"Harlequin" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ajar. Presently CATHERINE enters. In spite of her youth and girlish appearance, she is a good, thrifty housekeeper. She wears a simple summer gown, and carries a bunch of gay tulips and an old silver pitcher, from which she presently pours water into the Harlequin Delft vase on PETER GRIMM'S desk. She peeps into the office, retreating, with a smile on her ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm • David Belasco
... humor about something; and then, as though he feared to bring on himself one of Erle's jesting; remarks, he roused himself with an effort. "Well, Toddlekins, how's Flibbertigibbet; come and sit on my knee, and I will tell you the story of Mr. Harlequin Puss-in-boots." ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... stands with the Foreign Office, again, one still less knows. Seizures of Sapienza, and the like sudden appearances of Britain in the character of Hercules-Harlequin, waving, with big bully-voice, her huge sword-of-sharpness over field-mice, and in the air making horrid circles (horrid catherine-wheels and death-disks of metallic terror from said huge sword), to see how they will like it,—do from time to time astonish the world, in a not pleasant ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... takes life so strangely; at times tremendously seriously; at others as if it meant nothing at all. Now he plays the solemn and mysterious, and again he assumes the role of the irresponsible harlequin. I don't think anyone ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... a "lord baron of Strabane" needed almost the alacrity in turning his coat of a harlequin or a modern politician! It is a comfort to know that at last, on the 16th of June 1655, he found rest, dying at Ballyfathen, "a Roman Catholic and a papist recusant." As we came back into the gardens and grounds, Lord Ernest showed me, imbedded in the earth, a huge anchor presented ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... the stairs wabbled. The bookcase door lacked a hinge. Three out of four chairs were rickety. The bath-tub, which had been the chemical laboratory for some former student, was stained an unhealthy color. If ever it shall appear that Harlequin lodged upon the street, here was the very tub where he washed his clothes. Without caution the window of the bedroom fell out into the back yard. But to atone for these defects, up through the scuttle ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... some such thing; but the world's so censorious. There's old Doctor Hoskins of Bath, who attended poor dear Drum in the quinsy; and poor dear old Fred Hoskins, the gouty General: I remember him as thin as a lath in the year '84, and as active as a harlequin, and in love with me—oh, how he ...
— The History of Samuel Titmarsh - and the Great Hoggarty Diamond • William Makepeace Thackeray
... them change into something; and I never turned a corner suddenly without looking out for the clown and pantaloon, who, I had no doubt, were hiding in a doorway or behind some pillar close at hand. As to Harlequin and Columbine, I discovered immediately that they lodged (they are always looking after lodgings in a pantomime) at a very small clockmaker's one story high, near the hotel; which, in addition to various symbols and devices, almost covering the whole front, had a great dial hanging out ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... haying time. Not only would such an apparition and overture throw the best-trained orchestra of Old World birds into amazement or confusion, but astonish all the human listeners at an English concert. With what a wonderment would one of these blooming, country milkmaids look at the droll harlequin, and listen to those familiar words of his, set ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... to make comparisons,—like Harlequin! No sooner out of one scrape, than we get into another; and all for the sake of those Big Blockheads (L'AMOUR DE CES GRANDS COLOSSES). What the Kurfurst of Koln has done, in his character of Bishop of Osnabruck,"—a deed not known to this Editor, but clearly in the way of ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... to Tait's discreet, usual habit, had been left open. He vanished through it with harlequin-like agility as a terrible, white-faced black figure seemed to leap ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... eggs and chopped sausages, or a slice of agnello, and enjoy the delicious air that breathes from the mountains. The old cardinals descend from their gilded carriages, and, accompanied by one of their household and followed by their ever-present lackeys in harlequin liveries, totter along on foot with swollen ankles, lifting their broad red hats to the passers-by who salute them, and pausing constantly in their discourse to enforce a phrase or take a pinch of snuff. Files of scholars from the Propaganda stream ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... morality or good conduct, I can say, like Harlequin, that 'tis just as it is with you; and the Turkish ladies don't commit one sin the less for not being Christians. Now I am a little acquainted with their ways, I cannot forbear admiring either the exemplary ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... (irresolution) 605; fluctuation, vicissitude; alternation &c (oscillation) 314. restlessness &c adj.. fidgets, disquiet; disquietude, inquietude; unrest; agitation &c 315. moon, Proteus, chameleon, quicksilver, shifting sands, weathercock, harlequin, Cynthia of the minute, April showers^; wheel of Fortune; transientness &c 111 [Obs.]. V. fluctuate, vary, waver, flounder, flicker, flitter, flit, flutter, shift, shuffle, shake, totter, tremble, vacillate, wamble^, turn and ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... cruel! Who'd be Prime Minister? to starve and toil, And fret and fume in an eternal coil. But yet, I would not, for a hundred dollar Have missed the sight of her rampagious choler; I was rejoiced my turn had come to grin, Just as folks do at me when Harlequin Before my nose runs off with Columbine, ...
— Turandot: The Chinese Sphinx • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... was given in the morning, and in the evening came out the Gazette, and said the Hessians are to go away. This doubling style in the ministry is grown so characteristic, that the French are actually playing a farce, in which harlequin enters, as an English courier, with two bundles of despatches fastened to his belly and his back: they ask him what the one is? "Eh! Ces sont mes ordres." and what the other? "Mais elles ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... it to the credit of this particular damsel that she grudged no work which could beautify the simple background. Poor Betty! For two whole gloomy afternoons did she work at a spray of roses on a linen work-bag, and on the third day a feeble gleam of sunlight showed itself, and lo, the roses were a harlequin study in ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... Planets, that one may as plainly fee what a Clock it is by one of the Dials in the Moon, as if it were no farther off than Windsor-Castle; and had he liv'd to finish the Speaking-trumpet which he had contriv'd to convey Sound thither, Harlequin's Mock-Trumpet had been a Fool to it; and it had no doubt been an admirable Experiment, to have given us a general Advantage from all their acquir'd Knowledge in those Regions, where no doubt several useful Discoveries are ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... blue and white tiles with which the fireplaces were decorated; wherein sundry passages of Scripture were piously portrayed. Tobit and his dog figured to great advantage; Haman swung conspicuously on his gibbet; and Jonah appeared most manfully leaping from the whale's mouth, like Harlequin through a barrel ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... prescribed abominations not to be named. Barbarism, as bad as that of Congo or Ashantee. Traces of this barbarism linger even in the greatly improved medical science of our century. So while the solemn farce of over-drugging is going on, the world over, the harlequin pseudo-science jumps on to the stage, whip in hand, with half-a-dozen somersets, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... Columbine to Pierrot. Pierrot only stared in the sky and laughed inanely. "If you persist in slighting me like this," she whispered in his ear, in a whisper which was like a hiss, "I will abandon you for ever. I will give my heart to Harlequin, and you shall never see me again." But Pierrot continued to stare at the sky, and laughed once more inanely. Then Columbine got up, her eyes flashing with rage; taking Harlequin by the arm she dragged him swiftly away. They danced across the ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... reason," says the Spectator, "is, that persons think it makes them look ridiculous, by betraying the weakness of their nature. But why may not nature show itself in tragedy, as well as in comedy or farce? We see persons not ashamed to laugh loudly at the humour of a Falstaff,—or the tricks of a harlequin; and why should not the tear be equally allowed to flow for the misfortunes of a Juliet, or the forlornness of an Ophelia?" Sir Richard Steele records on this subject a saying of Mr. Wilks the actor, as just as it was polite. Being told in the green-room ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... fireplaces were decorated, whereon sundry passages of Scripture were piously portrayed: Tobit and his dog figured to great advantage; Haman swung conspicuously on his gibbet; and Jonah appeared most manfully bouncing out of the whale, like Harlequin through a barrel ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... from your mouth to your belly," added an elastic Harlequin, reaching an arm across the women's shoulders. "Come, Cantapresto, we'll help you line it with good wine, to the health of his most superlatively serene Highness, the heir-presumptive of Pianura; and where is that fabulous personage, by ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... flattering title is well-deserved. On the black background of the larva, vermillion-red, chrome-yellow and chalk-white figure side by side in circles, spots, freckles and stripes, as clearly marked as the glaring patches of a harlequin's dress. ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... Circle.—An original, very entertaining, and instructive pastime, with a book giving 64 colored illustrations of the "Harlequin Circle." Put up in handsome box. Price ...
— The Nursery, January 1877, Volume XXI, No. 1 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... spent thus disagreeably, a white domino, who for a few minutes had been a very attentive spectator, suddenly came forward, and exclaiming, "I'll cross him though he blast me!" rushed upon the fiend, and grasping one of his horns, called out to a Harlequin who stood near him, "Harlequin! do you ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... Venice the last summer, and taking Bergamo in my way homeward to England, it was my hap, sojourning there some four or five days, to light in fellowship with that famous Francattip Harlequin, who, perceiving me to be an Englishman by my habit and speech, asked me many particulars of the order and manner of our plays, which he termed by the name of representations. Amongst other talk ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... Riding-Hoods, whose number had seemed endless, with their ever-recurring cloaks of poppy-colored satin edged with black velvet; while little Mademoiselle Guiraud, with her Alsatian butterfly bow in her hair, danced as if demented opposite a Harlequin twice as tall as herself. To-day they were all arrayed in white. Jeanne, too, was in white, her head laid amongst white flowers on the white satin pillow. The delicate-faced Japanese maiden, with hair transfixed by long pins, and purple tunic ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... seemed to favour the turkey folk against the fox. But he was no novice in the laying of sieges, and had recourse to his bag of rascally tricks. He pretended to climb the tree; stood upon his hind legs; counterfeited death; then came to life again. Harlequin himself could not have acted so many parts. He reared his tail and made it gleam in the moonshine, and practised a hundred other pleasantries, during which no turkey could have dared to go to sleep. The enemy tired ...
— The Original Fables of La Fontaine - Rendered into English Prose by Fredk. Colin Tilney • Jean de la Fontaine
... one of those empty niches of the old Hotel de Ville, sketching the scene to the life, but with a [6] kind of grace—a marvellous tact of omission, as my father pointed out to us, in dealing with the vulgar reality seen from one's own window—which has made trite old Harlequin, Clown, and Columbine, seem like people in some fairyland; or like infinitely clever tragic actors, who, for the humour of the thing, have put on motley for once, and are able to throw a world of serious innuendo into their burlesque looks, with a sort of comedy which ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater
... blest as bird could be, 65 Feeding in the apple-tree; Made such wanton spoil and rout, Turning blossoms inside out; Hung—head pointing towards the ground—[7] Fluttered, perched, into a round 70 Bound himself, and then unbound; Lithest, gaudiest Harlequin! Prettiest tumbler ever seen! Light of heart and light of limb; What is now become of Him? 75 Lambs, that through the mountains went Frisking, bleating merriment, When the year was in its prime, They are sobered by this time. If you look to vale ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... or some stage in the game made such action desirable, he would leap the barrier, and jumping up and down like a harlequin in front of the bleacher benches, start his cohort into a combined school yell that must make the hot blood leap through the veins of everyone who called Chester his ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... we again fell in with the admiral; and I was most agreeably surprised at meeting my friend Mr. Brooke, who had come on to Singapore to meet Sir William Parker, and had followed him up in the Wanderer, commanded by my friend Captain Henry Seymour,—that vessel, in company with the Harlequin, Captain the Hon. George Hastings, and the H. C. steamer Diana, having just returned from an expedition to Acheen, whither they had been dispatched by the commander-in-chief, to inquire into and demand redress for an act of piracy, committed on an English merchant-vessel. An account of the expedition ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... Surveying, drilling, ordering, jesting, pondering; For the man was, we safely may assert, A thing to wonder at beyond most wondering; Hero, buffoon, half-demon, and half-dirt, Praying, instructing, desolating, plundering—Now Mars, now Momus—and when bent to storm A fortress, Harlequin in uniform.[408] ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... an expert in beautiful costumes. I venture to promise you, Mr Savoyard, that what you are about to see will be like a Louis Quatorze ballet painted by Watteau. The heroine will be an exquisite Columbine, her lover a dainty Harlequin, her father a picturesque Pantaloon, and the valet who hoodwinks the father and brings about the happiness of the lovers a grotesque but perfectly tasteful ...
— Fanny's First Play • George Bernard Shaw
... indiscriminate slaughter twenty-five thousand men, women and children. The brother of Ivan IV. was seized and thrown into prison, where he miserably perished. The archbishop was stripped of his canonical robes, clad in the dress of a harlequin, paraded through the streets on a gray mare, an object of derision to the people, and then was imprisoned for life. Such cruelty does not seem at all in accordance with the character of Ivan, while the grossest exaggeration ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... saying those horrible things about her! I know how she appears—she likes admiration. But the admiration in the world which she would most delight in just now would be yours. She plays with Captain Lovelock as a child does with a wooden harlequin, she pulls a string and he throws up his arms and legs. She has about as much intention of eloping with him as a little girl might have of eloping with a pasteboard Jim Crow. If you were to have a frank explanation with her, Blanche would very soon throw Jim Crow out of the ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... fair. At Lee and Harper's booth the tragedy of "Judith and Holofernes" is announced by a great glaring, painted cloth, while the platform is occupied by a gentleman in Roman armor and a lady in Eastern attire, who are no doubt the principal characters of the play. A gaudy Harlequin and his brother Scaramouch invite the attention of the passers-by. In another booth rope-dancing of men and women is offered to the less tragically minded, and in yet another the world-renowned Faux displays the announcement of his conjuring marvels. A peep-show ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... and moving in effect, he would be delightful to the general, and that without sacrificing on the vile and filthy altar of popularity. Here he is successfully himself, and what more is there to say? You clap for Harlequin, and you kneel to Apollo. Mr. Meredith doubles the parts, and is irresistible in both. Such fire, such vision, such energy on the one hand and on the other such agility and athletic grace are not ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... Never, indeed, it would seem, have such various centuries been jostled together as they are to-day upon this continent, and within the boundaries of our nation. We have taken the ages out of their processional arrangement and set them marching disorderly abreast in our wide territory, a harlequin platoon. We citizens of the United States date our letters 18—, and speak of ourselves as living in the present era; but the accuracy of that custom depends upon where we happen to be writing. While ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... fool, most valiant in words, but constantly being drubbed by Harlequin. Scaramouch is a common character in Italian farce, originally meant in ridicule of the Spanish don, and therefore dressed in Spanish costume. Our clown is an imbecile old idiot, and wholly unlike the dashing poltroon of Italian pantomime. The best "Scaramouches" that ever lived were Tiberio Fiurelli, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... flute—players, and John Canoes, as the negro Jack Pudding is called; the latter distinguishable by wearing white false faces, and enormous shocks of horsehair, fastened on to their woolly pates. Their character hovers somewhere between that of a harlequin and a clown, as they dance about, and thread through the negro groups, quizzing the women and slapping the men; and at Christmas time, the grand negro carnival, they don't confine their practical jokes to their own colour, but take ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... shut players altogether out of consecrated ground, yet I own I was not a little scandalized at the introduction of theatrical airs and gestures into a place set apart to remind us of the saddest realities. Going nearer, I found inscribed under this harlequin ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... of the two darkest eyes it ever was my fortune to behold, as the beauteous Selina looked up from the perusal of her handkerchief hem. It was a pity that the other features were not corresponding; for the nose was flat, and the mouth of such dimensions that a harlequin might have jumped down it with impunity; ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various
... characters of the Italian comedy were certainly adopted even from the persons of its several districts and dialects. Pantaloon is a Venetian, even in his countenance; and I once saw a gentleman of Bergamo, whose face was an exact Harlequin's mask. ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... churches and republics of history, is also true of the most trivial parlour game or the most unsophisticated meadow romp. We are never free until some institution frees us; and liberty cannot exist till it is declared by authority. Even the wild authority of the harlequin Smith was still authority, because it produced everywhere a crop of crazy regulations and conditions. He filled every one with his own half-lunatic life; but it was not expressed in destruction, but rather in a dizzy and toppling construction. Each person with a hobby found it turning ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... cover up this trail of tears A moment's weakness left upon my cheek, And hush my heart a little ere I speak Lest the false note ring true on other ears; The music rises and the empty cheers Proclaim the harlequin, and lo! I stand The painted fool again and kiss my hand With jocund air to Folly's worshippers. So day by day life's bitter bread is earned With lips that smile and frame the mirthless joke, And frailer grows the soul ...
— Pan and Aeolus: Poems • Charles Hamilton Musgrove
... Kobe or Yokohama; it is purely Japanese in all respects, and possesses a considerable commerce. The day of our arrival was a festal one, being consecrated to the god of the waters; wherefore large boats gayly decked with flags and party-colored streamers, containing crowds of gayly dressed men in harlequin style, were rowing in long processions through the water-ways of the city and under the many high-arched bridges. On the decks of the boats the people were dancing and singing (howling), to the notes of an indescribable ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... in graver tragic known (Though his best part long since was done), Still on the stage desires to tarry; And he who played the Harlequin, After the jest still loads the scene, Unwilling to ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... bring us bills instead of pleasures. Tom, who comes bounding home from school, has the doctor's account in his trunk, and his father goes to sleep at the pantomime to which he takes him. Pater infelix, you too have laughed at clown, and the magic wand of spangled harlequin; what delightful enchantment did it wave around you, in the golden days "when George the Third was king!" But our clown lies in his grave; and our harlequin, Ellar, prince of how many enchanted islands, was he not at Bow Street the other day,* in his dirty, tattered, faded motley—seized ...
— George Cruikshank • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of assailants made their way to the palace. Gordon came out to meet them. The whole courtyard was filled with wild, harlequin figures and sharp, glittering blades. He attempted a parley. 'Where is your master, the Mahdi?' He knew his influence over native races. Perhaps he hoped to save the lives of some of the inhabitants. Perhaps in that supreme moment imagination flashed another ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... have no vacancy in my own company at present; but would you be willing to take a part in my Christmas pantomime? I may say that I myself began life as harlequin." ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... delight. Then she turned upon Anthony eyes swimming with tenderness, put up consoling lips.... The entrance of Polichinelle, however, cudgel and all, in the shape of a little white dog, dragging a bough with him, spoiled her game. Harlequin Sun, too, flashed out of hiding—before his cue, really, for ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... bore, like his companion, a scrip, attached to his belt, but had neither horn nor knife, being probably considered as belonging to a class whom it is esteemed dangerous to intrust with edge-tools. In place of these, he was equipped with a sword of lath, resembling that with which Harlequin operates his wonders upon the ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... "I regret to say that another change has overtaken us. Have you ever heard of 'harlequin fate'? 'Tis a very buffoon of mischief and irony that is often permitted to dog our earthly footsteps and prevent us from becoming too content with our lot. For a time you and I, little maid, good comrades though ...
— Mary Louise • Edith van Dyne (one of L. Frank Baum's pen names)
... or two he found it to his advantage to compete with the actors in a fashion of his own. He was the inventor of the modern English form of pantomime, with a serious part that he took from Ovid's Metamorphosis or any fabulous history, and a comic addition of the courtship of harlequin and columbine, with surprising tricks and transformations. He introduced the old Italian characters of pantomime under changed conditions, and beginning with 'Harlequin Sorcerer' in 1717, continued to produce these entertainments until a year before his death in 1761. They ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... be said to be the worst feature of their general taste. They are too fond of the exhibition of art, and too regardless of the object, to which art should be made subservient. Dancing should never be considered as a mere display of agility and muscular power. It is then degraded to a level with Harlequin's tricks, wrestling, tumbling, or such other fashionable entertainments. The main object of the art unquestionably is, to display in full perfection the beauty and grace of the human form and movements. In so far as perfect command of the limbs is necessary, or may be made subservient ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... the Jack, solemnly,—"I think it's going to be a patchwork quilt," but just as he was finishing this remark a sort of wriggle passed through him, and, to Dorothy's amazement, he turned into a slender Harlequin all made up of spangles and ...
— The Admiral's Caravan • Charles E. Carryl
... costume of the times. This invention opened a new field for genius; and when we can for a moment forget their luckless choice of their bony and bloodless hero, who to amuse us by a variety of action becomes a sort of horrid Harlequin in these pantomimical scenes, we may be delighted by the numerous human characters, which are so vividly presented to us. The origin of this extraordinary invention is supposed to be a favourite pageant, or religious ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... allow him to love his Geraldine, but that he is to open his eyes to see her! That he may see, you will give him a light; and I command him not to extinguish it so long as Geraldine is with him. Otherwise he may confound her with another woman; for in the dark one cannot distinguish even a harlequin from a queen!'—You have now to decide, my lord, whether this lady remains with you, or whether she goes, and the light shall be ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... base and soulless world. At this very moment, I make no doubt, he is requiring that under the masks of a Pantaloon or a Punch there should be a soul glowing with unearthly desires and ideal aspirations, and that Harlequin should outmoralize Hamlet on the nothingness of sublunary things: and if these expectations are disappointed, as they can never fail to be, the dew is sure to rise into his eyes, and he will turn his back on the whole ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... character clown, harlequin, fat boy, jester, funny rustic, vied with each other in mirth-provoking antics so aptly described by the circus press agent as a "merry-hodgepodge of fun-provoking, acrobatic idiosyncrasies of ...
— The Circus Boys In Dixie Land • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... novelty; and attention is frequently exhausted, even before curiosity has been gratified. The pleasure afforded by performances of this sort, is very much akin to that which may be derived from the exhibition of a harlequin farce; where, instead of just imitations of nature and human character, we are entertained with the transformation of cauliflowers and beer-barrels, the apparition of ghosts and devils, and all the other ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... some saving crumbs of consolation for those who laugh at fate, and look good-humouredly for them; life's only evil to him who wears it awkwardly, and philosophic resignation works as many miracles as Harlequin; grumble, and you go to the dogs in a wretched style; make mots on your own misery, and you've no idea how pleasant a trajet even drifting ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... pinions, and sprang on my perch— 'Twas the dragon on Bow, that odd sign of the church, The episcopal centre of action; All Cheapside was crowded with black, brown, and fair, Like a harlequin's jacket, or French rocquelaire, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 400, November 21, 1829 • Various
... boxes and barrels of wines and fruits, commodities of all sorts, gold-leafed fripperies, luxuries of all manner, poured across the Potomac for her soldiers by the North. Sutlers' wagons did not lack, garishly stocked, forlorn as Harlequin in the day's stress. In and around and over all these stranded hulls roared the opposing forces. Steve saw Ashby, on the black stallion, directing with a gauntleted hand. Four great draught horses, drawing a loaded van, without a driver, maddened ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... the same profession, A black buckram cassock was gathered at his middle with a belt, at which hung, instead of knife or weapon, a goodly leathern pen-and-ink case. His ferula was stuck on the other side, like Harlequin's wooden sword; and he carried in his hand the tattered volume which he had ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... the strains of the Toy Symphony, a Harlequin ran in, with a Columbine, whom he twisted upon his bent knee, and tossed lightly through the upper window of a baker's shop, himself diving a moment later, with a slap of his wand, through the flap of the fishmonger's door, hard by. Next, as on a frozen ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... language, knowing all its moods, tenses, and declinations, in fact and in feeling, playing upon it as skillfully, as Paganini on his violin, finding expression for every thought and fancy, writing on the most serious subjects with the gayety of a harlequin, plucking jests from the mouth of death, graceful as the waving of willows, dealing in double meanings—that covered the asp with flowers and flattery, master of satire and compliment, mingling them often in the same line, always interested himself, ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... careless and indifferent observer, three black cats are just three black cats, but those who are really acquainted with animals know that their physiognomy is as various as that of the human race. I was perfectly well able to distinguish between these little faces, as black as Harlequin's mask, and lighted up by disks of emerald with golden gleams. Enjolras, who was much the handsomest of the three, was remarkable for his broad, leonine head and full whiskers, strong shoulders, ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow
... however, was not lighted with gas until 1809, and it was really not finally and generally introduced into London until the year 1820. We meet with an excellent satire published by S. W. Fores, in 1807, wherein a harlequin is depicted sitting on a rope suspended between a couple of lamp posts. The lamps and the hat of the figure are garnished with lighted burners; the neighbours in the windows of the adjoining houses, the people on the pavement below, the fowls, the dogs, the ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... medium. The afternoon wore on apace without a sign. Down under the high rocks, wooded to the water's edge, you repeated the work of the forenoon, trying, in addition to the flies already named, a harlequin-looking pattern which you had seen amongst Forrest's tempting collection, a novelty named Tommy Adkins. It did no effective service, however. With a levity pardonable at that time you hummed, "Tommy, make ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... Snooks is down for trial, Court 2. The legal call-boys bustle in the counsel and others engaged. Mr. Buzfuz, Q.C., pushes his way into Court, surrounds himself with briefs and other documents, when some mysterious harlequin of the Law Courts changes Tomkins v. Snooks to Court 4, and calls upon Brown v. Jones, who are packed away in Court 3, waiting their turn. Buzfuz gets very angry, and bustles off to Court 4. In fact, getting your case into Court reminded me forcibly of that amusing ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... steam from her pane, There once she watch'd heaven, fearing God and the rain— Or gaz'd o'er her bleach-field so fairly engross'd, Till the lines wander'd idle from pillar to post! Ah, where are the playful young pinners—ah, where The harlequin quilts that cut capers in air— The brisk waltzing stockings—the white and the black, That danced on the tight-rope, or swung on the slack— The light sylph-like garments, so tenderly pinn'd, That blew into shape, and embodied the wind! ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... squired my aunt and me to every part of Bath; which, to be sure, is an earthly paradise. The Square, the Circus, and the Parades, put you in mind of the sumptuous palaces represented in prints and pictures; and the new buildings, such as Princes-row, Harlequin's-row, Bladud's-row, and twenty other rows, look like so many enchanted castles, raised ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... long ray behind the dorsal fin, was also caught. It was highly amusing to watch the swarms of little finches, of doves, and Ptilotis, which came during the heat of the day to drink from our water hole. Grallina australis, Crows, Kites, Bronze-winged and Harlequin pigeons, (Peristera histrionica, GOULD), the Rose cockatoo (Cocatua Eos), the Betshiregah (Melopsittacus undulatus), and Trichoglossus versicolor, GOULD, were also visitors to the water-hole, or were seen on the plains. The day was oppressively hot; and neither the drooping ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... Devil take it, you have an awkward way of playing harlequin when you're not wanted! Now to come blundering in upon a lady and her friend is— Well, not the best of form. Better drop it before it becomes a habit," ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... Blunt, Nick Fetherfool, and the antique Petronella Elenora, are all alive with the genius of Astrea, although it may be possibly objected that some of the episodes with the two Monsters and the pranks of Harlequin are apt to trench a little too nearly ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... comes upon the scene. It is composed of men, boys, and women, all masked, who have practiced for the occasion some emblematic dance to perform for their own and the public amusement. The other dancers give way and the new-comers perform, in harlequin fashion, their allotted parts. Towards morning a large paper globe is suspended from the ceiling and lowered to within a certain height from the floor. Blindfolded volunteers of both sexes, furnished with sticks, are permitted to walk towards and try to hit it. ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... kindly pressed us to remain with her over Christmas. I longed to see the pantomime, having heard much from my cousins and from Leo of its delights—and of the harlequin, columbine, and clown. But my father wanted to be at home again, and he took me and Rubens and Nurse Bundle with him ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... La Ducloa and La Raisin were also very good; the charms of the latter had even penetrated the thick heart of our Dauphin, who loved her very tenderly: her husband was excellent in comic parts. There was also a very good harlequin, and as good a scaramouch. Among the best performers at the Opera were Clediere, Pomereuil, Godenarche, Dumenil, La Rochechouard, Maury, La Saint Christophe, La Brigogne, La Beaucreux. All that we see and hear now do not ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... he systematically strove to carry out, and in which one of the most important places is given to the building up of an artistic theatre, after the model of the great civilized nations. He surely had as much right to show some intolerance toward the harlequin and the popular stage as Lessing (who supplanted him while continuing his work) had to indulge in a like prejudice against the classical theatre of the French. Lessing, however, as we have already seen, goes at the same time more deeply into the matter by proposing not only a systematic but also ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... honor of wearing a United States sword—the noblest weapon on earth, sir—than to make yourself look like the drum-major of a band of nigger minstrels, sir! A United States officer ought to be ashamed to make a damned harlequin of himself, sir. I'd have you to ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... was lying against the bank under a severe fire. The waters of the bayou seemed to be boiling like a kettle. An officer came to the side of the boat to speak to me, but before he could open his mouth a shell struck him, and he disappeared as suddenly as Harlequin in a pantomine. Semmes then reported his condition. Conical shells from the enemy's Parrotts had pierced the railway iron, killed and wounded several of his gunners and crew, and cut a steam pipe. Fortunately, he had kept down his fires, or escaping steam would have driven every ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... the irons were taken off. I was then undressed, my clothes were removed to another room, and I was redressed in the prison uniform. This was a grotesque uniform indeed. The suit was red and blue, half and half, like a harlequin's, and to crown all came a hat or cap, like a fool's cap, a foot and a half high and running up to a peak. Miserable as I was, I could scarcely help smiling at the utterly absurd appearance I knew I then presented. I even ventured to remark upon it; but was suddenly and sternly checked ...
— Seven Wives and Seven Prisons • L.A. Abbott
... guise, seemed to haunt Pierston just at this time with undignified mockery which savoured rather of Harlequin than of the torch-bearer. Two days after parting in a lone island from the girl he had so disinterestedly loved he met in Piccadilly his friend Somers, wonderfully spruced up, and hastening along ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... In this person Bertram immediately recognised the manager of the theatre, and was thus at once able to account for the motley-colored dresses which he had seen and the plumes of feathers. Him however the seceders refused to hear: 'what! listen to a harlequin whom every man may see for sixpence?' And the insurrection seemed likely to prosper. The conductors of the funeral however, who had advanced far a-head with the van of the procession, now returned and proposed an accommodation with the malcontents—by virtue of which they should be ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey
... puppet-show; and the noisy gaiety of the crowded streets almost stunned me. One of the first objects we encountered was a barouche full of Turks and Sultanas, driven by an old woman in a tawdry court dress as coachman; while a merry-andrew and a harlequin capered behind as footmen. Owing to the immense size of the city, and the difficulty of making our way through the motley throng of masks, beggars, lazzaroni, eating-stalls, carts and carriages, we were nearly three hours traversing the ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... a harlequin jacket, with a bone, or what the painter denominates a baton, in the right hand, is generally considered designed for Mrs. Mapp, a masculine woman, daughter to one Wallin, a bone-setter at Hindon, in Wiltshire. This female Thalestris, ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... generally associated with suchlike warmint. At last—out of the tunnel! and now, I presume, in the caves. Here someone, gradually assuming a palpable form, emerges from somewhere out of a dark corner, and hands to each of us a long piece of wood about the length of a harlequin's bat (note, pantomime again), only that this is an inch or so thick and quite two inches wide at one end, where presently a candle is fixed by an attendant sprite,—the slave of the tallow candle,—and the wand, so to speak, tapers off towards the handle. A propos of "tapers off"—the ...
— Punch, Volume 101, September 19, 1891 • Francis Burnand
... his pig; Fie on such tricks! Johnson, the machinist Of former Drury, imitated life Quite to the life. The elephant in Blue Beard, Stuffed by his hand, wound round his lithe proboscis As spruce as he who roared in Padmanaba. [Footnote: "Padmanaba," viz., in a pantomime called Harlequin in Padmanaba. This elephant, some years afterward, was exhibited over Exeter 'Change, where it was found necessary to destroy the poor animal by discharges of musketry. When he made his entrance in the pantomime above-mentioned, Johnson, the machinist of the rival house, exclaimed, ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... foliage of the exotic island, with the three chandeliers of a bygone epoch, the sharp dissonance of styles is indicated. Aubrey Beardsley would have rejoiced at this mingling of genres; at the figures of Harlequin, Scaramuccio; at the quaint and gorgeous costuming; at the Dryad, Naiad, Echo, and all the rest of seventeenth-century burlesque appanage. And yet things didn't go as they should have gone. The music is sparkling for the minor characters, and for Zerbinetta ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... turbulent sea! A wild turbulent sea, indeed, over whose foaming waves the ghosts of the departed madly chased one another, their white shrouds floating in the wind, while behind all, goading them on with cracking whip, ran a many-colored harlequin—and I was the harlequin! Suddenly from the black waves the sea monsters raised their misshapen heads, snatched at me with extended claws, and I ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... upon the little platform that represented a stage bounded a sort of anomalous being, supple and charming, in the traditional dress of Pierrot, whom the English vulgarize and call Harlequin. He had white camellias instead of buttons on his loose white jacket, and the bright eyes of Wanda shone out from his red-and-white face. He held a mandolin, and imitated the most charming of serenades, before a make-believe ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... is the Ribbon Seal. He is about the size of his cousin the Harbor Seal. He is also called the Harlequin Seal. Sometimes his coat is blackish-brown and sometimes yellowish-gray, but always he has a band of yellowish-white, like a broad ribbon, from his throat around over the top of his head, and another band which starts on ...
