"Hilarious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... early candle-light when we reached the house. Miss Abigail, opening the front door, started back at my hilarious appearance. I tried to smile upon her sweetly, but the smile, rippling over my swollen cheek, and dying away like a spent wave on my nose, produced an expression of which Miss Abigail declared she had never seen the like excepting on the face of a ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... to be enjoying it very much at the time,' I said, joining the conversation for the first time; and when I added that Sister Barbara had eaten four slices of bread and butter the laugh turned against Barbara, and every one was hilarious. It is evident that Sister Barbara's appetite is considered an excellent ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... lacking in good points, though he had conspicuous vices. The former kept a quiet, orderly, and eminently respectable house; the latter liked to entertain a jovial company, and enjoyed the fun too well to frown upon youthful pranks or hilarious conduct. Among many good anecdotes told of Col. Balcom, there is one very characteristic, and good enough to find ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, January 1886 - Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, January, 1886 • Various
... who speak of it to this state of cheerful awe. Away from it, in the solitude of their rooms, Mr. Beebe, and even Freddy, might again be critical. But in its presence and in the presence of each other they were sincerely hilarious. It has a strange power, for it compels not only the lips, but the very heart. The chief parallel to compare one great thing with another—is the power over us of a temple of some alien creed. Standing outside, we deride or oppose it, or at the most feel sentimental. Inside, though the saints ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... while a clerk of Tournal, the newsman, bids them "kill all, so that there shall be no witnesses left." Whereupon, at the reiterated orders of Mainvielle, Tournal, Duprat, and Jourdan, with a complications of hilarious lewdness,[2448] the massacre develops itself on the 16th of October and following days, during sixty-six hours, the victims being a couple of priests, three children, an old man of eighty, thirteen women, two of whom are pregnant, in all, sixty-one persons, with their ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... next morning by the sound of laughing voices, and Mike's hilarious barking, outside his little window. Looking through it he beheld a delightful picture. On the dew-sprinkled grass of the little clearing about the cottage were merrily romping the dog, Rose and a small child. ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... is the portentous pedantry of his archaeological vein; the stupendous air of authority with which he raps out his classical quotations and his historic allusions. He is capable sometimes of producing upon the mind the effect of a hilarious school-master cracking his learned jokes to an audience only too willing to encourage him. At other times, so bizarre and out of all human proportion are his fantasies, one receives an impression as if one of the great granite ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... bottle, the club now became hilarious and noisy; when the hammer of the president rapped them to order, and knocked down Sniggs for a song, who, after humming over the tune to himself, struck up ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... tricked out as fine as leather and brass nails, ribands and feathers, can make him. Well, out of all these materials I had contrived for myself a picture of utter and contented idleness on the one hand, and the extreme of hilarious activity on the other. I need not tell you how little such a picture answers to the reality, how little prepared I was to encounter the din, and more than Cheapside confusion of this main thoroughfare, the Toledo street. The impression which Naples actually makes, is of a city where ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... rather than go home in the early hours of the morning, he hit upon the idea of finding a sleeping-place here on the premises, to which he could slink unnoticed. 'It's little enough sleep I get in my own house,' was his remark to the reporter who won his confidence. Clubmen were hilarious over this incident, speculating as to the result of its publication on the indiscreet ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... That did you, sir, and well I knew at the time You were wrong, it being not the character Of the Earl-whom all the world allows to be A most hilarious man. Be not, my ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... too much for him. He exploded again, and, rushing from the house, ascended the hills, and filled the groves as he went with hilarious melody. ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne
... in full-blown variety; sublime, languid peers, needy placemen, hilarious foxhunters, brave tradesmen, aspiring mechanics, poor good-for-nothings; sober housewives, whose thoughts were still of their husbands' shirt-fronts and their hasty-puddings, and who never dreamt that they ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... married!' said a hilarious group of other boys near, with smiles several inches broad, and shining teeth; and so the exclamation echoed down ...
— The Romantic Adventures of a Milkmaid • Thomas Hardy
... well-deck, side-stepped a yawning hatch, dodged a swinging cargo net stuffed with trunks, and entered the second-class smoking-room. From there he elbowed his way to the second-class promenade deck. A stream of tearful and hilarious visitors who, like sheep in a chute, were being herded down the gangway, engulfed him. Unresisting, Jimmie let himself, by weight of numbers, be ...
— Somewhere in France • Richard Harding Davis
... delicious flavour. For myself, I found a certain quiet but intense delight in the first five stories, episodes in the lives of individual billionaires; but when I came to the last three, which dealt with the class as a collective whole, then I became frankly and noisily hilarious. I am not given to being tiresome in the reading-room; it is another of the unforgivable offences; but I defy any man of intelligence to read those chapters and retain even a fair remnant ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 30, 1914 • Various
... suffocation, were made the scenes of savage mirth and feasting. The Hurons were inveterate gamblers; sometimes village would challenge village; and, as the game progressed, night would be made hideous with the beating of drums and the hilarious shouts of the spectators. Feasts were frequent, since any occasion afforded an excuse for one, and all feasts were accompanied by gluttony and uproar. The Dream Feast was a maniacal performance. It was agreed upon in a solemn council of the chiefs and was made the occasion of great ...
— The Jesuit Missions: - A Chronicle of the Cross in the Wilderness • Thomas Guthrie Marquis
... that of a despairer; on the contrary, there is something of a kind of lawless faith in thus parleying with such immense and immemorial brutalities. It was not until the time in which he wrote 'Don Juan' that he really lost this inward warmth and geniality, and a sudden shout of hilarious laughter announced to the world that Lord Byron had really ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... illumination the faces of the boarders could be distinctly seen. They sat, as it were, transfigured, in a nebulous whorl or glory of yellow light. It fell on the high collars, the quite remarkably high collars of the young gentlemen, and on those gay, those positively hilarious blouses which the young ladies at Mrs. Downey's wear. Beside the water-bottles and tumblers of red glass it lay like a rosy shadow on the cloth. It gave back their green again to the aspidistras that, rising from a ruche of pink ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... that he desired a word with him in private. Wondering what could be the nature of the communication the attorney desired to make, Nicholas withdrew with him into a corner, and Nowell, who saw them retire, and could not help watching them with some curiosity, remarked that the squire's hilarious countenance fell as he listened to the attorney, while, on the contrary, the features of the latter ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... did not know he was in the stock business. Formerly every clerk knew when Bob came or went, for it was with a rush, a shout, a laugh, and a bang of doors; and on the floor of the Stock Exchange no man played so many pranks, or filled his orders with so much jolly good-nature and hilarious boisterousness. But from the day the Virginian girl crossed his path, Bob Brownley was a man who was thinking, thinking, thinking all the time. It was only with an effort that he would keep his eyes ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... a fresh outburst from the hilarious crowd. Monkey Brand's relations with his "old friend" were ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... Commodore Tod and his dauntless henchman, Archibald Cobden, Esquire, were daily getting out of its battered timbers, had already become public property. The youth of Barnegat—the very young youth, ranging from nine to twelve, and all boys—received the news at first with hilarious joy. This feeling soon gave way to unsuppressed indignation, followed by an active bitterness, when they realized in solemn conclave—the meeting was held in an open lot on Saturday morning—that the ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... decorate the members of the Order of the Faithful reached their ears. The ceremony itself, which took place in the waist, indicated that those on deck were having an exceedingly jolly time, though the nature of the performance was not understood. Then, when the Grand Protectress was elected, the hilarious mirth of the Faithful was positively sickening to the rebels. Those on deck appeared to be making fun of those below, for what else could they be laughing at, since the refusal of the rebels to do duty must be the all-absorbing topic on board? ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... five bewildered but hilarious people took the boat for Dover. The poor old Colonel might have had some cause to complain, having been first forced to fight for two factions that didn't exist, and then knocked down with an iron lantern. But he was a magnanimous old gentleman, and being much relieved that neither party had anything ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... sat together on the piazza; the night was warm, and the full-moon shone through the haze, giving the landscape a magical softness and beauty. Tom and Gem were there also, and at, Tom's feet were the three dogs, Turk, somewhat sobered, Grip, less hilarious than formerly, but Pete Trone, Esquire, as vivacious as ever, investigating every corner of the garden as though he never saw it before, and coming back after each foray with increased importance, the air of a philosopher who had discovered all the secrets ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... Either Saturday or Sunday afternoon I go off duty. Then I dive into the country and visit my dog, who is well cared for. We spend a hilarious few hours, and Lancaster Gate is never mentioned. In the servants' hall, by the way, I am credited with a delicate wife—an impression which I have taken care not to correct, for where there are gathered together eight single ladies, ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... is therefore any thing but hilarious in its tendency. A certain number of grave-faced gentlemen and a few broad-jowled ladies are visibly constrained by the force of circumstance to dine at the same table and hour, et voila tout. There is no pretence that any more sociable and neighborly motive has ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... became hilarious and I became very angry with him. He persisted that everything was all right. I had put up a fine performance and had only to continue it. The Dean would no doubt write to me at Grosvenor Square, and Willie assured me that he had his father's butler on a string, and that the butler sorted ...
— Marge Askinforit • Barry Pain
... Then they broke in the barrels of whisky at the wharf and became drunker and madder than ever. The liquor ran about them in great streams. Standing ankle deep in the gutters, they waded in it and splashed it over each other. Hilarious shouts and cries arose and they began to fight among themselves. Everywhere the thieves came from their holes and were ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... log, sir," replied the lad, sobered by the sudden appearance of the young master, who seemed in no hilarious mood. ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... designed by committee, crockish, difficult to use, and overall a disastrous, multi-billion-dollar boondoggle (one common description is "The PL/I of the 1980s"). Hackers find Ada's exception-handling and inter-process communication features particularly hilarious. Ada Lovelace (the daughter of Lord Byron who became the world's first programmer while cooperating with Charles Babbage on the design of his mechanical computing engines in the mid-1800s) would almost ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... They were hilarious all during the meal. In the first place, everything was delicious, and in the second, everybody was in the ...
— The Outdoor Girls on Pine Island - Or, A Cave and What It Contained • Laura Lee Hope
... can't expect me to like it, you know. The Satheri, at least, saved my life—" He stopped in confusion. Bork was staring at him in hilarious incredulousness that ...
— The Sky Is Falling • Lester del Rey
... hilarious was that evening when the notorious George Robert Fitzgerald forced his way into the club. As this bravo had survived numerous duels—owing to the fact, as was stated after his death, that he wore ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... failure protecting itself from abjection by the glamour of its own assertions. It happened that at the extremest point of Ann Veronica's social circle from the Widgetts was the family of the Morningside Park horse-dealer, a company of extremely dressy and hilarious young women, with one equestrian brother addicted to fancy waistcoats, cigars, and facial spots. These girls wore hats at remarkable angles and bows to startle and kill; they liked to be right on the spot every time and up to everything that was it from the very beginning and ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... exclusivism without desiring them. Once a motherly matron seemed to perceive their isolation, and made overtures to them, but then desisted, as if repelled by Christine's suspicion, or by Mela's too instant and hilarious good-fellowship, which expressed itself in hoarse laughter and in a flow of talk full of topical and syntactical freedom. From time to time she offered to bet Christine that if Mr. Fulkerson was only there they would have a good time; she wondered what ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... drainage, elevation, water-supply, wharves, quays, bridges, and worked up to libraries, museums, public and private collections of pictures, and what not. He ordered three pictures of Boston artists,—two autumnal scenes, and an interior, a negro cabin, with an hilarious sable group variously employed, called "Christmas in the Quarters." Then the questions of fisheries, maritime traffic, coast and harbor defences, light-houses, the ship-building interests, life-saving associations, and railway systems, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... proud of Don's quickness to appear surprised; so, disregarding the hilarious shout of the Danby boys, he took the bridle from the young master with an off-hand air, and led the now gentle animal quietly towards ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... and made us all talk as though we were affected in the same way. Once Mr. Stewart asked me if I did not think it a "gey duir trip." I told him he could call it gay if he wanted to, but it didn't seem very hilarious to me. Every time the stage struck a rock or a rut Mr. Stewart would "hoot," until I began to wish we would come to a hollow tree or a hole in the ground so he could go in with ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... wholesome writer upon health, "we should do something more than to simply cultivate a cheerful, hopeful spirit,—we should cultivate a spirit of mirthfulness that is not only easily pleased and smiling, but that indulges in hearty, hilarious laughter; and if this faculty is not well marked in our organization we should cultivate it, being well assured that hearty, body-shaking laughter will do ...
— Cheerfulness as a Life Power • Orison Swett Marden
... a late, informal affair, filled with hilarious gaiety. There was no mention of any church service, and Margaret found it was quite too late to suggest such a thing when breakfast was over, even if she had been sure there ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... delightful recollection comes back to the writer of these pages at the moment of inscribing as the title of this Reading the name of the preposterous old lady who is the real heroine of "Martin Chuzzlewit." It is the remembrance of Charles Dickens's hilarious enjoyment of a casual jest thrown out, upon his having incidentally mentioned—as conspicuous among the shortcomings of the first acting version of that story upon the boards of the Lyceum—the certainly surprising fact that Mrs. Gamp's part, as originally set down for Keeley, ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... Then he started toward his lodgings on foot. It was that witching hour when West End London, before it goes to sleep, foams and froths like a glass of champagne that will soon be flat and flavorless. Men and women, inclined to be hilarious, thronged the pavements under the strong lights. Birds of prey, male ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... with much anxiety was, that the old basket-maker was quite hilarious, as though he had been dosed ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... and the setting sun Is slowly rising in the west; The rapid rivers slowly run, The frog is on his downy nest. The pensive goat and sportive cow, Hilarious, leap from ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... of canvas in the balcony. The audience, ever quick to catch on to a joke, seeing each man glance upward, followed suit, spied the enormous handkerchief held high in the left hand, and realizing the situation, burst into hilarious laughter. Uselessly I pleaded; at every possible opportunity the white handkerchief appeared in some left hand, while the stage manager vainly wondered why the audience laughed in such unseemly ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... operating their set the following evening that they could hardly sit still two minutes at a time. They laughed and joked and speculated on what would be the first thing they would hear through the air, and finally Bob's guests started home in an hilarious mood. ...
— The Radio Boys' First Wireless - Or Winning the Ferberton Prize • Allen Chapman
... who ordered the second bottle. It may have been the very fat Herr von Loffka, or the permanently hilarious judge. At all events the short visit of the gentlemen came to an end at three o'clock in the morning with wild intoxication and a sale of eighteen bottles of champagne, of which ...
— The Indian Lily and Other Stories • Hermann Sudermann
... around here until that tourist went home from his vacation," sez Bill,—I reckon his name was still Bill, though for the life o' me I can't remember it plain,—"he got the whole town hilarious on account o' the joke we'd played on him. He was game all right, an' he got me a job out to his uncle's, which I've ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... at this inviting rendezvous, two or three evenings following my arrival, that the general crowd, acting upon the random proposition of one of the boys, rose as a man and wended its hilarious way ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... felt very gay when he had done some especially annoying bit of mischief, it was safe to say that he had spent a busy morning somewhere, and now was turning handsprings to give vent to his hilarious feelings. ...
— Princess Polly's Gay Winter • Amy Brooks
... in the field is the man who, so to say, has been safely wounded, that is, whose wound is serious enough to take him right down the line, with a good prospect of crossing to Blighty, but not so serious as to cause anxiety. I never met so hilarious a crowd as the first batch of wounded from the fighting of 25th September 1915. We had been prepared for a 'rush.' The growling of the guns had for days past been growing deeper and more extended. It is, as a matter of fact, impossible ...
— On the King's Service - Inward Glimpses of Men at Arms • Innes Logan
... simplicity and the old purity were there indeed; but now there was a blessed calm upon the brow, and the calmness had a certain lofty quality; and the sweetness, which was more than ever, was refined and deep. It was not the sweetness of hilarious childhood, but something that had a more distant source than childhood draws from. The colonel ate his breakfast without knowing what he was eating; however, he could not talk to Esther at that time. He waited till evening had come round again, and the ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... the lads in bed, but hilarious. They had sent for Lars and had filled him full of hot stuff and commendation. He was sitting on the edge of a chair between the two beds, his honest eyes bulging and his head rolling from the effects of unusual potations. The lads ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... are blinded for a moment. Great Heavens! It is his old law-clerk. The wily and once hilarious Jaggers. ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... skipping the conversation along, was talking now of the visit she had in prospect to her friend, Mrs. Willing, Florence Stone that was, in New York. Florrie, she informed Hen, wanted her particularly for the Lenten weeks, promising that they would spend the sober penitential season in a hilarious round of theatres, restaurants, and shops. It appeared that this promising invitation had come only that morning, and Cally described it as a direct ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... were hotels and lodging- houses, busy restaurants and busier saloons whence came the sounds of revelry by night and by day. It was a healthy revelry, by the way, like the boisterous hilarity of a robust boy. Dyea was just that—an overgrown, hilarious boy. There was nothing querulous or sickly about this child; it was strong, it was sturdy, it was rough; it romped with everybody and it grew out of its clothes overnight. Every house, every tent, in the town was crowded; ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... mostly girls of the town, who were swallowing undiluted drams of gin and peppermint. Pallid mechanics and their wives, the latter sometimes bearing young children in their arms, exhibited varying degrees of drunkenness, from the hilarious or maudlin state to that of rolling intoxication. Even children, whose size was so diminutive that they had to stand on tiptoe to elevate their heads above the counter, demanded and received their liquor, imbibing the burning fluid with eyes that sparkled delight. I was in the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... hilarious glee, Their reckless course had run, And now, it seem'd as if they thought Of all ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young
... father laugh most heartily. Sometimes they all went in a body, armed with wild stories; and occasionally, across the open fields, a row of eccentric-looking figures might be seen, struggling in the grip of hilarious paroxysms; Mr. Fullerton doubled up in the middle of a turnip-field, perhaps, with his family in contortions round him. The air of the hills seemed to run to their heads, like wine. Roulades of laughter, hearty guffaws, might have been heard ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... vocabulary in French was very small, but by using her judgment, as we laughingly called the mental process, she could guess at the meanings of the words and put the sense together much as a child puzzles out a sliced object. The result was that in a few weeks she and I spent a most hilarious hour one evening while she poured out to me the whole story, dwelling with great gusto on its humour and sparkling wit. It was not a lesson, but only one of ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller
... wholly devoid of pathos, to Canby's view of it. Neither was the careworn, harried face, unharmoniously topped by a green hat so sparklingly jaunty, not only in colour but in its shape and the angle of its perch, that it was outright hilarious, and, above the face of Packer, made the playwright think pityingly of a St. Patrick's Day party holding a ...
— Harlequin and Columbine • Booth Tarkington
... his hands in his pockets, crept softly about the room, repeating, below his breath and with inflections that for his own sake he endeavoured to make humorous: "Three hundred—three hundred." His state of mind was far from hilarious, for he felt poor and sore and disappointed; but he wanted to prove to himself that he was gallant—was made, in general and in particular, of undiscourageable stuff. The first thing he had been aware of on stepping into his front room was ...
— Sir Dominick Ferrand • Henry James
... surrounded by a concourse of these mountain beauties, who would sit and stare at us with their black eyes, call attention to our personal oddities, and laugh among themselves. Now and then their jokes at our expense would produce hilarious laughter among the men. The dress of these women consisted of baggy trousers, better described in this country as "divided skirts," a bright-colored overskirt and tunic, and a little round cloth cap encircled with a band of red and black. ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... It was a hilarious four that touched glasses in the cabin, and after Gates went above we set to work in good earnest on our arms and cartridge belts. Having seen that each piece worked perfectly we followed him up, and the sight which greeted our eyes made ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... sweethearts, in the hope that the hasty shifting of garments would deceive the gang and so protect them from the press. It did. In their parti-garb make-up the women looked more sailorly than the sailors themselves. The gang consequently pressed them, and there were hilarious scenes at the rendezvous when the fair recruits were "regulated" and the ludicrous ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... her word, and told a "jolly story," for the friends saw through the parlor windows that the circle around her grew larger and more hilarious continually. Then would follow moments of rapt and eager attention, showing that the tale gained in excitement and interest what it lost in humor. Young people, who did not like to be classed with children, one by one yielded to the temptation. There was life and enjoyment in that corner ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... in Philadelphia; the joy is unconfined and measured neither by metes nor bounds. Indeed, it has become patent to the most casual observer that the further the New Englander finds himself from New England the more hilarious is his rejoicing. Whenever we find a son of New England who has passed beyond the borders of his own section, who has stepped out into the damp cold fog of a benighted outside world and has brought up in another ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... allowed to smoke; and one widower, whose manner indicated that any occasion whatever was gay enough for him; and four or five young women, who (Meredith explained to John) were of their host's age, and had been "left over" out of the set he grew up with; and for these the modest party took on a hilarious and chipper character. "It is these girls that have let the men go by because they didn't see any good enough; they're the jolly souls!" the one widower remarked, confidentially. "They've been at it a long while, and ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... from his hilarious heights, he turned to me rather gravely, and said, "Now, I want it from your own lips; did you really dig for money on ...
— Money Island • Andrew Jackson Howell, Jr.
... energy with which, as soon as I was released, I deranged my locks and flung the feathers from my hat, amused my persecutors as much as it solaced me. I was conscious of their hilarious greetings as I strolled up the street, trying to walk in a straight masculine way, but hideously conscious of blushing cheeks and nervous gait. I so far forgot myself that, in my eagerness to display my male superiority, I jostled against a lady, and disgraced ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... Atheist puts it. As Atheist in this book says, so the Atheist who is in our hearts often says: We are like to have nothing for all our pains but a lifetime of tedious travel. Yes, wherever the blame lies, there can be no doubt about it, that what this hilarious scoffer calls the tediousness of the way is but a too common experience among many of those who, tediousness and all, will still cleave fast to it and ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... while cannon booming from the market place startled the countryside for a mile or more around. Oswestry, assembled in public meeting, put to flight its town clerk's gloomy prognostications with hilarious speeches, and outside the more dignified civic circles popular demonstration took ...
— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine
... do save eat breakfast, since Jack had looked after all necessary preparations on the previous afternoon. Steve did not seem quite so hilarious as usual, Jack could not but notice. He understood the reason why, and while he hated to think of leaving the other behind, it was really necessary, since the camp must ...
— Jack Winters' Campmates • Mark Overton
... a martyred expression as he mounted his pony. But the expression on his face was hilarious compared with the one on his pony's. You see, a pony gets to know his rider mighty well, and it is not unlikely that cow ponies in pastures and at hitching racks had often guyed Sam's pony for being ridden ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... some cases, Mr. Masson's indecorums in respect of style may possibly be accounted for as attempts at humor by one who has an imperfect notion of its ingredients. In such experiments, to judge by the effect, the pensive element of the compound enters in too large an excess over the hilarious. Whether I have hit upon the true explanation, or whether the cause lie not rather in a besetting velleity of the picturesque and vivid, I shall leave the reader to judge by an example or two. In the manuscript copy of Milton's sonnet in which ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... Greg," Jim said cheerfully, after another silence. And here, truly, was Alan Gregory, a red-faced, smooth-shaven young man, already slightly hilarious and odorous of drink, and very gallant to beautiful Mrs. Studdiford. A great silky veil must be tied over Julia's hat; sure she was warm enough? Might be late, ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... the boisterous uproar. And while the old topers were clamoring for the customary libation to laughter, Byrrhaena explained to me that the morrow was a day religiously observed by her city from its cradle up; a day on which they alone among mortals propitiated that most sacred god, Laughter, with hilarious and joyful rites. "The fact that you are here," she added, "will make it all the merrier. And I do wish that you would contribute something amusing out of your own cleverness, in honor of the god, to help us duly worship such an ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... came and with them the joyously beautiful Betty Billy. Poopendyke must have prepared them for the task in hand, for they proceeded at once to transform the bleak, dreary old castle into a sort of hilarious merry-go-round, with me in the very Tortex of it all. They succeeded in taking me "out of myself," I will say that for them. My spirits took an upward bound and, wonderful to relate, retained their altitude in spite of all I could do to lower them. I did not want ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... patriotism. Would our Revolutionary fathers have gone barefooted and bleeding over snows to defend air-tight stoves and cooking-ranges? I trow not. It was the memory of the great open kitchen-fire, with its back-log and fore-stick of cord-wood, its roaring, hilarious voice of invitation, its dancing tongues of flame, that called to them through the snows of that dreadful winter to keep up their courage, that made their hearts warm and bright with a thousand reflected memories. Our neighbors said that it was delightful to sit by our fire,—but then, for their ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... plucked handfuls of it, to smear upon each other's faces and curls; and what remained in the raiser had been plentifully dotted with bits of coal from the near-by hod. They looked so funny, and were themselves so hilarious with glee over their own mischief, that there was nothing left for their elders to do except join ...
— Divided Skates • Evelyn Raymond
... laughter, it is mad, and of mirth, what good doeth it?" Of the same nature is that to which some excitable and joyous persons are constitutionally inclined. Their perpetual merriment seems to us childish and silly. Thus Steele observes to an hilarious friend, "Sir, you never laughed in your life," and farther on he remarks, "Some men ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... put the thing in trim. He's the very chap! He knows all about minerals, and he says that this copper we've struck is the very purest article he ever saw! Hurray! Hurray! Three cheers and a tiger for the Sobrante Copper Mine!" shouted the hilarious Marty. ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... praying generally ends with playing. Similar rejoicings are again indulged in during the third moon, when the tombs are usually cleaned and repaired, and the stone figures and horses washed and scrubbed, amidst the hilarious screams of the children and ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... Chicago with whom, upon the occasion of numerous previous visits to the Western metropolis, he had spent many hilarious and expensive hours, but now he had come upon the serious business of life, and there moved within him a strong determination to win financial success without recourse to the influence of rich and ...
— The Efficiency Expert • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... hundred and fifty other lads. Outfield West and his neighbors in Hampton House occupied a far table, and there the noise was loudest. West was dressed like a young prince, and his associates were equally as splendid. As Joel observed them, West glanced across and saw him, and waved a hilarious greeting with a soup spoon. Joel nodded laughingly back, and then settled in his chair with an agreeable sensation of being among friends. This feeling grew when, toward the end of his meal, Wesley Blair, in leaving the ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... cutter. By the time that he was back the two men had returned, laden with quite as much fruit as could be conveniently stowed away aboard so small a craft as the Flora; and this also they carried off and put on board. Then came breakfast—their last meal on the island, and a happy, hilarious ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... would have been more to her taste on this brilliant December day. But she was of course bound to make use of the carriage that came for her, and so she drove off in state, while Tiny and Jinks danced wildly on the doorstep and waved their hands to her in hilarious farewells. Mrs. Colwyn was secluding herself upstairs in high indignation at Janetta's presumption—first, in going to Helmsley Court at all, and, secondly, in having invited Mrs. Maitland to come to dinner—but ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... shouted, in hilarious warning. The squabbling retinue surged after him through the gate, and one by one the lanterns disappeared under ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... mind. If a man takes too much alcohol, its first apparent effect will be to paralyze the higher or cortical center. This leaves the mid-brain without the check-rein of a reflective intellect, and the man will be senselessly hilarious or quarrelsome, jolly or dejected, pugnacious or tearful, and would be ordinarily described as "drunk." If in spite of this he keeps on drinking, the mid-brain soon becomes deadened and ceases to respond, and the cerebellum, the organ of equilibrium, also becomes paralyzed. All voluntary ...
— Psychology and Achievement • Warren Hilton
... most hilarious of these small celebrations came early in June, when they dined all four together and went to the summer's opening of "The Follies of 1914." The show rather dragged a bit at first, but when Bert Williams took the stage Bruce's laugh became so contagious that people ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... America, and that Josiah Allen's wife and Josiah should also be permitted to adorn their shores simeltaneous and to once, what a proud hour for France! Well might she put her best foot forrerd and act happy and hilarious! ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... greatly excited at the good news. We had a farewell dinner that night at the mess, which assumed a somewhat convivial character, and when I left to drive two visitors into Salisbury, the hospital dentist was making a rambling, tearful plea to a few hilarious auditors, on behalf of Ireland, while the great majority were paying no more attention to him than if he ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... Savor was hilarious. "Well, Mr. Putney," he said, when he joined the group of which Putney was the centre, "you done that in apple-pie order. I never see anything much better than the way you carried on ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... of men, Mirandy's husband among them, surrounded a little fellow about six years old, who, having been made reeling drunk, was trying to walk a crack in the floor. The little victim swayed and tottered and struggled under the hilarious urging of ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins
... cost them nothing since they were foals,—we agreed to ride round the fair and see the fun, which had now been going on for some time, while, as the eating and drinking booths had been constantly filled and emptied, a large portion of the visitors were already in a hilarious condition. We were passing a booth, when a man came out, who, taking off his long frieze coat, which he trailed along behind him on the ground, at the same time flourishing his shillelah, ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... back into the land of dreams without delay. Katherine refused to blow the rising horn at all, but let them sleep as long as they wanted to, and it was nine o'clock before the first one stirred. Breakfast was served at ten instead of at eight, and was the most hilarious meal they had eaten since coming to Ellen's Isle. Song after song was made up about Katherine's "False alarm" and her "rising qualities." Finally they rose from the table and putting their hands on each other's shoulders they formed a circle around ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey
... evenings—Sunday evenings—Honor held her joyous At Homes. Three or four favored girls and a dozen boys came to supper, a loud, hilarious meal. Takasugi, the cook, and Kada, the second boy, were given their freedom. Honor, in the quaint aprons her stepfather had picked up here and there over the world, pink, capable, with the assistance of Jimsy and ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... my master immediately after the departure of the physician. "By Jupiter," he repeated in his satisfied and hilarious manner, so revolting to me: "Your injuries are healing so fast that you can see them heal, a proof of the purity of your blood; and with pure blood there are no such things as wounds, says the son of Aesculapius. But here you ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue
... sense to see that she looked better in her neat black alpaca with its simple trimmings than in any of her beflowered and bespangled home dresses. The Clays were having friends to supper this special evening, and the mirth was fast and hilarious when Hardy and Sampson entered the room. Hardy had never seen Louisa before in her evening dress. It gave her a blooming and buxom appearance. The dress was of a flaming red color, slightly open at the neck, ...
— Good Luck • L. T. Meade
... gowns of flowing silk, the Malay sailors in blue, the black native police in scarlet, the ladies of the harems closely veiled and cloaked, the market women in a single garment of orange, or scarlet, or purple, or of all three, and the happy, hilarious Zanzibari boys in the color ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... place he thought he wuz I repelled the insinuation with scorn. It wuz one of the most hilarious and vain places of revelry at the Fair, where there wuz lots of bally girls and ...
— Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition • Marietta Holley
... knowledge that they would not have believed him if he had not brought his proof was founded on everyday facts. They would not have doubted his veracity, but the possibility of such delirious good fortune. What they would have believed would have been that he was playing a hilarious joke on them. Jokes of this kind, but not of this ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... hilarious life she is," said Linda, viciously kicking a boot to the center of the kitchen. "She can manage to go downtown for lunch and be invited out to dinner thirteen times a week, and leave us at home to eat bread and milk, bread heavily stressed. She can manage ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... very popular one. When the people gathered together on one of the great trial days, they never knew whether they were to witness a bloody slaughter or a hilarious wedding. This element of uncertainty lent an interest to the occasion which it could not otherwise have attained. Thus the masses were entertained and pleased, and the thinking part of the community could bring no charge of unfairness against this plan; ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... equal to Mr. Sage's best efforts, and the occasion was as hilarious and as pleasant as it could be. Possibly the English guests missed their wine on such an occasion. Lord Tremlyn declared that he seldom drank it at all, and Dr. Ferrolan said the same; and Sir Modava was the strictest sort of a teetotaler, having been engaged in preaching this ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... it rather hard to recover their former hilarious spirits when, fifteen minutes later the sky opened as if by magic, letting forth a burst of golden sunshine that flooded the river and danced on the water so gladly and joyously that the girls and boys shouted ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... some of her responsibility would fall on their shoulders. But they were quite determined she should have a cheerful "send-off" next morning, so they bribed the children with promises of sweets if they did not cry, and they succeeded in giving her quite a hilarious good-bye at ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... so—with the effect of her husband's and his wife's closing in, together, round them, and of their all having suddenly begun, as a party of four, to lead a life gregarious, and from that reason almost hilarious, so far as the easy sound of it went, as never before. It might have been an accident and a mere coincidence—so at least she said to herself at first; but a dozen chances that furthered the whole appearance had ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... ragged old clothes—so we drove out of the grassy yard, down the steep, stony hill that led to the main valley road, and along the hot, white turnpike, deep with the dust which had been stirred up by the teams on their way to the fair. Gran'ther sniffed the air jubilantly, and exchanged hilarious greetings with the people who constantly overtook old Peg's jogging trot. Between times he regaled me with spicy stories of the hundreds of thousands—they seemed no less numerous to me then—of county fairs he had attended in his youth. He was horrified to find that ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... done to the hilarious satisfaction of Irish and Pink, and, while Pink was dancing in them to show them off, another entered with mail from town. And, because the mail-bearer was Andy Green himself, back from a winter's journeyings, Cal, Happy ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... nothing doing at the Signal Office, so we went and had some food—cold sausage and coffee. Our hostess was buxom and hilarious. There was also a young girl about the place, Helene. She was of a middle size, serious and dark, with a mass of black lustreless hair. She could not have been more than nineteen. Her baby was put to bed immediately we arrived. ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... blithe spring sunshine, the men stood around in little groups, making hilarious plans for the day's sport. The preparations for the departure being completed, a day of untrammelled freedom lay before them; and what pastime is so dull that it is not given a zest and a relish by the thought that it is engaged in for the last time? In uproarious ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... made up its mind yet, to be good company. Now it was, that after two or three such vain attempts to stifle its convivial sentiments, it threw off all moroseness, all reserve, and burst into a stream of song so cosy and hilarious, as never maudlin nightingale yet formed ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... that when they aroused themselves to the necessity of going home, they found to their dismay that it would be impossible, in the language of Mrs. Poteet, to "git half way acrost Pullium's Summit 'fore night 'ud ketch 'em." Sis was so delighted, apparently, that she became almost hilarious; and her gaiety affected all around her except Woodward, who barely managed ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... to remain at the camp and the six girls were a very hilarious party as they set forth in their canoes and fresh bathing ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe
... greatly enhances the power of his cheerful temperament, always had the talismanic faculty of breaking up that thoughtfully sad face into mirthful waves; and I remember how Hawthorne writhed with hilarious delight over Professor L——'s account of a butcher who remarked that "Idees had got afloat in the public mind with respect to sassingers." I once told him of a young woman who brought in a manuscript, and said, as she ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... children of the neighbors in Elm Street. Lila's clear, merry laugh—a laugh that rang like an old bell through Tom Van Dorn's heart—rose above the adolescent din of the group and to the father seemed to be the dominant note in the hilarious cadenza of young life. It struck him that they were like fireflies, glowing and darting ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... come straggling in, not jubilant and hilarious, footsore rather and a little cross. The effervescence is subsiding, and the noise is pretty well knocked out of them. They have caught and dressed some three score of small brook trout, which they deposit beside the shanty, and proceed at once to move on the ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... your advice," replied his companion, with a hilarious laugh. "Give the order to get to the hostelry as soon as the driver can make it. Anything will suit me. I'm not proud, even if I have made a cool million in an hour's ...
— Mischievous Maid Faynie • Laura Jean Libbey
... Madame invited herself to tea with me. I did not object. It was better just then to be on friendly relations with everybody, if possible, even on their own terms. She was in one of her boisterous and hilarious moods, and there was ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... partner glared at him through the slits of her mask in envious astonishment. The door was dotted with numerous circles of maskers, ten or fifteen deep, all watching and applauding the capers of the hilarious couples in the middle. ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers
... mate watched this extraordinary drama through the window. The stimulant habitually consumed by the Ninemilers had induced in them a state of superlative Dutch courage, and they looked upon the whole affair as a wildly hilarious joke. ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... announced that he was going over to Rivers Brothers to buy some collars and ties. But as they left the Club another of the party joined them, to Gordon's great dismay. Dean was in a jovial mood now, happy, expectant of the evening's party, faintly hilarious. Over in Rivers' he chose a dozen neckties, selecting each one after long consultations with the other man. Did he think narrow ties were coming back? And wasn't it a shame that Rivers couldn't get any more Welsh Margotson collars? There never was ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... make it less sacred, somehow, this open laughter and chatter about it. Why she had promised Billy but a few hours ago, and here he was threatening never to ask Betts to "our house," unless she behaved herself, and kissing Anna with the hilarious assurance that his real reason for "taking" Susan was because she, Anna, wouldn't have him! No man who really loved a woman could speak like that to another on the very night of his engagement, thought Susan. A great coldness seized her heart, ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... door, amid a chorus of noisy farewells, with Helene unsteady and hilarious behind him. Warren and Shine seemed satisfied with their hospitable endeavors, as they bade good-night. The elevator brought up two belated guests, the roseate Pinkie and ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... fortunes, taffy pulling and harmless kissing games, like Clap In and Clap Out, Post Office, and I Lost My Kerchief Yesterday, made for the young folk of the mountains a most happy and (to them of yesterday) a most hilarious occasion. ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... Amid the hilarious confusion that succeeded the unanimous vote, and the subsequent adjournment of the meeting, Mr. Opp pushed his way through the ...
— Mr. Opp • Alice Hegan Rice
... among the merry company, and partake of some brandy, which, with other liquors, Robert had provided in sufficient abundance; and that being a day when man had not learned to fear the glass, the doctor found them all in a state of hilarious chat. Taking out his German pipe, he joined the group of smokers in the great chimney-corner, and entered into conversation with them, laughing and joking, and mixing up his jests with that mysterious suspicion which gave so strange a character ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... joker—hilarious, laughing, and both witty and humorous. I was going to say he was wise, but that isn't the word. Tilton lacked wit—he never bubbled except as a matter of duty. Both Mr. and Mrs. Tilton greatly enjoyed the society of Beecher, for, besides being a great ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... and refused to move another foot; and then we played our ace of trumps. Near by, twenty laborers were working. Calling all hands, they took hold of that outstretched rope, and heading straight for the new Elephant House started a new tug of war. Every "heave-ho" of that hilarious company meant a three-foot step forward for Gentle Alice,—willy-nilly. As she raged and roared, the men heaved and laughed. A yard at a time they pulled that fatal left foot, into the corral and into the apartment of Alice; and she had to ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... Schwartzmeyer, Jose Maria, and Smith. All stopped for one night; some longer, remaining drunk and profitable to Ephraim; now and then one stayed permanently, and had a fence built round him. Whoever came, and whatever befell them, Twenty Mile was chronically hilarious after sundown—a dot of riot ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... news flies with the dust in the air. Soon the story of Matthews and the bull had spread to every soul at Brannon. The Line chatted it from gallery to gallery. Clothes-Pin Row digested it in hilarious groups. At barracks, it set the men to swapping yarns. "I knowed a feller onct that was goin' past a bull-pen," declared one trooper, "and he had a pail of cherries, and I'll be darned if——" "But, say! Down home, one time," put ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... through the Park woods descended again. Helen seemed impersonal and unapproachable... He felt a desire for noise and conviviality and laughter. He decided to look in at the St. Francis bar and see if he could chance upon a hilarious friend ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... the playfulness inborn in every healthy plant can peep out but timidly and seldom. But when strife is exchanged for peace, when a plant is once safely sheltered behind a garden fence, then the struggles of the battlefield give place to the diversions of the garrison—diversions not infrequently hilarious enough. Now food abounds and superabounds; henceforth neither drought nor deluge can work their evil will; insect foes, as well as may be, are kept at bay; there is room in plenty instead of dismal overcrowding. The grateful plant repays the care bestowed upon it by ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - The Naturalist as Interpreter and Seer • Various
... twisted the little rotary bell-handle that was set in the centre of the front door, and before its harsh noise had died away, the door was flung open and the Monroe sisters were instantly made a part of the celebration. Hilarious members of the family and their even more hilarious friends welcomed them in; the bare hallway was swarming with young persons of both sexes; girls were coming down the stairs, girls going up, and the complementary boys lined the wall, or, grinning, ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... frightened; this was a mild form of croup, he said. His medicines seemed to give relief, for presently the child breathed easier and slept. Next morning an old gentleman on his way downtown wondered why the baby was not out to greet him with a hilarious shout; he felt that here—all about his heart—which told him that two dimpled hands had taken hold and held him fast. An old lady came to the door that day and asked questions hurriedly and in whispers, and went away crying to ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field
... returned to the hotel and counted their ill-gotten gains. Pepeeta was sober, David exultant and the doctor hilarious. He pulled out the ends of his long black mustache to their utmost limit, twisted them into ropes, rubbed his hands together, slapped his great thigh and ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss |
