Phoenixiana, Or, Sketches and Burlesques

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D. Appleton & Company, 1889 - 274 pages
 

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Page 195 - O Woman ! in our hours of ease, Uncertain, coy, and hard to please, And variable as the shade By the light quivering aspen made, When pain and anguish wring the brow, A ministering angel thou ! — Scarce were the piteous accents said, When, with the Baron's casque, the maid To the nigh streamlet ran.
Page 113 - Archangel; but his face Deep scars of thunder had intrenched, and care Sat on his faded cheek, but under brows Of dauntless courage, and considérate pride Waiting revenge.
Page 43 - ... hers to be the perfection of acting, we cannot be wrong in the belief that no one hereafter will ever be found to approach her. Her conception of the character of Ingomar was perfection itself; her playful and ingenuous manner, her light girlish laughter, in the scene with Sir Peter, showed an appreciation of the savage character, which nothing but the most arduous study, the most elaborate training could produce; while her awful change to the stern, unyielding, uncompromising father in the tragic...
Page 32 - ... though of the same general class or quality, differ from each other by a thousand different shades or degrees of the same peculiarity. Thus, though there are three hundred and sixty-five days in a year, all of which must, from the nature of things, differ from each other in the matter of climate, — we have but half a dozen expressions to convey to one another our ideas of this inequality. We say — " It is a fine day ; " " It is a very fine day ; " " It is the finest day we have seen ; " or,...
Page 32 - I have often thought that the adjectives of the English language were not sufficiently definite for the purposes of description. They have but three degrees of comparison — a very insufficient number, certainly, when we consider that they are to be applied to a thousand objects, which, though of the same general class or quality, differ from each other by a thousand different shades or degrees of the same peculiarity. Thus, though there are three hundred and...
Page 42 - Franciscan interests, as to be careless what takes place in other portions of this great kedntry, and as it is received and read in San Diego with great interest (I have loaned my copy to over four different literary gentlemen, most of whom have read some of it) , I have thought it not improbable that a few critical notices of the musical performances and the drama of this place might be acceptable to you, and interest your readers. I have been, moreover, encouraged to this task by the perusal of...
Page 55 - Co. , wool-dealers, and who was named Co. Pernicus out of respect to his father's partners) soon set this matter to rights, and started the idea of the present Solar System which, greatly improved since his day, is occasionally called the Copernican system. By this system we learn that the Sun is stationed at one focus (not hocus, as it is rendered without authority by the philosopher Partington) of an ellipse, where it slowly grinds on for ever about its own axis , while the planets, turning about...
Page 39 - ... as the case may be ! Do you see how very close in this way you may approximate to the truth ; and how clearly your questioner will understand what he so anxiously wishes to arrive at — your exact state of health ? Let this system be adopted into our elements of grammar, our conversation, our literature, and we become at once an exact, precise, mathematical, truth-telling people. It will apply to everything but politics ; there, truth being of no account, the system is useless.
Page 47 - ... consisting of seven families, with forty-six wagons, each drawn by thirteen oxen; each family consists of a man in butternutcolored clothing driving the oxen; a wife in butternut-colored clothing riding in the wagon, holding a butternut baby, and seventeen butternut children running promiscuously about the establishment; all are barefooted, dusty, and smell unpleasantly. (All these circumstances are expressed by pretty rapid fiddling for some minutes, winding up with a puff from the orpheclide...
Page 232 - ... week old Byles returned; he was clamped into the iron chair, the forceps connected with the machine attached firmly to the tooth, and Tushmaker, stationing himself in the rear, took hold of a lever four feet in length. He turned it slightly. Old Byles gave a groan and lifted his right leg. Another turn ; another groan, and up went the leg again. " What do you raise your leg for?" asked the doctor. " I can't help it,

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