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More "Joke" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the decimal system should be kept well in mind, and the teacher should see that thirteen means three-ten, and that the children can touch the three and the ten as they speak the word. Eleven and twelve ought to be called oneteen and twoteen, half in joke. The idea of grouping should never be lost sight of, and larger numbers should at first be names for so many threes, fours, fives, etc. In order to keep the meaning clear the children should say threety, fourty and fivety, but there should be no need ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... an animal, he seems the badger among the writers of his time, nocturnal, inoffensive, solitary, but at the rumor of disturbance apt to rush out of its burrow and bite with terrific ferocity. The bite of Ibsen was no joke, and in moments of exasperation he bit, without selection, friend and foe alike. Among other snaps of the pen, he told Bjoernson that if he was not taken seriously as a poet, he should try his "fate as a photographer." Bjoernson, genially and wittily, took this up at once, and begged him to ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... incidents occurred to his memory, and each one brought on a fresh explosion. Even his own proposal to Zillah was remembered. He wondered whether Windham had proposed also, and been rejected. This only was needed to his mind to complete the joke. ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... a joke of the matter, and pretended that the dry maize-cakes were better than the fattest turkey. I spoke with such apparent seriousness that my companions began to get animated, and a sharp controversy gave a zest to our frugal meal. I asserted, too, that the tepid water in our gourds surpassed in flavor ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... 1815 Scott went to London, and met two persons of distinction, the Regent and Lord Byron. There seems to be a little doubt whether George did or did not adapt the joke of the hanging judge, about 'checkmating this time,' to the authorship of the Waverley novels; but there is no doubt that he was very civil. With Byron Scott was at once on very good terms, for Scott was not the man to bear any grudge ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury
... of some sort, no matter what, and then give me my fire, and my friends, the humblest glass of wine, and a few penn'orths of chestnuts, and I will still make out my Christmas. What! Have we not Burgundy in our blood? Have we not joke, laughter, repartee, bright eyes, comedies of other people, and comedies of our own; songs, memories, hopes? [An organ strikes up in the street at this word, as if to answer me in the affirmative. Right thou old spirit of harmony, wandering about ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... you have the character of being somewhat inconsiderate at times, as I am reputed a sober, solemn character, a jest or practical joke might ...
— Louise de la Valliere • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... wish you Would stop fooling me," said Peter. "The joke is on me, but now you've had your laugh at my expense, I wish you would tell me how you do it. ...
— The Adventures of Old Mr. Toad • Thornton W. Burgess
... for the time being. We always let each other alone in time to prevent ill feeling from spoiling a joke. But they had bought gloves, too, as I did. We threw all the purchases away together this morning. They were coarse, unsubstantial, freckled all over with broad yellow splotches, and could neither stand wear nor public exhibition. We had entertained an angel ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Subbar Khan, and Subbar means 'patience'; but the messenger did not know that, or understand that he was making a joke. However, he declared that the princess Imani was not only young and beautiful, but also the cleverest, most industrious, and kindest-hearted of princesses; and he would have gone on explaining her virtues had not the king laughingly put up his ...
— The Olive Fairy Book • Various
... paradisiacal fig-leaf, and go about in a state of absolute nudity. Livingstone told them that he should come back some day with his family, when none of them must come near without at least putting on a bunch of grass. They thought it a capital joke. Their mode of salutation is to fling themselves flat on their backs, and roll from side to side, slapping the outside of ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... father, liked his joke. "Sporting men," he said, "always go to a meet, and clerical men to a meeting. ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... his apartment where he reluctantly commenced dressing for the ordeal of the night. He felt himself rather ridiculous—a man of his age calling on a girl not yet out of high school. The thing was funny—of course—but just at the moment the joke was too entirely on him for the full ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... full appreciation of the new era; an ear in which it would seem that neither honesty nor truth is very desirable, but in which success is the only touchstone of merit. We must laugh at every thing that is established. Let the joke be ever so bad, ever so untrue to the real principles of joking; nevertheless we must laugh—or else beware the cart. We must talk, think, and live up to the spirit of the times, and write up to it too, if that cacoethes be upon us, or else we are ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... day, look at Lyon between the eyes—guess he was being played upon—which would lead to his wife's guessing it also. Not that Lyon cared much for that however, so long as she failed to suppose (as she must) that she was a part of his joke. He formed such a habit now of going to see her of a Sunday afternoon that he was angry when she went out of town. This occurred often, as the couple were great visitors and the Colonel was always looking for sport, which he liked best when it could be had at other people's ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... did once—an' you notice to-night he left the kegs be. So they get a good grade of whisky from the liquor houses. And they pass up the best, imported stuff that can be got to-day. We'll have regular customers for that; and you can gamble they'll pay the price!" He laughed at some secret joke which he straightway shared ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... boys, dear," spoke Mrs. Upper. "They will laff, joke or none. We ain't none of us blamin' you. It's a wonder you ain't run off long afore now. I can give you a job an' welcome, but you'll be green an' unhandy. Well, sir, we kin learn ye. You kin turn yer hand ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... Piper has for secretive private wires and the absurd precautions he takes to keep them intensely private. "Why he went and had all his special numbers here changed once just because I found out one of them by mistake and called him up on it for a joke—the cryptic old person!" Peter had said ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... next night the stranger again stood opposite the Baron, piercing him through and through with his dark fiery glance. Then the Baron burst out still more angrily than on the preceding night, "If you think it a joke, sir, to stare at me, pray choose some other time and some other place to do so; and now have the"—— A wave of the hand towards the door took the place of the harsh words the Baron was about to utter. And as on the previous night, the stranger, after bowing slightly, left the ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... remember now. There was a damned good mess-room joke about him. When he was in the Blues they used to say his solemn face would stop a merry-making. Well, after he had been in Austria a while they told this on him; that his field-marshal had him listed for a majority, and so he was presented to the empress. ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... good for a citizen of the greatest republic on the face of the earth. He said the tickets had been stamped on. I said so should I be if I returned without exchanging them. He was a very dense person, and didn't see my joke at all, but then, it is true, there were thirteen men in line behind me, with the train starting in three minutes, and there is nothing so debilitating to a naturally weak sense of humor as selling tickets behind a grating, so I am not really vexed with him. There! we are quite comfortable, ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... me, sir? And pray, why? I must confess that I was very much astonished when I received your letter informing me that the famous Detective-Inspector Juve wished to see me, and at first I suspected some practical joke. On consideration I decided to obey your summons without further pressing, but I did not imagine that you would have made any enquiries about me. How do you know ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... been able to take it indeed easily as a joke. "Ah, love, I began with that. I know enough, I feel, never to be surprised. It's you yourselves meanwhile," he continued, "who really know nothing. There are two parts of me"—yes, he had been moved to go on. "One is made up of the ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... commodore was holding Mrs. Abbott at bay, in this manner, Captain Truck, who had given him a wink to that effect, was employed in playing off a practical joke at the expense of the widow. It was one of the standing amusements of these worthies, who had gotten to be sworn friends and constant associates, after they had caught as many fish as they wished, to retire to the favourite spring, light, the one his cigar, the ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... it, Mother Michael? What is the joke? Tell us, that we may laugh too; for you know we must laugh. It is our duty ...
— Prince Vance - The Story of a Prince with a Court in His Box • Eleanor Putnam
... advise you to keep your mouth shut about it till you get some positive proof," the sheriff said dryly. "I tell you it's no joke to accuse a member of a family like the Wingfields of helping ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... antidote to the attractions of Neville's tract it was powerless, and to-day it remains as much of a curiosity as it was in 1668, when it was written. Indeed, a question might be raised as to which tract was less intentionally a joke—Neville's "Isle of Pines," or our German's ponderous essay upon it? At least the scientific ignorance of the Englishman, perfectly evident from the start, is more entertaining than the pseudo-science of the German critic, who boldly asserts as impossible ...
— The Isle Of Pines (1668) - and, An Essay in Bibliography by W. C. Ford • Henry Neville
... blackbird, goldfinches, canaries, linnets. Athos, the fat dog, who goes to market daily in a barchetta with his master, snuffs around. 'Where are Porthos and Aramis, my friend?' Athos does not take the joke; he only wags his stump of tail and pokes his nose into my hand. What a Tartufe's nose it is! Its bridge displays the full parade of leather-bound brass-nailed muzzle. But beneath, this muzzle is a patent sham. The frame does not even pretend to close on Athos' ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... "So we will—good joke, John. Oh, about this Stiefel, he carries his money in a belt round his waist. I infer that it ...
— Do and Dare - A Brave Boy's Fight for Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... of verdant Vermont, Of wisdom you may be a marvellous font; But you'll hardly get JOHN,—'tis too much of a joke!— To buy in your fashion a Pig in a Poke; Which nobody ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, Sept. 27, 1890 • Various
... cruel—forgive my upbraiding— As snakes, nor as hard as the toughest of oak; To stand out here, drenched to the skin, serenading All night may in time prove too much of a joke." ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... millions. The Duke of Brancas, the head of the family, was present throughout the negotiation, and shared in all the profits. St. Simon, who treats the matter with the levity becoming what he thought so good a joke, adds, "that people did not spare their animadversions on this beautiful marriage," and further informs us, "that the project fell to the ground some months afterwards by the overthrow of Law, and ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... unusual and unlooked for, that it took him a moment or two to realize the words; then, fearing it might be some practical joke, he recalled the driver, and heard with amazement that the Jew's granddaughter had herself given him the message. Assured of this fact, he answered the summons for his father promptly. Miriam was waiting just within the door; and, scarcely heeding his explanation, ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... enormous laugh requited Bill's joke. Perry prompted, the Chair banged with his bolt and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... began to laugh again, and that so heartily, that though I did not see the joke as he did, I was again obliged to join him in ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... at night and a joke by day? It seems to be so, and the common sense of the public mind ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... Madame; you have so much esprit, you laugh at me," said the Frenchman, who took Mrs. Hilson's protestation as a joke. ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... when he's serious; but when he tries to be funny, you know, it's too obvious. I can always see him feeling for the joke. No, it doesn't come off. You know an artist simply doesn't exist for me unless he has something to say. That's what makes me so annoyed with R.L.S. In 'Weir of Hermiston' and the 'New Arabian Nights' he really had something to say; the rest of the ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... inconvenient to be close up with No. 3 boat as it drew towards midday and my time (as he put it, growling) for 'taking the Old Man's temperature.' He was misguided enough, on the fourth day, to let off a part of this rather feeble joke upon the captain himself, and found his bearings pretty smartly. He had so managed things that at ten minutes to noon it became pretty clear I must miss my appointment. All three boats carried sail now: the weather being perfect, with a nor'-westerly ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... has occurred? Oh yes, I remember now. One of these nonsensical mesmeric experiments. There is no result this time, for I remember nothing at all since I became unconscious; so you have had all your long journeys for nothing, my learned friends, and a very good joke too;" at which the Regius Professor of Physiology burst into a roar of laughter and slapped his thigh in a highly indecorous fashion. The audience were so enraged at this unseemly behaviour on the part of their host, that there might have been a considerable disturbance, had it not been for the judicious ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... originally written by me for the Southern Bivouac, is strictly true. The successful forager was once a patient of mine, and is well known to me. I also know that he perpetrated the joke as described. The article is intended to appear as if written by ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... brought me news of Baby and gave me my tea. Isn't he queer? Not half so bad as people make him out to be. Oh!—and I was so overjoyed and excited that I kissed his hand. I wonder what he thought of my foolishness?" and she laughed at the joke; but her husband seemed to have lost his sense of humour, for he retired from the bedside to pace ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... to the Nibelungen in course of performance at the Walhalla-Roszavolgyi has royally amused me. [A joke of Mihalovich, who had nicknamed several mutually known people with the names and characters out of the Nibelungen] I wish that Wagner may find in Messrs. Betz, Scaria, Niemann, etc., interpreters as well suited to their roles as Richter-Wotan, Dunkl-Loge, ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... have played at getting tolerable cooking out of two slovens, one of whom knows nothing, and the other everything but his business,—and have lost the game; we have played at catching trout, and found this the best joke of all. There are beautiful brook-trout on the coast of Labrador. They say so; it is so. Beautiful trout,—mostly visible to the naked eye! Not many of them, but enough to gratify ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... boy," laughed the man. "That's a good one! It sounded for all the world as though someone had smashed one of my windows with a brick-bat. Ha, ha, ha! That's an all right one! I'd be willing to shake hands with the boy who put up that joke on me. How about my own Timmy, I wonder? No; Timmy wouldn't be smart enough for this one—-but he may have smart friends. I'll look up that young ...
— The High School Boys' Fishing Trip • H. Irving Hancock
... store, a few minutes before, one of the boys had called out, facetiously, "Shet yer mouth when ye go by the deepot, Laigs; the train's comin' in!" But he only smiled placidly, though it was an ancient joke, the flavor of which had just fully penetrated the rustic skull; and the villagers could not resist titillating the sense of humor with it once or twice a month. Neither did Jabez mind being called "Laigs," the local pronunciation of the word "legs;" in fact, his good humor ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... great moment, for always on his return he would be closeted immediately with one or other of the partners, who in turn seemed to consider him important too, and would sometimes treat him almost like one of themselves, actually condescending to laugh with him now and again over some joke, evidently as mysterious as all the rest. This Mr. Perkins seldom noticed the juniors in his department, though occasionally he would select one of them to accompany him on one of his missions to clients of the firm; and they would start off together, ...
— Young Lives • Richard Le Gallienne
... There never was a more jovial crew. The compliments of the season were passed round, and the Christmas Waits, singing their Christmas carols, were entertained right royally. For was it not a time of peace and good will? Then there was a mighty laugh. A huge joke had been perpetrated. Grandfather had been asleep, and he was telling the youngsters, who had been playing a round game, the character of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 24, 1892 • Various
... that contemporary conditions were exceptionally favorable to the success of the Tedworth hoax. In all likelihood the children had nothing to do with the first alarm, the alarm that occurred during Mompesson's absence in London; and possibly the second was only a rude practical joke by some village lads who had heard of the first and wished to put the Squire's courage to a test. But once the little Mompessons learned, or suspected, that their father associated the noises with the vagrant drummer, a wide vista ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... at that time, to be in a sort of mixed temper, between pleasantness and sourness. He would sometimes joke (which was natural to him), and cast out a jesting flirt at me; but he would rail maliciously against the Quakers. "If" said he to me, "the King would authorise me to do it, I would not leave a Quaker alive in England, except you. I would make no more," added he, "to set ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood
... Steve was in plenty trouble, or he wouldn't have sent for help. The boy's distress denied the joke I suspected; I grabbed a rope and made for the grove, the boy trailing me. I should have gotten a gun, but I ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... the medicine man said about the banjo player was only a joke, and the people knew that. He was not a professor at all. But he was a good banjo player and a singer, and Bunny and Sue were delighted with the music. The ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue on an Auto Tour • Laura Lee Hope
... and self-sacrifice has been proved in these last six months; it is to other qualities that one must look for final victory in a war of exhaustion. The Englishman does not look into himself; he does not brood; he sees no further forward than is necessary, and he must have his joke. These are fearful and wonderful advantages. Examine the letters and diaries of the various combatants and you will see how far less imaginative and reflecting, (though shrewd, practical, and humorous,) the English are than any others; you ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... yard of stove-pipe chain, by which it was hung around the neck of the winner of the last prize. A shout of laughter and a round of applause greeted the presentation of the medal. Laud did not know whether to smile or get mad; for he felt like the victim of a practical joke. Miss Nellie Patterdale stood near him, and perhaps her presence restrained an outburst of anger. Mr. Montague, the father of the commodore, had provided a bountiful collation in the cabin of the Penobscot, and the next half hour was given up to the discussion ...
— The Yacht Club - or The Young Boat-Builder • Oliver Optic
... when the jocund bowl we pass, And joke and wit and whim abound, When song and catch and friend and lass In sparkling wine we toast around, When Bull and Pun Rude riot run, And finding still the mirth increasing, Pealing laughter roars sans ceasing, I peal and roar and pant and ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... grave. He could not forgive La Normande's savage cruelty, which henceforth made him see the grinning jaws and hollow eyes of a skeleton within that lovely pink bonnet. Whenever the fish-girl tried to joke with him on the subject he turned quite angry, and silenced ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... Dressel; the difficulty was that she never quite knew when Justine's retorts were loaded, or when her own susceptibilities were the target aimed at; and between her desire to appear to take the joke, and the fear of being ridiculed without knowing it, her pretty face often presented an interesting study in perplexity. As usual, she now took refuge in bringing the talk back ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... if smiling at some hidden joke, "now you will meet my Superman." And she led the young American girl to Octave Keroulan and his wife, and, after greeting them in her ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... me yesterday; the King gave me a charming little locket for his hair, and only think—what will sound most extraordinary, absurd, and incredible to your ears—made me Second Chef of the 2nd Regiment of Hussars! I laughed so much, because really I thought it was a joke—it seemed so strange for ladies; but the Regiments like particularly having ladies for their Chefs! The Queen and the Queen Dowager have Regiments, but I believe I am the first Princess on whom such ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... the worst singer of the three - took the music seriously to heart, and judged the serenade from a high artistic point of view. Elvira, on the other hand, was preoccupied about their reception; and, as for Stubbs, he considered the whole affair in the light of a broad joke. ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... officers did not laugh at[1] the joke. 2. The surprise of the old courtiers was[2] great. 3. Voltaire was a famous author. 4. The servant's master will not be at the castle. 5. He wouldn't have[3] gone to[4] see the servant. 6. The man with[5] the yellow mask had gone to the chateau. 7. The beggar does ...
— French Conversation and Composition • Harry Vincent Wann
... constant but unassuming help he had received from Benda. He thought of the refined and delicate consideration of his friend. He thought especially of that extraordinary courtesy which was so marked in him, that, for example, while laughing at a good joke, Benda would stop with open mouth if some one resumed the conversation: he did not wish to lose anything another might wish ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... always the virtues of whose presence he was conscious in his good moods letting the bad ones slide, nor taking any account of what was in them. He substituted forgetfulness for repudiation, a return of good humor for repentance, and at best a joke for apology. ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... cities and towns; the great majority of these are men of means and leisure. Idleness is their curse, their opportunity for sin; you may know them as the loungers over refreshment-bars, as the retailers of the latest filthy joke, or as the vendors of some disgusting scandal; indeed, it is appalling the number of these lepers found both in our business and ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... the name of a process in Scots Law, and need alarm no honest man," said she. "But you are a very idle-minded young gentleman; you must still have your joke, I see: I only hope you will have no cause ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... nice; quite impertinent. Gordon can't get over the idea that it is a joke, S. McB. in conjunction with one hundred and thirteen orphans. But he wouldn't think it such a joke if he could try it for a few days. He says he is going to drop off here on his next trip North and watch the struggle. ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... The irony with which this was said was evident in the squire's face and voice. Augustus only quietly laughed. The attorney sat as firm as death. He was not going to argue with such a statement or to laugh at such a joke. "I suppose it will come to over ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... "You intimated a few minutes ago that you were rather inexperienced," she went on daringly. "If this winter you will try for such a reputation as Mrs. Latimer gave me, I'll agree to meet you on the field of battle." As she concluded the doctor came up and the joke was explained to him. He turned ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... abbreviation for "April Fool's Joke". Elaborate April Fool's hoaxes are a long-established tradition on Usenet and Internet; see {kremvax} for an example. In fact, April Fool's Day is the *only* seasonal holiday consistently marked by customary observances on Internet ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... laughing, but it was impossible to decide whether the boy was ignorant of the meaning of the word, or was trying to perpetrate a joke. ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic
... because it was so easy. There was something on his back, something that jogged about and hit him on the side of the head, that gripped him round the chest! What was it? He felt gingerly, and laughed again. His carbine! What was the use of a carbine there? No good, of course. What a joke to throw it down and hear the splash, or, better, to fire it off and ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... with a grateful smile. She comprehended perfectly John Heywood's delicacy and nice tact; she apprehended that he wanted by a joke to relieve her from her painful situation, and put an end to the king's public acknowledgment, which at the same time must turn to her bitter reproach—bitter, though it were ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach
... they really are not. Boisterous their mirth may be, for they have all the excitement of feeling that fresh air and green fields can impart to the dwellers in crowded cities, but it is innocent and harmless. The glass is circulated, and the joke goes round; but the one is free from excess, and the other from offence; and nothing but good humour and ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... Sarcastic joke Replete with malice spiteful, The people vile Politely smile And vote me quite delightful! Now, when a wight Sits up all night Ill-natured jokes devising, And all his wiles Are met with smiles, It's hard, there's no disguising! Oh, don't the days seem lank ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... child pouted, and was utterly averse to any detour of any sort. "Let's get back straight to Ivor," she said, petulantly. "I've had enough of camping out. It's all very well in its way for a week but when they begin to talk about cutting your throat and all that, it ceases to be a joke and becomes a wee bit uncomfortable. I want my feather bed. ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... down, as far from each other as they could. The belt-maker's apprentice, who was one of them, tried to make a joke, but the words refused to come. They saw themselves confronted by the police-court, the prison, the hospital and, in the background, the asylum. They did not know what was going to happen, but they felt instinctively that a species of scourging awaited them. Their only comfort in their ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... mystery," he went on to say, trying to take the thing as a joke. "Some kind friend sends me a solemn warning, and then neglects to sign his name. Do you think any of the fellows of the escadrille could be up to ...
— Air Service Boys Over The Enemy's Lines - The German Spy's Secret • Charles Amory Beach
... understood the danger. She blushed once at finding that she had called him Bertie and, on the same day, only barely remembered her position in time to check herself from playing upon him some personal practical joke to which she was ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... danger would be greater, and therefore his exhibition would be incomparable! Then you all delight in distortions; if a man can bend his back bone, or sit upon his head, you are in raptures, and seem to think it a good joke to see a fellow creature shortening his life. Then if any man will ride a dozen horses at once, without saddle or bridle; or go into an oven and be baked brown, or eat a fire shovel full of burning coals, or drink deadly poison, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 386, August 22, 1829 • Various
... "A joke! I'll attend to any joking around here," said Butsey, with a reckless wave of his razor. "There may be a few patent, nickel-plated jokes roaming around here, soon, you hadn't thought of. Now, what did they ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... Likewise that Sir B.M. is "a Knight of the Round Table." [N.B. Great rush to let off these. Contribution-Box joke-full of 'em. Impossible, therefore, to decide "who spoke first." Reward of Merit still ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 27, 1892 • Various
... I, so hopeless an outsider in the race of life, to come in with a rush and win the prize which Fortune's first favourite might envy? Can I hope or believe it? Can the Fates have been playing a pleasant practical joke with me all this time, like those fairies who decree that the young prince shall pass his childhood and youth in the guise of a wild boar, only to be transformed into an Adonis at last by the hand of the woman who is disinterested enough to love him despite his formidable ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... nail; a large stone hit the scow; Reddy had his hat knocked off, and Fred upset his canoe trying to duck out of reach of the invisible missiles before we could make our assailants understand that we were friends and not the tramps. The joke was on us after all. We hadn't counted on Dutchy's accurate aim or Jack's skill ...
— The Scientific American Boy - The Camp at Willow Clump Island • A. Russell Bond
... drains,' said old Jack Linden when the laughter produced by this elegant joke had ceased. 'Talking about the drains, I wonder what they're going to do about them; the 'ouse ain't fit to live in as they are now, and as for that bloody cesspool it ought to be ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... if someone has been playing a silly practical joke on me.' She shrugged her shoulders. 'But it's too foolish. If I were a suspicious woman,' she smiled, 'I should think you had sent it yourself to get ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... time of life!" said Mrs. Beverley; but the joke amused her, she wiped her eyes, and, as Irene had hoped and intended, stepped smiling into the waiting taxi, and left her old home with ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... you are laughing about!" said another girl, running up to the group at this moment. Her name was Rosy Myers. "You always have a joke among you three, and I want to share it. Do say—do say! I've got a lot of toffee in ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... answer the summons, and Leopold smiled in the darkness. He thought it likely that even the Prince was not at home. A practical joke had been played on ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... incident. Some one had said something about England: there had been a joke then about "sportsmen," some allusion was made to some old story connected with myself, and I had laughingly taken up the challenge. Suddenly Semyonov leaned across the table and spoke to Trenchard. Trenchard, who had ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... almost classical features, even although they were somewhat heavy. Not a cruel man—at least he did not appear so; indeed, he was well known as one who could tell a good story and pass a timely joke. A popular man, too, with those of his own order—one who by ability and worth had risen to ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... laugh at the idea of working for a master with their families and goods and chattels, and then to have the additional pleasure of paying their own small wages, besides bringing money to pay the "Baas" for employing them. But the Dutchman's serious demeanour told them that his suggestion was "no joke". He himself had for some time been in need of a native cattle owner, to assist him as transport rider between Bloemhof, Mooifontein, London, and other diggings, in return for the occupation and cultivation of ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... bronc piled you up. Miss Helen said there shore wasn't any joke about the cut on your knee. Now, a fellar's knee is a bad place to hurt, if he has ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... superstitious man when you talk to him of ghosts and churchyards. He chuckled, and his hair bristled. But after a pause, in which he seemed to wrestle with his own conscience, he said: "Well, well, you are a strange man, Jason; you love your joke. I have nothing to do except to find out ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... from the king, but made a motion, that instead of nine archons, they should yearly choose nine poor citizens to be sent ambassadors to the king, and enriched by his presents, and the people only laughed at the joke. But they were vexed that the Thebans obtained their desires, never considering that Pelopidas's fame was more powerful than all their rhetorical discourse, with a man who still inclined to the victorious ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... the country girl. "Why, I think you 're perfectly awful! Why, Zillah Forsyth! Don't you ever say a thing like that again! You can joke all you want to about the flirty young Internes. They're nothing but fellows. But it isn't—it isn't respectful—for you to talk like that about the Senior Surgeon. He's too—too terrifying!" she finished in ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... pulque; but having time to get hold of a sword, he overpowered one, which frightened the other, upon which they both began to laugh, and assured him it was mere experiment to see what he would do—a perfect jest, which he pretended to believe, but advised them not to try it again, as it was too good a joke to be repeated. Seor ——- pointed out to us the other day a well-known robber captain, who was riding on the high road with a friend. He had the worst-looking, most vulgar, and most villainous face I ever saw; a low-lived and most ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... away in the city." The lad's bright, clear eyes looked frankly into the captain's as he continued. "I have been making a fool of myself, Captain. Got into some mischief with a crowd of fellows at school. Of course, I got caught and had to bear the whole blame for the silly joke we had played. The faculty has suspended me for a term. I would have got off with only a reprimand if I would have told the names of the other fellows, but I couldn't ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... exclaimed Tartlet. "No! Don't joke about such things! The mere supposition will kill me! You are laughing ...
— Godfrey Morgan - A Californian Mystery • Jules Verne
... way in the world to rid yourself of those torments," he declared, enjoying his little joke hugely. "Why, Daisy, if you had come on alone some of those chaps would have spirited you away without even saying so ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... and Miss Kate Gordon of Louisiana. The advisability of attempting to have a woman suffrage measure introduced in the next session of the Legislature was considered. Two men besides the host appeared at this conference, a reporter, who regarded the meeting as something of a joke, and the Hon. R. H. Thompson of Jackson, an eminent lawyer, who came to offer sympathetic advice. Visits were made to the Governor, James K. Vardaman, and other State officials; to the Hinds county legislators ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... you were clever at imitating handwriting, Freddy," said Agnes, while the two letters shook in her grasp, "we used to make a joke of it, I remember. But it was no joke when you altered that check Hubert gave you, and none when you imitated his signature to that mortgage ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... Prosecutor, the Sous-prefet, the Presiding Judge, and his deputy, Lebas, had discovered there—to say nothing of Monsieur de la Baudraye and Dinah—the ladies now gathered round the tea-table, took the matter as a practical joke, and accused the Muse of Sancerre of having a finger in it. They had all looked forward to a delightful evening, and had all strained in vain every faculty of their mind. Nothing makes provincial folks so angry as the notion of having been a ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... make any of us anxious to see it. The First Canadian Division had been there and the reports they sent home were anything but encouraging. Our men were nearly all native-born Canadians and "Yankees," and they cracked many a joke about the little English "carriages," but they soon learned to respect the pulling power of the engines. We made ourselves as comfortable as possible with eight in a compartment, each man with his full kit, and soon after daylight the train stopped and we were ...
— The Emma Gees • Herbert Wes McBride
... grand serieux, and to consider it. When other people were laughing she would be gravely observant, as if she were solving a problem; and she would sooner have thought of trying to discover what combination of molecules resulted in a joke, with a view to benefiting her species by teaching them how to produce jokes at will, than of trying to be witty herself. She had, too, a quite irritating trick of remaining, to all outward seeming, stolidly unmoved by events which were causing an otherwise general commotion; but ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... the part of his character least to my taste; for I was of an enthusiastic, excitable temperament, prone to kindle up with new schemes and projects, and he was apt to dash my sallying enthusiasm by some unlucky joke; so that whenever I was in a glow with any sudden excitement, I stood in mortal dread of ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... when the song and joke passed from boat to boat, and the lights from the different fires were reflected in the water, the scenery was equally pleasing; but later still, when the lights were out, there being no moon, and the banks overhung ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... Bo-peep fell fast asleep, And dreamed she heard them bleating; But when she awoke she found it a joke, For they were ...
— Boy Blue and His Friends • Etta Austin Blaisdell and Mary Frances Blaisdell
... man, but this demand, in his impecunious condition, instead of terrifying him, struck his sense of humor as an exceedingly good joke. ...
— Joe's Luck - Always Wide Awake • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... that mess-room as startled the distant sentries on the outer walls. "Bullen, old man, forgive me." "It can't be!" "Incredible!" "Bullen, the Beau Brummel of the service, in leather!" "Why, Diogenes, what are you doing here?" "Is it a masquerade?" "Is it a joke?" "What means this unique headgear?" "And Diogenes, I ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... work. Glancing sidewise, they could glimpse the paint-daubs like scattered autumn leaves; and they could feel the tenseness of the tigerish forms, itching to leap with knife and tomahawk. Some of the women tried to laugh and joke, but their voices sounded thin ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... This joke over, "Our lady Secunda said," she resumed, addressing herself to Pao-yue, "'that to-morrow is your maternal uncle's birthday, and that our mistress, your mother, asked her to tell you to go over. That whatever clothes you will put on ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... said that I must go up there that very afternoon with him, and that he would introduce me to the head-gardener, who was always up there looking after the gooseberry bushes. I knew that this was a joke, but still I wanted to see what he meant. I said that I was ready at once, but he kept putting me off; and whenever he saw me going up the rigging he always got some one to send for me or to call me, so that it was quite late in the day before I succeeded ...
— My First Cruise - and Other stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... that you like talking in that sort of way, and I don't mind it a bit. It's your way of making jokes, and you don't mean any harm by what you say; but I'd really rather not be mixed up with Simpkins even by way of a joke. I don't like the man ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... the way all the three were looking at him, just as if they did not admire him. 'Look here, all of you,' he said entreatingly, as soon as Nana had gone into the bathroom, 'I have just thought of a splendid joke. I shall pour my medicine into Nana's bowl, and she will drink it, thinking ...
— Peter and Wendy • James Matthew Barrie
... as people will, at anything, when they have nothing else to do. Even Tita, who, though smiling always, is looking rather depressed, gives way to a merry little laugh. Hearing her, Margaret blesses Randal for his silly old joke. ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... to the wise men, "No doubt but ye are the people, and wisdom shall die with you," he struck twelve. When the sons of Jacob went down into Egypt and Joseph put up the price of corn, took their money, and then secretly replaced the coin in the sacks, he showed his artless love of a quiet joke. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... neglected. In the summer of 1515 a volume appeared purporting to contain letters to Ortwin Gratius; and it was followed two years later by another. With some good satire and some amusing caricature, they also contained much personal insult and calumny. The wit is not enough to carry on the joke through 108 letters, carefully composed in Teutonic dog Latin by the best Latinists north of the Brenner. Erasmus, who was diverted at first, afterwards turned away with disgust, and Luther called the authors buffoons. The main writer of the ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... himself up to fun, like a boy out of school. If one may judge, however, from the looks of Simmo's overalls, and from the number of times he woke me by scurrying around my tent, I suspect that he is never too serious and never too busy for a joke. It is a way he has of brightening the more sober times of getting his own living, and keeping a sharp lookout for cats ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... daughter of the General commanding the Division, and after edifying the station for some time by their ardent rivalry, Charteris and Gerrard were no longer on speaking terms. The station regarded it as an excellent joke, but to Colonel Antony, who took life seriously, it was a scandal and a sin, to be ended at once and peremptorily. Knowing his man, he had on this particular day announced his ultimatum ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... Ha! ha! ha! Better and better, my pretty maid, isn't it? He knows how to joke! I dangerous? I? Twenty years ago there might have been something in it. Yes, yes, my pretty maid, then I was a dangerous man: many a one knew ...
— Minna von Barnhelm • Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
... not let another serve thee,' he informed me, 'for the love of that vile joke that thou didst put upon me. It was not loaded. After all my fright!... It is a nice revolver. Let me ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... I did. But he only smiled and turned it off with a joke—said he didn't believe in all that subterranean conspiracy, and asked whether I thought that on a bright moonlight night like that he shouldn't notice a band of masked and cloaked conspirators closing in upon him ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... a grim jest to give a man an extra arm when he needs a leg, Mr. Jefferson. Can't you see to it that I am spared being made a monstrosity of?" Mr. Morris had said, whimsically. "I can hear Segur or Beaufort now making some damned joke about the unequal distribution of my members," and Mr. Jefferson had made a formal request to the master of ceremonies to allow Mr. Morris to be presented to His Majesty without a sword. With that exception, however, he was in full court costume and stumped ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... dangerous things they are to move, for if the men do not all heave or 'give' at the same moment the stone may slip, and the edge will take off a row of fingers as clean as the guillotine. Tibbald, of course, had his joke about that part of the machinery which is called the 'damsel.' He was a righteous man enough as millers go, but your miller was always a bit of a knave; nor could he forbear from boasting to me how he had been half an hour too soon ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... the New York Observer I will state that a despatch sent round the world in a spiral direction westward 1,200 times, would not really arrive at its destination four years before it started. It is only a joke which suggests it.] ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... of the church, and feeling that Christians made good neighbours, I do not suppose that he took anything in. Pictures he did not understand, or when we showed them to him, laughed merrily, thinking that we meant it for a joke. ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... was rather inclined to believe with others, who knew how much he enjoyed a good joke, that he intended to treat himself to a little fun. At the time, however, he vowed that he thought the work interesting, and maintained that if it were only brought out as a hitherto unknown work by Beethoven, the public would receive it ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... they nose everything out! The Great Unpaid!— We shall get it again! [He suddenly goes off into a fit of laughter] "Come off it," I says, "to the best of my recollection." Oh! Oh! I shan't hit a bird all day! That poor devil Builder! It's no joke for him. You did it well, Mayor; you did it well. British justice is safe in your hands. He blacked the fellow's eye all right. "Which I herewith produce." Oh! my ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... your luggage! A good joke! But I see you are not quite what I took you for; and if you'll stand a nobbler or two, I don't mind calling a porter for you, and showing you to a slap-up inn to suit you," said the man, his manner completely ...
— The Gilpins and their Fortunes - A Story of Early Days in Australia • William H. G. Kingston
... not the only part of him that had stayed as they were in those remote days. He wore the same clothes now as then; or if not the identical clothes, as many averred, clothes of the identical cut. Younger trainers, who were fond of having their joke with the old man, ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... Buck stood up. "I want to say," he began, "that if you are jesting, I think this is a mighty poor time to joke. And if you are serious I can only deduce from it that this year of business worry and responsibility has been too much for you. I'm sure that if ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... not say that the taste would be merely fastidious, for much is wanting that would add to the grace and beauty of society, while much that is wanting would be missed only by the over-sophisticated. Those young-men, who are sniggering over some bad joke in the corner, for instance, are positively vulgar, as is that young lady who is indulging in practical coquetry; but, on the whole, there is little of this; and, even our hostess, a silly woman, devoured with the ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... take a joke," said the captain, finding his speech at last; "I can take a joke as well as most men, but this is ...
— Salthaven • W. W. Jacobs
... in the garden will, I fear, not be at their ease. I do not consequently presume to come and see you in person, so I present you this letter, written with due respect, while knocking my head before your table. Your son, Yuen, on his knees, lays this epistle at your feet. A joke!" ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... days late; I did not care to start shooting without him. I was received by an old servant, Narkiz Semyonov, who had had notice of my coming. This old servant was not in the least like 'Savelitch' or 'Caleb'; my friend used to call him in joke 'Marquis.' There was something of conceit, even of affectation, about him; he looked down on us young men with a certain dignity, but cherished no particularly respectful sentiments for other landowners either; of his old master he spoke slightingly, while his own class he simply ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... doctor!' she thought as she lay in her luxurious bed on lace pillows under a light silk coverlet.... Anna Sergyevna had inherited from her father a little of his inclination for splendour. She had fondly loved her sinful but good-natured father, and he had idolised her, used to joke with her in a friendly way as though she were an equal, and to confide in her fully, to ask her advice. Her mother ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... casually. He, too, was tall, with a wide, dark beard curling over very pink and rather plump cheeks, and in his bright black eyes a sardonic sheen played as he loosely shook his host's hand. His expression was that of a man perpetually amused, as if anticipating a joke or recollecting a mockery. His voice was as languid as his limbs, but his words were precise and to ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... had no faith in the conditions of the circle, but for the joke of it I kept my sitters in place for nearly an hour by dint of pretending to hear creakings and to feel throbbings, until at last little Miss Brush became very deeply concerned. "I feel them, too," she declared. "Did some one blow on my hands? ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... the tongue." He also at one time ordered a chest of tea, and then countermanded the order, having taken the resolve to "use no tea in my family while that rascally Tax is on—having a spring of good, pure water near my house." Which shows that a man can be very much in earnest and still joke. ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... answering telegrams. She alone was free from all anxiety, for she had had a few words with her uncle before she came out, and at her entrance the languor of the sick man disappeared at once, and he had spoken to her with something of the enjoyment of a boy enjoying a huge joke. ...
— The Governors • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... den. Dere'll be all de bulls in N'York after em. Joke on us, dough, if Chuff was in de ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... of that joke had evaporated, Mrs. Vaniman departed; it was a part of her helpful tact in alleviating the grievous situation in which Frank was placed. She always came with the best little piece of news she could provide ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... the beautiful flowery hillsides over the other side and begged them to go over there to die, as it would be so much better and easier to perform the last sad rites there instead of here on the top of the dismal mountain. It seemed quite like a grim joke, but it produced a reaction that turned the tide of thoughts and brought more courage. We only laid out the march for this day as far as the falls and after a little prepared to move. The cattle seemed to have quit their foolishness, and ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... joke upon such a serious matter," he answered, with a degree of confusion that could not have escaped the ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... affinity between us. He was one of the wealthiest men in my class and was now, as he gleefully informed me, busily engaged clipping coupons in his father's office, "with office hours from two to three some Thursdays." Of course, that was his idea of a joke, for it seems quite obvious that a person who gave so little time to his business had better have kept no hours at all. He greeted me warmly and led me into his club, which happened to be near by, where over the ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... yourself up in this affair? For you must remember that we may be compelled to fight, before all is done; while, if we are captured, it may mean years of imprisonment in a Spanish penal settlement, which will be no joke, I can assure ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... frightened because you were so dark. You had quantities of black hair. I didn't even try to love you. Only I felt you were very valuable. So did Anne. And when Jack came hurrying back to me on the doctor's telegram, he was pleased with you. He called you in joke his 'little Frenchman.' He didn't dream it was all truth! And he didn't mind your being called Max. You'd already been baptized Maxime, after the soldier; and his wife made just that one condition: that the name ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... good practice," laughed Polly, filling her tiny teapot, and taking her place behind the tray, with a matronly air, which was the best joke of ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... ain't no joke. Quit playin' ball long 'nough ter hear what I say. They're lost, those two little girls are. ...
— Princess Polly's Playmates • Amy Brooks
... vases made of cats; flower-arrangements shaped like cats; and a little gold cat with emerald eyes for each woman to take away with her, so she wouldn't forget the lunch in a hurry. And would you believe it, not one of them saw the joke till Smart Sayings got hold of it, and published an account of ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... "Uncle Cornie is a lively companion—isn't he? He cant even blunder through a Joe Miller without tacking a moral to it, and then trying to persuade you that the joke of ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... and angry hands after the second act; and I brought suit against the management for damages, basing my claim on the idea that they had spurned my dusky brother on account of his race, color and previous condition of servitude. The last clause was a joke. He had never done any work in his life, except for the state. He was a very sightly coon, too, now that I recall him. The show was, as I said, The Merchant of Venice, and I'll leave it to anybody if my client wasn't at least as pleasing to the eye as Sir Henry ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... the war broke out his whole instinct was against it: against war. He had not the faintest desire to overcome any foreigners or to help in their death. He had no conception of Imperial England, and Rule Britannia was just a joke to him. He was a pure-blooded Englishman, perfect in his race, and when he was truly himself he could no more have been aggressive on the score of his Englishness than a rose can be aggressive on the score of ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... forced him to a seat, and held him there, Despite his anger, while the hideous joke Was tossed from hand to hand. Franz poured with care A brimming glass of whiskey. "Here, we've broke Into a virgin barrel for you, drink! Tut! Tut! Just hear him! Married! Who, and when? Married, and out on business. Clever Spark! Which lie's ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... "it wasn't his threat that hindered me, goodness knows! A divorce would be a relief, after living forty years with him! Say, there goes young Doctor Worley. Speaking of divorce, he's just got one. It all came round through a joke. Billy Patterson dared him to exchange wives with him one evening when they were having a little too much gaiety at the Worley home, and the doctor took the dare. Ha! ha! The men swapped wives for two days. What do you think of that! And this divorce was the ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... putting on the sheep's eyes?" suggested the Chairman, with a glance that admitted the court to the joke. ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... state this ultimate conviction as a 'theological superstition', or, as I should prefer to put it with a little more certainty, as a matter of faith. The alternative is to treat the world as a stupid, and possibly malicious, bad joke. ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... who have followed his glance break out into a cry of rage that rings far out over the placid waters of the bay, and makes the tough old British veterans chuckle grimly over the success of their little joke upon the Yankees; for there, high above the heads of the wrathful crowd, flaunting its scarlet folds over the roofs of the liberated city, floats ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... course, in the history of the Jew, and the fact that he came from the East. A Jew will sometimes complain of the injustice of describing him as a man of the East; but in truth another very real injustice may be involved in treating him as a man of the West. Very often even the joke against the Jew is rather a joke against those who have made the joke; that is, a joke against what they have made out of the Jew. This is true especially, for instance, of many points of religion and ritual. Thus we cannot ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... "That must be a joke," chuckled Hugh. "It was silly on the part of Chief Wambold. But then, of course, Nick has made him a whole lot of trouble in the past. So only one fellow has been taken, and he refuses to tell on his ...
— The Chums of Scranton High at Ice Hockey • Donald Ferguson
... there, and then came in here. It must have been about 5:27 by that time," he explained, with the meticulousness of a man on the witness stand. "I shouted, 'Hello, everybody! How's tricks?...' That's a joke, you know. ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... Clinch had uttered an exquisite joke instead of a very angry statement, it could not have been more hilariously received. He paused, grew confused, and then went ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... thoughts to things profane. My master was not tempted so, But once—don't let it out, you know— He squandered all his precious wits Making a titmouse trap for Fritz— Right here, and talked and had a smoke; To me, I'll own, it seemed a joke. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... snorting at, Goliath? Has a David at last sunk a joke into your head? Come, let us go ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... Sturgis. How are you?" Father Murray stopped to shake hands. Mr. Sturgis was a justice of the peace and the wag of the town. He always insisted on being elected to the office as a joke, for he was ...
— Charred Wood • Myles Muredach
... a trump, sir. Him and me got all the big uns; and it's no joke ketching your first conger, as ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... on the coach and looks back at his father's figure as long as he can see it; and then the guard, having disposed of his luggage, comes to an anchor, and finishes his buttonings and other preparations for facing the three hours before dawn—no joke for those who minded cold, on a fast coach in November, in the reign of his ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... Miss Polly, gravely; "you shouldn't joke upon such serious subjects. Good by, children. Your house is full of company, and I didn't come to stay. Here's a bag of thoroughwort I've been picking for your grandmother; you may give it to her with my love, and tell her my side is worse. I shall ...
— Dotty Dimple's Flyaway • Sophie May
... do common duties; being an excellent woodsman, he was his favourite guide; being an expert swimmer, he was generally by his side when swimming rivers, or paddled him over in a canoe if they had one; being a good fisherman, he often caught him fish; the general would laugh and joke with him, but with no other private. He did not however employ Bob in these small matters when he had any thing serious for him to do. Surprised at his exact intelligence from Georgetown and other places, the author asked him once "how he got it?" He related several interesting particulars, ...
— A Sketch of the Life of Brig. Gen. Francis Marion • William Dobein James
... head with a grin. He was a good-looking, long-limbed youth with a notable blue eye, and a glance of mirthful sobriety. "No, thanks," he drawled. The others gathered from his tone that a joke was coming, and pricked up their ears accordingly. "No, thanks. You forget that Sarge Lambert up at the Crossing is my senior. When I drove up he'd say: 'What the hell are you doing up here?' And when I told him he'd ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... offer of fourteen pounds a month, to write and edit a new publication they contemplate, entirely by myself, to be published monthly, and each number to contain four woodcuts. I am to make my estimate and calculation, and to give them a decisive answer on Friday morning. The work will be no joke, but the emolument is too ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... spoke with an intermittent kind of splutter; indeed, one of his patients had observed that it was a pity such a clever man had a 'pediment' in his speech. But when he came to what he conceived the pith of his argument or the point of his joke, he mouthed out his words with slow emphasis; as a hen, when advertising her accouchement, passes at irregular intervals from pianissimo semiquavers to fortissimo crotchets. He thought this speech of Mr. Ely's particularly ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... Ah, that was a joke indeed! Listen, O Holy Miriam and all saints! It was because one hot afternoon, at their Bible-class, he had kissed the pretty Sitt Hilda, who sat close to him, teaching. Forgetting he was no longer a child, she had caressed his hand approvingly; that was Hilda's tale. A likely ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... strange, seeing the delight we take in verses, that we can so seldom write them, and so are not ashamed to lay up old ones, say sixteen years, instead of improvising them as freely as the wind blows, whenever we and our brothers are attuned to music. I have heard of a citizen who made an annual joke. I believe I have in April or May an annual poetic conatus rather than afflatus, experimenting to the length of thirty lines or so, if I may judge from the dates of the rhythmical scraps I detect among my MSS. I look upon this incontinence ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... has not been as bountiful to Marcia in the matter of charms as to the others; she has stinted here and there, and it shows clearly as she grows older. But as she gives her head an airy toss and shakes the Skye fluff out of her eyes, he smiles. It would be an immense joke to marry Marcia Grandon; an immense mortification as well! To be Floyd Grandon's brother-in-law, to have the entree of the great house, to come very near Violet Grandon and perhaps drop a bitter flavor ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... as if he understood the joke. He closed his mouth and sighed deeply, as one who has just wakened ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower
... Tower," said his friend, half in a joke, "the rent will be nominal, and you'll have as much of the ...
— Washed Ashore - The Tower of Stormount Bay • W.H.G. Kingston
... that a rifle-ball as well as a charge of shot had struck the Pigeon. The gunners had fired on the same bird. Both enjoyed the joke, though it had its serious side, for food as well as ammunition was scarce in ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... they all required), Which seemed as if put for them—so precisely Was it the very thing that they desired; They were (or should have been) intensely tired, But luckily they had not far to go, A lot of pleasant matters had transpired, And all had cracked their lively joke or so; But now the day was o'er, the sun was ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott
... if it was a joke. "What nonsense! Your sister has told me quite a lot about you, Miss Vars, one time and another; that you write verse a little, for instance. Any one who can create is able to fill all the empty corners of his life. You know that as ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... tried to make myself believe that it was a joke; but, alas! he succeeded in convincing me he meant it seriously. So clearly and completely did he convince me of it, that, instead of being furious with him for such naive cynicism, I was filled with deep pity for him and incidentally for myself ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... neatly printed in English block capitals and caused much amusement. The whole day was in a way one great joke—the un-needed barrage, the empty trenches, these farewell notices, all combined to ...
— The Fifth Leicestershire - A Record Of The 1/5th Battalion The Leicestershire Regiment, - T.F., During The War, 1914-1919. • J.D. Hills
... to her mother for protection from a tyrant." So the letter ran; it was in her own graceful hand; her name was affixed. It was no cruel joke. She said, moreover, that it was evident that their tastes were not congenial; it was out of the question for her to be tied down to the sort of life he expected of her; that she had borne reflections on ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... A joke was being told as we sat down, and every one was taking a lively interest in it, the narrator was a bearded man of fifty, and he was telling to the delight of the others how his son had once got the better of him in Brussels before the war. ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... my manners, and I have never asked after the Captain, though he is a prime favourite of mine. Oh yes, he always has his little joke. "What will you sell it for, O'Brien, just as it stands? Name your own price." Well, it is a snug little place; and if only my little woman were here and I had news of Mat——' And here Mr. O'Brien pushed his hand through his gray hair again, and sighed as he looked out ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... It was a good joke, such as Mark Twain loved—a carefully prepared, harmless bit of foolery. He wrote Robert Collier, threatening him with all sorts of revenge, declaring that the elephant ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... honest good nature and humour of the fellow, sent for him next morning to court. You may imagine his surprise, to see and hear that his late guest was his sovereign: he was afraid his joke on his long nose would be punished with death. The emperor thanked him for his hospitality, and, as a reward for it, bid him ask for what he most desired, and to take the whole night to think of it. The next ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 492 - Vol. 17, No. 492. Saturday, June 4, 1831 • Various
... Saint Lawrence to the Campo Varano, there to wait many years perhaps for the pale and half sickly Ugo, of whom every one had said for years that he could not live through another twelve month with the disease of the heart which threatened him. Of late, people had even begun to joke about Donna Tullia's third husband. Poor ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... could only share the joke with some one!" she thought. "But I can't. Diana is the only one I'd want to tell, and, even if I hadn't sworn secrecy to Jane, I can't tell Diana things now. She tells everything to Fred—I know she does. Well, I've had my first ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... any one we are going, father,' I cautioned him. 'I want to surprise Kirke Connor. He is going to Burlington on that train himself, and it will be such a joke on him to find us there ready to be entertained. He is to be there several days, so he can amuse me while you are busy. Isn't it lovely? He really needs a little boosting now, and it is our duty, and—will you press my suit, Auntie? I must fly or I won't ...
— Sunny Slopes • Ethel Hueston
... its unreasonableness and untenableness. In addition to this, he has written a great number of books, in all of which Reason shines forth in all its peculiar excellence, and as the poor Doctor meant what he said in all seriousness, he was, so far, deserving of respect. But the great joke consisted precisely in this, that the Doctor invariably cut such a seriously absurd figure when he could not comprehend what every child comprehends, simply because it is a child. I visited the Doctor of Reason several times in his own house, where I found him in company with very ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... and rare good sense Ruth controlled herself sufficiently to laugh, and the embarrassment vanished. There were splendid points about this girl's character, not the least among them being the ability to laugh at a joke that had been turned toward herself. At least the effect was splendid. The reasons, therefore, might have been better. It was because her sharp brain saw the better effect that her ability to do this thing immediately produced on the people around her. But I shall have ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... not refrain from laughter at Walky's crude joke. Nobody could be very angry with Walky Dexter, no matter ...
— The Mission of Janice Day • Helen Beecher Long
... it demanded, "a bum joke you're trying to put over, or what? Come home at once!—Don't you know a packed house is waiting to see Miss Burton in her act? What do ye ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... with the Burnham Moores, the Henry Aldriches, and a score of other people whom he knew equally well. Apparently they all thought that he had married and settled down. They were interested to know where he was living, and they were rather disposed to joke him about being so very secretive on the subject, but they were not willing to discuss the supposed Mrs. Kane. He was beginning to see that this move of his was going to tell against ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... You will have your joke, eh? But the Lulu is no joke. Come, we will go to the bank; I want them to tell you how much she has yielded. You'll blame me for leasing her, but how was I to ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... only powder to make a noise and scare 'em. I wouldn't like to be in his place, though; father says you can never trust tigers as you can lions, no matter how tame they are. Sly fellers, like cats, and when they scratch it's no joke, I tell you," answered Ben, with a knowing wag of the head, as the sides of the cage rattled down, and the poor, fierce creatures were seen leaping and snarling as if they resented this display of ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... and dolce-far-niente air of nature and society hint at infinite periods in the progress of mankind. The States have leisure to laugh from Maine to Texas at some newspaper joke, and New England shakes at the double-entendres of Australian circles, while the poor reformer cannot ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... Kiddy, but that WAS rich. To think a chicken of your size sold them like that. It's the best joke I've heard for an age. Tell ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... but Raymond's presence helped her to rein in her temper; and she thought of Julius, and refrained from more than a "Very well. It was meant as a harmless joke, and—and if you—you did not take it ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... He reined in indignantly and stood up in his stirrups. Nothing was to be seen above the level of the grain. Beneath him the trailing riata had as noiselessly vanished as if it had been indeed a gliding snake. Had he been the victim of a practical joke, or of the blunder of some stupid vacquero? For he made no doubt that it was the lasso of one of the performers he had watched that afternoon. But his preoccupied mind did not dwell long upon it, and by the time he had reached the wall of the old ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... exclaimed Bartley. "He may be a sort of wandering joke to the citizens of this State, but he's doing what he wants to do, and that's more than I'm doing. Just fifty miles to Senator Brown's ranch. Drop in and see us. As the chap in Denver said when he wrote to his friend in ...
— Partners of Chance • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... the growing things into thinking spring has come, and the poor misguided plants begin to put out their leaves. Then, like a mischievous joker, old Winter comes back and nips the trusting little creatures. Cotton doesn't fancy that sort of joke. Nor does it like too much wet weather, for then the cotton gets damp and sodden and cannot be picked. Should it be gathered in this condition it would mold and mildew, and become ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... climbed for a long time. The rests were frequent, the course not of the straightest. For many years their recollection of that hill was as of a mountain. Finally the top sprang at them abruptly, as though in joke. ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... departure to Mr. and Mrs. Christie, and then I went with Tom to my lodgings. He looked vastly amused when he saw Duncan's house, and when I told him that I had been there all the time he seemed to think it a capital joke. ...
— Christie, the King's Servant • Mrs. O. F. Walton
... only virtue, then, indeed, is my state pitiable, for talk I must, and G. is a delightful person to talk to. She listens to my tales of Peter and the others, and asks for more, and shouts with laughter at the smallest joke. I pass as a wit with G., and have a great success. She is going to stay with a married sister for the cold weather. Quite like me, only I'm going to an unmarried brother. I think we are both getting ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... man has a wholesome dread of laughter, as he is the only animal capable of that phenomenon—for the laugh of the hyena is pronounced by those who have heard it to be no joke, and to be classed with those [Greek: gelasmata agelasta] which are said to come from the other side of the mouth. Whether, as Shaftesbury will have it, ridicule be absolutely the test of truth or no, we may ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... what Doctor Hutchinson says, I contend that the slim man has all the best of it in this world. The fat man is the universal goat; he is humanity's standing joke. Stomachs are the curse of our modern civilization. When a man gets a stomach his troubles begin. If you doubt this ask any fat man—I started to say ask any fat woman, too. Only there aren't any fat women to speak of. There are women who are plump and will admit it; there are ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb
... "What a joke!" exclaimed Nan. "Poor thing! She didn't see the parade after all, and I declare she deserved to. That was the time she was in it though, ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... liked a joke—or at least she thought so—as well as anybody; but like a too-humorous author, she found that to be as funny as possible was bad for business. Goodness knows there was enough in Littleburg to be solemn over, ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... commissariat there may be): a difficult march, to Amberg Country and the top of the Ober-Pfalz. After which are Mountain-passes; Bohemian Forest: and the Event—? "Cannot be dubious!" thinks France, whatever Maillebois think. Witty Paris, loving its timely joke, calls him Army of Redemption, "L'ARMEE DES MATHURINS,"—a kind of Priests, whose business is commonly in Barbary, about Christian bondage:—how sprightly! And yet the enthusiasm was great: young Princes of the Blood longing to be off ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Professor, being guileless and confiding, believed the tale, and he tried to oblige the bear-haunted miner by promoting an expedition of extermination. Seventeen men replied to his overtures with the original remark that they "Hadn't lost any bears." Since 1620 that has been the standard bear joke of the North American continent, and its immortality proves that it was the funniest thing that ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly
... me of a man I know who was made a G.B.E.; but that's another story, and Joan wouldn't see the joke of it anyhow, though I know she would ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 1, 1920 • Various
... explanation was demanded by Lady Fawn, but no explanation was forthcoming. When questions were asked about his silence, Lucy, half in joke and half in earnest, fired up and declared that everything had been as natural as possible. He could not have come to Lady Linlithgow's house. Lady Linlithgow would not receive him. No doubt she had been impatient, but then that had been her fault. Had he not come to her the very first day ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... would do something right funny. Our county election was coming on, and you know we have got about ten black voters to one white down there. Under the Constitution we couldn't elect a white man down there in a hundred years—not if we followed the Constitution. This time, just for a joke—but listen—do you know what ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... was sure that I was neither doing nor intending any harm; I thought the whole a mere ebullition of spite on the duenna's part to torment and frighten her emancipated victim, and I treated all as a joke to reassure Cecile, and even laughed at the Abbe for treating the matter more seriously, and saying it was always perilous to go out ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... preventives, and did not venture to say that he thought they tasted very badly. Occasionally the other professors were invited, and everybody drank the health of the little De Barancy, every one was enthusiastic over his sweetness and cleverness. The singing teacher, Labassandre, at the least joke made by the child, threw himself back in his chair with a loud laugh, pounded the table with his fist, and wiped his eyes with a ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... over seventeen stone," murmured Mr. Coyne, still with his eyes closed; "an' a weight like that is no joke." ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... their lodging, but nothing could damp for long her high spirits and girlish gaiety. We are told (not by herself, but by the arch-gossip, old Aubrey) that in the company of Lady Isabella Thynne, brightest star of the Stuart Court, "fine Mistress Anne" played a practical joke on Dr. Kettle, the woman-hating President of Trinity, who resented the intrusion of petticoats into his garden, "dubbed Daphne by the wits." The lady in question aired herself there in a fantastic garment ...
— Memoirs of Lady Fanshawe • Lady Fanshawe
... hang cages of all sorts of birds—a talking parrot, a whistling blackbird, goldfinches, canaries, linnets. Athos, the fat dog, who goes to market daily in a barchetta with his master, snuffs around. "Where are Porthos and Aramis, my friend?" Athos does not take the joke; he only wags his stump of tail and pokes his nose into my hand. What a Tartufe's nose it is! Its bridge displays the full parade of leather-bound brass-nailed muzzle. But beneath, this muzzle is ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... of playing a joke upon one's neighbor upon the First of April is of very ancient origin, dating so far back in the past that we are unable to tell just when or with what nation ...
— Connor Magan's Luck and Other Stories • M. T. W.
... gun? A lad from London town. Then let him go, for well we know The stuff that never backs down. He has learned to joke at the powder smoke, For he is the fog-smoke's son, And his heart is light and his pluck is right - The man who ...
— Songs of Action • Arthur Conan Doyle
... head voice, or to that as using the vibrato, or to the other as dwelling on an upper note ("queer sort of existence," says PULLER, gradually coming up, as it were to the surface to open his mouth for breath,—whereat Cousin JANE smiles, and Miss CASANOVA lazily nods approbation of the joke—while the rest of us ignore PULLER, putting him aside as not wanted just now,—when down he goes again), we generally agree that GAYARRE is about the best tenor we have had in London for some time; that SANTLEY is still ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 3, 1887 • Various
... who had treated me so ill. He took a fancy to me, which I encouraged to further my views. I became his confidant, he informed me of his amour with his cousin, adding that he was tired of the business, and wished to break with her; also, as an excellent joke, the punishment which he had inflicted ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... held more honourable than a shearer of men; and he who shirks the world's right labour will rank with the unranked lowest. The music-hall and theatre and unjustified fiction will have had their day. The little man with a little gift, that should be no more than an evening's joke or pleasure after real work, will exist no more. But we live under the rule of ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... looked at Tom as if they thought that he was making a joke at their expense. But ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... you will think her very silly to have imagined for a moment that her aunt's joke could be anything but a joke, especially as she had been so sensible about not letting Rex get anything into his head which could frighten him. But I am not sure that she was so very silly after all. She had read in her geography about the Lapps and Finns, the tiny little ...
— A Christmas Posy • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... under a log and died. At the door of the Major's tent I paused to learn and joy of one to whom comes reprieve when the rope is on his neck, I overheard Harry Helm, the General's nephew and aide de-camp, who had been with us, telling what a howling good joke Smith had just got ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... I've left my check-book, too—Polly says I ought to have a nurse—well, no matter. Let me have a dime, Washington, if you've got—ah, thanks. Now clear out, Jerry, your complexion has brought on the twilight half an hour ahead of time. Pretty fair joke—pretty fair. Here he is, Polly! Washington's come, children! come now, don't eat him up—finish him in the house. Welcome, my boy, to a mansion that is proud to shelter the son of the best man that walks on the ground. ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 1. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... dies," remarked Mr. Jaffrey one night, rubbing his hands gleefully, as if it were a great joke, "Andy will find that the old man has left ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... mechanical mouse. Ridiculous misfits in the presents made the distribution all the funnier, and the rejoicing was great when Roger, who didn't believe in washing his hands without being told to do so, drew a wee cake of soap. He took it good-naturedly and considered as an added joke, Estelle's hasty and shocked assurance that it was not meant ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... English house of commons, in the early part of the year, which damaged the prestige of Smith O'Brien, and although O'Connell exerted himself in parliament on his behalf, the event gave the arch-agitator satisfaction. He had many a private joke at the expense of O'Brien, and few men could wound with a brighter point than O'Connell in his best moods of satire. Mr. O'Brien was nominated on a committee, and refused to serve, alleging that the affairs of his country ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... driving his horse across the square, stopped, lifted the boy, and said: "Don't cry, Peter. It is only a little joke. See, you're not dead—here, pick up your hat. See all the pigeons are around us—you're ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... shown up for his condemnatory predilections and inability to discern or appreciate beauties. The cream of the joke against him is, that being sent by Apollo to choose a lily in a flower-garden, he brings back a thistle as all he could find. The picture is a humorous one, but we are at a loss to conjecture who can have ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. I, No. 6 - Of Literature, Art, And Science, New York, August 5, 1850 • Various
... general giggle at this, and many of the young swains took occasion to nudge the girls alongside them, ostensibly for the purpose of making them see the joke, but really for the pure pleasure of nudging. The Greeks figured Cupid as naked, probably because he wears so many disguises that they could not select a ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... the old well, and after I've wished it, I'll work harder than ever so that my wish will come true. Well, why do you laugh?" she asked, looking not only amazed, but rather vexed at Betty, who could not stop laughing even when she saw that Valerie was far from thinking it a joke. ...
— Dorothy Dainty at Glenmore • Amy Brooks
... 1," shouted a fourth; and as No. 1 had been compelled to hold on for the want of water, which leaked from the boxes almost as fast as put in, the joke told hugely. ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... Am I likely to believe all that? Am I likely to believe such a story as that? Whoever you are, whoever you may be, is it likely? I am not in the least afraid. I thought at first it was some silly practical joke. I thought that at first.' She paused, but no answer came. 'Well, I suppose in a civilised country there is a remedy even for a joke as wicked ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... of him, and he began fighting and kicking, in stout shoes, whose thumps were no joke. She held fast, but she felt frightened, and doubtful of the issue of the struggle; and again there was ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge
... beard, approach furtively, and assume a listening attitude. He had evidently just landed, and had put on his best clothes, to go up and see the town. The moment he stopped to listen, I assumed a tone of earnest badinage. Harrison, instantly seeing our intrusive and raw guest, and humoring the joke, responded in a like style. In effect we had a high controversy, which could only be settled by a duel, in which our raw friend must act as second. He was strongly appealed to, and told that his position as a gentleman required it. So far all was well. We adjourned ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... have the pull now; this is our cold season—October to March; but the hot weather is no joke; as for the rains, you might as well live in a steam laundry; we get a hundred inches ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... from strength, but from slothful tenderness. And thus they ruin their own tempers and natures, and consequently those of their offspring. Furthermore, if at any time a man is taken captive with ardent love for a certain woman, the two are allowed to converse and joke together and to give one another garlands of flowers or leaves, and to make verses. But if the race is endangered, by no means is further union between them permitted. Moreover, the love born of eager desire is not known among them; only that born ...
— The City of the Sun • Tommaso Campanells
... evidently thought they would spare me the mortification of a recognition under the circumstances. I couldn't help laughing within myself, though it was a bit embarrassing. Dick was hilarious over it. He evidently sees nothing improper in it, but a very good joke. He says he expects to hear me preaching there yet. I told him it might be to ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... think I am playing a joke again. What shall I do? I cannot save my sheep! I must run ...
— Children's Classics in Dramatic Form - Book Two • Augusta Stevenson
... many for them intirely." He received the information that the pilot's feet were "as his Creator made them," in respectful silence, and a few minutes afterwards asked me if I was aware of the "curious fact in physiology," that it took a surgical operation to get a joke through ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... in his letters from Ashbourne, used to joke about Taylor's cattle:—'July 23, 1770. I have seen the great bull, and very great he is. I have seen likewise his heir apparent, who promises to enherit all the bulk and all the virtues of his sire, I have seen the man who offered an hundred guineas for the young ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... wash-leather bags, I gave George Bowring his choice of the two; and he chose the one with four figures of seven, making some little joke about it, not good enough to repeat, nor even bad enough ...
— George Bowring - A Tale Of Cader Idris - From "Slain By The Doones" By R. D. Blackmore • R. D. Blackmore
... and eventually, in 1874, a book of "Songs for Music, by Four Friends,"[26] was published; the contents were written by my sister and two of her brothers, and the Rev. G.J. Chester. This book became a standing joke amongst them, because one of the reviewers said it contained "songs by four writers, one of whom was a poet," and he did not specify the one ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... nothing. That badly dressed man with long hair, who, under his dusty coat, resembled a clown, inspired so little confidence in him that he suspected a snare, perhaps a bad joke. ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... it had got about that any one was going to invest thirty thousand pounds—or pence—in Wildcat Reefs, the market would certainly have been convulsed. The House would have rocked with laughter. Wildcat Reefs were a standing joke—except to the unfortunate few who still held ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... in the matter; but the ceremony consists in sticking a curious sort of mitre, pointed and worked with hair, on the head of the candidate, and covering his body with a sort of Jack- in-the green wicker work of leaves, &c., and they joke and laugh about it, and attach, apparently, no religious significance to ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... being; that all his responses to the physical forces of his environment are motor; {illust. caption FIG. 26.—LAUGHING CHIMPANZEE. "Mike," the clever chimpanzee in the London Zoo, evidently enjoys a joke as well as any one else. (Photo by ...
— The Origin and Nature of Emotions • George W. Crile
... were often inclined to push a joke to rudeness, and what began in fun often ended in a fight. Still, they were good-natured, honest people. They were kind to those needing assistance, and if necessity became common so did ...
— A Sketch of the History of Oneonta • Dudley M. Campbell
... simply trying to joke away the dismals! Why,"—he smiled persuasively—"if you only knew what a hard job it is." But the ludicrousness of her misconstruction took him off his guard, and in spite of the grimmest endeavor to prevent it, his smile increased and he ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... Arlotto and Gonnella were historical beings, colored and shaped by local influences. But if the comparison be allowed, and extended to the jests of the non-Italian nations, we shall find in general that the joke in the French fabliaux, as among the Germans, is chiefly directed to the attainment of some advantage or enjoyment; while the wit of Arlotto and the practical jokes of Gonnella are an end in themselves, and exist simply for the sake of the triumph of production. ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... I try to keep mine clean," said Somerled. "I tell you that in earnest, not in joke, because for the present I've constituted myself your granddaughter's guardian. My plan is to take her in my motor-car to Edinburgh, where I shall deliver her safely to Mrs. Bal—Mrs. Ballantree MacDonald. In the car will be Mrs. West and her ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... mean?" cried Captain Weston indignantly. "If this is a joke, you're carrying it too far. If you're in earnest, let me warn you against interfering ...
— Tom Swift and his Submarine Boat - or, Under the Ocean for Sunken Treasure • Victor Appleton
... But All the Bills Were Finally Defeated - Grove L. Johnson Denounces Action of Governor Gillett and President Roosevelt - Speaker Stanton Places Himself in a Very Embarrassing Position - His Effective Speech Becomes a Joke. ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn
... particular of the "Lone Hermit," as in true poetic style she termed Arthur. But there was no seriousness in her converse either of or to young Myrvin. There was always mischief lurking in her laughter-loving eye; always some wild joke betrayed in the arch smiles ever lingering round her mouth; but mischief as it was, apparently the mere wantonness of childhood, or very early youth, something in that glance or smile ever bade young Myrvin's heart beat quicker than before, and every pulse throb with what ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... being desirous to return home. On the contrary, others would rather die there than go back one step from what they had undertaken. But others who had greater courage than any of these two parties did laugh and joke at all their discourses. In the meanwhile they had a guide who much comforted them, saying: 'It would not now be long before they met with people, from whom they ...
— The Buccaneers in the West Indies in the XVII Century • Clarence Henry Haring
... harasses the men most. They soon developed a contempt for German rifle fire, and it became a very persistent joke in the trenches. But nearly all agree that German artillery is "hell let loose." That is what the enemy intended it to be, but they did not reckon upon the terrors of Hades making so small an impression upon the British soldier. There is an illuminating passage in an official statement issued from ...
— Tommy Atkins at War - As Told in His Own Letters • James Alexander Kilpatrick
... Duras's or the Princesse de Glumenee's. The hand of the clock was slily put forward to hasten the King's departure by a few minutes; he thought bed-time was come, retired, and found none of his attendants ready to wait on him. This joke became known in all the drawing-rooms of Versailles, and was disapproved of there. Kings have no privacy. Queens have no boudoirs. If those who are in immediate attendance upon sovereigns be not themselves disposed to transmit ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... divide things easily; I am an indivisible man. But one night I went for a bicycle ride with my wife. She was a Bantam of delight, I can tell you, but she rode very badly. It was starlight, and I was attempting to explain the joke in the paper called, if I recollect aright, Punch. It was an extraordinarily sultry night, and I told her the names of all the stars she saw as she fell off her machine. She had a good bulk of falls. There were lights in the upper windows of the houses as the people ...
— The War of the Wenuses • C. L. Graves and E. V. Lucas
... out and not forget yourself in my place,' the fat man interrupted emphatically; 'people joke with a fool like you; you ought, you fool, to have sense, and be grateful to them for taking notice of ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... is, I—got up the summons, and I told Ed Tootle to serve it on you at your orgy—you had no business to expect me to enter any free-for-all inebriates' competition—you know that, 'Gene! It may have been a little extreme as a joke; but if you'd laughed it off as you always do, nobody would have thought anything of it except to chaff you about it. But what do you do? You make as serious a thing of it as if you hadn't been trotting with our crowd for five ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... and contention; in the exchange, that which springs from covetousness; in the fencing and wrestling schools, from emulation; in offices and state affairs, from ambition; and in a feast or entertainment, from pleasantness and joke. ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... curse of the Cardinal-Archbishop of Rheims, who banned the thief—both body and soul, his life and for ever—who stole his ring. It was an awful curse, but none of the guests seemed the worse for it, except the poor jackdaw who had hidden the ring in some sly corner as a practical joke. But, if we are to believe traditionary and historical lore, only too many of the curses recorded in the chronicles of family history have been productive of the most disastrous results, reminding us ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... his host full of merriment, singing in the lightness of his heart. Indeed, he had reason to be pleased, for at last, he told his wife and his friend, Buisson-Souef was his. He had seen Mme. de Lamotte at Versailles and paid her the full purchase-money in good, sounding gold. And, best joke of all, Mme. de Lamotte had no sooner settled the business than she had gone off with a former lover, her son and her money, and would in all probability never be heard of again. The gay gentleman laughingly reminded his hearers ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... Titbottom, during the dull season at the office. And I have known him sometimes to reply, with a kind of dry, sad humor, not as if he enjoyed the joke, but as if the joke must be made, that he saw no reason why I should be dull ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... rank, are all equalized and republicanized by the division of an account. No sooner had I entered the sanctum, than the senior partner, Mr. Precepts, began to quiz his junior, Mr. Jones, with, "Well, Jones must never joke friend Discount anymore about usury. Just imagine," he continued, addressing me, "Jones has himself been discounting a bill for a lady; and a deuced pretty one too. He sat next her at dinner in Grosvenor Square, last week. Next day she gave ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... both upon the stage and in the boxes, with patient expectation. There is little talking, but a tension of heads towards the stage. The last word is spoken there, the last joke expires; all attention is concentrated upon an expected object. The edge of eagerness is not suffered to turn, but precisely at the right moment a figure with a dark head and another with a gray head are seen at the depth of the stage, advancing through the aisle towards the ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... his form all day, that he gives himself up to fun, like a boy out of school. If one may judge, however, from the looks of Simmo's overalls, and from the number of times he woke me by scurrying around my tent, I suspect that he is never too serious and never too busy for a joke. It is a way he has of brightening the more sober times of getting his own living, and keeping a sharp lookout for cats and owls ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... are without any religion, not idolaters, but very gentle, not knowing what is evil, nor the sins of murder and theft, being without arms, and so timid that a hundred would fly before one Spaniard, although they joke with them.[144-1] They, however, believe and know that there is a God in heaven and say that we have come from Heaven. At any prayer that we say, they repeat, and make the sign of the cross. Thus your Highnesses should resolve to make them Christians, for I believe that, ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... served, while Mr Adams was saying grace, the captain conveyed his chair from behind him; so that when he endeavoured to seat himself he fell down on the ground, and this completed joke the first, to the great entertainment of the whole company. The second joke was performed by the poet, who sat next him on the other side, and took an opportunity, while poor Adams was respectfully drinking ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... better know to be true than those disinterested supporters of that noble lord, who had the advantage of hearing him and cheering him night after night, when he first became premier—I mean that he did officially and habitually joke, at a time when this country was plunged in deep disgrace and distress—I say, that noble lord, when he wondered so much that the man of this age, who has, by his earnest and adventurous spirit, done the most to distinguish himself and it, did not blush for the tremendous ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... arrived at St. James's a quarter after three on Tuesday the 8th. When she first saw the Palace she turned pale: the Duchess of Hamilton smiled. "My dear Duchess," said the Princess, "you may laugh; you have been married twice; but it is no joke to me." Is this a bad proof of her sense? On the journey they wanted her to curl her toupet. "No, indeed," said she, "I think it looks as well as those of the ladies who have been sent for me: if the King would have me wear a periwig, I will; otherwise I shall ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... an instant Virginia was something quite different from a little girl with a dimple. "You are very kind," she was saying, and her mother herself could have done it no better, "but I am sure our little joke had gone quite far enough. I bid you good-morning". And with that she walked regally over to the glove counter, leaving red and grey and black hosiery to their ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... and marriage are as unknown to him as the commonest distinction between mine and thine. He is a well-looking artistic vagabond, to whom a half-time book and a penalty will in all probability be no better than a standing joke to be cracked with impunity at the expense of ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... relating to the free interchange of the products of the two countries, were entirely set aside, and the duties proposed to be levied were almost prohibitory in their character." The free-list offered by the United States reads like a diplomatic joke: "burr-millstones, rags, fire-wood, grindstones, plaster and gypsum." The real bar in this and subsequent negotiations, was the unwillingness of the Americans to enter into any kind of arrangement for extended trade. They did not want to break in upon their system of protection, ...
— George Brown • John Lewis
... a fresh access, from the vortex of which he managed to fling out—"But that's the very core of the joke!" ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... although none but full-blooded Indians had ever ventured on a journey to it. This was rather too much, even for us, sanguine and confiding as we were. We shared a common suspicion that the Cura had changed his tactics, and resolved to play a practical joke upon our credulity—to send us on a fool's errand and laugh at us for our pains. That he had been tampering with the two guides for this purpose, struck us forcibly; for while he professed never to have known any man ...
— Memoir of an Eventful Expedition in Central America • Pedro Velasquez
... become beautiful not from strength, but from slothful tenderness. And thus they ruin their own tempers and natures, and consequently those of their offspring. Furthermore, if at any time a man is taken captive with ardent love for a certain woman, the two are allowed to converse and joke together, and to give one another garlands of flowers or leaves, and to make verses. But if the race is endangered, by no means is further union between them permitted. Moreover, the love born of eager desire is not known among them; only ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... to every person of my acquaintance. Finally, one day he came to propose to me to celebrate in verse the birth of the king of Rome; I told him, laughing, that I had not a single idea on the subject, and that I should confine myself to wishes for his having a good nurse. This joke put an end to the prefect's negociations with me, upon the necessity of my writing in favor of ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... making a profound bow to the boy in charge of it, passed in before Lord Northcliffe. Nothing was said during the descent. On leaving the lift Mr. H. again raised his hat and bowed low to the boy. When they were out of earshot Lord Northcliffe remonstrated with him on his behaviour. "You shouldn't joke," he said, "with these boys, it makes discipline difficult." "Joke!" exclaimed Mr. H., "good heavens, I wasn't joking; how do I know that to-morrow he will not be the ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... seasoned with wit and humour; they have plenty of good conversation as well as good cheer for their guests; and they not only have wit themselves, but they love it in others; they can take as well as give a joke. I never lived with a more good-humoured, generous, ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... guns, everybody!" cautioned Mr. Durban. "It's no joke to be caught in an elephant herd with an unloaded rifle. Have you plenty of ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Rifle • Victor Appleton
... always at one's post, and sleeping with one eye open. They had a hard time to contend with, our ten comrades, and the calm way in which they took everything was extraordinary. They were always in a good humour, and always had a joke ready. It was the duty of the sea party to bring up all the provisions and outfit for the wintering party from the hold, and put them on the ice. Then the land party removed them. This work proceeded very smoothly, and it was rare that one ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... impudent, but is perfectly obedient. I cannot make him out, however. He performs everything smilingly, as though it were an excellent joke. I ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray
... [served his turn].[335] * * *[336]Let it be understood, therefore, that I by no means express my own sentiments, but those of Carneades, in order that you may refute this philosopher, who was wont to turn the best causes into joke, through the mere ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... some sort of vague diplomatic appointment. He had drifted across Bobby's life afterwards in a shadowy way, seeming to have nothing special to do, but to know a great many people and to take life as a sort of a joke. He talked lightly and cynically about serious things, and used foreign expressions with great ease and fluency. It was characteristic of him that since the War he made frequent use of German idioms, and when conversation turned upon passing events he professed a complete ...
— War-time Silhouettes • Stephen Hudson
... Wot did I do? Stood. Wot happened then? Pointin' my finger at 'em I ses, surrender yer swabs, or I'll blow yer brains out! All o' them wuz so skeerd o' my threat they begged fer mercy. An' ther joke of it wuz, I didn't hev no pistol neither. It wuz so dark in ther cave yer couldn't see ther smellin' tackle on yer figger head, an in that gloom they mistook my finger fer a gun. Waal, sir, in less'n two minutes ...
— Jack Wright and His Electric Stage; - or, Leagued Against the James Boys • "Noname"
... "He is a short, thick-set chap, stout and red, rather like a comedian in face. I think he appreciates a joke more ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... Kwairyo. "I was not joking. The only joke—if there be any joke at all—is that you are fool enough to pay good money for a goblin's head." And Kwairyo, loudly laughing, ...
— Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things • Lafcadio Hearn
... about it was to watch the "Aneshodi" going about among them, his face alight with warm, human love; his hearty laugh ringing out in a joke that the Hopis seemed to understand, making himself one with them. It came to Margaret suddenly to remember the pompous little figure of the Rev. Frederick West, and to fancy him going about among these people and trying to do them good. Before she knew ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... little joke, for like many great singers she was half a child and half a genius, and endowed with the huge vitality that alone makes an opera singer's ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... A glass of wine, if you like ... a glass of good French wine.... That's it, uncork a bottle.... We'll have a glass all round.... Your health, Weisslicht!... Oh, what a joke!... When I think of the face of Weisslicht, the special commissary of the imperial government!... The prisoner's gone! ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... sir, have your joke; but when I ask questions or hang around to see what's going on I do it for a reason. I wanted to go on this voyage in this ship, sir: that's why I was so ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn
... an unnatural life altogether," said Dolores. "Why should the rotten apple have been swallowed? or, if it was, I should think a joke over it might have ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... convent—an honest but weak man, who knew of no other means of livelihood. Him Luther retained in his service throughout his life, and tried to make some provision for his future. He once sought, as we have seen, to practise turning with him, but of this nothing further is related. He loved, too, to joke with him in his own hearty manner. When, in 1534, Wolf built a fowling-floor or place for catching birds, he reprimanded him for it in a written indictment, making the 'good, honourable' birds themselves lodge a complaint against him. They pray Luther to prevent his servant, or ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... about in his dog-cart all over the country. He was delighted to take part in the fete and made his little speech, saying he had seen Monsieur Francis when he was only a few hours old, and that he had grown since—which joke ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... determination; and it was not long before this was evinced by a performance which, under other circumstances, might have evoked laughter from those who witnessed it. In this instance, however, the spectators were themselves the victims of the joke—if joke it might be termed—and during its continuance, not one of the three felt the slightest inclination to indulge in mirth. It was ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... coat, which always was loose about the shoulders and too long in the sleeves. But all knew "Jack" to be an excellent fellow. His principal fault, if it could be so termed, was a superabundance of good-nature, a willingness at all times to joke and be joked. He had a fund of stories—in some of which he pictured himself the hero—with which he was wont to relieve the tedium of the evening hours. A violin was among his effects, which he played to accompany his singing of entertaining ...
— Crossing the Plains, Days of '57 - A Narrative of Early Emigrant Tavel to California by the Ox-team Method • William Audley Maxwell
... was otherwise. Familiar in varying degree with the sea, they took me as a sort of joke. In truth, it was a joke to me, that I, the veriest landsman, should be filling the office of mate; but to be taken as a joke by others was a different matter. I made no complaint, but Wolf Larsen demanded the most punctilious sea etiquette ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... were not so fine, we'd weigh en whole: but as he is, we'll take a side at a time. John, you can mind my old joke, ey?' ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... we were all in the ambulances, thought they could stop the way; but that sort of joke wouldn't do with Napoleon. So he said to his demons, his veterans, those that had the toughest hide, 'Go, clear me the way.' Junot, a sabre of the first cut, and his particular friend, took a thousand men, no more, and ripped ...
— Folk Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... usually much relaxed, that prevailed in the smoking-room, but from time to time he made, in his soft flat youthful voice, a remark which every one paused to listen to and which was greeted with roars of laughter. Vogelstein, well as he knew English, could rarely catch the joke; but he could see at least that these must be choice specimens of that American humour admired and practised by a whole continent and yet to be rendered accessible to a trained diplomatist, clearly, ...
— Pandora • Henry James
... seemed as if put for them—so precisely Was it the very thing that they desired; They were (or should have been) intensely tired, But luckily they had not far to go, A lot of pleasant matters had transpired, And all had cracked their lively joke or so; But now the day was o'er, ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott
... with his neighbor, that the Portuguese farmer obtains his sound and intelligent views on the politics of his country. He is a great talker, taking a keen interest in all that goes on, enjoying a joke thoroughly and addressing his comrade with all the ceremonies and distinctions of a language which contains half a dozen different forms of address. The illiterate peasant is no whit behind the man of culture in the purity of his Portuguese. In no country ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... it, anyway," declared Archie. "Well, at Bridgeport they take me as a joke, see? That's all right; I'll show them, some day. They voted me a nuisance at the shops and shut me out. Wouldn't let me come near their engines. I had to find out some things necessary to my inventions, ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman
... again the horse gave an amazing hop which sent the pung forward with a lurch, and rolled the two girls over upon the straw. Patricia thought it a joke, but Arabella, never very good-tempered, was actually angry. "O dear!" she cried, "I think it's just horrid to be shaken up so. Well, I don't think you're very nice to laugh about it, Patricia. I wouldn't like to take any one out to a sleighride, and have ...
— Dorothy Dainty's Gay Times • Amy Brooks
... pointed to the statues of the Ladies of Ancient France which towered up, all white, in a half-circle under the trees of the terrace. This joke, though in itself trifling, enabled me to know that the young man called Gelis was a student at the Ecole des Chartes. From the conversation which followed I was able to learn that his neighbor, blond and wan almost to diaphaneity, ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... would'nt hurt me, Doctor?" he enquires, complacently, looking round the room distrustfully at those who were enjoying the joke, more at his expense than he held to be in accordance ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... that monument of human inanity, Bouvard et Pecuchet; Maupassant, his disciple, had just published a volume of verse; Manet was regarded as a dangerous charlatan, Monet looked on as a madman; while poor Cezanne was only a bad joke. The indurated critical judgment of the academic forces pronounced Bonnat a greater portraitist than Velasquez, and Gerome and his mock antiques and mock orientalism far superior to Fromentin and Chasseriau. It was ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... seem, this freak struck Madam Conway favorably. Arthur Carrollton knew that Maggie was unlike any other person, and the joke, she thought, would increase, rather than diminish, the interest he already felt in her. So she made no objection, and in a few days it was on its way to England, together with a lock of Hagar's snow-white hair, which Maggie had coaxed from the old lady, and, unknown to her grandmother, ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... a janitor at Boxwood Hall when Ned, Bob, and Jerry attended there. He had been a good friend to the three chums, and, as mentioned, had assisted them in performing what they were pleased to term a "joke." ...
— Ned, Bob and Jerry on the Firing Line - The Motor Boys Fighting for Uncle Sam • Clarence Young
... most splendid joke ever played in the Valley. Travis was not popular, neither was the dignified Col. Troup. Up to this time the crowd had not cared who won the purse; nor had they cared which of the pretty trotters received the ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... your mother in Montreal, he had contracted a previous marriage in the hunting-ground; a marriage amply attested, of which the certificate still exists. That, of course, makes his second marriage in Montreal illegal, makes him a bigamist, and you illegitimate. Moreover (and this is the best joke of all), unknown to him a son was born, to his first marriage, and that son, according to law, should inherit the family wealth and ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... well when he says that, amateurs or professionals, they are all very much alike. "Feed them like princes and pamper them like babies, and they'll complain all the time. But stand them up to be shot at and they'll take it as a joke, and rather a good joke, too." Lord Roberts maintains a dignified reticence, but that is ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... tread a brand-new sphere, created as they would have it, empty of all save their two selfish selves. On such a day, in such surroundings, crosses, hindrances, dangers, what were they? Life was a great joke: Nick Grylls and his minions were blithely whistled down the wind. Ascending between the flowery banks of the little river, their river, nothing mattered so they were not parted. In the more or less tarnished ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... recognized a treasure in Nicodemus, right away—a butt to play jokes on. It was easy to see that he was inconceivably green and confiding. George Jones had the glory of perpetrating the first joke on him; he gave him a cigar with a firecracker in it and winked to the crowd to come; the thing exploded presently and swept away the bulk of Nicodemus's eyebrows and eyelashes. He ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... in the bluest of summer weather, Sketching under a whispering oak, I heard five bobolinks laughing together, Over some ornithological joke. Bird ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... replied that I did not understand what she meant, since women, so far as I had observed them, were generally in love either with a man or with themselves, perhaps more often with the latter than the former. Rather a cheap joke I admit, with just enough truth in it to make it acceptable—in the ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... "Encyclopaedia Britannica." The new bill, in short, proposes to substitute for the old duty of eight per cent. ad valorem a new one of fifteen cents the pound weight. Could we suspect a Committee of Members of Congress of a joke appreciable by mere members of the human family, could we suppose them in a thoughtless moment to have carried into legislation a mildened modicum of that metaphorical language which forms the staple of debate, we should ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... good indeed, Puff on, keep up the joke 'Tis the best, 'twill stand the test, Either to chew ...
— The Social History of Smoking • G. L. Apperson
... thought to himself, while many a dire and forceful aspiration passed through his mind. Indeed, the expressions to which he gave vent were most inelegant in their nature. But what was to be done next? He was a Russian and thoroughly aroused. The affair had been no joke. "But for the Superintendent," he reflected, "I might never again have looked upon God's daylight—I might have vanished like a bubble on a pool, and left neither trace nor posterity nor property nor an honourable name for my future offspring to inherit!" (it seemed that our ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... "Your idea of a joke!" Forepaugh growled in disgust. He understood what Gunga's grim pleasantry referred to. There was indeed an incalculable quantity of hydrogen at hand. If some means could be found to separate the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... sure enough played hell all around, bringin' Brit Hunter's girl to the Sawtooth!" he began, chuckling as if he had some secret joke. "Where'd you pick her up, Lone? She claims you found her at ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... she was unable to think of anyone with whom she had ever come in contact, capable of threatening her in this terrible way. She had about decided that the whole thing must be some stupidly conceived practical joke, when she saw her mother cross the hall and ...
— The Film of Fear • Arnold Fredericks
... will not guess with whom I am going to breakfast this morning?"—"Really, General, I ———"—"With Bernadotte; and the best of the joke is, that I have invited myself. You would have seen how it was all brought about if you had been with us at the Theatre Francais, yesterday evening. You know we are going to visit Joseph today at Mortfontaine. Well, as we were coming out of the theatre ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... fat person. And she was a great joker. The joke that she loved most was this: she loved to bump into people that were flying through the air—to bump into them and knock them, spinning, upon ...
— The Tale of Mrs. Ladybug • Arthur Scott Bailey
... being an excellent woodsman, he was his favourite guide; being an expert swimmer, he was generally by his side when swimming rivers, or paddled him over in a canoe if they had one; being a good fisherman, he often caught him fish; the general would laugh and joke with him, but with no other private. He did not however employ Bob in these small matters when he had any thing serious for him to do. Surprised at his exact intelligence from Georgetown and other places, the author asked him once "how he got it?" He related several ...
— A Sketch of the Life of Brig. Gen. Francis Marion • William Dobein James
... appreciation of the new era; an ear in which it would seem that neither honesty nor truth is very desirable, but in which success is the only touchstone of merit. We must laugh at every thing that is established. Let the joke be ever so bad, ever so untrue to the real principles of joking; nevertheless we must laugh—or else beware the cart. We must talk, think, and live up to the spirit of the times, and write up to it too, if that cacoethes be upon us, or else we are nought. ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... of men looked sheepish and hurriedly explained the joke, looking over in the direction of the two strangers. As their welcome was considered a huge joke the men laughed loudly. Mr. Brewster (for it was the rancher) frowned when he saw the pale girls almost fainting from fear. Then he turned to ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... enjoyment, for though not quite so heartless as their brothers, it cannot be denied that most school-girls take a mischievous delight in teasing their companions. Dreda Saxon was, moreover, from this point of view an amusing victim, for when a joke was directed against herself her sense of humour was temporarily eclipsed, and she took refuge in what was laughingly dubbed "heroics." Now, as usual, her eyes flashed, her chin tilted itself in air, and her ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... deep submersion, and floundered on shore blowing and spluttering. But in the meantime the keepers had walked away, carrying with them the rod and line, fish, and tin can of bait, laughing loudly at the practical joke which they ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... most striking as a closing accompaniment to the secluded valley. Here, in the early morning, I saw an odd sight—fifteen milk-maids together, laden with their brimming pails. How cheerful and happy they appeared! and not a little inclined to joke after the manner of the pastoral persons in Theocritus. That day brought us to Capel Cerig again, after a charming drive up the banks of the Ogwen, having previously had beautiful views of Bangor, ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... was black with sightseers! We were loudly cheered, and for a good way below young lads and lasses ran along the bank, still cheering. What with current and paddling, we were flashing along like swallows. It was no joke to keep up with us upon the woody shore. But the girls picked up their skirts as if they were sure they had good ankles, and followed until their breath was out. The last to weary were the three graces and a couple of companions; and just as they too had had enough, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ever was) that any thing extraordinary had occurred in the world; he at first attributed the reports of what he heard to the "impudence" of his servants and dependents, and wondered that they should dare to venture upon such a joke. On finding these assertions backed by those of his acquaintance, he pished and pshawed, and looked very wise, and ironically congratulated them on this creditable conspiracy with the insolent rascals, his servants. On being shown the old Bible, of ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... is too strong a word for "man fuerchtete fuer Lottens Leben;" but there is no peg on which to hang the poor joke of the last stanza. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 234, April 22, 1854 • Various
... indeed! No, no; I did not come to Bath to drive my sisters about; that would be a good joke, faith! Morland must ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... time there was some truth in the old joke which describes the English dislike of speculation by saying that all our philosophy consists of a short catechism in two questions: "What is mind? No matter. What is matter? Never mind." The only accepted appeal was to tradition. Patriots were ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... however, to appear to he out done in learning in a public bar-room, and before so many of his clients; he therefore put the best face on the matter, and laughed knowingly as if there were a good joke concealed under it, that was understood only by the physician and himself. All this was attentively observed by the listeners, who exchanged looks of approbation; and the expressions of tonguey mati, and I guess Squire Lippet knows if anybody does, were heard in different parts of the ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... said: "Her Majesty is coming." Down we all went on our knees, the Emperor alone remaining standing and laughing at us. Of course there was no sign of Her Majesty and everybody joined in the laugh. He was never so happy as when he could work off a joke ...
— Two Years in the Forbidden City • The Princess Der Ling
... all she was right when she said he had never loved her. He was disappointed, irritated even, but his vanity was more affected than his heart. He knew that himself. And presently he grew conscious that the gods had played a very good practical joke on him, and he laughed at himself mirthlessly. It is not very comfortable to have the gift of being amused at ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... assumption of the role of critic in general to his fellow-workers in science. At a meeting of the x Club, Tyndall made a jesting allusion to this; Huxley, however, thought the mere suggestion too grave for a joke, and replied with all seriousness to clear himself from the possibility of such misconception. And the same ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... laughed at her joke. But it was true,—she was very bright. Her eyes seemed to light the room, or perhaps it was her gown, like an opal fire, blue and pink and purple, changing and glowing, and made ...
— The Little House in the Fairy Wood • Ethel Cook Eliot
... seems now like a huge joke, and so it has ever since been regarded, but a war was coming which was serious enough. It might be said that the great Civil War began with "John Brown's invasion of Virginia," in 1859, but it might just as well be ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... wouldn't. The fact is, he was afraid to. He snarled at Buster Bear and called him a thief and everything bad he could think of. Buster didn't seem to mind. He chuckled as if he thought it all a great joke and repeated his invitation to Little Joe to come and get his fish. But Little Joe just turned his back and went off down the Laughing Brook ...
— The Adventures of Buster Bear • Thornton W. Burgess
... chagrined, started off to the hotel, on the chance of the boy having turned up there. No Tom was there. Tom, in fact, was at that moment debating somewhere about a mile and a half away whether he should not try to make his way to the "Oriana" at the Docks, and remain quietly there till claimed. What a joke it would all be when he was found! What an adventure for his first ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... Lincoln and his friends beguiled the way through forest and prairie. With youth, good health, and a clear conscience, and even then the dawn of a young and undefiled ambition in his heart, nothing was wanting to give zest and spice to this long, sociable walk of a hundred leagues. One joke is preserved, and this one is at the expense of Lincoln. One chilly morning he complained of being cold. "No wonder," said some facetious cavalier, "there is so much of you on the ground." [Footnote: ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... Aphrodite. But this scene (Iliad, XIV., 153 seq.) is innocuous compared with the shameless description of the adulterous amours of Ares and Aphrodite in the Odyssey (VIII., 266-365), in presence of the gods, who treat the matter as a great joke. For a parallel to this passage we would have to descend to the Botocudos or the most degraded Australians. All of which proves that the severity of the punishment inflicted on the twelve maids of Odysseus does not indicate a high regard for chastity, but is simply ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... his proboscis; "the sun it pese hot like ash never vas, und I purns my nose. Nice nose, don't it?" And Snyder viewed it with a look of comical sadness in the little mirror back of his bar. It entered at once into the head of the mischievous fellow in front of the bar to play a joke upon Snyder; so he went out and collected half a dozen of his comrades, with whom he arranged that they should drop in at the saloon one after another, and ask Snyder, "What's the matter with that nose?" to see how long he would ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... together at the joke on Frank, and Dave parted the branches for a better look at ...
— The Flight of Pony Baker - A Boy's Town Story • W. D. Howells
... thought them rubbish. But he laughed, and she laughed. They became to her a huge joke. Old King Cole she thought was Brangwen. Mother Hubbard was Tilly, her mother was the old woman who lived in a shoe. It was a huge, it was a frantic delight to the child, this nonsense, after her ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... suggest that the motto of my new company should be, "Stealer et fraudax"? Is it a Latin joke? If so, don't write to me any more. Those who deal with me must be British ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 14th, 1891 • Various
... with another party, where the camp was bothered by the midnight foraging of a bear, our guide arranged to play a practical joke upon a certain "tenderfoot." Unknown to the victim, he tied a chunk of bacon to the corner of his sleeping bag with a piece of bale wire. In the middle of the night the camp was awakened by a pandemonium ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... open laughter. "That's a good one on you and on your friend, Ida," he declared. "If she has gone to meet her aunt up in New York State she'll meet a horse instead. How's that for a joke?" ...
— Betty Gordon at Mountain Camp • Alice B. Emerson
... not know," thought he, "that he has to do with Dirk Hammerhand," and he clenched his fist in anticipation of his rough joke. ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... looked frankly into the captain's as he continued. "I have been making a fool of myself, Captain. Got into some mischief with a crowd of fellows at school. Of course, I got caught and had to bear the whole blame for the silly joke we had played. The faculty has suspended me for a term. I would have got off with only a reprimand if I would have told the names of the other fellows, but I ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... much hacker discourse. Applied especially to parodies, absurdities, and ironic jokes that are both intended and perceived to contain a possibly disquieting amount of truth, or truths that are constructed on in-joke and self-parody. This lexicon contains many examples of ha-ha-only-serious in both form and content. Indeed, the entirety of hacker culture is often perceived as ha-ha-only-serious by hackers themselves; to take it either too lightly or too seriously marks a person as an outsider, a {wannabee}, ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... a long poem which persuades its reader to take up the cross. Still under the general head of arrangement John explains the ten ways of amplifying material. The tenth, "interpretacio," he illustrates by telling a joke, and then amplifying it into a little comedy. "Comedy," he says, "is a jocose poem beginning in sadness and ending in joy: a tragedy is a poem composed in the grand style beginning in joy and ending in grief."[115] Next follow the six metrical faults, the faults of salutations in letters, ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark
... aloud at the stupendous joke, as he drew her arm within his, and led her into the thronged rooms, as some favored subject may once in his ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... Northampton's. And then comes Monday—and to-night any unicorn I may see I will not find myself at liberty to catch. (N.B.—should you meditate really an addition to the 'Elegant Extracts'—mind this last joke is none of mine but my father's; when walking with me when a child, I remember, he bade a little urchin we found fishing with a stick and a string for sticklebacks in a ditch—'to mind that he brought any sturgeon he might catch to ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... comedies of Congreve. The characters which he played may have been comic ones, but he was a serious man. Indeed, his gravity was so well known in his lifetime that it was reckoned the height of wit, when he was dead, to father off upon him a Jest Book! This joke, bad as it was, was better than any joke in the book. It made him famous, so famous that for the next hundred years every little bon mot was laid at his door, metaphorically speaking, the puniest youngest brat of ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... considered himself a pretty smart fellow, and enjoyed cracking jokes with people, particularly when the joke was on his side, he went on chaffing Farmer Jonathan about the hay. He offered to trade brooms, clothes-lines, etc., for it, while those standing around laughed, and those passing along the street paused to see what the ...
— Harper's Young People, July 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... did not, and it is of no use to think what we should have done if he had. But rather more than a year ago Diana herself wrote to me—wrote me a pitiful, heart-breaking letter. I thought at first it must be some grim practical joke, though I could not imagine who had played so cruel a trick, or why the trick had been played at all. But it was Diana's handwriting, and she enclosed a photograph of herself, which I have now. It was impossible to mistake that: nothing could mar her beauty; and then ...
— Daisy's Aunt • E. F. (Edward Frederic) Benson
... Arbuthnot should admire," broke in Bickley, attempting to lighten matters with a joke. "But come on and let us be rid of this fool's errand. Certainly the world is a lovely place after all, and for my part I hope that we haven't seen the last of it," he added with ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... gone to stay with Froude in a remote corner of Wales; and wishing to refer to the draft, telegraphed to the Recorder of London: 'Send Homicide Bill.' The official to whom this message had to be sent at some distance from the house declined to receive it. If not a coarse practical joke, he thought it was a request to forward into that peaceful region a wretch whose nickname was too clearly significant ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... exposed. He would go under, deeper and deeper under, and so would she. The underworld, that vague and fearful place, would receive them. His generous and trusting love for her had joined with his love of a joke to sink him. Together they would sink, and over their bodies Charles Wilbraham would climb, as on stepping-stones, to higher things. Higher and higher, plumping with prosperity like a filbert in the sun, while his eyes dropped fatness, ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... the previous ones, and something like this may be the result: "A boy," "very dark complexion," "long yellow hair," "wearing a black Eton jacket," "with a dark green dress," "five feet high," "about six years old," etc. When the player guessing gives the game up, the joke is explained ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain
... no common joke. At length a veteran officer spelled it over deliberately and shook his head three or four times and said that in his opinion it was seditious. That was the first time I felt alarmed. I immediately said I would explain the document, and they crowded around. And so I explained and explained and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... cruel," said Emile, laughing. "You are rich now," he went on gravely; "very well, I will give you two months at most before you grow vilely selfish. You are so dense already that you cannot understand a joke. You have only to go a little further to ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... hand-grips. Lightly as he spoke of the incident, Phil knew right well that he was on the very edge of disaster at the moment that Dick pulled trigger, and though he would fain have treated the whole adventure as a joke he was none the less grateful to Dick for his timely intervention, and the pressure of his hand was quite as eloquent as much outpouring ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... the practical joke had reckoned without his host. The cry had hardly escaped the victim, when Ziffak bounded to the rear like a cyclone. The fellow who was a full grown warrior was still grinning with delight, when he found himself in the terrific grasp of the head chieftain. It was then his turn to utter a shriek ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... wouldn't let Hod Blake arrest me an' shove me in his damned little jail, he stuck up the reward. I'll just ride over when I get time, an' claim the reward myself—an' use the money to pay my fine with—that part's a joke." ...
— Prairie Flowers • James B. Hendryx
... that," answered Maud, "for I am anxious to calculate the worth of the life I helped to save. Your reports are ambiguous, and I am undecided whether you are taking the boy seriously or as a joke. From your description of his personal appearance, I incline to the belief that under ordinary circumstances I would not look twice at Mr. Jones, but having been partly instrumental in preserving him to the world, I naturally feel a proprietary ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West • Edith Van Dyne
... jokes" of which every point in his discourse continually reminded him, though his hearers could not always perceive the association of ideas. This gentleman was very facetious over family jars, which reminded him of a "little joke," which he told; he was also very witty upon the subject of matrimonial disputes in particular, which reminded him of another "little joke," which he also told; but most of all, he was amused at the caprice of womankind, who very ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... is how it is! Very good of her, don't you think? Shouldn't suppose she would be amusing, the old granny, and Phoebe likes to be amused. I must go to see her as soon as I can get there. You know, we are Dissenters at home, Miss May. Good joke, isn't it? The governor will not hear a word against them. As a matter of fact, nobody does go to chapel in our rank of life; but the governor sometimes is as obstinate as an ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... but as a matter of fact I cursed. Deep in my soul I cursed. Her little joke, her pretty bit of acting, had left a stinging sense of loss. As suddenly as this ruthless comet swept into my orbit it had swung out and on; for one delicious moment we had touched across the infinite, but now my harmony was shattered, the strings of my harp were snapped, ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... ruses tried, And yet no safety found. A hundred times he falsified. The nose of every hound Was here, and there, and everywhere, Above, and under ground; But yet to stop he did not dare, Pent in a hole, it was no joke, To meet the terriers or the smoke. So, leaping into upper air, He met two dogs, that ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... he came out victor. In the next room also he swept the field, and now at last the crowd murmurously compared certainties, one woman darkly prophesying he never'd pay for them, because he hadn't a cent—not a cent—laid up, and a man returning that nobody need worry. 'Twas only a joke of Tim's; but Miss Letty'd be the one to suffer. Timothy's eyes and ears were closed to comment. His commercial onslaught continued, and when, in the early dusk, horses were unhitched and there was time for comment at the gate, it was clearly understood that, save for what ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... by this tale of misfortune suddenly flung at her head, and scarcely sure if it were not a practical joke. The four young women were so charmingly dressed, their hair was so carefully waved, their complexions so pink and white, that it was impossible to believe in their poverty. Besides, they could evidently afford perfume, so luscious that ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... none the less does Charlotte's question reveal in how different a manner the girl regarded strangers as a rule. In after days when the curates, looking for Mr. Bronte in his study, occasionally found Emily there instead, they used to beat such a hasty retreat that it was quite an established joke at the Parsonage that Emily appeared to the outer world in the likeness of an old bear. She hated strange faces and strange places. Her sisters must have seen that such a temperament, if it made her unlikely to attract a husband or to wish to attract one, also rendered ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... busily engaged in braiding a watch-chain from her splendid, Titian-red hair. These chains were the fashion of the hour, and the old family doctor, friend as well as physician, paused after a visit to the boy's mother, to joke her about it: "You're making a keepsake for your sweetheart, ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... then I will say something myself. I have a small joke, the only one I ever made, which I inflict periodically upon my wife. You, and I suppose George, are the only two other people in the world to whom it can ever be told; let me see, then, if I cannot break the ice with it. It is this. Some men have twin sons; George in this topsy turvey ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... justice, he had meant to keep that little bit of gossip entirely to himself, for solitary gloating over and nibbling. But when an old gentleman has spent all his life uttering melancholy platitudes, and is suddenly delivered of a joke—of two jokes—it is a little hard to expect him to hide his light under a bushel. He could have buried scandal in his breast forever, but to put an extinguisher on the sparks of his playful fancy—no, these things are beyond ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... to deliver a pompous little speech, treating her brother's betrothed like some foreign princess, whom she had orders to welcome in the name of the king, her father, the young couple began to laugh, and even prolonged the joke by responding in the same style. The railway men looked on and listened, gaping. It was a fine farce, and the Froments were delighted at showing themselves so playful ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... only difficult part of the ordeal. Waiting patiently was not a strong point with Keith. Finally his mother appeared to take him home, and the moment he looked at her he knew. She was in such high spirits that she had to try a joke. ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... New York. No one placed a higher value on the abstract qualities of wit and irony than Mrs. Dressel; the difficulty was that she never quite knew when Justine's retorts were loaded, or when her own susceptibilities were the target aimed at; and between her desire to appear to take the joke, and the fear of being ridiculed without knowing it, her pretty face often presented an interesting study in perplexity. As usual, she now took refuge in bringing the talk back to ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... the time that Mr. Blithers arrived in Edelweiss, the people were in a less antagonistic frame of mind,—though sullenly suspicious,—and were even prepared to grin in their sleeves, for, after all, it was quite clear that the joke was not on ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... face was perfectly grave, but the joke was beginning to prey upon his vitals in a manner ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... possessed him to take the brat in his arms and nurse it? His lips contracted in a cynical grin as he remembered the figure he cut when Chook appeared. He decided to look on the affair as a joke. But again his thoughts returned to the child, and he was surprised with a vibration of tenderness sweet as honey in his veins. A strange yearning came over him like a physical weakness for the touch of his ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... acquaintance, that is myself; and made an idle diary of such odd things as I have fallen over by accident, in walking in a very limited area at a very indolent pace. If anyone says that these are very small affairs talked about in very big language, I can only gracefully compliment him upon seeing the joke. If anyone says that I am making mountains out of molehills, I confess with pride that it is so. I can imagine no more successful and productive form of manufacture than that of making mountains out of molehills. ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... that she was singularly inaccessible to vulgar temptation. I added that notwithstanding her seeming lawlessness she was not only remarkably sensitive to any accusation of bad manners, but that upon certain matters she could not endure even a joke. The only quarrel I remember to have had with her was when I lapsed into some commonplace jest about her intimacy with a music-master who gave her lessons. The way in which she took that jest I shall never forget. If I had made ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... a fit of emotional insanity that you relieved the lady of her pocketbook?" asked Mr. Waterbury, bent on keeping up the joke. ...
— The Young Adventurer - or Tom's Trip Across the Plains • Horatio Alger
... "That foolish joke of calling me M. Rodin may appear very amusing to you, my dear child. I understand it, you being only an echo. Some one has said to you: 'Go and tell M. Charlemagne that he is one M. Rodin. ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... anecdote and joke, and the old seaman laughed till he cried, and went to bed vowing that there never was such a pleasant fellow on earth, and he ought to be physician to ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... house-walls. They begged his pardon, and then they began again, and shouted and roared anew. Since the gale which blew down the poet ——'s chimneys and put him to the expense of rebuilding them, no joke so generally satisfactory had been offered to the community. My friend had, in his time, achieved the reputation of a wit by going about and and saying, "Did you know ——'s chimneys had blown down?" and he had ...
— Buying a Horse • William Dean Howells
... suffer as an evil-doer, addict not thyself to play with evil, 25 to joke and jest, and mock at men in place and power. Gaal mocked at Abimelech, and said, Who is Abimelech that we should serve him? But he paid for his disdainful language at last (Judg 9). I have heard of an innkeeper here in England, whose sign was the crown, and he ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the small hours in the shape of an obsession, a fixed idea, that there was nothing in the ridiculous relics and that my exaggerated scruples were making a fool of me. It was ten to one they were rubbish, they were vain, they were empty; that they had been even a practical joke on the part of some weak-minded gentleman of leisure, the former possessor of the confounded davenport. The longer I hovered about them with such precautions the longer I was taken in, and the sooner I exposed their insignificance the sooner ...
— Sir Dominick Ferrand • Henry James
... the English house of commons, in the early part of the year, which damaged the prestige of Smith O'Brien, and although O'Connell exerted himself in parliament on his behalf, the event gave the arch-agitator satisfaction. He had many a private joke at the expense of O'Brien, and few men could wound with a brighter point than O'Connell in his best moods of satire. Mr. O'Brien was nominated on a committee, and refused to serve, alleging that the affairs of his country were so neglected that he would not attend to any other business than such ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... that!" exclaimed Bunny. Then he laughed, as Wopsie did. It was a little joke on her, when Bunny answered her the way ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue at Aunt Lu's City Home • Laura Lee Hope
... cities, but our farms and pastures were so arranged that there were several houses close together. And what fun the boys had hunting and fishing. Then I would straggle home for supper—and my mother, who wasn't old then, would be at the back door with a laugh and a joke to see that her Gunnar had come home whole, and to make him wash his hands properly. And the supper table, Odin! You ought to have seen it. It groaned. There was no end to our food in those days. And after supper, the younguns of the neighborhood would play ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam
... echoed by Joseph, who thought the joke capital. The ladies only smiled a little. They thought poor Rebecca suffered too much. She would have liked to choke old Sedley, but she swallowed her mortification as well as she had the abominable curry before it, and as soon as she could speak, said, with ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... goodness' sake, don't give me any more!' cried Lord Findon. 'It's no joke, Eugenie, this sipping business—Where were we? Oh, well, of course I knew we should have to take it—and I don't say I'm not pleased with ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... will not say affection; but passion, which word your dull brain cannot comprehend, you virtuous and modest Joseph!" the lady laughed at her own joke, and then continued, "I am not certain whether I had better tell the young man that I have discovered his hope; but I shall be forced to forbid his visiting me, which will be the same as telling the whole world ...
— The Home in the Valley • Emilie F. Carlen
... themselves very absurd by always trying to say nonsensical things to you. Men of this sort appear to have an impression that you are still children amused with a Jack-in-the-box which springs up in a very conceited hobgoblin way. Everybody likes a joke, and at times feels a childlike pleasure in speaking nonsense; but, believe me, sense is much more attractive ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... no matter what Doctor Hutchinson says, I contend that the slim man has all the best of it in this world. The fat man is the universal goat; he is humanity's standing joke. Stomachs are the curse of our modern civilization. When a man gets a stomach his troubles begin. If you doubt this ask any fat man—I started to say ask any fat woman, too. Only there aren't any fat women to speak of. There are women who are plump and will admit it; there are even women ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb
... they are obviously caricatured, or set in designed profile, or merely sketched. But they are all alive. The finical estimate of Gray (it is a horrid joy to think how perfectly capable Fielding was of having joined in that practical joke of the young gentlemen of Cambridge, which made Gray change his college), while dismissing these light things with patronage, had to admit that "parson Adams is perfectly well, so is Mrs Slipslop." "They were, Mr Gray," said some one once, "they were more perfectly ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... to make a joke of everything. But I know—I'm sure this business about Kit Raynham is going to be more serious than you think. It's bound ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... up on the coach and looks back at his father's figure as long as he can see it; and then the guard, having disposed of his luggage, comes to an anchor, and finishes his buttonings and other preparations for facing the three hours before dawn—no joke for those who minded cold, on a fast coach in November, in the reign of his ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... income taxes, so that practically nearly all forms of domestic manufactures were subject to a greater or less tax, according to the nature of the article. So sweeping were the provisions that it was frequently a matter of joke as well as comment. ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... stretched forth his arm and then doubled it back, and they both laughed. "That's a joke—my getting rested up. Why I feel like a ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... before he had become at all proficient in the knife- grinding and umbrella-mending arts; and many a sly laugh and joke on the part of Deborah made him at times half-inclined to give up the work; but there was a determination and dogged resolution about his character which did not let him lightly abandon anything he had once undertaken. So he persevered, much to Old Crow's satisfaction, ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... a dish, and was kicking the fragments under the table. He laughed at first when the two Englishmen tried to impress upon him the gravity of the situation; at last, however, they made him understand that this was no joke, but deadly earnest. They helped him close and bar the heavy iron gates; and as they looked about for material with which to build up a barrier if necessary, they saw the sisters come to the door. Saidee had a pigeon ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... really like to have a change, would you? Well, I trust you will not be disappointed in your expectations of society and watering-places. At all events, you may learn to appreciate home more!" Here the professor laughed again, as if he considered it a joke. ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... off, and she very likely reckoned on his laziness and dislike to foreign traveling. It is so easy for a young woman writing from Boston to say to a young man residing in Scotland, "Do come over for a few days"—Surbiton thought it would be a good joke to take her at her word and go. The idea of seeing her again so much sooner than he had expected was certainly uppermost in his mind as he began to make his resolution; but it was sustained and strengthened ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... doctrine as Socrates. But Confucius does not suffer from the comparison. He had a beauty, dignity and grace of person which the great Athenian did not possess. Socrates was more or less of a buffoon, and to many in Athens he was a huge joke—a town fool. Confucius combined the learning and graces of Plato with the sturdy, practical commonsense of Socrates. No one ever affronted or insulted him; many did not understand him, but he met prince or pauper on terms ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... a fool," said the king, who now thought that Felix was a jester who had put a trick upon him. "But your joke is out of joint; I will teach such fellows to try tricks on us! Beat him out ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... trailed their tilted legs, filed away in straggling flight, like figures interlacing on a panel. At the height of his distress, Rudolph caught a whirling glimpse of the woman above him, safe on firm earth, easy in her saddle, and laughing. Quicksand, then, was a joke,—but he could not pause for this ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... his pupil Ries, who had, as a joke, played a mediocre march at a gathering at Count Browne's and announced it to be a composition by Beethoven. When the march was praised beyond measure Beethoven broke out into ...
— Beethoven: the Man and the Artist - As Revealed in his own Words • Ludwig van Beethoven
... man again and with the citoyennes Elodie, Rose, and Julienne crowding round him, Desmahis looked at Philippe Dubois—he did not like the man and suspected him of having played him a practical joke—with a wry smile, and towering above him by ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... officers called in this manner went out, and found no one; and then Thiemet went out with them, under the pretext of assisting them in the search, and increased their perplexity by continuing to make them hear some well-known voice. Most of them laughed heartily at the joke of which they had just been the victims; but there was one who, having himself less under control than his comrades, took the thing seriously, and became very angry, whereupon Eugene had to avow that he was the author of ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... tears he shed: But more was yet required, for guests were come, Who could not dine if he disgraced the room. It shock'd his spirit to be esteem'd unfit With an own brother and his wife to sit; He grew rebellious—at the vestry spoke For weekly aid—they heard it as a joke: "So kind a brother, and so wealthy—you Apply to us?—No! this will never do: Good neighbour Fletcher," said the Overseer, "We are engaged—you can have nothing here!" George mutter'd something in despairing tone, Then sought his loft, to think and grieve ...
— Tales • George Crabbe
... and drabs, into that strange gaiety of light and colour which is made up of the reflection of superannuated things. The atmosphere plays over them like a laugh, they are of the essence of the sad old joke. They are almost as charming from other places as they are from their own balconies, and share fully in that universal privilege of Venetian objects which consists of being both the picture and ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... a parcel of traditions. Among these was a letter from Mr. Broadfoot, schoolmaster in Pennington, who facetiously signed himself "Clashbottom." To cleish, or clash, is to "flog," in Scots. From Mr. Broadfoot's joke arose Jedediah Cleishbotham, the dominie of Gandercleugh; the real place of Broadfoot's revels was the Shoulder of Mutton Inn, at Newton Stewart. Mr. Train, much pleased with the antiques in "the den" ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... suggests the recollection of that other source of danger which was an element in the everyday life of the Rockland people. The folks in some of the neighboring towns had a joke against them, that a Rocklander couldn't hear a bean-pod rattle without saying, "The Lord have mercy on us!" It is very true, that many a nervous old lady has had a terrible start, caused by some mischievous young rogue's giving a sudden shake to one of these noisy vegetable products in her immediate ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... that kind of thing. But he was not the sort of man you might expect to get on well with women. Unless with very intimate friends, he was a trifle silent and reserved. Often he was inclined to be pragmatic and sententious, and had a habit of saying unpleasantly bitter things when some careless joke was being made. He was a little dingy in appearance; and a man who had a somewhat cold manner, who was sallow of face, who was obviously getting gray, and who was generally insignificant in appearance, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... grossness of thy thighs hinders him from coming at thy kaze. What comeliness is there in thy grossness and what pleasantness or courtesy in thy coarse nature? Fat meat is fit for nought but slaughter, nor is there aught therein that calls for praise. If one joke with thee, thou art angry; if one sport with thee, thou art sulky; if thou sleep, thou snorest; if thou walk, thou pantest; if thou eat, thou art never satisfied. Thou art heavier than mountains and fouler than ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous
... balked and behaved ridiculously in a crowd. Probably his father had looked out of the window and seen him washing the car, and had put this up on him while he dressed. It was like his father's idea of a joke. ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... I don't know what's the matter with you, but I wish you wouldn't try to be so funny. You seem to think the whole affair's a sort of German joke. So it is, by Zeus—that's to say it's no joke ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 31, 1917 • Various
... reason fails him, tries the effect of an injurious nickname. According to the views of Mr. Spencer, Mr. Mill, and Mr. Darwin, Mr. Mivart tells us, "virtue is a mere kind of retrieving:" and, that we may not miss the point of the joke, he puts it in italics. But what if it is? Does that make it less virtue? Suppose I say that sculpture is a "mere way" of stone-cutting, and painting a "mere way" of daubing canvas, and music a "mere way" of making a noise, the statements are quite true; but they only ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... to Augustine [*QQ. in Genes., qu. cxlv], when Joseph said that there was no one like him in the science of divining, he spoke in joke and not seriously, referring perhaps to the common opinion about him: in this ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... carrying his heavy bag, along York Street, his consciousness of the tremendous importance to the world of his decision exhilarated him like a tonic. He had freed himself from Cyrus and from commercialism at a single blow, and it had all been as easy as talking! The joke about starvation he had of course indulged in merely for the exquisite pleasure of arousing Susan. He wasn't going to starve; nobody was going to starve in Dinwiddie on thirty dollars a month, and there was no doubt in the world of his ability to make that much by his ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... disturbance among the fish-girls; they are either quarrelling or playing some practical joke, but so roughly that two barrels packed with herrings are upset, and the contents scattered on the floor and into the salt tubs, making ...
— Skipper Worse • Alexander Lange Kielland
... astonished at the number of costers, but old John told them that that was nothing to what it was fifty years ago. The year that Andover won the block began seven or eight miles from Epsom. They were often half-an-hour without moving. Such chaffing and laughing, the coster cracked his joke with the duke, but all that was done ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... to Franklin and his apparition, there was a schoolboy joke to this effect: that whenever the statue of Franklin over the Library door heard the clock strike twelve at night, it descended, went to the old Jefferson Wigwam, and drank a glass of beer. But the sell lay in this, ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... "If that's a joke, may I never see another! It is a phantom! It's a nightmare! It's something that comes to ...
— The Girls of Central High in Camp - The Old Professor's Secret • Gertrude W. Morrison
... return for the hospitality which was shown to you by my parents and of which you formally sang the praises. I am a good-natured fellow and will submit to more from you than from any other man—I know not why, myself;—but in a matter like this I do not understand a joke! My sister is the only daughter of the noblest and richest house in Corinth and has many suitors. She is in no respect inferior to the child of your own parents, and I should like to know what you would say if I made ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... seeing that I did not intend to pay so much, he made me a present of the flute, and seemed just as well pleased. Still, the others stared at me silently and suspiciously, until I offered some tobacco to the chief, which he accepted with a joke, whereat everybody laughed and the ice was broken. The men forgot their reserve, and talked about me in loud tones, looking at me as we might at a hopelessly mad person, half pitying, half amused at his vagaries. The chief now wished to shake hands with me, though he did not ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... persons, or pretending to do so, for nobody ever knew when the lapses of recognition were due to intention or absent-mindedness, often tempted other artists to play pranks upon him. He was a man who resented a joke at his own expense, except on a few occasions, and this trait was often ...
— Whistler Stories • Don C. Seitz
... my country are a disgrace, and nothing would ever induce me to avail myself of them. Besides, marriage, to me, is a very serious and solemn matter, and I can't permit you to speak about it flippantly, even by way of a joke." ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells
... know the habits of the British tradesman are aware that he has gregarious propensities like any lord in the land; that he loves a joke, that he is not averse to a glass; that after the day's toil he is happy to consort with men of his degree; and that as society is not so far advanced among us as to allow him to enjoy the comforts of splendid club-houses, which are open to many persons with not a tenth part of his pecuniary ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... strength, but from slothful tenderness. And thus they ruin their own tempers and natures, and consequently those of their offspring. Furthermore, if at any time a man is taken captive with ardent love for a certain woman, the two are allowed to converse and joke together, and to give one another garlands of flowers or leaves, and to make verses. But if the race is endangered, by no means is further union between them permitted. Moreover, the love born of eager desire is not known among them; ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... They wish the Governor to order out the militia at once, and take possession of the territory with the strong hand. There was a British army-captain at the Mansion-House; and an idea was thrown out that it would be as well to seize upon him as a hostage. I would, for the joke's sake, that it had been done. Personages at the tavern: the Governor, somewhat stared after as he walked through the bar-room; Councillors seated about, sitting on benches near the bar, or on the stoop along the front of the house; the Adjutant-General of the State; two young Blue-Noses, from ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... auld-farrand joke," said the cobbler, "but the fun intil a thing doesna weir oot ony mair nor the ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... allegoria] in De Or. II. 261, where an ex. is given. Definitiones: n. on 18. Tenebras obducere: such expressions abound in Cic. where the New Academy is mentioned, cf. 30 (lucem eripere), N.D. I. 6 (noctem obfundere) Aug. Contra Ac. III. 14 (quasdam nebulas obfundere), also the joke of Aug. II. 29 tenebrae quae patronae Academicorum solent esse. Non admodum probata: cf. the passage of Polybius qu. by Zeller 533. Lacyde: the most important passages in ancient authorities concerning him are quoted by Zeller 506. It is important to note that Arcesilas ...
— Academica • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... rather pompous setting her fair hair, small person, and pinched pale face looked out perhaps with greater dignity than they could have achieved unadorned. Her chilliness, her small self-indulgences, including an inordinate love of cakes and all sweet things, were the standing joke of the twins when they discussed the family freely behind the closed doors of the 'Den.' But no one disliked Alice Gaddesden, though it was hard to be actively fond of her. She and her husband were quite good friends; but they were no longer of any real importance to each other. He was ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the Premier to utter them. Only by an effort of will could he lift them to a plane of high interest. He could sketch great issues with the solemn hand of a great preacher pronouncing a benediction; but he never could utter an aside, or crack a joke, or tell a story, or forget that once upon a time Fate had picked him to be a leader and so help him he would go through the motions of shepherding while the other men were the real collie dogs of the flock. ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... their faces was very eloquent. Some were highly indignant, others looked foolish or supercilious, two or three were thoroughly frightened, not knowing what evil might befall them next. Not one gave any evidence of enjoying it or taking the matter as a good joke, although that was the attitude assumed by all their male acquaintances. In fact, some of the men were so anxious to have their pictures taken that they followed us about and posed on ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... characteristic native product of social conditions and home talent. One poet, John Godfrey Saxe (1816-1887) of Vermont, attempted something similar in literary verse after the style of Tom Hood. The heir to this tradition of farce, drollery and joke was Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835-1910), known as "Mark Twain," born in Missouri, who raised it to an extraordinary height of success and won world-wide reputation as a great and original humorist. His works, however, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... people strolled up Chapel Hill in the moonlight, talking gayly of the happy days they had spent together with Mrs. Gray; for Richards, the burglar, seemed now a sort of joke to them, and even the terrible recollection of the wolves was softened by time, and they could only laugh at poor Hippy's plight when his breath gave out and his ...
— Grace Harlowe's Plebe Year at High School - The Merry Doings of the Oakdale Freshmen Girls • Jessie Graham Flower
... the voice was not that of Swing Tunstall. On the heels of this unwelcome discovery Racey made another. The man had dragged out a knife from under his armpit, and was squirmingly endeavouring to make play with it. Racey's intended practical joke on Swing Tunstall was in a fair way to become a tragedy ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... as if it were all some excellent joke, the men threw themselves upon Paul, and proceeded to carry out the instructions of their leader, who seated himself with a smile of triumph where he could enjoy the spectacle of the suffering he intended to inflict. ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green
... Dale was engaged to be married to Adolphus Crosbie,—to Apollo Crosbie, as she still called him, confiding her little joke to his own ears. And to her he was an Apollo, as a man who is loved should be to the girl who loves him. He was handsome, graceful, clever, self-confident, and always cheerful when she asked him to be cheerful. But ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... which would have flattered those birds if they could have known of it. It might also have stimulated their efforts in that direction, which up to date were feeble. This, however, I attributed to the fact that the majority of our fowls—perhaps through some sinister practical joke on the part of the manager who had the manners of a marquis—were cocks. It vexed Ukridge. "Here we are," he said complainingly, "living well and drinking well, in a newly furnished house, having to keep a servant and maintain our position ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... have Jacob's consolation," said Fanny. She was lost by the joke and he knew it. A grim smile of satisfaction crossed his thin face as he heard it, and there was a feeling of triumph at his heart. "I am hardly fitted to be a patriarch, as the patriarchs were of old," he said. "Though the seven years should be prolonged to fourteen, ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... So far as that goes I don't lose my patience; but every night when the King enters the Queen's chamber to go to bed, the Count de Benavente confides to my care the King's sword, a certain utensil, and a lamp, the contents of which I generally manage to spill over my dress,—rather too good a joke. The King would never rise were I not to go and draw aside the bed-curtains, and it would be a sacrilege if anybody but myself were to enter the Queen's chamber whilst they were abed. Very lately, the lamp went out because I had spilled half the oil. I could not find where the windows ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... said Kwairyo. "I was not joking. The only joke—if there be any joke at all—is that you are fool enough to pay good money for a goblin's head." And Kwairyo, loudly laughing, went ...
— Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things • Lafcadio Hearn
... directed his glance. There she was across the square, her orchestra dangling, talking to a gentleman. It was true; and plainly to be seen that the gentleman was Pierre de Folligny. Philidor watched them uncertainly. A joke passed, they both laughed and the Frenchman indicated his quivering machine hard by. Then it was that Philidor went forth across the square, his brow a thundercloud. The girl cast a glance over her shoulder in his direction and then followed the Frenchman to his machine. Philidor's long ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... said, "is this a joke? I am afraid my sense of humour grows a little dull at this hour ...
— Jeanne of the Marshes • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... claret. As he sat eating he kept reading a letter over and over, and each time he read he grinned —he did not smile like a well-behaved man of the world, he did not giggle like a well-veneered Egyptian back from Paris, he chuckled like a cabman responding to a liberal fare and a good joke. A more unconventional little man never lived. Simplicity was his very life, and yet he had a gift for following the sinuosities of the Oriental mind; he had a quality almost clairvoyant, which came, perhaps, from his Irish forebears. The cross-strain of English blood had ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... taking the joke appeased those within hearing, who had perhaps believed that the tall Effect in brown thought a lot of herself and was putting on airs. Her seeming to imply that she might be considered ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... after the same fashion, they thought he must be the boy to mix the colours and accordingly they induced the abbess to tell him that they should like to see the master himself at work and not this other one always. Buonamico, who always loved his joke, told them that so soon as the master arrived he would let them know, although he was sensible of the small amount of confidence which they placed in him. Then he took a table and put another on the top of it, setting a water ...
— The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8) • Giorgio Vasari
... asleep, And dreamt she heard them bleating; When she awoke, she found it a joke, For still ...
— Harry's Ladder to Learning - Horn-Book, Picture-Book, Nursery Songs, Nursery Tales, - Harry's Simple Stories, Country Walks • Anonymous
... the hills, with the broad smile of a tyrant who fully enjoys the joke, when Desmond drew up before his own verandah and ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... havin' comp'ny now isn't what it used to be, what with wages up sky-high and all the niggers gone to Indianapolis and Chicago so there aren't any to pay even if you had the money, and food costin' three times what it's wuth. I reckon it is no joke to have Miss Ann a fallin' in on her kin nowadays with two horses that must have oats and that old Billy ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson
... stand it, and they burst into fits of laughter, which they tried in vain to conceal by bending down their heads and cramming their handkerchiefs into their mouths. Eric, having once given way, enjoyed the joke uncontrollably, and the lady made matters worse by her uneasy attempts to dislodge the unknown intruder, and discover the cause of the tittering, which she could not help hearing. At last all three began to laugh so violently that several heads were turned in their direction, and ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... you looking so s-solemn about? Can't you take a joke? Come along and have another ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... take it in. It seemed only minutes ago that he had been walking along the corridor in Wheel Five. It seemed that Wheel Five must exist, that the Earth, the people, the time he knew, must still be somewhere out there. This could be some kind of a joke, or some kind of psychological experiment. That was it—the space-medicine boys were always making way-out experiments to find out how men would bear up in unusual conditions, and this must be one ...
— The Stars, My Brothers • Edmond Hamilton
... had read the instructions. He had not had an opportunity to do so before. As he concluded his examination of them, his face hardened, his brow contracted in a frown, and he crushed the piece of paper in his hand. Was this some absurd joke that Monsieur Lefevre was playing upon him? The idea of separating him from Grace upon their wedding day, to send him on an expedition, the object of which was to recover a lost snuff box! It seemed preposterous. ...
— The Ivory Snuff Box • Arnold Fredericks
... a moment's hesitation, then Nell boldly followed suit; one by one, ending with Susy, the other five dropped down in the cool rippling water, which seemed to laugh, as if it saw the joke. ...
— Patricia • Emilia Elliott
... "Joke or not," said Palmerston, "you can't deny it." Suddenly weakening, he let slip his advantage. "But I wouldn' wish to marry one that despised me," he declared. "I had enough o' bein' despised—in ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... these scouts and skirmishes that the four—Harry and Chad, and Caleb Hazel and Yankee Jake Dillon, whose dog-like devotion to Chad soon became a regimental joke—became known, not only among their own men, but among their enemies, as the shrewdest and most daring scouts in the Federal service. Every Morgan's man came to know the name of Chad Buford; but it was not until Shiloh that Chad got his shoulder-straps, leading a ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... be regarded with great caution; certainly in one case of recent years, which at first appeared to be well authenticated, it was afterwards found that a small trout had been pushed down a salmon's throat after capture by way of a joke. A consideration of the question, however, which may perhaps make some appeal to both sides, is put forward by Dr.J. Kingston Barton in the first of the two volumes on Fishing (Country Life Series). He maintains that salmon do not habitually feed ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... graver things bespoke, This seems no better than a joke, And light for mere amusement made; Yet still we drive the scribbling trade, And from the pen our pleasure find, When we've no greater things to mind. Yet if you look with care intense, These tales your toil shall recompense; Appearance ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... risen with a sheepish grin and accepted the hand of friendship). You will 'ave your joke, James. Our quarrel's made up now, ...
— Candida • George Bernard Shaw
... sort of relation into which she could throw herself now with inordinate zeal; the idea of it, however, not preventing a foretaste of the queer expression in the excellent lady's face when she should mention with whom she was living. While she smiled at this picture she threw in another joke, asking herself if Miss Hack could be held in any degree to constitute the nucleus of a circle. She would come to see her, in any event—come the more the further she was dragged down. Sunday was always a difficult day with the two ladies—the afternoons ...
— The Chaperon • Henry James
... my former chief of artillery, a Minie-ball passed through Logan's coat-sleeve, scratching the skin, and struck Colonel Taylor square in the breast; luckily he had in his pocket a famous memorandum-book, in which he kept a sort of diary, about which we used to joke him a good deal; its thickness and size saved his life, breaking the force of the ball, so that after traversing the book it only penetrated the breast to the ribs, but it knocked him down and disabled him ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... you and plows weren't on speaking acquaintance. But you took hold right. There isn't one man in ten I could hire off the county road that could do as well as you were doing on the third day. But your big asset is that you know horses. It was half a joke when I told you to take the lines that morning. You're a trained horseman and a born ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... required eight days to establish a perfect understanding with your mistress; so that, take eight and eleven from thirty-one days, the time between the 28th of one month and the 29th of the next, there remains twelve, more or less!' This joke was followed by ...
— Manon Lescaut • Abbe Prevost
... from politeness, attempted to put it upon him. He was passionate without being sullen. I have often seen him warm, but never saw him really angry with any person. Nothing could be more cheerful than his temper: he knew how to pass and receive a joke; raillery was one of his distinguished talents, and with which he possessed that of pointed wit and repartee. When he was animated, he was noisy and heard at a great distance; but whilst he loudly inveighed, a smile was spread over ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... as a household joke against my brothers, whose appetite for roast meat was not less than that of other ...
— Mrs. Overtheway's Remembrances • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... Not an avowal, not a confidence, that shed light on his life work. Parsimonious of all he observed, he never related a typical anecdote, or offered a suggestive remark. Praise, even, did not move him, and if by chance he became animated it was to tell some practical joke, some atelier hoaxes, as if he had given himself up to the pleasure of hoaxing ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... Mrs. Brown did not know whether to laugh at Bunny for playing a joke or to tell him he must not do such things when there were visitors at the house. But Bunny looked so serious that his mother thought perhaps he did not ...
— Bunny Brown and his Sister Sue Giving a Show • Laura Lee Hope
... on your part, Captain Frere. A capital joke, I have no doubt; but permit me to say I do not like jesting on such matters. This poor fellow's letter to his aged father to be made the subject of heartless merriment, I confess I do not understand. It was confided to me in my sacred character ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... of his joke," said Mr. Cooper, with a glance at the company that would have moved an oyster. "He was always fond of making up things. You're like him in that. What do you ...
— Night Watches • W.W. Jacobs
... for the very reasonable price of $3.50 a week. It went like hot cakes. 'But,' said I, 'surely your one watchman can't look after thirty-seven different places.' 'No,' said Bobby, 'but they think he does.' I laughed and commended his ingenuity. 'But the best part of the joke,' said he, 'is that I haven't got ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... a truer word in your life," growled Mr. Thomas, and continued, "anything as calls itself a man and can't romp with the youngsters, nor give a joke and take it, had ought to be set in a high chair with a ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... 'You've applied to the wrong shop,' I said by way of a joke; 'my friend has all the talent he ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... corruption for Tea-tree (q.v.), from the fancy that it is Maori, or aboriginal Australian. On the railway line, between Dunedin and Invercargill, there is a station called "Titri," evidently the surveyor's joke. ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... for a husband.'—I happen to know what all the ladies thought of this speech, for every one of 'em afterwards told me; but, if you'll believe me, one or two of the youngest of 'em kind of pretended to smile at the joke on't, when Miss Jaynes looked round as if she expected 'em to laugh; for she thought, I suppose, I was really and truly no account, bein' a cobbler's daughter and a tailoress,—and that when the minister's wife insulted me, I dars'n't reply, and all hands would stand by and applaud. But she found ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... city." The lad's bright, clear eyes looked frankly into the captain's as he continued. "I have been making a fool of myself, Captain. Got into some mischief with a crowd of fellows at school. Of course, I got caught and had to bear the whole blame for the silly joke we had played. The faculty has suspended me for a term. I would have got off with only a reprimand if I would have told the names of the other fellows, but I couldn't ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... The Booming of Bunkie (JENKINS) as Mr. Peter McMunn, who, falling off a motor-cycle, landed in that quiet Scots village and proceeded to turn it, by a series of stunts, into a well-known watering-place. He undertook the job, I gather, partly for a joke and partly for the bright eyes of Evelyn Kirbet, whose father put up the money for the purposes of publicity and propaganda. The transformation of a hamlet into a seaside resort has been treated as a sort of psychological romance by Mr. OLIVER ONIONS in Mushroom Town, where the human beings ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 18th, 1920 • Various
... My Melissa wondered why I was out so late, and said to me: 'Had you come sooner you might at least have helped us, for a wolf has entered the farm, and worried all our cattle; but he had not the best of the joke, for all he escaped, for our slave ran a lance through his neck.' When I heard this, I could not doubt how it was, and, as it was clear daylight, ran home as fast as a robbed innkeeper. When I came to the spot ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... nothing can frighten you! Potz! I believe when your Guards at Alma walked into that battery the other day, every one of them was whistling your Jim Crow, even after he was shot dead!" And the jolly Polizeirath laughed at his own joke, till the mountain rang. "But you must leave the country, sir; indeed you must. We cannot permit such conduct here—I ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... the snow without difficulty was my bull-terrier "Bill," a spotted dog of doubtful ancestry. He had been given to me as a bull-terrier when he was only a little white rat of a thing, and I had raised him at Bunji on tinned milk. He was a most uncanny dog (the joke is unintentional), and it was commonly believed in the force that his father was a tom cat. Poor Bill! Before he got to Laspur he was so snow blind that until we got to Mastuj I had to open his eyes for him every morning and bathe them with hot water before he could see, and he ...
— With Kelly to Chitral • William George Laurence Beynon
... the most extensive joke in the way of a remark that Deerfoot had ever been known to originate. Jack Carleton saw his slight smile and the twinkle of his black eyes, and knew he was quizzing him. Assuming a seriousness which deceived no one, the doughty Kentuckian deliberately leaned his gun against the nearest tree, ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... the best joke of our lives, over which we will often laugh at our fireside hereafter. Come now, cousin, make the best of it; it is the best for you as well as for me. You know I always intended to marry you, and I have the hearty sanction of all ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... Edith with a merry laugh; but no one saw her little joke, so she asked more seriously, "How did the ...
— Rafael in Italy - A Geographical Reader • Etta Blaisdell McDonald
... essentially a motor being; that all his responses to the physical forces of his environment are motor; {illust. caption FIG. 26.—LAUGHING CHIMPANZEE. "Mike," the clever chimpanzee in the London Zoo, evidently enjoys a joke as well as any one else. (Photo by Underwood and ...
— The Origin and Nature of Emotions • George W. Crile
... companions, swift to trace The signs of anguish on his face, Drew near, his sorrow to expel, And pleasant tales began to tell. Some woke sweet music's cheering sound, And others danced in lively round. With joke and jest they strove to raise His spirits, quoting ancient plays; But Bharat still, the lofty-souled, Deaf to sweet tales his fellows told, Unmoved by music, dance, and jest, Sat silent, by his woe ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... and intends to deliver us to his countrymen, to serve as a feast given to celebrate his safe return to the bosom of his family," said Tom, in a tone half in joke ...
— The Two Supercargoes - Adventures in Savage Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... It has furnished a pleasing relaxation from the serious business of the court. It has even been instructive, as showing to what extent it is possible for plain facts to be perverted by misdirected ingenuity. But unless you are prepared to consider this crime as an elaborate hoax—as a practical joke carried out by a facetious criminal of extraordinary knowledge, skill and general attainments—you must, after all, come to the only conclusion that the facts justify: that the safe was opened and the property abstracted ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... then, at last," exclaimed Gale, as the former, with a disturbed and angry countenance, now came pushing his way into the midst of the company. "We have done nothing but drink and joke since you went out, scarcely; at all events, we have concluded on nothing, except to wait and learn the result of your discoveries: so now ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... didn't fight fairly," added Tom, who had to have his little joke. "It hit Dick before he ...
— The Rover Boys in the Air - From College Campus to the Clouds • Edward Stratemeyer
... are quite at liberty to search," laughed Duperre, treating the affair as a joke. ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... utterance, Harry made his confession. At another time the doctor would have treated the matter as a joke carried too far, but which, while it called for censure, was very amusing; but now the explanation that the disguise had been assumed to impose on the Andersons, only added to ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... one of the old Norse heroes, whom he so much admired, or an old-fashioned Gypsy bruiser, full of craft and merry tricks. One of these he played on me, and I bear him no malice for it. The manner of the joke was this: I had written a book on the English Gypsies and their language; but before I announced it, I wrote a letter to Father George, telling him that I proposed to print it, and asking his permission to dedicate it to him. He did not answer the ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... saw Osborne's looks just now he would hardly think him fanciful, or be inclined to be severe. But she only said,— 'Papa enjoys a joke at everything, you know. It is a relief after ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... out, "Helloa, Mr. Barney," the old gentleman owl blinked his eyes and said, "Who's calling me?" And then the little rabbit thought he'd play a joke, so he said, ...
— Billy Bunny and Uncle Bull Frog • David Magie Cory
... was in her, I found that it was common talk among the other fellows, that there was something queer about the ship. They spoke of her as if it were an accepted fact that she was haunted; yet they all treated the matter as a joke; all, that is, except the young cockney— Williams—who, instead of laughing at their jests on the subject, seemed to take the whole ...
— The Ghost Pirates • William Hope Hodgson
... of joking since you took to the law and Mr. Die? I did not give you credit for a joke; not even for so bad a one as that would be. Shall I congratulate or ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... wildman off me," gasped Garry between gasps of laughter, both at the tickling and at the recollection of the joke that had been ...
— The Ranger Boys and the Border Smugglers • Claude A. Labelle
... Pierre Labarre in terror. "Say that it was a joke, my lord, or a misunderstanding. ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... their tone to spare the ear Of wounded comrades groaning near, 70 Whose mangled limbs, and bodies gored, Bore token of the mountain sword, Though, neighboring to the Court of Guard, Their prayers and feverish wails were heard; Sad burden to the ruffian joke, 75 And savage oath by fury spoke!— At length up-started John of Brent, A yeoman from the banks of Trent; A stranger to respect or fear, In peace a chaser of the deer, 80 In host a hardy mutineer, But still the boldest of the crew, When deed of danger was to do. He grieved, ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... grey and anaemic, lacking passion, it seemed. Sedateness became fashionable; only dull people cared to be thought spiritual. At its best the late nineteenth century reminds one of a sentimental farce, at its worst of a heartless joke. But, as we have seen, before the turn, first in France, then throughout Europe, a new emotional movement began to manifest itself. This movement if it was not to be lost required a channel along which it might flow to some purpose. In the Middle ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... took the joke as good-naturedly as he did the howls of delight from the crowd, and the two peeled off their coats and discarded their hats as a couple of youths marked off the starting and finishing line, while others ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll
... track of the horse Lucy rode, and at once connected her with the singular discovery. Coupling that with Joel's appearance in the village incased in a heaving armor of adobe, the riders guessed pretty close to the truth. For them the joke was tremendous. And Joel Creech was exceedingly sensitive to ridicule. The riders made life unbearable for him. They had fun out of it as long as Joel showed signs of taking the joke manfully, which was not long, and then his resentment won their contempt. That led to sarcasm ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... me," answered Augusta, ignoring the little joke. "I regret," she went on hurriedly, "that I have not been able to fall in ...
— Mr. Meeson's Will • H. Rider Haggard
... that you never allow such things to pass, uncensured. A good joke, and it slipped ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... oppression;—Do not in such a way make a mock of things. An old man, (I speak) with entire sincerity; But you, my juniors, are full of pride. It is not that my words are those of age, But you make a joke of what is sad. But the troubles will multiply like flames, Till they are ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... he told her. "Never made a joke in my life. Of course, you'll refuse me. I know that. But I shan't give you up if you do. If you don't marry me, you won't marry any one else, for I'll lick any other man off the ground. I come first with you now, and I mean ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... whatsoe'er the failings on his part, was at any rate a logician) on the theory of causation; with the University of Cambridge about hominum divomque voluptas alma Venus (I have forgotten what was the bearing of this joke, and it is probably not worth inquiring into); with the Bishop of Gloucester about the Personality of God; with the Athanasian Creed, and its "science got ruffled by fighting." These things, as "form," class themselves; one ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... an admirable and accomplished sister—the first woman, I believe, to be elected to a School Board, and certainly the only one to whom J. W. Burgon (afterwards Dean of Chichester) devoted a whole sermon. "Miss Smith's Sermon," with its whimsical protest against feminine activities, was a standing joke in those distant days. The Rev. H. R. Bramley, Fellow of Magdalen, used to entertain us sumptuously in his most beautiful College. He was a connecting link between Dr. Routh (1755-1854) and modern Oxford, and in his rooms I was introduced to the ablest man of my generation—a newly-elected Scholar ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... miserable policy of these people was to starve the troops into the supposed necessity of evacuating the position, and returning to Khartoum. I represented to Allorron the danger of trifling with a hungry lion, at which he grinned, as a good joke, and immediately replied: "If you want cattle, I will give you some of my people as guides, and you can attack a neighbour of mine, and capture his herds, which will last you for a long time." I replied, that ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... "It's no joke," says I, trying to put my arm together again. "Van Wedderburn is his name. 'Course you've heard of him. ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... said shortly; "but if you can laugh and joke like that there's no need for me to feel ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... could bear it—they only annoyed me now. At last they even bored me, and I accounted for my confusion—perversely, I allow—by the idea that Vereker had made a fool of me. The buried treasure was a bad joke, the general ...
— The Figure in the Carpet • Henry James
... of the joke wore off Mamise grew as uncomfortable as he. She was beginning to love him more and her job less. But she was determined not to throw away her independence. Pride was her duenna, and a ruthless one. She tried to feed her pride on her ambition and on an occasional ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... some milk. He wanted bread and milk," Jim explained, in evident anguish. "You fellows might have seen, if any one fetched him down the trail. You're foolin'. Some of you took him for a joke!" ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels
... spoke at all at meals; and as to speaking to her father, though it is obvious she must have had some sort of intercourse with him, this famous question (a standing joke in the house for years) was the single direct speech of those early years she ever could remember. She spoke to her father when she was bidden to speak in the form of messages, generally about meals being ready, or relative to shopping commissions ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... Martin was genuinely angry. Brissenden looked upon the affair as a good joke, but he could not console Martin, who knew that it would be no easy task to explain to Ruth. As for her father, he knew that he must be overjoyed with what had happened and that he would make the most ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... so bad as it then was. I replied in an offhand way, meaning to make fun of him, that what he had passed through was nothing, and appealed to the patrao to confirm what I had said. That negro, seeing the joke, grinned all over his black face; and Mr. Bransome, perceiving that he was being laughed at, snatched a good-sized stick from a native standing near, and struck the patrao repeatedly over ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... Thorpe (who warn't bright 'nuff to see the joke), 'if the young gentleman sees his error, and takes back his ...
— Harper's Young People, May 4, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... of merit—the sort who can poke Funny tales in your ribs till you splutter and choke; But the best of the lot at a jibe or a joke ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, July 1, 1914 • Various
... understand that he had some sort of vague diplomatic appointment. He had drifted across Bobby's life afterwards in a shadowy way, seeming to have nothing special to do, but to know a great many people and to take life as a sort of a joke. He talked lightly and cynically about serious things, and used foreign expressions with great ease and fluency. It was characteristic of him that since the War he made frequent use of German idioms, ...
— War-time Silhouettes • Stephen Hudson
... worth all the Kings and Queens that had ever reigned in those regions. And if the matter had not happened to fall into the hands of a Bishop, who was a gentleman and a man of the world, and also, above all, a tactful person, both able and willing to turn the thing into a joke, Visino would have learnt not to play with savages; for those brutes of Hungarians, not understanding his words, and thinking that he had uttered something terrible, such as a threat that he would ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... antediluvian I am certain, for, in speaking of something which happened in 1820, she asked if I remembered it! And I only three years older than Guy! But then she once called him a dear old grandfatherly man, and thought it a good joke that on their wedding tour she was mistaken for his daughter. She looks so young—not sixteen even; but with those childish blue eyes, and that innocent, pleading kind of expression, she never can be old. She is very beautiful, and I can understand in part Guy's infatuation, though at times ...
— Miss McDonald • Mary J. Holmes
... with them. A childless wastrel is a terminating evil, and it may be, a picturesque evil. I must confess that a lazy rogue is very much to my taste, provided there is no tragedy of children to smear the joke with misery. And if he or she neither taints nor tempts the children, who are our care, a childless weakling we may freely let our pity and mercy go out to. To go childless is in them a virtue for ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... Him Luther retained in his service throughout his life, and tried to make some provision for his future. He once sought, as we have seen, to practise turning with him, but of this nothing further is related. He loved, too, to joke with him in his own hearty manner. When, in 1534, Wolf built a fowling-floor or place for catching birds, he reprimanded him for it in a written indictment, making the 'good, honourable' birds themselves lodge a complaint against him. They pray ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... him right, I'm thinkin'," said the Master. "Like as not he came here wi' the intent to mak' an end to yo.' Well, after Thursday, I pray God we'll ha' peace. It's gettin' above a joke." The two turned ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... and finally one of the permanent boarders was requested to leave, but still the thefts went on till, her patience being exhausted, she notified the police and a detective was sent: I have always wished I had been that detective. The case ended in what was always considered a joke. Another object disappeared while he was there, and it having been conclusively proved to him that it could not have been taken by way of the door, he turned his attention to the window which it was one of her freaks always to keep wide open. The result was curious. One day he spied ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... a great dislike for snakes. Once, by way of a joke, young Sia put a small snake into a parcel, which he gave her and told her to open. She turned pale and reproached him. Then Sia-Kung-Schong also took his jest seriously, and ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... decked out with flowers and trying to keep awake through the very tiresome and demode performance of "Macbeth." Tamberlik sang. What a glorious voice he has! And when he took the high C (which, if I dare make the joke, did not at all resemble the one Laura and I encountered coming out of New York Harbor) it was all I could do to sit quiet. I wanted to wave something. The prima-donna was assoluta, and must have been pickled in some academy in Italy years ago, for she was ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... fought on, seeking for a drift into which they might dig a refuge. But the Barren was as smooth as a table. They had shouted, and Miss Tavish had screamed—not because they expected to find assistance—but on account of Tavish falling in the storm, and losing himself. It was quite a joke, Porter thought, that Superintendent Tavish, one of the iron men of the service, should have given up the ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... cockney's face was turned the other way, cut off one skirt of his long coat. This excited peals of laughter. When the poor Londoner saw that this was done by a roguish American, at the instigation of his own countrymen, the tear stood in his eye. Even our jolly, big bellied captain, enjoyed the joke, and ordered the boatswain's mate to cut off the other skirt, who, after viewing him amidst shouts of laughter, damned him for a land lubber, and said, now he had lost his ring-tail, he looked ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... later, they sighted a fox. In order to have a joke on Skookum, they put him on its track, and away he went, letting off his joy-whoops at every jump. The men sat down to wait, knowing full well that after an hour Skookum would come back with a long tongue and an air of depression. But they were favoured ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... machinery of injustice; it sneers at society as hollow-hearted corruption and insincerity; it brands politics as a reeking mass of rottenness, and scoffs at morality as the tinsel of sin. Its disciples are those who rail and snarl at everything that is noble and good, to whom a joke is an assault and battery, a laugh is an insult to outraged dignity, and the provocation of a smile is like passing an electric current through the ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... "'A fine joke!' I said, putting in my oar. 'You looked at the trees, and you will at once tear them down. You fell on the fruit like a wolf. You saw the garden, and at once wanted to buy. Now you want the ring, and will exchange for it your wares. What sort of tomfoolery ...
— Armenian Literature • Anonymous
... self-confident, and without any regard for the world below, that the natural consequence was that she soon completely won the hearts of the lower classes. Even the whole number of waiting-maids would also for the most part, play and joke with Pao-ch'ai. Hence it was that Tai-y fostered, in her heart, considerable feelings of resentment, but of this however Pao-ch'ai had not ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... together they went over the speech to which they had been listening, and the scene which had followed it, in a running stream of talk, laughter, and gossip. Wharton took little part, except to make a joke occasionally at his own expense, but the pleasure on his smiling lip, and in his roving, contented eye was not to be mistaken. The speech he had just delivered had been first thought out as he paced the moonlit library and corridor at Mellor. After Marcella had left ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... in the world to look after anybody—least of all, you!" said Sorell with indignant energy. "But of course it's a joke! You mean it for a joke. If he proposed it, it was like his audacity. Nobody would, who had a shred of delicacy. I suppose he wants to disarm ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... could make one of his wonderful contrapuntal traceries of pure ornament with the requisite gaiety of line and movement. Beethoven bowed to no ideal of beauty: he only sought the expression for his feeling. To him a joke was a joke; and if it sounded funny in music he was satisfied. Until the old habit of judging all music by its decorative symmetry had worn out, musicians were shocked by his symphonies, and, misunderstanding his integrity, openly ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... not girls!" I blurted out, with the flush and tremor of a boy's passion. "You had not called my godfather, Anne de Montmorenci a girl, M. le Vidame!" For though we counted it a joke among ourselves that we all bore girls' names, we were young enough to ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... thus they ruin their own tempers and natures, and consequently those of their offspring. Furthermore, if at any time a man is taken captive with ardent love for a certain woman, the two are allowed to converse and joke together, and to give one another garlands of flowers or leaves, and to make verses. But if the race is endangered, by no means is further union between them permitted. Moreover, the love born of eager desire is not known among them; only ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... accustomed to that; Henry Leek had always thought him queer. As for Alice's incredulous attitude towards the revelation of his identity, he did not mentally accuse her of treating him as either a liar or a madman. On reflection he persuaded himself that she regarded the story as a bad joke, as one of his impulsive, capricious essays ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... population should join the "back-to-the-farm" movement. Leaving the country for the city is often disastrous even for the purpose in view, namely to gain wealth. For wealth gained at the expense of health always proves in the end a bitter joke. The victim proceeds through the rest of his life to spend wealth ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... had induced him to select from the tracts in the tinker's miscellany those which abounded most in professions of philanthropy, and predictions of some coming Golden Age, to which old Saturn's was a joke,—tracts so mild and mother-like in their language, that it required a much more practical experience than Lenny's to perceive that you would have to pass a river of blood before you had the slightest chance of setting foot on the flowery banks ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... conduct is even more austere than his demeanor. Mr. Clay at this time was addicted to gaming, like most of the Western and Southern members, and he was not averse to the bottle. Mr. Webster was reckless in expenditure, fond of his ease, and loved a joke better than an argument. In the seclusion of Washington, many members lived a very gay, rollicking life. Mr. Calhoun never gambled, never drank to excess, never jested, never quarrelled, cared nothing for his ease, and tempered the gravity of his demeanor by an admirable and winning ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... a third, "you are damnably out of luck. They say dead men walk, and you see there is some truth in it."—"Truce with your impertinence, Jeckols!" replied my protector: "this is no proper occasion for a joke. Answer me, Gines, were you the cause of this young man being left naked and wounded this bitter ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... of anaesthetics, whereas nowadays, he said, 'you are put under chloroform, then wake up and find your arm cut off, having felt nothing. Or you wake up and find your leg cut off. Or you wake up and find your head cut off!' He then laughed heartily at his own joke. ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... of humor and is easily amused. There is something almost pathetic about the way he goes into convulsions of laughter over such very small jokes. How a man like that would enjoy a real joke! One day he will perhaps hear a real joke. Who knows? It will, however, probably kill him. One grows to love the stage peasant after awhile. He is so good, so child-like, so unworldly. He realizes one's ...
— Stage-Land • Jerome K. Jerome
... necessities of the service permitted, there was a halt about noon, of an hour or so, to rest the men and give them a chance to cool off and get the sand and gravel out of their shoes. This time was spent by some in absolute repose; but the lively boys told many a yarn, cracked many a joke, and sung many a song between "Halt" and "Column forward!" Some took the opportunity, if water was near, to bathe their feet, hands, and face, and nothing could ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy
... of nature and society hint at infinite periods in the progress of mankind. The States have leisure to laugh from Maine to Texas at some newspaper joke, and New England shakes at the double-entendres of Australian circles, while the poor reformer cannot get ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... told herself, he wasn't very good at little jokes. Lancelot, on the other hand, was very good at them. "Twelve and a half!" he said, lifting one eyebrow, just like his father. "Why, I'm twelve and a half myself!" Then he propounded his little joke. "I say, Mamma, on the twelve and halfth of January—because the evening is exactly half the day—twelve and a half people have a dinner-party, and one of them is twelve and a half. ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... with some caution and decided that we would get up a crowd and go bear hunting the next day. When we told our adventure, Green was very hilarious at my expense and kept reminding me of the brave things I had said coming across the plains. He was so everlastingly tickled with his joke that he sat up all that night to guy me about my running away from a bear. I told him I would show him all the bears he wanted to see the next day, and give him a chance ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly
... take Frisbie long to decide. It was such a tremendous joke! A nest of niggers under the dainty Gingerford nose! ho, ho! Whip up, Stephen! And the red and puffy face, redder and puffier still with immense fun, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... speller." It is no joke, but one of the proverbial fools' truths, which Dogberry enounces when he says that "reading and writing come by nature." They do. And so does spelling. Abundance of well-educated people never escape from occasional perturbations in orthography, just as they never ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... rough joke of some passing wit interrupted the song. Then the reservists would break out into a loud laugh and call back some still more spicy retort. But they always took up their jingling refrain, repeating the childish words again and ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... an Eastern rug is woven the soul of a woman. Into the glisten of a scarab is polished the prophecy of a life. Into the whole charming romance of the book is woven the thread of an intangible, "creepy," mysterious force. What is it? Is it a joke? Who knows? ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... the boys drove a stake, and to it they fastened Mephibosheth. It was no joke taking food to him now. The unmowed meadow was in sight of the house, and it seemed as if one or another of the boys was always at the window. But Elias aided Romeo Augustus, and between them Mephibosheth got his daily rations. Surely he was safe at ...
— Harper's Young People, March 23, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... be lonely, took his mother along." There is laughter here, indeed, but the soul here laughs with a bleeding, torn, agonized heart. It is the same laughter which was roused among the disciples of Christ when they heard their Master utter the grim joke, "Verily, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of the needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven." Such laughter is Gogol's in "Dead Souls." Gogol had now learned to comprehend the words of ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... triumphant, with the restored diamonds in her ears and at her throat, laughing merrily with the others at Judge St. Claire, who had won the booby prize—a little drum, as something he could beat—and who, with a perplexed look in his face, was staring at the thing as if he did not quite get the joke. ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... best of all, if either of us possessed the gift of clothing the old commonplaces with charm. But men with that great gift are not to be met with in every railway-carriage, or at every dinner. The man we actually meet is one whose joke, though we have signalled it a mile off, we are powerless to stop, whose opinions come out with a whirr as of clockwork. Besides, it always happens in life that the man—or woman—with whom we would like to talk is at the next table. ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... is of quite another stamp, a "patent-right" haranguer, an amusing Gascon, alert, "free and easy," fond of a joke, even on the Committee of Public Safety,[3274] unconcerned in the midst of assassinations, and, to the very last, speaking of the reign of Terror as "the simplest and most innocent thing in the world."[3275] No man was ever ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... not understand how you could contact a time a thousand years beyond us. It is possible that you attempt a joke. A—a kid, as you ...
— The Machine That Saved The World • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... laughed, and Miss Mackenzie perceived that Mr Stumfold could joke in his way. She was introduced to Mr Maguire, who also pressed her hand; and then Miss Baker came and sat by her side. There was, however, at that moment no time for conversation. The prayer was begun immediately, Mr Stumfold ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... moments don't. Now, for instance, Jacob was telling a story about some walking tour he'd taken, and the inn was called "The Foaming Pot," which, considering the landlady's name ... They shouted with laughter. The joke was indecent. ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... The joke was suddenly evolved. A certain phrase led to a song, which was sung with lightning rapidity, each performer making precisely the same gestures at precisely the same instant. They were irresistible. McTeague, though he caught but a ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... fitted the man, even better than did his coat, which always was loose about the shoulders and too long in the sleeves. But all knew "Jack" to be an excellent fellow. His principal fault, if it could be so termed, was a superabundance of good-nature, a willingness at all times to joke and be joked. He had a fund of stories—in some of which he pictured himself the hero—with which he was wont to relieve the tedium of the evening hours. A violin was among his effects, which he played to accompany his singing of entertaining countryside songs. Most ...
— Crossing the Plains, Days of '57 - A Narrative of Early Emigrant Tavel to California by the Ox-team Method • William Audley Maxwell
... whose stiffness and awkwardness of manner are such as would freeze the most genial and silence the frankest. Sometimes it arises from ignorance of social rules and proprieties; sometimes from incapacity to take, or even to comprehend, a joke. Sometimes it proceeds from a pettedness of nature, which keeps you ever in fear that offence may be taken at the most innocent word or act. Sometimes it comes of a preposterous sense of his own standing and importance, existing in a man whose standing and importance are very small. It ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... a wilder jest, and I'll not spoil the joke. He has us on his toasting-fork. He shall have the honour ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... but get our deserts," sighed the elder knight, who had never seen a joke in his life, and was somewhat displeased at his companion's untimely levity. "'Twill be nine of the clock," he added in an undertone, "by the time we regain our hostelry. Full many a mile shall ...
— A Tangled Tale • Lewis Carroll
... wonder that their easy-going mother and their joke-admiring father should be quite willing to have them spend three-quarters of the year at boarding-school, and as much as possible of the remainder somewhere ...
— Dab Kinzer - A Story of a Growing Boy • William O. Stoddard
... may be all vewy well, and that; but I never can make out whether you are joking or not, somehow; and I always fancy you are going to CAWICKACHAW me. Ha, ha!" And he laughed, the good-natured dragoon laughed, and fancied he had made a joke. ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Captain Servadac had been acting only in jest. Aware that old Isaac was an utter hypocrite, he had no compunction in turning a business transaction with him into an occasion for a bit of fun. But the joke at an end, he took care that the Jew was properly paid all his ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... "Isn't it all a joke?" asked Mae, pushing her head out of the window again, to hide the sudden white terror in her face. "I didn't suppose Americans fought duels when they were off pleasuring." This sentence Mae meant to ...
— Mae Madden • Mary Murdoch Mason
... and his friend time to catch up. This, in Morse's time, would have been thought an achievement. Edison seems to regard it as a joke. There was no time for prolonged experiment. It was an emergency, and the idea must necessarily have been supplemented ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... Pantilius vex me? shall I choke Because Demetrius needs must have his joke Behind my back, and Fannius, when he dines With dear Tigellius, vilifies my lines? Maecenas, Virgil, Varius, if I please In my poor writings these and such as these, If Plotius, Valgius, Fuscus will ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... is over. I'm only here at all through a special dispensation of Providence. I ought to be at school this minute, grinding like the mischief. Our exams begin the last Monday in April, and they're no joke." ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... him,' says I, 'but in his present condition he reminds me of the joke Shakespeare got off on Julius Caesar. We might ...
— Options • O. Henry
... his wife are peculiar. They bow under the paternal despotism of the priests—and there are moments when that same despotism must be no joke—and revere them and adore them. But then these two are simple believers, with humble, unsmirched souls. I don't know the priest who was there, but he is rotund and rubicund, he shakes in his fat and seems bursting with joy. Despite the example of Saint Francis of Assisi, ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... always unconsciously put herself at a disadvantage; men did not mind her prattle and coquettish airs, being well aware that nothing was expected of them. For Miss Luscombe, though vain, was a pessimist, and quite good-natured. She was also a standing joke. ...
— The Limit • Ada Leverson
... he did blow about having landed the Michamac Bridge. But of course that's all hot air. He didn't even take part in the competition. Besides, you needn't tell me he's anything more than a joke as an engineer." ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... companions did not quite understand him. Was he perpetrating some grim joke, or had he received an injury on the ...
— The Khaki Boys Over the Top - Doing and Daring for Uncle Sam • Gordon Bates
... a candle, while Sam and Tom blackened the face of the sleeping victim of the joke. The burnt cork was in excellent condition and soon William Philander looked for all the world like ...
— The Rover Boys on the River - The Search for the Missing Houseboat • Arthur Winfield
... wait a minute," begged Dozia at the first landing. "This looks a little like a joke but who is the joker? Who got up in that place and rattled these nightly? Also, who let out that wild scream we heard on that first night?" She was talking quickly and in a subdued voice. "We may be breaking the spell by raiding the secret chamber, but ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... certain 'gay' house met this officer of the guards, a very nice chap and of good family, only without a hap'orth of brains; how they had made friends, how he, the officer that is, had suggested as a joke a game of 'fools' with Viktor with some old cards, for next to nothing, and with the condition that the officer's winnings should go to the benefit of Wilhelmina, but Viktor's to his own benefit; how afterwards they had got on ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... bag, along York Street, his consciousness of the tremendous importance to the world of his decision exhilarated him like a tonic. He had freed himself from Cyrus and from commercialism at a single blow, and it had all been as easy as talking! The joke about starvation he had of course indulged in merely for the exquisite pleasure of arousing Susan. He wasn't going to starve; nobody was going to starve in Dinwiddie on thirty dollars a month, and there was no doubt in ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... the boys realized that Pete had no secrets of theirs worth the purchasing, they grew more easy in their minds, and were inclined to look upon this giving of money by Newcombe as a very good joke. ...
— Ralph Gurney's Oil Speculation • James Otis
... fertile fancy," she went on, "and your absurd way of taking a joke only encourages me! Suppose you could transform this sour old wife of yours, who has insulted me, into the sweetest young creature that ever lived by only holding up your finger, wouldn't you ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... and wise, We walk a careful foot apart, You make a little joke that tries To hide ...
— Rivers to the Sea • Sara Teasdale
... support any opinion by argument. The landlord waited on him with peculiar officiousness,—not that he paid better than his neighbors, but then the coin of a rich man seems always to be so much more acceptable. The landlord had ever a pleasant word and a joke to insinuate in the ear of the august Ramm. It is true Ramm never laughed, and, indeed, ever maintained a mastiff-like gravity and even surliness of aspect; yet he now and then rewarded mine host with a token of approbation, which, though nothing ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... said Bixiou in an undertone, imagining that the whole thing was a practical joke, and never suspecting the importance to Carabine of reducing ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... courage and self-sacrifice has been proved in these last six months; it is to other qualities that one must look for final victory in a war of exhaustion. The Englishman does not look into himself; he does not brood; he sees no further forward than is necessary, and he must have his joke. These are fearful and wonderful advantages. Examine the letters and diaries of the various combatants and you will see how far less imaginative and reflecting, (though shrewd, practical, and humorous,) ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... as a joke, Cecilia. Seeing that we are parting in a spirit of perfect understanding, why shouldn't such an arrangement ...
— The Lonely Way—Intermezzo—Countess Mizzie - Three Plays • Arthur Schnitzler
... of Tondano only lately come to Patusan, and a relation of the man shot in the afternoon. That famous long shot had indeed appalled the beholders. The man in utter security had been struck down, in full view of his friends, dropping with a joke on his lips, and they seemed to see in the act an atrocity which had stirred a bitter rage. That relation of his, Si-Lapa by name, was then with Doramin in the stockade only a few feet away. You who know these chaps must admit that the fellow showed an unusual pluck by volunteering ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... height, but now the beams struck directly upon him and his face was soon covered with perspiration. He was assailed also by a fierce, burning thirst, and a great anger lay hold of him. It was a terrible joke that he should be held there in the hole of the cliff by an invisible warrior who used only arrows against him, perhaps because he feared a shot from a rifle would bring the ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... like a man awakening from a luring dream. "I have broken my engagement to preach to those poor drunken boobies at the fair—it is the first time I have played such a practical joke. A month ago I should have been horrified at such a possibility. I'll go away—to swear—and—ah, can I! to keep away." Then, suddenly: "One clasp, ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... ranged over from California to sell a patch of ground I owned in Yuma. Then I hiked over to Nogales on a little pasear and offered to pack a gun and wear a uniform for this Mexican squabble, and the powers that be turned me down because one of my eyes could see farther than the other—that's no joke—it's a calamity! I spent all the dinero I had recovering from the shock, and about the time I was getting my sympathetic friends sobered up, Singleton, of Granados, saw us trying out some raw cavalry stock, and bid for my ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... "'Twould be a rare joke on the Boss," he said, "to be stalin' from him the very thing he's trusted me to guard, and be getting me wages all winter throwed in free. And you're making the pay awful high. Me to be getting five hundred for such a simple little thing as that. You're trating ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter
... had Mr. Gusher escorted a woman of such ponderous circumference. Mattie followed, her roguish smiles indicating that she enjoyed what she considered a joke played at Mr. Gusher's expense. The picture presented by the meeting of such extremes ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... Monckton had no deep regard for you, and was capable of turning you adrift in prosperity; and I knew that if I told you everything you would let it out to him, and tempt him to play the villain. But the time is come that I must speak, in justice to you both. That estate he left your son half in joke is virtually his. Fourteen years ago, when he last looked into the matter, there were eleven lives between it and him; but, strange to say, whilst he was at Portland the young lives went one after the other, and there were really only five left ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... Well, sometimes he does seem like a hero to me, he's so strong and clever and kind. At school people are always coming to him with their disputes, and out of school, too. Even the Indians respect his knowledge. And with it all he can see a joke as soon as anybody, and isn't a bit puffed up. And then I like him, because even though he's quiet and it takes a long time for him to get angry, when he does get angry it's on the right side. I think some day he'll be a great lawyer. Come, Amy, what ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay
... this account he assumed the title of Cockletown; and when he built himself a mansion, as they term it, he would have it called by no other name than that of Cockle Hall. It is true he laughs at the thing himself, and considers it a good joke." ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... from the devout Billy—Billy Preston. That pious man liked to have the talk mainly to himself, and he thought that anything not obscene was tame. By the way, these abrupt and insolent remarks are characteristic of public-house wit. A favourite joke is to ask a friend a serious question. When he fails to answer, then the joker shouts some totally irrelevant and indecent word, and the questioned man is regarded as "sold." I cannot repeat the interlude with which Billy Preston ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... falling in love with her.... I don't know that I have not got a barb of the blind boy in me already. I felt absurdly glad the other day when that fool told me he dare not accept her modest offer. Ha! ha! A delicious joke it would have been to have seen Orestes bowing down to stocks and stones, and Hypatia installed in the ruins of the Serapeium, as High Priestess of the Abomination of Desolation!. And now.... Well I call all heaven and earth to witness, that I have fought valiantly. ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... at the palio. In spite of this we were good friends. I had the run of his stables and many a reckless ride have we enjoyed together. I was fond of all sports which were spiced with danger, and particularly of hunting. But there was no sport I loved so well as a practical joke, no game that for me had so delicious a flavour as the teasing of my friends and especially the more serious and dignified—though such pranks have frequently cost me dear. From the multitude of which I have been guilty I recall ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... now. There was a damned good mess-room joke about him. When he was in the Blues they used to say his solemn face would stop a merry-making. Well, after he had been in Austria a while they told this on him; that his field-marshal had him listed for a majority, and so he was presented to the empress. But when Maria Theresa saw him she ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... letters, like Kean's name, "large upon the bills," are made use of six or seven times to express his sense of the outrage. The charge is, indeed, very boldly made; but, like "Ranold of the Mist's" practical joke of putting the bread and cheese into a dead man's mouth, is, as Dugald Dalgetty says, "somewhat too wild and salvage, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... pounds, and were positively rejected by all but wine-merchant-sheriff's officers, who took them at nothing, and contrived to make a handsome profit out of them into the bargain. Few had so little reason to be proud as the man whose name had become a by-word and a joke amongst the most detestable and degraded of their race; and yet, strange as it may seem, few had a keener sense of their position, or could be so readily stung by insult, let it but proceed from a quarter towards which punishment might be directed with credit or honour. A hundred times Lord ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
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