"Frolic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... weak sweetness urging me on to accept the pretty chance which the good genius of my pilgrimage had so evidently put in my way,—for, after all, what harm could it do? With me Nicolete was, indeed, safe,—that, of course, I knew,—and safely she should come back home again after her little frolic. All that was true enough. And how charming it would be to have such a dainty companion! then the fun, the fancy, the whim of it all. What was the use of setting out to seek adventures if I ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... stole; Small creeks sprang from its mosses, and amaz'd, Like children in a wigwam curtain'd close Above the great, dead, heart of some red chief, Slipp'd on soft feet, swift stealing through the gloom, Eager for light and for the frolic winds. In this shrill moon the scouts of winter ran From the ice-belted north, and whistling shafts Struck maple and struck sumach—and a blaze Ran swift from leaf to leaf, from bough to bough; Till round ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... Frolic mingled with innocence. Sometimes religion itself wore the garb of gayety, and the annual thanksgiving to God was, from primitive times, as joyous as it was sincere. Nature always asserts her rights, and Christianity ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... festal-sounding shades, To some unworried minstrel dancing; While, as his flying fingers kissed the strings, Love framed with Mirth a gay fantastic round:— Loose were her tresses seen, her zone unbound;— And he, amidst his frolic play, As if he would the charming air repay, Shook thousand odors from ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... the very spot where, many years after, Cornwallis was to surrender the armies of England to the "rebel" republic, she with her companions entertained the English captain with a gay Indian dance full of noise and frolic. ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... weren't they the fine boys! You never saw the beat of them, Singing all together with their throats bronze-bare; Fighting-fit and mirth-mad, music in the feet of them, Swinging on to glory and the wrath out there. Laughing by and chaffing by, frolic in the smiles of them, On the road, the white road, all the afternoon; Strangers in a strange land, miles and miles and miles of them, Battle-bound and heart-high, and singing ...
— Rhymes of a Red Cross Man • Robert W. Service
... the road the Hardys, father and son, stepped briskly together. Altogether a trying walk, and calculated to make him more dissatisfied than ever with the present state of affairs. When his daughter shook her head at him and accused him of going off on a solitary frolic his stock of patience gave ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... as much as they liked, none of the outfit were ever able to induce Mat to pursue his education as a cowboy beyond the details incident to work and frolic on the open range. Old past-masters in the classics of cowboy town deportment, expert light shooters, monte players, dance-hall beaux, elbow-crookers, and red-eye riot-starters labored faithfully with Mat, but, all to no purpose. To ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... frequently in the discovery that some favorite child had been playing "hookey," which means (I will say to the uninitiated, if any such there be) absenting one's self from school without permission, to go on a fishing or a swimming frolic. Such at least was my experience more than once, for Mr. McNanly particularly favored my mother's house, because of a former acquaintanceship in Ireland, and many a time a comparison of notes proved ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 1 • Philip H. Sheridan
... Rutland, when Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, in a drunken frolic knighted the landlord of an inn in a country town. Being told the next morning what he had done, the duke sent for mine host, and begged of him to consider the ceremonial as merely a drunken frolic. "For my own part, my lord duke, I should readily comply with your excellency's ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 395, Saturday, October 24, 1829. • Various
... beauty, woman's glory! the limbs and faculties are cramped with worse than Chinese bands, and the sedentary life which they are condemned to live, whilst boys frolic in the open air, weakens the muscles and relaxes the nerves. As for Rousseau's remarks, which have since been echoed by several writers, that they have naturally, that is from their birth, independent of education, a ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... higher, if less happy, tribes— The race of earthly Childhood, Shall miss thy Whims of frolic wit, That in the summer wild-wood, Or by the Christmas hearth, were hail'd And hoarded as a treasure Of undecaying merriment And ever-changing pleasure. Things from thy lavish humour flung, Profuse as scents are flying This kindling morn, when ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... then placed upon the table for general use. It was not surprising that, where all were free to come and welcome to stay, and where anything like scantiness in providing or niggardliness in serving would be a matter of family disgrace, the wake often degenerated into a frolic, if not a debauch. In order to check any such tendency, it had been the custom of late years to introduce religious services, begun by the minister himself ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... people's eyes, and hear it in their voices. And they all talk to me as if I were very steady, and altogether removed from anything like fun and frolic. It seems to be admitted that if a girl does not want to fall in love, she ought not to care for any other fun in the world. If anybody made out a list of the old ladies in these parts, they'd put down Lady Julia, and mamma, ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... gently; he walked softly over the rag-carpet on the aisle. The LORD was in His holy temple. With another thought close behind that, of the time when the church was built, more than a year ago; what a happy, almost jolly time they had, the members giving the timber, and making a sort of frolic of putting it up, in the afternoons after harvest. They were all in one army or the other now: some of them in Blue's Gap. He would help ferret them out in the morning. He shivered, with the old doubt tugging fiercely at his heart. Was he right? The war was one of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... with a sudden spark. The spirit monitor—that match-making monitor—came back and dared her to a frolic, such a frolic, she thought, as no girl on earth had ever had, or would have, after her. And she could show this grave, soldier-hero of hers, something new in life—something quite new, which it would not harm ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... a mile with me Along life's merry way? A comrade blithe and full of glee, Who dares to laugh out loud and free, And let his frolic fancy play, Like a happy child, through the flowers gay That fill the field and fringe the way Where he walks ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... of dancing, when a tune Speeds us to Heaven, and night is at the noon Of all its frolic, all its wild desire! O thrall of rapt illusions when we tire Of coy reserve, and all the moments pass As pass the visions in a magic glass, And every step is shod with ecstacy, And every smile is ...
— A Lover's Litanies • Eric Mackay
... son had hairy backs and forked tails. Yes, gentlemen and ladies, forked tails and hairy backs. Believe Jerry Vincent for the truth of what he says. The moment they got into the water they began to frisk and frolic about as if it was natural to them, and to grow bigger and bigger and bigger, till the first which came up was as big as a frigate's jolly-boat. I made short work of it, and threw them all up till I felt there wasn't another morsel ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... the Merry Little Breezes of Old Mother West Wind are great friends, very great friends, indeed. Almost every morning they have a grand frolic together. But this morning the Merry Little Breezes hadn't come over to the old stone wall where Striped Chipmunk makes his home. Anyway, they hadn't come at the usual time. Striped Chipmunk had waited a little while and then, ...
— The Adventures of Grandfather Frog • Thornton W. Burgess
... golden-colored pumpkins which had been planted between the rows, that no land might be wasted, even left to ripen alone amid the withering corn-stalks. The neighbors from far and near had visited each other's houses in turn, for the "Husking frolic," when all joined to strip from the ear the long leaves in which it was wrapped, and which were to be stacked as fodder for the sheep and cattle. The apples had been sliced and dried in the sun, and then strung and suspended ...
— The Young Emigrants; Madelaine Tube; The Boy and the Book; and - Crystal Palace • Susan Anne Livingston Ridley Sedgwick
... on a frolic he went, He stayed till his very last penny was spent; But how to go home, and get safely to bed, Was the thing on his heart that most heavily weighed. But home he must go; so he caught up his hat, And ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... "By all the saints, no unfrocked priest shall speak words in this camp of mine! Not even a good father of the French has been present at a rendezvous of the bully boys of the mountains; and who are you, to come intruding at the frolic of the trappers? I'll have no sniveling Protestant here. So ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... from some sailors' frolic the night, or rather in the morning of the murder, he found the beast occupying his own bed-room, into which it had broken from a closet adjoining, where it had been, as was thought, securely confined. Razor in hand, and fully lathered, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Behind him a proud, expectant nation; a great host of sustaining friends; a cherished and happy mother wearing the full, rich honors of her early toil and tears; the wife of his youth, whose whole life lay in his; the little boys not yet emerged from childhood's day of frolic; the fair young daughter; the sturdy sons just springing into closest companionship, claiming every day, and every day rewarding, a father's love and care; and in his heart the eager, rejoicing power to meet all demand. Before him, desolation ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... saltiness of the damp air which blew across the room and by the grind of the shingle outside, I could tell that the wind was off sea. The sea itself was almost invisible—a swaying mistiness through which the white-horses rose and peeped at one, as if to say, "Come and share our frolic. Come and ride us." ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... disguise at a wedding reception, and talked a few moments, apparently undetected, to a bride. Hamdi Bey, and Hamdi's eunuchs, would be blandly ignorant of such a scandal. What his disappearance would indicate would be some further frolic on his part, some tempting of a later Providence before he had abandoned his disguise.... If he were discovered, for instance, in some of those native quarters, behind ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... they will not at all listen to the courtship of a wise suitor. Finally, wherever there is any preparation made for mirth and jollity, all wise men are sure to be excluded the company, lest they should stint the joy, and damp the frolic In a word, to what side soever we turn ourselves, to popes, princes, judges, magistrates, friends, enemies, rich or poor, all their concerns are managed by money, which because it is undervalued by wise men, therefore, ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... ye little ken about it! For Britain's guid! guid faith, I doubt it! Say rather, gaun as Premiers lead him, An' saying, aye or no's they bid him, At operas an' plays parading, Mortgaging, gambling, masquerading; Or may be, in a frolic daft, To Hague or Calais takes a waft, To mak a tour, an' tak' a whirl, To learn bon ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... Conduct and equipage, Noble by heritage, Generous and free; Brave, not romantic, Learn'd, not pedantic, Frolic, not frantic, This must ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 331, September 13, 1828 • Various
... "That were making him pay too dear for his curiosity and the pleasure he has had in surprising our frolic. Enough for this time to inflict a light chastisement. Say, shall we ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... more brightly golden than the silken tresses of Bertha,—tresses that ran in ripples, and lost themselves in a sunny stream of natural curls, which seemed audaciously bent on breaking their bounds, and looked as though they were always in a frolic. In vain they were smoothed back by the skilful fingers of an expert femme de chambre, and confined in an elaborate knot at the back of Bertha's small head; the rebellious locks would wave and break into fine rings upon the white brow, ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... neither mowing nor reaping to do that year, I told him that the time was come to build his house; and that for the purpose I would myself invite the neighbourhood to a frolic; that thus he would have a large dwelling erected, and some upland cleared in one day. Mr. P. R., his old friend, came at the time appointed, with all his hands, and brought victuals in plenty: I did the same. About forty people repaired to the spot; the songs, and merry stories, went round the ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... who had nothing seen, Was nearly caught; You shall hear how He told his mother the adventure— He said, "Pray, listen, now: I started out to frolic at a venture, When two fine animals appeared Before my eyes, And filled me with surprise. One was soft, benign, and sweet, The other, turbulent, and full of inquietude, Had a loud voice, piercing and rude, And on his head a piece of flesh. A sort of arm raised ...
— Aesop, in Rhyme - Old Friends in a New Dress • Marmaduke Park
... Victor himself, who was not the landlord to leave his ostlers to do as they liked with horses and grain,—many a flirtation, but none that meant or did any harm; for with all her wildness and love of frolic, Mademoiselle Victorine never lost her head. Deep down in her heart she had an ambition which she never confessed even to her aunt Jeanne. She had read enough romances to believe that it was by no means an impossible thing that a landlord's daughter should marry a gentleman; ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... inexplicable emerald circles to supernatural agency; if, indeed, anything connected with the "good folks" or "men of peace" could properly be called supernatural in times when a belief in fairies and every sort of fairy freak and frolic was deemed the most correct and natural thing in the world. Did not these circles, it was argued, appear in the course of a single night? In the sequestered woodland glade, nor herd nor milkmaid could see anything odd or unusual as the sun went down, and lo! ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... all mirth: We frolic to and fro As free and blithe, as if on earth Were no such thing ...
— The Christian Year • Rev. John Keble
... up with his hand going instinctively to his back to ease the ache there, and went out upon the porch and stood looking drearily down upon the asphalted street, where the white paths of speeding automobiles slashed the dusk like runaway sunbeams on a frolic. Then the street lights winked and sputtered and began to glow ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... work-house. Nature does not cocker us:[458] we are children, not pets: she is not fond: everything is dealt to us without fear or favor, after severe universal laws. Yet these delicate flowers look like the frolic and interference of love and beauty. Men use to tell us that we love flattery, even though we are not deceived by it, because it shows that we are of importance enough to be courted. Something like that pleasure, the flowers give us: what am I to whom these sweet hints are ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... said, Cooper was thirty years old before he began to write. He had studied under an Episcopal rector, and was intending to enter the junior class at Yale; the rector died and Cooper entered the second term of the freshman class; for some frolic in which he was engaged he was dismissed; he then entered the navy, where he gathered valuable experience which he worked afterwards into literature; he married; resigned, and lived the quiet life ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... you exactly," said Levee. "If I take no prizes this cruise, and you do make money, why then we will, on our return, have another frolic somewhere, and you shall stand treat. That will make us all square, if I am not fortunate; but if I am, I consider your pleasant company to have more than repaid me for any little expense ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... his hands upon his knees, opened his mouth, and waited for his hearer's laughter and wonder; but the hearer merely smiled, and with a queer look of frolic in the depths of ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... One moment poised on imaginary flights, weaving stories from the baldest materials, drawing allegories of the lives of her friends, the next—an irresponsible wisp, with no thought in the world but the moment's frolic; but whatever might be the fancy of the moment she drew her companions after her with the ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... greatest dreams that men have ever had, are written on panel and on canvas, and the immensity and the silence of them all are beautiful and eloquent with dead men's legacies to the living, where the Hours and the Seasons frolic beside the Maries at the Sepulchre, and Adonis bares his lovely limbs, in nowise ashamed because S. Jerome and S. Mark are there; to study and muse, and wonder and be still, and be full of the peace which passes all understanding, because the earth is lovely as Adonis ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... "How provoking you are! Haven't thought of it, and here I have been talking and coaxing all the morning. Father thinks it is a wild scheme, of course, and sees no sense in spending so much money; but I'm going for all that. I don't have a frolic once in an age, and I have set my heart on this. Just think of living in the woods for two whole weeks! camping out, and doing all sorts of wild things. I'm ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... bringing from the meadows, At set of harvest-day, The frolic of the blackbirds, The sweetness of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... careful not to strain the little eyes at his scholar's tasks, not to let the little shoulders grow round over his scholar's desk. Youth is golden; we should keep it golden, bright, glistening. Youth should frolic, should be sprightly; it should play its cricket, its tennis, its hand-ball. It should run and leap; it should laugh, should sing madrigals and glees, carol with the lark, ring out in chanties, folk-songs, ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... maids the most merriment, though of a covert and even tender and pitying sort, was Mary's black serving-wench Sukey, a half-grown girl, who had been bidden to attend her mistress upon this morning frolic. She was seated at a distance, square in the wet greenness, and was plunging both hands into the May dew and scrubbing her face with a fierce zeal, as if her heart was in that pretty folly, as no doubt it was. And ever and anon as she rubbed her cheeks, which shone the blacker and glossier for it, ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... silk skirt and tights, her curling black hair fell partly over her forehead; her bold, black eyes were full of a strange mixture of frolic, affection, and defiance. She looked the personification of healthy life and courageous fire. In her hand she held the bow of Diana, and round her neck was slung a couple of arrows. She was a wonderfully graceful child in all her movements, ...
— A Little Mother to the Others • L. T. Meade
... these days chooses to be sentimental in the years to come over the good old days of Urban scenery and Olive Thomas, the Balloon Girls of the Midnight Frolic and the chorus of the Winter Garden, he will be obliged to give way to the mood at home in front of the fire, see the pictures in the smoke, and hear the tunes in the dropping of the coals. Which is perhaps as it should be. For in 1937 the youth of that epoch can sit in Row A, ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... prosperous days he had built country villas for actresses and attended many a joyous house-warming, the fun and frolic of which were still fresh in the light-hearted veteran's memory. He had long ceased to care who heard him, and primed with maraschino, he would unfold his reminiscences like some sumptuous tapestry gone to tatters. The bookseller's son, meeting an artist for the first time, ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... drunken frolic of an hour or two ago. Never before, thought the policeman, as he passed upon his beat, had such a pitiful figure cowered upon the Embankment, and prayed for ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... night. Fancy our disgust, when we found the shutters closed, everything carefully locked up, and no living soul about the place but two helpless little colored persons of tender age. The whole family had gone out to a sledging "frolic," and would not return before late at night; it was then past P. M.; we had breakfasted lightly at seven, and been in the saddle ever since nine o'clock. We did discover some Indian corn for the horses, and left them to feed under ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... but this I gratefully declined, and he thereon recommended me to lodge with the widow of a ship-captain who had been drowned in his service. So I took lodging with her at her house in Brattles Street, and she made me very comfortable. She had a daughter, a pretty frolic lass of nine, who promoted me uncle the first day, and one negro slave, who was the autocrat of the establishment till my coming put his nose out of joint, ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... feeble light, along the dark mouldering walls and roof, which absorbed every straggling ray that reached them, and over the dingy floor, ropy and damp, the place called to recollection that hall in Roman story, hung and carpeted with black, into which Domitian once thrust his senate, in a frolic, to read their own names on the coffin-lids placed against the wall. The darkness seemed to press upon us from every side, as if it were a dense jetty fluid, out of which our light had scooped a pailful or two, and that was rushing in to supply the ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... Charley, and went on with his frolic until Wiley rose up in disgust. He had heated some water, besides tearing down a blanket and letting the daylight in, when there came a hurried knock at the door and the Widow appeared with his breakfast. She avoided his eyes, but ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... this way," said the master of the Frolic, dropping his voice. "I've been taking a little too much notice of a little craft down Battersea way—nice little thing, an' she thought I was ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... assemblies of negroes, and also to prevent them from being at large without permission of their masters. But this system had dwindled down to a farce, and was only engaged in by some of the youngsters, more in a spirit of fun and frolic than to keep order in the neighborhood. The real duties of the militia of the State consisted of an annual battalion and regimental parade, called "battalion muster" and "general muster." This occasioned a lively turn-out ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... discovered sauntering along the bank of a river, or lolling in the shade of a tree. This disposition to inactivity and laziness, in so young a man, was very strange. Persons of his age are rarely fond of work, but then they are addicted to company, and sports, and exercises. They ride, or shoot, or frolic; but this being moped away his time in solitude, never associated with other young people, never mounted a horse but when he could not help it, and never fired a gun or angled for a fish in his life. ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... sturdy strokes of his axe the light of day was let into the little circle of cleared ground. [Footnote: Hall, Statistics of the West, 98, 101, 145.] With the aid of his neighbors, called together under the social attractions of a "raising," with its inevitable accompaniment of whiskey and a "frolic," he erected his log-cabin. "America," wrote Birkbeck, "was bred in a cabin." [Footnote: Birkbeck, Notes on ...
— Rise of the New West, 1819-1829 - Volume 14 in the series American Nation: A History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... with country neighbors, all came round in quick succession. We lived, at this time, at Tenafly, New Jersey, not far from the publisher of the Sun, Isaac W. England, who also had seven boys and girls as full of frolic as our own. Mrs. England and I entered into all their games with equal zest. The youngest thought half the fun was to see our enthusiasm in "blindman's buff," "fox and geese," and "bean bags." It thrills me with delight, even now, to ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... had, like Shakespeare and Keats an instinctive feeling for the poetic value of words and phrases. Milton's early poems abound in such poetic expressions as "the frolic wind," "the slumbring morn," "linked sweetness," "looks commercing with the skies," "dewy-feathered sleep," "the studious cloister's pale," "a dim religious light," the "silver lining" of the cloud, "west ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... could find all the duties he craved. Toward the close of the war, on the formation of a new typhoid hospital, Sommers was put in charge. There one day in the heat of the fight with disease and corruption he discovered Parker Hitchcock, who had enlisted, partly as a frolic, an excuse for throwing off the ennui of business, and partly because his set were all going to Cuba. Young Hitchcock had come down with typhoid while waiting in Tampa for a transport, and had been left in Sommers's camp. He greeted the familiar face of the doctor with a welcome he ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... that she, that only she, whose deity recreates both gods and men, even this is a sufficient argument, that I no sooner stepped up to speak to this full assembly than all your faces put on a kind of new and unwonted pleasantness. So suddenly have you cleared your brows, and with so frolic and hearty a laughter given me your applause, that in truth as many of you as I behold on every side of me seem to me no less than Homer's gods drunk with nectar and nepenthe; whereas before, you sat as lumpish and ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... at it again praising and praising such low songs raising that no one hears them but the sun who rears them and the sheep that bite them are the quietest sheep awake or asleep with the merriest bleat and the little lambs are the merriest lambs they forget to eat for the frolic in their feet and the lambs and their dams are the whitest sheep with the woolliest wool and the longest wool and the trailingest tails and they shine like snow in the grasses that grow by the singing river that sings for ever and the sheep and the lambs are merry for ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... took stolen treasure from thievish Barons and Margraves protected by scores of armed men, with the object of breaking their power, for the relief of commerce, I admired you, but to say that the despoiling of a helpless merchant is a frolic—" ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... one gentleman at the opening of this contest,—"that he was willing to try the war for a year or two, and, if it did not succeed, then to vote for peace." As if war was a matter of experiment! As if you could take it up or lay it down as an idle frolic! As if the dire goddess that presides over it, with her murderous spear in her hand and her Gorgon at her breast, was a coquette to be flirted with! We ought with reverence to approach that tremendous divinity, that loves courage, but commands counsel. War never leaves where it found a nation. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... next noted achievement was the defeat of the English brig Frolic by the sloop-of-war Wasp, off the coast of North Carolina. When the former was boarded by her captors, her colors were still flying, there being no one to haul them down. The man at the helm was the only sailor ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... expect to have to pay for my unhappy frolic, but I would like very well if it could be managed without my personal appearance or even the mention of my real name. I had so much wisdom as to sail under false colours in this foolish jaunt of mine; my family would be extremely concerned ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... on, and the fine flower that you behold there, gaudily attired and scented like a dandy, is by no means what it appears to be, but rather, is like a labourer toiling in sun and shower, who has to submit a clear account of his work and has no breathing space to enjoy himself in playful frolic. ...
— Sadhana - The Realisation of Life • Rabindranath Tagore
... use to deny it?" said the Kid. "I got into a little gun frolic down in Laredo and plugged a white man. There wasn't any Mexican handy. And I come down to your parrot-and-monkey range just for to smell the morning-glories and marigolds. ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... nut-brown ale, talking betwixt mouthfuls and eliciting from his absorbed audience of one, now a little exclamation of horror at the tale of some tragic occurrence or narrow escape, and anon a hearty laugh at the recounting of some boyish frolic and escapade in one or another of the foreign cities visited in the course of the voyage. Supper over, they drew their chairs up before the fire and continued their talk, asking and answering questions in that delightfully inconsequent fashion which is possible only ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... was small; and, though little countries sometimes produce great men, little streams rarely produce great fish. But on one occasion, towards the close of autumn, when a party of the younger workmen set themselves, in a frolic, to sweep it with torch and spear, they succeeded in capturing, in a dark alder-o'ershaded pool, a monstrous individual, nearly three feet in length, and proportionally bulky, with a snout bent over ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... with fire and fury! Hark! the whistle shrilly shrieks! Speed—but mark! we don't insure ye 'Gainst the boiler's frolic freaks. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... however, saying he knew that I supposed him intoxicated, but that he was never more sober in his life. He was only tired, he added, of lying in bed on such a fine night like a dog, and was determined to get up and dress, and go out on a frolic with the boat. I can hardly tell what possessed me, but the words were no sooner out of his mouth than I felt a thrill of the greatest excitement and pleasure, and thought his mad idea one of the most delightful and most reasonable things in the world. It was blowing almost a gale, and the weather ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... to the representing of blind-sides and little extravagances; to which the wittier a man is, he is generally the more obnoxious. It succeeded as I wished; the jest went round, and he was laughed at in his turn who began the frolic. ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... Wolsey gained so much on the king, that he supplanted both Surrey in his favor, and Fox in his trust and confidence. Being admitted to Henry's parties of pleasure, he took the lead in every jovial conversation, and promoted all that frolic and entertainment which he found suitable to the age and inclination of the young monarch. Neither his own years, which were near forty, nor his character of a clergyman, were any restraint upon him, or engaged him to check, by any useless severity, the gayety in which Henry, who had small ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... a great favorite. No social evening or family festivity had seemed complete without his presence. The very children had felt that they had a claim upon his good-humor, and his tendency to break forth into whimsical frolic. Good Mrs. Trent had been wont to scold him and gossip with him. He had read his sonnets and metaphysical articles to Bertha, and occasionally to the rest; in fact, his footing in the family was familiar ...
— "Le Monsieur De La Petite Dame" • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... destruction of the toll gates occurred in 1839, and the gates then destroyed were particularly obnoxious to the people, who entertained doubts of the legality of their erection. They were broken down in open day, with no attempt at concealment, by a mob of persons rather in a spirit of mischievous frolic than otherwise. The proposal to re-erect these gates, on the part of the trustees, was overruled by a large body of magistrates and gentlemen, many of whom qualified for trustees expressly for the occasion. This decision gave strength and encouragement to the discontented, and, no doubt, ...
— Gossip in the First Decade of Victoria's Reign • John Ashton
... Rape of the Lock' has been so often related that it requires only a brief restatement. Among the Catholic families of Queen Anne's day, who formed a little society of their own, Miss Arabella Fermor was a reigning belle. In a youthful frolic which overstepped the bounds of propriety Lord Petre, a young nobleman of her acquaintance, cut off a lock of her hair. The lady was offended, the two families took up the quarrel, a lasting estrangement, possibly even a duel, was threatened. ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... were small, but they were numerous. By a last effort of mischievous frolic several of them pulled at the frames of the windows so strongly that several panes broke. A shout of joy sounded far over the field. Through the openings the interior of the hut became strewn with small clods of earth and stones. The ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... boy myself! I haven't forgotten that jolly time: we always liked to have some sort of excuse when we went off on a frolic. You see what a lot of work there is to do in clearing the ground and getting it ready for cultivation; you would much rather be hunting and rambling through the woods; I can't say I blame you, so off with you, and when you come back ...
— Camp-fire and Wigwam • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... enough to any group of farmhouses to have visitors, the last afternoon and evening in camp was made a country frolic. Great sled-loads of girls came out to taste the new sugar, to drop it into the snow to candy, and to ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... him that there was to be a reaping frolic in their neighborhood in a few days, and that if he would attend it, she would show him one of the prettiest girls upon whom he ever fixed his eyes. Difficult as he found it to shut out from his mind his lost love, upon whom his thoughts were dwelling by day and by night, he very wisely decided ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... engaged two whole sections for the young folks and an extra place for Uncle Dick. The latter did not interfere at all with the fun and frolic of his charges. He was—he should have been—used by now to the ridiculous antics of the Tucker twins and the overflowing spirits of the rest of the octette. Bachelor as he was, Mr. Richard Gordon considered himself pretty well ...
— Betty Gordon at Mountain Camp • Alice B. Emerson
... dog was usually ready for a frolic in the water he did not seem to be so just now. He ran back and forth, down to the edge of the stream and back again, getting his paws ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue on an Auto Tour • Laura Lee Hope
... Nathaniel Lee died in 1692 of injury received during a drunken frolic. Disappointed of a fellowship at Cambridge, he turned actor; failed upon the stage, but prospered as a writer for it. His career as a dramatist began with 'Nero', in 1675, and he wrote in all eleven plays. His most successful play was the 'Rival Queens', or the Death of Alexander ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... intrigues of office—bore some resemblance to the graver comedy. On the other hand, the Court life of France was all a ballet, of which Versailles was the patent theatre. There all was show and scene-shifting the tinsel of high life, and the frolic, of brilliant frivolity.—The minister was eclipsed by the mistress; the king was a buffoon in the hands of the courtier; and the government of a powerful nation was disposed of in the style of a flirtation behind ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... and the black clouds have been rolled away, and piled upon each other in the far east, Sif comes gleefully tripping through the meadows, raising up the bruised flowers, and with smiles calling the frightened birds from their hiding-places to frolic and sing in the fresh sunshine again. The growing fields and the grassy mountain slopes are hers; and the rustling green leaves, and the sparkling dewdrops, and the sweet odors of spring blossoms, and the glad songs of the summer-time, follow ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... very steady, and catching his fainting mother in his arms, took her into his own room; where he, upon her entreaty, swore he would never leave the house as long as she continued united with me. I knew nothing of the vow, or indeed of the tipsy frolic which was the occasion of it; I was taken up 'glorious,' as the phrase is, by my servants, and put to bed, and, in the morning, had no more recollection of what had occurred any more than of what happened ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to work well by the promise of extra pay; and the laborers seemed to regard the occasion as a grand frolic. They exerted themselves to the utmost, and the buckets flew along the lines, while the pumps rolled out the water in a continuous flow. As the steamer, relieved of the weight that pressed her down, rose on the surface of the lake, it was only necessary to lift the water ...
— Haste and Waste • Oliver Optic
... a mettlesome, warm-blooded creature, full of the energy and audacity of youth, to whom as yet life was only a frolic and a play spell. Work never tired her. She ate heartily, slept peacefully, went to bed laughing, and got up in a merry humor in the morning. Diana's laugh was as early a note as the song of birds. Such a nature is ...
— Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and The First Christmas - of New England • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... his life all but the one unmentionable thing; and then he told stories about his own life. He was a great one for stories, not always of the choicest. Being sent to jail had apparently not disturbed his cheerfulness; he had "done time" twice before, it seemed, and he took it all with a frolic welcome. What with women and wine and the excitement of his vocation, a man could afford to rest now ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... in that equivocal description of it which could scarcely be termed costume at all. Bareheaded and barefooted multitudes of both sexes were present, regardless of appearances, half mad with delight, and exhibiting many a frolic and gambol considerably at variance with the etiquette of fashionable life, although we question whether the most fashionable fete, of them all ever produced half so much happiness. Farmers had come from a distance in the country, mounted upon lank horses ornamented with incrusted ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... ignorance of childhood, when life has neither beginning nor end; when ways and means present no vexatious problems; when if food is not to be had for the simple asking, it can surely be secured by coaxing; when the day is for frolic and play, and the night ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... anxiety to witness the scene, having never attended an execution, and yet I felt a kind of horrid dread that made my heart revolt, and inclined me to step back rather than support the idea of advancing. On the morning of the execution she made her intention of going to the frolic, and taking me with her, known to our mother, who in the most feeling terms, remonstrated against a step at once so rash and unbecoming the ...
— A Narrative of the Life of Mrs. Mary Jemison • James E. Seaver
... sign of gaiety. Keeping away from the front entrance where carriages were constantly driving up and a good many people were about, I went round to the other side, avoiding the stables and passing along by the west wing. This, of course, brought me to the old tower, the scene of many a game and frolic in my young days. At its foot I stood for a while recalling memories of the past. In the mere idleness of affectionate remembrance I went up to the garden door of the tower and mechanically turned the ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William
... with George Erwyn, but now she turned toward the actor. "Heavens!" said Lady Allonby, "to think I should be able to repay you this soon! La, of course, you are at liberty, Mr. Vanringham, and we may treat the whole series of events as a frolic suited to the day. For I am under obligations to you, and, besides, your punishment would breed a scandal, and, above all, anything is preferable to being talked about ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... they came out to kill him. The garden-engine of poor little Alphonso was lying in the valley, all broken and useless. But the Firedrake, as happy as a wild duck on a lonely lock, was rolling and diving in the liquid flame, all red-hot and full of frolic. "Hi!" shouted the prince. The Firedrake rose to the surface, his horns as red as a red crescent-moon, only bigger, and lashing the fire with his hoofs and his ...
— Prince Prigio - From "His Own Fairy Book" • Andrew Lang
... of opinion that Henry never again did such good work as these nonsense rhymes, written thus for a frolic,—and one hundred and fifty pounds,—and as copies of the "Bon Marche Ballads" are now exceedingly scarce, it may possibly be of interest to quote two or three more of its preposterous numbers. This is a lyric illustrative of cheese, for ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... LOCRINE. Then frolic, lordings, to fair Concord's walls, Where we will pass the day in knightly sports, The night in dancing and in figured masks, And offer to God ...
— 2. Mucedorus • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... his left hand in a sling, bound up in dirty-looking bandages, interposed: "No; the only game we like to play now is the one with cannon-balls." No; these dour, stolid men take their fighting sadly and sternly; there is none of the "frolic welcome" with which our Irish Tommies, for instance, enjoy their fighting or endure the waiting for it. When I was a prisoner in Pretoria they used to keep us awake at night with fireworks after news such ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... a girl's frolic," said her father, wincing suddenly. "They can't help having birthdays. Betty will be begging ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... her laugh so that she tumbled into a clover-bed, and lay there a minute to get her breath. Just then, as if the playful wind repented of its frolic, the long veil fastened to the hat caught in a blackberry-vine near by, and held the truant ...
— Marjorie's Three Gifts • Louisa May Alcott
... of frolic and festivity begins in the fall, after the birds have left us and the holiday spirit of nature has commenced to subside. How absorbing the pastime of the sportsman who goes to the woods in the still ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... unwise, because the children often became so excited over their gifts and their frolic that it was difficult for them to settle down to sleep until ...
— Marjorie's New Friend • Carolyn Wells
... a regular frolic, isn't it, Jeremiah? How beautiful everything looks! What a perfection of ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... anything rather than a good condition for training, for he evidently remembered his frolic of the afternoon, and was anxious to repeat it. Toby thought he could be made to leap through hoops as a beginning of his circus education, and all the energies of the boys were bent to the ...
— Mr. Stubbs's Brother - A Sequel to 'Toby Tyler' • James Otis
... that they understand them; and they are gratified by the perception of a new intellectual pleasure. At this period of their education, great attention must be paid to them, lest their admiration for wit and frolic should diminish their reverence and their love for sober truth. In many engaging characters in society, and in many entertaining books, deceit and dishonesty are associated with superior abilities, with ease and gayety of manners, and with a certain air ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... familiar to readers of American newspapers even before its bearer was fairly out of college. The publicity it then attained (partly due to young Harman's conspicuous wealth) attached to some youthful exploits not without a certain wild humour. But frolic degenerated into brawl and debauch: what had been scrapes for the boy became scandals for the man; and he gathered a more and more unsavoury reputation until its like was not to be found outside a penitentiary. The crux of his career in his own ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... day as it was to be! But just now all care was forgotten, even to the regret at parting, in watching the absurd freaks of little Froll, the monkey. Her real name was Frolic; but who ever heard children call a pet ...
— Eric - or, Under the Sea • Mrs. S. B. C. Samuels
... think it would be the true compensation if all the rubbish of the old cloister were cleared from the area of those walls, and a great garden planted in the space, where lovers might whisper their wise nonsense, and children might romp and frolic, till the crumbling, masonry forgot its old office of imprisonment and the memory of its prisoners. For here, one could only think of the moping and mumming herd of monks, who were certainly not worth remembering, while the fame of Paolo ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... identity in this multitude somehow, and while I was very much impressed with their numbers, I even dared to pick and choose my friends among the Wilners. One or two of the smaller boys I liked best of all, for a game of hide-and-seek or a frolic on the beach. We played in the water like ducks, never taking the trouble to get dry. One day I waded out with one of the boys, to see which of us dared go farthest. The tide was extremely low, and we had not wet our knees when ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... up to some frolic, and could not take us in," said Cora. "If we were not so busy with our plans we might follow them. But I ...
— The Motor Girls on a Tour • Margaret Penrose
... Grasshopper, and a Toy-goose once wanted to see which of them could jump highest, and so they invited the whole world and everybody else who would like to come, to see the frolic. When the three met together in the room, everyone thought they were ...
— Stories to Read or Tell from Fairy Tales and Folklore • Laure Claire Foucher
... the oak-tree, Laughed, and said between his laughing, 185 "Do not shoot me, Hiawatha!" And the rabbit from his pathway Leaped aside, and at a distance Sat erect upon his haunches, Half in fear and half in frolic, 190 Saying to the little hunter, "Do not shoot me, Hiawatha!" But he heeded not, nor heard them, For his thoughts were with the red deer; On their tracks his eyes were fastened, 195 Leading downward to the river, To the ford across the river, And as one in slumber walked he. Hidden in ...
— The Song of Hiawatha - An Epic Poem • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... merriest of all the little people who live on the Green Meadows or in the Green Forest. He lives right on the edge of both and knows everybody, and everybody knows him. Almost every morning the Merry Little Breezes of Old Mother West Wind hurry over to have a frolic with him the very first thing. But though he dearly loves to play, he never lets play interfere with work. Whatever he does, be it play or work, he does with all ...
— Happy Jack • Thornton Burgess
... gives an account of this frolic. "A correspondent, who has borne a part (cow-horn blowing) on many a Plough Monday in Lincolnshire, thus describes what happened on these occasions under his own observation:—Rude though it was, the Plough procession threw a life into the dreary scenery of winter as it ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... as to his ability to ride the horse, for he hadn't been on a horse's back for years; but my brothers assured him that the chestnut was as obedient as a kitten, and that before he had been on the road an hour the mud would take all the frisk and frolic out of him. There was nearly fifteen miles to go, and they assured him that he would never get there if he rode any other horse. Well, at last he consented to ride the gelding, and the horse was made ready, properly groomed, his tail tied up, and ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... Susy and Flossy, when they were having a frolic in "Prudy's sitting-room," up stairs, "What happy little things! You don't know what trouble is, and never ...
— Little Prudy's Sister Susy • Sophie May
... and rolled about me. I took out the ten of hearts and studied it musingly. After all, should I go? Would it be wise? I confess I saw goblins' heads peering from the spots, and old Poe stories returned to me! Pshaw! It was only a frolic, no serious harm could possibly come of it. I would certainly go, now I had gone thus far. What fool idea the girl was bent on I hadn't the least idea; but I easily recognized the folly upon which I was about to set sail. Heigh-ho! What was a lonely young ...
— Hearts and Masks • Harold MacGrath
... this dirt and confusion, which once a week drives me nearly beside myself, is what K—— calls clearing up the ship; when he and his man Friday, as he calls Kelly, turn everything topsy-turvy, and, to make the muddle more complete, they always choose my washing-day for their frolic. Pantries and cellars are rummaged over, and everything is dragged out of its place, for the mere pleasure of making a litter, ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... to Baree that the pond was alive with beavers. Heads and bodies appeared and disappeared, rushing this way and that through the water in a manner that amazed and puzzled him. It was the colony's evening frolic. Tails hit the water like flat boards. Odd whistlings rose above the splashing—and then as suddenly as it had begun, the play came to an end. There were probably twenty beavers, not counting the young, and as if guided by a common signal—something ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... visage middle age Had slightly pressed his signet sage, Yet had not quenched the open truth, And fiery vehemence of youth; Forward and frolic glee was there, The will to do, the soul to dare, The sparkling glance, soon blown to fire Of hasty love or headlong ire. The Lady of the Lake, ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... wish had to go unfulfilled; the other half has been realized in a different but a profounder sense than that in which it is conceived. While he lives, in the creations of his humour and pathos, airy things of fun and frolic, tenderness and tears, his name is more and more associated "with the scenes"—to borrow the words of the memorial tablet in Rochester Cathedral—"in which his earliest and his latest years were passed", scenes that "from the associations ... which extended over all his life" have the best right ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... flowers, you mean. I thought perhaps you had gone off to join the monkeys for an old-time frolic ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... bullying railway navvy, who, having knocked his wife about and upset his old father, went off ostensibly to work. In reality he made his way by train to a town some ten miles distant, and from there, in a drunken frolic, sent a telegram home to his wife announcing that he was dead. He had given no particulars: a long search for him followed, and he was found some days later in a public-house of that town vaingloriously drinking. I remember that Bettesworth, ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... maidens dance in a ring, circling round one who stands in the midst, from whom they take both the time and music of the many dances performed at the odori. The dancers are always young and unmarried. The older people sit on the steps of the temple and watch the merry frolic with a smile. ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Japan • John Finnemore
... truly caught. Midsummer warmth and ripeness brooded in the verdure of field and forest. Wafts of fragrance went wandering by from new-mown meadows and gardens full of bloom. All the sky wore its serenest blue, and up the river came frolic winds, ruffling the lily leaves until they showed their purple linings, sweeping shadowy ripples through the long grass, and lifting the locks from Sylvia's forehead with a grateful touch, as she sat softly swaying with ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... the Prince, seriously but affably, for he did not like the turn affairs were taking, as he was anxious to keep his watchman frolic concealed. "I have nothing to do with this business. I belong to the court. If you venture to force me to go with you, you will be sorry for it when you are feasting on bread and water tomorrow ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... too, when her wings are dry, No frolic flight will take; But round a bowl she'll dip and fly, Like swallows round a lake. Then, if the nymph will have her share Before she'll bless her swain, Why that I think's a reason fair ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... family rude and rough, as some country people are. The girls are bright and intelligent, though full of fun and frolic," she added. "You will be sure to enjoy yourselves, and should there come a rainy day you will find plenty to amuse you in their quaint though ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... By nimble turn, by rapid bound He shunned the shafts that rained around, Eluding, as in air he rose, The rushing chariots of his foes. The mighty Vanar undismayed Amid his archer foemen played, As plays the frolic wind on high Mid bow-armed(876) clouds that fill the sky. He raised a mighty roar and yell That fear on all the army fell, And then, his warrior soul aglow With fury, rushed upon the foe, Some with his open hand he beat To death and trampled with his feet; Some with fierce nails ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... city, and it grows dusk. The soldiers being dismissed from duty, some young officers in a frolic of defiance halt, draw their swords and whet them on the steps of the FRENCH AMBASSADOR'S residence as they pass. The noise of whetting ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... ram with tinkling bell Led all his kin; sometimes one browsing sheep Hung back a moment, or one lamb would leap And frolic in a dell; Yet still ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... upon the slab a little while, Then drew a jewelled pencil from her zone, Scribbled a something with a frolic smile, Folded, inscribed, and ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... habits. I think there is a tradition that he entered a studio in Florence as a colour boy, and electrified the painter and his scholars, by brownie like freaks of painting at their unfinished work, in their absence, better than any of his masters, and by the dexterity with which he perpetrated the frolic of putting the facsimile of a fly on one of the faces on the easels. His end was a tragic conclusion to such light comedy. At the age of twenty-six, he quitted Florence for Rome so suddenly that he left his finest frescoes unfinished. It ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... glass is a beautiful thing to see. So is water, the morning after. That is the fault with frolic; there is always an inescapable rebound. The most violent love drops into humdrum tolerance. A pessimist is only a poor devil who has anticipated the inevitable; he has his headache at the start. Mental champagnes have their aftermaths even as the ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... greatest part is devoured by time.' Sir Arthur Champernowne was 'a good soldier and an eminent commander in the Irish wars' of the sixteenth century, and was conspicuous for his zeal and valour. Prince gives an odd little bit of gossip about an heiress of this family. He says she was 'a frolic lady,' and no unusual epithet could be more descriptive; for the lady 'married William Polglas, within three days after her father's death; and within two days after her husband Polglas's death, she was married again ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... dinners the next morning at their simple breakfast with Gervaise. Naturally people cannot frolic and work, too, and since Lantier had become a member of his household Coupeau had never lifted a tool. He knew every drinking shop for miles around and would sit and guzzle deep into the night, not always pleased to ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... reckoned upon; and he now began to set up a great shout, making all the noise he could. "Will you be quiet?" said the wolf, "you'll awaken everybody in the house." "What's that to me?" said the little man, "you have had your frolic, now I've a mind to be merry myself;" and he began again singing and shouting ...
— My Book of Favorite Fairy Tales • Edric Vredenburg
... day's work done, Night's pleasing shades his various tasks prolong, And yield new subjects to my various song. For now, the corn-house filled, the harvest home, The invited neighbors to the husking come; A frolic scene, where work and mirth and play Unite their charms to chase the hours away. Where the huge heap lies centred in the hall, The lamp suspended from the cheerful wall, Brown corn-fed nymphs, and strong hard-handed beaux, Alternate ranged, extend in ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... herself, had fallen into an old-time jig, with much gusto, for her heart was for a frolic always, when Strings, seized her arm in consternation, pointing ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... myself of it, and I therefore come to you, who are so prudent and so sage, to request, after you have heard what I have to impart, you will give me your real opinion as to what I ought to do. You recollect I told you a gentleman had followed me at Brighton, and how for mere frolic, I had led him to suppose that I was Caroline Stanhope, I certainly did not expect to see him again, but I did three days after I came up from Brighton. The girl had evidently copied the address on my trunk for him, and he followed me up, and he accosted me as I was walking home. ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... favorable to fun and flirtation. In houses where there are children, the cousins of the house and others very intimate adjourn to the school-room, where, when the party is further reinforced by three or four boys home for the holidays, a scene of fun and frolic, which it requires all the energies of the staid governess to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... duel,—a thing which, though she is fifteen, she has never been so lucky to see,—took due pains to make Lord March resent this; but he, who is very lively and agreeable, laughed her out of this charming frolic with a great deal of humour. Here we picked up Lord Granby, arrived very drunk from Jenny's Whim;(151) where, instead of going to old Strafford's(152) catacombs to make honourable love, he had dined with Lady Fanny,(153) and left her and eight other women and ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... heart, I have n't thought of that frolic this forty years. Poor, dear, giddy Sally Pomroy, and she 's a great-grandmother now!" cried the old lady, after reading one of the notes, and clearing the mist ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... impossible to sit hobnobbing with the little, jolly deacon on that bright New Year's morning and not be affected by the happiness of his mood, for he was actually bubbling over with fun, and as full of frolic as if the finger on the dial had, in truth, gone back forty-odd years, and he was "only sixteen. Only ...
— The Busted Ex-Texan and Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... tired Of living alone; So she sent for her cats From school to come home. Each rowing a wherry, Returning you see: The frolic made merry Dame ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... The white wake left by the passage, the quick tremulous whirl of the wheels, The flags of all nations, the falling of them at sunset, The scallop-edged waves in the twilight, the ladled cups, the frolic-some crests and glistening, The stretch afar growing dimmer and dimmer, the gray walls of the granite storehouses by the docks, On the river the shadowy group, the big steam-tug closely flank'd on each side by the barges, the ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... sparkling waters danced along, With a gushing, rushing, rippling song. The ramblers, when they reached the brink, Stepped down to bathe, and take a drink. They loved to frolic, dive and dash Beneath the water with a splash. They washed and smoothed each glossy feather, Then said, "let's have a swim together!" As moving gracefully, they went, They heard loud tones of sad lament. They listened, and did sharply look For cause of woe in ...
— The Ducks and Frogs, - A Tale of the Bogs. • Fanny Fire-Fly
... surprise, No ambuscade of beauty 'gainst mine eyes From brake or lurking dell or deep defile; No humors, frolic forms — this mile, that mile; No rich reserves or happy-valley hopes Beyond the bend of roads, the distant slopes. Her fancy fails, her wild is all run tame: Ever the same, ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... change added much to his misery, because it robbed him of the comfort of pitying himself. He could do nothing now but pity his mother. As he saw it now, the crime of lying to her about that Sunday's frolic loomed blacker than the passive part he had played in the tragedy of the night. He had lied to her and thought it a joke. He had taken a car worth more than five thousand dollars—more than his young hide was worth, he told himself now—and he had driven ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... are seen foraging and moving about by the time they weigh 200 to 300 grams, at an age of four to six weeks. They associate with other young of the same litter and neighboring litters, and frequently frolic together. When two to three months old and weighing 400 to 700 grams they begin to live a more solitary life and usually rest alone in forms. Fourteen young between one and six weeks of age never were recorded to have moved more ...
— Home Range and Movements of the Eastern Cottontail in Kansas • Donald W. Janes
... with delight, and introduced one after the other with great importance, and Nesta won all their hearts at once by joining them in their frolic. Her laugh was as gay as theirs, and she could run as fast as ...
— Odd • Amy Le Feuvre
... the Germans term it, Weihnacht—the Night of Dedication—is the time of family reunions, fun, and frolic. Not alone in homes, hospitals, prisons, barracks, and elsewhere is the pretty betinseled tree to be seen on Christmas, but in burying-grounds, on the resting-places of the dead, stand these fresh green trees in evidence of keeping the ...
— Yule-Tide in Many Lands • Mary P. Pringle and Clara A. Urann
... were so fair and bright, That down they sat them by the precious hoard. The youngest of them spake the firste word: "Brethren," quoth he, "*take keep* what I shall say; *heed* My wit is great, though that I bourde* and play *joke, frolic This treasure hath Fortune unto us given In mirth and jollity our life to liven; And lightly as it comes, so will we spend. Hey! Godde's precious dignity! who wend* *weened, thought Today that we should have so fair a grace? But might this gold he carried from this place ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... the stories that are told of him? Who makes them? Who are the fathers of those wondrous lies? Poor Harry did not know the reputation he was getting; and that, whilst he was riding his horse and playing his game and taking his frolic, he was passing amongst many respectable persons for being the most abandoned and profligate ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was master of the situation on the play-ground. By common consent the supremacy was conceded to him. He was first in frolic, as, years thereafter, ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... music, nor the powers Of youth and mirth and frolic cheer, Add half that sunshine to the hours, Or make life's prospect half so clear, As memory brings it to the eye From ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside |
