"Make-believe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... off than when I first met Dorothy," he thought. "Then, I was stuck on a pole in a cornfield, where I could make-believe scare the crows, at any rate. But surely there is no use for a Scarecrow stuck on a pole in the middle of a river. I am afraid I shall never have any ...
— The Wonderful Wizard of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... falsity, for he has not enough of deep and lasting impression to find a contrast or diversity between his words and his thoughts. He is not fairly to be called a hypocrite, but I have already confessed to the more exasperation at his make-believe reverence, because it has no deep ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... fool. Lilith in a moment of terror acknowledges that her dignified reserve was the cloak of passion, and Eve acknowledges that her profession of love was transferred to the wrong man; both ladies recover their self-possession and resume their make-believe decorums, and Adam, like a gallant gentleman, will not see through what is transparent. These are harmless jests at the ironies of life. Browning's best gifts in this volume, that looks pale beside its predecessors, ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... laughed Freddie. "You ought to have seen that monkey's face when he bit on those make-believe cherries on Flossie's hat!" and ...
— The Bobbsey Twins in a Great City • Laura Lee Hope
... purple skirt, "to think o' my bein' kissed by so many men, in my old days!—but why not?—it may be my last chance, as Joe Fairthorn says, and laugh if you please, I've got the best of it; and I don't belie my natur', for twistin' your head away and screechin' is only make-believe, and the more some screeches the more they want to be kissed; but fair and square, say I,—if you want it take it, and that's ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... papers on your return home and see. Then the print. Observe that the type is identical on both sides of this make-believe clipping, while in fact there is always a perceptible difference between that used in the obituary column and that to be found in the columns devoted to other matter. Notice also," I continued, holding up the scrap of paper between her and ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... Niggers 'cept what he done his own self, and dat was pow'ful little. In hot weather chillun played on de crick and de best game of all was to play lak it was big meetin' time. White chillun loved to play dar too wid de little slave chillun. Us would have make-believe preachin' and baptizin' and de way us would sing was a sight. One of dem songs us chillun loved de best ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... principle the line of argument in The Prophetical Office of the Church was taken by Mr. Newman. It was certainly no make-believe, or unreal argument. It was a forcible and original way of putting part of the case against Rome. It was part of the case, a very important part; but it was not the whole case, and it ought to have been evident from the first that in this controversy ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... the soul which is the seat of the desires is liable to be tossed about by words and blown up and down; and some ingenious person, probably a Sicilian or an Italian, playing with the word, invented a tale in which he called the soul—because of its believing and make-believe nature—a vessel (An untranslatable pun,—dia to pithanon te kai pistikon onomase pithon.), and the ignorant he called the uninitiated or leaky, and the place in the souls of the uninitiated in which the desires are seated, being the intemperate and ...
— Gorgias • Plato
... perception of masculine bombast and make-believe, this acute understanding of man as the eternal tragic comedian, is at the bottom of that compassionate irony which paces under the name of the maternal instinct. A woman wishes to mother a man simply because she sees into his helplessness, his need of an ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... replied Toby, quickly; "but you see that was a real one, an' this of ours is only a little make-believe for three cents. We want to get you to let us have the lot between the barn an' the road to put our tent on, an' then lend us old Whitey. We're goin' to have Jack Douglass's hoss that's blind, an' we've got a three-legged cat, an' one without ...
— Mr. Stubbs's Brother - A Sequel to 'Toby Tyler' • James Otis
... test for proof; And one fine day there rose a clamour, such As cheated mobs will make, when cunning puts A veto on their claim. For this mob found that, in her stolen guise Of softer beams, they had adored a cheat; A make-believe; a lie. Immense their rage! One aim inspired them all— To punish. But while they swayed and tossed In wrathful argument on just desert, Fair Truth indeed appeared, clad in her robes Of glorious majesty. "Desist, my friends," She cried; "the executioner condign Of Insincerity, and ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... that he could remember had he so deeply felt the sting of conscience. He, the Grand Duke Peter Nicholaevitch, in love with this little rustic? Impossible! It was the real Peter, tired of the sham and make-believe of self-restraint and virtue, who had merely kissed a country girl. He was no anchorite, no saint. Why had he tied himself to such a duty from a motive of ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... at home in the world of "make-believe," and delights in the stories and the many charming songs to which this imaginative use of the ball ...
— Froebel's Gifts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... question of our text, if asked by me, would be impertinent, but it is asked of each of us by the stern voice of conscience, and for some of us by the lips of dear ones whose loss has been among our chiefest sufferings. God asks us this question, and it is hard to make-believe to Him. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... was long in arriving, and when it did come around Calvin Gray regretted that he had elected to play a game of make-believe with "Miss Good," for she rigidly held him to his promise, and however adroitly he undertook to ascertain who or what she was, she foiled him. It gave her a mischievous pleasure to evade his carefully laid conversational traps, and what little he learned came from Ma Briskow. Briefly, ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... coming down from the days of Kublai Khan when he so proudly built his Khan-baligh (the Cambaluc of Marco Polo and the forebear of modern Peking) and filled it with his troops who so soon vanished like the snows of winter. An elaborate pretence, a deliberate policy of make-believe, ever since those days invested Imperial Edicts with a majesty which they have never really possessed, the effacement of the sovereign during the Nineteenth Century contributing to the legend that there existed in the capital a Grand and Fearful Panjandrum ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... their own motion to shape some object or fact or relation for human use. The propensity may in large measure be overborne by the more immediately constraining incentive to a reputable leisure and an avoidance of indecorous usefulness, and it may therefore work itself out in make-believe only; as for instance in "social duties," and in quasi-artistic or quasi-scholarly accomplishments, in the care and decoration of the house, in sewing-circle activity or dress reform, in proficiency ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... You're one can make-believe everything lovely, too! I see it. What fun we'll have! Let's begin at once. We're in the enchanted forest. We've been enchanted ourselves. But the fairy king has come and shown us where to find the magic treasure that will unlock the whole world for us and ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... looked up for a minute at the candle, with a pair of very bright, sharp eyes, and then went on with his work again, as if nothing had happened. On one side of him was a battered pint saucepan without a handle, which was his make-believe pail; and on the other a morsel of slate-coloured cotton rag, which stood for his flannel to wipe up with. After scrubbing bravely for a minute or two, he took the bit of rag, and mopped up, and then squeezed make-believe water out into his make-believe pail, ...
— A House to Let • Charles Dickens
... cried. "That prevents our putting one unpleasant question to you, anyway. I knew that your innuendo in the cabin was all make-believe." ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... decaying and falling to pieces, and are only like the faded rags of a once splendid robe which a child may gather round its puny form and make believe for the moment that it is a king. To the genuine credulity of the South-Sea Islander, and to the conscious make-believe of the Arab story-teller and the peasant who repeats the modern maerchen, all things are possible. But to the same peasant when relating the traditional histories of his neighbours, and to the grave ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... combat it, partly I think from pride, for he hated everything that savoured of earwigging; he was not going to put constraint upon himself that his following might be more enthusiastic. There was no make-believe about him, and he was never one who ...
— John Redmond's Last Years • Stephen Gwynn
... first I thought it was just the usual game of make-believe in which children love to indulge. But it was much more than this, and the simple words were an expression of her sure faith that what she willed must come to pass. "It mun be so." Why not? "If ye have faith, and shall say unto this mountain, ...
— Tales of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... was very much against the law did not disturb him much so long as his chief stood back of him. The unsupported word of the old man would not stand in court, and if he became obstreperous they could always have him locked up as a lunatic. The very pose of the old miner—the make-believe pretension that he was half a fool—would lend itself ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... difficult?" said Dolly. "But it is really not difficult, if one is a true servant of God and not only make-believe. Suppose it were difficult, though. Do you remember what Christ said of the two ways, serving Him and not ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... ever get really frightened in the costumery. Not exactly, though your goosehairs get wonderfully realistically tingled and your tummy chilled from time to time—because you know it's all make-believe, a lifesize doll world, a children's dress-up world. It gets you thinking of far-off times and scenes as pleasant places and not as black hungry mouths that might gobble you up and keep you forever. It's always safe, ...
— No Great Magic • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... upon in this rambling chronicle, may be called the children's "black-and-white" artist of the "sixties" (taking the date broadly as comprising the earlier "seventies" also), even as Walter Crane is their "limner in colours." His work is evidently conceived with the serious make-believe that is the very essence of a child's imagination. He seems to put down on paper the very spirit of fancy. Whether as an artist he is fully entitled to the rank some of his admirers (of whom I am one) would claim, is a question not worth raising here—the future will settle that for us. ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... you. I was thinking about her all the time, and by and by she became real to me. You see, it was making believe, and I knew it all the time, and then again I did n't. Whenever I 'd think of the men, and the work, and the hard life, I 'd know it was make-believe; but when I 'd think of her, it was n't. I don't know; ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London
... unhallowed band; yet any other record would be less than historic. If the band had a leader, it was he. They were always ready to listen to him—they would even stop fishing to do that—and to follow his projects. They looked to him for ideas and organization, whether the undertaking was to be real or make-believe. When they played "Bandit" or "Pirate" or "Indian," Sam Clemens was always chief; when they became real raiders it is recorded that he was no less distinguished. Like Tom Sawyer, he loved the glare and trappings of leadership. When the Christian ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... were just nobody at all. I was only talking make-believe to Sophie, that she might do the ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... from themselves, were actually playing at the kingdom of Heaven, speaking and judging and concluding of things of this world by quite other laws, other scales, other weights and measures than those in use in it. Every thing was turned topsy-turvy in this their game of make-believe. Their religion was their chief end and interest, and their work their play, as lightly followed as diligently. What she counted their fancies, they seemed to count their business; their fancies ran over upon ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... rougher, and Jerry lost himself in the play. Still playing, he grew so excited that all that had been feigned became actual. This was battle a struggle against the hand that seized and shook him and thrust him away. The make-believe of ferocity passed out of his growls; the ferocity in them became real. Also, in the moments when he was shoved away and was springing back to the attack, he yelped in high-pitched puppy hysteria. And Captain Van Horn, realizing, suddenly, ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... and sat down. She was thinking fast and hard. Life had not been make-believe to Patricia; she had builded whatever towers had been hers ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... the harm in that? How does he know what's in your heart? He doesn't need to understand that your action is make-believe, and not sincere. You'll see, after such actions, he'll believe in you so much that even though you made love before his very eyes, he ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... rather, semi-oval settee, upholstered in red plush. It extended right across the whole after-end of the cabin. Mr. Burns motioned to sit down, dropped into one of the swivel-chairs round the table, and kept his eyes on me as persistently as ever, and with that strange air as if all this were make-believe and he expected me to get up, burst into a laugh, slap him on the back, and vanish ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... Jesse, joining readily in the make-believe, "we'll try some of the cold roast of the last bighorn I killed, over in the breaks of the ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... and moved nearer to her, holding out his hand with an odd combination of "make-believe" and real pleading in ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane
... safe kind, made specially for children's playhouses, but I don't know how to cook, so I don't play in the kitchen at all. Make-believe dinners are no fun." ...
— The Girl Scouts at Home - or Rosanna's Beautiful Day • Katherine Keene Galt
... begin a book tomorrow, he says, and empties his pipe as he talks, which will have to do with the make-believe of people in streets—the make-believe of being alive and being somebody ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... a Mexican. No one but a white man—and a range man, she added to herself—would say, "Uh course I knowed yore voice." And he had not really had a cold. Mary V's ears were sharper than her dad's, for she had caught the make-believe in the hoarseness. She knew perfectly well that Johnny Jewel might be hoarse as a crow and never talk that way. Johnny never said "Uh course I knowed," and Johnny would choke before he'd ever call her sweetheart. He wouldn't ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... look back upon those make-believe days, naughty recollections spring up as fast as dust ...
— Aunt Madge's Story • Sophie May
... to track the deer and buffalo. Every day he came home carrying on his back some wild game. This kept mother badger very busy, and the baby badgers very chubby. While the well-fed children played about, digging little make-believe dwellings, their mother hung thin sliced meats upon long willow racks. As fast as the meats were dried and seasoned by sun and wind, she packed them carefully away ...
— Old Indian Legends • Zitkala-Sa
... veteran, and pronounced her "well and truly adopted," and the bands struck up and all saluted and she saluted in return, it was better and more moving than any kindred thing I have seen on the stage, because stage things are make-believe, but this was real and the players' ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... blamed for being conventional; is often sneered at as the arch-make-believe. But when he painted women he painted them as men really see them with their masks off, and with all their allure of femininity. This sneer of convention ...
— Vigee Le Brun • Haldane MacFall
... his invectives against 'The Creation' the other day," said Lucy, seating herself at the piano. "He says it has a sort of sugared complacency and flattering make-believe in it, as if it were written for the birthday fete of ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... a summer palace of the present fashion, but there was one good thing about it: it had no tower, nor any make-believe balconies hung on the outside like bird-cages. The rooms were spacious, and had big fireplaces, and ample piazzas all round, so that the sun could be courted or the wind be avoided at all hours of the day. It was, in short, not a ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... she would have suited him. He had new ones enough—was surrounded with them for instance on the stage of the other house; as a new one he probably wouldn't have so much as noticed her. He would have liked to invent something, get her to make-believe with him that some passage of a romantic or critical kind had originally occurred. He was really almost reaching out in imagination—as against time—for something that would do, and saying to himself that if it didn't come this sketch of a fresh start would show ...
— The Beast in the Jungle • Henry James
... though steeped in the glory of the world of legend, would not lightly accept its judgment upon religious and moral questions, and above all would not, in that region, play at make-believe. He would not elude the horror of this story by simply not mentioning it, like Homer, or by pretending that an evil act was a good one, like Sophocles. He faces the horror; realises it; and tries to surmount it on the sweep of a ...
— The Electra of Euripides • Euripides
... funny!" cried Eleanor. "I wish you could have seen your face when all those women swarmed around you. I was afraid you were going to jump out of the window! Did you ever feel anything so hot and stuffy as that room? And weren't they all silly and make-believe?" ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... and little make-believe worries, just enough of them to make me realize I have them licked, and to remind me I must not let up on my ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... adviser gave him the answer, "You long to be without sin, and you have no real sin. Christ is the forgiveness of real sins, such as parricide and the like. If Christ is to help you, you must have a list of real sins, and not come to Him with such trash and make-believe sins, seeing a sin in every trifle." The manner in which Luther gradually raised himself above such despair was decisive for his whole life. The God whom he served was at that time a God of terror. His anger was to be appeased only by the means of grace which the ancient Church prescribed—in ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... minutes ago, Tryon was calling for volunteers to come down here and steal an engine. From what he said, I took it they were aimin' to go over into the desert to tear up the track and stop somebody or something coming this way from Copah—all on account of that make-believe message ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... Boffin; 'and yet, to tell you the whole truth and nothing but the truth, I'm rather proud of it. My dear, the old lady thinks so high of me that she couldn't abear to see and hear me coming out as a reg'lar brown one. Couldn't abear to make-believe as I meant it! In consequence of which, we was everlastingly in ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... grandma and I were left together to enjoy a small fire in the dining-room, so I took this opportunity of inquiring how Jim Clay had managed to capture her. This sort of thing interested me; I liked life in the actuality where there was no counterfeit or make-believe to offend the sense of just proportions. Not that I do not love books and pictures, but they have to be so very very good before they can in any way appease one, while the meanest life is absorbingly interesting, invested as it must ever be with ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... he is a make-believe," she told herself; "and he's got them all fooled proper. Maybe he wants the farm, seeing old Skinflint didn't get it. I am going to ask Mrs. Grinnell. She had sense enough to run ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
... orangs or monkeys seize each other and wrestle, fall, and roll over and over, indefinitely. They make great pretenses of biting each other, but it is all make-believe. My favorite orang-utan pet in Borneo loved to play at biting me, but whenever the pressure became too strong I would say chidingly, "Ah! Ah!" and his jaws would instantly relax. He loved to butt me in the chest with his head, make wry faces, and make funny noises with his lips. ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... friend that the draft be reduced, the bullocks sent away, and that the traveler take a beer. "I took the beer," says Mr. Hazard. A dollar in gold means just four hundred dollars in Haytian paper: a cocktail cost the traveler "thirty dollars," and other things in proportion. These beginnings of make-believe pomposity are followed up by the strangest revelations wherever the adventurer sets his foot. Going from Cape Haytien to the citadel and "Sans-Souci" palace of Christophe, the traveler is charged "two thousand dollars" by the drunken negro guide, and "a dollar" by the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... were further lightened that afternoon when she was made the special messenger to carry to Miss Almira Belt the very lavender and white wrapper which she and Patty had picked out that day when they were doing the make-believe shopping. Marian, of course, told Mrs. Hunt all about it, and as one of the Guild which looked after such things, it had been voted to give Miss Almira some such present, and Mrs. Hunt had gone with Mrs. Perkins to select it. They had all agreed that Marian's choice was ...
— Little Maid Marian • Amy E. Blanchard
... in the world nearest to his heart. But he was commonly trying to find out something, or to produce some impression, as a juggler is working at his miracle while he keeps people's attention by his voluble discourse and make-believe movements. In his lightest talk he was almost always edging towards a practical object, and it was an interesting and instructive amusement to watch for the moment at which he would ship the belt of his colloquial ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... say, 'No.' Yet this is just the double work required in Soldiers' Homes, and above all at Lydd, where there is so little safe amusement to be had in camp, and none in the village." These poor youngsters go from this "safe amusement" under the loving care of "lady workers," this life of limitation, make-believe and spiritual servitude that a self-respecting negro would find intolerable, into a warfare that exacts initiative and a freely acting intelligence from all who take part in it, under the bitterest penalties of shame and death. What can you expect ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... knock-down blow, surely. He was a just man, so far as he knew, and as he studied the situation over he could not blame the girl. In the light of her convincing wrath he comprehended that the sharp things she had said to him in the past were not make-believe-not love taps, but real blows. She had not been coquetting. with him; she had tried to keep him away. She considered herself too good for a hired man. Well, maybe she' was. Anyhow, she had gone out ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... but imagine the summer-evening come, and Daniel and the French officer stealing down to the rocky beach. The young sailor showed a deal of doubtful feeling as he saw the tearful energy with which little Bertha parted with her make-believe husband; and when little Doome, who had been let into all the secrets, except the one that Daniel kept to himself—namely, that he was Daniel,—when little Doome crept up to condole with him on the hard case ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... greens, and make-believe things that don't nourish you at all. And there was such nice fish. Why do they not get some? The river certainly ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... Her make-believe liking for the little home became more and more real as spring drew near. She began to take an interest in it, in the flower garden, in the beds beside the porch, where the peonies and daffodils were beginning to show green heads above the ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... applause. A very equivocal compliment to ourselves it may be; but such jolly-looking "shabby fellows" as sat round the table at which our Tony presided, were never furnished by the supernumeraries of Drury or Covent-garden. They were as classical, in their way, as Macready's Roman mob. Then there was no make-believe puffing of empty pipes, and fictitious drinking of small-beer for punch; every nose among the audience could appreciate the genuineness of both liquor and tobacco; and the hearty encore which the song, with its stentorian chorus, was honoured ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... ability, in the conviction which has grown with my growth and strengthened with my strength, that there is no alleviation for the sufferings of mankind except veracity of thought and of action, and the resolute facing of the world as it is when the garment of make-believe by which pious hands have hidden its uglier features is ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... in satiric comedy is either to contemplate ridicule of them or to ask comedy to be other than satiric. We know what happened when the dramatists gave way: there followed, Hazlitt says, 'those do-me-good, lack-a-daisical, whining, make-believe comedies in the next age, which are enough to set one to sleep, and where the author tries in vain to be merry and wise in the same breath.' These in place of 'the court, the gala day of wit and pleasure, of gallantry, and Charles the Second!' And all because ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... against his wife for more than a week after the scene at Richmond, feeding it with reflections on what he called her disobedience. Nor was it a make-believe anger. She had declared her intention to act in opposition to his expressed orders. He felt that his present condition was prejudicial to his interests, and that he must take his wife back into favour, in order that he might make progress with her father, but could ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... the preacher's voice, and by and by the people began to sing, and she rose solemnly, as if it were her own parishioners in the garden who lifted up their voices. A cheerful robin began a loud solo in one of Dr. Leslie's cherry-trees, and the little girl laughed aloud in her make-believe meeting-house, and then the gate was opened and shut, and the doctor himself appeared, strolling along, and ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... his jokes. It was rum made hot on the fire; and he could drink it scalding and never wink: and he would drink it till he got reg'lar wild. He was never right-down drunk, but just wild, like a savage beast! And then he would jump up, and make-believe he was fighting, and holler out to give it to the Spanish dogs, and that there were lots of doubloons below. I've gone myself with other youngsters, to listen at the door; and once when he was in the fit, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 426 - Volume 17, New Series, February 28, 1852 • Various
... She was the tiniest little bent old creature, her handkerchiefed head was quick and alert, and her eyes were bright with excitement and feeling, but the rest of her was much the worse for age; she could hardly move, poor soul, as if she had only a make-believe framework of a body under a shoulder-shawl and thick petticoats. She got back to her chair again, and the guests took off their bonnets in the bedroom, and returned discreet and sedate in their black woolen dresses. The lonely kitchen was blest with society at last, to its mistress's heart's ...
— The Queen's Twin and Other Stories • Sarah Orne Jewett
... of Florida, Mr. MacCauley says that among the children's games are skipping and dancing, leap-frog, teetotums, building a merry-go-round, carrying a small make-believe rifle of stick, etc. They also "sit around a small piece of land, and, sticking blades of grass into the ground, name it a 'corn-field,'" and "the boys kill small birds in the bush with their bows and arrows, and call it 'turkey-hunting.'" ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... From earliest girlhood she has heard his tale and brooded over it; and self-sacrifice being her hobby, she has evidently worked herself up into a morbid state of mind and resolved to "redeem" the unfortunate man should the opportunity occur. This is honest work, not Scribe make-believe. Cases in which men and women have wrought themselves into an exalted mood and planned and achieved deeds, great or small, noble or ignoble, but always more or less mad, are common enough in history to justify a dramatist in taking a specimen as one of the persons of his drama. Besides, Senta, ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... another part of this record alluded, at that time doing his baccalaureat on the other side of the Seine and coming over to our world at scraps of moments (for I recall my awe of the tremendous nature, as I supposed it, of his toil), as to quite a make-believe and gingerbread place, the lightest of substitutes for the "Europe" in which he had been from the first so technically plunged. His mother and sister, also on an earlier page referred to, had, from their ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... winrows of corpses on battlefields, countless maimed and sick in hospitals, treachery among Generals, folly in the Executive and Legislative departments, schemers, thieves everywhere,—cant, credulity, make-believe everywhere. Thought you greatness was to ripen for you, like a pear? If you would have greatness, know that you must conquer it through ages, centuries,—must pay for it with a proportionate price. For you, too, as for all lands, ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... away, and their places being filled at the bottom of the social ladder by foreigners, and by immigration of residents and "summer boarders" of the "world's people." Above all, the powerful ideal of Quakerism was shattered. The community had lost the "make-believe" at which it had played for a century in perfect unity. With it went the moral and social authority of the Meeting. Two Meetings mutually contradicting could never express the ideal of Quakerism, that asserted the inspiration ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... written in it; but the ticket was there, and in the evening Knud went to the theatre for the first time in his life. And what did he see? He saw Joanna, and how charming and how beautiful she looked! She was certainly married to a stranger, but that was all in the play—something that was only make-believe, as Knud knew very well. If it had been real, he thought, she would never have had the heart to send him a ticket that he might go and see it. And all the people shouted and applauded, ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... go quite as often by nicknames as by those to which they are lawfully entitled. Half the cowboys and hunters of my acquaintance are known by names entirely unconnected with those they inherited or received when they were christened. Occasionally some would-be desperado or make-believe mighty hunter tries to adopt what he deems a title suitable to his prowess; but such an effort is never attempted in really wild places, where it would be greeted with huge derision; for all of these names that are genuine are bestowed by outsiders, with small ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... the general culture of the people with the utterances of individuals or of learned circles; and here, too, a distinction must be drawn between the true assimilation of ancient doctrines and fashionable make-believe. For with many, antiquity was only a fashion, even among very ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... had cork stoppers for heads, with faces marked on the sides, the rest, only wads of paper or cloth fastened on the ends of sticks that reached down into the bodies. A strip of cloth tied around each neck, below the bulge, served as make-believe arms, suitable for all ordinary purposes, and, with a little assistance, capable of saluting an officer or ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... most about her, and the thing that has set me writing about her, was this: I noticed that her face was painted and powdered. Now if there is one thing I abominate above all others it is a painted face. On the stage, of course, it is right and proper. The stage is a world of make-believe, and it is the business of the lady of sixty to give you the impression that she is a sweet young thing of seventeen. There is no affectation in this. It is her vocation to be young, and she follows it as willingly or unwillingly as you or I follow our ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... absolutely childish devices. It might be that he would buy toy pistols and paper caps for himself and his following of urchins; or that his whim would lead him to expend all the money in tin flutes. In one case the group he so incongruously headed would be for that one day a gang of make-believe banditti; in another, they would constitute themselves a fife-and-drum corps—with barreltops for the drums—and would march through the streets, where scandalised adults stood in their tracks to watch them go by, they all the while making weird sounds, which ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... shrinking from the contact of reality. It had been all right as a provision merchant, but when it fancied itself capable of higher things it had deceived itself. Foolish little image with its brave dreams and its swelling words from Browning! All make-believe of the feeblest. He was a coward, running away at the first threat of danger. It was as if he were watching a tall stranger with a wand pointing to the embarrassed phantom that was himself, and ruthlessly exposing its frailties! And yet the pitiless ...
— Huntingtower • John Buchan
... pitiable state of suppressed excitement before the ordeal was concluded. The solemnity and impressiveness of the vows she was taking disturbed the serenity with which she had schooled herself to regard the marriage as "make-believe." She was frightened at her own daring. A dread that the tie she was so lightly assuming might be harder to undo than she had contemplated was fluttering her heart and almost paralyzing her limbs. But Curtis was unemotional as an icicle; or, at any rate, ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... tired of playing doctor, Jan, and giving your make-believe sick doll bread pills. I want to do something else," and Teddy began taking off the coat, which was so long for him that it ...
— The Curlytops at Uncle Frank's Ranch • Howard R. Garis
... that he was ever very civil to me. I tell you, so far from rewarding him for being of the true sort, you do nothing but snub him, that I can see. He looks to me as good for work as any man I know; but you'll give your livings to any kind of wretched make-believe before you'll give them to Frank. I am aware," said the heir of the Wentworths, with a momentary flush, "that I have never been considered much of a credit to the family; but if I were to announce my intention of marrying and settling, there is not one of the name that would ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... time, though you make believe," said Herbert, "that they draw the coach of themselves; if one gives them the least push, they tumble down on their sides, and one must turn back, for ever and ever, to set them up upon their wooden legs again. I don't like make-believe horses; I had rather be both man and horse for myself." Then, whipping himself, he galloped away, pleased ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... look upon fiction as perhaps a necessary evil, but one which must be avoided as much as possible and set aside at the earliest possible moment. All fiction has in it some elements of truth, and they are the sources of the inspiration which comes to children when, in their world of make-believe, they live with their beautiful and heroic friends ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... reflect upon the lives of theatrical artists, that they are altogether unnatural existences, and produce—pardon the bull—artificial natures, which are misplaced anywhere but in their own unreal and make-believe sphere. They are the anomalous growth of our diseased civilizations, and, removed from their own factitious soil, flourish, I half believe, in none other. Do not laugh at me, but I really do think that creatures with the temperaments necessary for making good actors and actresses ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... exactly. They had a steamboat, you know, to carry over the telegraph from England to France; but we haven't got a steamer—not even a plank to make-believe one. Cousin Sam says that a good workman can do his work with almost any tools that come to hand. As we have no tools at all, we will improve on that and go to work without ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... know what a 'parallel of latitude' is, because I learned it in my geography," said Dodo, who had been pouting since Nat teased her about the cracked ice; "it's a make-believe line that runs all round the world like the equator. But ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... Needless to add, these screens would serve to obscure neither sound, sight, nor smell of drunken rowdies who sat behind them! In summer cars black and white passengers may be separated not even by a make-believe screen; they are simply required, respectively, to occupy certain seats in the front or the back end of ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... would then bend back to the make-belief work at which he was posing." There is a picture of interviewing! Everything so prepared, so studied, so well described to impress the subscribers of the enterprising journal. The photographer with a wide angle lens took in all that was in my studio—to "make-believe," as the camera invariably does, that the apartment was six times larger than it really is. But the artist, who should idealise if the photographer could not, who so sadly interfered with my enjoying ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... cheap and incredibly tawdry, from the festoons of paper roses on the walls to the flash of paste jewels in make-believe crowns. The big hall, with its stage flanked by gilded boxes, was crowded with a shifting throng of maskers in costumes of flaunting discord. Above the noisy laughter and popping of corks, rose the blaring strains of a brass band. ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... who are picketed in the open. And thunder. It's often extremely difficult to tell whether, when the thunder is far away, it is thunder or guns. Quite a novel experience, and quite pleasant after the long period of make-believe in England. Discipline. So salutary and so irksome. Now for the battle. I own I long to get into the thick of it soon. We see infantry returning and going up, and we feel sick, somehow, to ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson
... pretty, womanish Mazaro from time to time poured forth, in the ever ungratified hope that the goddess might come down with a draught of nectar for him, it profiteth not to recount; but I should fail to show a family feature of the Cafe des Exiles did I omit to say that these make-believe adventures were heard with every mark of respect and credence; while, on the other hand, they were never attempted in the presence of the Irishman. He would have moved an eyebrow, or made some barely audible sound, or dropped some seemingly innocent word, and the whole company, ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... that these words spoken from under the brim of her hat (oh yes, certainly, her head was down—she had put it down) gave me a thrill; for indeed I had never doubted her sincerity. It could never have been, a make-believe despair. ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... adventures of Mr. Penley in "Charley's Aunt"? In all of these "ludicrous" affairs there is an element of surprise, a slight shock which puts us off our mental balance, and the subsequent laughter, when we realise either that no serious harm has been done or that the whole thing is make-believe, seems to partake of the character of the "laugh of escape." It is caused by a sense of relief when we recognise that the disaster is not real. We laugh at the "unreal" when we should be filled with horror and grief were ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... not dreaming; this was not a make-believe home of the Alp-climber, created by our heated imaginations; no, for here was Mr. Girdlestone himself, the famous Englishman who hunts his way to the most formidable Alpine summits without a guide. I was not equal to imagining a Girdlestone; it was all I could do to even realize him, while looking ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Prune. But one thing never varies, either in our household or in any other, neither in the north nor in the south of the Empire, and that is the dessert and the manner of eating it: after all these little dishes, which are a mere make-believe, is brought in a wooden bowl, bound with copper,—an enormous bowl, fit for Gargantua, and filled to the very brim with rice, plainly cooked in water. Chrysantheme fills another large bowl from it (sometimes twice, sometimes three times), darkens ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... the mother both acted their parts very well. He rushed to the arms of the old woman for protection, and screeched small, while the widow shouted "millia murther!" at the top of her voice, and did not give up her hold of the make-believe young woman until her cap was torn half off, and her hair streamed about her face. She called on all the saints in the calendar, as she knelt in the middle of the floor and rocked to and fro, with her clasped hands raised to heaven, calling down curses on the "villains and robbers" ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... may look, lass,' said he, 'but a'd thought better on thee. It's like last week thy last sweetheart were drowned; but thou's not one to waste time i' rememberin' them as is gone—if, indeed, thou iver cared a button for yon Kinraid—if it wasn't a make-believe.' ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell
... when he meets with an enemy, is bluff. He raises his ugly mane, lifts his ungainly shoulders and assumes the look of a Jason, while in reality he is as harmless as a mouse, and the smallest child could drive him away with a twig. His bravery is all pose—a make-believe game—which he plays over and over again with ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... marching units of United States troops. The columns of bluish-grey that passed them with shorter, quicker steps, were companies of those tireless Frenchmen, who after almost three years of the front line real thing, now played at a mimic war of make-believe, ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... surrounded by a laughing jostling throng of pierrots, jockeys, Dresden-china shepherdesses, Roumanian peasant-girls and all the lively make-believe creatures that form the ingredients of a fancy-dress ball. As she stood watching them she experienced a growing feeling of annoyance, chiefly with herself. She was assisting, as the French say, at one of the gayest scenes of Europe's gayest capital, and she was conscious of being absolutely ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki |
