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More "Joker" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and would not have been disagreeable, but for an air of uncomfortably stiff solemnity, which draped him from head to foot like a robe of moral oilcloth, and might almost be said to rustle audibly. Whether he was a practical joker, a swindler, a fanatic, or a madman, my spiritual vision was not keen enough to discover at first sight. Beside him and ourselves the party consisted of a butcher, a baker, and a candlestick-maker, all members of the Doctor's church and indefatigable workers of miracles,—plain men and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... is a good, devoted fellow, but naturally an incorrigible joker. It may not hurt him much, because it is his nature; but it will hurt you if you give way to ...
— Catherine Booth - A Sketch • Colonel Mildred Duff
... remarked Clarence. "The little joker wouldn't part with it at first—afraid of getting into more hot water ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... that I would not only describe the machine, but state what progress I had made in the use of it, etc., etc. I don't like to write letters, and so I don't want people to know I own this curiosity-breeding little joker." ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... not believe for a moment that Wyatt Gifford was dead, and although it was impossible not to be affected by the general uneasiness, he was disposed to be more angry than frightened. At Cambridge Gifford had been an incorrigible practical joker, and by no means had outgrown the habit; it would be like him to cut across the country in his evening clothes, board a cattle-train, and amuse himself touching up the picture of the sensation ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton
... the despatches. He was thinking over 'The Seven Hunters.' It might be, probably was, a blind, or the kidnappers, having touched there, might have departed in any direction—to Iceland, for what he knew. But the name, 'the Seven Hunters,' was not likely to have been invented by a practical joker in London. If not, the conspirators had really captured and kept to themselves Mr. Macrae's line of wireless communications. How could that have been done? Merton bitterly regretted that his general information did not include ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... boatswain's mate and ordered him to pipe the men to dinner in a sharp tone; and he said to Mr Cheffinch, the gunnery lieutenant, when he crossed over the deck to go on board the old Blake to lunch, "He had me nicely there, like that other joker the chimney-sweeper. It must have been a planned thing between ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... made a citizen of prodigious Van Horne had here a character in a setting far more unusual. The eminent soldier as head of a university. One of the last surprises of the war; almost as it seemed then a joker in the pack; when men had to remember how this man leaped from an almost bankrupt real estate office in Victoria to what he ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... can pretend that you have sold this fish," cried Gianettino, "and that, too, for the ridiculously small sum of twenty ducats! Ah, you are a joker, my good man; you wish to excite in me a desire for this rare specimen, and therefore you say it is sold. But how can a fish that yet lies exposed for sale, and for which no one had made you a suitable offer, ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... of. We had chosen EVERY MAN IN HIS HUMOUR, with special regard to the singleness and individuality of the "humours" portrayed in it; and our company included the leaders of a journal then in its earliest years, but already not more renowned as the most successful joker of jokes yet known in England, than famous for that exclusive use of its laughter and satire for objects the highest or most harmless which makes it still so enjoyable a companion to mirth-loving right-minded men. Maclise took earnest part with us, and was to have acted, but fell ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... effective—though desperate. It was to suppress the inventor and his labor. They bought the sole rights from the inventor, promising him glittering royalties. The joker was that the invention was suppressed. None were ever manufactured. Hence there were no royalties and the corporations went on undisturbed while Brent and Balcom collected huge retainers for ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... naive, Lieutenant. Whoever does it, is going to need little integrity. You don't win in a sharper's card game by playing your cards honestly. The biggest sharper wins. We've just found a joker somebody dropped on the floor; if we ...
— Medal of Honor • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... told her son. "She sends you her regards. And this Yegor Ivanovich is such a simple fellow, such a joker! ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... inclined to think there be certain Buckets that invite kicking, and our uncle Job was one of them. He was birched at school for everybody but himself, for he never deserved it! He was plucked at college—because some practical joker placed a utensil, bearing his name, outside the door of the examining master, and our uncle Job Bucket being unfortunately present, laughed at the consequent abrasion of his, the examining master's, shins. He was called to the bar. His first ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 21, 1841 • Various
... Ketchim, smiling pallidly, "the little joker that James inserted in the contract, about your getting fifty thousand in the event of a favorable report. I told him it didn't look well—but he said it would test you. He would be funny, though, no ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... to which one would probably be so favored. Amzi had fluted in the Schumann Quartette, devoted to chamber music, but his asthma had broken up the club, and he now rarely essayed the instrument. Still, Amzi loved his joke, and Nan was a joker. So it was clear that either Kirkwood or Montgomery might with propriety marry either Rose or Nan. Whenever a drought seemed imminent in local ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... the buffoonery of the reverend joker of the Edinburgh Review; not the convulsed grin of mortification which, sprawling prostrate in the dirt from "the whiff and wind" of the masterly disquisition in the Quarterly Review, the itinerant preacher would pass oft' for the broad grin of triumph; no, nor even the ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... says Scraggs, still perfectly polite and uninterested. "'Have you?' says he, removin' his pipe and spitting carefully outdoors again. And then he slid the joker a'top of Smithy's play. 'Well, I have been a ...
— Mr. Scraggs • Henry Wallace Phillips
... from right to left, Spencer filled himself a bumper, and passed the bottles on. Lord Hastings followed suit. I, unfortunately, was speaking to Lyttelton behind Lord Hastings's back, and as he turned and pushed the wine to me, the incorrigible joker, catching sight of the handkerchief sticking out of my lord's coat-tail, quick as thought drew it open and emptied his full glass into the gaping pocket. A few minutes later Lord Hastings, who took snuff, discovered what had happened. He held the dripping cloth ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... "What a joker you be for a man that's had so much responsibility!" smiled Mrs. Tobin, after they had done laughing. "Ain't you never 'fraid, carryin' mail matter and such valuable stuff, that you'll be set on an' ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... Gave way, and his pent speech burst audible: "They wuz two stylish little boys, and they wuz mighty bold ones, Had two new pairs o' britches made out o' their daddy's old ones!" And at the inspirational outbreak, Both joker and his victims seemed to take An equal share of laughter,—and all through Their morning visit kept recurring to The funny words and jingle of the rhyme That just kept ...
— A Child-World • James Whitcomb Riley
... another bucket of water," remarked Max; "and I'd advise our practical joker here to jump out of those wet duds and get into some ...
— With Trapper Jim in the North Woods • Lawrence J. Leslie
... 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 suppose the old ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... by an inveterate joker three hundred years ago, is justified curiously by any of our modern railways; but to see the picture represented in startling accuracy you should find some busy "junction" among the coal-mountains. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... "This joker did the same job we just finished," he continued. "He put the new gauge in place while his partner fished the old one out. Then he forgot that he had put the new gauge in place, uncapped mind you, and when they took off he skied ...
— The Thirst Quenchers • Rick Raphael
... clubs—not to the hunters. An' he's found out they ain't got enny pistols. He's got one, an' shows 'em how straight he shoots, jest in case there should be enny trubble between 'em. Plays both ends to the middle, does Carlsen. Slick! But he ain't won the pot. They's a joker in this game. Mebbe he ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... up with a grin. "I don't know what the old joker will say if you bring your scheme to a head," ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... couldn't keep his teeth from chattering, whenever mention was made of an Alguazill in connexion with the adventures of Gil Blas; and I remember that when Gil Blas met the captain of the robbers in Madrid, this unlucky joker counterfeited such an ague of terror, that he was overheard by Mr. Creakle, who was prowling about the passage, and handsomely flogged for disorderly conduct in the bedroom. Whatever I had within me that was romantic and dreamy, was encouraged by so much story-telling in the dark; and in ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... river, which led nearly to the edge of the plateau. When the path branched off, I called a halt for lunch, as we were not likely to find any water later on. We were now quite near the craters, and while we ate our rice, we heard the roaring, so that the boys grew nervous, till the joker of the company made them laugh, and then the meal absorbed their attention. Still, they occasionally sent furtive glances skyward, to see if any lava was ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... is, were the fifteen auditors of Mr. Sothern fooled and deceived, or was this a genuine manifestation of extraordinary power? Sothern is such an inveterate joker that he may have put the thing upon the boys for his own amusement; but if so, it was one of the nicest tricks ever witnessed by yours truly, ONE OF ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini
... Ben Duncan, the inveterate joker, who saw the effect produced by the coming of the baronet, and wished to relieve the ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... of letters, which could no longer be trusted in the hands of the agents of the British Court. Franklin was appointed Postmaster General. He had attained the age of sixty nine years. Notwithstanding his gravity of character and his great wisdom, he had unfortunately become an inveterate joker. He could not refrain from inserting, even in his most serious and earnest documents, some witticism, which men of the intensity of soul of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, felt to be out of place. Still ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... game, and that was what the Governor was. But they were not able to score. They made several efforts, but the Governor defeated these efforts without any trouble and went on smiling his pleasant smile as if nothing had happened. Finally the joker chiefs of Carson City and Virginia City conspired together to see if their combined talent couldn't win a victory, for the jokers were getting into a very uncomfortable place: the people were laughing at them, instead of at their proposed victim. ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... a voyage in which he made nine hundred miles in thirty-eight hours, the rumour was spread that von Zeppelin would continue it to Berlin. Some joker sent a forged telegram to the Kaiser to that effect signed "Zeppelin." It was expected to be the first appearance of one of the great ships at the capital, and the Emperor hastened to prepare a suitable welcome. ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... in earnest! Ha! ha! He! he! I see that you are something of a joker. It's all right, all right. I tumble ...
