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More "Banter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with funds, but purchased sparingly as became a miserly hermit. And so vicious was his tongue that few cared to converse with him, even the young hoodlums of the town hesitating to harass him with the banter usually accorded the other ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... employing their muddled minds on frivolity or obscenity, or worse things still. You will hear hardly an intelligent word; you will not catch a sound of sensible discussion; the scraps of conversation that reach you alternate between low banter, low squabbling, objectionable narrative, and histories of fights or swindles ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... that they amuse themselves, and that they jest, and that they banter, and that they make sport of France! It is there that they pocket hap-hazard, amid great shouts of laughter, the millions of louis and the millions of votes! See them, look at them! They have treated the Law like a girl, they are content! Right is slaughtered, ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... sister who told me that Mary was engaged to be married. But I had noticed for some days how the neighbors went out of their way to accost her upon our walks; to banter her kindly, to shake hands with her, to wag their heads and look chin-chucks even if they gave none. Her face wore a beautiful mantling red for hours at a time. And instead of being made more sedate ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... to her father's boat. Braithwaite followed slowly, pausing a moment to exchange some banter with saucy Mosey Louis. Benjamin bent lower over his table; now and then he caught the dear tones of Mary Stella's voice or her laughter at some sally of Pete or Leon. He knew when she went up the road with Braithwaite; he caught the last glimpse of her light dress as she passed out of sight ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... good birth, and that indescribable something which may be called "pedigree." So, on Monday her turn would come. And, moreover, the Marquise knew that as soon as people learned that the stranger was her cousin, they would suspend their banter and look twice before they ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... eyes and seemingly mocking smile, he appears about to lead her back into the ballroom, there is, at least so I like to read the music, a pretty little laugh, as much as to say, "Can't you read my real feelings under my mask of banter," a tender glance indicated by a retard on a charmingly expressive little turn of the melody—and ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb
... partly from fear, though more from a sense of his humiliation, rose to his feet. For a moment he stood choking down his varied emotions. Then, with an attempt at his old-time, suave banter, he inquired: ...
— The Young Engineers in Arizona - Laying Tracks on the Man-killer Quicksand • H. Irving Hancock
... hard, brilliant Irish intellect so often is. He liked people to talk to him. He liked to know the colours of people's minds. He liked to be amused. His merriest talk was like playing catch with an apple of banter, which ...
— John M. Synge: A Few Personal Recollections, with Biographical Notes • John Masefield
... full of girls, who were beguiling the time with jokes and banter and lively chatter. Lettice, Ruth, and Dorothy soon mingled in the crowd, and forgot all about their Irish companion until the voice of ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... discuss abominable soup in Calais, had we not?" continued Blakeney in the same tone of easy banter, "and wine that I vowed was vinegar. Monsieur... er... Chaubertin... no, no, I beg pardon... Chauvelin... Monsieur Chauvelin and I quite agreed upon that point. The only matter on which we were not quite at one ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... creaking new shoes, leaped down to help Missy in. She had received her mother's last admonition, her father's last banter, Aunt Nettie's last anxious peck at her sash, and was just lifting her foot to the surrey step when ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... or more Chieftain had always had a good-night pat on the flank from Tim, and in the morning, after the currying and rubbing, they had a little friendly banter, in the way of love-slaps from Tim and good-natured nosings from Chieftain. Perhaps many of Tim's confidences were given half in jest, and perhaps Chieftain sometimes thought that Tim was a bit slow ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... to his canoe, they pushed out some twenty or thirty rods into the lake, cast anchor, and threw out their lines. Claud, who baited with grubs, soon had drawn in two, weighing as many pounds a piece, and began to feel disposed to banter the hunter, who had baited with a flap of moose-skin, which he had brought along with him, and which, to Claud, seemed little likely to attract the fishes to his hook. But he soon found himself mistaken; for, turning to give utterance to what was passing in his ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... give free scope to tongue and hand in his parish. He ruled paramount over wife, children, house, servants, parish, and everybody. He made work go on like the flying clouds of March; and at fair and market, at meeting and vestry, he had his fling and his banter at the expense of his neighbors, as if the world was all his own, and would never come to an end. But now came an event, arising, as so often is the case, out of the merest trifle, that more than all exhibited the indomitable stiffness ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... The banter in his voice was touched with a tenderness that went straight to Dot's young heart. She leaned down impetuously ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... blue-birds, warblers of many species, sparrows of different kinds, shore birds and ducks, the sweet-songed thrushes. Little tepid breezes wandered up and down, warm in contrast to the faint snow-chill that even yet lingered in the shadows. Sounds carried clearly, so that the shouts and banter of the rivermen were plainly audible up the reaches of the river. Ashore moist and aggressive green things were pushing up through the watery earth from which, in shade, the last frost had not yet departed. At camp the fires roared invitingly. Charlie's grub ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... up to the enjoyment of a pleasant contempt for all that immediately surrounds him. Pedantic /literati/, vain youngsters, every sort of narrowness and conceit, he banters rather than satirizes; and even his banter expresses no contempt. Just in the same way does he jest about his own condition, his misfortune, ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... impulse was to shame her adversary out of her warlike attitude with a little biting banter. Curling her lip, she said not very relevantly to the topic in hand, "They've telt me yer ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... back their lovers with charms differing but little from that sung by the Syracusan to Lady Selene, and the popular poetry alike of Italy and Greece is full of those delicate touches of refined sentiment that in Theocritus appear so incongruous with the rough coats and rougher banter of the shepherds. For though the poet raised the pastoral life of Sicily into the realms of ideal poetry, he was careful not to dissociate his version from reality, and he allowed no imaginary conceptions to overmaster his art. He ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... one, but it diverted attention for a time from the fact of Paul's absence, and when the religious went back to the house and found Brother Andrew returned to his old duty as doorkeeper, the laughter was renewed, and there was some playful banter. ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... home, breakfast was a pleasant send-off for the day. Both Sanford and Eunice were of the sort who wake up wide-awake, and their appearance in the dining-room was always an occasion of merry banter and a leisurely enjoyment of the meal. Aunt Abby, too, was at her best in the morning, and breakfast was served sufficiently early to do away with any need for hurry on ...
— Raspberry Jam • Carolyn Wells
... the least bit seriously—he never did. Her occasional courtship of him had been always so light and airy, so dispassionately epigrammatic, that he looked on it as mere whimsical banter and rather good amusement. She had plagued him into consenting to that kiss on the forehead which she gave him each time they met, referring to it constantly as an advantage won by hard effort. The circumstance ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... boy and Chad, awed by the stern, solemn face, withdrew and, without a word to anybody, climbed into the loft and went to bed. He could hear every stroke on the floor below, every call of the prompter, and the rude laughter and banter, but he gave little heed to it all. For he lay thinking of Caleb Hazel and listening again to the stories he and the cattle-dealer had told him about the wonderful settlements. "God's Country," the dealer always called ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... lost a great many men, he took a fancy to visit their camp. There he perceived little strength, less courage, but much disorder. From that time, foreseeing that things would go ill with them, as it since happened, he began to banter now one and then another, and be very free of his cutting jests; so some of Pompey's captains, playing the good fellows to show their assurance, told him, Do you see how many eagles we have yet? (They ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... art. If an active politician seeks to galvanise a new party by a series of novels, the romances cannot be works of literary art. If a young man wants only to advertise his own smartness, he will not produce a beautiful thing. And if a statesman out of office wishes to amuse himself by alternate banter and laudation of the very society which he has led and which looks to him as its inspiration, the result will be infinitely entertaining, but not a great work of art. Disraeli therefore with literary gifts of a very high order never used them in the way in which a true artist works, and ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... Latin quotations, which Steele and Addison deliberately abstained from giving, and which, as they were since added, impede and sometimes confound and contradict the text, are here placed in a body at the end, for those who want them. Again and again the essayists indulge in banter on the mystery of the Latin and Greek mottos; and what confusion must enter into the mind of the unwary reader who finds Pope's Homer quoted at the head of a 'Spectator' long before Addison's word of applause to the young poet's 'Essay on Criticism.' The mottos ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... boys up to the curbstone brokers, adored Miss Merriam. When they paid their checks they wooed her with every wile known to Cupid's art. Between the meshes of the brass railing went smiles, winks, compliments, tender vows, invitations to dinner, sighs, languishing looks and merry banter that was wafted pointedly back ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... with reserve, and this was cleverly swung so that it appeared to be caused by a temporary grouch due to the sting of defeat. As the Bar-20 man was known to be given to moods at times this was accepted as the true explanation and gave promise of hotly contested games for revenge later on. The banter which the defeated puncher had to endure stirred him and strengthened the reserve, although he was careful ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... Clodius attempted to banter his antagonist. "You are a fine gentleman," he said; "you have been at Baiae" (Baiae was a fashionable watering-place on the Campanian coast). "Well," said Cicero, "that is better than to have been at the 'matrons' ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church
... to all corners of the room. Afterward, as they wheeled from time to time in their chairs, they bitterly insulted each other with the utmost good-nature, taking unerring aim at faults and riddling personalities with the quaint and cynical humour of a newspaper office. Throughout this banter, it was strange to note how infrequently the men smiled, particularly when directly engaged in ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... farewell; and being entirely loyal to her own husband, she felt not the slightest jealousy of Vera Farlow; in fact, as she went upstairs that evening she was wondering whether it might not be possible to turn the scheme, which she had once propounded more or less in a spirit of banter, into an accomplished fact. It would be a good thing for Jimmy, a good thing for Vera, and, perhaps most important of all, it would annoy May Marlow and Mrs. Fenton intensely. Ethel went to bed to dream of a gorgeous wedding, in which she played ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... easy chat and gay banter of the friendly groups the more to her taste, because she had come from a rather trying quarter of an hour in Rosamond's room, where Mary Browne—with an e as she always explained carefully—was being shown the purchases which had seemingly consoled Rosamond ...
— Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge • Pemberton Ginther
... their ages was like another bond between them. Once, when twitted with the uncharitableness of his youth, Mr. Van Wyk, running his eye over the vast proportions of his interlocutor, retorted in friendly banter— ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... transferred Abel to the seventeenth arrondissement, and so the old friendship was picked up where it had been dropped, and the ruddy-faced agent found it both convenient and agreeable to drop in frequently at Madame Caille's on his way home, and exchange a few words of reminiscence or banter for a box of sardines or a minute package of tea. But, with the deterioration in his old friends' wares, and the almost simultaneous appearance of the Salon Malakoff, his loyalty wavered. Flique sampled the advantages of Hippolyte's establishment, and, being won over thereby, returned ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... assisted him toward maintaining the mock-serious tone which he chose to adopt; and Mrs. Thornton's peculiar style of face gave her the same advantage. It pleased each to express for the other an exaggerated sentiment of regard. They considered it banter and badinage. How far it was safe was another thing. But they had known one another years before, and were only resuming the manner of ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... her stool touched the chair. She bent her cheek upon the shrivelled hand resting upon the arm. The excitement and feverish banter of Truedale affected her painfully. She reproached herself bitterly for having left him to the mercy of his loneliness and imagination. Her interest in, her resentment for, Conning faded before the pitiful display of feeling expressed in every tone ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... Bolingbroke wrote a letter to Dean Swift, in which he says, "The Earl of Oxford was removed on Tuesday; the Queen died on Sunday. What a world this is, and how does fortune banter us!" In other {48} words, Bolingbroke tells Swift that full success seemed within his grasp on Tuesday, and was suddenly torn away from him on Sunday. But the most characteristic part of the letter is a passage which throws a very blaze of light over the unconquerable levity ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... inferior men all his life; he liked to ride rough-shod; he was never pleased when his path crossed people over whom he could not ride rough-shod. Generally she had accepted his classification of those who opposed him strongly as "blamed idiots"; sometimes with a little of her laughing banter, but usually, his superiority standing out sharp and clear when opposed to the dull Canaanites, endorsing his opinion. "I sort of wish," he went on, with that keen, wire-edged exasperation still sawing in his voice, "that you wouldn't ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... side. Amasis was tall, but his neck was bent; his corpulent body was supported by weak and slender legs: and his face, though well-formed, was lined and furrowed. But a vigorous spirit sparkled in the small, flashing eyes, and an expression of raillery, sly banter, and at times, even of irony, played around his remarkably full lips. The low, broad brow, the large and beautifully-arched head bespoke great mental power, and in the changing color of his eyes one seemed to read that neither wit nor passion were wanting in the man, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Rachel," said Joan, a little hurt. For it was not in flippancy or banter that he had called her out of her name; his eyes were not within a hundred leagues of that place, his heart away with them, it ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... a master of the great art of banter. It is a marvellous force; it kills sanctity, unveils sophistry, travesties wisdom, cuts through the finest shield, and turns the noblest impulses ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... boys should drive away, Little maidens from their play, Or love to banter and fight so well, That's the thing ...
— Fifty Famous People • James Baldwin
... perfunctorily. She was living too deeply to-night to appreciate wit. John, too, was strangely silent, his eyes resting often and adoringly upon Colette. Shrewdly Derry divined the situation and relieved it by rattling on with a surface banter that demanded no response. ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... when they would interfere with their privilege of becoming boys. So I suppose we must attribute it to something or other in human nature. Meanwhile, there stands the new-comer, surrounded by a circle of his new associates, who forthwith proceed to frighten, and to banter, and to make a fool of him, to the extent of their wit. Some address him with mock politeness, others with fierceness; and so they conduct him in solemn procession across the Agora to the Baths; and as they approach, they dance ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... cooled a little in that moment since Steve's eyes had left her face. Now she forgot her confusion—forgot to be annoyed, even at her father's clumsy banter. ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... delicately from the drawing-room as from a great distance. From the kitchen came the muffled clatter of earthenware and occasionally a harsh, loud voice; it was the hour of relaxed discipline in the kitchen, where amid the final washing-up and much free discussion and banter, Florrie was recommencing her career on a grander basis. Hilda closed the door very quietly. When she had closed it and was shut in with George Cannon her ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... vestajxo. Rain pluvo. Rainbow cxielarko. Raise levi, plialtigi. Raise up altlevi. Raisin sekvinbero. Rake rasti. Rake (implement) rastilo. Rake (a profligate) dibocxulo, malcxastulo. Rally (gather together) kolekti. Rally (to banter) moki. Ram sxafoviro. Ram (a gun) sxtopi. Ramble vagi. Ramble (in speech) paroli sensence. Rampart remparo, murego. Rancid ranca. Rancour malameco. Random, at hazarde. Range (put in order) arangxi. Rank (a row) vico. Rank ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... rooster-fight," retorted Reeves. In his triumph he was not unwilling to banter repartee with the hateful Hiram. "You fellers with what you call sportin' blood"—he sneered the words—"come along and think nobody else can't do anything right but you. You fetch along cat-meat with feathers on it"—he ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... who fears God's anger more than the displeasure of his master. A pension, a title, a ribbon, are sufficient to make one forget the torments of hell and the pleasures of the celestial court. A woman's caresses expose him every day to the displeasure of the Most High. A joke, a banter, a bon-mot, make more impression upon the man of the world than all the grave notions of his religion. Are we not assured that a true repentance is sufficient to appease Divinity? However, we do not see that this true repentance is sincerely expressed; at least, we very ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... Jimmy. So long, old man," and he threaded his way past the rear of the brigade, not without some good-humoured banter ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... to all comers, Alec rather mischievously suggested to Sam that he ought to enter for this, as his practice in that famous escapade with the bear, where he ran with such marvellous rapidity, might have turned out a good training for this occasion. To the surprise of all, when Frank added his banter to the others, Sam sprang up and asked permission from Mr Ross, who was somewhat amused at this request, as he felt sure Sam would be hopelessly beaten; but he readily granted Sam's desire. Surprises often come from unexpected quarters. Sam quickly stripped off his outer garments and, ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young
... difficult to detect how much of conviction and how much of banter there was in his treatment of men engaged in the actual intellectual movement of our times. I found such to be the case in my own intercourse with him. He always attacked me in a bantering way, but, I thought, half in earnest too. Hence I never found it advisable to enter into argument with him. ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... notice the cleverest and most charming were always proud. Not because he was an earl—nobility was plentiful enough at Edinburg then—but because he was himself. It was a pleasure just to sit beside him, and to meet his pleasantness with cheerful chat, gay banter, or affectionate earnestness. ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... topics, and the two soon fell into their wonted tone of banter. "Tell me, Renee," said Denoisel, "have you never felt, I won't say love, but some ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... This banter, coupled with the assurance that the girl knew exactly what she was about, cooled Lennon's excitement. His high strung ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... gentlemen bet, nor to back a well-heeled bird, nor to color my fancy for a horse. As for a mistress, or for those fugitive affairs of the heart which English fashion countenanced—nay, on which fashion insisted—I had no part in them, and brooked much banter from the gay world in consequence. It was not merely lack of money, nor yet a certain fastidiousness implanted, nor yet the inherent shrinking of my English blood from pleasure forbidden, for my Renault blood was hot enough, God wot! It was, I think, all of these reasons that ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... phenomena had escaped his notice, and more than once he had attempted to entice Ben Zoof into conversation upon the subject; but the orderly made no secret of his antipathy to him, and generally replied to his advances either by satire or by banter. He told him that he had everything to gain under the new system of nights and days, for, instead of living the Jew's ordinary life of a century, he would reach to the age of two centuries; and he congratulated him upon the circumstance of things having become so light, because it ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... Burdette and George Cable, and for a while my gentlest and cheeriest of friends, Bill Nye, joined with me and made the dusty detested travel almost a delight. We were constantly playing practical jokes on each other or indulging in some mischievous banter before the audience. On one occasion, Mr. Nye, coming before the foot-lights for a word of general introduction, said, 'Ladies and gentlemen, the entertainment to-night is of a dual nature. Mr. Riley and I will speak alternately. First ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... these he persuaded the young man to go and take lessons. After he had gone through the course he came back, and Socrates proceeded playfully to banter him. ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... give an hour a day to the King of Prussia to touch up a bit his works in prose and verse; I am his grammarian, not his chamberlain ... Never in any place in the world was there more freedom of speech touching the superstitions of men, and never were they treated with more banter and contempt. God is respected, but all they who have cajoled men in His name ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... towards him, but the particular reason for that heliotropism on the part of his feminine neighbors was that he was an easy man for a woman to ask. Being asked, he always served her in a spirit of masculine banter and then went away as if he had enjoyed the joke. Thus she could be grateful for his neighborly turn without feeling herself under any painful state of obligation. Naturally his custom grew. One moment he would be mending a yoke ...
