"Vivacious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to inspire any thing like vexation. Her face was beautiful in outline and expression. Her eyes were dark and animated, her tone and manner indicated good-breeding and refinement, though these were somewhat more vivacious than is common with ...
— The Living Link • James De Mille
... immediate familiarity that sprung up between the Norwegian and ourselves, and showed their cordial acquiescence by shaking us also by the hand. Hurrying through the villagers our new friend led us with triumphant strides and a vivacious air towards his cottage, and calling forth his wife, bade her salute us, which she did with that modest and simple demeanour common to her countrywomen. Gratified that he had so far conduced, as he imagined, to our comfort, the Norwegian would insist on our entering his house; and conducting ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... been translated in many forms. Certainly Anster's version (Sampson Low) is the most vivacious. Anna Swanwick, Sir Theodore Martin and Bayard Taylor's translations have ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... raiment, whether it be organdie dresses, sports togs or afternoon frocks. Women of the city insist on being modish, however, so they wear furs with the airiest of apparel on the warmest days, contradictory but vivacious apparitions. Even the Chinese girls ape their Western sisters and appear in brocaded ...
— Fascinating San Francisco • Fred Brandt and Andrew Y. Wood
... calm and restful. Do not fidget. Command of the tongue is a valuable accomplishment to cultivate. Many a young girl is actually fidgety, because she thinks to be a success she must be "full of life" and always "on the go." She wants to be bright and vivacious. If such is her temperament and her vivaciousness comes spontaneously it is perhaps attractive, though it is ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... being wholly of New York. There were the imposing steps, the double-doored entrances, the broad windows, the massive lines of the whole. And beyond this he came to a many-coloured little street out of Bagdad, overhung with gay balconies, vivacious with spindled towers and minarets, and small reticent windows, out of which veiled ladies would glance. And all was still with the stillness of ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... and Polly followed, but Eleanor turned around every other moment to include them in her vivacious conversation about the land-slide and the fears ...
— Polly and Eleanor • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... and caught back with combs of shell, and from beneath it two little black eyes peered out with a bird's alertness of gaze. Although age had claimed her strength, it was evident from the woman's vivacious expression that she had lost none of her interest in life and as she now sat before the silver-laden tea table there was a girlish ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... came very affectionately to inquire after the even now uncertain health of the queen-mother, and to announce to her that the preparations for the journey to Fontainebleau were complete. Seeing her laugh, his uneasiness on her account diminished, and he addressed her in a vivacious tone himself. Anne of Austria took him by the hand, and, in a voice full of playfulness, said, "Do you know, sire that I am proud ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... characteristically in his correspondence with Turgot. What Turgot loved in Condorcet was his 'simplicity of character.'[6] Turgot was almost as much less vivacious than Condorcet, as Condorcet was less vivacious than Voltaire. They belonged to quite distinct types of character, but this may be a condition of the most perfect forms of sympathy. Each gives support where the other is most ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley
... saying or doing everything they had in their power to mortify him. To Tommy, they were in the contrary extreme, and omitted no opportunity of rendering themselves agreeable to him. Nor was it long before their forward vivacious manners, accompanied with a knowledge of many of those gay scenes, which acted forcibly upon Tommy's imagination, began to render their conversation highly agreeable. They talked to him about public ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... Ganders are vivacious animals. Farmer Ady of Segary had a gander that was fifty yeares old, which the soldiers killed. He and his gander were both of the same age. (A goose is now living, anno 1757, at Hagley hall in Worcestershire, full fifty ...
— The Natural History of Wiltshire • John Aubrey
... brought ox-carts laden with gay, curious Spanish ladies from surrounding ranches, piquant eager senoritas with vivacious gestures of small hands and fluttering fans; senoras plump and placid, slower in their movements and with brooding eyes. They wore their laciest mantillas, silkiest gowns and daintiest footwear to impress the alien invader. And, beside their equipages, like outriders ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... my fling!" remarked the newcomer, drying her eyes. "Scores of admirers crowded around me, willing to ruin themselves for my amusement—" she said in a vivacious manner, as she ...
— Orphans of the Storm • Henry MacMahon
... Inimitable through the apartment until last night. Then all the improvements were concluded, and I do really believe the place to be now worth eight or nine hundred francs per month. You must picture it as the smallest place you ever saw, but as exquisitely cheerful and vivacious, clean as anything human can be, and with a moving panorama always outside, ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... my confiding friend on the subject of his satisfaction or resentment, was urged to hint at a corresponding experience in my own case; but the signs of a rapidly lowering pulse and spreading nervous depression in my previously vivacious interlocutor, warned me that I was acting on that dangerous misreading, "Do as you are done by." Recalling the true version of the golden rule, I could not wish that others should lower my spirits as I was lowering my friend's. After several times obtaining the same result from a like experiment ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... once on the "Memoires" of D'Artagnan, where they had lain since the family bought them in Queen Anne's time. There were our old friends the Musketeers, and there were many of their adventures, told at great length and breadth. But how much more vivacious they are in Dumas! M. About repeats a story of Dumas and his ways of work. He met the great man at Marseilles, where, indeed, Alexandre chanced to be "on with the new love" before being completely "off with the old." Dumas picked up M. About, literally lifted him in his embrace, ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... Felix had felt half asleep through the earlier days of his stay, and Lance seemed to be lulled into a continual doze whenever he was unoccupied, and that was almost always. It had grieved his elder brother to see this naturally vivacious being so inert and content with inaction, only strolling about a little in early morning and late evening, and languid and weary, if not actually suffering, during the heat and glare of the day. He was now, with ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to this, though the results were amusingly different. It would appear that when in early years, Mr. William Morris and Mr. Burne Jones occupied a studio together, they had a young servant maid whose manners were perennially vivacious, whose good spirits no disaster could damp, and whose pertness nothing could banish or check. Rossetti conceived the idea of frightening the girl out of her complacency, and calling one day on his friends, he affected the direst madness, strutted ominously up to ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... take a lump of sugar; and then Coretti showed me a little picture,—the photograph portrait of his father dressed as a soldier, with the medal for bravery which he had won in 1866, in the troop of Prince Umberto: he had the same face as his son, with the same vivacious eyes and ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... Fair maidens in heaven,—and O, how many of them has consumption gathered in!—fair maidens there are like the white flowers, which are sacred to peculiar times and scenes. How goodly must be their array! What a perpetual spring tide of vivacious joy and delight do they create in heaven. It is pleasant to have a ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams
... is rather an extraordinary man; short, vivacious and solid; full of generous impulses, yet very well able to look after his own interests. It was he who dared the neighbourhood, and caused his wife to invite often to their house a crippled girl that had been raped by a scoundrel ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... hurried out of one of the apartments to greet Howard. She was a vivacious brunette of medium height, intelligent looking, with good features and fine teeth. It was not a doll face, but the face of a woman who had experienced early the hard knocks of the world, yet in whom adversity had not succeeded in wholly subduing ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... was not at all like Mrs. Orban. She was certainly pretty, but the most remarkable thing about her was her expression, so vivacious was it, so keenly interested and alert. She was a great contrast to the people amongst whom she had come, for tropical heat saps a good deal of the enthusiasm of life out of people—even the children were subject ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield
... so yielded herself to the enjoyment of such silly dreams as might occur to any miss of a lively imagination and vivacious temperament, the reader is to understand that she has yet so much dignity and spirit as to cover these foolish and romantic fancies with a cloak of so delicate and so subtle a reserve that when the young gentleman called to pay his respects ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... their richness might strike his senses favourably. The other caught the expression of his eye; and perhaps he mistook its meaning, when he suffered his construction of what it said to animate him to pursue his whimsical analysis of the flags, with an air still more cheerful and vivacious than before. ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... that particular,) but he makes acquaintance with more varieties of hop and malt liquor than he previously supposed to exist. I remember a sort of foaming stuff, called hop-champagne, which is very vivacious, and appears to be a hybrid between ale and bottled cider. Another excellent tipple for warm weather is concocted by mixing brown-stout or bitter ale with ginger-beer, the foam of which stirs up the heavier liquor from its depths, forming a compound of singular vivacity ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... to notice the hearty urbanity of the Marquis, the thorough good humour and bibliomaniacal experience of the Comte d'Ourches, (who, ever and anon, would talk about an edition of Virgil's Pastorals printed by Eggesteyn) the vivacious sallies of the Chevalier Langles, the keen yet circumspect remarks of the Comte Noailles, the vigilant attention and toast-stirring propensities of M.D. de Lancon, the Elzevirian enthusiasm of M. Berard, the ... But enough ... "Claudite jam rivos ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... on my daughter,' sir!" I answered, laughing. "I hope that the vivacious Miss Henrietta Coldbrooke, and the meek Miss Anne Marston, are both ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... precaution of privacy that its members, when occasion confronted them with a public meal, would usually hide their embarrassment under horseplay or a markedly militant demeanour. But these gaily, if lightly dressed people below, albeit vivacious, hurried and uncommunicative, were dexterously mannered and certainly quite at their ease with ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... enough with my good-natured companions, Madame Perrodon, and the vivacious Mademoiselle Lafontaine. They both perceived that I was out of spirits and nervous, and at length I told them what lay ...
— Carmilla • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... to place less reliance on one another. In that vivacious army, susceptible of all impressions, and taught to reason by an advanced civilization, despondency and neglect of discipline rapidly spread, the imagination knowing no bounds in evil any more than in good. ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... was no difficulty in hearing of him. In the wine-shops and at the street corners he was being talked of in every group. Of what else could people speak who knew he had returned? How there would be sport—how there would be pleasure! Life began to wear a more vivacious aspect. And what had he not done since he had left Madrid? Such success—such adulation! The impression among his adorers was that the whole world had been at his feet. Here and there one could hear snatches of song of which his name was the refrain. It was only because ...
— The Pretty Sister Of Jose - 1889 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Her head was small, and crowned with a mass of jet black hair. My first impression on entering the large, rather dimly lighted room was unfavourable, but that vanished instantly under the charm of a manner so graceful and vivacious, that in a moment I seemed to be standing in a brilliant Parisian salon rather than in the sombre drawing-room of an English country house. Every poise of her dainty head; every gesture of those small, perfect hands; every modulated tone of the voice, whether sparkling with ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... she, "it is Mr. Triplet, good Mr. Triplet!" And this vivacious dame, putting her book down, seized both Triplet's hands and ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... Skidder got very busy erasing the tall, black-haired heroine from his latest (unproduced) play and inserting a small, roguish one with heavy, bright hair and vivacious features. ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... surintendante (controller) of the Queen's household, and soon became as great a favourite of Anne of Austria as the Constable de Luynes was of Louis the Just. The French Court was then very brilliant, and gallantry the order of the day. Marie de Rohan was naturally vivacious and dashing, and, yielding herself up to the seductions of youth and pleasure, she had lovers, and her adorers drew her into politics. Her beauty and captivating manners were such as to fascinate and enthral the least impressible who crossed her path, and their dangerous ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... did," I replied. "What a beautiful young man he was! His aquiline nose, his fair complexion, his brilliant eyes, his lithe form, his intelligent and vivacious expression,—all these ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... superfluous, their rapid intuitions anticipating the tardy conclusions of experience. Her letters are full of spirit: not always strictly grammatical; not irreproachable in orthography; but vigorous and vivacious. After a lengthened interview with her, an enthusiast exclaimed, "Now do I understand how Goethe has become the man he is!" Wieland, Merck, Buerger, Madame de Stael, Karl August, and other great people sought her acquaintance. The Duchess Amalia corresponded with her as with ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... Siccatif de Courtray, as has been intimated, went so far as to fidget while listening to Mademoiselle Carthame's vivacious description of her encounter with the handsome Marquis. Being regaled during the ensuing evening with a very similar narrative—a materially modified version of the events which had aroused in so lively a manner the passion of jealousy in the breast of Jaune d'Antimoine—the ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... She was dark, vivacious for a chaperon, easily on the correct side of thirty, and arrayed in very light mourning indeed. She had a will: for it was she who had baited J. Pinkney Hare with sociology and politics to abandon the law in New York, at which ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... have continued to talk in this dull manner, nobody knows how long; but, suspecting that Charley would find the subject rather dry, he looked sideways at that vivacious little fellow, and saw him give an involuntary yawn. Whereupon, Grandfather proceeded with the history of the chair, and related a very entertaining incident, which will be found ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... you—how could you miss last Thursday afternoon at Miss Colson's? We had a perfectly lovely time!" cried a vivacious member of ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... an attractive woman in middle life, of slim, graceful figure and vivacious manner. She had one son out in the world, and one in college, and lived in a charming house just off the Avenue, with an adored but generally invisible husband, who was engaged in business downtown. As a girl Constance Elliot had been on the stage, and had played ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... have borrowed the notion from The Spectator, No. 43, where Steele, after saying that the poet blundered because he was 'vivacious as well as stupid,' continues:—'A fool of a colder constitution would have staid to have flayed the Pict, and made buff of his skin for the ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... seen that, while the Calvinist was very distinct in his recollection of the ninth chapter of Romans, his memory was very faint as respects the exact wording of some of the verses in the Epistle of James; and though the Arminian had a most vivacious impression of all those passages which spoke of the claims of the law, he was in some doubt whether the Apostle Paul's sentiments respecting human depravity, and justification by faith alone, had not been a little exaggerated. In short, it very dearly ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... Miss Edgeworth, so celebrated as a novelist, and deserving equal celebrity as a metaphysician, for her novels abound with the most accurate and acute speculations in mental philosophy, incidentally occurring in the course of her narratives. She was small in stature, lively in disposition, vivacious in thought, a good correspondent, and an affectionate friend. The opinion has gained currency since her death, that the more intellectual portions of her writings were the products of her father's genius, whose hand appeared in nearly ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... flower. You see that blondes are not impossible; there, indeed, are two sisters who might be undistinguishable twins but that one has blue eyes and golden hair. You note the exquisite pencilling of their eyebrows, here and there some heavier and more velvety, where a less vivacious expression betrays a share of Spanish blood. As Grandissimes, you mark their tendency to exceed the medium Creole stature, an appearance heightened by the fashion of their robes. There is scarcely a rose in all their cheeks, ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... paintings, did when massed together, as they were in 1904 in the Pavilion de Marsan, display more or less well-defined extra-Flemish characteristics—a modern feeling for Nature and an intimate realism in the treatment of landscapes, a freer, more supple and more vivacious drawing of the human figure—reasonably explained by the theory of a school of painters expressing independent local feeling and genius. But even if all the paintings which the patriotic bias of French critics now attributes to French or Franco-Flemish ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... mission, and to see them come running, to have them press around, thrusting their little hands into one's own or hanging to one's coat, is a delight that compensates for much disappointment with the grown ups. In the midst of such a crowd of healthy, vivacious youngsters, clear-eyed, clean-limbed, and eager, one positively refuses to be ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... few minutes later the princess was descending the stairs, accompanied by Flavia, who was silent, a phenomenon seldom to be recorded in connection with that vivacious young lady. Giovanni went also, and his cousin, ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... prices for laying hens, we only found empty shells in the hen-coop, the rats having sucked the eggs before us. Gilbert, to save our eggs, bought a vivacious little terrier, who killed more fowls than rats; and as to the few little chickens that were hatched—despite the cold and damp—they gradually disappeared, devoured by the birds of prey, falcons and eagles, which carried them off under my eyes, even ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... you that it is a shock," Richard said, looking off toward the bare village in its mantle of trampled snow. "It— it is—a shock." And he folded the cable and returned it to his pocket. "We were married twenty-three years," he said, simply. "She was an extremely pretty girl, vivacious and happy—I imagine ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... approach and enjoy the ever renewing spectacle and feast of the world. Thus all the delightful boons life has, instead of being cooped within a little stale circle, are ceaselessly diffused and increased. Vivacious claimants advance, see what is to be seen, partake of what is furnished, are satisfied, and retire; and their places are immediately taken by hungry successors. Thus the torch of life is passed briskly, with picturesque and stimulating effect, along the manifold ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... the hour. Her fine figure, noble mien, and graceful manners fascinated all eyes and won all hearts. Her complexion was of dazzling purity, her eyes of a soft blue, and a profusion of fair hair hung gracefully upon her shoulders. Her conversation was extremely lively and vivacious, having on every occasion just the right word to say. Her dancing was said to be the perfection of grace. With such accomplishments for her station, naturally fond of society and gayety, and with a disposition to recompense herself, for her heart's disappointment, ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... to witness not a diminution but a pronounced increase of royal power, was due to the character of the French king at this critical juncture. Henry IV (1589-1610) was strong and vivacious. With his high forehead, sparkling eyes, smiling mouth, and his neatly pointed beard (Henri quatre), he was prepossessing in looks, while his affability, simplicity, and constant expression of interest in ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... of Strenburg, night arrives at a very opportune moment to-day, for Strenburg proves a nice, sociable sort of village, where the doctor can speak good English and plays the role of interpreter for me at the gasthaus. The school-ma'am, a vivacious Italian lady, in addition to French and German, can also speak a few words of English, though she persistently refers to herself as the " school -master." She boards at the same gasthaus, and all the evening long I am favored by the liveliest ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... entrance, Usher arose from a sofa on which he had been lying at full length, and greeted me with a vivacious warmth which had much in it, I at first thought, of an overdone cordiality—of the constrained effort of the ennuye; man of the world. A glance, however, at his countenance, convinced me of his perfect sincerity. We sat down; and for some moments, while ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... at last was over, the big living room became the scene of an important family council. A vivacious girl of sixteen clad in a smart white linen frock with shoes to match, took her young cousins in charge, expecting to entertain them, while their elders were engaged in a discussion that would in no way likely be of interest to young minds. She informed ...