— Frank Merriwell's Cruise • Burt L. Standish
... is useless to inquire of any stupid joker, for he will idly say that there is no such man there, because, forsooth, a certain single woman who was sent to the moon came back again, which she would never have done if a man had been there with whom she could have married and remained, Nor should any one be misled by those ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... blessed martyr, nothing more or less. The gin and the guns are left clean out of the tale; and will Boston please send out some more subscriptions, one-time? You'll see they'll stick up a stained-glass window to that joker in Boston, and he'll stand up there with a halo round his head as big as a frying-pan. And, oh! won't his friends out here be resigned to his loss when the subscriptions begin to hop ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... kings more than once," was the prompt reply; "but, your Highness, I never held four kings and the royal joker before." ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks, according to an old legend, in rondeau form"), op. 28.[173] Here his disdain is as yet only expressed by witty bantering, which scoffs at the world's conventions. This figure of Till, this devil of a joker, the legendary hero of Germany and Flanders, is little known with us in France. And so Strauss's music loses much of its point, for it claims to recall a series of adventures which we know nothing about—Till crossing the market place and smacking ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... a joker, that officer! One, two—get out of the way," cried a colossal grenadier. "No, you won't, hey! Well, as you ...
— Adieu • Honore de Balzac
... moment too bewildered to do anything. Christophe carried off his plate, thinking that he had finished his soup, so that when Goriot had pushed back his cap from his eyes his spoon encountered the table. Every one burst out laughing. "You are a disagreeable joker, sir," said the old man, "and if you take ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... was red wine, and had stained the ground of the narrow street in the suburb of Saint Antoine, in Paris, where it was spilled. It had stained many hands, too, and many faces, and many naked feet, and many wooden shoes. One tall joker so besmirched scrawled upon a wall, with his finger dipped in muddy ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... psychological types—the choleric, the sanguine, the phlegmatic, and the hybrid. There are also the types of real life with which we are most familiar—the masterful, the weak, the mischievous, the backward, the shy, the bully, the joker, the "smartie," the echo or shadow, the quiet or reticent, the girl-struck, the self-conscious, the unconscious, and the forgetful. Lastly, we should also consider the different types of the unfortunate boys, ...
— The Boy and the Sunday School - A Manual of Principle and Method for the Work of the Sunday - School with Teen Age Boys • John L. Alexander
... a modern story current in America, which is often circumstantially narrated, of some individual wearing a fine beard or 'whiskers,' and who is said to have sold them to a vulgar practical joker, who had one shaved off, but suffered the other to remain for a long time on the face of his victim, annoying him meantime with inquiries as to 'my whisker.' It is the true type of a great number of stories which originated in the Southern and South-Western United States, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... verse on that extremely stylish person Who insists upon the hat of emerald hue; I have made a lot of fun of things that honestly were none of My blanked business—and I knew that it was true. At the shameless subway smoker I have been a ceaseless joker—— For that nuisance daily gets me in a huff— But the one that makes me maddest is that pestilential faddist Who is carrying his ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams
... ticket, pals!" cried the Chourineur, addressing those prisoners who ranged themselves on his side; "you have hearts; you will not see a man murdered who is half dead; only cowards are capable of such conduct. Skeleton is no bad joker; he is condemned in advance; that is the reason why he urges you on. But if you aid him to kill Germain, you will be roughly treated. Besides, I have a proposition to make. Skeleton wants to finish this young man. ...
— Mysteries of Paris, V3 • Eugene Sue
... very bad, for their mirth is prepared; their jokes have run the length and breadth of the United Kingdom, and they are not always prepared to sacrifice the privilege of being coarse which used to be regarded as the joker's prerogative. In moving about the world I have always found that the society of the great commercial room set up for being jolly, but I could never exactly perceive where the jollity entered. Noise, sham gentility, the cackle of false laughter were there; but the strong, sincere cheerfulness of ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... bow to your superiority," replied Corentin, assuming the air of a professional joker, as if he said, "If you mean humbug, by all means humbug! I have everything at my command, while you are single-handed, ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... that Heiny has my old seat, and I'm inside behind the ground-glass door, sittin' at a reg'lar roll-top, with a lot of file cases spread out, puzzlin' over this incorporation junk that makes the Fundin' Comp'ny the little joker in the Corrugated deck. ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford
... town, but I don't know whether he be friend or foe, Delany: But, however, if he be come, bring him down, and you shall go back in a fortnight, for I know there's no delaying ye. O! I forgot too: I believe there may be one more, I mean that great fat joker, friend Helsham, he That wrote the prologue,[3] and if you stay with him, depend on't, in the end, he'll sham ye. Bring down Longshanks Jim[4] too; but, now I think on't, he's not yet come from Courtown,[5] I fancy; For I heard, a month ago, that ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... Corrie, gravely, at the same time laying his hand impressively on his companion's arm, "I'm a tremendous joker—awful fond ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... corners sharp thou lov'st to dart, (Thou skating imp! Thou rolling joker!) And hit in some projecting part The lawyer staid, or solemn broker. Does pity never mar thy glee, When upright men with torture double? Oh, let our one petition be That thou may'st come ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 27, 1892 • Various
... coachman, as he was called, on account of his small size, in spite of his years, which were not few. He was a tiny scrap of a man, nimble, snub-nosed, curly-haired, with a perennial smile on his infantile countenance, and little, mouse-like eyes. He was a great joker and buffoon; he was able to acquire any trick; he set off fireworks, snakes, played all card-games, galloped his horse while standing erect on it, flew higher than any one else in the swing, and even ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... of thought in politics, had agreed in threatening me with many ludicrous misadventures, and with sudden death in many surprising forms. Cold, wolves, robbers, above all the nocturnal practical joker, were daily and eloquently forced on my attention. Yet in these vaticinations, the true, patent danger was left out. Like Christian, it was from my pack I suffered by the way. Before telling my own mishaps, let me, in two words, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... said, with a chuckle; "you play a mighty safe game, don't you? You're not takin' any chances on the cards. I believe you reckon I've got the joker up my sleeve, hey? But you're wrong, 'cos me sleeves is rolled up. But you've got a tidy twist on ye for mutton, all the same, an' I reckon it's lucky for you I killed that staked ewe. Now, how ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... tremendously powerful, his hide that of an extreme blond burned by months of a tropic sun upon salt water. His hair was an aureole, yellow as a sunflower, a bush of it on a bullet-head. And, incredible almost—as if made of putty by a joker—his nose stuck out like the first joint of a thumb, the oddest nose ever on a man. His little eyes were blue and bright. Barefooted, bare-headed, in the sleeveless shirt and short trousers of a life-guard, ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... serious in manner, which made it very hard to tell when he was joking or in earnest. Among the natives of the land, I knew, he had the reputation of a mighty joker, but I had learnt the fact from the applause of others. I never should have guessed from his ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall
... hearing distance, and the good priest was fast asleep in his chamber, the only reply he got was the echoes of his own bawlings. Mistaking the nature of the sounds, he came to the conclusion that the good priest had turned joker, and was trifling with his misfortunes. Losing his patience, then, he called his elbows into service, and succeeded after much perturbation in escaping feet-foremost from his shell. And as he stood erect upon his feet, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... Austrian name," he reflected. "But the girl was English, a thoroughbred, too. What was it he said? 'Work of the right sort, for a man with brains and pluck.' Well, I shall give this joker a call. If he wants me to tackle anything short of crime, I'm his man. Failing him, I shall see Jack to-morrow, when he ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... said Camille, "this joker has been employed at the Orleans-Railway-Station for eighteen months, and it was only to-night that we met and recognised one another—the administration ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... the nations disarm, some statesman will slip in a joker permitting the building of battleships ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... hundred-and-fifty mile trip over the mountains to the south. As his car sped through sleeping Sequoia and gained the open country, the Colonel's heart thrilled pleasurably. He held cards and spades, big and little casino, four aces and the joker; therefore he knew he could sweep the board at his pleasure. And during his absence Shirley would have opportunity to cool off, while he would find time to formulate an argument to lull her suspicions ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... Connecticut. His father's father, Ephraim Barnum, was a captain in the War of the Revolution, and was distinguished for his valor and for his fervent patriotism. His mother's father, Phineas Taylor, was locally noted as a wag and practical joker. His father, Philo Barnum, was in turn a tailor, a farmer, a storekeeper, and a country tavernkeeper, and was not particularly prosperous in any of ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... and we could see the thumping of his heart against his chest. We had never had a subject who took the matter so hardly. When the operation was completed, we learned the cause of all this trouble. Our interpreter turned out to be a joker, and, while we were telling him encouraging remarks, with which to soothe the subject, he was saying, "Now you will die; pretty soon you will not be able to breathe any more; you will be dead and buried before to-morrow; your poor widow will no doubt feel badly, but ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... who, in my judgment, should be elected to the position of Governor of this grand old commonwealth. In the first place, that exalted position would never be filled by one who, for lack of serious argument, constantly appeals to the risibilities of his audience; never by a wit, a mere joker, a story-teller; in other words—if you will pardon me, my fellow-citizens—by a mere buffoon. On the contrary, the incumbent of the exalted position of chief executive of this grand old commonwealth should be a gentleman of character, of ability, the worthy successor of ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... faced him, and threw his cigarette over his shoulder in the chimney-place. "Do I look like a joker?" ...
— The Bad Man • Charles Hanson Towne
... card' or 'ventilator card'). Card readers tended to jam when they got to one of these, as the resulting card had too little structural strength to avoid buckling inside the mechanism. Card punches could also jam trying to produce these things owing to power-supply problems. When some practical joker fed a lace card through the reader, you needed to clear the jam with a 'card knife' — which you ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... of writing," went on Dick as though he thought, because he had given the first alarm and had been, in fact, the only one to view the midnight intruder, that more suspicion might attach to him as the joker than to any ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Death Valley - or Diamond X and the Poison Mystery • Willard F. Baker
... infidelity was certainly less read. JOHNSON. 'All infidel writers drop into oblivion, when personal connections and the floridness of novelty are gone; though now and then a foolish fellow, who thinks he can be witty upon them, may bring them again into notice. There will sometimes start up a College joker, who does not consider that what is a joke in a College will not do in the world. To such defenders of Religion I would apply a stanza of a poem which I remember to have seen in ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... in the islands of the Indian Archipelago, and a Yankee skipper who lived a year among the natives informs us that he "once saw some arter a boa in Sumatra." The skipper, however, is a small joker, and always ready to Sacrifice Truth on the Alter Ego of a miserable pun. A vile habit this, but one that it is to be feared ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 12 , June 18,1870 • Various
... situation as the sheerest humor, a sort of lunatic farce for the laughter of some cosmic joker. He swung the gunsights up towards the smiling face. Amusement bubbled in his blood and he heard himself laugh—heard it with ...
— The Man Who Staked the Stars • Charles Dye
... Fuller started after the flying train on foot, followed by Cain and Murphy. Hundreds of soldiers were idling about the station. They had no idea what was taking place. They thought either that the locomotive had been carried up the track to take on or leave a freight car, or that some practical joker was playing a prank. They showed their enjoyment of the situation by laughing and cheering loudly when Captain Fuller, followed by Engineer Cain and Mr. Murphy, started ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris
... that one negative argument is worth six positive ones; that it never pays to knock your competitor; that it's wise to fight shy of that joker known as ...
— Personality Plus - Some Experiences of Emma McChesney and Her Son, Jock • Edna Ferber
... us," said Harry, laughing. "I guess that bird is a joker and wants to keep us busy," and both boys being healthy were quite ready to fall off to sleep as soon as they felt it was of no use to stay awake longer looking ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at the Seashore • Laura Lee Hope
... mood, as he watched the miserable crowds afoot and reflected upon them, was neither remorseful nor triumphant. He simply noted an interesting fact—a commonplace fact—of the methods of that sardonic practical joker, Life. Because the scheme of things was unjust and stupid, because others, most others, were uncomfortable or worse—why should he make himself uncomfortable? It would be an absurdity to get out of his ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... gentlemen," laughed Commander Ennerling. "Jack Benson is the same lad who stole up under the battleship 'Luzon,' and painted the name, 'Pollard,' in sixfoot letters on the hull of the battleship as a reminder of his call. The lad is a sea-joker of ...
— The Submarine Boys' Trial Trip - "Making Good" as Young Experts • Victor G. Durham
... grotesque, alarming, apparently the design of a joker. But tread not on the domain of the scientist, for he will prove to you that each separate queerness is only a trick of nature to fit its owner to the necessities of his habitat. The parrot-fish are screamingly fantastic. ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... child had spent a great part of the night out of bed. That spoilt the whole thing; her child was as good as dead. Finding a good chance for revenge, he pretended to be ill, not seeing that he would gain nothing by it. They sent for the doctor. Unluckily for the mother, the doctor was a practical joker, and to amuse himself with her terrors he did his best to increase them. However, he whispered to me, "Leave it to me, I promise to cure the child of wanting to be ill for some time to come." As a matter of fact he prescribed bed and dieting, and the child ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... to assemble, in a kind of anthology, all the invectives that have been hurled since the beginning of literature against this loathly dirt-born insect, this living carrion, this blot on the Creator's reputation—and thereto add a few of my own. Lucian, the pleasant joker, takes the fly under his protection. He says, among other things, that "like an honest man, it is not ashamed to do in public what others only do in private." I must say, if we all followed the fly's example in this aspect, life would at ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... friend. Mrs. Gifford at length, remembering that Hunt was a guest, forced a momentary, ghastly smile. Annie was looking melancholy enough before, but a slight compression of the lips indicated that she had received the full effect. Certain degrees of badness in jokes stamp the joker as a natural inferior in the eyes of even the most rabid of social levelers. Scarcely any possible exhibition of depravity gives quite the sickening sense of disappointment in the perpetrator imparted by a genuinely bad or stale joke. Two or ...
— Potts's Painless Cure - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... for they were unsafe; but always made a voyage himself direct to the place where any foreign thing was to be had that he wanted. He went to Havre for his woolen shirts, to Panama for his hats, to China for his silk handkerchiefs, and direct to Calcutta for his cheroots; and as a great joker in the watch used to say, no doubt he would at last have occasion to go to Russia for his halter; the wit of which saying was presumed to be in the fact, that the Russian hemp is the best; though that is ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... a reduction to twenty per cent, a lower rate than Jackson had offered, but the reductions were to be made gradually during a period of ten years, thus giving time for the industrial men to readjust their affairs without great losses. There was one joker in the scheme which the Southerners seem to have winked at: that which exempted the wool-growers of the Middle States and the West from the reductions. The author of the American System now hotly urged the men who a year ago ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... were seen very often, and a great deal of time was devoted to the study of their movements. In the silence of the night a practical joker would rush out with a field-glass in his hand and shout "balloon!" at the top of his voice. The desired effect—of bringing the whole street out of bed to see the balloon—was easily produced. The star-gazers would thus spend an hour or so minutely examining all the stars in the firmament ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... the more so, because nothing of it appeared on the surface. Nobody could call Major Flint, with his bawlings and his sniffings, the least mysterious. He laid all his loud cards on the table, great hulking kings and aces. But Miss Mapp felt far from sure that Captain Puffin did not hold a joker which would some time come to light. The idea of being Mrs. Puffin was not so attractive as the other, but she occasionally ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... takes none of the risk, I should be well enough—as well as I want to be. Here is no lack of my best friend,'—touching his case-bottle;—'but, to tell you a secret, he and I have got so used to each other, I begin to think he is like a professed joker, that makes your sides sore with laughing if you see him but now and then; but if you take up house with him, he can only make your head stupid. But I warrant the old fellow is doing the best he ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... nigger nurse-gal to tote a lusty one back to his desk while he was at work. Once one of the gang sent 'im a tin rattler by mail, an' they was all thar to see 'im open it. He took it all in good fun, too; he's one joker that kin stand one on hisself. You may 'a' noticed that Hettie is a sorter odd woman in some ways. Well, she's more peculiar on the husband line than any other. Alf's been off now goin' on ten months, an' she hain't once put pen to paper for him. So the few lines ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... my dear friend," explained the Woggle-Bug, "that our language contains many words having a double meaning; and that to pronounce a joke that allows both meanings of a certain word, proves the joker a person of culture and refinement, who has, moreover, a thorough ...
— The Marvelous Land of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... real name is unknown. Der Stricker probably means 'the composer,' 'the poet.' He wrote a long epic, Karl the Great, an Arthurian romance, Daniel of the Blooming Vale, and several short tales of which the best is Pfaffe Ameis. The hero is a peripatetic rogue and practical joker who plays tricks on people and makes much money. The selection is from the translation by Karl Pannier ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... least disturbance in Miss Chase's room, she has but to touch the wire by her bed, and the communicating bell will ring close to me, so that I can fly to her rescue. I do not need to say that the practical joker will ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... misadventure is omitted from the Admiralty copy. It is an illustration of the times to note that the fact of Orton having got drunk does not seem to call for the Captain's severe censure. In these days, though the practical joker receives punishment, the drunkard would certainly come in for a large ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... rolls in France. I would have, too, but he simply wouldn't listen to me; told me he'd send it back freight if I did; and I had to believe him, though, it seemed unnatural. But they wouldn't let me go look at their blame trenches. I tried to get this General joker to pass me in, but he wouldn't fall for it. 'No, no,' he gurgles and splutters. 'A Benevolent Neutral in the trenches! Never do, never do. We'll have to put some new initials on the Mechanical Transport,' he says, 'B.N.M.T. Benevolent ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... the poor butt suffer. On one occasion the kingly joker had a brace of bear cubs laid in Gundling's bed, and the drunken historian tossed in between them, with little heed of the danger to which he exposed the poor victim of his sport. On another occasion, when Gundling grew sullen ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... amazing thing about this space joker, Sinclair," commented Connel, "was the way he had everyone fooled. I couldn't figure out how he was able to get around so quickly until I learned ...
— The Revolt on Venus • Carey Rockwell
... Agenor de Vargnes, the Examining Magistrate, was the exact opposite of a practical joker. He was dignity, staidness, correctness personified. As a sedate man, he was quite incapable of being guilty, even in his dreams, of anything resembling a practical joke, however remotely. I know nobody to whom he could be compared, unless it be the present president of ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... so much fun out of the notion of these two journeying together, and the mishaps that might occur to them, that he esteemed it almost a personal insult for his hearers not to laugh. The wise youth's dull life at Raynham had afflicted him with many peculiarities of the professional joker. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Where's the joker? You, is it? Here's hot news You've brought us; all the valley's hissing aloud, And makes as much of you falling into it As a pail of water would of a ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... you're a joker," he said. "And it really seems a pity," he went on, "that a bright young fellow like you shouldn't wear the finest clothes to be had anywhere. If you'll come to my shop I'll make you a suit such as you never saw before in all ...
— The Tale of Brownie Beaver • Arthur Scott Bailey
... her and drawing her toward him.] And I am a joker, too, and a very wicked man. Nevertheless, you must trust me. There ...
— The Human Drift • Jack London
... a while, when for hours no word had been spoken except some broken reference to a royal flush or a jack-pot, or O'Flynn had said, "Bedad! I'll go it alone," or Potts had inquired anxiously, "Got the joker? Guess I'm euchred, then," the Boy in desperation would catch up Kaviak, balance the child on his head, or execute some other gymnastic, soothing the solemn little heathen's ruffled feelings, afterwards, by crooning out ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... the sawdust emptiness before him as if it were a packed audience, "this is Barney Barnato, the biggest joker of a mule ever born. He's as affectionate as ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London
... with the trotter for a moment. The racer is incidentally useful, but essentially something to bet upon, as much as the thimble-rigger's "little joker." The trotter is essentially and daily useful, and only incidentally a tool for ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... man! that, with our species upon the edge of extermination or appalling degradation, with no clear prospect before us but the chance of a horrible death, we could sit following the chance of this painted pasteboard, and playing the "joker" with vivid delight. Afterwards he taught me poker, and I beat him at three tough chess games. When dark came we decided to take the ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... those whom they know to be unable to pay them; one will answer, that his debtor once lived better than himself; another, that his wife looked above her neighbours, and his children went in silk clothes to the dancing-school; and another, that he pretended to be a joker and a wit. Some will reply, that if they were in debt, they should meet with the same treatment; some, that they owe no more than they can pay, and need therefore give no account of their actions. Some will confess their resolution, that their debtors shall ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... readily perceiving that whoever the joker might be the boy was innocent of complicity. "You mean, you thought you did! See here, what was ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... you want," cried a joker, "maybe Lewis an' Patterson will give us all enough of it at ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... my letter any further at present, but you shall soon hear from me again. You tell me I am a party man. I hope I shall always be so, when I see my country in the hands of a pert London joker and a second-rate lawyer. Of the first, no other good is known than that he makes pretty Latin verses; the second seems to me to have the head of a country parson and the tongue of an Old ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... growled Caldwell, "he makes a noise like a joker in the pack. I don't mind telling you he's got me listening. He wouldn't have thrown up his job and quarrelled with his father and Senora Rojas if he wasn't pretty sure he was in right. Vega tells me, three ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis
... thunderin' hidin', sich ez I hanker arter, hey? I'm jiggered, too, if I don't, ye young whelp! Fur I guess ye wer kinder in truck with thet durned nigger when he tried to pizen me an' Mister Flinders. I'll skin ye alive, though ye aren't bigger nor a spritsail sheet knot, my joker, fur ye hevn't got half enuff yet, ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... to every move on the board. He don't use no shove-nets, nor such-like tackle; not he; I s'pose he don't call that sport. Besides, I got master to stake the whole water, and set old knives and razors about in the holes, but that don't answer; and this joker all'us goes alone—which, in course, he couldn't do with nets. Now, I knows within five or six yards where that chap sets his lines, and I finds 'em, now and again, set the artfullest you ever see. ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... by a practical joker, he would be made to look ridiculous in the eyes of all who were in the secret. And that thought brought him back to the question which over and over he asked in his mind. Who could have written ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... joker!" exclaimed Michel Ardan. "He hopes! He is not quite sure! And he waits till we are encased to make this deplorable acknowledgment! I ask ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... heard much of you, Sir Charles Grandison: but I am quite mistaken in you: I expected to see a grave formal young man, his prim mouth set in plaits: But you are a joker; and a free man; a very free man, I ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... be likely to do it?" asked Bob. "Can you recall a practical joker? This is copy book paper torn from an ordinary theme book. Yes, I'll bet a cookie a ...
— Betty Gordon at Boarding School - The Treasure of Indian Chasm • Alice Emerson
... of his death, this simple Western attorney, who, according to one party was a vulgar joker, and whom the doctrinaires among his own supporters accused of wanting every element of statesmanship, was the most absolute ruler in Christendom, and this solely by the hold his good-humored sagacity had laid on the hearts and understandings ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham
... up juices from all the land, whose liberal fruits were showered all around; having a key to unlock all hearts, and a treasure for each; hospitable friend, husband-lover, doting father; a boisterous wit, fantastic humorist, master of pathos, practical joker, sincere mourner; always an extremist, yielding to various excess; an April day, all smiles and tears; January and May met together; a many-sided fanatic; a universal enthusiast; a large-hearted sectarian; a hot-headed judge; a strong sketch full of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... said, his laugh lacking sincerity. "You're a bit of a joker, Mr. Tibbetts. Now, what do you say to this? This is Stivvins' Wharf and Warehouse. Came into the market on Saturday, and I bought it on Saturday. The only river frontage which is vacant between Greenwich and Gravesend. Stivvins, ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... to the clerks' office and asking himself how he could best incite a clamor against his chief without compromising himself, Bixiou rushed to the Rabourdin office for a word of greeting. Believing that he had lost his bet the incorrigible joker thought it amusing to pretend that he ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... Juan, being a joker, once thought to have a little fun at others' expense, so he robed himself in a shroud, placed a bier by the roadside, set candles around it, and lay down so that all who went by should see him and be frightened. A band ...
— Philippine Folk-Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss, Berton L. Maxfield, W. H. Millington,
... fitting it is that the splendid dome should be the chief feature of a building that is really an indoor garden and that the most prominent note of the coloring should be green, nature's favorite and most joyous color. Some joker," he went on, "says that this Exposition is domicidal. He expresses a feeling a good many people have here, that there are too many domes. But I don't agree. The domes make a charming pictorial effect, and they harmonize with the general spirit of the architecture. And ...
— The City of Domes • John D. Barry
... man, and with such a hat, passed in those days through a crowded neighbourhood, he might think himself fortunate if his annoyances were confined to the shouts and cries of the populace. The obnoxious hat was often snatched from his head, and thrown into the gutter by some practical joker, and then raised, covered with mud, upon the end of a stick, for the admiration of the spectators, who held their sides with laughter, and exclaimed in the pauses of their mirth, "Oh! what a shocking bad hat! .... What a shocking bad hat!" ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... by George!" said John. "It seems to me that I've fallen into a pretty soft thing here. There'll be a joker in the deck somewhere, I guess. There always is in these good things. But I don't see it yet. You can ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... again went over this unexpected letter. Reflection inclined me yet more strongly to believe that it was the work of a practical joker. My adventure was well known. The newspapers had given it in full detail. Some satirist, such as exists even in America, must have written this threatening ...
— The Master of the World • Jules Verne
... in Her Majesty's Navy, an' it was just then that Old 'Op, our Yeoman of Signals, an' a fastidious joker, made remarks to me ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... equally imperative and not-to-be-disregarded order to arise. The story of the old veteran who was carrying home his dinner and who dropped his hands to his side and his dinner to the gutter when a practical joker called "Attention"; the pathetic plight of the superannuated business man who is totally at a loss away from his familiar duties, are often quoted illustrations of how completely habit may determine ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... Why, Morrison, of course! Of course, I know! How are you, Morrison? And, by the way, Where are you? What! You never mean to say You are down there yet? Well, by the Holy Poker! What are you doing there, you ancient joker? ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... admirer, wife of a Vienna pianist, longed for a lock of the composer's outrageously unkempt hair, and asked a friend to get her one. At his suggestion, Beethoven, who was a practical joker of boorish capabilities, sent her a tuft from the chin of a goat. The trick was discovered, and the scorned woman vented her fury in a letter; the repentant Beethoven made ample apology to her, and spent his wrath on the head of the suggester of ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... the village joker assured him. "But 'twas too much of a chance ter get a rise out er Sophy for me to lose it. Ain't she the hot-tempered thing? Just the same she wuz dead sot on gettin' him, we all know that, an' she's ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... "The Advantage of a Great Breadth of Base." Latin Oration, to a vain person, subject, "Amor Sui." Dissertations: to a meddling person, subject, "The Busybody"; to a poor punster, subject, "Diseased Razors"; to a poor scholar, subject, "Flunk on,—flunk ever." Colloquy, to a joker whose wit was not estimated, subject, "Unappreciated Facetiousness." When a play upon names is attempted, the subject "Perfect Looseness" is assigned to Mr. Slack; Mr. Barnes discourses upon "Stability of character, or pull down and build greater"; Mr. Todd treats upon "The Student's Manual," ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... foreign tourists, might be addressed the warning which Peter Plymley thundered against BONAPARTE, in reference to the Anti-Jacobin jests of CANNING: Tremble, oh! thou land of many spitters and voters, 'for a pleasant man has come out against thee, and thou shalt be laid low by a joker of jokes, and he shall talk his pleasant talk to thee, and thou shalt be no more!' In order that America may take its due rank in the commonwealth of nations, a literature is needed which shall be the exponent of its higher life. We live in times of turbulence and change. There is a general ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... things;" but profoundly observes that one must eat a good many of them before being satisfied. "Ay, but how many of them," asks Goldsmith, "would reach to the moon?" The sage professes his ignorance; and, indeed, remarks that that would exceed even Goldsmith's calculations; when the practical joker observes, "Why, one, sir, if it were long enough." Johnson was completely beaten on this occasion. "Well, sir, I have deserved it. I should not have provoked so foolish an answer by so ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... difficulties and worryings, prospects of sudden disaster, peril of life and limb; all these, and death itself, seem to him only sly, good-natured hits, and jolly punches in the side bestowed by the unseen and unaccountable old joker. That odd sort of wayward mood I am speaking of, comes over a man only in some time of extreme tribulation; it comes in the very midst of his earnestness, so that what just before might have seemed to him a thing most momentous, now seems but a part of the general ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... with a stripped deck, the joker going as a fifth ace or to fill a straight or a flush. Several hands were dealt without any stayers. The slender Mexican was dealing when the sensation of the game was ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... Even a practical joker would hardly care to go to the length of cutting open government mail-pouches; for Uncle Sam doesn't approve ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... to excite his ire? I had not treated Beranger with sufficient respect, and Monsieur Taxile Delord, though a joker by trade, would not hear of any fun on this subject. His genius had shaped itself exactly on Beranger's, and he resented as a personal affront every insult offered to the songster. Of a truth, Beranger's fate was a hard one, and all my ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... Zouave was as cheerful as it was diverse. There were some officers on their way to rejoin their units, a bevy of tarts from Marseille, a rich Mahommedan merchant, returning from Mecca, some strolling players, a Montenegran prince, a great joker this, who did impersonations.... Not one of these people was sea-sick and they spent the time drinking champagne with the captain of the Zouave, a fat "Bon viveur" from Marseille, who had an establishment there and another in Algiers, and who rejoiced in the name of Barbassou. Tartarin ...
— Tartarin de Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... Hatchway, who had one of his legs shot away, while he acted as lieutenant on board the Commodore's ship; and now being on half pay, lives with him as his companion. The Lieutenant is a very brave man, a great joker, and, as the saying is, hath got the length of his commander's foot; though he has another favourite in the house, called Tom Pipes, that was his boatswain's mate, and now keeps the servants in order. Tom is a man of few words, but an excellent ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... that they not only keep abreast but ahead of the current thought of the day. Spencer is their philosopher, and Howells is their novelist, but Dickens and Scott have large space on their shelves. All this does not prevent Mr. Herne from being an incorrigible joker, and a wonderfully funny story-teller. All dialects come instantly and surely to his tongue. The sources of his power as a dramatist are evident in his keen observation and retentive memory. Mrs. Herne's ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... dear man!" went on Mrs. Jane Jukes Jopp. "What practical joker ever lured you into appearing in public ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... grumbling pettishly. Why shouldn't she speak her own language? What did the man think? He must be a joker! ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... begin to hope the old man finds something that's been afire up there, Grannis," said the joker of the house. "If he don't, you've cooked ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... the knife was called the "Whittler," and sometimes the "Joker." It was a perpetual mystery, they never knew just what it would do next. His particular pet was one with a hollow around the point, which made a whistling sound when it flew, and was sometimes called the "Whistler" and sometimes the "Jabberwock," "which whiffled through ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... was a frolicsome 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 ...
— The Tale of Mrs. Ladybug • Arthur Scott Bailey
... most skilled ear to pick up the thread of the musical idea, or even to imagine that there was one. Fantastic instrumentations, humoristic sallies became grotesque through the coarseness of the execution. It was lamentably stupid, the work of an idiot, of a joker who knew nothing of music. Christophe tore his hair. He tried to interrupt, but the friend who was with him held him back, assuring him that the Herr Kapellmeister must surely see the faults of the execution and would put everything right—that Christophe must not show himself and ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... clad in vivid silver with bands of gold on their sides. There also flashed past the purple of the salmonoids, the brilliant majesty of the gold fish, the bluish belly of the sea bream, the striped back of the sheep's head, the trumpet-mouthed marine sun-fish, the immovable sneer of the so-called "joker," the dorsal pinnacle of the peacock-fish which appears made of feathers, the restless and deeply bifurcated tail of the horse mackerel, the fluttering of the mullet with its triple wings, the grotesque rotundity ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... accommodation. For my part, I do not know which is the less desirable, the tenant or the tenement There are dogs that submit to be kissed by women base enough to kiss them; but they have a secret, coarse revenge. For the dog is a joker, withal, gifted with as much humor as is ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... Rameures said to the cure, "you were about to read us your sermon on superstition last Thursday, when you were interrupted by that joker who climbed the tree in order to hear you better. Now is the time to recompense us. Take this seat and we ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... that way, and I believe, as you do, that they will take it a little better if we also agree to pay this year's taxes on the land they put under the mortgage. It would be a great sweetener to some of them, and I can slip in an option to sell the land to us outright as a kind of a joker in small type." His brassy eyes were small and beady as his brain worked out the details of his plan. He put his hands affectionately on General Hendricks' shoulders as he added, "You mustn't forget to write to Bob, General; ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... Tarzan very glad to know these things; but at the other lesson he had been taught he reddened. He had always been a joker, the only joker in the grim and terrible company; but now as he lay there half dead from his hurts, he almost swore a solemn oath forever to forego practical joking—almost; but ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... "damme, what next?—well, my joker, all the better for you, I shall put your philosophy ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... stated that the cardinal of Ragusa had given her as a present an article, which this holy joker called in articulo mortis. It was a tiny glass bottle, no bigger than a bean, made at Venice, and containing a poison so subtle that by breaking it between the teeth death came instantly and painlessly. He had received it from Signora Tophana, the celebrated ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... as Vidocq might, to see if they are not thieves. If a lover, a thief, or you—I make no comparisons—could get the better of this first wicket, well, in the first hall, which is shut by a glazed door, you would run across a butler surrounded by lackeys, an old joker more savage and surly even than the porter. If any one gets past the porter's lodge, my butler comes out, waits for you at the entrance, and puts you through a cross-examination like a criminal. That has happened to me, a mere postman. ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... this world of ours: Cause and effect are grim, relentless powers. They rule the world. (A king was shot last night. Last night I held the joker and both bowers.) ...
— Songs of a Sourdough • Robert W. Service
... it. But, Timothy, hearken to me," said the Grandfer earnestly. "Though known as such a joker, I be an understanding man if you catch me serious, and I am serious now. I can tell 'ee lots about the married couple. Yes, this morning at six o'clock they went up the country to do the job, and neither vell nor ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... the unruly, bedlamite gusts that have been charging against one round street corners and utterly abolishing and destroying all that is peaceful in life. Nothing sours my temper like these coarse termagant winds. I hate practical joking; and your vulgarest practical joker ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... offering him the posy, saying, "Thy favour!" and the other continned shouting his loudest, "Am I at skite or at a feast?" Thereupon the Lack-tact of Damascus turned to his rival and cried, "The Fatihah[FN603] is in thy books, O Chief Joker of Cairo. By Allah (and the Almighty grant thee length of life!) thou hast excelled me in everything, and they truly say that none can surpass or overcome the Cairene and men have agreed to declare that the Syrian ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... playing euchre, he popped the "joker" (himself) on the 'Crats' left bower, and voted the Commission had no right to do anything of the sort. In the next game the "joker" will ...
— The Honest American Voter's Little Catechism for 1880 • Blythe Harding
... old joker has done them, is it? Quite right too. The lad doesn't know his own mind yet. Let Fanny wait if she really wants him—and if she can keep hold of him. ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... The only trouble was, he said, that when the gas started the machine guns made so much noise you couldnt hear it an it always came at night sos you couldnt see it and when you smelled it it was most to late to bother anyhow. I been thinkin that over. Seems to me theres a joker in the contract somewhere. Ask your father to read it over an see if it sound droit (thats French for right) to him. Better still. Ask Higgins the grocer to give it the once over. Hes got a grand tete as the French say when they ...
— Dere Mable - Love Letters Of A Rookie • Edward Streeter
... encounter with the agreeable Mr. Murrill. Anyway, he arrived in no very affable state of mind. As a matter of fact he was most terrifically out of temper. Somebody or other—presumably some ass of a practical joker, he figured, or possibly a person with a grudge against him who had curious methods of taking vengeance—had lured him into taking a hot, dusty, tiresome and entirely useless trip. There was no business conference on out at Toledo; no need for his presence there. ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... his musical leanings, Harrigan was a practical joker, and on one occasion he was exercising his humorous talents in the forecastle to the considerable discomfort of one of the crew. Ultimately the sailor, unable to rid himself of his persecutor in any other way, resorted ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... receiving a request by return mail that I would not only describe the machine, but state what progress I had made in the use of it, etc., etc. I don't like to write letters, and so I don't want people to know I own this curiosity-breeding little joker." ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... colonies of Massachusetts and Connecticut. His father's father, Ephraim Barnum, was a captain in the War of the Revolution, and was distinguished for his valor and for his fervent patriotism. His mother's father, Phineas Taylor, was locally noted as a wag and practical joker. His father, Philo Barnum, was in turn a tailor, a farmer, a storekeeper, and a country tavernkeeper, and was not particularly prosperous in any ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... those who help themselves," said he. "I've prospered. For a nineteen-year-old I've hooked my claw fairly deep here and there. As for to-day—why, that's in the game too. It was their deal. Could they have won it on their own play? A joker dropped into their hand. It's my deal now, and I have some jokers myself. Go to sleep, Bolles. We've a ride ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... sir, since you put it that way, and since I know you are gentlemen, I will confide in you. It was like this: One day I was standing at a street corner wondering where my next meal would come from, when a swell joker comes along, and says to me: 'Do you want to earn a bob?' 'Rather, sir,' says I, 'how?' 'By just follering me and carrying this parcel.' 'Right!' says I, and I started off after him, pleased as anything ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang
... He spoke of his own paragraphs as incompressible, "each sentence an infinitely repellent particle." Because of this condensation, it is best not to read more than one essay at a time. Years ago some joker said that Emerson's Essays could be read as well backward as forward, because there was no connection between the sentences. The same observation could have been made with almost equal truth about Proverbs, some of Bacon's Essays, Polonius's Advice ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... only Bellefont, farther down the valley, has cut us out. Then we had the cinnabar mines—you may see them along the slope to northward, right over the west end of the town. They went well for about sixteen months; and then came the stampede. A joker in the Bellefont Sentinel wrote that the miners up in Eucalyptus were complaining of the 'insufficiency of exits'; and he wasn't far out. Last there were the 'Temperate Airs and Reinvigorating Pine-odours of America's Peerless Sanatorium. ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... let 'em go," Carrots said. His glance at Rick was vindictive. "This is the smart joker that dove at me in his airplane. I ...
— Smugglers' Reef • John Blaine
... was perched high above the Upper Farms, on a crag that jutted out from a barren ridge just under a mountain peak called "The Big Hammer." The real name of the little farm was New Ridge,[1] and "Peerout Castle" was only a nickname given to it by a joker because there was so fine an outlook from it and because it bore no resemblance whatever to a castle. The royal lands belonging to this castle consisted of a little plot of cultivated soil, a bit of meadow land here and there, and some heather patches where ...
— Lisbeth Longfrock • Hans Aanrud
... as good as dead. Finding a good chance for revenge, he pretended to be ill, not seeing that he would gain nothing by it. They sent for the doctor. Unluckily for the mother, the doctor was a practical joker, and to amuse himself with her terrors he did his best to increase them. However, he whispered to me, "Leave it to me, I promise to cure the child of wanting to be ill for some time to come." As a matter of fact he prescribed bed and dieting, and the ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... goes!" said she; "the more I peck myself the handsomer I grow!" And she said it quite merrily, for she was a joker among the hens, though, as I have said, she was very respectable; and ...
— Stories to Read or Tell from Fairy Tales and Folklore • Laure Claire Foucher
... Could Socrates not have made an adequate return to Archelaus, if he had taught him to reign? as though Socrates would not benefit him sufficiently, merely by enabling him to bestow a benefit upon Socrates. Why, then, did Socrates say this? Being a joker and a speaker in parables—a man who turned all, especially the great, into ridicule—he preferred giving him a satirical refusal, rather than an obstinate or haughty one, and therefore said that he did not wish to receive benefits from one to whom he could ...
— L. Annaeus Seneca On Benefits • Seneca
... toward each other, nevertheless we are implacable opponents. Mr. Parker has graciously spread, face up on the table for my inspection, an extremely hard hand to beat; so now it's quite in order for me to spring my little joker and try to take the odd trick. Mr. Conway, I want you to do something for me. Not for my sake or the sake of my dead father, who was a good friend of yours, but for the sake of this state where we were both born and which we love because it is symbolical of the United States. I want you to ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... said. "We must do this, if only for the effect on the Frostola man when he sees what has happened. It's turning the tables on that joker, and he ...
— The Blue Ghost Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... out to the ice-boat. "I've wanted to speak to you afore, but I haven't had the chance. You mustn't b'lieve too much of what Mr. Catesby-Stuart says, nor you mustn't always do just what he suggests. You see," he says, "he's a dreadful practical joker." ...
— Cape Cod Stories - The Old Home House • Joseph C. Lincoln
... he got so much fun out of the notion of these two journeying together, and the mishaps that might occur to them, that he esteemed it almost a personal insult for his hearers not to laugh. The wise youth's dull life at Raynham had afflicted him with many peculiarities of the professional joker. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... many respects a decided contrast to Spurling. Reared on a New Hampshire farm in the shadow of the White Mountains, he was of medium build, wiry and active, a practical joker, full of life and spirit. He had red hair and the quick temper that goes with it. Though not much of a student, he had at eighteen a keen, clear business head. Like Spurling, he had been obliged to make his own way; and, like Spurling, he was ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... the joker and saw Padre Salvi, who was seated at the right of the Countess, turn as white as his napkin, while he stared at the mysterious words with bulging eyes. The scene of the sphinx recurred ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... makes 'at Both me and you lays back and shakes at His comic, miraculous cracks Which makes him—clean back of the power Of genius itse'f in its flower— This Notable Man of the Hour, Abe Martin, The Joker on Facts. ...
— Songs of Friendship • James Whitcomb Riley
... watched the miserable crowds afoot and reflected upon them, was neither remorseful nor triumphant. He simply noted an interesting fact—a commonplace fact—of the methods of that sardonic practical joker, Life. Because the scheme of things was unjust and stupid, because others, most others, were uncomfortable or worse—why should he make himself uncomfortable? It would be an absurdity to get out of his limousine and trudge along in the wet and the wind. It would be equally absurd ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... of her exploits were told us by her C.O., who was an R.N.V.R. Lieutenant. Some practical joker produced a cylinder alleged to be in cuneiform writing. A translation of the inscription proved beyond doubt that the Shushan was used by Nebuchadnezzar as a royal yacht, and is the last surviving link ...
— A Dweller in Mesopotamia - Being the Adventures of an Official Artist in the Garden of Eden • Donald Maxwell
... powerful, his hide that of an extreme blond burned by months of a tropic sun upon salt water. His hair was an aureole, yellow as a sunflower, a bush of it on a bullet-head. And, incredible almost—as if made of putty by a joker—his nose stuck out like the first joint of a thumb, the oddest nose ever on a man. His little eyes were blue and bright. Barefooted, bare-headed, in the sleeveless shirt and short trousers of a life-guard, with an embroidered V on the front of the upper garment, he was ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... no haphazard in this world of ours: Cause and effect are grim, relentless powers. They rule the world. (A king was shot last night. Last night I held the joker and ...
— Songs of a Sourdough • Robert W. Service
... got the wrong end of all things with a tight grip, and who flings a shilling in the face of out-back conventionality (as he thinks) by chucking a bob into the Salvation Army ring. Then he glares round to see if he can catch anybody winking behind his back. There's the cynical joker, a queer mixture, who contributes generously and tempts the reformed boozer afterwards. There's the severe-faced old station-hand—in clean shirt and neckerchief and white moleskins—in for his annual or semi-annual spree, who contributes on principle, ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... effect in promoting their most genial feelings. A result brought about, not so much by their skill, as by Quimby's perpetually forgetting what was trumps, confounding the right and left bowers, and disregarding the power of the joker. ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... said to belong to the period of the Frankish incursions. Some one had once remarked that Count Simon himself was the most perfect relic of the barbaric period to be found in Europe, which, coming round in due time to Count Simon, the joker paid with his life for his ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... Lupin, well?" resumed the deputy. "You look as if your nose were out of joint. Come, console yourself and admit that one sometimes comes across a joker who's not quite such a mug as his fellows. So you thought that, because I wear spectacles and eye-glasses, I was blind? Bless my soul, I don't say that I at once suspected Lupin behind Polonius and Polonius behind ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... The Tangled Skein My Lady One Against The World Put A Penny In The Slot Good Little Girls Life Limited Liability Anglicised Utopia An English Girl A Manager's Perplexities Out Of Sorts How It's Done A Classical Revival The Practical Joker The National Anthem Her Terms The Independent Bee The ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... completely busied with either the consciousness of being noticed, or the hope of being noticed, or the hatred of it, that they take note of nothing else. Fifth Avenue expressions are a filling meal for the prowling lonely joker; but what will most satisfy his cannibal appetite is the passage of the self-conscious men and women. For here, on a good day, he cannot fail to relish some extreme cases of their whimsical disease: fledgling young ...
— Harlequin and Columbine • Booth Tarkington
... foot, followed by Cain and Murphy. Hundreds of soldiers were idling about the station. They had no idea what was taking place. They thought either that the locomotive had been carried up the track to take on or leave a freight car, or that some practical joker was playing a prank. They showed their enjoyment of the situation by laughing and cheering loudly when Captain Fuller, followed by Engineer Cain and Mr. Murphy, started ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris
... enlivened the hours for a time; but the fiddler was soon voted a bore, and silenced by some one pouring a pint of molasses into the f-holes of his instrument. The enraged musician completed the job by breaking it over the head of the joker. After several weeks, they put into Cape Town. Here the practical joker of the crew made himself famous by utterly routing an inquisitive old lady, who asked, "What do you do with your prisoners?" The grizzled old tar dropped his voice to a confidential ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... as inimitable jokers. Whether people grow fat by joking, or whether there is something in fat itself which predisposes to a joke, I have never been quite able to determine; but certain it is that a lean joker is ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... in 1879, the new owner decided on erecting a handsome roomy mansion on the same site. The visitor at Kirk Ella, after paying his devoirs to the youthful Chatelain and Chatelaine, can admire at leisure Mr. Levey's numerous and expensive stud: "Lollypop", "Bismark," "Joker," "Jovial," "Tichborne," "Burgundy," "Catch-him-alivo," a crowd of fleet steeds, racing and trotting stock, surrounded by a yelping and frisky pack of "Peppers," "Mustards," "Carlos," "Guys," "Josephines," ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... had had. The General's expression from being interested and generous had grown suddenly obstinate and set. Tabs hurried on. "So I can understand Terry's preference. And yet, as you've owned, despite your advantages, I hold the winning card. I can joker all your aces by telling—well, the things to which you have referred." He leant forward across the table. "I don't want to have to tell. To do that I should have to make myself still more inferior to you than you have proved me to be in the hardest of all ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... cried, pincers in one hand, hammer in the other; and he looked as if he were going to seize me with one tool and beat me with the other. "Yah! Get out, you young joker! ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn
... says I, 'and watch the little ball. It costs you nothing to look. There you see it, and there you don't. Guess where the little joker is. The quickness of the hand deceives ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... gravity, as he turned towards the boatswain's mate and ordered him to pipe the men to dinner in a sharp tone; and he said to Mr Cheffinch, the gunnery lieutenant, when he crossed over the deck to go on board the old Blake to lunch, "He had me nicely there, like that other joker the chimney-sweeper. It must have been a planned thing between ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... been augmented on the West India station. The brig 'Firefly,' corvettes 'Croaker' and 'Joker,' touched at Nassau, New Providence, on the 2d instant, bound to leeward. We also learn that the United States have fitted out a squadron of small vessels, called the Musquito Fleet, to search for the noted pirate Brand, who has so long committed atrocities among the islands. He was last chased ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... beard, which he had allowed to grow since the war, spread like a fan over his chest, and gave him a look of Henri IV. I knew that this formidable exterior concealed the merriest companion and the most delightful sly joker that ever lived. So I was not much impressed by his thoughtful brow and his ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... things in the crowd. At any rate, the Genoese, though apparently occupying a secondary station, had no grounds to complain of indifference to his presence. Most of the observances and not a few of the sallies of honest Peter, who had some local reputation as a joker and a bel esprit, as is apt to be the case with your municipal magistrate, more especially when he holds his authority independently of the community with whom he associates, and perhaps as little likely to be the fact when he depends on popular favor for his rank, were ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... great joker on the peculiarities of Oldys, was far from insensible to the extraordinary acquisitions of the man. "His knowledge of English books has hardly been exceeded." Grose, too, was struck by the delicacy of honour, and the unswerving veracity which so strongly characterised Oldys, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... so," he admitted. "Yes, I guess I do. I can't help it. I'm no joker; no time for that. Jokers don't get anywhere. Never saw one that did. It's the fellow who keeps thinking about his job and banging away ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... played by an old man who pretended to be dead in the ancient days when nobody really died. But the Lord of the Sun, who held the threads of all human lives in his hand, detected the fraud and in anger cut short the thread of life of the practical joker. Since then everybody else has died; the door for death to enter into the world was opened by the folly of that silly, though humorous, old man.[95] The natives about the Murray River in Australia used to relate how the first man and woman were forbidden to go near a tree in which a bat lived, ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... with clerks and that from the various inner offices people were constantly coming and going, the question was peculiar. The young guardian of the portal seemed to find it so. He regarded Mr. Bangs with the puzzled stare of one not certain whether he has to do with a would-be joker ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... crushing indignity, they opened wide the spigots of wrath, all talked at once, and the sum total of their comments contained no single word that could be considered as complimentary to management of the war. More instruction in flying! It was unthinkable. But then, perhaps this grim joker, Yancey, was spoofing ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... village joker assured him. "But 'twas too much of a chance ter get a rise out er Sophy for me to lose it. Ain't she the hot-tempered thing? Just the same she wuz dead sot on gettin' him, we all know that, an' she's ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... the while, when something occurred to me which placed a new complexion upon this second summons. I thought of the falsity of the first, of the improbability of even the most hardened practical joker practising his wiles at one o'clock in the morning. I thought of our recent conversation; above all I thought of the girl who had delivered the message to Eltham, the girl whom he had described as a French maid—whose personal ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... thing more extraordinary than all, that is that Shakespeare is a genius. The Italians, the French, the men of letters of all other countries, who have not spent some time in England, take him only for a clown, for a joker far inferior to Harlequin, for the most contemptible buffoon who has ever amused the populace. Nevertheless, it is in this same man that one finds pieces which exalt the imagination and which stir the heart to its depths. It is Truth, it is Nature herself who speaks her own ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... lambent mirth still flickered, golden, in the depths of the brown eyes. "If you persist, I can only suggest that you come back when Judge Ackroyd is here. You won't find him particularly amenable to humor, particularly when perpetrated by a practical joker in masquerade." ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... remembered that Braceway was not that kind of a joker. He looked at his watch. He had no encyclopaedia, and it was now a quarter to eleven, too late to ring up anybody and ask the absurd favour of having extracts from an encyclopaedia read to him over the telephone. Besides, it might be ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.
... through a crowded neighbourhood, he might think himself fortunate if his annoyances were confined to the shouts and cries of the populace. The obnoxious hat was often snatched from his head, and thrown into the gutter by some practical joker, and then raised, covered with mud, upon the end of a stick, for the admiration of the spectators, who held their sides with laughter, and exclaimed in the pauses of their mirth, "Oh! what a shocking bad hat! .... What a shocking bad hat!" Many a nervous, poor man, whose purse could ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... Oh! Why, Morrison, of course! Of course, I know! How are you, Morrison? And, by the way, Where are you? What! You never mean to say You are down there yet? Well, by the Holy Poker! What are you doing there, you ancient joker? ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... bandages and a plentiful application of tarwater had made him, in three days, able to use his leg as well as ever. While this communication was under grave discussion—it must be remembered that many then thought tarwater had extraordinary remedial properties—the joker contrived that a second letter should be delivered, which stated that the writer had forgotten, in his previous communication, to mention that the leg was a wooden leg! Horace Walpole told this story, I suppose for the first time; he is good authority for the fact of circulation, ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... in Miss Chase's room, she has but to touch the wire by her bed, and the communicating bell will ring close to me, so that I can fly to her rescue. I do not need to say that the practical joker will fare ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... course it would be better to trip him up on this case, but if you can get hold of something else Luke has done that can be proved anyways shady it would be four aces and the joker. Luke would have to pull in his horns about this mortgage. And if I know Luke, he'd do it. He's got nerve, but it ain't cold enough nor witless enough to go up against ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... Fiennes had a considerable stock of wit, and was a great joker; her tongue spared no one but me. Perceiving that she treated the King and Monsieur with as little ceremony as any other persons, I took her by the hand one day, and, leading her apart, I said to her, "Madame, you are very agreeable; you have a great deal of ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... dignity of a serious demeanor. He liked to laugh at the theatre, but mistrusted a daily point of view which savored of buffoonery. He was fond of saying that more than one public man in the United States had come to grief politically from being a joker, and that the American people could not endure flippancy in their representatives. He liked to tell and listen to humorous stories in the security of a smoking-room, but in his opinion it behooved a citizen to maintain a dignified bearing before the world. Like other self-made ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... unpleasant-looking fellow, much disliked by Lennox and Dickenson for his smooth, servile ways, had grown so hollow-cheeked that he was always spoken of as the "Lantern," after being so dubbed by the joker of ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... went on Mrs. Jane Jukes Jopp. "What practical joker ever lured you into appearing ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... "thet this 'ere ain't what you'd 'xactly call a square game. Thet joker in the lead is gettin' well nigh played out, an' them two coves a-follerin' are gettin' the bulge on 'im. Shure an' I'm thinkin' they're friends av yourn, Lagrange, but they wants stoppin'. What ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... a mistake for the Julius Paulinus subsequently mentioned.] was a man of consular rank, who was a great chatterer and joker and would not refrain from aiming his shafts of wit at the very emperors: therefore Severus had him taken into custody, though without constraints. When he still continued, even under guard, to make the sovereigns the objects of his jests, Severus sent ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio
... you seem to see the pallor of the saint's face, the circles under her eyes, the relaxation of all her muscles. Then the angel is a little joker who stands there smiling at the ecstasy of ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... slaughtered than slaughtering. They sat limply in their chairs, nervously twitching their yellowed slimy fingers, their dull eyes intent upon the worn spots in the carpet. It was funny! Even Carol smiled, not the serene sweet smile that melted hearts, but the grim hard smile of the joker when the tables are turned! She flattered herself that this wretched travesty on parsonage courtesy would be ended before there were any further witnesses to her downfall from her proud fine heights, but she was doomed to disappointment. ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... so?" snarled Durand. "You're quite a joker, ain't you? Well, you can't start somethin' too soon to suit me. But let's get this clear so we'll know where we're at. ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... than our worthy President, James K. Polk. That man was the famous Captain Riley! whose "narrative" of suffering and adventures is pretty generally known, all over the civilized world. Captain Riley was a fine, fat, good-humored joker, who at the period of my story was the representative of the Dayton district, and lived near that little city when at home. Well, Captain Riley had amused the company with many of his far-famed and singular ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... are dear, aren't they?" "I don't know. I heard my brother Ned say they were quite cheap," went on Jane, who was something of a joker. ...
— The Young Firemen of Lakeville - or, Herbert Dare's Pluck • Frank V. Webster
... sat there, and the Lack-tact of Cairo continued offering him the posy, saying, "Thy favour!" and the other continned shouting his loudest, "Am I at skite or at a feast?" Thereupon the Lack-tact of Damascus turned to his rival and cried, "The Fatihah[FN603] is in thy books, O Chief Joker of Cairo. By Allah (and the Almighty grant thee length of life!) thou hast excelled me in everything, and they truly say that none can surpass or overcome the Cairene and men have agreed to declare that ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... of the reverend joker of the Edinburgh Review; not the convulsed grin of mortification which, sprawling prostrate in the dirt from "the whiff and wind" of the masterly disquisition in the Quarterly Review, the itinerant preacher ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... the great palace of the Archbishop, and it was guarded by English soldiery; but no matter, there was never a dark night but the walls showed next morning that the rude joker had been there with his paint and brush. Yes, he had been there, and had smeared the sacred walls with pictures of hogs in all attitudes except flattering ones; hogs clothed in a Bishop's vestments ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... "Some joker has been at that game before me," he announced. "A chunk of wire has been forced in there ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... changeable and capricious, not that he was given to a facetious turn of thought or to a "sportive" exercise of the imagination. When he talks in "The Taming of the Shrew" of "her mad and head-strong humor" he doesn't mean to imply that Kate is a practical joker. It is interesting to note in passing that the old meaning of the word still lingers in the verb "to humor." A woman still humors her spoiled child and her cantankerous husband when she yields to their capriciousness. By going hack a step further in history, ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... 2: The joker is a fifty-third card, of any kind of device, which is added to the pack; the player to whom it is dealt can make it any card he chooses. For example, if the other four cards he holds are two queens and two sevens, he can make ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... of the cart and over the fence? Not more than five, I'd say, and all that time I was sitting there shaking with laughter—just shaking with inward laughter; I asked you not to leave me alone! Well, I always was a joker but I ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... seventeen votes. P. S. Nov. 5, great grandmother a Fairfax of which very proud. P. S. Dec. 7, great great grandmother a Lee. P. S. Jan. 15, great aunt a Washington. P. S. Feb. 4, great grandmother danced with Lafayette. Mar. 15, brought ugly old painting of joker in wig and stock at second-hand shop Bowery and expressed to H. J. C., with note that was assured this was portrait of ancestor. Total cost $1.15, charged exs. Mar. 23—Enthusiastic letter thanks from J. H. C. in which says exactly like miniature portrait ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... perfectly polite and uninterested. "'Have you?' says he, removin' his pipe and spitting carefully outdoors again. And then he slid the joker a'top of Smithy's play. 'Well, I have been a Mormon,' ...
— Mr. Scraggs • Henry Wallace Phillips
... should come. The best of us profane it readily, leaving the coarse prints of our heels upon its paths, mauling and man-handling the fairy blossoms with what pudgy fingers! Comes the poet, ruthlessly leaping the wall and trumpeting indecently his view- halloo of the chase, and, after him, the joker, snickering and hopeful of a kill among the rose-beds; for this has been their hunting-ground since the world began. These two have made us miserably ashamed of the divine infinitive, so that we are afraid to utter the very words "to love," lest some urchin overhear and pursue us with a sticky ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... "Yes, joker," said Ned Land. "And one fine day the creature plunges, carrying with it all the inhabitants to the ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... smiling pallidly, "the little joker that James inserted in the contract, about your getting fifty thousand in the event of a favorable report. I told him it didn't look well—but he said it would test you. He would be funny, though, no matter how serious the business. But you showed ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... eh? Well, if you ain't the greatest joker Putnam Hall ever see then I'll eat my hat," declared Peleg. "Jump in an' don't ask me about no grandfathers, or wife's sisters, nor nuthing. ...
— The Rover Boys on the Farm - or Last Days at Putnam Hall • Arthur M. Winfield (AKA Edward Stratemeyer)
... to the hunters. An' he's found out they ain't got enny pistols. He's got one, an' shows 'em how straight he shoots, jest in case there should be enny trubble between 'em. Plays both ends to the middle, does Carlsen. Slick! But he ain't won the pot. They's a joker in this game. Mebbe he ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... my hands. This joker was leading with his chin, forcing the fight. I had to hit him again; if I lost, I lost good. "A person," I said slowly and rhythmically, "with normal intelligence and a minute interest in the universe, will keep step with the major sciences, ...
— Question of Comfort • Les Collins
... strange bird. Then he indulges in a fit of merriment at his own jokes—'chatter-chatter-chat-chat-chat-chat-chat' he says, calling his own name as he slips away to the security of a catbrier or barberry bush. Large and vigorous and strong of beak as he is, this practical joker is wise, and does not often show his conspicuous ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... that law worked very nicely so long as the poor cowboy was willing to catch and brand him for his employer, but it proved a 'joker' when he woke up and said to his fellows: 'Why brand these mavericks at five dollars per head for this or that outfit when the law says it belongs to the man ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... Griscom, "I am ready to do a little joking myself. I'm just enough of a joker to want to see whoever it was in jail. My house is my house—it is my castle, as the saying is—and I don't want strangers wandering in and out of it, whether they come to take away my property, or leave property that is not mine. Is there, or is there not, a law against such ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler
... risk, I should be well enough—as well as I want to be. Here is no lack of my best friend,'—touching his case-bottle;—'but, to tell you a secret, he and I have got so used to each other, I begin to think he is like a professed joker, that makes your sides sore with laughing if you see him but now and then; but if you take up house with him, he can only make your head stupid. But I warrant the old fellow is doing the best he can for me, ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... it an equally imperative and not-to-be-disregarded order to arise. The story of the old veteran who was carrying home his dinner and who dropped his hands to his side and his dinner to the gutter when a practical joker called "Attention"; the pathetic plight of the superannuated business man who is totally at a loss away from his familiar duties, are often quoted illustrations of how completely habit may ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... rhymsters couple such words as sung and one? It is like near and tears in the American war-song, 'The Old Camp-Ground.' Some people are like these fish; they have no ear at all. A practical joker, like you, Corry, once corrected a young lady ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... her son. "She sends you her regards. And this Yegor Ivanovich is such a simple fellow, such a joker! He speaks ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... nine hundred and ninety-nine years at the nominal sum of five thousand dollars per year. It was understood that the old bridges over State, Dearborn, and Clark streets should be put in repair or removed; but there was "a joker" inserted elsewhere which nullified this. Instantly there were stormy outbursts in the Chronicle, Inquirer, and Globe; but Cowperwood, when he read them, merely smiled. "Let them grumble," he said ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... When the path branched off, I called a halt for lunch, as we were not likely to find any water later on. We were now quite near the craters, and while we ate our rice, we heard the roaring, so that the boys grew nervous, till the joker of the company made them laugh, and then the meal absorbed their attention. Still, they occasionally sent furtive glances skyward, to see if any lava was coming down ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... misery as only cultivated poltroonery can breed. Wicked wags knew that they could frighten him at any moment; they would greet him cordially, and then suddenly assume an air of deep concern. The poor plutocrat's face changed instantly, and he would ask, "What is the matter?" The joker then made answer, "You are a little flushed. You should rest." This was enough. The truant imagination of the unhappy butt went far afield in search of terrors; neither food, nor wine, nor the pleasures ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... priest and a preacher of power before he was twenty-five. In temperament he was very much such a man as Luther, save that Luther was considerable of a joker. Luther had more common- sense than Knox, but what Knox lacked in humor he made up in learning. In fact, his love of learning was his chief weakness. He was as self-reliant as a black Angus. At twenty-six Knox made a vow that he would no longer kneel. This led to a rebuke from Cardinal Beaton, followed ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... that confronted the London revenue officers in the Sussex humour. To be confounded by too swift a horse or too agile a "runner" was all in the night's work; but to be hoodwinked and bamboozled by the deliberate stealthy southern fun must have been eternally galling. The Sussex joker grinds slowly and exceeding small; but the flour is his. "There was Nick Cossum the blacksmith [the words are a shepherd's, talking to Mr. Lower]; he was a sad plague to them. Once he made an exciseman run several miles after him, to take ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... splendid dome should be the chief feature of a building that is really an indoor garden and that the most prominent note of the coloring should be green, nature's favorite and most joyous color. Some joker," he went on, "says that this Exposition is domicidal. He expresses a feeling a good many people have here, that there are too many domes. But I don't agree. The domes make a charming pictorial effect, and they harmonize with ...
— The City of Domes • John D. Barry
... saw an old woman come limpin' along th' dock where th' Starbuck lay. She hobbled on to th' gang-plank an' started aboard, an' O'Toole began to chaff Garnett. He waren't half bad as a joker. ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains
... have been from time to time introduced, but few have any claim to permanence or popularity. The best known in this country are the Blaze and the Joker. ...
— Round Games with Cards • W. H. Peel
... tin can to the tail of a mad dog. It only irritates him, and he might resent it before you get the can tied on. A friend of mine, who was a practical joker, once sought to tie a tin can to the tail of a mad dog on an empty stomach. His widow still points with pride to the marks of his teeth on the piano. If mad dogs would confine themselves exclusively to practical jokers, I would be glad to endow a home for indigent mad ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... course," Julietta answered, and the burst of laughter that followed would have been enough to silence the most ambitious joker, but this girl fun-maker was not in the least ambitious, so she ...
— Campfire Girls at Twin Lakes - The Quest of a Summer Vacation • Stella M. Francis
... different in being behind fashion, but always slightly apart from it. "Chic" is a borrowed adjective, but there is no English word to take the place of "elegant" which was destroyed utterly by the reporter or practical joker who said "elegant dresses," and yet there is no synonym that will express the individuality of beautiful taste combined with personal dignity and grace which gives to a perfect costume an inimitable air of ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... run," cried the sailor, thrusting all the money into his breeches pocket. "That's what you'll learn to do, my joker, before you've been ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... Hunters.' It might be, probably was, a blind, or the kidnappers, having touched there, might have departed in any direction—to Iceland, for what he knew. But the name, 'the Seven Hunters,' was not likely to have been invented by a practical joker in London. If not, the conspirators had really captured and kept to themselves Mr. Macrae's line of wireless communications. How could that have been done? Merton bitterly regretted that his general information did ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... that for several years he lived much with Charles Townshend, and that he ventured to tell him he was a bad joker. JOHNSON. 'Why, Sir, thus much I can say upon the subject. One day he and a few more agreed to go and dine in the country, and each of them was to bring a friend in his carriage with him. Charles Townshend asked ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... Joker, lived at a farm in the village, and, during the leisure of summer, when rabbiting did not engage his attention, took to wandering by the river, joining the bathers in their sport and poking his nose inquisitively under ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... your opinion, is it? Well, you'd best take care, my joker, or you'll get something in the ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... the hurrying workmen, with a chorus of 'Serve ye right,' and the fallen joker found himself awkwardly confronted by the shop bruiser. But Bob had turned to a corner, and buried his eyes in the bend of his arm, while ...
— Victorian Short Stories of Troubled Marriages • Rudyard Kipling, Ella D'Arcy, Arthur Morrison, Arthur Conan Doyle,
... 'the composer,' 'the poet.' He wrote a long epic, Karl the Great, an Arthurian romance, Daniel of the Blooming Vale, and several short tales of which the best is Pfaffe Ameis. The hero is a peripatetic rogue and practical joker who plays tricks on people and makes much money. The selection is from the translation by Karl Pannier ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... of what Fontenette might presently do or say, my blood ran hot and cold. But Monsieur showed neither amusement nor annoyance, only a perfectly gracious endurance. Yet how could I know what instant his forbearance might give way, or what serpent's eggs the joker's inanities might in the next day or hour turn out to be, laid in the hot heart of the Creole gentleman? Then it was that this slender little German seamstress-wife shone forth like the first star ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable
... It was to suppress the inventor and his labor. They bought the sole rights from the inventor, promising him glittering royalties. The joker was that the invention was suppressed. None were ever manufactured. Hence there were no royalties and the corporations went on undisturbed while Brent and Balcom collected huge retainers for the ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... sphere in Her Majesty's Navy, an' it was just then that Old 'Op, our Yeoman of Signals, an' a fastidious joker, made remarks to me about ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... against any Person in the Ship.* (* This history of Mr. Orton's misadventure is omitted from the Admiralty copy. It is an illustration of the times to note that the fact of Orton having got drunk does not seem to call for the Captain's severe censure. In these days, though the practical joker receives punishment, the drunkard would certainly come in for ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... If the joker's mood happened to be more boisterous, the approved procedure was to softly uncover Gillsey's feet, and tie a long bit of salmon twine to each big toe. After waking all the other hands, the conspirators would ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
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