"Joker" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... old joker," observed Duff. "Hillo, here comes old Monsieur Collet with his cargo of ginger-beer. Let's go and get some; ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... 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 maker ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... 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, ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... 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
... joker and saw a tall, well-set-up young fellow with extraordinarily broad shoulders, long brown face, stubby blond mustache, who looked down on him ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... 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
... 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, ...
— The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Volume 4 (of 7) • Samuel Richardson
... 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
... "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
... 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
... 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
... 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
... great joker," Mr. Frog murmured with a smile. "He was only teasing me. . . . Still, he might be a bit hungry. So I'll stay here out of harm's way for a while, for it would be a shame for so handsome a person as I am to be eaten by an old, ...
— The Tale of Ferdinand Frog • Arthur Scott Bailey
... 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
... 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 of his countrymen. Nor was this all, for it appeared ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... 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
... 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
... 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
... 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
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... 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
... joker had hidden his hat, he was not able to leave the room with the dignity befitting the occasion; but eighteen supporters answered to his call; and the face of John Wesley was seen in the Fetter Lane Society no more. The breach was final; the wound remained open; and Moravians ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... 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 |
