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All is forced, coarse, heavy. The jokes are like cannon balls, smashing everything in their passage. No wit, nothing natural, no sprightliness, no elegance. These literary men, in truth, know nothing of society. They are perfectly ignorant of how people think and talk in our set. I do not mind if they despise our customs, our conventionalities, but I do not forgive them for not knowing them.
Alexina reached out and, with a passionate sort of protectingness, took hold of the beringed hand wielding a fan with vivacity and sprightliness. "I wish we could have given him more advantages," Mrs. Leroy was continuing; "but he's had to plan for us somehow instead.
The preface itself is a gem. New-England Galaxy. This book is written with sprightliness and ease, and may justly claim to be considered an agreeable as well as an instructive companion. It is inscribed in a brief but modest dedication to Mrs. E. D. Reed a lady of uncommon refinement, of manners and intellectual accomplishments. The descriptions of Madeira and Lisbon are the best we have read.
At any rate, she would be beneath the same sky, and the dear hope of meeting them would be a continual comfort. A whole day was consumed by Tippy her real name was Xantippe in plucking out Aunt Kizzie's grey hairs, and in fixing her up to appear to the best advantage for youth and sprightliness. She was only sixty, but hard labor and severe usage had told upon her heavily.
He continually brought her bon-bons and like fanciful trifles, till at last, in jest, the family called him Zell's "ancient beau." But during the past year it had dawned on him that the child he petted on account of her beauty and sprightliness, was rapidly becoming a brilliant woman, who would make a wife far more to his taste than her equally beautiful but matter-of-fact sister.
I remember hearing Miss Sedgwick say that she should always think the better of Verplanck for having been the husband of Eliza Fenno. Several of her letters written to him before their marriage are preserved, which, amidst the sprightliness natural to her age, show a more than usual thoughtfulness. She rallies him on being adopted by the mob, and making harangues at ward meetings.
He was not long in coming back to his usual sprightliness and decision.
Why he enjoyed so much of this lady's favour it was not easy to understand; intellectual sympathy there could be none between them, and as for personal liking, on his side it did not go beyond that naturally excited by a good-natured, feather-brained, rather pretty woman, whose sprightliness never passed the limits of decorum, and who seemed to have better qualities than found scope in her butterfly existence.
What struck him and his fellow-traveller in a special manner was the effects of famine on the children; their faces were so wan and haggard that they looked like old men and women; their sprightliness was all gone; they sat in groups at their cabin doors, making no attempt to play. Another indication of the Famine noticed by them was, that the pigs and poultry had entirely disappeared.
But when he is rational he is often dull when he is unreasonable he is often very entertaining. The speech of April 18th was a rational speech it was, therefore, a dull one. Lord Randolph is not what he was. The voice which was formerly so resonant has become muffled and sometimes almost indistinct, and the manner has lost all the sprightliness which used to relieve it in the olden days.
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