— The Wrong Woman • Charles D. Stewart
... how worthy these motives, he would degenerate into the laughing stock of the community the instant he began to carry out the terms of the will and reconstruct the wall. She could hear now the taunts and jests of the townsfolk. Some of them would speak in good-humored banter, some with premeditated malice; but ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... off talking all that stupid nonsense, Shaddy?" cried Rob angrily as he began now polishing his head and face with the towel. "Who is going to fight? I suppose you think it's very clever to keep on with this banter, but I can see through you ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn
... astonishment became still greater when this singular-looking little man began to talk, not, as the listener innocently expected, of such abstruse subjects as he was wont to write on in the 'London Magazine,' but in a banter about the most ludicrous and vulgar things. He kept Mr. Taylor and his friends in a roar of laughter, until another guest was announced, in the person of Mr. Charles Lamb. The latter, outwardly friendly to De Quincey, seemed, as Clare observed, not altogether partial to him, but ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... muttered in an undertone across to Naismith, while Dick and the girls were in the thick of exclamatory and giggling banter, "here's some stuff for that article of yours, if you touch upon the Big House. I've seen the servants' dining room. Forty head sit down to it every meal, including gardeners, chauffeurs, and outside help. It's a boarding house ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... those things!" said Miss Lord, who was governess in a very wealthy household, and liked to talk of the city's prominent families. "Some day you and I will have to find a million dollars and run away for a year in Italy! I wonder, Sue," the mild banter ceased, "if you could get Mary's dinner? I hate to go into the kitchen, they're ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... glistening. He called out a blessing to her, as it is the custom among travellers, and asked how far he still had to go to reach the large city. Then she got up and came to him, beautifully her wet mouth was shimmering in her young face. She exchanged humorous banter with him, asked whether he had eaten already, and whether it was true that the Samanas slept alone in the forest at night and were not allowed to have any women with them. While talking, she put her left foot ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... queen, "your majesty will no longer be surprised, when you understand, that this is not as you suppose a bird, but a man." "Madam," said the king, more astonished than before, "you mean to banter me; but you shall never persuade me that a bird can be a man." "Sir," replied the queen, "far be it from me to banter your majesty; nothing is more certain than what I have had the honour to tell you. I can assure your majesty, it is the king of Persia, named Beder, son of the celebrated Gulnare, ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... of voices silenced his laughing banter; on the instrument board the warning light was flashing imperatively. Above the bedlam of voices one stood out, and all other commands went silent before the voice ...
— The Finding of Haldgren • Charles Willard Diffin
... truth, cogency of logical reason. Those who insist on charm, on winningness in style, on subtle harmonies and fine exquisiteness of suggestion, are disappointed in Burke: they even find him stiff and over-coloured. And there are blemishes of this kind. His banter is nearly always ungainly, his wit blunt, as Johnson said, and often unseasonable. As is usual with a man who has not true humour, Burke is also without true pathos. The thought of wrong or misery moved him less to pity for the victim than to anger against the cause. Again, there are some ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... it, although it was only a piece of banter which she felt that Nola would appreciate. But Nola was not in an appreciative mood, for she was a full-blooded daughter of the baronial rule. She jerked her head like a vicious bronco and reined hurriedly away from Frances ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... musicians, her banter about the provincial festivals had stung him. The word "provincial" rankled. If it applied to him, to his talent! If he were merely provincial and destined to remain so because of his ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... nothing to this. God is great; and when a scandal is to end, brings some devoted man to take charge of it in hope, not in despair!"—But cannot he reform? asked many simple persons;—to whom our friend in grim banter would reply: "Reform a Popedom,—hardly. A wretched old kettle, ruined from top to bottom, and consisting mainly now of foul grime and rust: stop the holes of it, as your antecessors have been doing, with temporary putty, it may hang together yet ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... in fair I 've braced me wi' pride, The bruse I hae won, and a kiss of the bride; And loud was the laughter, gay fellows among, When I utter'd my banter, or chorus'd my song. Dowie to dree are jesting and glee, When ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... with a shower of pasquinades in prose and verse. Lord Falkland has practically put himself at {82} the head of the Tory party, said Howe, and as a political opponent he shall have no mercy. A flood of Rabelaisian banter was poured upon the head of the unhappy nobleman. He was attacked in his pride, his tenderest place. It is impossible not to wish that Howe had shown more moderation. He had, of course, precedent on his side. Nothing which he wrote was so bad as the language of Queen Elizabeth ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... efforts to keep the conversation to a tone of banter, acrimonious though it had to be, Derek was unable to pronounce the two brief syllables without betraying some degree of anger. Glancing up at him as she shrank under her weight of jewels, Mrs. Bayford found ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... of dignity and banter, of haughtiness and playfulness, made Francesca at this moment the most fascinating creature in the world. The dinner and the evening were full of cheerfulness, justified, indeed, by the relief of the two refugees, ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac
... unfinished declaration. It was true that he hadn't said half what he intended to say; it was true that she might have misunderstood it as the conventional gallantry of the situation, as—terrible thought!—the light banter of the habitual love-making American, to which she had been accustomed; perhaps even now she relegated him to the level of Greyson, and this accounted for her singular impassiveness—an impassiveness that certainly was singular now he reflected upon it—that ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... once more, she took her husband's arm, and passed through the opening ranks of her friends, bowing to this side and that, with apologetic banter and graceful words of regret—still very pale, but changed in no ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... motion may not, be altogether unacceptable; for I am inclinable to believe, that when some whom you are obliged to converse with, observe your behaviour so different from what it formerly was, and banter you upon it as mad and fanciful, it may be some little relief to correspond with one who will take a pleasure in heartening and encouraging you. And when a great many things frequently offer, in which ...
— The Life of Col. James Gardiner - Who Was Slain at the Battle of Prestonpans, September 21, 1745 • P. Doddridge
... a top hat or a morning suit in Monte Carlo," she said, furious at his banter. "Let us talk about somebody ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... another knock sounded Mrs. Lynch took the women in charge so that Robin might welcome the newcomers. They were four of the Mill girls and they crowded into the room, staring curiously about them and at Robin, whose greeting they answered awkwardly. Spying Adam Kraus, they rushed to him with noisy banter and laughter that ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... was Ibla, daughter of Malek, the son of Zoheir. Ibla, fair as the full moon, was somewhat younger than Antar. She was accustomed to banter him in a familiar way, feeling that he was her slave. "And you," she said to him, "you, born so low, how dared you kill the slave of a prince? What provocation can you have against him?" "Mistress," replied Antar, "I struck that slave because he deserved it, for he had insulted ...
— Oriental Literature - The Literature of Arabia • Anonymous
... offended at this good-natured banter, and, as Gedge was after all a decent-looking boy, and aspirated his "h's," and did not smell of onions, he began to think that if he were doomed to drudge in this place he might have been saddled with ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... the plans of the settlers for the immediate future, the accounts of the last massacre by the savages, or the rumor that Indian sign had been seen in the neighborhood; all interspersed with much banter, practical joking, and rough, good-humored fun. The scope of conversation was of necessity narrowly limited even for the backwoods; for there was little chance to discuss religion and politics, the two subjects that the average ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... shoe was lying hidden, and she was pacified. Lucian, of course, treats this narrative in a spirit of unfeeling mirth, but, if such tales were not current in his time, there would have been no point in his banter. Thus the belief in the haunting of a husband by the spirit of his wife, the belief which drives a native Australian servant from the station where his gin is buried, survived old Egypt, and descended to Greece. We now take a modern instance, ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... on you? Say, Matt, that's tough! No, I wouldn't be mean enough to tell the other girls. I ain't as low-down as that." (How Frome hated his cheap banter!) "But look a here, ain't it lucky I got the old man's cutter down ...
— Ethan Frome • Edith Wharton
... out of the room, when Rudolf, who had drained the bottle, began in his usual tone of banter— ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint
... a moment of struggle with himself).—You must ask me what I did wish, because I do not now wish for anything. You have known her longer than I have, therefore I came to you as her friend and mine, and for answer you banter with me. In your eyes there shone hatred for me, although I have never wronged, you. Be the judge yourself! I would be more than right in asking you: What do you wish of me, if it were not for the reason (with pride) that it is immaterial to ...
— So Runs the World • Henryk Sienkiewicz,
... Where was he? What up to? Would he miss his appointment? No, I caught a glimpse of him at the door getting rid of hat and overcoat, pausing a moment with tall bent head to banter Rose, the little Chinese girl who usually drifted from table to table with cigars and cigarettes. Then he ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... in her eyes, and entertained her greatly. Where the bounds of banter ended, was not easy to define, but whenever he tried a little mystification, she either entered merrily into the humour, or threw it over with keen wit that he kept constantly on the stretch. They were always discovering odd, unexpected bits of knowledge in each other, and a great ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... expression) will 'shut him up.' He has reached the stage of framing general notions, and in this respect is in advance of Cephalus and Polemarchus. But he is incapable of defending them in a discussion, and vainly tries to cover his confusion with banter and insolence. Whether such doctrines as are attributed to him by Plato were really held either by him or by any other Sophist is uncertain; in the infancy of philosophy serious errors about morality might easily grow up—they are certainly put into the mouths ...
— The Republic • Plato
... you to-night?" asked Leslie, with a marked banter in his tone. "It is none of my business, of course, here on Canadian ground, but the other day, ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... Hitchcock's clear, mocking voice could be heard teasing her cousin Caspar on his performance that afternoon. The heavy young man, whose florid face was flushed with the champagne he had taken, made ineffective attempts to ward off the banter. Parker Hitchcock came to ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... patriotic day on July 4 and the enthusiasm had not yet died out and the decorations were still in evidence. Our days were spent in fishing, playing croquet, in bathing and climbing the mountains. There was one high peak that no one had ever attempted and there was considerable banter between the guests and the proprietor, Roop saying that no one had scaled the peak since he had become proprietor of the springs. Among the guests were several great climbers and one evening we concluded to try, at least, and if we succeeded we were to put ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... of a whole family of children. Yet it was gone upon like a holiday jaunt. I read in Colonel Fergusson's letter that his schoolmates bantered him when he began to broach his scheme; so did I at first, and he took the banter, as he always did, with enjoyment, until he suddenly posed me with the question: "And now do you see any other jokes to make? Well, then," said he, "that's all right. I wanted you to have your fun out first; now we ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... With jest and banter, the morning wore away. The day was serene and beautiful, with not a cloud obscuring the sky, while there was just enough wind to make their progress steady and rapid. Almost before they knew it, they had reached the point agreed upon ...
— The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove - Or, The Missing Chest of Gold • Spencer Davenport
... simple old father, as the girl tripped away in hot haste to seek for it; "I forbid you to make such a guy of yourself. You must not take my little banter, darling, in such a matter-of-fact way, or ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... to say, you think I have sense enough to love you," said Fanny, still in a tone of banter. "We part as friends, however, and if you insist on coming to call upon my sister, Mrs Barton, of course I cannot help it, only do not for a moment suppose that ...
— The Ferryman of Brill - and other stories • William H. G. Kingston
... to the door, from which debarked two men, each comfortably full, followed by hand-bags, blankets and a two-gallon demijohn. They said they had driven from Winona that day, and would stay all night. They ordered supper, and while it was in course of preparation, indulged in a good deal of banter back and forth. Of course, I had formed the determination of becoming acquainted with the contents of that demijohn in some way, by fair means or foul, and became deeply interested in their conversation, looking for a favorable chance ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... at that, but both Leroy and the sheriff tried to banter her by insisting that they ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... was very comfortable to sit before the fire, which protested, in a fire's cheery, human way, against the depression of the murky world outside, and to banter Judith. ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... American-born laborer applies the contemptuous term "square-head" to his competitors from northern Europe. The word "Boche" cannot be translated by anything except "Boche," any more than our word "Wop," meaning an Italian, can be turned into French. The same attitude, half banter, half race contempt, lies at the ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... or two she did not reply; it was clearly no use to continue the ordinary banter of conversation, to suggest that as the room was Hermann's he might conceivably be conceded the right to stop there if he chose. There was no transition possible between the affairs of every day and the affair for which Michael had stopped to speak. She ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... Pilkington was not to be evaded. He bore down on Rickman, shining genially, and addressed him with an air of banter. ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... me a good deal. Nevertheless, I could not find out what he thought; and I knew, I thought, what he did not know so well. I knew the fiery proud spirit of my native portion of the people. While his banter fell on my ears, my eyes went off to the sunlit green fields where the troops were parading; on Southern soil; and I saw in imagination the rush and fury of vengeful onset, which might come over those very fields; I saw the unequal ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... assistance of Eugene, and under the eyes of Sieur Sarpy, who sat at the table sipping his wine and enjoying the amusement of the young people. Zulma's spirits had completely revived; and she was in high feather, enlivening the occasion by songs, and anecdote and banter, while she bustled around the table playing tricks upon her brother, and teasing the gentle Pauline. Now and then she would stop suddenly as if to listen, and her face would assume an expression of disappointed expectancy, but the ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... help," retorted Phillis, who was sore all over, and wanted to get rid of him, and yet would have been offended if he had taken her at her word. But Mr. Drummond, who felt his position an uncomfortable one, and was dreadfully afraid of the colonel's banter, was not mean enough to take advantage of her dismissal. He had joined himself to her company out of pure good nature, for it was a hot day and the parcel was heavy, but she would have none ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... of his joke too—a kind of supersubtly satirical Cambridgy banter that was not to my taste at all; for I am no Cantab, and the wit of the London Stock Exchange is subtle enough for me. His father did not joke. Indeed he was full of useful information, and only too fond of imparting it, ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... such distinct and manly emphasis on a subject, which, though it is one of the burning questions of the day, is too often treated irreverently, or altogether dismissed with a few sentences of languid banter ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... fifteen or twenty other guests, and after a few minutes of light social banter a bell will ring and the players will take their places. At your table will be Mrs. F. Jamison Dollings (your partner) and Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Watts. Mrs. Dollings (Sept. 6, 1880) is considered one of ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart
... replied Marie, in the same tone of banter which she had so suddenly assumed, "I shall not tell him one word of ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... sights was Molly Brant, Joseph's elder sister, a lively, winsome girl of sixteen years. During the manoeuvres a field-officer rode by, mounted on a spirited steed. As he passed, Molly asked if she might get up behind. The officer, thinking it a bit of banter, said she might. In an instant she had sprung upon the crupper. Away went the steed, flying about the field. Molly clung tight to the officer, her blanket flapping in the breeze and her dark hair floating wide. Every one burst into merriment, ...
— The War Chief of the Six Nations - A Chronicle of Joseph Brant - Volume 16 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • Louis Aubrey Wood
... lines, she nevertheless possessed the qualifications which most men seek in women and therefore became quite as formidable as Delilah when she chose to assert herself. To say that Mr. Yankton was dazzled but mildly expresses his feelings; he was ravished, though in no mood for banter. Had their meeting occurred under more auspicious circumstances, he undoubtedly would have complimented her on her charming appearance; but for one who had been eating his heart out during eight consecutive hours ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... Mr. Grayson was not your authority for such a statement," said Harley, with a smile, although he did not wholly relish her banter. ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... resented by her Southern sisters as well as by her Northern partners. The Old North State derided the pretensions of the commonwealths that flanked her on either side, and Georgia was not slow to give South Carolina as good as she sent. All this seemed to be harmless banter, but the rivalry was old enough and strong enough to encourage the hopes of the Union leaders that the Confederacy would split along state lines. The cohesive power of the Revolutionary war was not sufficiently ...
— The Creed of the Old South 1865-1915 • Basil L. Gildersleeve
... laughing abuse, but he persisted,—a serious undertone to his banter. "Yes, I have always observed the scepticism of youth, no matter what may be the age of the contracting parties and their previous experience, in this matter. But Love and Marriage are two distinct and entirely independent states of being,—one is the creation of God, the other of Society. ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... on my host, who persisted. I did not want to give myself away, so, simulating a tone of light banter, I said: ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... when I described my first night at Flensburg, for I had my revenge at last, and did not spare him. He bore up gallantly under my jesting, but I knew very well by his manner that he had not forgiven me my banter about the ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... worlds that met that day - The world of work and the world of play; And the grimy lads from the reeking shaft Nudged each other and grinned and chaffed. 'Got 'em all out!' 'A cousin of mine!' So ran the banter ...
— Songs of Action • Arthur Conan Doyle
... banter ceased, for the sergeant's men passed through the swing gate, and to Waller's great relief he was able to make his way back to the hall, very silent now as he went over the day's proceedings, and thought of the chances of the men coming back to make a fresh search, while the gardener ...
— The New Forest Spy • George Manville Fenn
... Shakespeare's Rosalind perhaps the most popular heroine of English comedy. Yet Lodge furnished to Shakespeare far more than a name for his heroine. In the dialogue between Ganymede (Rosalynde) and Aliena there is a good deal of lively banter that must have furnished more than a suggestion for the teasing playfulness of Rosalind in the play. Such, for example, is the conversation between the two girls upon finding a love poem "carved on a pine tree."[2] As in the drama, Rosalynde's ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... hungry, began to eat whilst still indulging in banter. All at once, however, he exclaimed: "Well, my dear Abbe, as the Pope is looking at us, this is the moment to speak of him. I promised to tell you how he sunk several millions of St. Peter's Patrimony in the frightful financial crisis of which you have ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... woman remained without a movement. She was not deceived by the banter of the moment. She knew that to all of the others, if not to Peter Strange's odd little daughter, it was the thief who was being spotted and brought thus hilariously to light. And her eyes grew hard, and her lips grey, and she failed to unglove ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... soon palled. To which add, that if we are minded to discourse on a life of pleasure, these men won't give us leave to go on, but will presently confess themselves that the pleasures of the body are but short, or rather indeed but of a moment's continuance; if they do not design to banter us or else speak out of vanity, when Metrodorus tells us, We many times spit at the pleasures of the body, and Epicurus saith, A wise man, when he is sick, many times laughs in the ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... the young men, the mothers and older women rather stiff, and usually hampered by at least one child, which they carry on their backs or on their hips, while another holds on to the garment which replaces our skirts. There is plenty of laughter and banter with the men, who look on unmoved at the efforts of the weaker sex, only rarely offering a ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... could be heard teasing her cousin Caspar on his performance that afternoon. The heavy young man, whose florid face was flushed with the champagne he had taken, made ineffective attempts to ward off the banter. Parker Hitchcock came to ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... is not a bad one, I see no good reason why I should not introduce myself to the reader as Ralph Rover. My shipmates were kind, good-natured fellows, and they and I got on very well together. They did, indeed, very frequently make game of and banter me, but not unkindly; and I overheard them sometimes saying that Ralph Rover was a "queer, old-fashioned fellow." This, I must confess, surprised me much; and I pondered the saying long, but could come at no satisfactory conclusion as to that wherein my old-fashionedness lay. It is true ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... stories of the fine sights at the theatres and elsewhere had so far raised poor John's curiosity that one evening he entreated his companion to let him into the bottom of what he meant. The cunning villain turned it at first into a jest and continued to banter him about his being a country put, and so forth, until he perceived it was past twelve o'clock, and knew that it was too late for him to get in at home; then he told him that if he promised never to reveal it, he would tell him what he meant. John being ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... with banter. It was understood that the President should not be told—and that I should not tell him—of my talk with Mr. Sandford. Colonel Lamont undertook to arrange an audience with Mr. Cleveland for me. "You had better wait," he said, "until I can approach him with the suggestion ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... in the free-traders' camp. The storm did not abate until nightfall, and during that time the men were engaged in digging their habitations clear of the snow that almost threatened to bury them. In this work, McTavish cheerfully took a hand, and, by his good-humored banter, won his way to the hearts of his fellow-toilers. Notwithstanding his industry, the Hudson Bay man kept his eye open for glimpses of Maria who, as he expected, was constantly about, now that Charles Seguis had ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... Venice, or the Vatican; and, guessing beforehand, guessing before the "Pictures" were produced, one might, I repeat, have been afraid lest Dickens should go through Italy as a kind of educated Sam Weller. Such prophecies would have been falsified by the event. The book as a whole is very free from banter or persiflage. Once and again the comic side of some situation strikes him, of course. Thus, after the ceremony of the Pope washing the feet of thirteen poor men, in memory of our Lord washing the feet of the Apostles, Dickens says: "The whole thirteen sat down to dinner; grace ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... nearly five minutes. Where was he? What up to? Would he miss his appointment? No, I caught a glimpse of him at the door getting rid of hat and overcoat, pausing a moment with tall bent head to banter Rose, the little Chinese girl who usually drifted from table to table with cigars and cigarettes. Then he ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... worked, Auguste and Rose, and how cheerfully they worked! One could hear her singing, and him whistling, at it all day. Yet they seemed to have abundant leisure to exchange a deal of pleasantry and harmless banter. Auguste was a Swiss, and a bigoted Protestant, and never lost an opportunity of holding forth on the superiority of the reformed religion. If he thought the family were out of hearing, he would grow very animated and declamatory. But Rose, ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... married, do you? Well, when you become a denizen of this higher, but none the less practical sphere, you may read, if you please, where, with wonder and strange emotion, I read, in the heavenly records of marriages.' ... [It was dated about the time of my birth.] 'Your banter is not so agreeable as your tenderness.' ... 'You are incorrigible. It will take me many a long age to bring you to a due sense of my importance,' etc. 'Some of my friends are beside themselves with mirth, ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... she went to her room for a fresh handkerchief. She would accompany Helen home, would manage to slip into the library alone, and put it partly under a book, so that it would appear to be hidden, and thus account for it not having been seen before; or better yet, she would catch it up playfully and banter Helen on her carelessness in leaving her love letters so exposed. This last seemed a very clever plan, and with her spirits quite elated, Juno drove around with Helen, finding no one in the parlor below, and felicitating herself upon ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... to say," answered the Vicar, accustomed to parry Mr. Toller's banter about his belief in the new medical light. "I am out of the way and he ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... reception. "He received me," says Augustin, "like a father, and as a bishop he was pleased enough at my coming:"—peregrinationem meam satis episcopaliter dilexit. This satis episcopaliter looks very like a sly banter at the expense of the saint. It is infinitely probable that St. Ambrose received Augustin, not exactly as a man of no account, but still, as a sheep of his flock, and not as a gifted orator, and that, in short, he shewed ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... barely made good our retreat when the boat arrived alongside, and her occupants were in another moment in possession of the felucca's deck. A torrent of ribald banter and raillery—of the sort which, coming from a drunken man, is expected to be received as jovial humour, but which a chance word or inadvertent glance of misappreciation may in a moment cause to be exchanged for expressions and acts of the most diabolical ferocity—was at once discharged ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... at this unwonted hour. In the pale-blue, kindly, woods-wise eyes of both the man and the boy shone the light of happy anticipation. They seemed too occupied and excited to make much response to the good-natured banter of their comrades, but grinned contentedly as they hastened their preparations for departure. The man was Steve Williams, best axe-man and stream-driver in the camp; the boy, young Steve, his eldest son, who was ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... utmost to improve his opportunity. Without openly speaking his love, he allowed it to appear in his every look and intonation. The girl met the attack with banter and raillery and adroit shiftings of the conversation whenever his ardent inferences became too obvious. Yet her evasion and her teasing could not always mask her maidenly pleasure over his adoration of her loveliness, and an occasional blush betrayed to him ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... evening passed with the banter that invariably took place when Rube was of the party. It was late when they left the Squire's, the constable going along with them, and all singing merrily as birds on ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer
... looked at his daughter with a little quizzical sadness in his faded gray eyes. He began to perceive the drift of her banter. ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... Sir Luke's banter was generally accepted with indifference, but on this occasion it provoked Lady Dunstable. She protested with vehemence that she had given Mrs. Meadows every chance, and that a young woman who was both trivial and ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... pursued the nephew, with a short laugh, relapsing into that light tone of banter which was his most natural mode of expression; "when, one fine day, a hired coach clattered up Sir Rupert Landale's avenue and deposited upon his porch a tattered mariner who announced himself, in melancholy ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... naturally grave, assisted him toward maintaining the mock-serious tone which he chose to adopt; and Mrs. Thornton's peculiar style of face gave her the same advantage. It pleased each to express for the other an exaggerated sentiment of regard. They considered it banter and badinage. How far it was safe was another thing. But they had known one another years before, and were only resuming ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... lower than even to the medium of their cast-off bodies, to juggle, and rap, and squeak, and perform mountebank tricks with tables and chairs; to recite over in weary sameness harmless truisms, which we were wise enough to say for ourselves; to trifle, and banter, and jest, or to lead us through endless moonshiny mazes. Sadly and soberly we say that, if this be communion with the dead, we had rather be without it. We want something a little in advance of our present life, and not below it. We have read with some attention weary pages of spiritual ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... club. The crowd was there; I sat down at a table and when somebody asked me what I'd have I took a glass of water. Several of my friends looked inquiringly at me and one asked: "On the wagon?" This attracted the attention of the entire group to my glass of water. I came in for a good deal of banter, mostly along the line that it was time I went on the wagon. This was varied with predictions that I would stay on from an hour to a day or so. I didn't like that talk, but I bluffed it out—weakly, to be sure. I said I had ...
— Cutting It out - How to get on the waterwagon and stay there • Samuel G. Blythe
... mentioned it with disgust. Rolfe also had visited the island, and remembered it much more agreeably, his impressions seeming to be chiefly gastronomic; he recalled the exquisite flavour of Cyprian hares, the fat francolin, the delicious beccaficoes in commanderia wine; with merry banter from Carnaby, professing to despise a man who knew nothing of game but its taste. The conversation reverted to technicalities of sport, full of terms and phrases unintelligible to Harvey; recounting feats with 'Empress' and 'Paradox', the deadly results of a ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... Under the seeming banter of her tone lurked real resentment. But he, with a smile—partly due to a finger too much Scotch—only answered, in ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... certainly. If we are not friends, who should be? Are we not both jackals hunting in the one pack, and jackal does not bite jackal." Then his mood changed with a swiftness which La Mothe soon found to be characteristic, a kindliness cast out the jarring banter from his face, and his luminous eyes grew wistful. "Friends? It is a good word, the very best word in the world. Friends are more than family or kinship, and not many care to call old Francois Villon friend nowadays. There was ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... hand-bags, blankets and a two-gallon demijohn. They said they had driven from Winona that day, and would stay all night. They ordered supper, and while it was in course of preparation, indulged in a good deal of banter back and forth. Of course, I had formed the determination of becoming acquainted with the contents of that demijohn in some way, by fair means or foul, and became deeply interested in their conversation, ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... the window, half angry with herself that a kind of banter in which certainly there was very little wit should have power enough to disturb her. But though the shaft might be a slight one it was winged with a will; the intensity of Mrs. Evelyn's enjoyment ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... of inspiration leave their sources parched and dry, Scalding tears of indignation sear the hearts that beat too high; Chilly waters thrown upon it drown the fire that's in the bard; And the banter of the critic hurts his heart till it grows hard. At the fame your muse may offer let your lip in scorn be curled, 'Self and Pelf', my friend, remember, that's ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... room where he was, to show there were no concealed weapons about him, Dionysius, by way of retort, observed, that he would prefer he would do so on leaving the room, as a security that he was carrying nothing off with him. And when Philip of Macedon, at a drinking party, began to speak in banter about the verses and tragedies which his father, Dionysius the elder, had left behind him, and pretended to wonder how he could get any time from his other business to compose such elaborate and ingenious pieces, he replied, very much to the purpose, "It was at those ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... ability. The cross-examination of a foreign artist, employed by the Duke to repaint some portraits of the Cornaro family by Titian, is said to have been one of the finest things on record. The sly and pungent humour, and the banter with which the counsel derided and laughed down this witness, were inimitable. The printer won his case; but he eventually consented to remove his steam presses from the neighbourhood, on the Duke paying him a certain sum to be ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... from being the frivolous young thing that her father's banter indicated. She had a train of admirers, never thinning from year to year, to be certain, for it had been the regular fate of adolescent male Shelbyville to get itself tangled up in love with Alice Price ever since her high-school days. Many of the youngsters soon ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... money left to bet as gentlemen bet, nor to back a well-heeled bird, nor to color my fancy for a horse. As for a mistress, or for those fugitive affairs of the heart which English fashion countenanced—nay, on which fashion insisted—I had no part in them, and brooked much banter from the gay world in consequence. It was not merely lack of money, nor yet a certain fastidiousness implanted, nor yet the inherent shrinking of my English blood from pleasure forbidden, for my Renault blood was hot enough, ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... face like a girl's, a broad forehead topped with close-cropped hair, and a scrubby and ill-trimmed fair beard. His bright eyes gleamed with intelligence. He seemed not in the least embarrassed and wore a pleasant smile, free from any shade of banter. ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... And, captain, you'll do us the favour to stay, And take a short dinner here with us to-day: You're heartily welcome; but as for good cheer, You come in the very worst time of the year; If I had expected so worthy a guest—' 'Lord, madam! your ladyship sure is in jest; You banter me, madam; the kingdom must grant—' 'You officers, captain, are so complaisant!'"— "Hist, hussey, I think I hear somebody coming "— "No madam: 'tis only Sir Arthur a-humming. To shorten my tale, (for I hate ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... scanning with attentive eye the bodily size of Rolf, and smitten with great wonder thereat, proceeded to inquire in jest who was that "Krage" whom Nature in her beauty had endowed with such towering stature? Meaning humorously to banter his uncommon tallness. For "Krage" in the Danish tongue means a tree-trunk, whose branches are pollarded, and whose summit is climbed in such wise that the foot uses the lopped timbers as supports, as ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... girls laughed at her Americanisms and Colonial ways, and often teased her about them, Gipsy continued as great a favourite as ever, she took all the banter so good-temperedly, and returned it so smartly. There was always a delightful uncertainty also as to what she would do next, and the prospect of an exciting interlude by "Yankee Doodle", as she was nicknamed, was felt decidedly to relieve the monotony of the ordinary Briarcroft atmosphere. Not that ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... fierce exultation surged within her. She had half expected this, half dreaded it, and now that it had burst upon her in such volcanic fashion she realized that she had not been entirely prepared. She sought refuge in banter, facing him, her cheeks flushed, her ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... of the gentlemen seemed to put a bridle on the tongues of the little party, for Dexie was not slow in perceiving that Maxwell was trying to quiz her, and it was very hard to withstand the good-humored banter of this young gentleman. She stood the teasing as long as she thought necessary, then her ready tongue made Maxwell confess that for once he had met his match, and the laughable occurrence of their first meeting was allowed to drop. Dexie ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... is a crucifix, and Eugene is going to entrap us into a confession," returned De la Roche, who loved to banter his cousin. ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... have me driven about by my servant like an apothecary, uncle?" No, Major Pendennis would on no account have his nephew appear like an apothecary; the august representative of the house of Pendennis must not so demean himself. And when Arthur, pursuing his banter, said, "And yet, I daresay, sir, my father was proud enough when he first set up his gig," the old major hemmed and ha'd, and his wrinkled face reddened with a blush as he answered, "You know what ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... During this little banter Nellie cries, "Pooh, pooh!" mamma looks pleased, and papa smiles gently. Then the fresh young voices of the brother and sister mingle ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... paper, in the New Monthly Magazine, is by no means novel; but the fine, cutting satire—the pleasant, lively banter on our vices and follies—which pervades every page of the article, is a set-off to the political frenzy and the literary lumber of other Magazines of the month. Each of them, it is true, has a readable paper, but one gem only contributes ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 529, January 14, 1832 • Various
... the shore, where peasants in bright-coloured shirts and vests lounged. After much haggling and good-humoured banter, Sanine hired one of the little boats. Ivanoff was a deft and powerful oarsman, and the boat shot forward across the water like a living thing. Sometimes the oars touched reeds or low-hanging branches which for a long while after such contact trembled above ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... articles of art, antiquarianism, and vertu, Hazlitt has only good-natured banter. Of what a strange jumble of apocryphal treasures the painter believed himself the possessor! And he was without the doubts and anxieties of ordinary collectors. They strive to believe and to cast aside all suspicion. But Cosway believed without the ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... leisure. I give an hour a day to the King of Prussia to touch up a bit his works in prose and verse; I am his grammarian, not his chamberlain ... Never in any place in the world was there more freedom of speech touching the superstitions of men, and never were they treated with more banter and contempt. God is respected, but all they who have cajoled men in His ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... deal less than you were, Mr. Morrissy." There was a dangerous flush on Ben's cheeks, but the smoke was so dense that Morrissy failed to observe it. The men laughed again, accepting Ben's retort as a piece of banter. Ben went on doggedly: "I have in my pocket a permit to tear down the shops. Bennington gave it to me to produce. Look at it, if you doubt ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... letting her eyes rest on his in a way that took the edge from her banter and made him suddenly malleable ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... over Henry, and an attitude of proud reserve had taken the place of the careless banter with which he usually regaled the crew. He married Miss O'Brien in imagination to a strong man of villainous temper and despotic ideas, while the explanations he made to Miss Harcourt were too ingenious and involved to be confined in ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs
... the room. Afterward, as they wheeled from time to time in their chairs, they bitterly insulted each other with the utmost good-nature, taking unerring aim at faults and riddling personalities with the quaint and cynical humour of a newspaper office. Throughout this banter, it was strange to note how infrequently the men smiled, particularly when directly engaged ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... the performance of this comedy the following play was given: first appeared a boy in woman's clothes who represented Virtue, and another in the character of Fortune. They began to banter each other as to which was the mightier, whereupon Fame suddenly appeared, standing on a globe which rested on a float, upon which were the words, "Gloria Domus Borgiae." Fame, who also called himself Light, awarded Virtue the prize over Fortune, saying that Caesar and Ercole ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... stroll out to them after his daily visit, and lying on the grass, his arms crossed behind his head, and a big cigar between his lips, would gently banter everybody. Tea came at five o'clock, and then Mrs. Decie appeared armed with a magazine or novel, for she was proud of her literary knowledge. The sitting was suspended; Harz, with a cigarette, would move between the table and the picture, drinking his tea, putting a touch in here and ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... name for the last sheaf is Boba (Old Woman), answering to the Polish name Baba. The Boba is said to sit in the corn which is left standing last. The person who binds the last sheaf or digs the last potato is the subject of much banter, and receives and long retains the name of the Old Rye-woman or the Old Potato-woman. The last sheaf—the Boba—is made into the form of a woman, carried solemnly through the village on the last harvest-waggon, and drenched ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... ideas treasured in his breast, He grew composed, and let his anger rest; Till Counter once (when wine so long went round, That friendship and discretion both were drown'd) Began, in teasing and triumphant mood, His evening banter: —"Of all earthly good, The best," he said, "was an obedient spouse, Such as my friend's—that every one allows: What if she wishes his designs to know? It is because she would her praise bestow; What if she wills that he remain at home? She knows that mischief may from travel come. ...
— Tales • George Crabbe
... medicated draughts are often mentioned in Romances. The reader will recollect the banter upon them in Don Quixote, where the Knight of La enumerates to Sancho the cures which had been performed upon many valorous champions, covered with wounds. The Hindus, in their books on medicine, talk of drugs for the recovery of ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... way of making friends unconsciously. I can see that," Mrs. Tellingham said, kindly. "Now, do not be discouraged. You will make friends among the girls in just the same way. Don't mind their banter for a while. The rough ...
— Ruth Fielding on Cliff Island - The Old Hunter's Treasure Box • Alice Emerson
... a great deal more banter and fun, and the March of Education was resumed with small recruits in clean pinafores darting out of homes here and there to join it. It ended at last at the battered gate of the little schoolhouse. The East Ward was a small part of the town, consisting mostly of lake, so the ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... the buts," said Oliver, smiling, and just then, piqued by his companion's banter, he would have crossed had the danger been ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... I, that whole day, Saw her no more, altho' I linger'd there Till every daisy slept, and Love's white star Beam'd thro' the thicken'd cedar in the dusk. So home we went, and all the livelong way With solemn gibe did Eustace banter me. "Now," said he, "will you climb the top of Art; You cannot fail but work in hues to dim The Titianic Flora. Will you match My Juliet? you, not you,—the Master, Love, A more ideal ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... commented Martin cheerfully. "Very well, see you to-morrow. Meanwhile, be good. Flee the giddy lure. Go home to your little bed and sleep sweet." There was seriousness under his good-natured banter. "Come along and I'll see you as ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... At the same time, I can not help stating my own impression that a natural susceptibility, roused by those slighting remarks from Captain Thorn's correspondence, to which Mr. Irving as an historian gives currency, has somewhat blinded my excellent friend to the tone of banter, so characteristic of the chronicler of the Knickerbockers, in which all these particulars are given, more as traits of the character of the stern old sea-captain, with his hearty contempt for land-lubbers and literary clerks, than as a dependable account of the persons ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere
... had talked to Hadria about a thousand topics in which they were both interested, there had been nothing personal in their conversation. He was disposed, at times, to treat her in a spirit of affectionate banter. ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... was, he was becoming increasingly impatient of the continual banter expected of him by Cliff and even the others. As original members of the team, they expected an intimacy that he was finding it increasingly difficult to deliver. Among other things, he wished that Cliff, in particular, would mind his attitude when such followers as Guemama ...
— Border, Breed Nor Birth • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... a-laughing, and began to banter her. The gentleman who was sent to try the slipper looked earnestly at Cinderella, and, finding her very handsome, said it was but just that she should try, and that he had orders to let every lady ...
— The Tales of Mother Goose - As First Collected by Charles Perrault in 1696 • Charles Perrault
... or provost-marshal ever gave a more hazardous gauntlet to run, thought I, and I said as much; but my musings brought only a good-humoured banter from ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... While this disgusting banter was going on I observed a planter ride up to one of the brokers and whisper for some time in his ear. The planter was a bad but unmistakable likeness of my friend Moore, worked over, so to speak, with a loaded brush and heavily glazed with old Bourbon whisky. After giving his ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... some parts. The audience was not a pleasant one to face. It was the First Consul's habit to invite forty persons to dinner, and a hundred and fifty for the evening, and consequently to hear, criticise, and banter us without mercy" (Memoirs of Duchesse d'Abrantes, tome ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... apart, as if in a kind of pet. Nay they have made a Report on that old Catherine Theot, and her Regenerative Man spoken of by the Prophets; not in the best spirit. This Theot mystery they affect to regard as a Plot; but have evidently introduced a vein of satire, of irreverent banter, not against the Spinster alone, but obliquely against her Regenerative Man! Barrere's light pen was perhaps at the bottom of it: read through the solemn snuffling organs of old Vadier of the Surete Generale, the Theot Report had its effect; wrinkling the general Republican ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... and devoid of impartiality and liberty. A close association of this kind between two persons must, in my view, narrow the mind, detract from anything like breadth of view, and fetter the independence. Beule often used to banter me upon this score. He was somewhat attached to me, and was anxious to render me a service, though I had not done the equivalent for him. Upon a certain occasion I voted against him in favour of some one who had been ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... question before it upon its own merits and without conscious comparison with historical examples, through a power of judgment and perception ripened and broadened by the mastery of principles which have ruled the great campaigns of the world. He was fond of conviviality, loved to banter good-humoredly his staff officers and intimates, and was altogether an attractive and companionable man, with intellectual activity enough to make his society stimulating and full of lively discussion. I could easily understand Garfield's saying, ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... fair I 've braced me wi' pride, The bruse I hae won, and a kiss of the bride; And loud was the laughter, gay fellows among, When I utter'd my banter, or chorus'd my song. Dowie to dree are jesting and glee, When poverty ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... the betters than their judgment, I selected an outsider, and took the longest date named for my day, August 20th. The odds fluctuate daily in the market, according to the view the knowing ones take of the weather: these bets form a subject of interest and banter ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... no poaching, no snares are laid for the unwary, and if harm is done it is because people have misunderstood them. The man flirts because he loves {38} to say pretty things to a woman. He revels in an interchange of banter and repartee which makes her eyes sparkle and his pulses beat the faster. The girl flirts out of the abundance of her joyous vitality. She suits herself to the companion of the hour. She knows nothing of the tender passion, she is not ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux
... Marston; "the case is too serious for banter of this kind. My dear boy," he added, kindly, "I am glad to see you angry, but nevertheless, you must condescend to explain. The longer you allow suspicion to rest on yourself the longer it will be before it ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... it diverted attention for a time from the fact of Paul's absence, and when the religious went back to the house and found Brother Andrew returned to his old duty as doorkeeper, the laughter was renewed, and there was some playful banter. ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... intercepting him, and his rude bulk smiling down into her upturned face with a commanding yet amiable restiveness, made a picture to the players and to the distant pilot, but much more than a picture to the captive himself. He had thought he had been fending off the banter of a child, but now, suddenly, this was not a child. A being was here not entirely mundane nor quite supernal yet surpassing all his earlier knowledge of feminine quality, something for which a year's hard thinking would not have found him a definition. ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... handsomely for the appearance of young Glenuskie, his horse, and his attendants, that the whole floor of their quarters was strewn with doublets, boots, chaperons, and gloves, saddles, bridles, and spurs, when the Duke of Bedford loitered into the room, and began to banter James for thus (as he supposed) pranking himself out to meet the lady of his love; and then bemoaned the fripperies that had become the rage in their once bachelor court, vowing, between sport and ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... good-naturedly at the banter his questions had elicited, and solemnly assured them that there were not men enough in the whole North to take Richmond. Our man was probably misinformed as to who their interlocutor was. General Lee did not wear long, bushy whiskers, ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... for boyish banter, but I knew that it was something more; the use of the third person changed from chaff to scorn as I listened, and my sympathetic resolution went to ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... said musingly. . . "I wonder . . ." then she laughed forgivingly. "Come, let us cease this constant banter. We have been at it ever since we met, and it profits nothing to ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... the subject to athletics, and was in the highest spirits the rest of the day; but underneath all his fun and banter the question constantly arose in his inner consciousness: How could he elude his roommate's watchfulness and on the coming Saturday ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... last adventure, which gave me endless opportunities to banter her, one would have thought I might have been on my guard as to what her real intentions were; but she managed to mislead me with an art of dissimulation quite admirable, and lulled me into a fatal security with regard ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... himself "altogether disqualified for it by nature."[23] "I have refrained, as much as human frailty will permit, from all satirical composition,"[24] he said. For satire he seems to have substituted that kind of "serious banter, a style hovering between affected gravity and satirical slyness," which has been pointed out as characteristic of him.[25] Washington Irving noticed a similar tone in all his familiar conversations ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... had always stood him in such stead with the young ladies who, to use his own expression, were 'dead nuts on him,' that his love-making, under whatever circumstances, always took the form of genial banter de haut en bas. 'Don't be a bloomin' fool!' was the phrase he deemed of most efficacy in softening the female heart; and the result seemed to justify him, for after some half-hour's wrangling, Clem abandoned her ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... Mammoth Cave and a voice like the whisperings of the battle zone in France. Take a good look at him while he is quiet for ten seconds hand running. Everything about him is tremendous—except his size. He is built to withstand banter, ridicule and jollying; his sturdy nature is guaranteed proof against the battering assaults of unholy mirth from other scouts; his round face and curly hair are the delight of the girls of Bridgeboro; his loyalty is as the mighty rock of Gibraltar. A bully little scout ...
— Pee-wee Harris • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... relaxed, Anthony perceived first of all that most of the grimness passed away from the narrowed eyes and they lighted instead with good-humoured banter, though of a weary nature. One by one, they cast off ten years of age; the lines rubbed out; the jaws which had thrust out grew normal; the leaning ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... her the least bit seriously—he never did. Her occasional courtship of him had been always so light and airy, so dispassionately epigrammatic, that he looked on it as mere whimsical banter and rather good amusement. She had plagued him into consenting to that kiss on the forehead which she gave him each time they met, referring to it constantly as an advantage won by hard effort. The circumstance of ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... played! In all the flowery kingdom so many foolish people could not have been found in one place. What chaff and banter! What laying aside of cares, responsibilities, and heavy hearts, if there were any, and just being free and young! For a time at least the years fell away from us and we relived all the games and folk-dances we ever knew. True, time had stiffened joints and some of the movements were ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... a very horrible fate to be blinded. But somehow the blind men themselves seldom seem to be overwhelmed by its horribleness. If you want to hear the merriest banter in a war hospital, visit the blind men's wards. The pathos of them lies less in the sadness of the victims than in the triumphant, wonderful fact that they are not sad. I wish we others all inhabited the same mysteriously jocund spiritual realm as Jock and his comrades, ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... good-humored banter had passed between us on the subject of American wives and Hindu wives, I had gone ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... "Pray, don't banter, Mrs. Kinloch. I hoped to find you in a more complaisant humor. There are topics which cannot be discussed with the square precision of legal rules,—thoughts that require sympathy before they can be expressed." And he dropped his eyes with a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... and tumult of voices hovered about the two cages. Men appraised the fighters and made their bets, and Grouse Piet and Henri Durant made their throats hoarse flinging banter and contempt at each other. At the end of the hour the crowd began to thin out. In the place of men and women half a hundred dark-visaged little children crowded about the cages. It was not until then that ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... don't say whether you forgive him or not, Rachel," said Sir William, whose idea of carrying off the situation was to indulge in the time-honoured banter suitable to ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... education: Then Alice would come in and make the dispute a subject for sprightly mockery. Alice was the Princess in those days. He quarrelled with her often, but only to resume the tone of affectionate banter an hour after. Alice was now Mrs. Rodman, and had declared that she hated him, that in her life she would never speak to him again. Would it not have been better if things had gone the natural course? Alice would no ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... will be in German hands." This brought an emphatic denial from one of his confreres who insisted that the Germans had already reached the end of their rope. A certain correspondent, joining in the argument, came in for a deal of banter for taking the war de luxe in a good hotel ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... particularly well. This completed his mortification. There was no concealing the awkwardness of his position. The sneers of the waiter revealed it. His acquaintances amused themselves for some tune at his expense, professing their inability to relieve him. When, however, they had enjoyed their banter, the waiter was paid, and poor Goldsmith enabled to convoy off the ladies ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... Brand, Braund, and Barnes, is a Banter on Criticks, and Genealogists, who make such a Pother about the Orthography of Names and Things, that many Times, three Parts in four of a Folio Treatise, is taken up in ascertaining the Propriety of a Syllable, by which Means the Reader is left undetermined; ...
— A Learned Dissertation on Dumpling (1726) • Anonymous
... for the hens to lay in, and on the arrival of strangers, men, women, and children ply their calling as hucksters with a great deal of noisy haggling; all their transactions are conducted with civil banter and good temper. ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... over by a little good-natured banter, and often annoyed Chief Justice Campbell when I woke him up with laughter. And yet he liked me, for although often annoyed, he was never really angry. He used to crouch his head down over his two forearms and go to sleep, or pretend to, by way of showing it did not matter ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... young empress than an impecunious doctor's daughter as she floated into the room, to be embraced and complimented by the Lavender Lady and to receive a generous meed of admiration, seasoned with a little gentle banter, ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... more than one point of view. At first Lorimer had tried to banter him out of the plan, insisting that the guardianship would be sufficient. There was something in his earnest desire that touched the heart of the man of wide experience. He wondered why he could not be as persistent to win the lady! Perhaps she ...
— A Modern Cinderella • Amanda M. Douglas
... of breast-pin. Pictures on the wall cut out of the Police Gazette. A slush of beer on floor and counter. A pistol falls out of a ruffian's pocket. By the gas-light a knife flashes. Low songs. They banter, and jeer, and howl, and vomit. An awful goal, to which hundreds of people better ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... formed by melting snow. Neither would they come out for either threats or blandishments until he went in too, with a pike; while Jasper's broncos, which were considerably less than half-tamed, backed round and round in rings when I attempted to re-harness them. Still, with laughter and banter we started again, and worked on until daylight faded and the stars twinkled out one by one above the dewy prairie. The scent of wild peppermint hung heavy in the cool air, which came out of the north exhilarating ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... two best brokers, there was a deficit in his premium returns which he could not overcome. And certainly his melancholy countenance did not attract business; it was a bold placer indeed who tried with quip and banter to secure Mr. Cuyler's acceptance of a doubtful risk. His world was awry, and all who ran might read it. His brow became unpleasantly corrugated, his smile a thing of the past. If Mr. O'Connor had wanted evidence of the success of his ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... the parliamentary Opposition, but pelted the governor himself with a shower of pasquinades in prose and verse. Lord Falkland has practically put himself at {82} the head of the Tory party, said Howe, and as a political opponent he shall have no mercy. A flood of Rabelaisian banter was poured upon the head of the unhappy nobleman. He was attacked in his pride, his tenderest place. It is impossible not to wish that Howe had shown more moderation. He had, of course, precedent on his side. Nothing which he wrote was so bad as the language of Queen Elizabeth ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... most diverse sorts but very much of a unit, and all bright, witty, and ready to cooperate. Indeed, having a system of fetching each other's hay and filling each other's canteens, they have a better squad organization than we. It has pleased me very much that our banter between the tents at Plattsburg has turned into the friendliest of feeling, so that we naturally seek each other out. We gave them a spread last night, and today are invited ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... writings, and said to Simplicianus (not openly, but privately and as a friend), "Understand that I am already a Christian." Whereto he answered, "I will not believe it, nor will I rank you among Christians, unless I see you in the Church of Christ." The other, in banter, replied, "Do walls then make Christians?" And this he often said, that he was already a Christian; and Simplicianus as often made the same answer, and the conceit of the "walls" was by the other as often renewed. For he feared to offend his friends, proud ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... can't get over it that you should fancy I meant to 'banter' you.[47] If I wrote lightly, it was partly that you wrote lightly, and partly perhaps because at bottom I wasn't light at all. When one feels out of spirits, it's the most natural thing possible to be ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... too small for him. He had a pink face like a girl's, a broad forehead topped with close-cropped hair, and a scrubby and ill-trimmed fair beard. His bright eyes gleamed with intelligence. He seemed not in the least embarrassed and wore a pleasant smile, free from any shade of banter. ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... a sharp reply to this banter, but she was very anxious to find a physician for Phoebe, and so thought it best ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... us. At the same moment we heard Henri's mocking voice, and there, sword in hand, stood my cousin, barring our path. Below him were several brawny ruffians, bearing pikes and clubs, and, last of all, Pillot, who shouted with good-humoured banter, "Aha! the wheel has ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... a tone of banter, and was cut short by a curious, prolonged chuckle, which differed from laughter in the feeling it produced in the hearer that the mirth did not spring from the open, obvious humor of the situation, ...
— An Adventure With A Genius • Alleyne Ireland
... would persuade you only that banter, pun, and quibble are the properties of light men and shallow capacities; that genuine humour and true wit require a sound and capacious mind, which is always a grave one. Contemptuousness is not incompatible ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... said Oliver, smiling, and just then, piqued by his companion's banter, he would have crossed had the ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... to banter them agreeably; "here you are, young men, eh? Holidays all over now! Work while you're young, and then—— Gad, you're walking me off my legs. Stop; I'm not as young ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... scarcely any courtier who fears God's anger more than the displeasure of his master. A pension, a title, a ribbon, are sufficient to make one forget the torments of hell and the pleasures of the celestial court. A woman's caresses expose him every day to the displeasure of the Most High. A joke, a banter, a bon-mot, make more impression upon the man of the world than all the grave notions of his religion. Are we not assured that a true repentance is sufficient to appease Divinity? However, we do not see that this true ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... him with laughing abuse, but he persisted,—a serious undertone to his banter. "Yes, I have always observed the scepticism of youth, no matter what may be the age of the contracting parties and their previous experience, in this matter. But Love and Marriage are two distinct and entirely independent states of being,—one is the creation ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... had already been taken up, as the phrase goes, by the elite of Edinburgh; and it shows also and quite as clearly in the tone of quiet banter, that he was little likely to lose his head by the notice taken of him. To the Earl of Glencairn, mentioned in it, he had been introduced probably by Mr. Dalrymple of Orangefield, whom he knew both as a brother-mason and a brother-poet. The ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... would not follow her in her banter. He grew grave and even frowned, but all he said was, "Really there are limits, you know." It was her own verdict, expressed more tersely, more completely, and more finally. There were limits, and Alexander Quisante was beyond them; the barrier they raised could not be surmounted; he could ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... this specimen, there is little delicacy in Defoe's satire. The lines run on from beginning to end in the same strain of bold, broad, hearty banter, as if the whole piece had been written off at a heat. The mob did not lynch the audacious humourist. In the very height of their fury against foreigners, they stopped short to laugh at themselves. They were tickled by the hard ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... came to John Flint's lips. He made no reply to the light banter, but stiffened, and stared ahead of him with a set face and eyes into which crept an expression of anguish. Mary Virginia, with a quick glance, laid her ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... of months my friends had made me the target of plenty of pleasant banter about my "highest land," which they lost faith in as we climbed from Thomas's Mill,—I too becoming a trifle anxious about it; but now the truth had burst upon Brewer and Hoffman they could not find words ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various
... to their work—heartened by the feel of the snow. The tingling air was filled with familiar man-sounds—the resonant stroke of axes, and the long crash of falling trees, the metallic rattle of chains, the harsh rasp of saws, and the good-natured calls of men in rude banter; sounds that rang little and thin through the mighty silence of ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... foreigners, and the king reproached and insulted by insolent pedants and ballad-making poets for employing foreigners and being a foreigner himself, I confess myself moved by it to remind our nation of their own original, thereby to let them see what a banter they put upon themselves, since—speaking of Englishmen ab origine—we are really all ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... strolls, nutting expeditions in the October woods,—Alice declared that it was a whirl of dissipation. The fondness of Ruth, which was scarcely disguised, for the company of agreeable young fellows, who talked nothings, gave Alice opportunity for no end of banter. ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 3. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... from his excellent work, a distinguished passage in support of the Christian Revelation. After shewing, in decent but strong terms, the unfairness of the INDIRECT attempts of modern infidels to unsettle and perplex religious principles, and particularly the irony, banter, and sneer, of one whom he politely calls 'an eloquent historian', the archdeacon thus ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... arts only remain in bondage, when a man of science and character shall be openly insulted in the midst of the many useful services he is daily paying to the publick. Was it ever heard, even in Turkey or Algiers, that a state-astrologer was banter'd out of his life by an ignorant impostor, or bawl'd out of the world by a pack of villanous, deep-mouth'd hawkers? Though I print almanacks, and publish advertisements; though I produce certificates under the ministers and church-wardens hands I am alive, and attest the same on oath ...
— The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers • Jonathan Swift
... say that, living in the same house with the young lady to whom people have married me, I am ill-bred and do not speak to her, but I am not in love with her. I banter and jest with her when time permits (which is only in the evenings when I chance to be at home, for in the morning I write in my room, and in the afternoon am rarely in the house), but nothing more. If I were obliged to marry all those ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... jestingly criticised the color, and begged her to choose another. Madame Bonaparte defended her shawl, and said to the general that he knew as much about criticising a toilet as she did about attacking a fort. This friendly banter continued for some moments; and in the interval, the First Consul, who never waited, set out in advance, and the miserable assassins and authors of the conspiracy set fire to the infernal machine. Had the coachman of the First Consul ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... statue to sup with him that night. At midnight Don Juan and his friends are making merry when a knock is heard at the door and the stone guest enters. Don Juan, who does not lose his bravery even in the presence of the supernatural, plays the host, maintaining his air of insulting banter. At the end of the evening the guest departs, offering to repay the hospitality the following night if Don Juan will visit his tomb at midnight. Though friends try to dissuade him, Don Juan fearlessly accepts ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... about English musicians, her banter about the provincial festivals had stung him. The word "provincial" rankled. If it applied to him, to his talent! If he were merely provincial and destined to remain so because ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... affected desire for occupation made me soon skilful. We talked as we worked. When I had nothing to do, I read new books to her, for I had my part to keep up as a man weary of life, worn out with griefs, gloomy, sceptical, and soured. My person led to adorable banter as to my purely physical resemblance—with the exception of his club foot—to Lord Byron. It was tacitly acknowledged that her own troubles, as to which she kept the most profound silence, far outweighed mine, though the causes I assigned ...
— Honorine • Honore de Balzac
... a suggestion of laughter in the husky voice, now, of a sort of contemptuous banter. But Cairn stolidly shook his ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... love," said the major as he looked at her thoughtfully and dropped the banter that had been in his voice since she had come in. "A boy's? Perhaps, but I think not. You'll see! It's a call, a call that must be answered some time, child—and a mystery." For a moment the major sat and looked deep into the gray eyes raised to his in quick responsiveness to the change ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... substituted a bourgeois good-humor which respects the family circle, and haunts the kitchen-stairs; for the biting jeer, intended to make some victim uncomfortable, it gives the sarcastic or sprightly banter, not unconscious of an effort at moral amelioration; for the sententious sagacity, and humorous enjoyment of the nature of man, it gives bright thoughts and a humanitarian sympathy. But, on the whole, ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... Amidst laughter and banter and repartee, they came to it, of course; the most delightful combination and joint arrangement. Two wagons, the general's and Dr. Ingleside's two saddle-horses, Frank Scherman's little mountain mare, that climbed ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... Their idle banter was interrupted by Westy Martin of Roy's and Pee-wee's troop who paused at the tree as they returned from the village. Westy was ...
— Tom Slade on Mystery Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... tremendous fuss over the old lady. He also threw the aunties into pleased confusion by pretending that he was going to kiss them, and occasioned no end of laughter and good-natured banter by his incessant teasing of Mr. Chester. He was in that state of effervescence that ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... that it was his way of laughing. He was a singular man in all respects; he might not have been quite in earnest, but that the short, hard, rapid manner in which he shot out these cinders of principles, as if it were done by mechanical revolvency, seemed irreconcilable with banter. ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... roast the dab; I'll arrest the rascal.—Also to jeer, ridicule, or banter. He stood the roast; he was the butt.—Roast meat clothes; Sunday or holiday-clothes. To cry roast meat; to boast of one's situation. To rule the roast; ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... livery bills, and the others. He was figuring out the added expense of the dinner, with roast beef now costing as much as peacocks' tongues. He had raised a large family and there was not a dyspeptic in the lot—not even a banter. ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... Palmer, in the same grave tone, which might have passed for banter, had Jack ever bantered. "I'll maintain and prove it. I don't see how he can be otherwise. It is as necessary for a man to be a gentleman before he can turn highwayman, as it is for a doctor to have his diploma, or an attorney his certificate. Some of the finest gentlemen of ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... man I am to marry!" she said in a voice from which the girlish banter had gone forever. It was the voice of a woman in arms to ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... quarter of a mile on smooth water appears but a short distance, and the people of the two boats could hold converse at will. The opportunity was not neglected by those of the Belle to pay back the boasts of the Magnolians. Shouts of banter reached their ears, and their former taunts were now returned ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... now, and, finding much to interest him, he presently recovered his temper, and began to banter his host. But even this outlet was scarcely sufficient for his superfluous life and energy, so he emphasized his remarks by throwing a stray cushion or two at the Tenor; he jumped over the chairs instead of walking round them, and performed ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... far from being the frivolous young thing that her father's banter indicated. She had a train of admirers, never thinning from year to year, to be certain, for it had been the regular fate of adolescent male Shelbyville to get itself tangled up in love with Alice Price ever since her high-school days. ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... the apartment. In the ante-room, a number of servants had collected, and no sooner did the young man appear than they began to banter and annoy him. It was perfectly legitimate for the serfs to derive as much amusement from the Jews ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... mighty well," said Uncle Remus, snapping his huge tongs in order to silence a persistent cricket in the chimney, "dat ef he dast ter back out fum a banter lak dat he never is ter year de las' un it fum Miss Meadows en Miss Motts en de gals, en he march off todes Mr. Benjermun ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... for the last sheaf is Boba (Old Woman), answering to the Polish name Baba. The Boba is said to sit in the corn which is left standing last. The person who binds the last sheaf or digs the last potato is the subject of much banter, and receives and long retains the name of the Old Rye-woman or the Old Potato-woman. The last sheaf—the Boba—is made into the form of a woman, carried solemnly through the village on the last harvest-waggon, and drenched with water ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... rear of the court-house: of whom the first to greet our Chairman was Lord Rattley. Lord Rattley, a peer with very little money and a somewhat indecorous past, rarely honours the Tregantick bench by attending sessions; but for once he was here, and at once started to banter ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... ground, for that day. From all which, one has to infer, That the mutual salutation by hat was probably a fact; that, for certain, there was some slight preliminary talk and gesticulation, but in the Homeric style, by no means in the Espagnac-French,—not chivalrous epigram at all, mere rough banter, and what is called "chaffing;"—and in short, that the French Mess-rooms (with their eloquent talent that way) had rounded off the thing into the current epigrammatic redaction; the authentic business-form of it being ruggedly what is ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... in the little store wended their uneasy way along, a spark of humour was often injected into them by the delightful banter of a rollicking, good-natured Irishman, a big two-fisted fellow, generous- hearted and lovable, whom we affectionately called "Big Phil." I can see him now, standing like a great pyramid in the midst of the little group, every now and then throwing his head back in good-natured abandon, ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... nation, is not a man pledged to respectful language? speaking, though it is but by a chimera as wild as Repeal to a question of national welfare, a man is pledged to sincerity. Had he seven devils of mockery and banter within him, for that hour he must silence them all. The foul fiend must be rebuked, though it were Mahu and Bohu who should prompt him to buffoonery, when standing at ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... was fond of his joke too—a kind of supersubtly satirical Cambridgy banter that was not to my taste at all; for I am no Cantab, and the wit of the London Stock Exchange is subtle enough for me. His father did not joke. Indeed he was full of useful information, and only too fond of imparting it, and he always made use of the ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... part jointly in many affairs, but Bob got Marjorie to himself as much as possible. The others chaffed them a good deal, but as the banter was all good-natured, it was ...
— The Radio Boys with the Revenue Guards • Gerald Breckenridge
... always difficult to detect how much of conviction and how much of banter there was in his treatment of men engaged in the actual intellectual movement of our times. I found such to be the case in my own intercourse with him. He always attacked me in a bantering way, but, I thought, half in earnest too. Hence I never found it advisable to enter into argument ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... applause greeted this gay banter, and then as Adele played a lively strain, the Lord of Misrule gave a clever clog dance on the ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells
... strength and activity was a greater protection to him than his inoffensive good-nature. But the loud admiration of Offutt gave them umbrage. It led to dispute, contradictions, and finally to a formal banter to a wrestling-match. Lincoln was greatly averse to all this "wooling and pulling," as he called it. But Offutt's indiscretion had made it necessary for him to show his mettle. Jack Armstrong, the leading ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... them are nothing else but science.' 'You are munificent indeed,' said Socrates; 'for when asked for one thing, you have given many.' I almost think," continued Harrington, "that, if Socrates were here, he would do what I should not presume to do,—banter you in a somewhat similar way. He would say, that, having asked what a miracle was, Mr. Fellowes told him that half a dozen things were miracles, but did not tell him what every miracle was; that is, never told him what made all miracles such. Suffer ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... men, he took a fancy to visit their camp. There he perceived little strength, less courage, but much disorder. From that time, foreseeing that things would go ill with them, as it since happened, he began to banter now one and then another, and be very free of his cutting jests; so some of Pompey's captains, playing the good fellows to show their assurance, told him, Do you see how many eagles we have yet? (They were then the device of the Romans in war.) They might ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... club-footed giant Malan had a lot of scars under his shirt that were not born on him. And there was Ump, a crooked thing of a man truly, but a crooked thing of a man that would hobnob with the king of all the fiends, banter for banter, and in whose breast cowardice ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... himself up to the enjoyment of a pleasant contempt for all that immediately surrounds him. Pedantic /literati/, vain youngsters, every sort of narrowness and conceit, he banters rather than satirizes; and even his banter expresses no contempt. Just in the same way does he jest about his own condition, his misfortune, ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... transaction happened to my father whilst doing the business of the rent-day. He was receiving sums of money from the tenants in succession. After looking over a bundle of notes which he had just received from one of them, a well-known character, he said in banter, "James, the notes are not correct." To which the farmer, who was much of a humorist, drily answered, "I dinna ken what they may be noo; but they were a' richt afore ye had your fingers in amang 'em." An English farmer would hardly ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... people travelling my way, that June morning, T was probably one of the most thoughtful and judiciously-minded; yet of every one but myself the business in being abroad was sober and reasonable, while mine was utterly ridiculous and silly. And the girl whose banter had driven me to it—perhaps she had attached no seriousness whatever to my petulant vow and had even now forgotten it. With these reflections were mingled the pangs of parting from my home and family; and for a time ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... most feeling man alive at the fate of his poetry. At the representation of his Cato, such was his agitation, that had Cato been condemned, the life of Addison might, too, have been shortened. When a wit had burlesqued some lines of this dramatic poem, his uneasiness at the innocent banter was equally oppressive; nor could he rest, till, by the interposition of a friend, he prevailed upon the author to ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... Knowledge, good Sense and Penetration, which your Libertines display at some Times, are inconsistent with the Ignorance, Folly and Stupidity they shew at others. It is impossible that Men of Parts, and the least Spirit, how much soever they were in the Wrong, could see themselves defeated, banter'd and exposed with so much Tranquility and Chearfulness; and I can't conceive how any, but egregious Coxcombs, without Sense of Shame, could behave as Alciphron and Lysicles do throughout your Dialogues. They are Fellows ...
— A Letter to Dion • Bernard Mandeville
... so glad you say No." He spoke passionately, and yet there was banter in his voice, or so it seemed to her. "It is because you fear to be told; it is because you had hoped ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... "Don't banter me," she said, wounded at what appeared to be his flippancy. He did not mind the entreaty, but the tone with its delicate note of pathos was like a reproach. He could not explain; he could not tell her that he had penetrated her mood and understood. ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... Spanish, besides I don't know how many Indian sign-languages." Now I was patting the groom on the back. I sat facing the ladies, so it was impossible to see the expression on his face. I kept up this banter till we arrived at the Department. I bade the ladies good day. I do not recollect when I enjoyed ten ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... study of Aretino. Nola, Bruno's birthplace, was famous for the license of its country folk. Since the day of its foundation by Chalkidian colonists, its inhabitants had preserved their Hellenic traditions intact. The vintage, for example, was celebrated with an extravagance of obscene banter, which scandalized Philip II.'s viceroy in the sixteenth century.[85] During the period of Bruno's novitiate, the ordinances of the Council of Trent for discipline in monasteries were not yet in operation; and ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... Orme could get out of her and after a little banter and a brief exchange of greetings with Tom, who was called to the telephone by his wife, the wire was permitted ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin
... avowal shocked and disappointed him a little, the old man could not find it in his heart to say one word of sorrow or disapproval, far less of ridicule or banter, to his dearly loved boy. He felt instinctively, what Herbert Le Breton could not feel, that this sentimental tendency of his son's, as he thought it, lay far too deep and seemed far too sacred for mere argument or common discussion. ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... not feel himself "altogether disqualified for it by nature."[23] "I have refrained, as much as human frailty will permit, from all satirical composition,"[24] he said. For satire he seems to have substituted that kind of "serious banter, a style hovering between affected gravity and satirical slyness," which has been pointed out as characteristic of him.[25] Washington Irving noticed a similar tone in all his familiar conversations about local ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... her banter about the "horrid Germans," for which she had abundant reason in our journey from Gratz to Vienna. We had hoped to have a compartment to ourselves, to which end Herr Schwager had expended a florin; but at the last moment ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... said Murray, who had dropped all light flippancy and banter, to speak now as the eager young officer deeply interested in everything connected with ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... and readers to appreciate the calibre of poetical work in point of musical and general execution could be given than the fact that Moore has always with them passed, and still passes, for an eminently melodious poet. What then remains? Chiefly this. In one class of writing, liveliness of witty banter, along with neatness; and, in the other and ostensibly more permanent class, elegance, also along with neatness. Reduce these qualities to one denomination, and we come to something that may be called "Propriety": a sufficiently disastrous "raw material" for the purposes ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... close that her stool touched the chair. She bent her cheek upon the shrivelled hand resting upon the arm. The excitement and feverish banter of Truedale affected her painfully. She reproached herself bitterly for having left him to the mercy of his loneliness and imagination. Her interest in, her resentment for, Conning faded before the pitiful display of feeling expressed ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... his banter. She needed to ask him no questions about his presence here; his ease of bearing had conveyed to her unconsciously from the first instant that her previous half-contemptuous estimate of him had been altogether wrong and that he was now in his natural ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... voices silenced his laughing banter; on the instrument board the warning light was flashing imperatively. Above the bedlam of voices one stood out, and all other commands went silent before ...
— The Finding of Haldgren • Charles Willard Diffin
... decided note of uneasiness behind the banter of his tone which her quick ear instantly detected. She looked up sharply and in a second, as if at a touch of magic, the laughter all ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... operations with great vigor. He made Aun' Sheba sit down and give directions for supper, which he and his two colored men carried out. Mrs. Bodine was the only one who would jest with him, and he had a word of banter with her; and a cheery word for every one ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... worldly matters. His other convictions Captain Whalley never intruded. The difference of their ages was like another bond between them. Once, when twitted with the uncharitableness of his youth, Mr. Van Wyk, running his eye over the vast proportions of his interlocutor, retorted in friendly banter— ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... glances which were turned toward him. There was something in his appearance which cast an unpleasant chill over every one of the little assembly. Even the Colonel, though an outsider, felt himself disagreeably impressed by Travers' new bearing, and the good-natured banter which he had held in readiness for the new arrival died away on his lips as he responded to the cold, formal bow. For some minutes no one spoke. Travers was busy arranging some papers which he had brought with him, and only when he had laid these out to his satisfaction ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... seemed to stand out from his head, shorn to the very skin, and the whole of his diminutive barrel-like body expressed a spirit of banter. ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... silent, fearing the banter of the company; but he drank immoderately, trying to drown in intoxication the recollection ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... self once more, she took her husband's arm, and passed through the opening ranks of her friends, bowing to this side and that, with apologetic banter and graceful words of regret—still very pale, but changed ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... questions about his first experiences in Paris, and inquired mischievously whether he had brought his cloak, his purse, and his handkerchief home with him, to which de Sigognac joyfully answered in the affirmative. In this friendly banter he soon forgot his sombre thoughts, and asked himself whether he had not been the dupe of a hypochondriac fancy, which could see nothing ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... of the frenzy of Mr. John Dennis," published in the Miscellanies of Pope, Swift, and Arbuthnot, and said to have been written by Pope, is a grave banter on his usual violence. It professes to be the account of the physician who attended him at the request of a servant, who describes the first attack of his madness coming on when "a poor simple child came to him from the printers; ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... look, Chevalier!" said she, in a tone of half banter. "One would think I had accused you of murder instead of saving a fair lady's life in the forest; although woman-killing is no murder I believe, by the laws of gallantry, as read by ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... their stand at the steps of the Piazzetta to receive the oncoming barges, for the "Calza" were the very darlings of their eyes, and never had they been more brilliant. With true Venetian comradery the crowd tossed them light banter on the names of their divisions, with pantomimic interpretation, in response ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... be taking Venza now to Mars. I was glad to see her. She was diverting. Educated. Well traveled. Spoke English with a colloquial, theatrical manner more characteristic of Greater New York than of Venus. And for all her light banter, I would rather put my trust in her than any Venus girl I ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... villains with stout cords, for the present," cried the lieutenant, returning no answer to the banter of Nosey, who fired with indignation at ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... untrustworthy person who would make him ultimately miserable. I'll remind him that her beauty is no deeper than he sees it. But that Caroline there, admirable girl, seething with affection in a figure warranted against time or accident—" her expression brought his banter to an end. He studied her seriously, revolved what she had said. She was right about Myrtle, who was undoubtedly a vain and silly little fish. His father's immoderate admiration for her had puzzled him as well as the elder ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... dogs, thought I to myself, trying to make the best of the matter, for I saw it would not do to resent what they said; they can't mean any harm, though they are certainly very impudent; so I tried to laugh off their banter, but as soon as ever I could, I put down my name ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... that Robin might welcome the newcomers. They were four of the Mill girls and they crowded into the room, staring curiously about them and at Robin, whose greeting they answered awkwardly. Spying Adam Kraus, they rushed to him with noisy banter and laughter that ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... with the banter that invariably took place when Rube was of the party. It was late when they left the Squire's, the constable going along with them, and all singing merrily as ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer
... and wine in his veins were doing their work, and a pleasant warmth was stealing over Hardrow. He found to his surprise that airy banter ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... dear, you're growing ferocious." Her uncle's tones were laden with banter, but his countenance could not conceal the pleasure her last remark had ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... a hint of something more than banter in his voice. They had reached the end of the terrace, and were slowly descending the steps. But at his last words, Lady ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... even to the medium of their cast-off bodies, to juggle, and rap, and squeak, and perform mountebank tricks with tables and chairs; to recite over in weary sameness harmless truisms, which we were wise enough to say for ourselves; to trifle, and banter, and jest, or to lead us through endless moonshiny mazes. Sadly and soberly we say that, if this be communion with the dead, we had rather be without it. We want something a little in advance of our present life, and not below it. We have read with some attention weary pages of spiritual communication ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... as unjust now as you have been generous hitherto,' said St. Cleeve, with tears in his eyes at the gentle banter of the lady, which he, poor innocent, read as her real opinions. Seizing her hand he continued, in tones between reproach and anger, 'I swear to you that I have but two devotions, two thoughts, two hopes, ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... tone of banter the dinner began; and no doubt in another man's mouth it might have sounded good-humoured enough. There was certainly no word as yet which, it could be definitely said, was meant to wound, but underneath the raillery Thresk ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... thundered past the fortifications of Paris, and said, as people do say in such circumstances, "Why, I believe I've been asleep!" Roderick shook himself like a great bear, and asked if we had passed Chantilly; the Perfect Fool began his banter, and roared for a cab as the lights of the station twinkled in the semi-darkness. I could scarce believe, as I watched his antics, that he was the man who had spoken to me of great mysteries ten minutes before. Still less could ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... interfered with, and resents the advice of candid friends, and cannot stand any 'chaff.' He has his kind of humour, which is slow in expression and material in conception, but he does not understand 'banter.' He is liberal in theories, but intensely conservative in practice. He will agree with a new theory, but often do as his grandfather did, and so in Holland there may be seen very primitive methods side by side with fin de siecle thought. In a salon in any principal ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... their intellectual want of harmony. Douglas's usual sobriquet was "the little giant," and it fitted well—a man of stalwart proportions oddly "sawed off." His voice was vibrant and sonorous, his mien compelling. It was no great speech, a few sentences of compliment to the city and of good-natured banter of the political foes among whom he found himself; but it was ex pede Herculem, a leader red-blooded to the finger-tips. I treasure the memory of this brief touch into which I once came with Douglas for I have come to think more kindly of him as he has receded. ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... amuse themselves, and that they jest, and that they banter, and that they make sport of France! It is there that they pocket hap-hazard, amid great shouts of laughter, the millions of louis and the millions of votes! See them, look at them! They have treated the Law like a girl, they are content! Right is slaughtered, Liberty is gagged, ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... of her last adventure, which gave me endless opportunities to banter her, one would have thought I might have been on my guard as to what her real intentions were; but she managed to mislead me with an art of dissimulation quite admirable, and lulled me into a fatal security with regard to her intentions: for, one ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... with a tinge of feeling beneath his banter—"you've added to the list to-night, and I wish you joy of your acquisition! But don't ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... disappointments you may meet with at first, do not be discouraged. Success is certain if you will only have a little patience and perseverance. Do not be disheartened because you feel very awkward, and because you not unfrequently forget the oven, and let your cakes and pastry burn. Try not to mind the banter of your relations and friends at any possible failure. Many well-meaning efforts to acquire this useful knowledge have been nipped in the bud by the thoughtless, silly way in which some people will laugh at any mistake or blunder. ...
— The Skilful Cook - A Practical Manual of Modern Experience • Mary Harrison
... said in a tone of good-humoured banter, which gave me courage. He offered to walk homewards with me; and, as I shambled along by his side, I told him all my ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... which to answer his nonsense. I never have had the gift of repartee. I can talk well enough about subjects that interest me when I am conversing with some one whom I know well, but the frothy persiflage, the light banter that forms the conversation's stock in trade of so many women, is an alien tongue ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... say, you think I have sense enough to love you," said Fanny, still in a tone of banter. "We part as friends, however, and if you insist on coming to call upon my sister, Mrs Barton, of course I cannot help it, only do not for a moment suppose that ...
— The Ferryman of Brill - and other stories • William H. G. Kingston
... their cloaks and capes, and the men, following their example, took off their coats and sat in their shirt-sleeves. Whereupon ensued much banter of a not particularly edifying kind respecting the garments which each person would like to remove—which showed that the innuendo of French farce is not so unknown to the upright, honest Englishman ...
— Liza of Lambeth • W. Somerset Maugham
... with something remote and reserved in his air, as if in the city he bore with him another atmosphere, and were still secluded among solitary hills. In the bright and busy street of the city which was always cosmopolitan, and in which there lingers a tradition, constantly renewed, of good-natured banter of the losel Yankee, this figure passed like the grave genius of New England. By a little play of fancy the first figure might have seemed the smiling spirit of genial cheerfulness and humor, of ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... who insist on charm, on winningness in style, on subtle harmonies and fine exquisiteness of suggestion, are disappointed in Burke: they even find him stiff and over-coloured. And there are blemishes of this kind. His banter is nearly always ungainly, his wit blunt, as Johnson said, and often unseasonable. As is usual with a man who has not true humour, Burke is also without true pathos. The thought of wrong or misery ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... the four men under sentence sounding in his ears, and their hands, stretched our through the gratings in their cell-doors, clasped in frantic entreaty before his very eyes, it was particularly remarkable. Indeed, Mr Dennis appeared to think it an uncommon circumstance, and to banter himself upon it; for he thrust his hat on one side as some men do when they are in a waggish humour, sucked the head of his stick with a higher relish, and smiled as though he would say, 'Dennis, you're a rum dog; you're a queer fellow; you're capital company, ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... the cap'n had been schoolfellows, though he was older, and often she treated him with scanty ceremony; now, after she had tossed him that aged formula of banter, she laughed to soften it. But ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... soul. Now he understood the heart and inmost meaning of it; it was the all-compelling Womanhood, the sacred spark, guarded and precious, which set men's hearts aflame; and for him, henceforth, because of that one, it made all women sacred. He answered her, banter for banter. ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... of the master being in that place which one would naturally assign to the man, and the man appearing to usurp the position of the master. One day these two alighted at the terminus in full view of each other. "Well," said Mr. B—, in that tone of banter which a superior so frequently thinks it becoming to adopt, "I don't know how you manage to ride first-class, when in these hard times I find third-class fare as much as I can afford." "Sir," replied the clerk, "you, who are known to be a person ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... of the Coliseum, like the galleries of a great theatre, and the lowest of these was occupied by a regiment of Carabineers. There was some banter and chaff at the expense of the soldiers, but the people were serious for all that, and the excitement beneath their jesting ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... their banter the old windmill, perhaps because it was the only thing stirring, held them and sobered their thoughts as it would not have done elsewhere. Perhaps they felt a sort of consciousness of its lonely position and fancied it to be something human. It overlooked the obscure ...
— Roy Blakeley in the Haunted Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... good-natured banter. There was not a sign of panic in the army. The men at once formed themselves into line of battle, according to their instructions, and opened a terrible fire upon the weeds in which the warriors lay concealed. Hundreds ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the same, and that the genuine coherence is apt to be at its best in the first trial, for one of the essences of the rapture of production is the novelty of the new relation. There were times in the forenoons when I met halting stages and was ready possibly to banter a moment. I very quickly encountered a repulse, if she were in the thrall. She would wave her hand palm outward before her ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... all their banter the old windmill, perhaps because it was the only thing stirring, held them and sobered their thoughts as it would not have done elsewhere. Perhaps they felt a sort of consciousness of its lonely position and fancied it to be something human. ...
— Roy Blakeley in the Haunted Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... laughed at that, but both Leroy and the sheriff tried to banter her by insisting that they knew exactly ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... he would talk exactly," I returned. "He has a kind of loving banter with him, if you will allow me the expression, that is irresistible to any man with a heart in his bosom. I am very glad to hear there is anything like communion begun between them. Weir will get good ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... black, especially as some witnesses fled and declined to appear. Scott, who knew Macintosh, the counsel for the prisoners, says that their advocates and agent "were convinced of their guilt". Yet a jury of Edinburgh tradesmen, moved by Macintosh's banter of the apparition, acquitted the accused solely, as Scott believes, because of the ghost and its newly-learned Gaelic. It is indeed extraordinary that Prestongrange, the patron of David Balfour, allowed his witnesses ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... circle and were discussing the polo match. Miss Hitchcock's clear, mocking voice could be heard teasing her cousin Caspar on his performance that afternoon. The heavy young man, whose florid face was flushed with the champagne he had taken, made ineffective attempts to ward off the banter. Parker Hitchcock ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... was broken by many a shout of exultation or banter, many a merry sound of jest or fun, as the back of the night's task was fairly broken. One husker mimicked the hoot of an owl in the thickets below; another sang a melody popular at the time, the ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... girls, there had been manifested an expression of mingled curiosity, coquetry and banter on Vaudrey's appearance in their midst. His presence in the manager's box had been noticed and his coming to the greenroom expected. Every one had hurried thither. Sulpice was pointed out. He was ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... tell her how the bird and cage had come there, though that the poor little songster had been starved to death was evident. The sadness of the incident had made an impression on her. She had not been able to forget it for days, despite Farfrae's tender banter; and now when the matter had been nearly forgotten it ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... I am sorry to say," answered the Vicar, accustomed to parry Mr. Toller's banter about his belief in the new medical light. "I am out of the way and he is ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... poor poet fell upon the hard rocks beneath his chamber window and was injured fatally. Frischlin was considered one of the best Latin poets of post- classical times; but his genius was marred by his immoderate and bitter temper, which caused him to imagine that the gentle banter and jocular remarks of his acquaintances were insults to be repaid by angry invective and bitter sarcasm, ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... their hotel was located. Their transit was an interrupted one, for these four cattlemen were among the best known in the Southwest. All along the route they scattered nods of recognition, friendly greetings, and genial banter. One of them—the man who had formerly been the hard-riding, quick-shooting sheriff of the county—met also scowls once or twice, to which he was entirely indifferent. Luck had no slavish respect for law, had indeed, if rumor were true, run a wild and stormy course in his youth. But his reign ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... European view. Oddly enough, Ibsen believed, or pretended to believe, that The League of Youth was a "placable" piece of foolery, which could give no annoyance to the worst of offenders by its innocent and indulgent banter. Perhaps, like many strenuous writers, he underestimated the violence of his own language; perhaps, living so long at a distance from Norway and catching but faintly the reverberations of its political turmoil, he did not ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... was enjoying it. I think he was asleep!" The day had been an unusually hard one, and the patient little schoolmistress was just then struggling with a distracted sense of unavailing effort. Arnold's grim banter had brought the tears, as blood follows a blow. He got down from his horse, looking wretched at what he had done. "I am a brute, I believe,—worse than any of the pack. You have so much patience with them,—please have a little with ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... you will forgive me. I do but speak in banter. It has been said that a good woman, fitly mated, grows doubly good; but how often have we seen a bad man mated to a good woman turned into a good man? Why, I myself was not wholly good till I married my wife; and, if the eminent soldier and gentleman in whose honor we are here—and ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... he was bound by ties that are strong enough to hold ingenuous hearts to a creature with whom he could not sympathize. By the time that he became master of his own heart he had reached his growth, and was sixteen years old. His mind, developed by Ursula and by the banter of the clerks, made him study commerce with an eye in which intelligence was veiled beneath simplicity: he observed the customers; asked in leisure moments for explanations about the merchandise, whose divers sorts and proper places he retained in his head. ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... unflinching eye, the great lawyer trembled, as many a witness had trembled of old under his own cross-examination. But he tried to pass it off just at first with a little society banter. He bowed, and smiled, and pretended to look arch—look arch, indeed, with that ashen, white face of his!—as he ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... something to assuage your want. And you, Madam," said he, turning to the Queen, "you will sometimes give her an old dress; for the poor child has n't a shift to her back." [Wilhelmina, ii. 85.] This rugged paternal banter was taken too literally by Wilhelmina, in her weak state; and she was like "to burst in her skin," ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. IX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... while my gentlest and cheeriest of friends, Bill Nye, joined with me and made the dusty detested travel almost a delight. We were constantly playing practical jokes on each other or indulging in some mischievous banter before the audience. On one occasion, Mr. Nye, coming before the foot-lights for a word of general introduction, said, 'Ladies and gentlemen, the entertainment to-night is of a dual nature. Mr. Riley and I will speak alternately. First ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... either threats or blandishments until he went in too, with a pike; while Jasper's broncos, which were considerably less than half-tamed, backed round and round in rings when I attempted to re-harness them. Still, with laughter and banter we started again, and worked on until daylight faded and the stars twinkled out one by one above the dewy prairie. The scent of wild peppermint hung heavy in the cool air, which came out of the north exhilarating ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... tinge of earnestness in this good-natured banter, but it was instantly dissipated ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... best public opinion at Athens; for the insidious doubts cast by Euripides upon the reality of any divine scheme of governance have never struck home. The scandalous stories about the domestic broils on Olympus, in which Homer indulges, only awaken good-natured banter. It is no longer proper—as in Homeric days—to pride oneself on one's cleverness in perjury and common falsehood. Athenians do not have twentieth century notions about the wickedness of lying, but certain it is the gods ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... disqualified for it by nature."[23] "I have refrained, as much as human frailty will permit, from all satirical composition,"[24] he said. For satire he seems to have substituted that kind of "serious banter, a style hovering between affected gravity and satirical slyness," which has been pointed out as characteristic of him.[25] Washington Irving noticed a similar tone in all his familiar conversations ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... gone back on you? Say, Matt, that's tough! No, I wouldn't be mean enough to tell the other girls. I ain't as low-down as that." (How Frome hated his cheap banter!) "But look a here, ain't it lucky I got the old man's cutter ...
— Ethan Frome • Edith Wharton
... the ground, for that day. From all which, one has to infer, That the mutual salutation by hat was probably a fact; that, for certain, there was some slight preliminary talk and gesticulation, but in the Homeric style, by no means in the Espagnac-French,—not chivalrous epigram at all, mere rough banter, and what is called "chaffing;"—and in short, that the French Mess-rooms (with their eloquent talent that way) had rounded off the thing into the current epigrammatic redaction; the authentic business-form of it being ruggedly ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Auguste and Rose, and how cheerfully they worked! One could hear her singing, and him whistling, at it all day. Yet they seemed to have abundant leisure to exchange a deal of pleasantry and harmless banter. Auguste was a Swiss, and a bigoted Protestant, and never lost an opportunity of holding forth on the superiority of the reformed religion. If he thought the family were out of hearing, he would grow very animated and declamatory. But Rose, who also had hopes, though perhaps faint, ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... committing the first of that series of offences which, in the poet's vindictive memory, marked him down for elevation to the throne of Dulness which was rendered vacant by the deposition of King Tibbald."[16] There is a rumour that Gay, in revenge for Cibber's banter of "Three Hours After Marriage," personally chastised the actor-dramatist,[17] but there is nothing definitely known about this. Anyhow, Gay was so irritated by the failure of this play that he did not produce anything at a theatre ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... idiot enough to let it be known that I was afflicted with an aristocratic name, and I had to hold this job against banter enough to drive a cow daft. ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... and began again upon a vein of foolish banter, for the amusement of the Sheriff and his guests, all ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... whether you forgive him or not, Rachel," said Sir William, whose idea of carrying off the situation was to indulge in the time-honoured banter suitable to those about to ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... it off with banter. It was understood that the President should not be told—and that I should not tell him—of my talk with Mr. Sandford. Colonel Lamont undertook to arrange an audience with Mr. Cleveland for me. "You had better wait," ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... have returned a sharp reply to this banter, but she was very anxious to find a physician for Phoebe, and so thought it best to take ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... recessionals—a certain popular version of "Lest we forget" their unvaried theme; the more I hear the cries of derision raised by the makers of this likeness of something unworshipful on the earth beneath, so much the more am I convinced that the national humour is that of banter, and that no other kind of mirth so gains as does this ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... readers that are readers. Therefore I think it would be unwise in me not to print Elia's Postscript to his "Chapter on Ears," and his Answers to Correspondents. Indeed, I do not know but that they contain some of the most racy sentences Lamb ever wrote. At any rate, they do contain some delightful banter and "most ingenious nonsense." In their pleasantry, archness, and good-natured raillery, these two little articles of Elia's remind me of some of Addison's happiest ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... perceived first of all that most of the grimness passed away from the narrowed eyes and they lighted instead with good-humoured banter, though of a weary nature. One by one, they cast off ten years of age; the lines rubbed out; the jaws which had thrust out grew normal; the leaning heads straightened and ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... tone was not lost upon Siona, who ceased her banter and studied the young man with deeper interest, while Mrs. Belden, detecting some restraint in Berrie's tone, renewed her questioning: "Where did you ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... street. Acquaintances, men who meet after separation, rush together with "Ah Cio!" Then they kiss on the right cheek "Cio!" on the left, "Cio!" on the lips, "Cio! Bon di Cio!"] continually, and banter each other as they trot ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... could of consoled, and a few singles that would of listened to reason if properly approached; and by them it was said that Homer was a fiend for caution. He would act like one of them that simply won't take no for an answer—up to a certain point. He would seem to be going fur in merry banter, but never to words that the law could put any expensive construction on. He would ride round to different ranches and mingle at dances and picnics, and giggle and conduct himself like one doomed from the cradle to be woman's prey—but ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... much of a unit, and all bright, witty, and ready to cooperate. Indeed, having a system of fetching each other's hay and filling each other's canteens, they have a better squad organization than we. It has pleased me very much that our banter between the tents at Plattsburg has turned into the friendliest of feeling, so that we naturally seek each other out. We gave them a spread last night, and today are invited to another ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... nice scoundrel, Benson," said Superintendent Galloway, nodding his head at the innkeeper with a kind of ferocious banter. "You're really a first-class villain, upon my soul! But this precious story with which you've tried to bamboozle us is not complete. Would it be putting too much strain on your inventive faculties to ask you, while you are about it, to give us your version of how the money which ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... that Mr. Grayson was not your authority for such a statement," said Harley, with a smile, although he did not wholly relish her banter. ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... made the neighboring woods resound with our cheers and huzzas for almost half an hour. The master of the sloop was amazed beyond expression, and declared he thought we had heard of the success of our arms eastward before, and had sought to banter him."[593] At night there was a grand bonfire and universal festivity ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... smile came to John Flint's lips. He made no reply to the light banter, but stiffened, and stared ahead of him with a set face and eyes into which crept an expression of anguish. Mary Virginia, with a quick glance, laid her hand ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... superior air. "You fellers'll bring up down on South Clark Street before you end. Some choice dive on the levee is gappin' for you. Now, mind you, I won't bail you out. You go into the game with your eyes open," he said, and his banter was highly pleasing to ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... Happy. The biggest ketch you ever seen in your life. It's ketch the Flying U outfit and squeeze the life out of it; that's the ketch." Andy's tone had in it no banter, but considerable earnestness. For, though Chip would no doubt convince the boys that the danger was very real, there was a small matter of personal pride to urge Andy into trying to convince, them himself, without aid from ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... next? But hold, I am not here to banter words with you. Will you enter the King's service, and fight his battles under Prince Rupert?" demanded ...
— Hayslope Grange - A Tale of the Civil War • Emma Leslie
... abuse, but he persisted,—a serious undertone to his banter. "Yes, I have always observed the scepticism of youth, no matter what may be the age of the contracting parties and their previous experience, in this matter. But Love and Marriage are two distinct and entirely independent states of being,—one is the creation ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... actors might have learnt from him in some parts. The audience was not a pleasant one to face. It was the First Consul's habit to invite forty persons to dinner, and a hundred and fifty for the evening, and consequently to hear, criticise, and banter us without mercy" (Memoirs of Duchesse d'Abrantes, ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... Leslie, with a marked banter in his tone. "It is none of my business, of course, here on Canadian ground, but the other day, ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... has lightly touched on passing topics and jotted down, "to point a moral or adorn a tale," some of the more obvious foibles and inconsistencies of our American ways. If a stray bit of philosophy has here and there slipped in between the lines, it is mostly of the laughing "school," and used more in banter than in blame. ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... and scrubbing. The girls with their banter put death into the background as an obscure and infrequent incident ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... the man I am to marry!" she said in a voice from which the girlish banter had gone forever. It was the voice of a woman in arms to defend ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... smiled. "What has made you think of it so suddenly?" said I. "Do you not want to catch some more canaries?" said she. "I suspect," said I, "that you would like to have ours escape." "Perhaps," said she, "that would be a relief to you from your present embarrassment." Then I saw that all this was banter. She wished to teaze me a little. The truth is, I have two fine singing canaries and a mocking-bird. Some of my pro-slavery friends delight to pester me about them. They say that they mean to issue a habeas ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... had been reached. One lone typewriter came to a chattering halt. Men and women rose from their machines, where they had been sitting tense. Cigarettes were lit; the workers relaxed. There began a subdued chatter. Chaff and banter were ...
— Death Points a Finger • Will Levinrew
... of the scholars who had sat here and there, Miss Ludington began gently to banter Ida about this and that boyish sweetheart, and divers episodes connected with ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy
... passed the evening at the house, enduring, with the fortitude of long experience, such delicate enough banter as our likeness naturally suggested. When the young lady and I were left alone for a few minutes I looked her squarely in the face and ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... in the morning to say that my cousin is pretty, intelligent, lovable, clever, and gay, probably because she has lived so much in society; she was also some time at Munich. We do, indeed, exactly suit each other, for she too is rather inclined to be satirical, so we banter our friends most merrily together. [The Mozart family were both well known and dreaded for their somewhat ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
... never could find any Person compleatly Master of, it pleased me very much, to find this Author has made a large Essay, to prove there is really no such Power in Nature; and that the Pretenders to it are all Impostors, and put a Banter upon the World; for that it is impossible for any Man to oblige himself to forget a thing, since he that can remember to forget, and at the same time forget to remember, has ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... upon this being understood, he had a variety of questions from Crawford as to his feelings and success; questions, which being made, though with the vivacity of friendly interest and quick taste, without any touch of that spirit of banter or air of levity which Edmund knew to be most offensive to Fanny, he had true pleasure in satisfying; and when Crawford proceeded to ask his opinion and give his own as to the properest manner in which particular passages in the service should be delivered, shewing it to be a subject on which he ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... gave a more hazardous gauntlet to run, thought I, and I said as much; but my musings brought only a good-humoured banter from my friend. ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... canoe, they pushed out some twenty or thirty rods into the lake, cast anchor, and threw out their lines. Claud, who baited with grubs, soon had drawn in two, weighing as many pounds a piece, and began to feel disposed to banter the hunter, who had baited with a flap of moose-skin, which he had brought along with him, and which, to Claud, seemed little likely to attract the fishes to his hook. But he soon found himself mistaken; ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... somehow that she had been cheated. Why had he not told her? Why did he let her play and romp and joke and banter with him as though they had been children and equals? It wasn't fair! He was just laughing, at her! Just laughing at her! All her spirit was ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... please your Grace; my father is Giles Headley the armourer, Alderman of Cheap Ward," said Dennet, doing her part bravely, though puzzled by the King's tone of banter; "and ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... most "civilized" undertook to banter me on my non-appearance in the classic regions of Barnwell.—Bristed's Five Years in an Eng. Univ., Ed. 2d, ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... angry at the scant measure of freedom in Piedmont, he could never be induced to go near his sovereign till Charles Emmanuel was staying at Florence as a proscript. Then the poet went to pay his respects to him, and was received with the good-humoured banter: 'Well, Signor Conte, here am I, a king, in the condition you would like ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... by this light banter. "But I brought a book from home, in which I am much interested—'Bishop Hannington's Life'—and as you are so good as to spare me, I mean to explore some of those shady lanes; they are ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... to detect how much of conviction and how much of banter there was in his treatment of men engaged in the actual intellectual movement of our times. I found such to be the case in my own intercourse with him. He always attacked me in a bantering way, but, I thought, half in earnest too. Hence ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... reserve, and this was cleverly swung so that it appeared to be caused by a temporary grouch due to the sting of defeat. As the Bar-20 man was known to be given to moods at times this was accepted as the true explanation and gave promise of hotly contested games for revenge later on. The banter which the defeated puncher had to endure stirred him and strengthened the reserve, although he was careful not ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... Stone Coal; the club-footed giant Malan had a lot of scars under his shirt that were not born on him. And there was Ump, a crooked thing of a man truly, but a crooked thing of a man that would hobnob with the king of all the fiends, banter for banter, and in whose breast cowardice was as ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... my profession find themselves compelled to behave as I did quite of my own free will. In the meantime I enjoy the pleasure of hearing some of my friends say that I must have foreseen what was coming, while others banter me by declaring that the new edict has been designed to put a stop to my ...
— The Letters of the Younger Pliny - Title: The Letters of Pliny the Younger - - Series 1, Volume 1 • Pliny the Younger
... wood in abundance, and perhaps," he added, looking slyly over to the stove where some bread-soup was in preparation for their very temperate repast, "some better fare for dinner. But," he continued in a tone of humorous banter, which he frequently adopted, and pushing back his chair a few paces as he spoke, "while you superintend the household concerns, and give the necessary orders to the cook, I will withdraw into my study. Now, what would I not write if only pen, paper, and ink, were to be got at; and how studiously ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... say No." He spoke passionately, and yet there was banter in his voice, or so it seemed to her. "It is because you fear to be told; it is because you had hoped ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... bore the stamp of perfect innocence. She wanted to know why her cousin had never married. Hortense, who knew of the five offers that she had refused, had constructed her little romance; she supposed that Lisbeth had had a passionate attachment, and a war of banter was the result. Hortense would talk of "We young girls!" when speaking of herself and ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... had observed that we always drank His Majesty's health as soon as the cloth was removed; but they were by this time become so fond of wine that they would frequently remind me of the health in the middle of dinner by calling out King George Earee no Brittannee; and would banter me if the glass was not filled to the brim. Nothing could exceed the mirth and jollity of these people ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... for whom she cared or who cared for her, none but whose interest in her presence or absence was as slight as hers; and her mood shrank from the thought of such casual and conventional gallantries as the affair would inevitably bring forth. She was in no humour tonight to dance and banter and coquette with an empty ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... unmodified, but I then staved it off, and indeed John Tupper himself did not deem it appropriate. It will be observed that "MS. Society" is said not to mean "Manuscript Society." I forget what it did mean—possibly "Medical Student Society." The whole thing is replete with semi-private sous-entendus, and banter at Free Trade, medical and anatomical matters, etc. The like general remarks apply to No. 4, "Smoke," by the same writer. It is a rollicking semi-intelligible chaunt, a forcible thing in its way, proper in the first instance (I believe) ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... accustomed to the ceaseless banter of Burley's two comrades—a banter entirely American, and which at first she was unable to understand. But now all things American, including accent and odd, perverted humour, had become very dear to her. The clink-clank of the muleteer's ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... travelling in a circle. But this looks more like 'Blind Man's Buff' than 'Ring-Around-A-Rosy,' don't you think? Or are you trying to play 'Tag' with me? Well, you're 'It' anyway," he said, dropping all hint of banter in his tone. "I'd advise you to meet a few straight questions with straight answers. First, who is this Joe person you were expecting to do the ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... should know; he'd been close at hand when it happened. He felt a warm emotion, a sense of comradeship, for the referee. He'd surely been square; he'd made Holliday break clean. He felt an impulse to joke with the referee, to banter him, and bid him count a million if ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... imprudent—that it might attract the attention of thieves or detectives; but to save his life he could not have kept from doing it. At last he scratched his hand on the pin which was doing duty for the button he had lost in his scuffle with Sleeny. "Ah!" he said to himself, with humorous banter, "it won't do to be married in a coat ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... "You may banter and make light if you want to," she said, pouting admirably. "I don't care. All the same the laugh will jump to the other corner of your mouth, see if it doesn't. They say that what a person dreams about and wishes for and waits for and believes in, will come true sooner ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... until nightfall, and during that time the men were engaged in digging their habitations clear of the snow that almost threatened to bury them. In this work, McTavish cheerfully took a hand, and, by his good-humored banter, won his way to the hearts of his fellow-toilers. Notwithstanding his industry, the Hudson Bay man kept his eye open for glimpses of Maria who, as he expected, was constantly about, now that Charles Seguis had returned. He was surprised that Seguis had nothing to say to ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... growing ferocious." Her uncle's tones were laden with banter, but his countenance could not conceal the pleasure her last remark had ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... river while they lament the loss of their beautiful treasure. Siegfried, who has strayed from his companions in the chase, now appears, and they beg him for the ring upon his finger, at first with playful banter, and afterwards in sober earnest, warning him that if he does not give it back to them he will perish that very day. He laughs at their womanly wiles, and they vanish as his comrades appear. After the midday ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... clambered breathlessly into a coal car, and snuggled down into a corner inside a little strip of shade, and panted like a hunted rabbit. A sickening pain throbbed up from his toe. The train moved slowly at first, and Jimmy knew that he could not hide from the train men in a coal car. On a banter from Piggy Pennington and Bud Perkins Jimmy had ridden on the brake-beam while the switch engine was pulling freight cars about the railroad yards. He had a vague idea that midway of the train, between two box cars, would be a safe place. When the train began to increase ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... his hands, 'Can a man,' he asked, 'so fat as I am be ambitious?' I could not for my soul help saying, 'Ah! Sire, your Majesty is surely joking.' He pretended, however, to be serious, and after a few moments, noticing my decorations, he began to banter me about the Cross of St. Louis and the Cross of the Lily, which I ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... it—and her laughing made it less possible than before for Breckon to unbend and meet Trannel on his own ground, to give him joke for joke, to exchange banter with him. He might never have been willing to do that, but now he shrank from it, in his realization of their likeness, with an ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... good reputation my mother sustained as a worthy servant and excellent cook, a tyrannical and much dreaded slaveholder watched for an opportunity to purchase her, but fortunately arrived a few moments too late, and she was bid off in too poor a condition of health to remain long a subject of banter and speculation. Her husband was allowed to carefully lift her down from the block and accompany her to her new master's, Charles Canory, who treated her very kindly while she remained in his family. Mr. Canory resided in St. Charles County for five ...
— The Story of Mattie J. Jackson • L. S. Thompson
... response to the banter. "Only a fool runs risks when there's nothing to be gained. But I'm prepared to run one if you like to fall in with a plan I've thought out. You're not under arrest yet. You needn't be if you care to undertake to give evidence when the inquest ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... when the minister retired, he began to rally his Lordship on the subject. But Byron really fancied that he had acquitted himself with grace and dignity, and took the jocularity of his friend amiss—a little banter ensued—the poet became petulant, and Mr Hobhouse walked on; while Byron, on account of his lameness, and the roughness of the pavement, took hold of my arm, appealing to me, if he could have said less, after the kind and hospitable treatment ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... "the case is too serious for banter of this kind. My dear boy," he added, kindly, "I am glad to see you angry, but nevertheless, you must condescend to explain. The longer you allow suspicion to rest on yourself the longer it will be before it falls on the right person. Come, what were you doing in the passage ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... persuaded the young man to go and take lessons. After he had gone through the course he came back, and Socrates proceeded playfully to banter him. ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... as if giving up the riddle in her dancing eyes and seemingly mocking smile, he appears about to lead her back into the ballroom, there is, at least so I like to read the music, a pretty little laugh, as much as to say, "Can't you read my real feelings under my mask of banter," a tender glance indicated by a retard on a charmingly expressive little turn of the melody—and she ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb
... heart to enter the convention on her eighty-fourth birthday to a thundering welcome, to banter with Mrs. Upton who called her to the platform, and to stop the applause with a smile and "There now, girls, that's enough."[443] Nothing could have been more appropriate for her birthday than the Colorado jubilee over which she presided and which gave irrefutable ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... dismissed Adair from his mind, except as a possible subject to banter Nell withal, or as a culprit to punish, ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... question and answer. The beginning is the catechism in Greek. Ay, ay, Pollaki toi: What's your name?"—"Ay, what's your name?" says the justice to Adams; who answered, "It is Aeschylus, and I will maintain it."—"Oh! it is," says the justice: "make Mr Aeschylus his mittimus. I will teach you to banter ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... authorities, but his theme is generally "Society" with a capital S. "Praed," says Locker in "My Confidences," "is the very best of his school: indeed, he has a unique position; for in his narrower vein of whimsical wit, vernacular banter, and antithetical rhetoric, which may correctly be called vers de societe in its most perfected form, and its exactest sense, he has never been equalled." These phrases hit off Praed very well—if one does not exactly see what "Society" has ...
— London Lyrics • Frederick Locker
... I'll not detain you. Mrs. Custers wants to see you again." He had dropped all banter, and was speaking to her quietly, respectfully, kindly, as he should speak; in a lowered tone, but not so low as to be unheard ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... fortifications of Paris, and said, as people do say in such circumstances, "Why, I believe I've been asleep!" Roderick shook himself like a great bear, and asked if we had passed Chantilly; the Perfect Fool began his banter, and roared for a cab as the lights of the station twinkled in the semi-darkness. I could scarce believe, as I watched his antics, that he was the man who had spoken to me of great mysteries ten minutes before. Still less could I convince myself that he had not many ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... citizen of the United States"; those questions, I say, were not so much a matter of surprise under the peculiar forms of the trial, but that a law journal should so far forget its dignity; should so far descend from argument, from discussion of law to unseemly banter on the question of sex; that it should so far stoop from a canvass of the most important trial that ever took place, to a senile jest on woman, must be matter of astonishment to every candid mind in the legal fraternity, and certainly ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... her quizzically, his face a mask of banter. Of what his actual feelings were at that moment she ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... once." Fred dropped his banter. "I'll tell you what, Nancy. I may not be able to do much right off, but I'll promise you that he has a fair chance ...
— The Calico Cat • Charles Miner Thompson
... wear a top hat or a morning suit in Monte Carlo," she said, furious at his banter. "Let us talk about somebody else than ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... very fond of him, was mildly scornful of his Philistine outlook. He cared nothing for books, and the only form of art that appealed to him was the musical comedy. She treated him as a rule with pleasant banter and refused to take him seriously. It required a good deal of energy to keep their friendship on a light footing, for she knew that he had been in love with her since he was eighteen. She could ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... his joke too—a kind of supersubtly satirical Cambridgy banter that was not to my taste at all; for I am no Cantab, and the wit of the London Stock Exchange is subtle enough for me. His father did not joke. Indeed he was full of useful information, and only too ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... to turn it all to banter relieved her at once. "It was pitiable," she nodded gravely to Marion; "his nerve left him when they made such a din in ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... international; the contrast of American and foreign ways runs through it, and Mr. Howells has added the contrast of the old and the new Americanism. The hero is a Western journalist, a Mugwump, much given to banter ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 1: Curiosities of the Old Lottery • Henry M. Brooks
... 3d Bolingbroke wrote a letter to Dean Swift, in which he says, "The Earl of Oxford was removed on Tuesday; the Queen died on Sunday. What a world this is, and how does fortune banter us!" In other {48} words, Bolingbroke tells Swift that full success seemed within his grasp on Tuesday, and was suddenly torn away from him on Sunday. But the most characteristic part of the letter is a passage which throws a very blaze of ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... horizon, or fructify some faltering thought into a suggestive and affecting image. Such people are worth their weight in gold. Then there is a talker who is worth much silver, a man of irresistible geniality, who has a fund of pleasant banter for all present. This is a great art; banter, to be agreeable, must be of a complimentary kind; it must magnify the object it deals with—a perverse person may be bantered on his strength of character; a stingy person may be bantered on his prudence. There ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... sharp sarcasm, now some aphorism heavy with meaning, which sticks to the memory, like a saying of Talleyrand's. His umbrae, who have put but little of allaying Tiber in their cups, grow boisterous and abusive, and having insulted nearly everybody at the table by coarse personal banter, the party breaks up, and we are glad to get out with flushed cheeks and dizzy head into the cool air of an early summer night—all the more, that for the last half-hour young Piso at our elbow has been importuning us with whispered specimens of his very rickety elegiacs, and trying to settle ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... thought that perhaps it might not be all, lay heavy on their hearts all the way home, and made their drive a silent one. It never came into Jem's mind to banter Davie about the new dignity of his office as reader, as at first he had intended to do, or, indeed, to say anything at all, till they were nearly home. As for David, he was going over and over the very same things that ...
— The Inglises - How the Way Opened • Margaret Murray Robertson
... appeared to be well supplied with funds, but purchased sparingly as became a miserly hermit. And so vicious was his tongue that few cared to converse with him, even the young hoodlums of the town hesitating to harass him with the banter usually accorded the other ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... and relief the click of a telegraph instrument that seemed at once to bring him into contact with the remote world. He filed his telegrams and walked the length of the broad hall, his riding-crop under his arm. The gay banter and laughter of a group of young men and women just returned from a drive gave him a touch of heartache, for there was a girl somewhere in the valley whom he had followed across the sea, and these people were of her own world—they undoubtedly knew her; very likely she came often to this ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... should drive away Little sweet maidens from the play, Or love to banter and fight so well, That's the thing ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... I have wasted my time!" rejoined Lecoq in a tone of angry banter, a scarlet flush mantling at the same time over his features. "Such is not my opinion. This scrap of paper undeniably proves that if any one has been mistaken as regards the prisoner's identity, it is certainly ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... her ruffled temper in private; and she remained absent from the room for over half an hour. During this time Laura and Bob were alone together. But even less than before came of their intercourse: Bob, still smarting from his father's banter, was inclined to be stand-offish, as though afraid Laura might take liberties with him after having been made to look so small; Laura, rendered thoroughly unsure to begin with, by the jocular tone of the luncheon-table, had not recovered ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... to hide his mood under a cover of light talk and banter, but the others felt it and sympathized with him, though all refrained from mentioning what each ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick
... sensitively feel - the death of a whole family of children. Yet it was gone upon like a holiday jaunt. I read in Colonel Fergusson's letter that his schoolmates bantered him when he began to broach his scheme; so did I at first, and he took the banter as he always did with enjoyment, until he suddenly posed me with the question: 'And now do you see any other jokes to make? Well, then,' said he, 'that's all right. I wanted you to have your fun out first; now we can be serious.' And ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... good-humoredly at her over the three checks he was pinning together. He liked to play at a rough game of banter with her. He flattered himself that he had made her harsher than she was when she first came to him; that he had got off a little of the sugar-coating Harsanyi always ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... the walls of the Coliseum, like the galleries of a great theatre, and the lowest of these was occupied by a regiment of Carabineers. There was some banter and chaff at the expense of the soldiers, but the people were serious for all that, and the excitement beneath their ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... and began to banter her. The gentleman who was sent to try the slipper looked earnestly at Cinderella, and, ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... despised it more in action; no one could more consistently decry it in speculation. In his opinion, the exercise of the reasoning powers is absolutely sinful—l'homme qui raisonne est l'homme qui peche. Franklin, on the other hand, in a familiar tone of playful banter, vindicates its utility, alleging that it is mightily 'convenient to be a rational animal, who knows how to find or invent a plausible pretext for whatever it has an inclination to do.' Examples of this convenience ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 439 - Volume 17, New Series, May 29, 1852 • Various
... noisier than need be. And he saw them all, now, from a new angle of vision. Discreetly aloof, he observed, in passing, the complete free-and-easiness of the modern maiden with her modern cavalier; personalities flying; likewise legs and arms; a banter-wrangle interlude over a tennis-racquet; flight and pursuit of the offending maiden, punctuated with shrieks, culminating in collapse and undignified surrender: while a pair of club peons—also discreetly aloof—exchanged ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... genial frankness and simplicity in his entertainers which banished restraint, and gave him a sense of security. He felt instinctively that there were no adverse currents of mental criticism and detraction, that they were loyal to him as their invited guest, notwithstanding jest, banter, and good-natured satire. ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... any day you want him. Tell me when you want him, I kill him," Pete answered me, ignoring the criticisms of the others as to his marksmanship and hunting prowess. All that day and all the next the men let no opportunity pass to guy Pete about his lost caribou, and on the whole he took the banter very good-naturedly, but once confided to me that "if those boys get up early, maybe they see caribou too and try how much they ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... entirely grave about it, although it was only a piece of banter which she felt that Nola would appreciate. But Nola was not in an appreciative mood, for she was a full-blooded daughter of the baronial rule. She jerked her head like a vicious bronco and reined hurriedly away from Frances as she ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... not a bad sort of fellow. He sometimes had really sensible things to say. He was something of a dandy with his Parisian working man's gift for banter, a regular gift of gab, and ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... in one place that he is afraid the Stoics are the only philosophers, and whenever he is combating Epicureanism his language is that of a Stoic. Some of Vergil's most eloquent passages seem to be inspired by Stoic speculation. Even Horace, despite his banter about the sage, in his serious moods borrows the language of the Stoics. It was they who inspired the highest flights of declamatory eloquence in Persius and Juvenal. Their moral philosophy affected the world through Roman law, the great masters of which were brought up under its influence. ...
— A Little Book of Stoicism • St George Stock
... had difficulty in keeping their buggy in sight. Sometimes Bartley stopped long enough for them to come up, and then, after a word or two of gay banter, was off again. ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... more liberal than Rogers in his willingness to entertain professions of religious diversity. Yet he straitjacketed his liberalism when he denied responsible men the right to attack laws, both civil and canonical, with "ludicrous Insult" or "with Buffoonery and Banter, ...
— A Discourse Concerning Ridicule and Irony in Writing (1729) • Anthony Collins
... good humour, and when Dirk Stroeve came up and sat down with us he attacked him with ferocious banter. He showed a skill I should never have credited him with in finding the places where the unhappy Dutchman was most sensitive. Strickland employed not the rapier of sarcasm but the bludgeon of invective. The attack ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... said Raoul. "I feel that you are all, of both sexes, of a different age from me. You can laugh, and you can banter agreeably. I, mademoiselle, I loved mademoiselle de—" Raoul could not pronounce her name—"I loved her; well! I put faith in her—now I am quits ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... reduced to my last Guinea—obliged to inform Strap of my Necessity, who is almost distracted with the News, but nevertheless obliged to pawn my best Sword for present Subsistence—that small Supply being exhausted, I am almost stupified with my Misfortunes—go to the Gaming Table by the Advice of Banter, and come off with unexpected Success—Strap's Ecstacy—Mrs. Gawky waits upon me, professes Remorse for her Perfidy, and implores my Assistance—I do myself a Piece of Justice by her Means, and afterwards ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... seventy-seven. Secondly, he enjoyed Winter's society. Thirdly, he liked Winter's tobacco. Fourthly, he admired Betty, who usually let him in, and who, being even more foolish than himself, was not at all averse to a few empty compliments and a little frothy banter, which he was very ready to bestow. For Aubrey was not of that sterling metal of which his grandfather had been made, "who loved one only and who clave to her," and to whom it would have been a moral impossibility to flirt with one woman while he was making serious love to another. ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... and her associates took time for us, it did not interrupt the lively banter between the five girls. Dorothy was now certain that Polly had a real beau, somewhere, and being so very candid and talkative herself, she admired the reticence displayed by Polly in keeping the affairs of ...
— Polly's Business Venture • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... the whisperings of the battle zone in France. Take a good look at him while he is quiet for ten seconds hand running. Everything about him is tremendous—except his size. He is built to withstand banter, ridicule and jollying; his sturdy nature is guaranteed proof against the battering assaults of unholy mirth from other scouts; his round face and curly hair are the delight of the girls of Bridgeboro; his loyalty is as the ...
— Pee-wee Harris • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... buffoonery, keenness, and boldness, having been frequently imprisoned, he was not inferior, nor was he at times less an adventurer. His "Mercurius Aulicus" was devoted to the court, then at Oxford. But he was the fertile parent of numerous political pamphlets, which appear to abound in banter, wit, and satire. Prompt to seize on every temporary circumstance, he had equal facility in execution. His "Paul's Church-yard" is a bantering pamphlet, containing fictitious titles of books and acts of parliament, reflecting on the mad reformers ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... the merry banter faded from the Virile Benedict's brown eyes, and was replaced by the commanding look of one who has taken a brilliant degree in all ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... personages sings to the company. Sometimes it is a dance song, as for example the "Io son si vaga della mia bellezza." To this all the others spontaneously dance while singing the refrain in chorus. Another time the queen of the day, Emilia, invites Dioneo to sing a canzona. There is much pretty banter, while Dioneo teases the women by making false starts at several then familiar songs. In another place Dioneo with lute and Fiametta with viol play a dance. Again one sings while Dioneo accompanies ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... aid be such as thine To stir my brain a bit. When 'round this hearth of mine Friends sit and banter wit, She'll shape a well-turned phrase, ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... better to cancel the preceding paragraphs. Is not any savor of banter out of place in the reception we are bound to accord to an alleged solution of the unthinkable problem which underlies creation and man's position therein? If the impulse which first controlled us ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... of parodies, which combine the mocking spirit with clever imitations of the style and affectations of familiar poets. They are witty; they are humorous; they are good-natured; and they are artistic and extraordinarily clever. His satirical banter shown in these verses—most of which are real poems as well as parodies—has been classed as "refined common-sense," and "the exuberant playfulness of a powerful mind and tender and manly nature." It contains also independent literary skits and comiques which ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... his aunt, followed his movements with her small blinking eyes, timidly uneasy, but yet visibly conscious all the time that she had done nothing that any reasonable man could rationally complain of; while in the manner towards him of his widowed cousin Mrs. Burgoyne, in the few words of banter or remonstrance that she threw him on the subject of his aunt's expected visitor, there was an indulgence, a deference even, that his ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... sparring with Patteson far more than in jesting with y^e king, whom he alwaies looks on as a lion that may, any minute, fall on him and rend him. Whereas, with 'tother, he ungirds his mind. Their banter commonly exceeds not plesantrie, but Patteson is ne'er without an answer, and although, maybe, each amuses himselfe now and then with thinking, "I'll put him up with such a question," yet, once begun, the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... striving for what he knows to be right, and ready to maintain it against all odds, especially of such enemies as banter or ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... Under all this banter Serviss perceived the pulse of an interest which laid hold on the most secret hopes and fears of the youngest and shook the eldest with an elemental dread and longing. It was as if the flood-gates of a sea of doubt and wonder had been turned in upon a dozen minds hitherto as well kept as lawns. ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
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