— The Burgess Animal Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... because it irresistibly demanded to be written. "I wonder," he once wrote to Newton, "that a sportive thought should ever knock at the door of my intellects, and still more that it should gain admittance. It is as if harlequin should intrude himself into the gloomy chamber where a corpse is deposited in state." Harlequin, luckily for us, took hold of his pen in John Gilpin and in many of the letters. In the moral satires, ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... Guard who came after the royal carriage out-Heroded Herod by their deafening cries of loyalty. Who would have imagined these gentlemen would have played the harlequin and receive their dethroned Emperor as they did when he entered Paris again? "Put not your trust in men, particularly Frenchmen in 1814, O ye house of Bourbon, for they made ye march out of ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... the needle. But when he was following Lucy the last time through the middle of the circle, he gave the signal for the whole party to loose hands and follow him, and away they all went. But they could not get on for laughing, for Lucy had as many pranks as Harlequin himself, so that several of the children, and amongst these Miss Darwell herself, fairly stood still ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... It seems only decent to defer, in this place, to the author's own feeling in the matter. Mr. Squire is the author of The Birds and Other Poems and Poems: Second Series. My present choice is the beginning and the close of the poem, "Harlequin"—which ...
— When Winter Comes to Main Street • Grant Martin Overton
... her wink. If brown now her breasts—once globes of beauty! The roasting will char them into a black heap; If trembling her limbs, the prickers' loved duty Will be to compel her to dance and to leap. The harlequin Man has doffed his jacket, No pity to feel—he has none to give; The Bible has said it, and so thou must take it, "Thou shalt not ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume XXIV. • Revised by Alexander Leighton
... in after times for the standing characters of the Latin popular comedy or the Atellana, as it was called: Maccus the harlequin, Bucco the glutton, Pappus the good papa, and the wise Dossennus—masks which have been cleverly and strikingly compared to the two servants, the -pantalon- and the -dottore-, in the Italian comedy of Pulcinello—already ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... America, become the god Odin or Woden in Scandinavia; and when his worship as a god dies out Odin survives (as Dr. Dasent has proved) in the Wild Huntsman of the Hartz, and in the Robin Hood (Oodin) of popular legend. The Hellequin of France becomes the Harlequin of our pantomimes. William Tell never existed; he is a myth; a survival of the sun-god Apollo, Indra, who was worshipped on ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... he, with solemn frown, "I tremble for each dancing frater, Like unregenerated clown And harlequin at some the-ayter." ...
— The Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... Brown suit and service, having spent Boxing-night and the proceeds of the Christmas-piece at the play, where he saw "Jane Shore" and "Harlequin House that Jack built;" the plot and tricks of which he recounted to Master Tommy, as he took that young gentleman for a walk, inoculating him with a great desire to go and behold it. So, after having coaxed his ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... might go to sleep, or perhaps go away, the science and the austere philosophy taught in these plays were enlivened by tavern scenes, and by the gambols of a clown, fool, or buffoon, called Vice, armed, as Harlequin, with a wooden dagger. And often, such is human frailty, the beholders went, remembering nothing but the mad pranks of Vice. It was in their eyes the most important character in the play, and the part was accordingly entrusted to the best actor. ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... 'charlatan', 'concert', 'conversazione', 'cupola', 'ditto', 'doge', 'domino'{17}, 'felucca', 'fresco', 'gazette', 'generalissimo', 'gondola', 'gonfalon', 'grotto', ('grotta' is the earliest form in which we have it in English), 'gusto', 'harlequin'{18}, 'imbroglio', 'inamorato', 'influenza', 'lava', 'malaria', 'manifesto', 'masquerade' ('mascarata' in Hacket), 'motto', 'nuncio', 'opera', 'oratorio', 'pantaloon', 'parapet', 'pedantry', 'pianoforte', 'piazza', 'portico', ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... a luxurious couch of a street in which the afternoon lolls like a gaudy sybarite. Overhead the sky stretches itself like a holiday awning. The sun lays harlequin stripes across the building faces. The smoke plumes from the I. C. engines scribble gray, white and lavender fantasies against the ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... short, black curls a mouth shaped like a bud reluctant to open, blew him a kiss. Then came a cue of music like an avalanche, and quicker than Harlequin's wink ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... by the blunders of the past. Knowing that contemporary criticism has damned almost every true artist of the nineteenth century, they are determined not to be caught napping; and they join in shouts of applause as each new harlequin steps upon the stage. They forget that it is as dangerous to praise ignorantly as to blame unjustly, and that the railer at genius, though he may seem more malevolent, will scarce appear so ridiculous to posterity as the dupe of the mountebank. Others of them are, no doubt, honest victims ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... Harden (to make hard) malmoligi, hardi. Harden (to become hardy) hardigxi. Hardly apenaux. Hardness malmoleco. Hardwareman kuirilvendisto. Hardy hardita. Hark! auxskultu. Hare leporo. Hairbrained sencerba. Harem haremo. Haricot-bean fazeolo. Harlequin arlekeno. Harm malutili. Harm malutilo. Harmonica harmoniko. Harmonious harmonia. Harmonize harmoniigi. Harmony harmonio. Harness jungi. Harness jungajxo. Harp harpo. Harpoon harpuno. Harpy harpio. Harrier ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... Peer and a Mechanick are cloathed in the same Habits, and indulge in the same Diversions and Luxuries: When Husbands are ruin'd, Children robb'd, and Tradesmen starv'd, in order to give Estates to a French Harlequin, and Italian Eunuch, for a Shrug or a Song; [Footnote: Farinelli, an eminent Italian soprano, went to England in 1734, remained there three years, sang chiefly at the Theatre of Lincoln's-Inn-Fields, then under the direction of Porpora, his old ...
— The Pretentious Young Ladies • Moliere
... now, with a pair of legs like an old apple tree. The freedom of criticism is mine to-night! Did you ever see such ridiculous ideas of costume? For my part, the robe and the domino for me. All lines are destroyed; nothing is recognizable. My, my! There's Harlequin, too, walking on parentheses." ...
— Hearts and Masks • Harold MacGrath
... woods, here. 'Taint been much over twenty-four hours, I reckon, since every one o' them-ah sort o' shut-up-fan-shape sort o' fish-traps had a gray-jacket in it layin' flat down an' firin' through the rails, sort o' random-like, only not much so." His manner of speech seemed a sort of harlequin patchwork from the bad English of many sections, the outcome of a humorous and eclectic fondness for verbal deformities. But his lightness received a ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... want to win; but parry those invitations ludicrously, 'et en badinant'. Say that, if you were sure to lose, you might possibly play, but that as you may as well win, you dread 'l'embarras des richesses', ever since you have seen what an encumbrance they were to poor Harlequin, and that, therefore, you are determined never to venture the winning above two louis a-day; this sort of light trifling way of declining invitations to vice and folly, is more becoming your age, and at the same time more effectual, than grave philosophical refusals. A young fellow who ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... most, and cheeriest smile, at the very apsis and black nadir of Despair: for He is nimble as a weasel, and He twists like Proteus, and His solstices and equinoxes, His tropics and turning-points and recurrences are innate in Being, and when He falls He falls like harlequin and shuttlecocks, shivering plumb to His feet, and each third day, lo, He is risen again, and His defeats are but the stepping-stones and rough scaffolding from which He builds His Parthenons, and from the densest basalt gush His rills, and ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... idle boulevardier, in touch with some smart journalists, made free of a few newspaper offices, and welcomed in the pleasure haunts of pressmen. This life, whose dreary superficiality is covered by the glitter of universal blague, like the stupid clowning of a harlequin by the spangles of a motley costume, induced in him a Frenchified—but most un-French—cosmopolitanism, in reality a mere barren indifferentism posing as intellectual superiority. Of his own country he used ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... grave drollery and merry pathos with all he says or does, and his ubiquity is so wonderful, that he gives an idea of a character, of whose existence we had previously no conception, that of a sentimental harlequin.[139] ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... long and so vociferous, that in my momentary anger I prayed some one might burst a blood-vessel, and frighten the rest. I put on a look of indescribable indignation, and cast a glance of what I intended should be most withering scorn on the assembly; but alas! my infernal harlequin costume ruined the effect; and confound me, if they did not laugh the louder. I turned from one to the other with the air of a man who marks out victims for his future wrath; but with no better success; at last, ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 2 • Charles James Lever
... consist, what service does it perform, what is its business, and what are its merits? Does the virtue consist in the metaphor, or in the man? Doth the goldsmith that makes the crown, make the virtue also? Doth it operate like Fortunatus's wishing-cap, or Harlequin's wooden sword? Doth it make a man a conjurer? In fine, what is it? It appears to be something going much out of fashion, falling into ridicule, and rejected in some countries, both as unnecessary and expensive. In America it is considered as an absurdity; ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... fellowship than a tribe; rather a residuum than a fellowship. It was all the riffraff of the universe, having for their trade a crime. It was a sort of harlequin people, all composed of rags. To recruit a man was ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... purpose of thought. Does not my friend, the Professor, receive at least two letters a week, requesting him to. . . . ,—on the strength of some youthful antic of his, which, no doubt, authorizes the intelligent constituency of autograph-hunters to address him as a harlequin? ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... could act. Mrs. Timberlake, a fat, indulgent mother, rather agreed with her. The whole idea, after a few discursive performances of Milton's "The Masque of Comus," "Pyramus and Thisbe," and an improved Harlequin and Columbine, written by one of the members, was transferred to the realm of the studios, then quartered in the New Arts Building. An artist by the name of Lane Cross, a portrait-painter, who was much less of an artist than he was a stage ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... had been played under his eyes. Beyond the hedge other figures were moving. Three at that moment came crowding into the gap—a saucy-faced girl with a tip-tilted nose, whom he supposed to be Columbine, the soubrette; a lean, active youngster, who must be the lackey Harlequin; and another rather loutish youth who might be a zany or ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... on edge to look at her tonight. I suppose that dress is 'a sweet thing just out,' but upon my word she reminds me of nothing but a Harlequin ice," and Mac turned his back on her with a shudder, for he was sensitive to ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... defects, they are the world's spoiled children. And, on the other hand, the world is stern beyond measure to strong and complete natures. Perhaps in this apparently flagrant injustice society acts sublimely, taking a harlequin at his just worth, asking nothing of him but amusement, promptly forgetting him; and asking divine great deeds of those before whom she bends the knee. Everything is judged by laws of its being; the diamond must be flawless; the ephemeral creation of fashion may be flimsy, ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... Benjamin Franklin, with the idea of abducting him, a small monkey, flung from the windowsill by the strong hand of an impatient fireman, made a straight dive, hitting Poor Richard just below the waistcoat, and passing through his stomach, as fairly as the Harlequin in the 'Green Monster' pantomime ever pierced the picture with the slit in it, which always hangs so conveniently low and near. Patrick Henry had his teeth knocked out by a flying missile, and in carrying Daniel Lambert down stairs, he was found to be so large that they ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... shadowy form that lifelessly clings to it? It is a delicate membrane, thin and light; see, I blow it away. You saw the split in the back, through which the former tenant left the abode. It is the cast-off skin of the green drake, now metamorphosed into a creature more active than harlequin or columbine, the male into a dark brown insect, with gauze-like wings, the female into a beautiful creature, with body marbled white and brown, and able to fly well and strongly, now high in the ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton
... Parliament, or seeking entrance to it, except this variously tinted Whiggery, this Harlequin of Reaction? Well, inside Parliament, setting aside the Irish party, which is, we may now well hope, merely temporarily there, there is not much. It is not among people of "wealth and local influence," who I see are supposed to be the only available candidates ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... Yens, but to the smaller race, he held several other offices in conjunction with this—those of cook and chamberlain, for example: his talent, however, seemed most to incline to that of court-fool or harlequin. ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... company with a danseuse, how could they help being friends? If des Lupeaulx had not been a general-secretary he would certainly have been a journalist. Thus, in that fifteen years' struggle in which the harlequin sabre of epigram opened a breach by which insurrection entered the citadel, des Lupeaulx never received so much ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... through which they had come, and which he was quite sure had always been a straight-up-and-down, old-fashioned window, was now a round affair, with flaps running to a point in the centre, like the holes the harlequin jumps through in ...
— Davy and The Goblin - What Followed Reading 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' • Charles E. Carryl
... party was heard coming to the door. York entered, his arms loaded with eggs and bacon, and a glass or two the merrier. A Deaf-Burke-made fellow, an Irishman, half labourer and half beggar, who went under the name of Harlequin, reeled by his side in a state of high elevation, with two or three hangers-on, that trod close to their heels. Harlequin, filled with drink and overflowing with vanity, overwhelmed every one with noise ...
— Sinks of London Laid Open • Unknown
... of a bright copper colour, so different from black that one had painted his thighs with black chequered lines which made his skin very much resemble the dress of a harlequin. ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... sought to display his vocation for polite letters, by publishing an ambitious allegorical poem of the age of chivalry, entitled "Hermin and Gunilde," which was not only exceedingly well reviewed, but received the honour of a parody entitled "Harlequin and Columbine." He also wrote translations of several of the poems of Ossian, and a disquisition upon their genuineness; and then with better inspiration he wrote a considerable treatise on "Percy's Reliques of Ancient Poetry," with metrical translations, being thus the first to call the ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... triumphs in the part of Samson. His history was romantic. In 1732 he married the Lady Henrietta, daughter of James, Earl of Waldegrave, and widow of Lord Edward Herbert, second son of the Marquis of Powis. In 1759 he took as his second wife Charlotte, daughter of John Rich, the harlequin."—Rockstro. ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... become a Pulcinella. His very sorrow and melancholy did but increase the comic dryness of his sharply-cut features, and increased the laughter of the audience, who showered plaudits on their favourite. The lovely Columbine was indeed kind and cordial to him; but she preferred to marry the Harlequin. It would have been too ridiculous if beauty and ugliness ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... flying up out of reach and sight, he puts on a tragical face, and complains that it is a base and soulless world. At this moment, I doubt not, he is exacting, that under the masks of a Pantaloon and a Pulcinello there should be a heart glowing with unearthly desires and ideal aspirations, and that Harlequin should out moralise Hamlet upon the nothingness of sublunary things; and should it not be so, the dew will rise into his eyes, and he will turn his back on the whole scene with ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... his subjects he could do anything, take any liberty, without fear of dethronement. One evening, during an act in which he had not to appear on the stage, he was leaning while chatting with a comrade against that part of the wings known in French as "harlequin's cloak"—in our stage language the prompt-place. A brass knob was under his elbow. "What's this machine for?" he said, examining it. "Don't touch it, Monsieur Frederic," cried an employe: "it's the gas-regulator." ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... One has fastened on his back a square of linoleum, with a big draught-board pattern in white and red, that he found in the middle of the dining-room of some temporary refuge. That is Pepin. We know him afar off by his harlequin placard sooner even than by his pale Apache face. Here is Barque's bulging chest-protector, carven from an eiderdown quilt, formerly pink, but now fantastically bleached and mottled by dust and rain. There, Lamuse the Huge rises like a ruined tower to which tattered posters still cling. A cuirass ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... America are always light- handed and adroit. The nature of an American car is no doubt known to all men. It looks as far removed from all bed-room accommodation as the baker's barrow does from the steam engine into which it is to be converted by Harlequin's wand. But the negro goes to work much more quietly than the Harlequin; and for every four seats in the railway car he builds up four beds almost as quickly as the hero of the pantomime goes through his performance. The great glory ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... appropriate music, and other decorations, he exhibited a story from Ovid's Metamorphoses, or some other fabulous writer. Between the pauses, or acts, of this serious, representation he interwove a comic fable; consisting chiefly of the courtship of Harlequin and Columbine, with a variety of surprizing adventures and tricks, which were produced by the magic wand of Harlequin; such as the sudden transformation of palaces and temples to huts and cottages, of men and women into wheelbarrows and joint stools, of trees turned into houses, colonades to beds ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... as Pantaloon, the existing Pantaloon being "a stick, sir—a mere muff." I observed that I was sorry times were so bad with him. "Mr. Dickens, you know our profession, sir—no one knows it better, sir—there is no right feeling in it. I was Harlequin on your own circuit, sir, for five-and-thirty years, and was displaced by ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 2 (of 3), 1857-1870 • Charles Dickens
... stage Harlequin and Punch were as usual quarrelling with each other and threatening every ...
— Pinocchio - The Tale of a Puppet • C. Collodi
... having driven from the stage entirely the graziosissima maschera d'Arlecchino, who used to be the hero of all the pieces represented by the puppets and substituted himself, or rather a puppet bearing his name, in the place of Harlequin, as the principal farceur of the performance. He has contrived to make the puppet Girolamo a little like himself, but so much caricatured and so monstrously ugly a likeness that the bare sight of it ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... humorists in letters only had been intended. As Thackeray explains clearly what he means by a humorist, I may as well here repeat the passage: "If humour only meant laughter, you would scarcely feel more interest about humorous writers than about the private life of poor Harlequin just mentioned, who possesses in common with these the power of making you laugh. But the men regarding whose lives and stories your kind presence here shows that you have curiosity and sympathy, appeal to a great number of ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... the coupe. Harlequin, and Colombine, and Humpty-Dumpty; shapes which came out of nowhere and instantly vanished into nothing, for all the world like the absurd pantomimes of his boyhood days. He kept close to the curb, scrutinizing the numbers as he went along. Never had he seen such a fog. Two ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... of Beltramo Bergamasco, i.e. a native of the town and province of Bergamo, in the north of Italy. Compare "Comasco." Harlequin ... was a Bergamasc, and the personification of the manners, accent, and jargon of the inhabitants of the Val Brembana.—Handbook: ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... the country?" some one asks the Senate. "We are charged with the preservation of public liberty."—"What is your business in this city?" Pierrot demands of Harlequin.—"My business," replies Harlequin, "is ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... and Papal head-dress. He sits on the perch now with folded wings, but the cage door, in likeness of a portico, shows there is convenience to come forth for the purposes of benediction, when wanted. Outside, the king of Naples, dressed as Harlequin, plays the organ for instruction of the bird (unhappy penitent, doomed to penance), and, grinning with sharp teeth, observes: "He speaks in my way now." In the background a young Republican holds ready the match for ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... listener:—"So saying, the Antiquary opened a drawer, and began rummaging among a quantity of miscellaneous papers ancient and modern. But it was the misfortune of this learned gentleman, as it may be that of many learned and unlearned, that he frequently experienced on such occasions, what Harlequin calls "l'embarras des richesses"—in other words, the abundance of his collection often prevented him from finding the article he sought for." We need not add that this unsuccessful search for Professor Mac ...
— Notes And Queries,(Series 1, Vol. 2, Issue 1), - Saturday, November 3, 1849. • Various
... necessity consist, what services does it perform, what is its business, and what are its merits? Doth the virtue consist in the metaphor or in the man? Doth the goldsmith that makes the crown make the virtue also? Doth it operate like Fortunatus's wishing-cap or Harlequin's wooden sword? Doth it make a man a conjurer? In fine, what is it? It appears to be a something going much out of fashion, falling into ridicule, and rejected in some countries both as unnecessary and expensive. In ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... made from among a wide range of different types. A variety of corn called "Harlequin" shows stripes on its kernels, and one ear may offer nearly white and nearly red seeds and all the possible intermediate steps between them. From these seeds the next generation will repeat the motley ears, but some specimens will produce ears of uniform kernels of a dark purple, showing thus ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries |
