul:[5] Styx, through Hell whose waters roll! Let me be allow'd to tell What I heard in yonder Hell. Near the door an entrance gapes,[6] Crowded round with antic shapes, Poverty, and Grief, and Care, Causeless Joy, and true Despair; Discord periwigg'd with snakes,'[7] See the dreadful strides she takes! By this odious crew beset,[8] I began to rage and fret, And resolved to break their pates, Ere we enter'd at the gates; Had not Clio in ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... been milking my goats, which I had in the enclosure just by. When he espied me, he came running to me, laying himself down again upon the ground, with all the possible signs of an humble, thankful disposition, making a many antic gestures to show it. At last he lays his head flat upon the ground, close to my foot, and sets my other foot upon his head, as he had done before, and after this made all the signs to me of subjection, servitude, and submission imaginable, to let me know how he would serve me as long as he lived. ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... the alarm, it was quite impossible to restrain laughter when one saw the mother, with great gravity, sitting nursing the little elf, with her hand behind it, and the older children skipping up and down the walls, and playing all sorts of antic tricks with one another. They made their escape with the utmost rapidity, leaping over rocks and precipices with great agility, and evidently unconscious ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 358 - Vol. XIII, No. 358., Saturday, February 28, 1829 • Various
... the hemorrhage that made him die, has been broken by a shell; it is twisted into a circle, dislocated, slack, invertebrate. A mournful irony has invested the last writhe of his agony with the appearance of a clown's antic. ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... back. They were all in varying stages of liquor—from two or three who had to be hauled over the float and up to the bunkhouse like sacks of bran, to others who were so happily under the influence of John Barleycorn that every move was some silly antic. She retreated in disgust. When Charlie reached the cabin, he himself proved to be fairly mellow, in the best of spirits—speaking truly in ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... this point that another notion came into my mind, so antic, so impish, so fiendish, that if there were still any Evil One, in a world which gets on so poorly without him, I should attribute it to his suggestion; and this was that the procession which Jan saw issuing from the tenement-house door was not a funeral procession, as the reader will ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... truth, yet doubtless in the conviction that such an exhibition showed the superiority of anointed kings even over death—he ordered his servants to place a golden crown. And thus, during the whole of his long illness, the Antic held his state, while the poor mortal representative of absolute power lay living still, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... corners. These gatehouses were of stone, as was the lower story of the palace itself; but the upper one was of wood, "richly adorned and set forth and garnished with variety of statues, pictures, and other antic forms of excellent art and workmanship, and of no small cost:" all which ornaments, it seems, were made of rye dough. In modern language the "pictures" would probably be called basso-relievos. From the eastern and western angles of the inner court rose two slender turrets five stories high, ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... other men Love Elia for his antic pen, And watch with dilettante eyes His page for every quaint surprise, Curious of caviare phrase. Yea; these who will not also praise? We surely must, but which is more The motley that his sorrow wore, Or the ...
— English Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... the harder he looked at the fire, which knowingly answered his look with a winking and blinking of its great bright eye, that seemed to say, "Well, Uncle Juvinell, what shall we do for the entertainment or instruction of these little people to-night? Shall we tell them of that crew of antic goblins we wot of, who are wont to meet by moonlight, to play at football with the hanged man's head, among the tombstones of an old graveyard? Or may be that dreadful ogre, with the one fiery eye in the middle of his forehead, who ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... from his stall to the pulpit for the sermon. Generally he gave out the number of the short anthem which accompanied this manoeuvre, but today he made no such announcement. A discreet curtain hid the organist from the congregation, and veiled his gymnastics with the stops and his antic dancing on the pedals, and now when Mr Rumbold moved from his stall, there came from the organ the short introduction to Bach's "Mein Glaubige Herz," which even Lucia had allowed to be nearly "equal" to Beethoven. And then came ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... leather-breeches, green-shirt or blanket-coat, land-trotter or river-roller,—I'm the man for a massacree!" Then giving himself a twirl upon his foot that would have done credit to a dancing-master, he proceeded to other antic demonstrations of hostility, which when performed in after years on the banks of the Lower Mississippi, by himself and his worthy imitators, were, we suspect, the cause of their receiving the name of the mighty alligator. ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... Dancing on the chamber wall, While I sit beside the hearthstone Where the red flames rise and fall. Caps and nightgowns, caps and nightgowns, My three antic shadows wear; And no sound they make in playing, For the six small ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... Judas! whom nor friend nor foe may trust, Think'st thou with tears and plaints to answer this? Do I not know thy heart? do I not know That bribes have purchas'd Ely this escape? Never make antic faces, never bend With feigned humblesse thy still crouching knee, But with fix'd eyes unto thy doom attend. Villain! I'll plague thee for abusing me. Go hence; and henceforth never set thy foot In ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... let me kiss away that tear)— Thou tiny image of myself! (My love, he's poking peas into his ear!) Thou merry, laughing sprite! With spirits feather-light, Untouch'd by sorrow, and unsoil'd by sin— (Good heavens! the child is swallowing a pin!) Thou little tricksy Puck! With antic toys so funnily bestuck, Light as the singing bird that wings the air— (The door! the door! he'll tumble down the stair!) Thou darling of thy sire! (Why, Jane, he'll set his pinafore a-fire!) Thou imp of mirth and joy! In Love's dear chain so strong and bright a link, Thou idol of thy parents—(Drat ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... men who began eagerly to press me for further particulars of the Amalgamated subscriptions. We all know the story of the comedian informed in the midst of a performance of his beloved wife's death, who yet must laugh and antic to the end of the play. I appreciated the heavy-hearted actor's plight as I surveyed the little throng so vitally interested in their dollar affairs. I longed to mount a chair and tell them how they had been duped, but my role called for different lines. It was my part ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... little children in this respect, that they interest most when they are enacting native peculiarities unconscious of beholders. Discovering themselves to be watched they attempt to be entertaining by putting on an antic, and produce disagreeable caricatures ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... person who knew Dr. Johnson must have observed that the moment he was left out of the conversation, whether from his deafness or from whatever cause, but a few minutes without speaking or listening, his mind appeared to be preparing itself. He fell into a reverie accompanied with strange antic gestures; but this he never did when his mind was engaged by the conversation. These were therefore improperly called convulsions, which imply involuntary contortions; whereas, a word addressed to him, his attention was recovered. Sometimes, indeed, it would be near a minute before ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... a good day's journey from his master's house he sat down, and being weary he fell asleep. No sooner had slumber taken full possession of him, and closed his long-opened eyelids, but he thought he saw many goodly proper personages in antic measures tripping about him, and withal he heard such music as he thought that Orpheus, that famous Greek fiddler (had he been alive), compared to one of these, had been as infamous as a Welsh harper that plays for cheese and onions. As delights commonly last not ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... evoked by Shakespeare's tragedies,—again in varying degrees. Perhaps they are the very strongest of the emotions awakened by the early tragedy of Richard II., where they receive a concentrated expression in Richard's famous speech about the antic Death, who ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... upon the bough divines. No leaf does tremble in the wind, Which I returning cannot find. Out of these scattered Sibyl's leaves, Strange prophecies my fancy weaves: What Rome, Greece, Palestine, e'er said, I in this light Mosaic read. Under this antic cope I move, Like some great prelate of the grove; Then, languishing at ease, I toss On pallets thick with velvet moss; While the wind, cooling through the boughs, Flatters with air my panting brows. Thanks for my rest, ye mossy banks! And unto you, cool zephyrs, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... Kornelius, and had nearly laughed aloud. I have never been more childish; I suppose (although the deeper voices of my nature seemed all dumb) because I have never been more moved. And at this last incongruous antic of my nerves I was seized with a panic of remorse, and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... has an antic in it, He's wondering what's to pay on his insides. [Footnote: Ben Jonson Entertains a Man from Stratford. See also Poe's letter, April 1, 1841, to Snodgrass, on the unfortunate ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... brought out for my lady's amusement!" said the stranger, smiling; "you make rare sport with your antic tricks, at the fort yonder, ...
— The Rivals of Acadia - An Old Story of the New World • Harriet Vaughan Cheney
... queen was to be conducted, but the uproar and confusion was indescribable; strange and antic figures hurrying to and fro, seeking their companions, and crying lustily for their places. Sir John Finett and Sir George Goring fulfilled the office of whippers-in, attempting to establish order out of these ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... former victors, Who sleep by yellow Tiber's brink; Ye mighty names—what d'ye think? The Pope has sanctioned Railway Bills! And so the lofty Aventine, And your six other famous hills Will soon look down upon a 'Line.' Oh! if so be that hills could turn Their noses up, with gesture antic, Thus would the seven deride and spurn A Roman work so unromantic: 'Was this the ...
— Scientific American magazine Vol 2. No. 3 Oct 10 1846 • Various
... explored The loneliest coves, and in the loose warm sand Deposited her eggs, which the sun hatch'd: Hence the young brood, that never knew a parent, Unburrow'd and by instinct sought the sea; Nature herself, with her own gentle hand, Dropping them one by one into the flood, And laughing to behold their antic joy, When launch'd in their maternal element. The vision of that brooding world went on; Millions of beings yet more admirable Than all that went before them now appear'd; Flocking from every point of heaven, and filling Eye, ear, and mind, with objects, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 286, December 8, 1827 • Various
... to her is, in their opinion, only worthy of a barbarian. But the most forward and tormenting of them all is my quondam friend, the Count; who is half a lunatic, but of so diverting a kind that, ere a man has time to be angry, he either cuts a caper, utters an absurdity, or acts some mad antic or other, ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... Make me but happy in his safe return, Whose wanted presence I can only mourn; Your common gift shall two large goblets be Of silver, wrought with curious imagery, And high emboss'd, which, when old Priam reign'd, My conqu'ring sire at sack'd Arisba gain'd; And more, two tripods cast in antic mold, With two great talents of the finest gold; Beside a costly bowl, ingrav'd with art, Which Dido gave, when first she gave her heart. But, if in conquer'd Italy we reign, When spoils by lot the victor shall obtain- Thou saw'st the courser by proud Turnus press'd: That, Nisus, ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... TALBOT. Thou antic Death, which laugh'st us here to scorn, Anon, from thy insulting tyranny, Coupled in bonds of perpetuity, Two Talbots, winged through the lither sky, In thy despite shall 'scape mortality. O thou, whose wounds become hard-favor'd ...
— King Henry VI, First Part • William Shakespeare [Aldus edition]
... goes well and his song is clear, if his crest and gorgeous splashes of tints and shades are fresh and shining with the gloss of health, then the feathered lover may hope, indeed, that the little brown mate may look with favour upon dance, song, or antic—and the home is become a reality. In some instances this home is for only one short season, when the two part, probably forever; but in other cases the ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... yourself," Antonio retorted. "I recall one antic, just before you left us—" He broke off to meditate. Clicking his tongue against his teeth, he gazed at me almost with resentment, as if I were responsible for this depressing work of time. "No!" he exclaimed, looking ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... prepared to kindle by long seclusion and the fervor of strict Calvinistic notions. In the glooms of Charnwood he was assailed by illusions similar in kind to those which are related of the famous Anthony of Padua. Wild antic faces would ever and anon protrude themselves upon his sensorium. Whether he shut his eyes or kept them open, the same illusions operated. The darker and more profound were his cogitations, the droller and more whimsical became the apparitions. They buzzed about ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... as intimate with him as if he had been her brother. One night he came home just a trifle tipsy. She noted at last what was wrong with him, and her heart yearned over the sinner. There were five or six glasses inside of him, and each was the father of an antic. He was an opera company, a gymnasium, and a menagerie at once, all tinged with a certain hilarious unsteadiness which was fascinating. But at last he got to his bed, which was ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... in dancing; Every tar playing Punchinello With the pretty, laughing fellow; Even the second mate gave sly winks At the noisy mid-day high jinks. Never was a crew so happy With a curly-headed chappy, Never were such sports gigantic, Never dog with joy more antic. ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... Fool Plough, which consists of a number of sword-dancers dragging a plough with music, was anciently observed in the North of England, not only at Christmas time, but also in the beginning of Lent. Wallis thinks that the Sword Dance is the antic dance, or chorus armatus of the Romans. Brand supposes that it is a composition made up of the gleaning of several obsolete customs anciently followed in England and other countries. The Germans still ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... at eighteen packed off to Heidelberg to study law, with no special preparation in knowledge of the world, of men or books. But old father antic, the law, was not to his taste. Robert liked music and poetry better. His fine, sensitive, emotional spirit found its best exercise in music; and at the house of Professor Carus he used to sing with the professor's wife. This Professor ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... something to express my exultation, so I walked over to a bronze statue of Bacchus, about my size—that is, height—put my hat—which I had been carrying under my arm—on his head, cut a few capers in an entirely new and equally antic step, and then drew back and knocked that Bacchus down. Jane thought I had gone stark mad, and her eyes grew big with wonder, but I walked proudly back to her after my victory over Bacchus, and reassured her—with a few of Mary's messages that I had still left over, if the truth must be told. ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... not appear as if the huge walrus realised the danger approaching so steadily, for every now and then, while performing some antic, the bear continued to lessen the distance between it and its prey, while simulating the greatest innocence and assuming to be thinking of anything but making an attack. So playful a creature, enjoying itself ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... lads, Antic, Frolic and Fantastic, having lost their way, are given shelter by a countryman, Clunch—a smith, by the way, like our old friend, Adam—whose goodwife, Madge, entertains two of them with a tale while the other sleeps ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... could manage him without letting him know he was being managed. There was a widow in the East, acknowledged his niece, who had been angling for poor Peter for years. And Peter was still free, Susie suspected, because in the presence of that widow he emulated Hamlet and always put an antic disposition on. Did the most absurd things, and appeared to be little more than half-witted. The widow in question had even spoken to Susie about her uncle's eccentricities and intimated that his segregative manner of life might in ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... outside by an arm and can hardly tell what he has to say because it's so funny he has to laugh when he thinks of it. They go up an alley where they won't be overheard, and Herman at last manages to keep his laughter down long enough to tell it. It's a comical antic he wants Manuel ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... words "wanken" and "schweben" are not easily translated. The English words, by which we attempt to render them, are either vulgar or antic, or not of sufficiently general application. So "der Wolken Zug"—The Draft, the Procession of Clouds. The Masses of the Clouds sweep onward in ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... words each of them said to himself, "Indeed I am a dead man and 'tis the intention of this woman to peach upon me." Presently her husband asked her, "What be these four histories?" and answered she, "I saw four men each and every of whom was an antic fellow, a droll, a buffoon; furthermore, O my lord, one and all of them were garbed in gaberdine and bonnet."—And Shahrazad was surprised by the dawn of day and fell silent and ceased saying her permitted ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... a very difficult task, as the packages were so awkward and heavy, the object being to make them secure against any antic on the part of the mules if they became restive, and also to guard against the corners of the plates ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... of it. Mlle. Frahender grew pale and ill, and her hair flew about in the most comic disarray. Cosily ensconced in a corner, Maurice sketched the various attitudes his companions assumed with every antic of the lightly-laden, wave-tossed Soulacroup. Hunched up on the seat, Esperance clung to the rigging. Genevieve clutched at her when a wave pitched the boat too far over. The others, well muffled up, waited in ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... eyes . . . And lo! A flickering snatch of memory that floats Upon the face of a pool of darkness five And thirty dead years deep, Antic in girlish broideries And skirts and silly shoes with straps And a broad-ribanded leghorn, he walks Plain in the shadow of a church (St. Michael's: in whose brazen call To curfew his first wails ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... eyes, and saw a man kneeling above me, rubbing me all over with his hands, and pushing my belly up under my ribs, and blowing into my mouth, and tickling my nostrils with a feather, and performing a great variety of such antic manoeuvres ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... husbandry? They foolish and not seeing, how should he Spend anger there or fear—great ceremonies Equal for none save great antagonists? The grave indifference of his heart before them Was moved by laughter innocent of hate, Chastising clean of spite, that moulded them Into the antic likeness of his toad Bidding for laughter underneath ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... to the hungry and inquiring mind—ah, no!—but of a desperately sustained struggle in which, with every faculty on the alert to discover the truest expedients, with every nerve strained to the utmost, I strove for the mastery over this antic, untamed animal, until I could throw the reins loose at night, and drop my head down on my desk in the deserted ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... to show her how to dance and die, and Najib begins to whirl like a dervish until he falls in the grave; thereupon he folds his arms, closes his eyes, and smiles a pathetic smile. This by far is the masterpiece of all his feats. And one evening, when he was repeating this strange and weird antic, which in Khalid's strange mind might be made to symbolise something stranger than both, he saw, as he lay in the grave, a star in the sky. It was the first time he saw a star; and he jumped out of his sand-grave exulting in the discovery he had made. He runs to his mother and ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... signifies this is he, or this is it,—an expression by which they assert the verity of the Christian religion. After they had by these religious circulations and clamours turned their heads and inflamed their madness, they began to act the moat antic tricks and postures in a thousand shapes of distraction. Sometimes they dragged one another along the floor all round the Sepulchre; sometimes they set one man upright upon another's shoulders, and in this posture marched round; sometimes they tumbled round the Sepulchre after the manner ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... And what avails reviling? Such pitch without defiling Can "Prince" or "Patriot" touch? This quicksand unromantic Closes on him, the Antic, Whose hands with gestures frantic Contiguous ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., September 20, 1890 • Various
... groans—such was the dark fancy of the author—issued from a windy tower. But there was one supreme chapter in which the hero was locked in a haunted room and saw a candle at a chink of the wall. It belonged to the villain, who nightly played there a ghostly antic to frighten honest ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... hung back a little at the start, but the impulse of the tune, the night, and my example, were not to be resisted. A man made of putty must have danced, and even Dudgeon showed himself to be a human being. Higher and higher were the capers that we cut; the moon repeated in shadow our antic footsteps and gestures; and it came over my mind of a sudden—really like balm—what appearance of man I was dancing with, what a long bilious countenance he had shown under his shaven pate, and what a world of trouble the rascal had given me ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... white, and her brow was ornamented with a sparkling Diadem. After her appeared St. Genevieve, surrounded by a number of Imps, who putting themselves into grotesque attitudes, drawing her by the robe, and sporting round her with antic gestures, endeavoured to distract her attention from the Book, on which her eyes were constantly fixed. These merry Devils greatly entertained the Spectators, who testified their pleasure by repeated bursts of Laughter. The Prioress ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... felt a secret satisfaction in contemplating their helpless condition. He might have forgotten the scene by this time but for that ill-looking man by the fire. Now, while he capered about, boylike, and threw himself with an antic into his bed, he inwardly hoped that the voetspoelen would not ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... it in such terms as are charged to the fullest with significance—this would seem to be the aim and end of Mr. Meredith's ambition. Of simplicity in his own person he appears incapable. The texture of his expression must be stiff with allusion, or he deems it ill spun; there must be something of antic in his speech, or he cannot believe he is addressing himself to the Immortals; he has praised with perfect understanding the lucidity, the elegance, the ease, of Moliere, and yet his aim in art (it would ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... as we had finished our dinner we returned towards the ship. I was much delighted in this walk with the number of children that I saw in every part of the country: they are very handsome and sprightly and full of antic tricks. They have many diversions that are common with the boys in England such as flying kites, cats cradle, swinging, dancing or jumping in a rope, ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... Cafe des Exiles was erupting antic shapes, waiters, customers, Dupont, Therese. The quiet hour was made hideous by ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... tongue signifies, no trees are growing thereon. This place is the threshold of the Pass of Killicrankie, through the dark and woody chasms of which the impatient waters of the Gary come with hoarse and wrathful mutterings and murmurs. The hills and mountains around are built up in more olden and antic forms than those of our Lowland parts, and a wild and strange solemnity is mingled there with much fantastical beauty, as if, according to the minstrelsy of ancient times, sullen wizards and gamesome fairies had joined their arts and spells to ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... of his residence in civilized quarters, he had a convulsion in the very middle of the parsley patch, I thought it a playful antic, and was amused and gratified thereat. The second time this happened, James, the gardener, chanced to witness the performance and informed me, brutally, that "that old hyar had throwed a fit, and was ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... England, but to which the idea of low is now currently annexed. It was originally adapted from the Moors, and is still known by the name of Morris-dancing, or Moresc-dance. It is danced with swords, by persons odly disguised, with a great deal of antic rural merriment: it is true that this diversion is now almost exploded, being entirely confined to the lower classes of life, and only kept up in some counties. What the reason may be of its going out of use, I cannot say; but am very sure, there ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... simple Whitehead, taught to creep Silent and soft, lay Fontenelle asleep;[214] Let them with Browne contrive, to vulgar trick, To cure the dead, and make the living sick;[215] Let them in charity to Murphy give Some old French piece, that he may steal and live; Let them with antic Foote subscriptions get, And advertise a Summer-house of Wit. Thus, or in any better way they please, With these great men, or with great men like these, Let them their appetite for laughter feed; I on my Journey all alone ...
— English Satires • Various
... countenance was suffused with a grim and ghastly smile, which reminded us of Dante's devils. He immediately ascended the ladder, dragging his prey after him till they had nearly reached the top; he then placed the rope around the neck of the malefactor with many antic gestures and grimaces highly gratifying and amusing to the mob. To signify to the poor fellow under his fangs that he wished to whisper in his ear, to push him off the ladder, and to jump astride his neck with his heels drumming with violence upon his stomach, was but the work of an instant. ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... clapped his hands with glee, my mother was perplexed at my antic conduct, while the ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... what difference always puzzled her. She would clean up a kitten and comb it slick, then turn to one of the squirrels and wash it, but rarely, if ever, completing the work because of some disconcerting un-catlike antic. As the squirrels grew older they also grew friskier, and soon took the washing as the signal for a frolic. As well try to wash a bubble. They were bundles of live springs, twisting out of her paws, dancing over her back, leaping, kicking, tumbling as ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... him a jacket and trowsers, which produced great merriment, for he had all the gestures of a monkey newly dressed: We also gave him bread, which he eat with a voracious appetite, and after having played a thousand antic tricks, he leaped overboard, jacket and trowsers and all, and swam back again to his proa; after this several others swam to the ship, ran up the side of the gun-room ports, and having crept in, snatched ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... the eccentric, and, as the day approaches for the handing in of his bill, his eccentricity verges upon madness, till at last, when the document is really tendered, he becomes absolutely crazy—shouts, sings, performs in an antic manner, and declares himself to be the king of the Jews, the President of the United States, or something of that sort. He has sufficient method in his madness, however, to gain the advantage of the hotel proprietors, ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... have power to do; nor are they perceived to be in great pain, save that they are usually silent and sullen. They are said to have many pleasant toyish books; but the operation of these pieces only appears in some paroxysms of antic, corybantic jollity, as if ravished and prompted by a new spirit entering into them at that instant, lighter and merrier than their own. Other books they have of involved, abstruse sense, much like the Rosurcian [Rosicrucian] style. They have nothing of the Bible, ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... Burke gave Old Father Antic the Law as lavish a letter of recommendation as the Legal Profession ever received, and he gave it for the very natural reason that he had no use ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... all the congregation grow weary, and fall asleep, till their patience be released; whereas if the preacher (pardon the impropriety of the word, the prater I would have said) be zealous, in his thumps of the cushion, antic gestures, and spend his glass in the telling of pleasant stories, his beloved shall then stand up, tuck their hair behind their ears, and be very devoutly attentive. So among the saints, those are ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... rhythm to this chaos of crossing, buffeting waves. I sense this rhythm, although I cannot solve it. But Mr. Pike knows it. Again and again, as we paced up and down this afternoon, when to me nothing unusually antic seemed impending, he would seize my arm as I lost balance, and as the Elsinore smashed down on her side and heeled over and over with a colossal roll that seemed never to end, and that always ended with an abrupt, snap-of-the-whip effect as she began the corresponding roll ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... but confined themselves to strange actions, exclamations, and contortions. They would creep into holes, and under benches and chairs, put themselves into odd and unnatural postures, make wild and antic gestures, and utter incoherent and unintelligible sounds. They would be seized with spasms, drop insensible to the floor, or writhe in agony, suffering dreadful tortures, and uttering loud and piercing outcries. The attention of the families in which they held their meetings was called ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... Sidney; 'methought that it betokens disease in the mind of a nation when their festive revelry is thus ghastly, rendering the most awful secrets made known by our God in order to warm man from sin into a mere antic laughing-stock. Laughter should be moved by what is fair and laughter-worthy—even like such sports as our own "Midsummer Night's Dream." I have read that the bloody temper of Rome fed itself in gladiator ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... nine horses and mules, the latter being very handsome, but the horses had lost their beauty and condition, as, except one or two, they were very unfit for being sent or accepted between princes. This done, the Persian returned, with many antic tricks, to his place, which was far inferior to mine, as I stood alone, and above all the subjects, though Asaph Khan at first wanted to put me from it, but I maintained it as my right, having been appointed me by the king. This was only the first act of the play ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr |
