"Hilarity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... question of divorce here, as I have done elsewhere, in its intrinsic character; I merely note it as one of these negative reforms which have been substituted for positive economic equality. It was preached with a weird hilarity, as if the suicide of love were something not only humane but happy. But it need not be explained, and certainly it need not be denied, that the harassed poor of a diseased industrialism were indeed maintaining marriage under every disadvantage, ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton
... Tut! Tut! Just hear him! Married! Who, and when? Married, and out on business. Clever Spark! Which lie's the likeliest? Come, Max, do think." Swollen with fury, struggling with these men, Max cursed hilarity which must needs have ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... Patrick's Day brought more cheerful excitements. The Irish officers of the garrison gave their comrades a feast, having laid in during the autumn a stock of frozen provisions, that the festival of their saint might be duly honored. All was hilarity at Fort Cumberland, where it is recorded that punch to the value of twelve pounds sterling, with a corresponding supply of wine and beer, was consumed on this ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... took notice in any way of the chuckling within the shadow of the hood. He kept it up for a long time with intense enjoyment. Obviously he had preserved intact the innocence of mind which is easily amused. But when his hilarity had exhausted itself, he made a professional remark in ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... or the rivers in winter, as we used to do on the Coral Island; but then I knew from experience that a large washing-tub and a sponge do form a most pleasant substitute. The feelings of freshness, of cleanliness, of vigour, and extreme hilarity, that always followed my bathes in the sea, and even, when in England, my ablutions in the wash-tub, were so delightful that I would sooner have gone without my breakfast than without my bathe in cold water. My readers will forgive me for asking whether ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... see, you wish for a tune," cried the orphan, with much hilarity, as he put the flute to his lips and ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... language, where there are few social restraints to prevent universal intercourse, familiarizes every class of the community with the peculiarities of each, and forms an outlet for the wit and humor of the whole. This was the stimulant to mirth and hilarity, for which no people are so much distinguished as the Georgians of the middle country. At the especial period of which I now write, her humorists were innumerable. Dooly, Clayton, Prince, Longstreet, Bacon (the Ned Brace of Longstreet's Georgia Scenes), and many others of lesser ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... spangled with cob-webs, shining with tiny pricks and gems of moisture. These damp, mildewy nights that irritate us and bring that queer soft grayish fur on the backs of our books seem to mean high hilarity and big business to the spider. Along the hedge near the station there were wonderful great webs, as big as the shield of Achilles. What a surprising passion of engineering the spider must go through in the dark hours, to get his struts and cantilevers and his ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... yeep!" as I spat on it and hurled it into the ditch. With a yell and a screech a Comanche might have been proud of, that darkey "lit out." As he ran he turned his head, and seeing me dancing a war-dance to work off the extra hilarity which his fright had occasioned, he pulled up and ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride
... supported with great ingenuity. We returned to our college on a Sunday afternoon: the peasants were dancing, and every one we met appeared gay and happy. My own spirits were high, and I bounded along with feelings of unbridled joy and hilarity. ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... present on these occasions, and the hilarity of the Wallencampers, as they were jounced and joggled over the stones, in a manner which to some might have been productive of great bodily agony, concealed, with them, no undercurrent of nervous dread or pain. ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... meeting with the accused in a tone of great importance. He knows every thing and explains every thing. With a little encouragement he would, no doubt, declare that the accused had confided to him all his plans of incendiarism and murder. His answers are almost all received with great hilarity, which bring down upon the audience another and very ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... and, I imagine, he was being pricked with the points of their knives till he did get on his feet. "Jump!" they roared all together—and Manuel began to finger the strings, lifting up his voice between the gusts of savage hilarity, mingled with cries of death. He exhorted his followers to close on the traitor inch ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... at a cafe table with his companions, his blue eyes sparkling like the bright sea below, and ordered a bottle of Saumur with a pleased impatience. He was for some reason in a condition of curious hilarity. His spirits were already unnaturally high; they rose as the Saumur sank, and in half an hour his talk was a torrent of nonsense. He professed to be making out a plan of the conversation which was going to ensue between himself and the deadly Marquis. He jotted it down wildly with a pencil. ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... hard work, culminating in the task of getting all details into perfect marching order, and setting every item in readiness for the start at dawn. This done, the British predilection for "letting off steam" resulted in a night of uproarious hilarity, incomprehensible to those ignorant of the conditions which gave it birth, and unable to realise its tonic effect on men who are setting out to face danger, hardship, and ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... match. Men gasped when they came into his office in Britt Block, but men held their faces measurably under control even though their diaphragms fluttered; the need of renewing a note—paying a bonus for the privilege—helped supplicants to hold in any bubbling hilarity. Therefore, Mr. Britt continued to be assured that he was pretty generally all right, so far as the folks of Egypt ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... so they'd sail in and lick each other. Funniest thing I ever heard. I'll have to tell Old Hicks about that. But I won't do it till after dinner, or he'll burn the mutton and spoil our meal. Fighting each other!" Luke indulged in more hilarity. ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Montana • Frank Gee Patchin
... and the certain storehouses of good stories, which storehouses are the upper stories of old canons and wise dames, who remember the good old days when they could enjoy a hearty laugh without looking to see if their hilarity disturbed the sit of your ruffle, as do the young women of the present day, who wish to take their pleasure gravely—a custom which suits our Gay France as much as a water jug would the head of a queen. Since laughter is a privilege granted to man alone, and he has ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... down to Atlantic City on Sunday morning was accomplished with much joy and hilarity. The entire cast of "The Purple Slipper" acted like boys and girls let out of school, and mischievous children at that. Miss Adair enjoyed it all immensely, and at times she very timidly joined in the fun, which was centering itself upon ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... hilarity of the others and made the best of my discomfiture. In any case, the manner in which my partner had dismissed me betrayed a pair of powerful masculine fists! My shoulders, on which she had come down so vigorously ached as if they were broken, and I was still unable to conquer entirely ...
— The Gray Nun • Nataly Von Eschstruth
... and Friday evenings the Miners' Retreat was a scene of wild hilarity, for it was then that Mr. Moffat, gorgeously arrayed in all the bright hues of his imported Mexican outfit, his long silky mustaches properly curled, his melancholy eyes vast wells of mysterious sorrow, was known to ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... It is obvious that religious enthusiasm, as a personal matter, means nothing to him. He investigates the feelings of Newman or Keble as a naturalist might the contortions of an insect. The ceremonies and rites of the Church are objects of subdued hilarity to him, and in their presence, if he suppresses his laughter, it is solely to prevent his missing any detail precious to his curiosity. When the subject of Baptismal Regeneration agitates the whole pious world of England Mr. Strachey seems to say, looking down with exhilaration ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... dignified views of humanity, being, in the words of Plato, "the imitation of the most beautiful and most excellent life;" Comedy, on the other hand, by its jocose and depreciatory view of all things, calls forth the most petulant hilarity. ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... wild animals, and roaring with laughter at our appearance; even the very babies crowing with merriment on our being pointed out to them by their fond parents, much to Ned's disgust, although I joined in with their hilarity, it was really so hearty ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... through the globe gave me a visual image and, at the same time, a strong feeling of light hilarity." ...
— As Long As You Wish • John O'Keefe
... sang, he danced, he was entertaining from morning to night; and if his tone had been a little sharp when he declared that Ola was kicking up the dust, it was really because of his annoyance at being unable, by any means, to screw his brother up to the same pitch of hilarity. ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... loudly at what he considered wit. But a frowning glance from the Tzigana cut short his hilarity; and, with a mechanical movement, he drew himself up in a military manner, as if the Czar ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the hilarity remained unabated: "gangway!" He elbowed his way through the suddenly silent throng and confronted the special runner. "Now, my man, tell me—what is ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... also blank,—and two or three little fringes of wood, such as there are in every country, and through which huntsmen run their hounds, conscious that no fox will lie there. At one o'clock they had not found, and the hilarity of the really hunting men as they ate their sandwiches and lit their cigars was on the decrease. The ladies talked more than ever, Lady Gertrude's voice was heard above them all, and Lord Chiltern trotted on close behind his hounds ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... kindly, honest nature. Sometimes, when two or three of them happened to meet elsewhere, they would fall to wondering why the silent man sought their company, seeing he both contributed so little to the hilarity of the evening, and seemed to derive so little enjoyment from it. But I believe their company was necessary as well as the drink to enable him to elude his conscience and feast with his imagination. Was it that he knew they also fought misery by investments in her bonds—that ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... read in "Two Years before the Mast,"—a book which had possibly cast its glamour upon the adventure. He admired also the just and perfectly characteristic air of grief in the bereaved husband and father,—those occasional escapes from the sense of loss into a brief hilarity and forgetfulness, and those relapses into the hovering gloom, which every one has observed in this poor, crazy human nature when oppressed by sorrow, and which it would have been hard to simulate. But, above all, he exulted in that supreme stroke of the imagination given ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... appeared to me that James Ballantyne felt his genius rebuked in the presence of Constable: his manner was constrained, his smile servile, his hilarity elaborate. Not so with Johnny: the little fellow never seemed more airily frolicsome than when he capered for the amusement of the Czar.[111] I never, however, saw those two together, where, I am told, the humors of them both ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... young things were having the best of times. It was "wildly exciting," as Clem Forsythe said, to be packed in; those on the end seats huddling away from the rain as much as possible, under cover of the curtains buttoned down fast. And hilarity ran high. They sang songs; never quite finishing one, but running shrilly off to others, which were produced on several different keys maybe, according to the mood of the singers. And as every girl wanted to sing ...
— Five Little Peppers at School • Margaret Sidney
... representations. Only the principal characters, the gods, the Brahmins, and the kings, speak Sanskrit; women and the less important characters speak Prakrit, more or less refined according to their rank. Whatever may offend propriety, whatever may produce an unwholesome excitement, is excluded; for the hilarity of the audience, there is an occasional introduction on the stage of a parasite or a buffoon. The representation is usually opened by an apologue and always ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... would tangle his eyes. These excursions, which commonly lasted three months each, were not fruitless; they increased his stock of information, and supplied him with some of his most striking images. He became joyous about this period, and his hilarity broke out all at once. One night Count Tolstoy had ordered Murger to color several thousand strategic maps, and, after he had postponed the labor repeatedly, he asked several of his friends to aid him. They sat up all night. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... the bank furnishing almost no foothold for tracking the Mauni rapids were reached and finally at 5 P.M., Aug. 6th, the party emerged into Lake Waminikapo. As Cary's journal puts it, here the party "first indulged in hilarity." The hardest part of the work was over and had been done in much less time than had been expected. According to all accounts the falls should be found only thirty miles beyond the head of the lake, which is forty miles long and good rowing water, and about three ...
— Bowdoin Boys in Labrador • Jonathan Prince (Jr.) Cilley
... dancing. We were on one occasion engaged in the latter amusement en pleine midi—our Deputy Bourgeois being one of the party, and all of us in the highest possible glee, when lo! in the midst of our hilarity, the hall door flew open and the great man stood sternly before us. The hand-writing on the wall could scarcely have produced a more startling effect on the convivial party of old, than did this unexpected apparition upon us. We listened to the reprimand which followed ...
— Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory • John M'lean
... not take their pleasure solemnly after the manner of the less impressionable English. Stay-at-home as they have hitherto been, home-loving as they essentially are, the atmosphere of an inn, the aroma of a holiday, fill the Frenchman's cup of hilarity to overflowing, rendering gayer ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... us. We were waited on by four or five men servants dressed in livery." At the last official dinner the President gave, Bishop White was present, and relates that "to this dinner as many were invited as could be accommodated at the President's table.... Much hilarity prevailed; but on the removal of the cloth it was put an end to by the President—certainly without design. Having filled his glass, he addressed the company, with a smile on his countenance, saying: 'Ladies and gentlemen, this ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... professions of a writer and a soldier, Mr. De Foe, in the year 1685, joined that of a trader; he was first engaged as a hosier, in Cornhill, and afterwards as a maker of bricks and pantiles, near Tilbury Fort, in Essex; but in consequence of spending those hours in the hilarity of the tavern which he ought to have employed in the calculations of the counting-house, his commercial schemes proved unsuccessful; and in 1694 he was obliged to abscond from his creditors, not failing to attribute those misfortunes to the war and the severity ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe Of York, Mariner, Vol. 1 • Daniel Defoe
... physique, as he took up his position behind the spindley table weighted by the smeared tumblers and water-bottle. He rose with the intention of flattering the speakers and audience in the orthodox way, but the electors, among whom a spirit of overflowing hilarity was at large, took his duties out of ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... duty to the joke, but the Rev. Doctor, though he wore the paternal smile of a man that has begotten hilarity, was not perfectly propitiated, and pursued: "Nor to my apprehension is 'the man's laugh the comment on his wit' unchallengeably new: instances of cousinship germane to the phrase will recur to you. But ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... The spirit of hilarity and good fellowship, however, who suddenly discovered this error on the part of Nature, rectified it, as will be ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... this demand that a law which every one knew had proved a complete failure should be made a permanent part of the Constitution? And why the ungovernable hilarity over the demand that its "efficiency" should never be impaired? Surely the motive was something other than a desire to recover lost property. Upon the Whig party had been fastened the odium for the enactment of the law, and the act unrepealed meant the death of the party. The ...
— The Anti-Slavery Crusade - Volume 28 In The Chronicles Of America Series • Jesse Macy
... look of rebuke was entirely lost upon him, and he rattled on with an air of assumed hilarity which ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... to be accepted as a sort of municipal legacy. All Carthage assumed to own it in community, and to enjoy it with her. Her walls rang with the hilarity of her neighbors. But her laughter took on more and more the sound of icicles snapping from the ...
— Mrs. Budlong's Chrismas Presents • Rupert Hughes
... house was a little garden, full of gay flowers: so that if the garb of the young Mitchells was rather sombre, the setting was bright and cheerful, and the life in the home was healthy and wide-awake. When the hilarity became excessive the mother would put in her little check, from time to time, and the father would try to look as he ought to, but ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... had laughed with him, yet almost with her laugh, being possessed of several sets of independent perceptions, had noted a sudden flatness of tone in Alida's answering hilarity. ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... ablative, when the ablative was absolutely necessary, aroused once more the hilarity of the audience, and proved that Sister Claire's devil was just as poor a Latin scholar as the superior's, and Barre, fearing some new linguistic eccentricity on the part of the evil spirit, adjourned the meeting to ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - URBAIN GRANDIER—1634 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... should more properly designate it as mistaken piety—is another peculiar manifestation of the effects of this vicious practice. The victim is observed to become transformed, by degrees, from a romping, laughing child, full of hilarity and frolic, to a sober and very sedate little—Christian, the friends think, and they are highly gratified with the piety of the child. Little do they suspect the real cause of the solemn face; not the slightest suspicion have they of the foul orgies practiced by the little sinner. By the aid ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... all the excitement of feeling that fresh air and green fields can impart to the dwellers in crowded cities, but it is innocent and harmless. The glass is circulated, and the joke goes round; but the one is free from excess, and the other from offence; and nothing but good humour and hilarity prevail. ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... was a grim threat; for the soldiers carried matchlocks, and the whisper ran round the assemblage that these were primed and loaded, and that the soldiers had orders to fire if any group of sightseers indulged in undue hilarity. ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... was without a trace of hilarity, and included only the most dignified subjects. The ladies ate mincingly, with their little fingers sticking out straight, or curved in what they ...
— Patty's Summer Days • Carolyn Wells
... deep dejection was in strange contrast to his general hilarity. Silent and tearful, he stood upon an ice-bound rock, straining his eyes across the boundless vista of the mysterious territory. "It cannot be!" he exclaimed. "We must somehow have mistaken our bearings. True, we have encountered this barrier; but France is there beyond! Yes, France is there! Come, ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... a scene of wild hilarity, for even the teachers threw off their wonted airs of decorum, and entered into the spirit of the occasion, and to see severe Miss Mott throwing for cocoa-nuts, and fat little Fraulein hopping across the lawn, were by no means the least entertaining ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... looked much more distressed than rejoiced as he lumbered from his table to grasp the outstretched hand of a classmate. The opera-hat of this Mr. Richard Giddings was cocked at a rakish angle, his blue eye twinkled good cheer and youthful hilarity, and ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... if by vulgarity we mean coarseness of speech, rowdiness of behaviour, gossip, horseplay, and some heavy drinking, vulgarity there always was wherever there was joy, wherever there was faith in the gods. Wherever you have belief you will have hilarity, wherever you have hilarity you will have some dangers. And as creed and mythology produce this gross and vigorous life, so in its turn this gross and vigorous life will always produce creed and mythology. If we ever get the English back on to the English ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... their enfranchisement with congratulations; the prison garb was exchanged for citizen's dress, and they were taken in carriages to the police prison of Brunn, where comfortable apartments, good food, free intercourse, books, and newspapers awaited them. Imagine the vividness of their sensations, the hilarity of feeling inspired by the first sight of scenes and objects associated with their youth! It was like a new birth. To grasp the hands and hear the voices of their fellow-creatures,—to behold streets, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... merry dance beneath flaming lanterns suspended from the roof. Two hundred Christmas boxes were found packed on board, parting gifts of friends and acquaintances. For these lots were drawn, and many amusing surprises excited general hilarity. So the polka was danced on the deck, while cold reigned outside and snow whizzed through the frozen rigging. For supper there was ham and Christmas ale, just as at home in Sweden. Old well-known songs echoed through the saloon, and toasts were given of king and country, officers ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... could be felt. And then out of the downward windows of the gate, the watcher's eye always fell on the City of Destruction in the distance, and on her sister cities sitting like her daughters round about her. And that also made mirth and hilarity impossible at that gate. And then the kind of characters who came knocking all hours of the day and the night at that gate. Goodwill never saw a happy face or heard a cheerful voice from one year's end to the other. And ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... All three had equally surrendered themselves to hilarity—unsympathetic, as it was uncontrollable. Fritz had not ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... "Queen Victoria was so rich that she had a piano in her kitchen." Generally the conversational topics of the villagers seemed to be people and prices. Undoubtedly, I was told, the subjects which were most popular, "because they provoked hilarity," were family discords and sexual questions. One man with whom I spoke about the morality of the village said cautiously, "They say there ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... height, by bleeding her in both arms. Opium, the concrete juice of the poppy, was known in the earliest ages; and probably it was opium that Helen mixed with wine, and gave to the guests of Menelaus, under the expressive name of Nepenthe, to drown their cares, and encrease their hilarity. This conjecture, in a considerable degree, is supported from the fact, that Homer's Nepenthe was procured from the Egyptian Thebes, whence the tincture of opium, according to the nomenclature of the pharmacopeia about fifty years ago, and still known by this ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... Mr. Strumley allowed himself to smile. Suddenly this evidence of inward hilarity broadened into a heartily exploded greeting, as a familiar figure turned the corner and advanced directly toward him. It was another wealthy customer ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... the breakfast ended amid general hilarity, and afterward Grandma took Marjorie up to her own room, and they had a little ...
— Marjorie's Maytime • Carolyn Wells
... considerable time, feel languid and depressed when they are deprived of it for some time; they repair to the opium houses, as our dram drinkers do to the gin shops in the morning, sullen, dejected, and silent; in an hour or two, however, they are all hilarity. This shows the effects of opium to be stimulant. Tobacco intoxicates those who are not accustomed to it, and in those who are, it produces a serene and composed state of mind by its stimulating effects. Like opium and fermented liquors it exhausts the ...
— Popular Lectures on Zoonomia - Or The Laws of Animal Life, in Health and Disease • Thomas Garnett
... was a sight such as I had never before seen. It was six o'clock and dinner was being served by the flushed and flustered waiters. Probably a hundred persons sat at the tables in all stages of intoxication. Hilarity ran high. Most of them were wildly jolly and gushingly full of good will; but all seemed hungry, and the odors ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... sunshine of the breast; gaiete de coeur[Fr], bon naturel[Fr]. liveliness &c. adj.; life, alacrity, vivacity, animation, allegresse[obs3]; jocundity, joviality, jollity; levity; jocularity &c. (wit) 842. mirth, merriment, hilarity, exhilaration; laughter &c. 838; merrymaking &c. (amusement) 840; heyday, rejoicing &c. 838; marriage bell. nepenthe, Euphrosyne[obs3], sweet forgetfulness. optimism &c. (hopefulness) 858; self complacency; hedonics[obs3], hedonism. V. be cheerful &c. adj.; have the mind at ease, smile, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... time, too, that the widow stood in most need of his advice, the behaviour of Edward Silk being of a nature to cause misgivings in any mother's heart. A strange restlessness possessed him, varied with occasional outbursts of hilarity and good nature. Dark hints emanated from him at these times concerning a surprise in store for her at no distant date, hints which were at once explained away in a most unsatisfactory manner when she became too pressing ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... Only the idea of it!—to tell a young child that story! Why—what would the baby have thought I meant? Fie for shame of yourself, that's what I say!" A very small amount of indignation leavened a good deal of hilarity in this. The old lady enjoyed the joke immensely. That she, at eighty, should tell a child of seven a tale of nuptial infidelity! She took her great-grandson into her confidence about it, asking him:—"Did they say his great-grandmother told shocking stories ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... showily dressed—laughing loudly, gesticulating violently, and bragging tremendously. Near to them were collected a number of sterner spirits—men of middle age, with all the energy, and muscle, and bone of youth, but without its swaggering hilarity; men whose powers and nerves had been tried over and over again amid the stirring scenes of a voyageur's life; men whose heads were cool, and eyes sharp, and hands ready and powerful, in the mad whirl of boiling rapids, in the sudden attack of wild beast ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... the appearance of the shore so grand that I should have enjoyed the two hours it took to reach it, but for the fatigue which was too visible in the countenances of the sailors, who, instead of uttering a complaint, were, with the thoughtless hilarity peculiar to them, joking about the possibility of the captain's taking advantage of a slight westerly breeze, which was springing up, to sail without them. Yet, in spite of their good humour, I could not help growing uneasy when the shore, receding, as it were, as we advanced, seemed to promise no ...
— Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark • Mary Wollstonecraft
... began, and got no further, for she turned and ran away. Anxious to explain, he ran after her, pursued by the loud hilarity of the intruding pair. In vain, for Juliette was singularly swift of foot, and he might as well ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... beautiful as can be conceived; and if you want to see French people to the greatest advantage, you should go to a festival like this, where their manners, and innocent gayety, show a very pleasing contrast to the coarse and vulgar hilarity which the same class would exhibit in our own country—at Epsom racecourse, for instance, or Greenwich Fair. The greatest noise that I heard was that of a company of jolly villagers from a place in the neighborhood of Paris, who, as soon as the fireworks were over, formed themselves ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... aid. He raised his voice. "Now, look here, boys," he said. But he made no headway against the hilarity, which swelled higher and higher. The crowd increased. Several more men and boys were on the outskirts. An ally pressed through the crowd ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... anything," said Daisy. Randolph's skepticism excited Winterbourne to further hilarity, and he observed that Giovanelli was coming back to them. Daisy, observing it too, addressed herself again to her countryman. "Since you have mentioned it," she said, "I AM engaged." * * * Winterbourne looked at her; ...
— Daisy Miller • Henry James
... the Irishman regarded each other thoughtfully. "Pard," said Tex in a low, earnest tone, "do you reckon that there hilarity was in any ways directed toward this corner ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... said Henry, who spoke to his extraordinary guest with an air of forced hilarity. "It was my fault for not introducing ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... and so responsible also from having consecrated you to the Lord, that I must write. I have taken the liberty with you which Mr. Cecil took with me in 1801, to caution you, now you are a chief pastor and a father in God, against excessive hilarity of spirits. There is a mild gravity, with occasional tokens of delight and pleasure, becoming your sacred character, ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... and consequently welcomed with joy, many indeed believing Sir Nigel had requested the truce for the purpose. Sir Christopher, too, though pale and gaunt, and compelled to use the support of a cane in walking, was observed to look upon his youthful charge with all his former hilarity of mien, chastened by a kindly tenderness, which seemed indeed that of the father whom he personated; and Lady Seaton had donned a richer garb than was her wont, and stood encouragingly beside the bride. About twenty men-at-arms, ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... up wide awake in an attitude of attention to offers of marriage; and that, similarly, the young man, who had meanwhile lived with his eyes shut and his senses asleep, would jump up also at the striking of a clock, and, as it were, with hilarity, say, "It is high time I chose a wife," and thereupon begin to look about, among the streets and tennis-parties known to him, for that impossible paragon,—a wife to satisfy ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... to labor in the church. There is no doubt of that. There are many things they may do with impunity, nay, even hilarity. They may make strong and useful garments for the poor; they may teach in Sunday-school and attend prayer-meeting; they may finance the new parsonage, and augment the missionary funds by bazaars, birthday socials, autograph quilts and fowl suppers—where the masculine portion of the congregation ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... many a ball in progress, but never had he seen dancing as he saw it here, where grace rubbed shoulders with absolute gaucherie, and wild hilarity mingled unashamed with a curious seriousness—one had almost said iciness—of demeanor. The women, who formed the definite interest of the picture, were for the most part young, with a youth that ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... heard me. I returned to my home. Home! As if one alone can build a nest. How often as I have ascended the stairs that lead to my lonely, sumptuous rooms, have I paused to listen to the hilarity of the servants below. That morning I could not rest: I wandered from chamber to chamber, followed by my great dog, and all were alike empty and desolate. I had nearly finished a cigar when I thought I heard a pebble strike the window, and looking out I saw David's father ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... incident that the astute Panigarola returns and joins the duke's suite at Salins. He finds Charles a changed man, indulging in strange fits of hilarity, expressing the wish that a couple of thousand more of his troops had been killed, "French at heart" as they were. He refused to see Yolande, after thus forcibly obtaining the means of so doing, and sent her to the castle ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... was hilarity and cordial good-humor now. North, for one, came out resplendently; such graceful compliments, such bright flashes of wit no one had ever heard from his lips till then. It aroused the best talent of every one present. When the party broke ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... irritability endurable. Only some accidental circumstance can intensify and spread this irritability. Such circumstances intensify the drunkard s liveliness and lead to the outbreak of merriment approximating upon hilarity, then to a verbal quarrel, which need not yet be a real quarrel and may be conducted in all friendship. It seems that in most cases the irritability is excited through the fact that the drunkard's self-satisfaction ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... this royally honoured dwelling. And, in a few minutes, the door was quietly opened and the emperor came out, in an undress uniform, wearing no stars nor orders, and with an air of gay good humour, and unassuming ease. There was something in his whole appearance of hilarity, freedom, youthfulness, and total absence of all thought of state and power, that would have led me much sooner to suppose him a jocund young Lubin, or country esquire, than an emperor, warrior, or ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... discovering this fact, I ventured to say to Mr. Barnum that, owing to the general untowardness and inclemency of the night, I would introduce him in my own way, and not in the conventional one, if he did not object. "By all means," said he; "if you can awaken any warmth or hilarity on as sorrowful an outlook as this, do not spare ME, or hesitate for ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... that the Gray family, with the prospect of a graduation and a wedding within a few days of each other before it, was thrown into a ferment of excitement compared to which the hilarity of the Christmas holidays was but a mild ripple. Molly had won a scholarship at the Conservatory, and was beginning to show some talent for musical composition; Katherine was the Valedictorian of her class; Edith had every dance engaged for the ball; and though Thomas had not ...
— The Old Gray Homestead • Frances Parkinson Keyes
... adjoining staircase arrested my attention. I presently recognized it as that of Usher. In an instant afterward he rapped with a gentle touch at my door, and entered, bearing a lamp. His countenance was, as usual, cadaverously wan—but, moreover, there was a species of mad hilarity in his eyes—an evidently restrained hysteria in his whole demeanor. His air appalled me—but anything was preferable to the solitude which I had so long endured, and I even welcomed his presence ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... justice of the peace. Travelers were held up over "holy time." Attempts were made to prevent the young people from gathering in companies on Sunday evenings after the Sabbath was legally over. Too much hilarity, though innocent, was condemned. Such restrictions were extremely distasteful to a large minority in the state, and seemed to many citizens only repeated proofs of how closely the government and the Presbyterian-Congregational church were banded together. Accordingly the Republicans began to think ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... Chief heard the hilarity, and were soon out of the house, and although the boys and Sutoto tried to push the machine behind the garage, they were too late for ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Treasures of the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... his speech, the freedom of his fancy, which was, however, always controlled by a certain instinctive tact, began to affect Kate nearly as it had the others. She found herself laughing over the work she had undertaken in a pure sense of duty; she joined in the hilarity produced by Lee's affected terror of her surgical mania, and offered to undo the bandages in search of the thimble he declared she had left in the wound with a ...
— Snow-Bound at Eagle's • Bret Harte
... and plank, until by degrees the gaps were all stopped up by figures of natives, who took possession of these points of vantage to gaze to their hearts' content on the sahib, who, with signs of evident suspense on the part of these spectators, managed even to shave. Hilarity, on the other hand, was caused when I smeared myself all over with soap while bathing. Admiration followed at my putting on my last starched shirt and other mysterious garments, but the excitement grew almost to fever-heat ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... and we soon gave it up. I slipped off a rock in the lower swirl of the rapid, and went into the river over head and ears. Pete, who was with me, gave audible expression to his amusement at my discomfiture as I crawled out of the water like a half drowned rat; but I could see no occasion for his hilarity and ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... not sorry when the carriage was at the door to bear him away, before (shall it be confessed?) his tears had got the mastery over him. As it was, by the judicious help of his sisters, he passed the Rubicon in courageous style, and went through the form of breakfast with the greatest hilarity, although with several narrow escapes of suffocation from choking. The thought that he was going to be an Oxford MAN fortunately assisted him in the preservation of that tranquil dignity and careless ease which he considered to be the necessary adjuncts of the manly ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... Professor, has been full of eggs lately. [This remark excited a burst of hilarity which I did not allow to interrupt the course of my observations.] He has been reading the great book where he found the fact about the little snapping- turtles mentioned above. Some of the things he has told me have suggested ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... out what there was to laugh at in a spectacle that for two mortal hours—ever since daybreak—had been causing him the extreme of fear; but, without saying a word, he waited for the explanation of this ill-timed hilarity. ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... less than three inflated bladders, whose sides still bore the scars of numerous punctures, which, as I recalled my battle of the previous night, were situated at the very points where I had inflicted gaping wounds upon my adversaries. Hereupon the hilarity, which up to this point had been fairly held in check, swept through the crowd like a conflagration. Some gave themselves up helplessly to an unrestrained extravagance of merriment; others did their best to control themselves, holding their aching sides with ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... are suitable for farm-work; a juvenile style of dress is not suitable for an old lady. In conduct much the same rules apply. The dignity and gravity of a patriarch would not be becoming to a child; at a funeral lively, cheery sociability would not be decorous, while noisy hilarity would not be decent; sumptuous display would not be suitable for a poor person. Fit is a compendious term for whatever fits the person, time, place, occasion, etc.; as, a fit person; a fit abode; a fit place. Fitting, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... quick's you can!" So the new arrivals swoop down, spreading out their tails like fans, and dangling their feet under them, and settling in the centre of the crowd amid general hilarity. ...
— Days Off - And Other Digressions • Henry Van Dyke
... think we belie it; who say that we are needlessly alarmed; that we are hunting a friend; that we are driving one from our country without whose aid we can never check the ravages of disease, or perform our labor, or have any hilarity. It is not, say they, a poisonous foe. It is a pleasant cordial; a cheerful restorative; the first friend of the infant; the support of the enfeebled mother; a sweet luxury, given by the parent to the child; the universal token of kindness, friendship, ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... and variegated scene the spirits of the author remain almost preposterously high. If it were all hilarity and sardonic laughter, we should weary of the strain. But physical beauty of the most enchanting order is liberally provided to temper the excess of irony. It is, I think, no exaggeration to say that nowhere to the dramatic literature of the ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... Only one part of it remained unoccupied, the central list showing the open sewer with its bordering of black mud. In their holiday attire the populace declined invading this, though they stood wedging one another along its edge; their faces turned towards it, with hilarity in their looks and laughter on their lips. It was just the sort of spectacle to please them; the sentries in a row—for they had now sneaked back to their post— appearing terribly crestfallen, while those over whom they stood guard seemed, on the ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... But their hilarity was not of long endurance. Ralph was seized with a fit of coughing, and when this was over he lay back exhausted. ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... buoys up and sweeps along on the current of fancy and improvisation the chaff and dross of vulgar jests, puns, scurrilous personalities, and cheap "gags," allowing no time for chilling reflections or criticism. Jests which are singly feeble combine to induce a mood of extravagant hilarity when huddled upon us with such "impossible conveyance." This vivida vis animi can hardly be reproduced in a translation, and disappears altogether in an attempt at an abstract enumeration of the poet's inexhaustible devices for comic effect. He himself ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... five or six dozen speckled trout the party returned to the lair. That evening the chief and Joe returned, the face of each dark and threatening. There was no hilarity, and supper was eaten in silence. Then the robbers smoked for an hour, while the girls repaired torn garments. Nancy did not raise her eyes from her work; but there was in her face a new light, the ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... from the time they stopped work until after the New Year. Persons who at other times did not use strong drink thought it quite the proper thing to indulge in it rather freely during the Christmas week. There was a widespread hilarity, and a free use of guns, pistols, and gunpowder generally. The sacredness of the season seemed to have been almost wholly lost ...
— Up From Slavery: An Autobiography • Booker T. Washington
... laughter and half-hearted and coy protests from the ladies; notably one pastime known as "I'm a-pinin'," in which ingenious performance the victim was obliged to stand in the centre of a circle and publicly "pine" for a member of the opposite sex. Some hilarity was occasioned by the mischievous Miss "Georgy" Piper declaring, when it came to her turn, that she was "pinin'" for a look at the face ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... I discover that my mussulman hat-band has mysteriously disappeared, and when preparing to depart, a miscellaneous collection of females gather about me, seize the bicycle, and with much boisterous hilarity refuse to let me depart until I have given each one of them some money; their behavior is on the whole so outrageous, that I appeal to my patient of yesterday evening, in whose bosom I fancy I may perchance ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... dishes, with the tail of her eye sweeping the horizon of the summit level around her. But no Rand appeared. Presently she began to laugh quietly to herself. This occurred several times during her occupation, which was somewhat prolonged. The result of this meditative hilarity was summed up in a somewhat grave and thoughtful deduction as she walked slowly back to the cabin: "I do believe I'm the first woman that ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... door, although it had withstood the pressure from without, could not resist this additional pressure within. It collapsed and burst outwards suddenly. The great mass of water went forth with the gushing hilarity of a prisoner set free, and, with something like a roar of triumph, carried Salamander like a chip on its crest. He was launched into the bosom of the amazed James Dougall, who incontinently went with the stream, laying hold of ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... a loss to account for their excess of hilarity to-night. Though fond of drink, and meeting often in a crowd, they were few of them of a class—using his own phrase—"to give so much tongue over their liquors." The old toper and vagabond is usually a silent ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... increased by a recent circumstance, which showed that all the ancestral spirit was not dead in the breast of Britannicus. During the festivities of the Saturnalia, which were kept by the ancients with all the hilarity of the modern Christmas, Nero had been elected by lot as "governor of the feast," and, in that capacity, was entitled to issue his orders to the guests. To the others he issued trivial mandates which would not make ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... wardrobe and bath together that caused a very singular mishap. One morning, being in clumsy-fingered haste to get to a train, I summarily dropped my bonnet into the wash-bowl. This was not a very dry joke, but having mopped up the article as well as possible, I put it on and departed with usual hilarity,—still remembering what it was to have the kindest fortune in the world, and that one should not expect so rare a life as mine ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... yourself, which I can compare to nothing more seemly than the mirth which criminals are said sometimes to experience and to express previous to their execution; all these combine to give you a degree of false hilarity, I had almost said painful from its very excess. It is an agitation of the nerves, such as we may suppose madmen feel, which you are inclined to wish removed, though you are not unwilling to admit ...
— The Campaigns of the British Army at Washington and New Orleans 1814-1815 • G. R. Gleig
... accordingly proceeded with his bride and his most famous warriors to the city, where he was received and entertained in the most sumptuous manner, seated on a gorgeous throne, and felt infinitely exhilarated with the magnificence and the hilarity by which he was surrounded. Seven days were passed in this glorious banqueting and delight; but on the succeeding night, the sound of trumpets and the war-cry was heard. The intrusion of soldiers changed the face of the scene; and the king, who had just ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... of humor among the green men of Mars are widely at variance with our conceptions of incitants to merriment. The death agonies of a fellow being are, to these strange creatures provocative of the wildest hilarity, while their chief form of commonest amusement is to inflict death on their prisoners of war in ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... chanced to adhere to them. Then followed sundry small flasks of schnaps, some cans of beer, and two or three bottles of sour country wine; under the influence of which the tap-room became, ere long, a scene of extraordinary hilarity. The old soldier raved about the "guten Anglesisch soldaden," and pronounced "der Hertoch von Wellington," worthy to take rank with Blucher himself. This, of course, drew from me sundry compliments to the valour and discipline of the Prussian army, till in a few minutes we were sworn brothers. ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... mean, gentlemen?" asked the apothecary, who had become somewhat anxious, for he feared that this outburst of hilarity ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... continuing the dialogue, Barbassou stared at him for a space ere he burst into a peal of such hilarity that Sidi Tart'ri sat ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... he gasped, "and as if I had swallowed a little baby." It was many years ago since we gathered about him on that occasion, but, if my memory serves me, we had what might be called a pleasant evening. Indeed, I remember much hilarity, and sounds as of men laughing and singing far into midnight. I could not deny, if called upon to testify in court, that we had a good time on that frosty ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... and up at the starting-place there seemed to be a good deal of hilarity. The hearty ...
— Three Young Knights • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... successfully screwed a thousand pounds out of the firm of Girdlestone, it is quite certain that that gentleman's seasoned conscience did not reproach him in the least degree. On the contrary, his whole being seemed saturated and impregnated with the wildest hilarity and delight. Twice in less than a hundred yards, he was compelled to stop and lean upon his cane owing to the breathlessness which supervened upon his attempts to smother the delighted chuckles which came surging up from the inmost recesses of his capacious frame. At ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and uncertain hilarity characterized the atmosphere of the dinner table that night, Mrs. Devereaux, in her black lace and diamonds, was happily unaware of its cause in the antics of the obsequious butler, who in the intervals of his calling threw kisses from behind the guest to the yellow-gowned Marcia, attempted to ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... The hilarity of the Harmony rooters increased when Oldsmith, right halfback, crashed through left tackle for a gain of 8 yards, dragging a couple of Chester tacklers with him. Hutchings plunged straight ahead for 6 yards more, and the ball was then on Chester's ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... day in London with Dr. Priestly. The Doctor bears glowing testimony to his admirable character. Many thought Dr. Franklin heartless, since, in view of all the horrors of a civil war, his hilarity was never interrupted. Priestly, alluding to this charge against Franklin, says, that they spent the day looking over the American papers, and extracting from them passages to be published in England. "In reading ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... unusual sternness, and his face an unwonted displeasure, as he sits, occupied by his silent reflections and thoroughly unregardful of whatever occurs around him. Two ladies who are his companions in the apartment, exert all their blandishments to win him back to hilarity, but in vain. The services of his expectant musicians are not put into requisition, the delicacies on his table remain untouched, and even 'the inestimable kitten of the breed most worshipped by the ancient Egyptians' gambols unnoticed and unapplauded at his feet. All its ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... heart must break. But her sobs were tearless. And, oh, agony of agonies! unsought came the conviction, and she could not send it away—to this had sunk her lofty idea of her Tom!—that he would have had her take the money! More than once or twice, in the ill-humors that followed a forced hilarity, he had forgotten his claims to being a gentleman so far as—not exactly to reproach her with having brought him to poverty—but to remind her that, if she was poor, she was no poorer than she had been when dependent on the charity of a ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... said Tom Raymond. "The minute you dropped your eyes she was off. We might have stopped her, Will and I, but there wasn't much left of her. Oh, oh, oh! isn't she finished off beautifully, though?" and Tom gave way at last to the hilarity he had so long ...
— A Flock of Girls and Boys • Nora Perry
... guardian of the honor and dignity of the Carter family was at all disturbed by what he had heard, there was nothing in his face to indicate it. On the contrary, every wrinkle was twisted into curls and curves of hilarity. He even went so far during dinner as to correct his master in so slight a detail as to where Captain Loynes was hit in the famous duel between the colonel's ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith
... his 'injurious hilarity,' his degrading himself as 'the little bark, attendant on the huge all-bearing ark,' his political and ecclesiastical aberrations from the surer and better standpoints of his family and country. The feeling of this friend of Boswell would represent, we ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... weeping family. The young ladies ceased crying, stared wildly, and then, to my utter bewilderment, broke into hysterical laughter. For the moment I thought they had gone mad. It was only when in my perplexity I put up my hand to rub my head, that I came upon the cause of the strange hilarity. For years afterward the thought of it had the same effect upon me that the cabbage-leaf produced so unexpectedly in that ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... fact that he had also met Mr. Ranny. It was a point to his credit, for the story would have been received with hilarity, and he particularly ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... to be, till this sad week of wealth and riotous hilarity, that constantly recurring blessing of the morn and evening prayer which Roger read aloud, and Grace's psalm or chapter; and afterwards the frugal meal—too scanty, perhaps, and coarse—but still refreshing, thank the Lord, and ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... saw nothing but an old house standing in the trees, with a little faint light streaming from the door, and heard the low hilarity of drinking men. The whole band poured out to receive Van ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... result of causes stretching back through many months. A well-developed narrative sense in looking on at life is very rare. Every one, of course, is able to refer the headache of the morning after to the hilarity if the night before; and even, after some experience, to foresee the headache at the time of the hilarity: but life, to the casual eye of the average man, hides in the main the secrets of its series, and betrays only an illogical succession ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... were merry and happy as the birds were, and with an arm of each around the waist of the other, they went hopping and skipping up and down the walks, stopping now and then to waltz, to swing round and round, and then darting away again with their hop and skip, too full of hilarity, too instinct with vitality, to be for a moment still. The flush of health was on their cheeks, and the warm light of affection in their eyes. They were confiding, affectionate, loving little children, and my heart warmed towards ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... myself to be in the company of a gentleman so extremely funny that I began to laugh before he began to speak; no sooner did he remark 'the sky was dark and gloomy, the air was damp and raw,' than I was in fits of hilarity. My retirement in our sequestered corner of life made me, perhaps, even in this matter, somewhat old-fashioned, and possibly I was the latest of the generation who accepted Mr. Pickwick with an unquestioning and hysterical abandonment. Certainly few young people ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... the treasures of its unopened quarries. So incorrigible an optimist was Milton Caukins that any slight degree of success, which might attend the promotion of any one of his numerous schemes, caused an elation that amounted to hilarity. On the other hand, the deadly blight of non-fulfilment, that annually attacked his most cherished hopes for the future development of his native town, failed in any wise to depress him, or check the prodigal casting of his optimistic ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... name) being the name of the landlord, Hood opened his silent jaws and said * * * Shall I tell you what he said? It was not a very good pun, which the great punster then made. Choose your favorite pun out of "Whims and Oddities," and fancy that was the joke which he contributed to the hilarity of our ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... her captain, and rode to Mrs. Wilson, and made her captain hold her pony while she went in. Mrs. Wilson received her with a tenor scream of delight that revived Lucy's heart to hear, and then it was nothing but one broad gush of hilarity and cordiality—showed her the house, showed her the cows, showed her the parlor at last, and made her ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... and out of the dance room with escorts or without, stood at the bar for drinks, entwined their arms with those of the men. In the dance room a band was playing. A man with a tambourine added to the hilarity of the music. It was a wild spectacle, unlike anything I had ever seen. No one accosted me. I could feel a different spirit in the crowd from that I had seen on the boats or in New York. There was no talk of politics, negroes, force bills. They did not seem to know or to care about these things. ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... Her eyes were fixed upon him as he read a note just handed to him by a servant. He crushed it in his hand with a flash of anger, and made a motion as if about to tear it, but did not. He placed it in his bosom. But the hilarity ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... breath half a dozen times with dulcet sounds and a murmur of mirth between. Before and after this performance he would look at you straight from under his black brows, and his eyes seemed dazzling. I think the hilarity was revealed in them, although his cheeks rounded in ecstasy. I was a little roguish child, but he was the youngest and merriest person in the room ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... louder hiss than usual came from the interior, Jem became convulsed, and threatened another explosion of laughter, in spite of Don's severely reproachful looks; but in every case Jem's mirthful looks and his comic ways of trying to suppress his hilarity proved to be too much for Don, who was fain to join in, and they both laughed heartily ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn
... immoderate fit of laughter, her very gloom of the previous hour seeming to render it the more uncontrollable. It had not died out of her when she reached the dining-room; and even here, before the servants, her shoulders suddenly shook as the scene returned upon her; and the tears of her hilarity mingled with the remnants of ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... was choking and gasping ... all the way. And Stanfield got into such apoplectic entanglements that we were often obliged to beat him on the back with portmanteaus before we could recover him." Immediately on their return, refreshed and invigorated by this wholesome hilarity and enjoyment, he threw himself into the composition of his next book, and the first number of "Martin Chuzzlewit" appeared in ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... with Washington in his mirth, and in the midst of their hilarity the cabin door opened and Suarez, with a reproachful expression, looked in at O'Connor and waited for the ...
— A Voyage with Captain Dynamite • Charles Edward Rich
... Should I not hear these, and scores of such anecdotes, that show the simple life of the district, and yet have more hearty merriment in them than much finer stories in much finer places? Hard times and hard measures may have, quenched some of the ancient hilarity of the English peasant, and struck a silence into lungs that were wont to "crow like chanticleer;" yet I will not believe but that, in many a sweet and picturesque district, on many a brown moor-land, in many a far-off glen and dale of our wilder and more primitive ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... fancy, of course!" Sir Joseph ejaculated, and laughed very violently indeed. "'Ave you caught my meaning?" he added, as his hilarity subsided. ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... adventure. The peasants at this place were dancing to a vile scraper on the violin: I took the instrument myself, and played while they continued their hilarity. They were much pleased with my playing: but when I was tired, and desired to have done, they obliged me, first by importunities, and afterwards by threats, to play on all night. I was so fatigued, I thought I should have fainted; at length they quarrelled ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 1 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... between the cleanness and splendour of Quinsay and the gloomy dirt of European cities in the thirteenth century is very striking. China then enjoyed hackney coaches, tea gardens, and hilarity; while the delights of European capitals were processions of monks among perpetual dunghills in ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 1 • Robert Kerr
... was a Capuchin, a native of Aragon, far advanced in years, but strong and healthy. His extreme corpulency, his hilarity, the interest he took in battles and sieges, ill accorded with the ideas we form in northern countries of the melancholy reveries and the contemplative life of missionaries. Though extremely busy about a cow which ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... Taste, turns out to be a very meritorious performance. Thus all the world is pleased; the old proverb is justified, that it is an ill wind which blows nobody good; the amateur, from looking bilious and sulky, by too close an attention to virtue, begins to pick up his crumbs, and general hilarity prevails. Virtue has had her day; and henceforward, Vertu and Connoisseurship have leave to provide for themselves. Upon this principle, gentlemen, I propose to guide your studies, from Cain to ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... the hilarity of La Chouette. Having placed her basket in a hole under one of the steps, she ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... hilarity had somewhat subsided, Princess Stephanie returned to the charge, saying, "It really is a pity that your Majesty does not know how to waltz, for the Germans are wild over waltzing, and the Empress will naturally share the taste of her compatriots; ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Memoirs of Napoleon • David Widger
... sixpences of their outlay and income with a purpose and a spirit that made a miser of neither. But there was no delusion indulged about the business. Jessie never mistook the hilarity of Silas for an indication of incalculable prosperity. Silas never understood her gravity for that of discontent and envy. They never spent in any week more than they earned. They counted the cost of living, and were therefore free and rich. "She was never alone," ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... The wild, grotesque hilarity of those midnight songs can never be forgotten. Then come poem and funeral oration, interspersed with songs, and music by the band—'Old Grimes is dead,' 'Music from the Spheres,' and other equally ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... ecclesiastical problems did not exclusively occupy his mind, for the present Marchesa Peruzzi has more than one laughing reminiscence of this saintly father, who at one time challenged his pupil to hop around the large table on one foot. The hilarity of the festivity was not lessened when the Reverendo himself joined in the frolic, his robes flapping around him, as they all contributed to the merriment. The Marchesa has many a dainty note written to her by Penini's ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... night even out of his season. And friends and relatives gave themselves up to joy and merriment with happy hearts. Eat, feed, give, make merry, sing, drink—these were the sounds heard everyday in every house. And here and there arose loud uproars of hilarity mixed with clappings of hands which filled the whole city of the Daityas, who being capable of assuming any form at will, were engaged in every kind of amusement and sport and scarcely noticed the flight of time, even regarding a whole year as ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... prospered. We crossed the country without obstacle, mounted on two powerful Mecklenburgers; and before noon, were deep in Brabant. The very rashness of the undertaking seemed to restore to Don John his forgotten hilarity of old! He was like a truant schoolboy, that has cheated his pedagogue of a day's bird-nesting; and eyes more discerning than those of the stultified natives of these sluggish provinces, had been ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... until my sides ached; little thinking how the Horsley Hill would pay us off for our mistimed hilarity. ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... Beam fell upon these two, who stood plainly visible in the moonlight, while he and Mrs. Petter were in shadow, his trouble was dissipated by a mischievous hilarity. ...
— The Squirrel Inn • Frank R. Stockton |