— Pearl and Periwinkle • Anna Graetz
... evening we were visited by several friendly Arabs, short and thin, but strong and sinewy people. Their complexion was yellowish-brown, their eyes were small and vivacious. An assumed dignity barely disguised their native vivacity, and their guttural speech reminded us very strongly of the Jews. Their dress consisted of a rough cotton shirt, a white woolen cloak and a red and yellow kerchief, half-silk, which each man had fastened about ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... vivacious figure (so low that he might pass under your chin without ever catching the eye even for a moment, says Lockhart), was far more impressive when familiar than at first sight. Lord Cockburn praises his legal abilities (whether as judge or advocate) ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... Scotland, the result of its godly motherhood, the severe discipline of its social conditions, its stern toil, its warm church life, its missionary enthusiasm. Mature in mind and body, she retained the freshness of girlhood, was vivacious and sympathetic, and, while aglow with spirituality, was very human and likeable, with a heart as tender and wistful as a child's. What specially distinguished her, says one who knew her well, were her humility and the width and depth of her love. With diffidence, but in high ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... by our set," went on the vivacious old "Gainsborough," "the aristocrats whose conversation is limited to the weather and scandal, and who are so frightfully dull! Dull! My dear Ross you know how ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... through, the other thing really mastered her: the fixed idea that Jim must be saved. As it deepened, the other life that she had lived became like the sports in which we shared when children, full of vivacious memory, shining with impulse and the stir of life, but not to be repeated—days and deeds outgrown. So the light of one idea shone in her face. Yet she was intensely human too; and if her eyes had ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... at Meadow Brook?" she asked by way of starting conversation. She was very carefully vivacious, was Miss Hastings, and had a bird-like habit, meant to be very fetching, of cocking her head to one side as she spoke, and peering up to men—oh, away up—with the beady expression ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester
... too heavy to bear—are not blows such as these constantly striking people down? In this long parenthesis we are wandering ever so far away from M. le Duc and Madame la Duchesse d'Ivry, and from the vivacious Florac's statement regarding his kinsman, that ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... latter had quickly communicated itself to the daughter, and Carmen, in return, feeling that she could never be sufficiently grateful to Frau von Trautenau for her kindness, showed every possible favor to Adele. This young lady's naturally vivacious and merry disposition, which was not at all subdued by the calm seriousness which surrounded her, proved a great source of amusement to Carmen. She gladly reciprocated the warm affection lavished upon her by the petted heiress, ...
— Sister Carmen • M. Corvus
... tradition of 'Arry at Margate, to look at once startling and commonplace. But as the Cockney apparition drew nearer, Muscari was astounded to observe that the head was distinctly different from the body. It was an Italian head: fuzzy, swarthy and very vivacious, that rose abruptly out of the standing collar like cardboard and the comic pink tie. In fact it was a head he knew. He recognized it, above all the dire erection of English holiday array, as the face of an old but forgotten ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... made so light of the occurrence that a note of apology from Mr. Wharton settled the matter. Captain Nevitt felt in his cooler moments that he had been a little to blame, also hasty and unreasonable. And when, a few evenings after, he met pretty and vivacious Polly Wharton and danced with her, he was very glad the matter had ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... the people, the ugliness is more pleasant and sometimes becomes a kind of prettiness. The eyes are still too small and hardly able to open, but the faces are rounder, browner, more vivacious; and in the women there remains a certain vagueness in the features, something childlike which prevails to the very end of ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... minded baby, but twelve months of late suppers and many plays had already blighted her rose-leaf skin and sown three fine, nervous little wrinkles between her delicately arched eyebrows. She was very vivacious, but, as Gerty Bridewell had observed, it was a vivacity that was hardly justified, since possessing neither the means nor the manner exacted by the more exclusive circles, she had been compelled to compromise with a social body which made up in members what it lacked ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... Why the vivacious blond stenographer was permitted to sit in on this conversation, Locuty did not know, unless it was to tempt him, for, as she bade him good-by, she squeezed his hand significantly and said she wanted ...
— Secret Armies - The New Technique of Nazi Warfare • John L. Spivak
... the wonderful pageant of consciousness; let us teach people, as much as we can, to enjoy, and they will learn for themselves to sympathise; but let us see to it, above all, that we give these lessons in a brave, vivacious note, and build the man up in courage while ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... my great surprise," says vivacious Pennant, "I met again with Sir John Cutler, Grocer, in marble and on canvas. In the first he is represented standing, in a flowing wig, waved rather than curled, a laced cravat, and a furred gown, with the folds not ungraceful; in all, except where the dress is inimical to the sculptor's art, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... extreme, tastes as to his food. But when the ground is freshly covered with snow, all supplies of this sort would seem to be cut off, for the time at least. Yet who ever found a starved crow, or even saw one driven by hunger from any of his accustomed caution? He is ever the same alert, vivacious, harsh-tongued wanderer over the white fields as over the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... surroundings bear them out!" Dr. Holmes cried, vivacious in movement and glance as a boy. "Where else are the little door-yards that hold their glint of sunlight so tenaciously, like the still light of wine in a glass? Year after year it is ever there, ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... mother, can she expect to retain the consideration that is due to the wife? Not a man in the world but would rather see his wife tidy, neat, and elegant in her attire, easy and assured in her bearing, intelligent and vivacious in her talk, than the contrary; and if she neglect these things, ought she to be surprised if he turns to fresh woods and pastures new for the diversion and entertainment which he seeks in vain at home? This is quaky ground, but I know where I am, and I am not afraid. ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... who was ever born. Meet her in any quarter of the world, in any nation, in any garb, and for no fraction of a moment could the beholder doubt her nationality. She was French in appearance, in expression, in movement, in thought, in character, and in deed; lovable, intelligent, vivacious, easily irritated, but still more easily pleased, sharp of tongue, tender of heart, and full to overflowing with humour. In appearance Marie was small and slight, with a sallow complexion which was the bane of her life, black hair and beautiful white teeth. No one could call ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... recognize my acquaintance, deprived of his factitious identity of clothes. But I always knew a certain stately consul-general by a vast expanse of baldness upon the top of his head; and it must be owned, I think, that this form of social assembly was, with all its disadvantages, a novel and vivacious spectacle. The Venetian ladies, when they bathed, went to the Lido, or else to the bath-houses in front of the Ducal Palace, where they saturated themselves a good part of the day, and drank coffee, ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... at each extremity of the long table, the maid-servants spin as in olden times, and relate to each other a thousand marvellous legends. On the right, in a lodging of three rooms, so low that one can touch the ceiling, a man of some thirty years, brown, with vivacious eyes, the face closely shaven." This man was of course Nicholas Chopin. I need hardly say that Count Wodzinski's description is novelistically tricked out. His accuracy may be judged by the fact ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... Pepe is not above the middle height. He is a fairly developed man, but looks thin and worn, and his shoulders have the stoop of age, which scholars mostly anticipate. His face is much corrugated, but it bears the traces of vivacious thought and emotion, not the withering print of passion. Of his eyes I have already spoken; they are wise, kind, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... ventures, and was reputed to be worth something over two millions. His wife was a sister of Mrs. Winslow of Raymond. She had been an invalid for several years. The two girls, Rose and Felicia, were the only children. Rose was twenty-one years old, fair, vivacious, educated in a fashionable college, just entering society and already somewhat cynical and indifferent. A very hard young lady to please, her father said, sometimes playfully, sometimes sternly. Felicia was nineteen, with a tropical beauty somewhat like her ...
— In His Steps • Charles M. Sheldon
... contributions of the President to the Academy, appeared the vivacious portrait of Lord Rosebery's little daughter, The Lady Sybil Primrose, who appears in white with a blue sash, carrying a doll. A Portrait of Mrs. A. Hichens and Phoebe were the only other pictures this year. A frieze, Music, was shown, and at the Grosvenor Gallery A Study of a fair-haired ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... by as many graduates, were of a high order—vivacious, brilliant, and one or two of them quite exhilarating and fine. Yet there was prevalent something like the feeling of a funeral occasion—a feeling which follows the loss of a friend. But no one was dead. Even the applause at the end of any well-given number was gentle ...
— The Mystery of Monastery Farm • H. R. Naylor
... to make a drawing of her. She gave him repeated sittings in his studio at 6 Wells Street, London, and Mr. Laurence looks back with great pleasure on the long conversations that those occasions gave him with his vivacious sitter. The drawing was taken front face, with the hair uncovered, worn in the fashion then prevalent, and it was made in chalks. While it was proceeding, Mr. Laurence asked her if he might exhibit it, when finished, at the Royal Academy, and she at once consented. But when the time for sending ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... very attractive when she laughed. She had a small, piquant, vivacious face. Jimmy, as he looked at it, had an odd feeling that he had seen her before—when and where he did not know. That mass of red-gold hair seemed curiously familiar. Somewhere in the hinterland of his mind there lurked a memory, but he ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... frail body and very little physical endurance. In spite of this physical handicap he was very vivacious and gay. He was a genial and companionable man, loved by all who knew him. He was very modest, even to the point of shyness, exceptionally sincere, and quaintly humorous. He established homes in New Jersey and West Virginia, where he spent the greater part of his ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... her husband round the world, and the latter—an artist with a sense of humour—kept his hand in practice by making droll sketches of people encountered by the way, which heighten the charm of his wife's vivacious description of a Stolen Summer. Mrs. Boyd has quick eyes and an open mind, and writes with ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd
... occasion of mingled conversations, bursts of popular song at the piano, and impromptu dancing through the length of the lower floor. The benches at either side of the fire-place were invariably crowded; and, from her place on the over-mantel, Cytherea's gaze rested on the vivacious or subdued current of life. Lee Randon often gazed up at her, and tonight, sunk in a corner with scarcely room to move the hand which held a cigarette, this lifted interrogation ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... explained to Gertie, "is naturally attracted to his club, not only because he finds there all the latest news concerning his profession, but because it gives him an opportunity of coming into contact with other bright, vivacious spirits." She took Gertie's coat and hat. "Perhaps we can get him to tell us some of ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge
... cordially, nodded, signaled with her sunshade, and hurried through the little gate toward him. He paused, turned, and stood waiting for her. He had not seen her, even at a distance, for nearly a year, and her improved appearance struck him forcibly. Her color was splendid, her eyes were sparkling and vivacious. She was perfectly groomed ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... herself—a gay, frank, hearty little laugh—and she spread out her hands with the opening of her fan, as, with her usual vivacious spontaneity, ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... enough entered the lists as a newspaper man. From the sporting page he was graduated to police news, then the city desk, at last closing his career as the genius who invented the weekly Sunday thriller, in many colors of illustration and vivacious Gallic style which interpreted into heart throbs and goose-flesh the real life romances and tragedies of the preceding six days! He had conquered the paper-and-ink world—then deep within there stirred the call for ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... stroke of Nature's irony, there was graven on her face alone of all those faces, the true look of rebellion; a haughty, almost fierce, uneasy look—an untamed look. On all the other thousand faces one could see no bitterness, no fierceness, not even enthusiasm; only a half-stolid, half-vivacious patience and eagerness as of children going to ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... attention to remedies, and to medical treatment; and it is remarkable how many men of dissolute lives take up the same sort of reading, in the vain hope of repairing a course of dissolute living. As a writer, his style was at once forcible and lively; as a companion, he was wildly vivacious: madly, perilously, did he outrage decency, insult virtue, profane religion. Charles II. liked him on first acquaintance, for Rochester was a man of the most finished and fascinating manners; but at length ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... is so strong and enduring that he is the doyen of traction power in the North, when long distances and staying qualities are required. But for short, sharp dashes of twenty to thirty miles the lighter built and more vivacious Straits dog is the speedier and certainly the less wolfish. We have attempted crossbreeding our somewhat squat-legged Eskimo dogs with Kentucky wolf hounds, to combine speed with endurance. The mail-carrier from Fullerton to Winnipeg found that combination very desirable. With ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... vivacious versatility, Which many people take for want of heart. They err; 'tis merely what is called "mobility;" A thing of temperament, and not of art, Though seeming so ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... one of the dancers, a vivacious young Venus, retorted. "Nor are we to you either. So run along, little ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... which we have of the English royal life of the day. "Evelina" and "Cecilia" were old stories even in 1840; it was more than fifty years since Madame D'Arblay had taken royal service, and now her best-beloved young patroness had passed away an aged woman, only a few months later than the gifted and vivacious little keeper of the robes, whose duties, to be sure, had included reading habitually to the Queen when she was dressing, and sometimes to the Court circle. Princess Augusta's funeral went from her house of Frogmore at seven o'clock in the evening of the 2nd of October, one of the last ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... why you are here," she said, as the little American burst into vivacious explanations. "I am quite ready to do anything Julian wishes. You know—or, perhaps, you do not know—that he trained my clairvoyante faculties long ago. They are natural to me, I suppose; but you do not require to be told that even natural gifts are capable of ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... necessary for her to do at the creamery, notwithstanding all the assistance rendered by Germinie, had sent to her province for a niece of hers. She was the embodiment of the blooming youth of the country, a woman in whom there was still something of the child, active and vivacious, with black eyes full of sunlight, lips as round and red as cherries, the summer heat of her province in her complexion, the warmth of perfect health in her blood. Impulsive and ingenuous as she was, the girl ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... This vivacious and active species is as well known as the last, and nests about habitations on the outskirts of cities and in ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... I directed my steps, under the guidance of the said Miss SPINK, to a certain imposing stucco residence hard by, wherein were an assortment of female women conversing with vivacious garrulity, in a delicious atmosphere of ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... days when his mistress had occupied her place at the board, ready to do her bidding. It was the way upon Barsoom, so I endured the anguish of it, though it wrung my heart to see that silent chair where should have been my laughing and vivacious Princess keeping the great hall ringing ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... disease is more dangerous in the mother than in the father, as far as the next generation is concerned. This is a good and sufficient reason why the daughter of drunken parents, very often attractive to some men by reason of their excitable, vivacious, neurotic manner, should be carefully avoided by young men in search of wives. The man who marries the daughter of an inebriate not only endangers his own happiness, but runs the risk of entailing upon his children an inheritance ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... the Baroness d'Isola, a tiny blonde with a cloud of fluffy curls all over her forehead, vivacious and grimacing as a young monkey, called to him in ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... the ghostly and the real in this vivid and vivacious drawing. But if it is easy to see through the faint outlines of the sailor spirits, it is easier for these gallant ghosts to see through the unrealities of their descendants' fears and hesitations. The anger of the heroes is plainly ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... of modern life in London, and concerns the hearts and passions of live men and women. Being the first novel by Mrs Maud Churton Braby, author of that vivacious and daring book, "Modern Marriage and How to Bear it." As might be expected, some of the serious problems of women are dealt with in its pages. The story concerns the fortunes of brilliant and undisciplined Dolly who, on the death of ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... of lovely woman are the same everywhere: on bright Broadway, along the stately Thames, on the vivacious boulevards of gay Paris and in the silk-draped yurta of the Soyot Princess behind ...
— Beasts, Men and Gods • Ferdinand Ossendowski
... from letters written by one of Hannah's vivacious sisters. "Since I last wrote, Hannah has been introduced by Miss Reynolds to Baretti and to Edmund Burke (the 'Sublime and Beautiful' Edmund Burke!). From a large party of literary persons assembled at Sir Joshua's ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... from its proprietress. In this establishment our whole family, by no means small, found accommodations. I recall many pleasant acquaintances we made while there, especially that of Miss Molly Hamilton of Philadelphia. She was a vivacious old lady, and was accompanied by her nephew, Hamilton Beckett, in whom I found a congenial playmate. His name made a strong impression upon my memory, as I was then reading the history of Thomas a Becket, the murdered Archbishop of Canterbury. I have heard that this friend of my childhood ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... than satisfied! I am a contented woman, I am very happy! The quiet delicious calm of my happiness, is a new experience for me. Heretofore, I had supposed that happy women must be vivacious and voluble, from the very effervescence of their happiness. Now I know that it is not so. Your characteristic words of praise, for the one I have chosen as a husband, have made me very proud of him and deeply ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... two; then, having formed her decision, walked rapidly away with the resolute stride of the woman who tears herself regretfully from the artful temptations of the shop-window. As she hurried along, the Marquis de Monpavon, vivacious and superb, with a flower in his buttonhole, saluted her at a distance with the grand flourish of the hat so dear to the vanity of woman, the acme of elegance in the way of street salutations, the hat raised high ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... was a soul strung with chords that vibrated to the slightest breath of sorrow, she could be vivacious as well. She was a child of Poland, that land of sorrow, but where sorrow, for very excess of itself, sometimes reverts to joy. And so she had her brilliant joyous moments. Chopin saw her in such ...
— The Loves of Great Composers • Gustav Kobb
... is a great healer and I cherished no resentment at this late day toward the repudiator of my caresses. In fact I smiled in recollection of the incident as I walked up the gravelled path and knocked at the door. I wondered if the same vivacious, rosy-cheeked girl would come to meet me, and if I should feel in duty bound to make honorable amends. The door was opened by a tall, spare woman, who carried a lamp. The light reflected directly ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field
... and a delightful conversationalist, Sir Walter was the most practical and businesslike of authors. It was a treat to meet him, as I frequently did, walking into Town, and enjoy his vivacious humour. I recollect one morning, speaking of illustrators, mentioning the fact that Cruikshank always imagined that Dickens had taken "Oliver Twist," merely endowing it with literary merit here and there, and palming ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... and magazines, and was generally spoken of by the inner circle of the craft as "a rising man," and a man to be afraid of. Henley was full of common-sense, only moderately introspective, facile, and vivacious. He might be trusted to tincture a book with the popular element, and yet not to spoil it; for his literary sense was keen, despite his jocular leaning toward the new humour. He lacked imagination; but his descriptive powers were racy, and he knew instinctively what was likely to take, and what ...
— The Collaborators - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens
... to carry on a spirited conversation with Mr. Britt. At best, his range of topics was limited, and in his present frame of mind he was about as vivacious as a deaf mute. He was quite content to sit with the high heels of his cowboy boots—from which a faint odor of the stable emanated—hung over the rung of his chair, and to watch the Schoolmarm's hand plying the needle on that ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... and size from the book above noticed is this little neatly-printed pamphlet with flexible covers, occupying sixty-six pages, of songs, to be used by pupils in connection with their industrial labors. They are vivacious, pithy, adapted to the purpose in hand, and doubtless would cheer and brighten many an hour that might otherwise pass in the humdrum of an unrelieved toil, and at the same time impress upon the memory and heart a good deal of ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 4, April, 1889 • Various
... room had waxed warm with the old college feeling, the feeling of lads who seemed never to treat anything respectfully and yet at the same time managed to treat the real things with respect. The professor himself contributed to their wild carouse over the strange Greek viands. It was a vivacious moment common to this class in times of relaxation, ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... low to the vivacious little lady, who went on rapidly, gesticulating as she talked, and emphasizing what she said with most expressive shrugs and elevations ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... fires were ice and snow, They urged his pulse with warm vivacious blood; How made his furrowed cheeks in winter glow With ruddy health and ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... rocks, scramblingly and with many a splashing stumble. The bride met her various mishaps with a kind of silent disdain; she made no complaints, not even comments. She made me think of a sleep-walker. There was a set, far-off, cold expression upon her usually gentle and vivacious face, and once or twice it occurred to me that she went with us unwillingly. But when I remembered the humiliation that Farallone had put upon her and the blows that he had struck her, I could not well credit ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... saddle, with a leg curled round the horn; he whistled the vivacious air of Tule, Tule Pan, a gay fanfaronade of roistering notes, the Mexican words for which are, for considerations of high ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... widower and has no children, they send deputations to him to entreat him to remarry, in order that at his death the country may not fall into a war of succession or be given up to the encroachment of neighbors. Thus there is a revival, after a thousand years, of the most powerful and the most vivacious of the sentiments that support human society. This one is the more precious because it is capable of expanding. In order that the small feudal patrimony to become the great national patrimony, it now suffices ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... was not analysed, but accepted. He was of the early English who came to New York, and was a novelty of interest, with his background of Manor House and village and old family name. He was very much talked of at vivacious ladies' luncheon parties, he was very much talked to at equally vivacious afternoon teas. At dinner parties he was furtively watched a good deal, but after dinner when he sat with the men over their wine, he was not popular. He was not perhaps exactly disliked, ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... accounts of the victory gained over the veteran cavalry of the States in the very presence of the stadholder, followed by the crowning triumph of Wachtendonk, the demonstrations of joy were all the more vivacious in consequence of the previous gloom. Spinola himself followed hard upon the latest messengers, and was received with ovations. Never, since the days of Alexander Farnese, had a general at the Spanish court been more cordially caressed or hated. Had Philip the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... in charge, and made such a reputation as "Master" Gridley, that he kept that title even after he had become a college tutor and professor. As a tutor he had to deal with many of these same boys, and others like them, in the still more vivacious period of their early college life. He got rid of his police duties when he became a professor, but he still studied the pupils as carefully as he used once to watch them, and learned to read character ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... away. Had I not on a similar occasion of a secret-disclosing tide heard through seven miles of insulted and sullen air the flop of an inch or so of dynamite exploded by a heartless barbarian for the illicit destruction of vivacious fish? Had I not listened with amazement to the buzz of a steamer's propeller and the throb of her engines six miles away when unaccustomed "nigger-heads" of coral showed yellow in the sun? The calm, shallow sea conveyed the sounds with marvellous fidelity and surety. Yet this unaccountable ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... Anson Durand's fine figure emerging from that quarter of the hall where our host and hostess stood to receive their guests. His eye was roaming hither and thither and his manner was both eager and expectant. Whom was he seeking? Some one of the many bright and vivacious girls about me, for he turned almost instantly ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... were comfortably seated before a wood fire in the library. So numerous were their social engagements they rarely had time for a quiet talk together. Wilhelmine was in good spirits. De Naarboveck listened with an indulgent smile to her vivacious account of the little happenings and doings of her day. Presently a more serious subject came up for discussion. The word "marriage" was mentioned. Wilhelmine blushed and lowered her eyes, while the baron sounded her teasingly on ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... talking at once, with harassed anxious faces, and bulging portfolios under their arms. The extraordinary meeting of the Petrograd Soviet was over. I stopped Kameniev-a quick moving little man, with a wide, vivacious face set close to his shoulders. Without preface he read in rapid French a copy of ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... has been said to be the sum of manly virtue: the virtue of forbearance in childhood must always be measured by the pupil's disposition to activity: a vivacious boy must often have occasion to forbear more, in a quarter of an hour, than a dull, indolent child in a quarter ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... hazel eyes, sparkling with fun and merriment, are shaded by thick, curly lashes. She has a small, determined mouth, and the chin slightly upturned, gives a piquante expression to the intelligent face—so bright and vivacious. Her hair is of a fair-brown colour, a little lighter than her eyelashes, and is piled up high on the top of her head, breaking away into natural curls over her brow. She is clad in an exquisite ...
— Mrs. Hungerford - Notable Women Authors of the Day • Helen C. Black
... of delight at beholding his intercessor and ransomer. Drusus could hardly recognize in the supple-limbed, fair-complexioned, vivacious lad before him, the wretched creature whom Alfidius had driven through the streets. Agias's message was short, but quite long enough to make Drusus's pale cheeks flush with new life, his sunken eyes rekindle, and his languor vanish into energy. Cornelia would be ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... breach of discipline; to do so, she considered, would be an acknowledgment of her lack of authority, and indeed the girls dreaded one of her scathing reproofs far more than an imposition or the loss of a mark. Her bright, vivacious, interesting style, her fund of appropriate stories for every occasion, and her many amusing remarks and comments, made her extremely popular with her class in spite of her strictness, and the moment she took her place on ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... to-day at the Palace?" asked Captain Monredin, a vivacious Navarrois. "All the Gros Bonnets of the Grand Company have gone down this afternoon! I suppose you are going ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... another invitation from M. Louvier for next Saturday,—conversazione." This was said in Italian by an elderly lady bursting noisily into the room,—elderly, yet with a youthful expression of face, owing perhaps to a pair of very vivacious black eyes. She was dressed, after a somewhat slatternly fashion, in a wrapper of crimson merino much the worse for wear, a blue handkerchief twisted turban-like round her head, and her feet encased in list slippers. The person to whom ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... participation? Nothing of a healthy, wholesome, vigorous, vital, individual, personal kind; but some pitiful pretence of wit or humor, having for its vague or indefinite object ideal or general, abstract, impersonal, or, so to speak, invisible intangible subjects, wanting all the vivacious pungent stimulus that belongs to real individual absurdity, and the direct ridicule of it, judiciously and dexterously applied; the only efficient—I had almost said legitimate—object of a rational creature's amusement. If Dorothy depends upon you for her entertainment (otherwise than ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... weather-beaten farm-houses, rolling country, thickets of trees, little hills green and grey in the distance, decorous small fields, orchards, and, I swear, a hedge or two. Most of the towns we went through are a little too vivacious or too pert to be European. But there seemed to be real villages occasionally, and the land had ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... looked about, and have found no one more likely to give it me, than Miss Thoroughbung. Her temper is excellent, and her person pleasing." Mr. Prosper, as he said this, thought of the kiss which had been bestowed upon him. "Her wit is vivacious, and I think that upon the whole she will be desirable as a companion. She will not come to this house empty-handed; but of her pecuniary affairs you already know so much that I need, perhaps, tell you nothing farther. But though I am ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... old she is as straight as a poplar, and has never been ill. She is vivacious, and active to excess, and can only keep still when asleep, or when playing her favorite game of piquet. She has her four meals a day, eats like a vintager, and takes her wine neat. She professes an undisguised contempt for the silly women of our ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... at her, he found that she was tall and thin and vivacious, and he felt that she must have been going to hops for a very ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice
... blew his nose, making his pocket-handkerchief conceal as much of his face as possible. At that moment he caught Miss Bishop staring at him, and if there was one thing that Mr. Rickman disliked more than another it was being stared at. Particularly by Miss Bishop. Miss Bishop had red hair, a loose vivacious mouth, and her stare was ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... ridge far on our right I saw the rogues working their gun, as busy as monkeys. Our friend the pom-pom once more, and most vivacious. At the same time I heard the banging of Mausers behind me, and the air above sang for an instant. And when that flight was over—Boom...! and the long screaming whirr—sounds which tell you that someone has touched off a field-gun, and that the shell is coming your way. This one was a common shell, ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... dashed along so like a knight with the graceful and much-admired Mrs. D., whose husband was abroad serving his country; what gallant captain of dragoons (captains of infantry were looked upon as not what they might be) promenaded so imperiously with the vivacious Miss E.; and what distinguished foreigner sat all night in the corner holding a suspicious and very improper conversation with Miss F., whose skirts never were free of scandal, and who had twice got the ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... very interesting spot; although, for such beauty as its scenery possesses, it must be acknowledged that it is indebted very much more to art than to nature. Notwithstanding, however, the noise it has made in the world, and will, I suspect, should we ever be driven into a war with our vivacious continental neighbour, again make, it is but a rock some twenty miles long, and twelve broad, in the middle of the Mediterranean, with a smaller rock, Gozo, to the north of it, and was, probably, at one time of this planet's existence, ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... "We both like easy-chairs, and evenings at home, and reading about famous people, or queer people, and wonderful places. We both like a fire, and a cat; I adore a nice cat, it is such a comfortable thing. And we like to go out where people are bright and vivacious, and know something. We're fond of music, and pictures, and like a good play. Oh, there are things enough to agree upon all our lives; so what would be the use of hunting round to find a few things to ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... found for Watts a bride in the person of Miss Ellen Terry. The painter and the youthful actress were married in Kensington in February of that year, and Watts took over Little Holland House. The marriage, however, was irksome, both to the middle-aged painter and the vivacious child of sixteen, whose words, taken from her autobiography, are the best comment ...
— Watts (1817-1904) • William Loftus Hare
... century, and with which Johnson and Boswell have made us so intimately acquainted. A bottle of claret and a game of whist solaced his leisure hours; and these were not numerous: he was constantly to be found in his studio, late at night, hard at work long after his assistants had retired: a vivacious, honest, warm-hearted man, much and justly esteemed by his ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... in whom the first pleasures of life and love supplied the place of grace and wit, so arch, so animated, so vivacious, whose least movements spoke with delicious eloquence, has cast off, slowly, one by one, her natural artifices. At last you perceive the truth! You try to disbelieve it, you think yourself deceived; but no: Caroline lacks intellect, she is dull, she can neither joke nor reason, ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... deep, Captain Cuttle,' pursued Carker, with the easy and vivacious frankness of a man of the world who knew the world too well to be ruffled by any discovery of misdoing, when it did not immediately concern himself, 'but you are not quite out of soundings, either—neither you nor ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... elliptic spores, or, as De Bary terms them—conidia. Deeply seated on the mycelium, within the substance of the foster plant, other reproductive bodies, called oogonia, originate. These are spherical, more or less warted and brownish, the contents of which become differentiated into vivacious zoospores, capable, when expelled, of moving in water by the aid of vibratile cilia. A similar structure has already been indicated in Cystopus, otherwise it is rare in fungi, if the Saprolegniei be excluded. In Botrytis and in Polyactis, the ...
— Fungi: Their Nature and Uses • Mordecai Cubitt Cooke
... visit to France; his name was George Hammersley. They settled here in the village, but I do not think that they lived very happily together. Their one child, christened Diane, was born two years after the marriage. She inherited her mother's vivacious disposition and love of the world, and I always felt misgivings about her future. She spent five years at a school in Paris, and returned at the age of sixteen. Within less than two years her parents died within a week of each other, of a malignant fever that attacked our village. A friend ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... whom he did not like, he would throw away his plate, go off to sulk, or to finish his dinner all alone. One circumstance will paint him completely. Being on a journey once with his brothers, the Duc de Coislin and the Cardinal de Coislin, the party rested for the night at the house of a vivacious and very pretty bourgeoise. The Duc de Coislin was an exceedingly polite man, and bestowed amiable compliments and civilities upon their hostess, much to the disgust of the Chevalier. At parting, the Duke renewed the politeness he had displayed so abundantly the previous evening, ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... they greatly polished our rude and homely manner of vulgar poesy from what it had been before, and for that cause may justly be said to be the first reformers of our English metre and style." The dull moralizings of the rimers who followed Chaucer, the rough but vivacious doggrel of Skelton, made way in the hands of Wyatt and Surrey for delicate imitations of the songs, sonnets, and rondels of Italy and France. With the Italian conceits came an Italian refinement whether of words or of thought; and the force and versatility ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... my career as an actress was ruined forever. Even now I remember how bitterly I wept, and how deeply humiliated I felt. But the little incident, so mortifying to me, did not spoil my first appearance altogether. The Times of May 1, 1856, was kind enough to call me "vivacious and precocious," and "a worthy relative of my sister Kate," and my parents were pleased (although they would not show it too much), and Mrs. Kean gave me a pat on the back. Father and Kate were both in the cast, too, I ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... Dante, no doubt, felt all this to the core of his being. A poet by nature, with that intense, morbid, proud, uncomfortable, alternately benevolent and misanthropical temperament which occasionally accompanies the poetic faculty, he had little in common with the bustling, vivacious character of his fellow-townsmen. Fiorentino di nascita, non di costumi, as he describes himself, he had slight sympathy with Blacks or Whites, Guelphs or Ghibellines. A Guelph by birth, a Ghibelline by banishment, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... reputation, was chosen as not too far from home to send a mite seven years old, to acquire the French language and begin her education. And so to Boulogne I went, to a school in the oddly named "Rue tant perd tant paie," in the old town, kept by a rather sallow and grim, but still vivacious old Madame Faudier, with the assistance of her daughter, Mademoiselle Flore, a bouncing, blooming beauty of a discreet age, whose florid complexion, prominent black eyes, plaited and profusely pomatumed black hair, and full, commanding figure, attired for fete days, in salmon-colored ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble |
