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More "Droll" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... you don't, for I am sure I could not say. I respect them both immensely. I have from boyhood," he added, with a droll look. ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... a candidate for the governorship, and among the more mercenary class of politicians smiling often becomes a habit for the sake of popularity. Hawthorne might have added something to the judge's personale by representing him with a droll wit, like James Fiske, Jr., or some others that we have known, and he might have exposed more of his internal reflections; but he serves as a fair example of the hard, grasping, hypocritical type of Yankee. We see only one side ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... case to the smiling brother of our guild who may chance to read it at some remote future day. The physician of whom I now write was one who already dreaded bleeding, thought less of medicines than his fellows, and was, in fact, exceptionally acute. He did some droll things for the sick prelate, and had reasons yet more droll for what he did, but his practice was, as may happen on the whole, wiser than his reasons for its use. His patient was a man once bulky, but now thin, overworked, worried, ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell
... grievance against one of the younger clerks. She could maintain an ugly silence until goaded into speech, but, once launched, few of her juniors escaped humiliation. Ordinarily, however, Miss Thornton was an extremely agreeable woman, shrewd, kindly, sympathetic, and very droll in her passing comments on men and events. She was in her early thirties, handsome, and a not quite natural blonde, her mouth sophisticated, her eyes set in circles of a leaden pallor. An assertive, masterful little woman, born and ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... of his droll playfulness; she laughed with him, and taking his arm, walked up and down the porch. They talked of many things—of Louise's persistent stubbornness, and of a growing change in the conduct of Tom—his abstraction ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... there will be between August and December; a jolly, buxom, wanton, wishful, plethoric female of thirty odd, to an infirm, decrepit, consumptive, gouty, rheumatic, asthmatic, phlegmatic mortal of near seventy; ha, ha. Exquisitely droll and humourous, upon my erudition. It puts me in mind of a hot bed in a hard winter, surrounded with ice, and made verdant and flourishing ...
— The Politician Out-Witted • Samuel Low
... had a very nice time, and went away well pleased; but they told their mamma that the Evans children were very droll. ...
— Five Happy Weeks • Margaret E. Sangster
... droll—and ludicrous, when you come to think of it? First, Sunnysides' punch in my stomach. And now, with my head cut open by a stone, and a broken leg, and two bullet-wounds—I've still got a splendid appetite. I ought to ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... and his features gave the idea of a man in the act of straining himself. In consequence, one of the city wits, upon the emperor's desiring him "to say something droll respecting himself," facetiously answered, "I will, when you have done relieving your bowels." [767] He enjoyed a good state of health, though he used no other means to preserve it, than repeated friction, as much (459) as he could bear, on his neck and other parts of his body, in ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... It is worth coming a thousand miles by stage coach and flatboat, to meet so droll an adventure with such a nondescript amphibian. He has a prodigious gift of gab, plain and ornamental. Did you take note of his metaphors? 'Rose of Sharon' is good.—By the way, we can't be far from the Bower of Bliss. We must tie up our Argo there as ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... we may have luxuries." "For the present," said one, "we have duties to do: we must support our widows, our orphans, our old people who can no longer produce. No man is allowed to want here amongst us; we all work for the helpless." It was a droll illustration of their devotion to the useful, to find in the borders of the garden, where flowers had been planted, these flowers alternating with lettuce, radishes, and ...
— The Communistic Societies of the United States • Charles Nordhoff
... didn't think we free-born Yankees—descendants of the Puritan Fathers—were going to claim relationship with any of those effete European aristocracies, did you?" with a droll look ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... other rolling about on the pine-needles, as they related their experiences boy-fashion. Ben's were the most exciting, but Thorny's were not without interest, for he had lived abroad for several years, and could tell all sorts of droll stories of the countries ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... the best German stars to St. Petersburg. And yet all this is useless, and the Russian theater is not raised above the dignity of a workshop. Only the comic side of the national character, a burlesque and droll simplicity, is admirably represented by actors whose skill and the scope of whose talents may he reckoned equal to the Germans in the same line. But in the higher walks of the drama they are worthless. The people have neither cultivation nor sentiment for serious works, while ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 8 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 19, 1850 • Various
... Pierre, awakened by Miraut's loud barking, had risen and joined his master at the door. As soon as he was informed of what had occurred, he lighted a lantern, and with the baron set forth, under the guidance of the droll old actor, to find and rescue the chariot in distress. When they reached it Leander and Matamore were tugging vainly at the wheels, while his majesty, the king, pricked up the weary oxen with the point of ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... and childishness, so comic withal in its contrast with the rough hair, round eyes, and long nose of the creature, that as I watched him an involuntary laugh escaped me. "Certainly," I said to him, "you are a droll dog. One might do a good deal with you in a traveling caravan!" As the evening wore on he became more tranquil. Perhaps he began to have confidence in me and to believe that I should restore him to his owner. At any rate, ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... poetry flourished in Scotland. The poetical chroniclers Barbour, Henry the Minstrel, and Wyntoun, are familiar names, as are likewise the poets Henryson, Dunbar, Gavin Douglas, and Sir David Lyndsay. But the authors of the songs of the people have been forgotten. In a droll poem entitled "Cockelby's Sow," ascribed to the reign of James I., is enumerated a considerable catalogue of contemporary lyrics. In the prologue to Gavin Douglas' translation of the AEneid of Virgil, written not later than 1513, and in the celebrated "Complaynt of Scotland," ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... course, was great fun for our frolicsome Norman, always ready for a joke or a good story; and although Douglas had not taken unalloyed pleasure in the events of the evening, he, too, could see the droll side of them now that they were over. They were rehearsed with great glee at the breakfast-table the next morning; and it occurred to me that here, if he chose to use it, was the opportunity for Jim to revenge himself for some of the sneers cast upon him by Theodore Yorke. I was wicked enough, ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... them, sir—have read them with great pleasure," said Beulah, smiling at his droll manner ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... Toombs was not solely a raconteur. He did not draw upon his memory for his wit. The cream of his conversation was his bold and original comment. His wit flashed all along the line. His speech at times was droll and full of quaint provincialisms. He treated subjects spontaneously, in a style all his own. Strangers, who sat near him in a railroad car, have been enchanted by his sage and spirited conversation, as his leonine features lighted up, and his irresistible smile and kindly eye forced good-humor, ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... not too good for her. James assists his father but prefers the joiner's business; Hannah rather lusty, does a good deal in the house and also assists Ann; Martha the youngest, her spine injured in her youth, a very sly little person and says very droll things. Noah often affected when talking of old friends in England; related some grievances of the family not treating him with respect, particularly his two sons. The daughters too fond of visiting and dressing. This evening a neighbour's dog catches ...
— A Journey to America in 1834 • Robert Heywood
... to be but two sisters left at home, the daring mind of Bella on the next of these occasions scaled the height of wondering with droll vexation, "what on earth Pa ever could have seen in Ma, to induce him to make such a little fool of himself as to ask her to ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... was excellent, as Mrs. Layton's always were, and there was a great deal of jollity as it progressed. Larry was very droll and kept the boys in roars of laughter as he told of some of the funny incidents in his experience, and Tim was not ...
— The Radio Boys at the Sending Station - Making Good in the Wireless Room • Allen Chapman
... played at paper games for nearly two hours that evening, to the extreme delight of Gillian, Mysie, and Harry, to say nothing of their mother and aunts, who played with all their might, even Aunt Adeline lighting up into droll, quiet humour. Only Dolores was first bewildered, then believed herself affronted, and soon gave up altogether, wondering that grown-up people ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... displaying the voice, airs and songs of an exquisite Leander.. . I really believe that, at the last meeting, he sung alone in this manner three quarters of an hour at different times, the assembly repeating the last line of the verse."—"How odd!" exclaims a common woman alongside of Morellet, "how droll, passing all their time here, singing in that fashion! Is that what they come here for?"—Not alone for that: after the circus-parade is over, the ordinary haranguers, and especially the hair-dresser, come and propose measures for murder "in infuriate ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... words, were to him, of course, the instrument of conquest. But the search for the fit and shining word for his mark did not become research. In a droll letter, about how he put simpler English into the Department of the Interior, he tells of finding a letter written by one of the lawyers of the Department to an Indian about his title to land, that was "so involved and elaborately ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... to be the case. The laird was what his country neighbours called "a droll, careless chap", with a very limited proportion of the fear of God in his heart, and very nearly as little of the fear of man. The laird had not intentionally wronged or offended either of the parties, and ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... was still boiling. "Ye maun drink our welcome hame," said he to the elders; "it would nae otherwise be canny. But I'm sorry Mr. Craig has nae come." At these words the door opened, and the absent elder entered, with a long face and a deep sigh. "Ha!" cried Mr. Daff, "this is very droll. Speak of the Evil One, and he'll appear";—which words dinted on the heart of Mr. Craig, who thought his marriage in December had been the subject of their discourse. The Doctor, however, went up and shook him ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... any other man of his time: therefore he probably did more to hold back the science of meteorology than did any other man of his time. In Nature, 41-135, Mr. Symons says that Prof. Schwedoff's ideas are "very droll." ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... enforcing and restating obvious points till the reader feels as if his own intelligence were somewhat underrated. He is over-conscientious in giving us full measure, and once profoundly absorbed in the sound of his own voice, he knows not when to stop. If he feel himself flagging, he has a droll way of keeping the floor, as it were, by asking himself a series of questions sometimes not needing, and often incapable of answer. There are three stanzas of such near the close of the First Part of Peter Bell, where ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... half a dollar a peck, and his quinces ninepence apiece. He had a greenhouse one quarter of a mile long, and kept a fire in it all the year round, at the suggestion of a rascally gardener, whose brother kept a wood and coal yard. We could tell some droll stories about Tubbs's gardening, if they were to the purpose. We will mention, however, that when he went into the vegetable business he was innocent as a lamb, and verdant as one of his own green peapods, and of course he made some curious mistakes. He was not aware that the infant bean, like ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... His friends persuaded him to cover his lecture circuit of two years before, telling the story of his travels. This he did with considerable profit, being everywhere received with great honors. He ended this tour with a second lecture in San Francisco, announced in a droll and characteristic fashion which delighted his Pacific admirers, and insured him a crowded house.—[See Mark Twain: A Biography, chap ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the best Recipe that was ever given for a married Couple to live in Peace: Though John and his Wife frequently attempted to quarrel afterwards, they never could get their Passions to any considerable Height, for there was something so droll in thus carrying on the Dispute, that before they got to the End of the Argument, they saw the Absurdity of it, ...
— Goody Two-Shoes - A Facsimile Reproduction Of The Edition Of 1766 • Anonymous
... Grave!—thou spoil'st the dance of youthful blood, Strik'st out the dimple from the cheek of mirth, And every smirking feature from the face; Branding our laughter with the name of madness. Where are the jesters now? the men of health Complexionally pleasant? Where the droll, Whose every look and gesture was a joke To clapping theatres and shouting crowds, And made even thick-lipp'd musing melancholy To gather up her face into a smile 120 Before she was aware? Ah! sullen now, And dumb as the ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... good business man?" said Dinney, grinning from ear to ear. "I should say! What's your business, Miss?" And having said this, he doubled up with droll laughter. ...
— Gloria and Treeless Street • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... unnecessary to see or hear more. I had already descried what a peaceful family life—upright, pure, and devoted—my friend Meurtrier hid under his chimerical gasconades. But the spectacle with which chance had favored me was at once so droll and so touching that I could not resist the temptation to watch for some moments longer. That indiscretion sufficed to show me the ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... tugged too strongly at his easy inclination, drawing him away to idle when he should have toiled. What was the use of freedom, asked an inward voice, if one might not rest when one would? If he might not stop midway the furrow to listen and laugh at a droll story or tell one? If he might not go a-fishing when all the forces of nature invited and the jay-bird called from the tree and gave forth saucy banter like the fiery, blue ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... to be a "comedian." No one ever saw him in a temper, or heard him speak a sharp word. He had a droll, woebegone face that never smiled, but a face everybody—from the mayor to the poorest mill hand—loved and respected. How often Benson had come in from school, ill-tempered and sour-visaged at something ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... at her with a droll sort of awakening. It was, indeed, a startling anomaly that this woman of the tribe without should be standing there beside him as his wife, if his sentiments were as he had said. In their travels together she had ranged so unerringly at his level in ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... very well," replied the old lady, "and are certainly a droll and curious young man. I should not care to affirm that you were sane, for I have never found any one entirely so besides myself; but at least the nature of your madness entertains me, and I will reward you with some description ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... has been 'plucked,' as the gentlemen call it, or 'ploughed,' does your brother say? University slang is very droll. He has not taken his degree, I suppose, and they want him to work before going up again. I am sorry for your father, too, for I don't think it will be very easy to get anything into Clarence Copperhead's mind. But there ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... likeness of face? As I strolled home, I could tell which of the couples of men walking before me were brothers by the similar bending of the knee and the similar gait, even when their features were quite unlike. There was one man whose fashion of walking was really very droll; his right knee gave a sort of preliminary shake as if it was uncertain which way the foot wanted to go. For the life of me I could not help imitating him; and then I wondered what his face would be like if he were suddenly to turn ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... dull and dry, Embellished with, he said, and so said I. At ev'ry interview their route the same, The repetition makes attention lame, We bustle up with unsuccessful speed, And in the saddest part cry—droll indeed! The path of narrative with care pursue, Still making probability your clue, On all the vestiges of truth attend, And let them guide you to a decent end. Of all ambitions man may entertain, The worst that can invade a sickly brain, Is that which angles hourly for surprize, And baits ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... nothing. It will buy an apple apiece. Come on! Let's go down to old Granger's. I saw some apples there big as your head; and bigger, too," said Noah, with a droll wink. ...
— The Errand Boy • Horatio Alger
... in the Firth. These events occurred within the last few years, and are sufficiently notorious. They form a triad out of dozens of a similar kind, in some of which there are features so odd, so strangely droll, that indignation against the offence is dispelled by an ...
— Romano Lavo-Lil - Title: Romany Dictionary - Title: Gypsy Dictionary • George Borrow
... we had a droll lad, whose humour developed itself in mispronunciation. In my nonage I considered that unique. Now I know it is a rather common order of quaintness. Hugh used to call Sierra Leone, "Sarah Alone;" Cambodia, "Gamboge;" Stromboli, "Storm-boiler;" and Gibraltar, "Gabriel ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... a T. Cassy could jump and run to her heart's content. Jump and run she did, for at recess Bessie drew her into the midst of the other girls, and such a game of "I spy" Cassy had never imagined. Nobody said a word about her droll gown. "She is my friend," Bessie had announced, ...
— Harper's Young People, September 7, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... but her back grew stiff, something like Mrs. Ridge's; and when she saw Uncle Stanley in the outer office a few minutes later and he smiled without looking at her—smiled and shook his head to himself as though he were thinking of something droll—Mary went back to her room in a hurry, and stayed there until she ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston
... bought the St. Ulric doll at a booth under the stone archway of one of the streets of Botzen. He could not carry away with him the beautiful Austrian Tyrol, except as pictures in his own mind, and therefore he picked up the droll and ugly little St. ...
— Harper's Young People, June 8, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... starvation. They grew angry with Columbus, and threatened to take his life if he did not command the ships to be turned back toward Spain, but his patience did not give out, nor was his faith one whit the less. He cheered the hearts of the men as best he could, often telling them droll, funny stories to distract their thoughts from the terrible dread which now filled ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... poem is written in a droll, satirical strain, and shows a great familiarity with the topics of ancient and modern literature. The rest of the volume consists of translations from Anacreon, Horace, and other Greek and Latin poets, and many original ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... BILLINGS") (1818-1885).—Humorist, b. in Massachusetts. After working on steam-boats and farming, he became an auctioneer, and settled at Poughkeepsie. Stripped of the fantastic spelling by which he first succeeded in catching the public attention, the shrewd and droll maxims of his Farmers' Allminax have something in common with Franklin's Poor Richard. Other books with the same features are Josh Billings' Sayings, Everybody's Friend, Josh Billings' ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... till the tears rolled down her face at the droll effect of these tenderly sentimental verses in Catherine's mouth, but Hazard took it quite seriously and was so much delighted with Catherine's recitation that he insisted on her repeating it to Wharton, who took it even more seriously ...
— Esther • Henry Adams
... Dr. Scarborough, Dr. Quarterman, and Dr. Clerke, Physicians, Mr. Daray, and Mr. Fox (both very fine gentlemen), the King's servants, where we have brave discourse. Walking upon the decks, were persons of honor all the afternoon, among others, Thomas Killigrew (a merry droll, but a gentleman of great esteem with the King), who ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... Jone'," he continued, "you make a so droll sermon ad the bull-ring. Ha! ha! I swear I thing you can make money to preach thad sermon many time ad the theatre St. Philippe. Hah! you is the moz brave dat I never see, mais ad the same time the moz rilligious man. Where I'm goin' to fin' one ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... a pawn-shop and bought a pistol. He was in a fever to get back to his lodgings. He found Minetti waiting for him. He tried to conceal the pistol, but he knew that Minetti had seen it. Minetti was as pleasant as one could imagine. He told the most droll stories of his life in London. It appeared that he had lived there in a hotbed of exiled radicals; but he, himself, seemed to have no convictions. Everything he described was touched with a certain ironic humor. When he rose to go he ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... very stupid, and there are many stories as to how they have been outwitted. One of them is very droll. A farmer ploughed a hill-side field. Out came a Troll and said, "What do you mean by ploughing up the roof of my house?" Then the farmer, being frightened, begged his pardon, but said it was a pity such a fine piece of land should lie idle. The Troll agreed to this, ...
— Fairy Tales; Their Origin and Meaning • John Thackray Bunce
... at last, and give us this incomparable man for our master on the harpsichord. They hesitated, and made inquiries: they indeed heard nothing bad of the teacher, but, at the same time, nothing particularly good. Meanwhile, I had informed my sister of all the droll names: we could hardly wait for the lesson, and succeeded in having the ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... buffalo carts; "Babul the thief," the natives called this acacia. Higher up a torch-wood tree gleamed as if sprayed with gold, its limbs, lean and bare of foliage, holding at their extremities in wisp-like fingers bright, yellow, solitary blooms. From a tendu tree a pair of droll little brown monkeys chattered and grimaced ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... l'Arte Christiana, vol. iii, pp. 70 et seq. For a good discussion of Cosmas's ideas, see Santarem, Hist. de la Cosmographie, vol. ii, pp. 8 et seq., and for a very thorough discussion of its details, Kretschmer, as above. For still another theory, very droll, and thought out on similar principles, see Mungo Park, cited in De Morgan, Paradoxes, p. 309. For Cosmas's joyful summing up, see Montfaucon, Collectio Nova Patrum, vol. ii, p. 255. For the curious survival in ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... country was to be inhabited entirely by children, and he was to be the king. His idea of the place was so distinct that a friend had to draw him a map of the cities in it, to which he gave names, and his friends were completely fascinated to hear him talk of his droll conceits, when he was not holding them spell-bound by the magic of ...
— Ten Boys from History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... of the captains were more accomplished than the stolid persons concerning whom so many droll legends still linger; but the fact remains, that valuable property and valuable lives were entrusted to men who wrought solely by rule of thumb, and that the trust was, on the whole, very wisely bestowed. With clumsy old craft that sailed in heavy weather as though they ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... opinions as to the character and duties devolving on members of Parliament was very embarrassing even to themselves, and the vivacity with which they delivered orations to each other on the merits or demerits of members was exquisitely droll. The rivalry between Fox and Pitt was a subject that involved them in vehement chaos, just as the rivalry between Disraeli and Gladstone did in later years. They had some mystified idea that those political gentlemen were ever thirsting for each others' blood. They ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... attending on his vicar, who is about to perform a wedding service and make two people for ever happy. He christens the two officials "the joiners, no rough mechanics, but a portly full-blown vicar with his clerk, both rubicund, a peony paged by a pink. It made me smile to observe the droll clerical turn of the clerk's beaver, scrubbed into that fashion by his coat ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... And droll it was to Colombo to think what might possibly happen were King Ferdinand to take his dream seriously or were the King perhaps to be informed as to the true meaning of ...
— A Parody Outline of History • Donald Ogden Stewart
... table "Noctes Ambrosianae" or the London "Punch." His chair is wide, so that he can easily roll off on the floor when he wants a good time at laughing. His inkstand is a monkey, with the variations. His study-cap would upset a judge's risibilities. Scrap books with droll caricatures and facetiae. An odd stove, exciting your wonder as to where the coal is put in or the poker thrust for a shaking. All the works of Douglass Jerrold, and Sydney Smith, and Sterne, the scalawag ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... so dissatisfied," said Mr. Payton, with so droll an attempt to look gloomy that Lucile then and there threw her arms about his neck and gave him an ecstatic kiss, crying joyfully, "Oh, you are the most wonderful father ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... asked me just now why I came into the world. I told her I did not know, and the idea had never before occurred to me: and she said, 'Well, then, it is high time it did, and some to spare!' Do all the people in Cumberland ask you such droll questions?" ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... he tossed his head coquettishly, and trotting away a few steps, turned and looked at her with a droll air. Colina called him in dulcet tones, and ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... personages in their respective parties. The two were antipathetic. Their dispositions were as wide asunder as the poles. Brown was serious, bold, and masterful. Macdonald concealed unrivalled powers in statecraft and in the leadership of men behind a droll humour and convivial habits. From the first they had been political antagonists. But the differences were more than political. Neither liked nor trusted the other. Brown bore a grudge for past attacks reflecting upon his integrity, while Macdonald, despite his experience in the ...
— The Fathers of Confederation - A Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion • A. H. U. Colquhoun
... chorus, was by common consent pronounced the star of the company, her interpolated reflections being so droll and to the point that even the lingering victims found ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... I am not alone. I have my brother with me. He adores music, and was as fascinated with your Siebel as myself. May I present him?' Then she will say, 'Oh, yes, by all means;' and I shall introduce you. Then you can make love to her. That will be droll. Fanny, I'll tell you every ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... the whole manner of treating it was sportive and jocular. The unlimited dominion of mirth and fun manifests itself even in this, that the dramatic form itself is not seriously adhered to, and that its laws are often suspended; just as in a droll disguise the masquerader sometimes ventures to lay aside the mask. The practice of throwing out allusions and hints to the pit is retained even in the comedy of the present day, and is often found to be attended with great success; although unconditionally reprobated ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... drooping against her companion's shoulder, the humble old lay-brother placed the bowl of soup he had brought for the beggar in Noemi's hands, and hastened away in search of the chair and the water. Thanks partly to the droll spectacle the astonished Noemi presented, as she stood holding the bowl of soup, partly to the rest—the water, the sight of the ancient cloister sleeping so peacefully, and the reassertion of her own will—a few minutes sufficed to restore Jeanne sufficiently. Fra Antonio went to call the ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... to go in, the Doctor looked down the path to where the Divorcee was still standing. After a moment's hesitation he took her lace scarf from the back of her chair, and strolled after her. The Sculptor shrugged his shoulders with such a droll expression that we all had to smile. Then ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... settlement—where often there was nothing to sell; where a birth or marriage was published sooner than a paragraph could be printed; where a taste for general literature had no existence, and politics were excluded. The chief contents were droll anecdotes and odd exploits. The second number contains a rather pompous account of Governor Macquarie's inauguration at Sydney. The next issue, beside a government order or two, describes the feat of Barclay, the pedestrian—a thousand miles in a thousand hours; the wonderful longevity ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... perceptibly to the right or left, but without disquieting the eye, like the tower of Asinelli at Bologna, or the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Seen two or three miles away, these towers, drunk and staggering, with their pointed caps that seem to nod at the horizon, present a droll and hilarious silhouette. ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume V (of X) • Various
... wings, And with every turn of gimlet and screw Turning and screwing his mouth round, too, Till his nose seemed bent To catch the scent, Around some corner, of new-baked pies, And his wrinkled cheeks and his squinting eyes Grew puckered into a queer grimace, That made him look very droll in the face, And also very wise. And wise he must have been, to do more Than ever a genius did before, Excepting Daedalus, of yore, And his son Icarus, who wore Upon their backs Those wings of wax He had read of in the old almanacs. Darius ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... girls. In front of a candy-counter, where there was a soda fountain, they saw the red hat again. Vandover looked her squarely in the face and laughed a little. When he had passed he looked back; the girl caught his eye and turned away with a droll smile. Vandover paused, grinning, and raising his hat; "I guess that's ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... a caution. Be very careful how you tell an author he is DROLL. Ten to one he will hate you; and if he does, be sure he can do you a mischief, and very probably will. Say you CRIED over his romance or his verses, and he will love you and send you a copy. You can laugh over that as ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... thy letter, and the new plays thou sentest me down, and that droll new paper, the "Spectator:" it is a pretty shallow thing enough,—though it is not so racy as Rochester or little Sid would have made it; but I thank thee for it, because it shows thou wast not angry with thine old uncle for ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... arts, and especially for the belles-lettres, he entertained a profound contempt. With this he had been inspired by Casimir Perier, whose pert little query "A quoi un poete est il bon?" he was in the habit of quoting, with a very droll pronunciation, as the ne plus ultra of logical wit. Thus my own inkling for the Muses had excited his entire displeasure. He assured me one day, when I asked him for a new copy of Horace, that the translation of "Poeta nascitur non fit" was "a nasty poet for nothing fit"—a remark which I took ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... think wrongly is, first of all, so absurd. He proves it by putting wrong thinking on the stage, where you see it for yourself in action, and laugh immoderately. Perhaps you had never thought how droll wrong thinking or no thinking was before; and while you laugh with Shaw at your side-splitting discovery, the serious message glides in unostentatiously—wrong thinking is not merely laughable; it is also dangerous, and very uncomfortable. And so the showman has done his work, the ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... at the droll sight, he knew the wayfarer to be a certain rich corn engrosser of Worksop, who more than once had bought all the grain in the countryside and held it till it reached even famine prices, thus making much money from the needs of poor people, and for this he was hated far and near by everyone ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... the manner of a triumphal arch. The interior of the building presented, save for its central erection, the aspect of a modern opera-house. Around the entire wall was a circle of boxes, divided by wainscoting, and each decorated with a "droll painting" and hung with a candle-lamp. Above these was another tier of boxes, similarly fitted, each of them, fifty-two in number, having accommodation for seven or eight persons. Higher up was a circle of sixty windows. Although the building itself was constructed of wood, it could boast of a ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... making a negative gesture which was not a little droll, and proved to an observer that in his youth the sailor had been witty and loving and beloved. Perhaps his fossil life at Guerande hid many memories. When he stood, solemnly planted on his two heron-legs in the sunshine on the mall, gazing at ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... a Fancy Ball's a strange affair, Made up of silks and leathers, Light heads, light heels, false hearts, false hair, Pins, paint, and ostrich feathers: The dullest Duke in all the town, To-night may shine a droll one— And rakes, who have not half-a-crown, Look royal with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 345, December 6, 1828 • Various
... longer the case, as with Plautus, that everything needs to take place on the street, whether belonging to it or not. Plautus ties and unties the dramatic knot carelessly and loosely, but his plot is droll and often striking; Terence, far less effective, keeps everywhere account of probability, not unfrequently at the cost of suspense, and wages emphatic war against the certainly somewhat flat and insipid standing ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... every one of them, and had known them from childhood; and somehow they were all transformed from commonplace, and dignified into a comedy which was at once sympathetic and exquisitely droll. His narrow world had widened; his neighbours had sprung alive. His heart was tickled with a genial laughter, and his mirth tasted sweet to him, like a mellow apple. He could have hugged the crowd for ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... instead of the lovely red things they had expected, and were by no means consoled when their father told them that it would be three or four years before they gained their beautiful colour. However they became great pets, and were very droll, with their long legs, and slender necks, and great curved bills. They became extremely tame, and would, after a time, follow the girls about, and stalk up to the house of their own accord to be fed, their food always being placed in water, as they never feed by picking ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty
... pea?" asked the lad. Everybody laughed at his droll request; and an old woman, who was selling porridge in the crowd, handed him the vegetable which he demanded. It was a dry and yellow pea. Otto, stepping up to the target, caused Squintoff to extract his arrow from the bull's-eye, and placed in the orifice made by the steel point of ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the Quartier was at the same time on a footing of intimacy in the exclusive home of those so charming Hemingways, who were, one knew, of the grand monde. Was it true that the American painter was very wealthy? Yes? Ah, ciel! That droll young man was then amusing himself by living in the Quartier? But what an original! His family approved? He was an orphan? With no relations save that old uncle whose heir he was? Ah, mon Dieu! That touched one's heart! One ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... took me to the theatre. Oh, Phil, you ought to see a play, and the actors, all be-a-u-ti-fully dressed, and talking just like a party in a house, and dancing, and being funny, and some of it so sad as to make you cry, and some of it so droll that you had to laugh—just such a world as you read of in books and in poetry. I was so excited that I saw the stage all night and could hardly sleep." The girl paused and looked away to the river as if she saw it all again, and then added in a ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... you that time, I'm thinking! Oh, la-la! how it was droll to hear you all making your pleasantries upon me while I kept still—so still! I have never been so still but when I am up to mischief. If ye could have seen under the table, I was shaking like a jelly, but Esmeralda said, 'I'll pack ye back as quick as ye ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... with the description given by these Frenchmen of the mishaps of their ill-directed enterprise. Persistent as Chinese, resembling many others of the French nation in their ignorance of our country, language, or customs, they had passed through many droll blunders, which rendered their narrative ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... full of jokes, and if any one told a story which was at all verging on the marvellous, he was sure to tell another which would be still more incredible. He played the fiddle and sang to his own accompaniments, which were very droll, as he extracted very strange noises from his instrument; sometimes his bow would be on the wrong side of the bridge, sometimes down at the keys; besides which, he produced sounds by thumping the fiddle as well as by touching its strings as a guitar; indeed, he could imitate ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... presumptuous in me to do anything but separate from an undertaking upon which I could only have been a clog. We returned after a few days from a delightful tour, of which I have many pleasant, and some of them droll enough, recollections. We returned by Dulverton to Alfoxden. The 'Ancient Mariner' grew and grew till it became too important for our first object, which was limited to our expectation of five pounds; and ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... are uttered unintentionally than by premeditation. There is no such thing as being "droll to order." One evening a lady said to a small wit, "Come, Mr. ——, tell us a lively anecdote;" and the poor fellow was mute the rest of ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... about Gafferson, in that forlorn environment on the Belize road, and his success in making them laugh drew him on to other pictures of the droll side of life among the misfits of adventure. The ladies visibly dallied over their tea-cups to listen to him; the charm of having them all to himself, and of holding them in interested entertainment by his discourse—these ladies of supremely refined associations and position—seemed ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... heart,—it pleases you, eh! The man who calls himself by such a name as that ought to be a brave fellow, a veritable hero? Well, perhaps. But I know an Indian who is called Le Blanc; that means white. And a white man who is called Lenoir; that means black. It is very droll, this affair of the names. It is like ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... their ideas of the beauty of the human countenance from the casual glimpses thus afforded of our features, would it be possible for the most susceptible of them to fall in love with us? The idea was so droll that I was almost convulsed with laughter; but, not wishing to attract attention by laughing aloud at my own thoughts, I merely clung to the bulwarks and doubled myself up, trying to avoid the appearance of ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... and his friends the crowd; A huge neat's tongue he in his right hand held: His left was with a huge black pudding fill'd. With a grave look in this odd equipage, The clownish mimic traverses the stage: Why, how now, Andrew! cries his brother droll, To-day's conceit, methinks, is something dull: Come on, sir, to our worthy friends explain, What does your emblematic worship mean? Quoth Andrew; Honest English let us speak: Your emble—(what d' ye call 't) is heathen ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... that we live in a bad age, O tempora, O mores! as 'tis in the adage. My foot was but just set out from my cathedral, When into my hands comes a letter from the droll. I can't pray in quiet for you and your verses; But now let us hear what the Muse from your car says. Hum—excellent good—your anger was stirr'd; Well, punners and rhymers must have the last word. But let me advise you, when next I ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... moment with hind legs stretched out flat and fore paws planted between them, one of the cubs would approach and attempt some monkey play. A sound cuff on the ear invariably sent him whimpering back to his companion, who looked droll enough the while, sitting with his tongue out and his head wagging humorously as he watched the experiment. It was getting toward the time of year when she would mate again, and send them off into the world to shift for themselves. And this was ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... 'You don't understand!' says I, 'why it's French. I guess you didn't expect to hear such good French, did you, away down east here? But we speak it real well, and it's generally allowed we speak English, too, better than the British.' 'Oh,' says he, 'you one very droll Yankee, dat very good joke, Sare; you talk Indian and call it French.' 'But,' says I, 'Mister Mount shear; it is French, I vow; real merchantable, without wainy edge or shakes—all clear stuff; it will pass survey in any ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... quite possible that you will consider this information a lie. That will be quite droll. However, I am, most respected Herr Professor, ...
— The Leader • William Fitzgerald Jenkins (AKA Murray Leinster)
... and Maignan that he had not got any; but before I could answer that he must get some, La Trape thrust his may to the front, and producing a small piece from his pocket, proceeded with a droll air of extreme carefulness to treat the hand. The other knaves fell into the joke, and the Spaniard had no option but to submit; though his scowling face showed that he bore Maignan no good-will, and that but for my presence he might not have been so complaisant. La Trape was ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... meal-bag. However, it went down to his credit. One person, however, took a dark view of this innocent circumstance But then that hostile critic was Vespasian, a rival in matters of tint. He exploded in one of those droll rages darkies seem liable to: "Massa cunnel," said he, "what for dat yar niggar always prowling about the capn's door? What for he ask so many stupid questions? Dat ole fox arter no good: him heart so black as ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... the agreement between them that Mr. Bousefield was not to intermeddle. It had been Limbert's general prayer that we would during this period let him quite alone. His terror of my direct rays was a droll, dreadful force that always operated: he explained it by the fact that I understood him too well, expressed too much of his intention, saved him too little from himself. The less he was saved the more he didn't sell: I literally interpreted, ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... countenance seemed too pure to be of the earth as he continued to express his ideas of the better land and its denizens. As for Toddie, his tongue was going incessantly, although in a tone scarcely audible; but when I chanced to catch his expressions, they were so droll and fanciful, that I took him upon my lap that I might hear him more distinctly. I even detected myself in the act of examining the mental draft of my proposed letter to Helen, and of being ashamed of it. But neither Toddie's fancy nor Budge's spirituality caused me to forget ...
— Helen's Babies • John Habberton
... all this time had stood still at the door, he said, "James, my lad, set down the oats and come here; I am very glad to find that John's opinion of your character agrees so exactly with my own. John is a cautious man," he said, with a droll smile, "and it is not always easy to get his opinion about people, so I thought if I beat the bush on this side the birds would fly out, and I should learn what I wanted to know quickly; so now we will come to business. ...
— Black Beauty • Anna Sewell
... his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot; A bundle of toys he had flung on his back, And he looked like a peddler just opening his pack; His eyes, how they twinkled! his dimples, how merry! His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry; His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow, And the beard on his chin was as white as the snow; The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth, And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath; He had a broad face, ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... outlandish hat. It was of fur, flat at the top, flat as a pie tin, with the moth-eaten earlaps turned up at the sides and looking exactly like small furry ears. These, with the round steel spectacles which he wore—the only distinctive feature of his countenance—gave him an indescribably droll appearance. ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... good to him, I think, because of his sense of humor. He used to stop talking now and then and with a quizzical hopeless smile he would look about the hall. And we would all smile broadly back, enjoying to the full with him the droll farce of our presence there. "Go to it, Madge," someone would murmur. And the work of revealing the wonders of this material universe would limp quietly along. In examinations Madge gave no marks, at ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... us about it she laughed and said it explained some things in her which nothing else could excuse! Wasn't that funny!—oh, pshaw! it doesn't sound a bit funny as I tell it, but she said it in such a droll way! She was so full of fun and frolic that day! You can't conceive how full of them she is—sometimes; how soberly she can say the funniest things, and how funnily she can say the ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... the time when she and Ab found themselves outside their cave, unarmed, with a bear to be eaten through before they could get into their door, and Little Mok surprised his mother and Old Mok by an outburst of laughter at the tale. He had a glimmering of humor, and saw the droll side of the adventure, a view which had not occurred to Lightfoot, nor to Ab. The little lad, of the world, yet not in it, saw vaguely the surprises, lights and shades and contrasts of existence, and sometimes they made him laugh. The ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... long time since we have met with anything so charming, so refreshing, so droll. . . . Read this book once, and one wants to turn back and read it ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives
... his altered future, and the obligations and interests that lay before him; but he shrugged away from the subject, questioning her instead about the motley company at Violet Melrose's, and fitting a droll or malicious anecdote to each of ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... I was thinking of a tale my Uncle Cyril used to tell me as a child. An absurd little story, sir, though I confess that I have always found it droll. According to my Uncle Cyril, two men named Nicholls and Jackson set out to ride to Brighton on a tandem bicycle, and were so unfortunate as to come into collision with a brewer's van. And when the rescue party arrived on the scene of the accident, it was discovered that they had ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... smiling," repeated Madame Oge. "Though you stoop your head over your work, I see that you have some droll thought." ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... indeed, as little Rose seemed to think, for she laughed and cooed incessantly. The girls were enchanted with her, and voted her by acclamation an honorary member of the S.S.U.C. Her health was drunk in Apollinaris water with all the honors, and Rose returned thanks in a droll speech. The friends told each other their histories for the past three years; but it was curious how little, on the whole, most of them had to tell. Though, perhaps, that was because they did not tell all; for Alice Gibbons confided ...
— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge
... keep. This young couple, however, a little lighter headed, or a little deeper hearted than the most of us, whichever it may have been, and angry at the mocking laughter with which the air around them seemed filled, went down one stormy night together to the lake, and sobered droll Fate for an instant by turning her grim comedy into a somewhat ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... evening, saying 'he was all for the ladies!' He repeated whole scenes by heart. I declare I was astonished at him. Oh, you can't imagine how much he is pleased with the book; he 'could not get rid of the rogue,' he told me. But was it not droll," said she, "that I should recommend it to Dr. Burney? and tease him so innocently to ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... Cupid as a Link-Boy are companion pieces, painted from the same model,—a mischievous young street boy, whose simulated gravity is irresistibly droll. The artist's keen sense of humor is seen again in that most captivating little rogue, Puck. The saucy elf is perched on a mushroom, resting after a frolic, and apparently ...
— Child-life in Art • Estelle M. Hurll
... are. O! all the servants will lead merry lives here, now; we shall have singing and dancing in the little hall, for the Signor cannot hear us there—and droll stories—Ludovico's come, ma'am; yes, there is Ludovico come with them! You remember Ludovico, ma'am—a tall, handsome young man—Signor Cavigni's lacquey—who always wears his cloak with such a grace, thrown round his left arm, ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... the pies, for Mrs. Smith had not much to give, and her spirit was generous, though her pastry was not of the best. It looked very droll to see pies sitting about on the thresholds of closed doors, but the cakes were quite elegant, and filled up the corners of the towel handsomely, for the apron lay in the middle, with the oranges right and left, like ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... said, with the slightly foreign accent which lent an added charm to her words, "I cannot help thinking it rather droll that a man of your mind and rare penetration should have thought you had an ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... last, and we turned, with our last spark of courage, to the bedroom. We had improved the entrance, but it was still a kind of rope-walking; and it would have been droll to see us mounting, one after another, by candle-light, ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... eccentric way, said of him that he was "as brave as ten lions, each with two tails and two sets of teeth." Sir Charles rivalled Mr. Roebuck, the radical English commoner, in the scantiness of his commendations; his droll eulogy of Sir Hugh Gough will therefore be appreciated. On the 8th of February, Sir Harry Smith made his junction with the army of his chief, and was received in terms not more flattering than just from a general who never refused ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... form indeed, Mr. Grindon,—and find, for another interesting phenomenon in the violet, that it sometimes produces flowers without any petals! and in the pansy, that "the flowers turn towards the sun, and when many are open at once, present a droll appearance, looking like a number of faces all on the 'qui vive.'" But nothing of the difference between them, except something about 'stipules,' of which "it is important to observe that the leaves should be taken from the middle of the stem—those ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... afraid he was a sad deceiver, that Editor. He was a very clever fellow. What droll songs he used to sing! What a heap of play-tickets, diorama-tickets, concert-tickets, he used to give you! Did he touch your ...
— The Wolves and the Lamb • William Makepeace Thackeray
... looked droll enough, with your pale face and your shabby clothes. 'I want to be a soldier,' says you; 'I want ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... which you will keep to yourself and Lowell: you being Carlyle's personal friend as well as myself. Not that there is anything that should not be further divulged: but one must respect private Letters. Carlyle's proves a droll instance of even so shrewd a man wholly mistaking a man's character from his Letters: had now that Letter been two hundred years old! and no intelligent Friend to set C. right by ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... alienist, one acquainted with the difference between the eccentricities which frequently accompany greatness and the unconscious physical and psychical evidences of idiocy which so clearly agree with the antics of the chimpanzee or the droll Capuchin monkeys, might find in the performer to whom I refer a subject for some very interesting, not to say startling reflections. Few have ever been successful in inducing this pianist to talk upon any other ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... dances run in the most droll vein of true rural humor. The performers seem to be made for the dances, and the dances for the performers; so well assorted are the figures to the representation. Several eminent painters in the grotesque stile, Teniers especially, have ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... through the underwood, and seeing you through the leaves advancing with eager and rapid steps to the spot, conceals himself behind the entrance, and as you are just on the point of entering the hut, your foot just on the step, the droll sportsman puts his ugly head out of the window, as a yellow tortoise would his out of his shell, asking you, in most polite terms, what o'clock it is; or if it should chance to be raining a deluge ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... so did he; they were used to exchange these passages in an admirably artistic masquerade, but it was always a little droll to each of them to see the other wear the domino of sentiment, and neither had much credence in ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... at once there comes a noisy chattering in a Teutonic tongue—and shouts and laughs! . . . How is it possible, so near to the great dead? . . . And there enters a group of tourists, dressed more or less in the approved "smart" style. A guide, with a droll countenance, recites to them the beauties of the place, bellowing at the top of his voice like a showman at a fair. And one of the travellers, stumbling in the sandals which are too large for her small feet, ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... "I hope this Mr. —-, with the unpronounceable name, will disgust them with his eloquence; for B—- writes me word, in his droll way, that he is a coarse, vulgar fellow, and lacks the dignity of a bear. Oh! I am certain they will return quite sickened with the Canadian project." Thus I laid the flattering unction to my soul, little dreaming that I and mine should share ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... Herodotus retails to us, as sober historical facts, the remedy employed by this unhistorical Pheron in order to recover his sight; the adventures of Paris and Helen at the court of Proteus,* and the droll tricks played by a thief at the expense of the ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... never thought of looking after. When his letters come back in print I find lots in them that seems new to me, although I saw it all at the time. But you don't see the fun in his letters to the papers. The way he adapts himself to all circumstances comes from long travel; but it is droll. He makes a salaam to the defunct kings, a neat bow to the Sudras, and a friendly wink at the Howadji, in a way that puts him cheek-by-jowl with them in a jiffy. He beats me all out in his positive sympathy with these ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr
... said the droll, "we have no time to lose or to stand on the ceremony of fashionable etiquette. Here to-day, gone to-morrow—is the motto of Marseilles! Hola! Messieurs, shall we not make the most of new acquaintances when they ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... and his private letters sparkled like his books and articles. Original expressions, just similitudes, striking phrases, quaint or droll ideas welled in his mind without the slightest effort. He was always at his best. I have never met a man who talked so well, so easily. His wit was the genuine article—absolutely natural ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... wu nooch mir lebt, Ich schreib eich noch des Schtick: Ich warn eich, droll eich, gebt doch Acht, Un memmt uf immer gut enacht, ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas
... well sure-LY, if that arn't droll. It may be some use to keep the primins dry, I reckon; but I can't see the good of keepin' the fowlin' pieces warm. Have you met any game yet, officers. I expect as how I can pint you out a purty spry place ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... abusive epithets nobody could surpass him. One of his droll comic sentences was often worth a speech of an hour in putting down an opponent, or in gaining supporters to his side. At Nisi Prius, he turned his mingled talent for abuse and drollery to great effect. He covered a witness with ridicule, or made a cause so ludicrous, that the ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... earnest; he would know better some day, that was all; but she had no idea of any deeply-laid plan against their happiness. She felt as though some one had struck her hard; she had received a blow that set all her nerves tingling. It was very funny, what he said; it was so droll that it almost made her laugh; and yet her eyes smarted, and ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... babies are brought forth as the residue of assimilation; we are to observe, however, still other interrelations that will be encountered later. A series of mythological parallels may be cited. I shall rest satisfied with referring to the droll story, "Der Dumme Hans." Stupid Jack loads manure (faeces, sewage) into a cart and goes with it to a manor; there he tells them he comes from the Moorish land (from the country of the blacks) and carries ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... shortest, the military mass. Although in Madrid he had spoken ill of the religious orders, so as not to be out of harmony with his surroundings, considering them anachronisms, and had hurled curses against the Inquisition, while relating this or that lurid or droll story wherein the habits danced, or rather friars without habits, yet in speaking of the Philippines, which should be ruled by special laws, he would cough, look wise, and again extend his hand downwards to that ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... BURLESQUES.—Then succeeded the precieux and the burlesques, who resembled each other, the precieux seeking wit and believing that all literary art consisted in saying it did not matter what in a dainty and unexpected fashion; the burlesques also sought wit but on a lower plane, desiring to be "droll," buffoons, prone to cock-and-bull stories or crude pranks in thought, style, and parody. Voiture is the most brilliant representative of the preieux and Scarron the most prominent of ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... leaped nimbly from log to log and disappeared under the wood-pile. The children went down to see what he would do. They were so astonished at his droll appearance ...
— Little Mr. Thimblefinger and His Queer Country • Joel Chandler Harris
... rather a curious circumstance, but by no means uncommon, that the vegetation on such isolated summits in Australia, is peculiar and different from that of the country around them. Trees of a very droll form chiefly drew my attention here. The trunk bulged out in the middle like a barrel, to nearly twice the diameter at the ground, or of that at the first springing of the branches above. These were small in proportion to their great girth, and the whole tree looked very odd. ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell
... towards it in sign of abhorrence, yet, perhaps, the very same persons would give some rough token of respect to Lieutenant Atkinson if they met him in High Street. Touching their hats was an unknown gesture in those parts, but they would move their heads in a droll, familiar kind of way, neither a wag nor a nod, but meant all the same to imply friendly regard. The ship-owners, too, invited him to an occasional dinner or supper, all the time looking forward to the chances of his turning out ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell
... you know," said Elinor, with a laugh, "to a little country mouse like me that has never seen anything. There is always something going on, and their slang way of speaking is certainly very amusing if it is not at all dignified, and they have such droll ways of looking at things. All so entirely different! Don't you know, John, sometimes in one's life one longs for something to be quite different. A complete ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... took their seats to-night and looked around the room they saw a droll sight. The old lady, who had been knitting on the veranda, was seated at a small table in one corner; and on each side of her in a chair sat a cat! One cat was a gray "coon," the other an Angora; and both of them sat up as grave as judges, ...
— Jimmy, Lucy, and All • Sophie May
... filled with small tables, filled with many human bodies. About the walls are paintings and banners in sharp colors; above our heads hang innumerable gaudy lanterns of wood and paper. We sit in furs, shivering with the cold. The food passes endlessly, droll combinations in brown gravies—roses, sugar, and lard—duck and bamboo—lotus, chestnuts, and fish-eggs—an "eight-precious pudding." They tempt curiosity; my chop-sticks are busy. The warm ...
— Profiles from China • Eunice Tietjens
... Hours evry Morning, but what is the Nature of this Farce of yours? have you any Smart, ridiculous, droll Fellows in ...
— The Covent Garden Theatre, or Pasquin Turn'd Drawcansir • Charles Macklin
... bites her "mammy," scratches "nurse," And makes droll mouths at "pappy;" We can but love the roguish thing, She looks so bright ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... an uppercurrent in the other; the effect of the whole depending almost, perhaps altogether, as much on what is not directly seen as on what is. So that with him the pitiful and the ludicrous, the sublime and the droll, are like the greatness and littleness of human life: for these qualities not only coexist in our being, but, which is more, they coexist under a mysterious law of interdependence and reciprocity; insomuch that our life may in some sense be said to be great because little, ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... cast-off clothes of all the armies of Europe finding their way hither. The natives of South Africa prefer an old uniform coat or tunic to any other covering, and the effect of a short scarlet garment when worn with bare legs is irresistibly droll. The apparently inexhaustible supply of old-fashioned English coatees with their worsted epaulettes is just coming to an end, and being succeeded by ragged red tunics, franc-tireurs' brownish-green ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... "You droll little man, why did you not ask me that before, if you wanted to know? Finish your wine, and come to the door. There's your change, and thank you for your custom, though it isn't much. Come to the door, I say, and don't interrupt me! You're ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... Trimble hitherto obscured his light under a bushel. In his own proper person children avoided him, but they crowded about this Santa Claus, encircling his legs, gurgling with joy when they were lifted to his shoulder, their laughter ringing through the church at his droll antics. A sense of mystery grew when he opened a pack on the pulpit stairs, a pack unfamiliar in its outward aspect to the Committee on Entertainment. Every girl had a little doll dressed in fashionable attire, and every boy a brilliantly colored, splendidly noisy, ...
— The Romance of a Christmas Card • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... not far removed from the scene of activity. She began to feel sorry for the little foster-father. He was having a time of it! The first thing he knew, one of the little insurgents would tumble into the lake and— well, she couldn't imagine anything more droll than Mr. Bingle venturing into the water as a rescuer. At last, moved by an impulse that afterwards took its place as the psychic capstone in her career, she arose and resolutely went to his relief. He was panting and perspiring, for ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... the cockney. "You poor droll mortal! As if I could ever be afraid of that! What is the matter with my going into training myself? Two can train, you know—even three. You almost make me feel sorry I tried to remedy the loss of ...
— Ghosts I have Met and Some Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... Club is as deliciously droll as any form of entertainment ever devised, provided one's sense of the ludicrous be strong enough to overcome the natural indignation aroused by seeing genuine poetry, the high gift of the gods, thus abused. The clubs meet in richly furnished parlors, of which the chief ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... might be added as to the nature of the tales. I have included only "hero tales, serious and droll," beast stories and fables, and pourquoi or "just-so" stories. Myths, legends, and fairy-tales (including all kinds of spirit and demon stories) I have purposely excluded, in order to keep the size of the volume within reasonable limits. I have, however, occasionally ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... romances. "Like Dr. Hopkins, he believed that the class-room should be a jolly place, and used to say that no recitation was complete without at least one good laugh. 'Laughter makes sport of work,' he said." His teaching sometimes came in a droll story. "Once there was a woodchuck.... Now, woodchucks can't climb trees. Well, this woodchuck was chased by a dog and came to a tree. He knew that if he could get up this tree the dog could not ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... he showed himself as droll as ever, but there were days when, as John said, "all the skip was gone out of the Jack." The good Monk was puzzled by the change, which he did not think quite worthy of his cousin, having-though the son of a military man-a contempt for the pomp and circumstance of war. He marvelled ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... one of her walks accompanied by her maid, Susan. Through a misapprehension of personalities his lordship addresses a love missive to the maid. Susan accepts in perfect good faith, and an epistolary love-making goes on till they are disillusioned. It naturally makes a droll and delightful little comedy; and is a story that is particularly clever ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... thought. I delight in telling what I think, but if you ask me how I dare say so, or why it is so, I am the most helpless of mortal men. I do not even see that either of these questions admits of an answer. So that in the present droll posture of my affairs, when I see myself suddenly raised into the importance of a heretic, I am very uneasy when I advert to the supposed duties of such a personage who is to make good his thesis against all comers. I certainly shall ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... are totally unfit for the enjoyment of civil liberty. In conclusion, we can hardly recommend the book before us, further than to say, that its gossip, though often prosy to the verge of twaddle, is also sometimes droll and amusing from its ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal, No. 421, New Series, Jan. 24, 1852 • Various
... are shodden with vanity! I read on, thinking it was a nice letter of yours,—feeling something startled, to be sure, at the compellation, as if you were mesmerise, and had got an insight (calls me bambino half of the time)—looking at your mood reverential as a droll jest,—vexed at first, but then reconciled, about the book and the lecturing,—charmed and grateful beyond measure at what you say about your health,—when! at last!! I fell upon your request: ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... not," said the doctor, with a droll look of puzzledom in his face. "Why, what's come to you, you reckless young scamp? No, thank you. If you're going to be indulged in any luxuries of that kind, I'm going to land at Penang or Singapore, and make my way home by ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... resembling me, walked impudently in the open sunlight on this planet, which is rightly mine—I can indeed no longer picture to myself, nor even credit, that such a state of things—so fantastic, so far-fetched, so infinitely droll—could have existed: though, at bottom, I suppose, I know that it must have been really so. Up to ten years ago, in fact, I used frequently to dream that there were others. I would see them walk in the streets like ghosts, and be ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... the better at leisure to contemplate their strangeness and absurdity, I have begun to commit them to writing, hoping in time to make them ashamed of themselves." The novelty of my position causes me to shamble and shuffle, now to pause painfully, and then to dance like a droll. I go out from the presence of my household, that I may vent myself by private absurdities and exclusive antics, I retire into remote corners, that I may grin fearfully, unseen of Mistress Gamp and my small servant. I am possessed by ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... taken Rome, and placed the Pope in the Castle of St. Angelo ... that was a droll stroke! Then the soldiers in jest, under the windows of the Castle, called out ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... : tirkesto. drawers : kalsono, (chest of -s), komodo. dream : songx'i, -o; (day-), rev'o, -i. dredge : skrapegi. dress : robo; vesti, sin vesti. drill : bori; ekzerco, manovro. drink : trinki, (to excess) drinki. drive : veturi; peli. "—away", forpeli. droll : ridinda, sxerca. drone : abelviro; zumi. drop : gut'o, -i. drown : dron'i, -igi. drug : drogo. drum : tamburo. drunken : ebria. dry : seka. "—land", firmajxo. duck : anasino, anaso. duration : dauxro. duty : devo, (tax) imposto. ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... Oh, it was too droll—that plucky horse, dashing along with the rest, shooting over the fences, up to time, and acting like a soldier charging under command. I could just have gone down and kissed the splendid creature, and the whole crowd—thousands and thousands—set ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... probably did more for the science of meteorology than did any other man of his time: therefore he probably did more to hold back the science of meteorology than did any other man of his time. In Nature, 41-135, Mr. Symons says that Prof. Schwedoff's ideas are "very droll." ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... contrary; only the first time it appeared droll to him, as to every one else—it is very simple; but when I explained my reasons, as I had explained them to M. Cabrion, the tears came into his eyes. From that day I said, 'M. Germain has a kind heart; he has nothing against him but his sadness.' And do you see, M. Rudolph, that ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... come to see this Garrulier, whom she had so often heard mentioned at five o'clock teas, so as to be able to describe him to her female friends subsequently in droll phrases, imitating his gestures and the unctuous inflections of his voice, in order, perhaps, to experience some new sensation, or, perhaps, for the sake of dressing like a woman who was going to try for a divorce; and, ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... was my saying you and I. She was vexed that mother had left me—a baby, in her opinion—to look after the house, and rather resented my assuming to be the mistress. By my happy form of speech I pleased the droll old woman, who was much like a child herself. Then, too, she was as well aware as I was that grandmamma's pain would grow worse and worse every ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... be droll enough; but not for everybody. They are rich sacristans, who pay the expenses. They don't look to money, provided the journal bites, tears, burns, pounds, exterminates and destroys. On my word of honor, I shall never have been in such a fury!" added Ninny Moulin, with a loud, ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... disinterested abhorrence than any sins against decency. It contained, or was supposed to contain, a broadly ludicrous caricature of one well-known local physician; and an allusion, brief, indeed, and covert, but highly scandalous, to a certain "droll foible" attributed to another personage of much wider celebrity in the scientific world. The victim in the latter case was no longer living; and this circumstance brought upon Sterne a remonstrance from a correspondent, to which he replied in a letter so characteristic in many respects as to be ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... especially for the belles-lettres, he entertained a profound contempt. With this he had been inspired by Casimir Perier, whose pert little query "A quoi un poete est il bon?" he was in the habit of quoting, with a very droll pronunciation, as the ne plus ultra of logical wit. Thus my own inkling for the Muses had excited his entire displeasure. He assured me one day, when I asked him for a new copy of Horace, that the translation of "Poeta nascitur non fit" was "a nasty poet for nothing fit"—a ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... went to see an Italian comedy represented at the Teatro Re. The piece was l'Ajo nell' imbarazzo—a very droll and humorous piece—but it was not well acted, from the simple circumstance of the actors not having their parts by heart, and the illusion of the stage is destroyed by hearing the prompter's voice full as loud as that of the actors, who follow his promptings something ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... therefore I submitted I hope with a good grace, but I doubt it. She wishes me only to join in society at home this year, but next year I may go out with her as often as I please. Lord Henry D'Este is one of the most amusing creatures I ever met with, he has always some droll anecdote to relate that calls forth universal merriment; but of single men, the Earl of St. Eval, eldest son of the Marquis of Malvern, is the most agreeable. He is not particularly handsome, but has an eloquent smile and persuading voice, very tall and noble in his carriage. He has talked ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... safe, she found it tiring to talk) ready, and indeed eager, to discuss the news. It was very good of dear Soames, they thought, to employ Mr. Bosinney, but rather risky. What had George named him? 'The Buccaneer' How droll! But George was always droll! However, it would be all in the family they supposed they must really look upon Mr. Bosinney as belonging to the family, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... didn't hold their tongues, or give a more distinct account of the port. This menace cowed them down like so many bullies, and they fell into a moody but vindictive silence, their looks discovering the internal oaths of revenge. It was really droll, if the words used allow the expression, to hear how the captain blended Italian, Maltese, and Arabic oaths and abuse in his rage. Now "Santo Dio!" now "Scomunicat!" Sacrament! now "Allah!" "Imshe," "Kelb," "Andat," "per Bacco!" &c. At length, ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... Gillotts and their Esterbrooks. Let us say, in every school and in every house, the child must not only learn to read and write, he must learn to draw. We cannot afford to let our young folks grow up without this power. A new French book is just now much talked about, with this droll title, "The Life of a Wise Man, by an Ignoramus." It is the story of the great Pasteur, whose discoveries in respect to life have made him world renowned. I turned to the book, eager to find out the key to such success, and I found the old story—"the child ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... that we both knew. The julep held out far into the night, and my memory never saw him afterwards otherwise than as bending over it, with his straw, with an attempted air of gravity (after some anecdote involving some wonderfully droll and delicate observation of character), and then, as his eye caught mine, melting into that captivating laugh of his, which was the brightest and best ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... grave face. The host gave the word and the four set to work, Reuben playing with genuine fire, and his companions sawing away with a dogged precision which made them agreeable enough to listen to, but droll to look at. Ruth, with her chin upon her dimpled arm, watched Reuben as he played. He had tossed back his chestnut mane of hair rather proudly as he tucked his violin beneath his chin, and had looked round on his three seniors with the air of a master ...
— Aunt Rachel • David Christie Murray
... auld and droll, Rigwoodie hags wad spean a foal, Louping and flinging on a crummock, I wonder ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... smile, and, in order not to appear childish, she bowed ever so slightly. When he was safely past, she could not resist giving a furtive look behind her, and at precisely the same moment, he turned, too. In spite of her trouble, Ephic found the coincidence droll; she tittered, and he saw it, although she immediately laid the back of her hand on her lips. It was not in him to let this pass unnoticed. With a few quick steps, he was at ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... institution gives it zest for the strange mind of Pepys. He is, however, capable also of moralising. "Oh, that the King would mind his business!" he would exclaim, after having delighted himself and his readers with the most droll accounts of His Majesty's frivolities. "How wicked a wretch Cromwell was, and yet how much better and safer the country was in his hands than it is now." And often he will end the bewildering account with some such bitter comment as the assertion ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... boys, apprentices, and a couple of stout slaves: we had, in addition, taken on board an old apprentice of the pilot's, who as we started had volunteered to accompany his once master. This was a droll subject, a regular long-sided dare-devil of a South Carolinian: he was full three sheets in the wind when we sailed, and managed to keep the steam up by the contributions liberally proffered during ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... never was and never will be, Mrs. Yocomb," I cried, controlling myself with difficulty, for the old gentleman's manner was irresistibly droll and instead of the pallor that used to make my heart ache, Miss Warren's face was like a carnation rose. My hope grew apace, for her threatening looks at Mr. Yocomb contained no trace of pain or deep annoyance, while the embarrassment she could not hide so enhanced her loveliness ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... him to persecution. Nor can I suppose that he held it any disgrace for a dignitary of the church to be wealthy, at a time when churchmen in general spare no pains to become so. But the wisdom of some men has a droll sort of knavishness in it, much like that of a magpie, who hides what he finds with a deal of contrivance, merely for ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... Higher up a torch-wood tree gleamed as if sprayed with gold, its limbs, lean and bare of foliage, holding at their extremities in wisp-like fingers bright, yellow, solitary blooms. From a tendu tree a pair of droll little brown monkeys chattered and grimaced ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... new discovery there developed at last a certain respect for the lazy, good-natured, droll old man. Opinions which she had heretofore laughed at suddenly became of value; criticisms which she had passed over in silence ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... older she grew the more he treated her as if she were a baby, and, in the little passages of arms that continually took place between them, Jacqueline was bitterly conscious that she no longer had the best of it as formerly. She was no longer as droll and lively as she had been. She was easily disconcerted, and took everything 'au serieux', and her wits became paralyzed by an embarrassment that was new to her. And, pained by the sort of sarcasm ...
— Jacqueline, v1 • Th. Bentzon (Mme. Blanc)
... which he established in the Spanish drama, was the comic under-plot, and the witty gracioso or droll, the parody of the heroic character of the play. Much of his power over the people of his time is also to be found in the charm of his versification, which was always fresh, flowing, and effective. The success of Lope de Vega was in proportion to his ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... sort of a beggar, I fancy." "You're another queer beggar" was the reply. "I am Gillott, the penmaker. My banker tells me you are clever, and I have come to buy some pictures." "By George!" quoth Turner, "you are a droll fellow, I must say." "You're another," said Gillott. "But do you really want to purchase those pictures," asked Turner. "Yes, in course I do, or I would not have climbed those blessed stairs this morning," was ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... way with Poinsinet who amused me, in spite of his sadness, with his droll fancies. In two days I got down at Dr. Vannini's, who tried to conceal his surprise at seeing me. I lost no time, but waited on Sir—— Mann immediately, and found him sitting at table. He gave ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... comment, "it were better had Mary Twining shown more Regret for what she herself confesses was ill done, rather than that she should take upon herself to correct the Faults of those towards whom she was somewhat lacking in Reverence." But it is droll enough to fancy the scene—the pretty schoolgirl gravely rebuking her delinquent master for the too great partiality her own bright eyes had won for her. Poor man! His was no sinecure. To hold rule over a parcel of unruly girls, with the ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... Steele (Tatler, No. 246) dates from Lloyd's his Petition on Coffee-house Orators and Newsvendors. And Addison, in Spectator, April 23, 1711, relates this droll incident: "About a week since there happened to me a very odd accident, by reason of one of these my papers of minutes which I had accidentally dropped at Lloyd's Coffee-house, where the auctions are ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... he has been 'plucked,' as the gentlemen call it, or 'ploughed,' does your brother say? University slang is very droll. He has not taken his degree, I suppose, and they want him to work before going up again. I am sorry for your father, too, for I don't think it will be very easy to get anything into Clarence Copperhead's mind. But there is no harm at all in him, and he used ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... There was a not-to-be-daunted expression in her extraordinary eyes which made him feel that a love tilt with her would be a somewhat serious business. He pictured himself as an ardent lover; he would cut a droll figure in that role, he knew; emotions were hardly in his line. He might feel such an assertive emotion as love quite as strongly as anyone, in fact, did, but could he express himself with faultless consistency? He rather doubted ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... style of fishing, and give advice; naturally, after a time, if you are nervous, you are certain of one thing only: that you are the king of asses, and had better imitate the immortal colonel who hurled his book of salmon flies into the pool shouting "Here, take the bally lot." The droll thing was that Halford never dreamed that his chum was put out by his good intentions, or that the victim's feeble smiles were ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... concealed a hardy courage and earnest patriotism under a phlegmatic and droll exterior, "while we're discussin' that question, I reckon we may as well have breakfast. This is as good a place as any,—we can take turns keeping a lookout from ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... had done. In fact, he disliked him more, but, seeing the friendly relations between Dick and his employer, found it prudent to treat him well whenever Mr. Rockwell was by. At other times he indulged in sneers and fault-finding, which Dick turned off good-humoredly, or returned some droll answer, which blunted the edge of the sarcasm, and made the book-keeper chafe with the feeling that he was no match for the boy he hated. Dick, by faithful attention to his duties, and a ready comprehension of what was required of him, steadily advanced ...
— Fame and Fortune - or, The Progress of Richard Hunter • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... been reading the old French fairy tale of "Les deux Fees," and the application amused her; but she shook her head gravely at Aurora afterwards, and reminded her that no serious truth was well answered by a joke, however droll. ...
— The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales • Mrs. Alfred Gatty
... piano to play 'A Hot Time in the Old Town To-night.' After playing a few measures, he turned abruptly toward the class, saying: 'Why, that isn't it! What is it I am playing?' Someone answered 'Annie Rooney.' Facing us with a droll smile, he asked if there was anyone present who could play 'A Hot Time.' A dozen boys rushed forward and the one who gained the chair dashed it off with the abandon of a four ...
— Edward MacDowell • Lawrence Gilman
... the significance of chemistry in the future. The address is interesting in more respects than one. Prof. Berthelot sketched the probable state of chemistry at about the year 2000. While his sketch contains many a droll exaggeration, it does contain so much that is serious and sound that we shall present it in extract. After describing the achievements of chemistry during the last few decades, Prof. Berthelot went ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... colloquy, Pierre, awakened by Miraut's loud barking, had risen and joined his master at the door. As soon as he was informed of what had occurred, he lighted a lantern, and with the baron set forth, under the guidance of the droll old actor, to find and rescue the chariot in distress. When they reached it Leander and Matamore were tugging vainly at the wheels, while his majesty, the king, pricked up the weary oxen with the point of his dagger. The actresses, ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... fireplace has been bricked up, it is true; but the sweet cider is admirable, and as for the cheesecake, we would back it against all the Times Square variety that Ben De Casseres rattles about. It is delightful and surprising to find on Hudson Street an ordinary so droll and Dickensish in atmosphere, and next door is a window bearing the sign WALTER PETER. We feel sure that Mr. Holliday, were he still living in those parts, would have cajoled the owner into changing that E ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... they be?" "what a beautiful girl!" and "what a nice little boy! but I fear he is lame!" "Oh, look! do look at that queer old lady following them out of the carriage! How oddly her nose is turned! and what a droll bonnet!" "I wonder whether they will dine with us!" "I should like to know who ...
— The Boarding School • Unknown
... many anecdotes which tended to prove that even England's colonies were growing tired of her arrogance: he related droll stories told him by Colonials about the Queen ... obscene and ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... obscure more significant news altogether. Great printed sheets will be read by every one every day; and even the laziest of this lazy race will not think it labor to perform this toil. They won't like to eat in the morning without their papers, such slaves they will be to this droll greed for knowing. They won't even think it is droll, it is ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... speak of Literature. The stranger expressed himself with enthusiastic admiration of Racine. A droll incident happened during our dialogue. My gentleman wanted to let down a little sash-window, and could n't manage it. 'You don't understand that,' said I; 'let me do that.' I tried to get it down; but succeeded ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... distinctly—ushering in Titmouse; on whom the door was the next instant closed. He felt amazingly flustered—and he would have been still more so, if he could have been made aware of the titter which pervaded the fourteen or twenty people assembled in the room, occasioned by the droll misnomer of the servant, and the exquisitely ridiculous appearance of poor Titmouse. Mr. Quirk, dressed in black, with knee breeches and silk stockings, immediately bustled up to him, shook him cordially by the hand, and led him ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... ground looked up at the horseman, and in a droll tone that made the rider his friend, said, while he stretched his long legs painfully: "I like to walk. You see I—ah—fancied it would be good ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... not think that such a scene is particularly attractive," responded John in his droll way. "Such a scene in the theatre would be tragedy, I think; it could not be comedy ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... nations. But that he is so void of the comic faculty as certain potent authorities allege, we persistently doubt. Mr Macaulay affirms that Southey may be always read with pleasure, except when he tries to be droll; that a more insufferable jester never existed; and that, often as he attempts to be humorous, he in no single occasion has succeeded further than to be quaintly and flippantly dull. Another reviewer warned the author of the Doctor, that there is no greater ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 459 - Volume 18, New Series, October 16, 1852 • Various
... afraid I shall have to postpone my millennium of fagging. But I don't know what else will make men of you. And mark you, my merry men, there's more than one kind of fagging;" and he looked in a droll way—a droll way that was not in the least funny, but made the boys all wonder what Abel Newt was ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... son—sufficiently to ensure his future, he plucked off the mask and allied himself with Sophia in her hostility towards Madame von Platen. He did worse. Some little time thereafter, whilst on a visit to the court of Poland, he made one night in his cups a droll story of the amorous persecution which he had suffered ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... bell and his nickname from his father, who was not a native of Thrums. He came from some distant part where the people speak of snecking the door, meaning shut it. In Thrums the word used is steek, and sneck seemed to the inhabitants so droll and ridiculous that Hobart got the name of Snecky. His son left Thrums at the age of ten for the distant farm of Tirl, and did not return until the old bellman's death, twenty years afterwards; but the first remark he overheard on entering the kirkwynd was a conjecture flung ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... of what we feel sure was the fact, we fail to find it. Bishop Burnet, in his delightful history, supplies us with sketches of the leading Parliamentarians of Marvell's day, yet to Marvell himself he refers but once, and then not by name but as "the liveliest droll of the age," words which mean much but tell little. In Clarendon's Autobiography, another book which lets the reader into the very clash and crowd of life, there is no mention of one of the author's most bitter and cruel enemies. With Prince Rupert, Marvell ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... Austrian, earnestly, with one finger to his temples. "It is a funny picture, I know. I cannot recall. But the word caucus I remember. That is a droll word." ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... mob hooted and hissed them all in my lord's travelling carriage, and cried, "Down with the persecutor! down with Hanging Hermiston!" and mamma covered her eyes and wept, and papa let down the glass and looked out upon the rabble with his droll formidable face, bitter and smiling, as they said he sometimes looked when he gave sentence, Archie was for the moment too much amazed to be alarmed, but he had scarce got his mother by herself before his shrill voice was raised ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and Wright told excellent stories. Among those of the latter was one of a Scotchwoman who, on being informed of the change made by the revisers in the Lord's Prayer,—namely, "and deliver us from the evil one,"—said, "I doot he'll be sair uplifted." Mahaffy gave droll accounts of Whately, Archbishop of Dublin. One of these had as its hero a country clergyman who came to ask Whately for a living which had just become vacant. The archbishop, thinking to have a little fun with his guest, said, "Of course, ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... to decline your paper," said Lousteau. "Stop, there is a superb engraving in the top drawer of the chest there, worth eighty francs, proof before letters and after letterpress, for I have written a pretty droll article upon it. There was something to lay hold of in Hippocrates refusing the Presents of Artaxerxes. A fine engraving, eh? Just the thing to suit all the doctors, who are refusing the extravagant gifts of Parisian satraps. You will find two or three dozen novels underneath it. Come, now, ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... vengeance, that have made this litter here; could not you look before you, and be d—-d? Do you think I have nothing else to do (in the devil's name) but to mend and repair after you?" "Good words, friend," said the bee, having now pruned himself, and being disposed to droll; "I'll give you my hand and word to come near your kennel no more; I was never in such a confounded pickle since I was born." "Sirrah," replied the spider, "if it were not for breaking an old custom ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... ribs. He was extremely thin and bony, with a long, drooping nose set very much to one side, and was possessed of a remarkable pair of eyes—that is to say, one eyelid hung continually lower than the other, thus lending to his otherwise sinister face an air of droll and unexpected waggery that was ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... generally acknowledged to be a "comedian." No one ever saw him in a temper, or heard him speak a sharp word. He had a droll, woebegone face that never smiled, but a face everybody—from the mayor to the poorest mill hand—loved and respected. How often Benson had come in from school, ill-tempered and sour-visaged at something that had gone wrong in the class-room, ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... watch this in its progress up the broad aisle and the pulpit stairs, under the arm of the boy from the parsonage, and the irreverent way in which he made his descent, in view of the assembly, after depositing his burden, was thus rebuked by an old lady who was always droll and quaint. "Why, Matthew, when you come down the pulpit stairs of a Sunday, you throw up your heels like a horse coming out of ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... the constant recurrence of some words in a quaint and queer connection, which gives a grotesque and somewhat repulsive mannerism to many sentences. Of these the commonest offender is 'quite;' which appears in almost every page, and gives at first a droll kind of emphasis; but soon becomes wearisome. 'Nay,' 'manifold,' 'cunning enough significance,' 'faculty' (meaning a man's rational or moral power), 'special,' 'not without,' haunt the reader as if in some uneasy dream which does not rise ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... cruzado in the presence of another, the latter instantly says I cry halves, and if the first refuse he is instantly threatened with an information. The manner in which they cheat each other has, with all its infamy, occasionally something extremely droll and ludicrous. I was one day in the shop of a Swiri, or Jew of Mogadore, when a Jew from Gibraltar entered, with a Portuguese female, who held in her hand a mantle, ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... he said solemnly, laying his hand on Dumay's shoulder, and thinking to himself how droll it was to make a soldier of the empire tremble, "this young girl may be all in all to you, but to society at large what is she? nothing. At this moment the greatest mandarin in China may be yielding up the ghost and putting half the universe in mourning, and what ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... she thinks you half a cat. But you're a Dog and know your job: Oft have I seen you hob-a-nob, And grandly gracious to unbend With a Great Dane, your humble friend. As on the lawn with him you roll, He makes your very being droll. Yet how you set to work to flout him, To tease and gnaw and dance about him! You risk the pressure of his paws, Plunge all you are within his jaws, And, swelling to a final rage, With pin-point teeth the fight engage, ...
— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann
... brother; that was a droll affair:' and then, addressing himself to me, he continued, 'You remember your Uncle Terence? A funny dog he was, and in his young days the very devil for lovemaking and fighting. Look here,' said the speaker, pointing to a small ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... grayish fluffy balls, instead of the lovely red things they had expected, and were by no means consoled when their father told them that it would be three or four years before they gained their beautiful color. However, they became great pets, and were very droll, with their long legs, and slender necks, and great curved bills. They became extremely tame, and would, after a time, follow the girls about, and stalk up to the house of their own accord to be fed, their food always being placed in water, as they never feed by picking ...
— On the Pampas • G. A. Henty
... that the news of his presence on the Rigi should reach down there, no one would know what he had come to do in Switzerland. And besides, it would be so droll to see, to-morrow morning, the stupor of those "Inglichemans" when they should learn the truth... For that Swiss girl, of course, would not hold her tongue... What surprise, what excitement throughout ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... to look upon me as very nearly an idiot. Just as we were going into the town of Plymouth, he eyed me from head to foot, and muttered, 'The lad's beside himself, sure enough.' In truth, I believe I was a droll figure; for my hat was stuck full of weeds, and of all sorts of wild flowers; and both my coat and waistcoat pockets were stuffed out with pebbles ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... again," said Galors, "that is impossible! I will never do it. What! when the whole forest rings with Entra per me, and wicket-gates dazzle every eye on this side Wan? My friend, where are your wits? That droll of a Montguichet did me a turn there ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... number. One of them—I remember he was the adjutant—held in his hand a wax candle (three to the pound). Whether he had himself seized it in the enthusiasm of my narrative of flood and field, or it had been put there by another, I know not, but he certainly cut a droll figure. The room we were in was a small one off the great saloon, and through the half open folding-door I could clearly perceive that the festivities were still continued. The crash of fiddles and ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... Arlee found admirable in him, "it is not all the world who is invited to the home of our—our haut-monde, you understand?... And then it will interest you to see how our ladies live in that seclusion which is so droll to you. Confess you have heard strange stories," and he smiled in ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... to Cantos I., II. of Childe Harold (Poetical Works, 1899, ii. 5), Byron relies on the authority of "Ariosto Thomson and Beattie" for the inclusion of droll or satirical "variations" in a serious poem. Nevertheless, Dallas prevailed on him to omit certain "ludicrous stanzas." It is to be regretted that no one suggested the excision of sections xix.-xxi. from the second ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... Perhaps the author of the world Is something like me, A little grotesque, A little whimsical, Serious often, Sometimes all the more serious Seen through a Fool's words With cap and jingle of bells. In this droll world There are lots of children Who are the children of fools— Like me. Good people! I bespeak your patience With ...
— The Flutter of the Goldleaf; and Other Plays • Olive Tilford Dargan and Frederick Peterson
... or a little deeper hearted than the most of us, whichever it may have been, and angry at the mocking laughter with which the air around them seemed filled, went down one stormy night together to the lake, and sobered droll Fate for an instant by turning her grim comedy ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... pretty brown feathers all dropped out, one after another, until Brownie looked more like a chicken which had been plucked than any thing else. Grace could not keep from laughing at the sight of him; and it was very droll when he popped up on a log, and tried a ...
— The Nursery, No. 165. September, 1880, Vol. 28 - A Monthly Magazine For Youngest Readers • Various
... Let us say, in every school and in every house, the child must not only learn to read and write, he must learn to draw. We cannot afford to let our young folks grow up without this power. A new French book is just now much talked about, with this droll title, "The Life of a Wise Man, by an Ignoramus." It is the story of the great Pasteur, whose discoveries in respect to life have made him world renowned. I turned to the book, eager to find out the key to such success, and ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... and then my father, raising his, would say: "Here's to us all. God bless us!" a toast which was rapidly and willingly drunk. His conversation, as may be imagined, was often extremely humorous, and I have seen the servants, who were waiting at table, convulsed often with laughter at his droll remarks and stories. Now, as I recall these gatherings, my sight grows blurred with the tears that rise to my eyes. But I love to remember them, and to see, if only in memory, my father at his own table, surrounded by his own family ...
— My Father as I Recall Him • Mamie Dickens
... possible that you will consider this information a lie. That will be quite droll. However, I am, most respected ...
— The Leader • William Fitzgerald Jenkins (AKA Murray Leinster)
... good deal of jauntiness and elegance, while she listened to the talk of the gentleman. Biddy guessed that this little transaction took place very frequently, and was not unaware of its giving the old lady a droll, factitious, faded appearance, as if she were singularly out of step with the age. The other person was very much younger—she might have been a daughter—and had a pale face, a low forehead, and thick dark ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... handsomest pictures. He gets the handsomest prices for them. That slim young Van Dyck, who was his pupil, has genius too, and is painting all the noble ladies in England, and turning the heads of some of them. And Jordaens—what a droll dog and clever fellow! Have you seen his fat Silenus? The master himself could not paint better. And his altar-piece at St. Bavon's? He can paint you anything, that Jordaens can—a drunken jollification ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Grand Sacrificer to the King of Fiji. Of course the recital lacked everything of the scenery and dresses that give it so much vogue upon the stage; but it had at least the charmingly suggestive music, the wonderful linking of sound to sense, the droll and inimitable intermixture of the plausible and the impossible which everybody has admired and laughed ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... see what I wish! oh, I wish that I might go down to the bottom of the ocean and see all the beautiful shells and the fishes, and every thing that's going on down there!" When she said it, the little waves laughed as they came scampering up to her, as if they said—"What a droll idea!" ...
— Seven Little People and their Friends • Horace Elisha Scudder
... like a ram. The only thing that astonishes me is that he did not strike me dead at once. He had good cause to do so; the pain I gave him must have been atrocious. As to Porthos—oh, as to Porthos, faith, that's a droll affair!" ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... had taken for them. Iver and Southend spoke of big schemes in which they had been or were engaged together—legitimate enterprises, good for the nation as well as for themselves. How had he, a useless old fogy, dared to blackball a man like Iver? An occasional droll glance from Southend ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... very droll to see the peculiar look with which he regarded his feathered friend; not knowing exactly what to make of her civilities, and doubting how they should be received. When her family were educated, and able to do without her care, she was a frequent visitor at Jock's ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... the slightly foreign accent which lent an added charm to her words, "I cannot help thinking it rather droll that a man of your mind and rare penetration should have thought you ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... best recipe that was ever given for a married couple to live in peace. Though John and his wife frequently attempted to quarrel afterwards, they never could get their passions to a considerable height; for there was something so droll in thus carrying on the dispute, that, before they got to the end of the argument, they saw the absurdity of it, laughed, ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... you looked droll enough, with your pale face and your shabby clothes. 'I want to be a soldier,' says you; 'I want ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... "a noticeable man with large grey eyes," goes on to say, "He" (viz. Coleridge) "did that other man entice" to view his imagery. Now we are sadly afraid that "the noticeable man with large grey eyes" did entice "that other man," viz. Gillman, to commence opium-eating. This is droll; and it makes us laugh horribly. Gillman should have reformed him; and lo! he corrupts Gillman. S. T. Coleridge visited Highgate by way of being converted from the heresy of opium; and the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... forbid!" said I. "I hope this Mr. —-, with the unpronounceable name, will disgust them with his eloquence; for B—- writes me word, in his droll way, that he is a coarse, vulgar fellow, and lacks the dignity of a bear. Oh! I am certain they will return quite sickened with the Canadian project." Thus I laid the flattering unction to my soul, little dreaming that I and mine should share in the strange ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... the banquet of the Association of Chemical Manufacturers upon the significance of chemistry in the future. The address is interesting in more respects than one. Prof. Berthelot sketched the probable state of chemistry at about the year 2000. While his sketch contains many a droll exaggeration, it does contain so much that is serious and sound that we shall present it in extract. After describing the achievements of chemistry during the last few decades, Prof. Berthelot ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... them all Mackintosh blankets with the buffalo-robes are drawn, by what power this deponent sayeth not, not knowing. No watch is kept, for there is little danger of intrusion. Once a whole party was startled by a white bear smelling at them, who waked one of their dogs, and a droll time they had of it, springing to their arms while enveloped in their sacks. But we remember no other instance where a sentinel was needed. And occasionally in the journals the officer notes that he overslept in the morning, and did not "call the cook" early ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... been a very faithful, hard-working and willing beast, with rather droll ways of his own, and we were sorry that his end should come so soon. He could never be accused of being a handsome dog, in fact he was generally ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... Hilda grew in endearing ways, and began to have knowing looks and smiles for each. Her preference for her grandfather with his great frosty eyebrows pleased the old gentleman immensely. It was both droll and touching to observe how one often so irascible would patiently let her take off his spectacles, toy with and often pull his gray locks, and rumple his old-fashioned ruffles, which he persisted in wearing on state occasions. It was also silently ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... the brush, she was full of fun and merriment, and kept her friends much amused by her droll talk, half to them, half to ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... no doubt it was) had now descended to within a hundred feet of the earth, allowing the crowd below a sufficiently distinct view of the person of its occupant. This was in truth a very droll little somebody. He could not have been more than two feet in height; but this altitude, little as it was, would have been sufficient to destroy his equilibrium, and tilt him over the edge of his tiny car, but for the intervention of a circular rim reaching as high as the breast, and ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... a polite bow listened to what he was saying. Ah, the old words, the eternal words, the political situation, or the situation politique, whichever way you like to use them. But still you listen a bit, for it is droll to hear the yet unaccustomed word Boxers in French. "Les Boxeurs," he says; and what the French Minister says is always worth listening to, since he has the best Intelligence corps in the world—the Catholic priests ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... A droll spectacle he made, laughable even at that moment. He limped sorely, his head and neck were swathed in bandages, and beneath their ragged fringe the little eyes gleamed out ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... as he was fairly started with this droll narrative the strain of the situation was relieved. We were all laughing as much at his deliberate way of narration ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... the most dreaded of the myrmidons of Tristan l'Hermite, no less than his two chief hangmen, Trois-Echelles and Petit-Jean. Trois-Echelles was the long, cadaverous hangman; Petit-Jean was the stout, droll hangman, but when it came to a push and a pinch, both were hangmen and hung in the same manner, if not with the same manners. Petit-Jean pulled a flagon of wine from under the platform of the gallows, lifted it to his lips, drained a mighty draught, ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... a droll humour, quite unforced, Mr. Leacock reviews his little community for the sport of the thing, and the result is a natural and delightful ...
— Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... and very often of their wives. And there was the ordinary amount of unparalleled military atrocities and perfidies and ravishments and burnings and so on, and the endurers took their agonies so seriously that it is droll to think of how unimportant it ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... in household matters, but in other affairs of life. Whenever she had visitors,—and she and James were hospitable in the extreme,—she was pretty sure to end up, sooner or later, if James were present, with some droll criticism of him, as much to ...
— By The Sea - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin
... it,' said his uncle, upon a series of nods diminishing in their depth until his head assumed a droll interrogative fixity, with ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... went in and found the chamber where the golden bird hung in a wooden cage, and below stood the golden cage, and the three golden apples that had been lost were lying close by it. Then thought he to himself, 'It will be a very droll thing to bring away such a fine bird in this shabby cage'; so he opened the door and took hold of it and put it into the golden cage. But the bird set up such a loud scream that all the soldiers awoke, and they took him prisoner ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... impossible to know Barty at all intimately and not do whatever he wanted you to do. Whatever he wanted, he wanted so intensely, and at once; and he had such a droll and engaging way of expressing that hurry and intensity, and especially of expressing his gratitude and delight when what he wanted was what he got—that you could not for the life of you hold your own! Tout vient a ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... monarchy at work today are to be had, as felicitously as anywhere, in the Balkan states; perhaps the case of Greece will be especially instructive. At the other, and far, end of the line will be found such other typical instances as the British, the Dutch, or, in pathetic and droll miniature, the Norwegian. ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... laughingstock &c. 857. V. be ridiculous &c. adj.; pass from the sublime to the ridiculous; make one laugh; play the fool, make a fool of oneself, commit an absurdity. Adj. ridiculous, ludicrous; comical; droll, funny, laughable, pour rire, grotesque, farcical, odd; whimsical, whimsical as a dancing bear; fanciful, fantastic, queer, rum, quizzical, quaint, bizarre; screaming; eccentric &c. (unconformable) 83; strange, outlandish, out ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... after the days of July at the Court of Louis Philippe, although she belonged to the Montmorency family (the elder branch), whose last descendant she was. She had always a number of black and white pet dogs, canaries, and parrots about her; and possessed also a very droll little monkey, which was permitted even ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... name Samuel Pickwick, and, on his buttons, the letters P.C., which we suspect are the badge of a secret society. But this is not to the point; for it is certain that, whatever the crimes of this brigand, he is NOT Fosco, but an Englishman. That he should be found in the domicile of Fosco when that droll had evaded is suspicious (louche), and his explanation does not permit itself to be understood. I have fear that we enjoy bad luck, and that M. Palmerston will make himself to be heard on ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... been droll if it had not been so exemplary to see her tracing the loves of the duchesses beside the innocent cribs of her children. The immoral and the maternal lived together in her diligent days on the most comfortable terms, and she stopped curling the mustaches of her Guardsmen to pat the heads of her ...
— Greville Fane • Henry James
... consequence of the fall of this tragedy, the French custom is derived of securing a number of friends to applaud their pieces at their first representations. I find the following droll anecdote concerning this droll tragedy in ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... benches not far removed from the scene of activity. She began to feel sorry for the little foster-father. He was having a time of it! The first thing he knew, one of the little insurgents would tumble into the lake and— well, she couldn't imagine anything more droll than Mr. Bingle venturing into the water as a rescuer. At last, moved by an impulse that afterwards took its place as the psychic capstone in her career, she arose and resolutely went to his relief. He was panting and perspiring, for the spring day ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... he saw flapping strongly, wheeling between the gaunt quaywalls, gulls. Rough weather outside. If I threw myself down? Reuben J's son must have swallowed a good bellyful of that sewage. One and eightpence too much. Hhhhm. It's the droll way he comes out with the things. Knows how to tell a ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... determined I became that I would not appear in a domino! So Monday morning I started out for an idea, and this I found almost immediately in a little shop window. It was only a common pasteboard mask, but nevertheless it was a work of art. The face was fat and silly, and droll beyond description, and to look at the thing and not laugh was impossible. It had a heavy bang of fiery red hair. I bought it without delay, and was wondering where I could find something to go with it in that little town, when I met a friend—a friend indeed—who ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... upward. To the amazement of the Meanest Trustee he discovered them shifting into human shapes: here was the form of a child, here a youth, here a lover and his lass, here a little old dame, and scores more; while into the corners of the room drifted others that turned into the drollest of droll pipers—with kilt and brata and cap. It made him feel as if he had been dropped into the center of a giant kaleidoscope, with thousands of pieces of gray smoke turning, at the twist of a hand, into form and color, motion ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... of the naval activity, during the Maori wars, dwelt in Sir George's memory by reason of its droll comedy. An officer, thoroughly tired out, went to his bunk, leaving directions that he should be called at a particular hour. It happened that the awakening of him, fell to a blithesome midshipman having the sombre surname D'Eth. The sleeper turned himself lazily, half asleep, ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... Stampa, madam. He used to drive one of Joos's carriages; but he had a misfortune. He nearly killed a lady whom he was bringing to the hotel, and was dismissed in consequence. Now he is guide to an American gentleman. My God! but they are droll, the Americans!" ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... little glass stick in my mouth. He feel my arm here. He make me count like whisper—so—twenty, /treinta/, /cuarenta/. Who knows," concluded Ylario, with a deprecating spread of his hands, "for what that doctor do those verree droll and ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... impressed, for the first time, by a recognition of the fact that an absence of the sacred gift of humour is often a great advantage to mortal happiness, and even to mortal success. There was clearly and obviously a droll and humorous side to the career and the companionship of Captain Sarrasin and his wife. How easy it would be to make fun of them both! perhaps of her more especially. Cheap cynicism could hardly find in the civilised world a more ready and defenceless spoil. Suppose, then, that Sarrasin or ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... say that she was almost eager to show her delight in his. If it was a case of love at first sight, the earliest glimpse had been to the girl, who was all eyes for Glendenning. It was very pretty, but it was a little alarming, and perhaps a little droll, even. She was actually making the advances, not consciously, but helplessly; fondly, ignorantly, for I have no belief, nor had my wife (a much more critical observer), that she knew how she ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... Mr. Stewart Orr has produced a picture-book unique of its kind. Nothing could be more droll than the situations in which he represents the frog, the pig, the mouse, the elephant, and the other well-known characters who appear in his pages. Little folk will find in these pictures a source of endless delight, ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... securely. The poor dog often looked up in her face as if to say, Are you being punished too? and then, while still looking at her, made little springs and barked, as if to encourage her to rise in rebellion and escape from her persecutors. He was really so droll that Caroline could not help laughing very heartily at him, and Herbert and her cousins were so glad when they heard it, that they left off their game at once, and came ...
— Carry's Rose - or, the Magic of Kindness. A Tale for the Young • Mrs. George Cupples
... with them to the chief of the town, to whom he took the liberty of introducing them, almost before he knew himself who or what they were; went himself and procured excellent lodgings for them, returned and sat down in their company to tell them some droll stories, and impart to them in confidence some very disagreeable news; then hastily arose, went out, and came back again with a sheep and other provisions, which he had obtained by compulsion from the chief, and finally remained with them till long after the moon ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... they had just been reading the old French fairy tale of "Les deux Fees," and the application amused her; but she shook her head gravely at Aurora afterwards, and reminded her that no serious truth was well answered by a joke, however droll. ...
— The Fairy Godmothers and Other Tales • Mrs. Alfred Gatty
... Cromwell had meant to accept, and that his sudden and unexpected refusal was occasioned by a bold stroke of the Army-men. Having invited himself to dine at Desborough's, says Ludlow, he had taken Fleetwood with him, and had begun "to droll with them about monarchy," and ask them why sensible men like them should make so much of the affair, and refuse to please the children by permitting them to have "their rattle." Fleetwood and Desborough still remaining grave, he had called them "a couple ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... steps of the lonely building, the High Street seemed to turn all its staring eyes of lamps in my direction. 'What a droll fellow!' they appeared to be saying; 'and how will he look when ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... appear," says he, filling his glass. "But let us speak no more of business. The very sight of Torrance brings in my head a little droll matter of some years ago, when I had made a tryst with the poor oaf at the cross of Edinburgh. Each had gone his proper errand; and when it came four o'clock, Torrance had been taking a glass and did not know his master, ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... all seem so dissatisfied," said Mr. Payton, with so droll an attempt to look gloomy that Lucile then and there threw her arms about his neck and gave him an ecstatic kiss, crying joyfully, "Oh, you are the most wonderful ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... appreciable identity than its foreignness. He put the card into his waistcoat pocket, keeping his own meanwhile in evidence; and as he leaned against the door-post he met with the smile of a straying thought what the expanse before the hotel offered to his view. It was positively droll to him that he should already have Maria Gostrey, whoever she was—of which he hadn't really the least idea—in a place of safe keeping. He had somehow an assurance that he should carefully preserve the little token he had just tucked in. He gazed with ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... sending me to the Bastile? All very fine, my lord, but at the very first hint you give of such a thing I will strangle you and become Frondist. I should be carried home in triumph like Monsieur Broussel and Athos would proclaim me the French Brutus. It would be exceedingly droll." ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... chickens as soon as they are hatched, so that each housewife may know her own. One woman will colour hers a bright red, another will use blue, another green, and so on, the appearance of these strikingly-coloured little creatures intermingled in the streets being exceedingly droll ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... here, lad!" Noll turned about and saw the skipper. "'Twa'n't manners in me to laugh at ye, I 'low," said he, good-humoredly; "but 'twas droll, ennyhow. Hain't ye never ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord
... asked the lad. Everybody laughed at his droll request; and an old woman, who was selling porridge in the crowd, handed him the vegetable which he demanded. It was a dry and yellow pea. Otto, stepping up to the target, caused Squintoff to extract his arrow from the bull's-eye, and placed in the orifice made by the steel point ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... not knowing in the least what he meant. "You are so droll," she said. "You never, I think, think of the position you were born ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... first long story, is one of his best. Mr. Pickwick, with his genial nature, his simple philosophy, and his droll adventures, and Sam Weller, with his ready wit, his acute observations, and his almost limitless resources, are amusing from start to finish. The book is brimful of its author's high spirits. It has no closely knit plot, but merely a succession of comical incidents, and vivid caricatures of Mr. ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... dead earnest. MacGahan used gravely to entreat him to take greater care of his invaluable life, and hint that if any calamity occurred to him, the campaign would ipso facto come to an end. Andreas knew that MacGahan was quizzing him, but it was exceedingly droll how he purred and bridled under the light touch of that genial humourist, whose merits his own countrymen, to my thinking, have never adequately recognised. The old story of a prophet having scant ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... Miss Langley, whom he sees in one of her walks accompanied by her maid, Susan. Through a misapprehension of personalities his lordship addresses a love missive to the maid. Susan accepts in perfect good faith, and an epistolary love-making goes on till they are disillusioned. It naturally makes a droll and delightful little comedy; and is a story that is particularly clever in ...
— The Devil - A Tragedy of the Heart and Conscience • Joseph O'Brien
... of the creek. They were waiting for daylight, and for the guard to grow sleepy and careless. With little more emotion than hunters waiting in a blind for the birds to go over, the two men examined their rifles and six-shooters. They talked in undertones, laughing a little at some droll observation or reminiscence. Only by a sparkle of deviltry in Babe's blue eyes, and an added gravity of expression upon Ralston's face, at moments, would the closest observer have known that anything unusual was about to take place. ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... at some remote future day. The physician of whom I now write was one who already dreaded bleeding, thought less of medicines than his fellows, and was, in fact, exceptionally acute. He did some droll things for the sick prelate, and had reasons yet more droll for what he did, but his practice was, as may happen on the whole, wiser than his reasons for its use. His patient was a man once bulky, but now thin, overworked, worried, subject to asthma, troubled with a bad stomach, ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell
... difference between the eccentricities which frequently accompany greatness and the unconscious physical and psychical evidences of idiocy which so clearly agree with the antics of the chimpanzee or the droll Capuchin monkeys, might find in the performer to whom I refer a subject for some very interesting, not to say startling reflections. Few have ever been successful in inducing this pianist to talk upon any other subject than music for more ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... almost without exception, this story is delightfully droll, humorous and illustrated in harmony ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade
... occurred to Philip that he, the future instructor of British royalty, had only just escaped from a poorhouse, and it seemed to him so droll that ...
— The Young Musician - or, Fighting His Way • Horatio Alger
... begin this story of Susy Parlin on a New Year's day, only it is so hard to skip over Christmas. There is such a charm about Christmas! It makes you think at once of a fir tree shining with little candles and sparkling with toys, or of a droll Santa Claus with a pack full of presents, or of a waxen ...
— Little Prudy's Sister Susy • Sophie May
... I do this droll old Gipsy great wrong in thus apparently classing him with the heathen, since he one day manifested clearly enough that he considered he had a right to be regarded as a true believer—the only drawback being this, that he was apparently under the conviction that all human ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... he would be set aside altogether. But if he appeared again for another trial, he was sure to fare no better. He would be set aside at last. I remember an instance in which a member was expelled for a reason purely fictitious,—droll enough to be worth telling, if I could remember it,—and the secretary directed 'to write to his father, and break the matter gently to him, that it might not bring down the gray hairs of the old man with sorrow to ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... goods and notions, beckoned me with her finger. I had been standing at Kate O'Malley's counter, pretending to admire her new basket-weave suitings, but in reality reveling in her droll account of how, in the train coming up from Chicago, Mrs. Judge Porterfield had worn the negro porter's coat over her chilly shoulders in mistake for her husband's. Kate O'Malley can tell a funny story in a way to make ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber
... of emergency," said the droll, "we have no time to lose or to stand on the ceremony of fashionable etiquette. Here to-day, gone to-morrow—is the motto of Marseilles! Hola! Messieurs, shall we not make the most of new acquaintances when they ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... to a T. Cassy could jump and run to her heart's content. Jump and run she did, for at recess Bessie drew her into the midst of the other girls, and such a game of "I spy" Cassy had never imagined. Nobody said a word about her droll gown. "She is my friend," Bessie had ...
— Harper's Young People, September 7, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... midshipman in the royal navy, who was our especial pride and delight. We had no brother, but he supplied the want to us, being, as a child, our constant playmate—as a youth, our merriest and best-loved correspondent. How full of fun, quaint humor, and droll adventures were his letters, and how we used to long for them, especially for that which proclaimed his arrival in the English seas! The period for receiving such an announcement had arrived, for his ship had ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... my permission to enter my luxuriously furnished apartments, to show me an amusing set of irons that had been discovered in one of the cells used during the last two hundred years for the storage of fire-wood. The droll things were called the "Little Ease," and seemingly, were intended to create merriment. One of the officers was complacent enough to assume them, and caused great diversion by his eccentric gestures. My levee was not ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, Sept. 27, 1890 • Various
... for Mrs. Smith had not much to give, and her spirit was generous, though her pastry was not of the best. It looked very droll to see pies sitting about on the thresholds of closed doors, but the cakes were quite elegant, and filled up the corners of the towel handsomely, for the apron lay in the middle, with the oranges right and left, like two ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... humour—the humour of the average man, the average newspaper, the average play—are its utter irreverence, its droll extravagance, its dry suggestiveness, its naivete (real or apparent), its affectation of seriousness, its fondness for antithesis and anti-climax. Mark Twain may stand as the high priest of irreverence in American humour, ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... that all the queer freaks, like clubs and corals, the cranks and tomfools, in droll shapes and satanic colors, the funny poisonous looking Morels, Inkcaps, and Boleti are good wholesome food, but the deadly Amanitas are like ordinary Mushrooms, except that they have grown a little thin, ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... his glory at a dinner-party, where he could wait on the guests, give droll answers to the remarks made to call him out, and enliven the feast by his inimitable and "catching" laugh. In a certain circle no occasion of the sort was considered complete without his presence There was no such thing as dullness ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... Postman and Cupid as a Link-Boy are companion pieces, painted from the same model,—a mischievous young street boy, whose simulated gravity is irresistibly droll. The artist's keen sense of humor is seen again in that most captivating little rogue, Puck. The saucy elf is perched on a mushroom, resting after a frolic, and apparently plotting ...
— Child-life in Art • Estelle M. Hurll
... of the plains, was called the “bull-wagon boss”; the teamsters were known as “bull-whackers”; and the whole train was denominated a “bull-outfit.” Everything at that time was called an “outfit.” The men of the plains were always full of droll humour and exciting stories of their own experiences, and many an hour I spent in listening to the recitals of thrilling ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... coats, the women in their shawls; one man, "a regular Irishman, with his hat on, one ear," the music furnished by three old and tattered pipers. Her Majesty pronounced the steps of the dancers "very droll." ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... in the richly-seasoned feast prepared for it. There is plenty of humor and whim in this volume, in which many old apologues appear in new shapes; wit, too, is to be found, and a sprinkling of wisdom. Effective designs, droll, fantastic, and invariably ingenious, set off the least of the poems and stories, and make it as striking and attractive a quarto as will be found among the young ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... locality is attested by his "Natural History of Selborne." Thoreau was such a stay-at-home that he refused to go to Paris lest he miss something of interest in Concord. "I have traveled a good deal in Concord," he says in his droll way. And one of the most delicious instances of provinciality that I ever came across is Thoreau's remark on returning Dr. Kane's "Arctic Explorations" to a friend who had lent him the book—"Most of the phenomena therein recorded are to be observed about Concord." In thinking ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... Moate, and unexceptional judges of 'poteen.' A large jug of this insinuating liquor figured on the table, and was called 'Goat's-milk'; and if these humoristic traits are so carefully enumerated, it is because they comprised all that was specially droll or quaint in these social gatherings, the members of which were a very commonplace set of men, who discussed their little local topics in very ordinary fashion, slightly elevated, perhaps, in self-esteem, by ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... from log to log and disappeared under the wood-pile. The children went down to see what he would do. They were so astonished at his droll appearance that they ...
— Little Mr. Thimblefinger and His Queer Country • Joel Chandler Harris
... that of a private soldier in the King of Prussia's guard. I had a grotesque mask made, with an immense nose and moustaches, talked a jumble of broken English and German, in which the latter greatly predominated; and had crowds round me laughing at my droll accent, and whose curiosity was increased by a knowledge of my previous history. Miss Kiljoy was attired as an antique princess, with little Bullingdon as a page of the times of chivalry; his hair was in powder, his doublet rose-colour, and pea-green and silver, ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... me an adventure that befell her and her sister, which is rather a droll illustration of the manners of a French Canadian lumberer. They were walking one fine summer evening along the west bank of the Moira, and the narrator, in stooping over the water to gather some wild-flowers that grew in a crevice of the rocks, dropped her parasol ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... arrangements, so that it is no longer the case, as with Plautus, that everything needs to take place on the street, whether belonging to it or not. Plautus ties and unties the dramatic knot carelessly and loosely, but his plot is droll and often striking; Terence, far less effective, keeps everywhere account of probability, not unfrequently at the cost of suspense, and wages emphatic war against the certainly somewhat flat and insipid standing expedients of his predecessors, e. g. against allegoric dreams.(3) Plautus ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... like to unravel it and look at the colors. Lincoln is the strongest, longest thread in the fabric. Often I think of your description of the great, tender hands that lifted you to his shoulder when you were a boy, of the droll and kindly things that he said to you. I have laughed and cried recalling those hours of yours with Jack Kelso and Dr. John Allen and the rude young giant Abe, of which I have heard you tell so often as we sat in the firelight ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... grinned. "Thou'lt make a droll squire to wait in a Lord's household," said he. "Hast ever been in ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... review is not without its compensations for a new writer. The 'equal popularity' of Jane Eyre and Vanity Fair is referred to. 'A very remarkable book,' the reviewer continues; 'we have no remembrance of another containing such undoubted power with such horrid taste.' There is droll irony, when Charlotte Bronte's strong conservative sentiments and church environment are considered, in ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... to his altered future, and the obligations and interests that lay before him; but he shrugged away from the subject, questioning her instead about the motley company at Violet Melrose's, and fitting a droll or malicious anecdote to each of the people ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... luxurious but homelike nest which the young star has provided for his bride of a few months-she was 'Flips' Montague, one recalls, daughter of a long line of theatrical folk dating back to days of the merely spoken drama-he proved to be finely unspoiled and surprisingly unlike the killingly droll mime of the Buckeye constellation. Indeed one cannot but be struck at once by the deep vein of seriousness underlying the comedian's surface drollery. His sense of humour must be tremendous; and yet only in the briefest flashes of his whimsical ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... horcht, ihr Leit, wu nooch mir lebt, Ich schreib eich noch des Schtick: Ich warn eich, droll eich, gebt doch Acht, Un memmt uf immer gut enacht, Des Schulhaus an ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas
... entirely devoid of expression, and they spoke like automatons. If I had understood the words, the contrast between their meaning and the machine-like movements of the actors would probably have been droll enough; but, as it was, the noise, the heat, and the smoke were so great that ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... passed quickly to Rupert. The room was full of men whose names were prominent in the history of the time, and these Sir John Loveday, and Lord Fairholm, who were lively young men, twenty-two or twenty-three years old, pointed out to him, often telling him a merry story or some droll jest regarding them. There was Saint John, handsome, but delicate looking, with a half sneer on his face, and dressed in the extremity of fashion, with a coat of peach-coloured velvet with immense cuffs, crimson leather shoes with ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty
... and, just as we sat down to dinner, came the Laird of the Isle of Muck himself, his lady, sister to Talisker, two other ladies their relations, and a daughter of the late M'Leod of Hamer, who wrote a treatise on the second sight, under the designation of Theophilus Insulanus. It was somewhat droll to hear this laird called by his title. Muck would have founded ill; so he was called Isle of Muck, which went off with great readiness. The name, as now written, is unseemly, but is not so bad in the original Erse, which is MOUACH, signifying the Sows' Island. ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... chance, and liked the idea of having Bob Hunter for a room mate. He thought there would be something fascinating about living with a newsboy, and learning this phase of life in a great city, especially when the newsboy was so droll as Bob Hunter had already ...
— The Boy Broker - Among the Kings of Wall Street • Frank A. Munsey
... "That was droll." Hazel chuckled at the recollection, and she recalled the weary look that had once or twice flitted over Bill's face during that ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... doubted it was going to be, of peaceful nights passed in wholesome slumber, of days laden with fruitful works, of evenings with the poets, came into her head and made this tormented marching suddenly seem intensely droll. She laughed into her pillow till the tears rolled down her face, and the pains she had to take to keep all sounds from reaching Fritzing ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... first look at me? Who put it on, and why was I so frightened that the sight of it is an era in my life? It is not a hideous visage in itself; it is even meant to be droll, why then were its stolid features so intolerable? Surely not because it hid the wearer's face. An apron would have done as much; and though I should have preferred even the apron away, it would not have been absolutely insupportable, like the mask. Was it the immovability of the mask? The ...
— Some Christmas Stories • Charles Dickens
... Eagle told Katarina and Marie. Holding their hands, she walked between them toward me, and bade them notice my height. "I am his Cloud-Mother," she said. "How droll it is that parents grow down little, while their children grow ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... can say is, good luck to you both. And please, mayn't I be the best man?" he added, with a droll accent that brought an involuntary smile to Ashby's face. "But go on. Who is the charmer? and where is ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... carts; "Babul the thief," the natives called this acacia. Higher up a torch-wood tree gleamed as if sprayed with gold, its limbs, lean and bare of foliage, holding at their extremities in wisp-like fingers bright, yellow, solitary blooms. From a tendu tree a pair of droll little brown monkeys chattered and grimaced ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... were all tarnished with ashes and soot; A bundle of toys he had flung on his back, And he looked like a peddler just opening his pack. His eyes how they twinkled; his dimples how merry! His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry; His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow, And the beard on his chin was as white as the snow. The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth, And the smoke, it encircled his head like a wreath. He had a broad face and ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous
... how that finally came about, and it might have come so much earlier if you had made your first visit with the same brigand determination as your second. And you brought Jack with you! How droll you two looked that day as you stood upon our narrow door-sill awaiting your welcome! There was no accent of paternity in your expression to justify poor little Jack's presence. The relationship between you ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... Dunlees took their seats to-night and looked around the room they saw a droll sight. The old lady, who had been knitting on the veranda, was seated at a small table in one corner; and on each side of her in a chair sat a cat! One cat was a gray "coon," the other an Angora; and both of them sat up ...
— Jimmy, Lucy, and All • Sophie May
... the death of Higginbottom for his own verses. But Thackeray's Novels by Eminent Hands are superior even to the Rejected Addresses. Codlingsby, the parody of Disraeli's Coningsby, may be taken as the most effective parody in our language: intensely droll in itself, it reproduces the absurdities, the affectations, the oriental imagination of Disraeli with inimitable wit. Those ten pages of irrepressible fooling are enough to destroy Disraeli's reputation as a serious romancer. No doubt they have unfairly reacted so as to dim ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... at the breakfast table which resulted in his remaining at the lights, but then he was not entirely serious. He was, of course, grateful for the kindness shown him by the odd longshoreman and enjoyed the latter's society and droll remarks as he would have enjoyed anything out of the ordinary and quaintly amusing. But now he really liked the man. Seth Atkins was a countryman, and a marked contrast to any individual Brown had ever met, but he was far from being a fool. He possessed a fund of dry common sense, and his ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... only traces of the old custom of going a-Maying were the garlands of the milk-maids and the Jack-in-the-green of the sweeps. The garland (so called) was made of silver plate, borrowed for the day, and fastened upon a sort of pyramid. Accompanying this droll garland were the maids themselves in gay dress, with ribbons and flowers, and attended by musicians who played for them to dance in the street. Sometimes a cow was dressed in festive array, with bouquets and ribbons on her horns, neck and tail, and over her back ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... the matter with you?' asked Zoulvisia. And the maid answered that she was thinking of a droll adventure told them the evening before ...
— The Olive Fairy Book • Various
... all pigeons have a tendency to do this at times, but in the Pouter it is carried to an enormous extent. The birds appear to be quite proud of their power of swelling and puffing themselves out in this way; and I think it is about as droll a sight as you can well see to look at a cage full of these pigeons puffing and blowing themselves out in ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... another, the latter instantly says I cry halves, and if the first refuse he is instantly threatened with an information. The manner in which they cheat each other has, with all its infamy, occasionally something extremely droll and ludicrous. I was one day in the shop of a Swiri, or Jew of Mogadore, when a Jew from Gibraltar entered, with a Portuguese female, who held in her hand a mantle, ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... he, "I'm afraid I shall have to postpone my millennium of fagging. But I don't know what else will make men of you. And mark you, my merry men, there's more than one kind of fagging;" and he looked in a droll way—a droll way that was not in the least funny, but made the boys all wonder what Abel Newt was up ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... stories, crazy stories and stories written far into the future, as "Brigands of the Moon." These stories make light of the vast distances of space and are too weird, droll and fail to give a single shiver down my old backbone. They are strange and inhabited by strange people. No story can give the faintest idea of the space between those mighty suns of the universe. Most of them have more imagination than scientific ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... such no doubt it was) had now descended to within a hundred feet of the earth, allowing the crowd below a sufficiently distinct view of the person of its occupant. This was in truth a very droll little somebody. He could not have been more than two feet in height; but this altitude, little as it was, would have been sufficient to destroy his equilibrium, and tilt him over the edge of his tiny ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... burdens and poor health he was always in good spirits. "At breakfast and at luncheon, and also at our family dinners, he sat at the top of the table, and kept us all enlivened by his interesting conversation, by his charming anecdotes, and droll stories without end of his childhood, of people at Coburg, of our good people in Scotland, which he would repeat with a wonderful power of mimicry, and at which he would himself laugh most heartily. Then he would at other times entertain us with his talk about the most interesting ...
— Queen Victoria • E. Gordon Browne
... "we are doing The Bells. Mr. IRVING has kindly leased it to us. But we are not adhering too slavishly to the plot, nor does he wish us to; and, in fact, we have turned the part made so famous by Mr. IRVING'S father into something a shade more droll, to suit Mr. LESLIE HENSON, than whom, I take the liberty of thinking,"—here the young officer saluted—"no funnier comedian now walks the boards. We are also changing the title from The Bells ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 2, 1917 • Various
... the bank of a frog-pond, we tickled frogs with straws. Yes, and fun of the freshest we found it. Certain animals, and especially frogs, were created, shaped, and educated to do the grotesque, that men might study them, laugh, and grow fat. It was a droll moment with Nature, when she entertained herself and prepared entertainment for us by devising the frog, that burlesque of bird, beast, and man, and taught him how to move and how to speak and sing. Iglesias and I did not disdain batrachian ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... and the perfumers will be base enough to decline your paper," said Lousteau. "Stop, there is a superb engraving in the top drawer of the chest there, worth eighty francs, proof before letters and after letterpress, for I have written a pretty droll article upon it. There was something to lay hold of in Hippocrates refusing the Presents of Artaxerxes. A fine engraving, eh? Just the thing to suit all the doctors, who are refusing the extravagant gifts of Parisian satraps. You will find two or three dozen novels underneath it. Come, now, take ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... friends shrieked with laughter, but no one condescended to say what it was that was so very droll. Gervaise stood still, a little bewildered by this unexpected reception. Coupeau was so ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... Europe. He has been under the leads at Venice, and out again, deuce knows how. He has been expelled from half the cities of Italy, and has turned the story into capital in the other half. A most exorbitant, irresistible droll of a master you have there, sir; but who his decoy- duck of the moment may be, I dare say you can tell better than I. A fine young woman, and a cool hand, I could see for myself. I thought she looked waspish and gave herself more graces than were hers by nature. He has a taste for a ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... word to say that he would never marry till I was married,—but that on the day that he should hear of my wedding, he would go to the first single woman near him and propose. It was a droll thing to say; ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... over again what has been already swallowed; and, however droll this may seem to you, it is the business which all ruminants are born to. You remember the monkey's pouch, which serves him as a larder, whence he takes out his provisions as he wants to eat. The ruminant ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... too, Till his nose seemed bent To catch the scent, Around some corner, of new-baked pies, And his wrinkled cheeks and his squinting eyes Grew puckered into a queer grimace, That made him look very droll in the face, And also very wise. And wise he must have been, to do more Than ever a genius did before, Excepting Daedalus, of yore, And his son Icarus, who wore Upon their backs Those wings of wax He had read of in the old almanacs. Darius was clearly of the opinion That the air is also ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... Wheatfield, who was apparently wiping away a tear. Was the song too deep for them, or perhaps he did not sing the words distinctly, or perhaps they had laughed and he had not noticed? At any rate he would try the next verse, which was certain to amuse them. He looked as droll as he could, and by way of heightening the effect, stuck his two thumbs into the armholes of his waistcoat and wagged his hands in time with ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... sayings and doings, far more like clever memoirs than the experiences of the banks of the Avon. Perhaps there was this immediate disadvantage, that hearing of a more intellectual tone of society tended to make Rachel less tolerant of that which surrounded her, and especially of Mr. Touchett. It was droll that, having so long shunned the two sisters under the impression that they were his protegees and worshippers, she found that Ermine's point of view was quite the rectorial one, and that to venerate the man ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... pins from the table she noticed a little bronze figure which she had not yet seen. It was an old Italian work of Flemish taste: a nude woman, with short legs and heavy stomach, who apparently ran with an arm extended. She thought the figure had a droll air. She asked what she ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... later I became well acquainted with him, and from that time a most cordial friendship existed until his dying day. He visited me as a speaker at our State convention in Trenton, N.Y. I had him at my house at supper when my mother asked him if he would take coffee. His droll reply was: "I hope to drink coffee, madame, in heaven, but I cannot stand it in this world." After supper I informed my guest that it was customary for my good mother and myself (for I was not yet married), to have family worship immediately at the close of that meal ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... laughing matter," cried the lieutenant angrily. "It may seem very droll to you, but if I embody your conduct of the past night in a despatch your chance of ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... had dreamed life in Creeper Cottage was going to be, of all they had never doubted it was going to be, of peaceful nights passed in wholesome slumber, of days laden with fruitful works, of evenings with the poets, came into her head and made this tormented marching suddenly seem intensely droll. She laughed into her pillow till the tears rolled down her face, and the pains she had to take to keep all sounds from reaching Fritzing ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... it is an institution gives it zest for the strange mind of Pepys. He is, however, capable also of moralising. "Oh, that the King would mind his business!" he would exclaim, after having delighted himself and his readers with the most droll accounts of His Majesty's frivolities. "How wicked a wretch Cromwell was, and yet how much better and safer the country was in his hands than it is now." And often he will end the bewildering account with some such bitter ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... Farival the harrowing story of one of her accouchements, withholding no intimate detail. She was growing accustomed to like shocks, but she could not keep the mounting color back from her cheeks. Oftener than once her coming had interrupted the droll story with which Robert was entertaining some amused group of ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... sashes round their waists, with a sheath-knife and revolvers mostly stuck in them, and broad-leaved felt hats on. There were Californians, then foreigners of all sorts—Frenchmen, Italians, Germans, Spaniards, Greeks, Negroes, Indians, Chinamen. They were a droll, strange, fierce-looking crowd. There weren't many women at first, but they came pretty thick after a bit. A couple of theatres were open, a circus, hotels with lots of plate-glass windows and splendid bars, all lighted up, and ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... "A droll scene, a council of war in Boston, Admiral Tombstone, Elbow Room, Mr. Caper, General Clinton and ...
— The Fall of British Tyranny - American Liberty Triumphant • John Leacock
... queer-looking old person, short of figure, round as a ball, his head sunk between very high and rounded shoulders, and with short stumpy legs. He was curiously attired in a whole-coloured suit of gray; a droll-shaped jacket the great collar of which reached far up the back of his head, surmounted a pair of voluminous breeches which suddenly tightened at the knee. I imagined him to be the butler in morning dishabille; and when he accosted ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... strange markings had been forgotten. Nowhere in the world—quite as little in Egypt as elsewhere—had any man the slightest clew to their meaning; there were those who even doubted whether these droll picturings really had any specific meaning, questioning whether they were not rather vague symbols of esoteric religious import and nothing more. And it was the Rosetta Stone that gave the answer to these doubters and restored to the world a ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... the background beyond, and the sky itself; beautiful rough landscapes and seascapes and skyscapes, winds and weathers, boisterous or sunny seas, rain and storm and cloud—all the poetry of nature, that he feels most acutely while his little people are being so unconsciously droll in the midst of it all. He is a king of impressionists, and his impression becomes ours on the spot—never to be forgotten! It is all so quick and fresh and strong, so simple, pat, and complete, so direct from mother Nature herself! It has about it the quality of inevitableness—those ...
— Social Pictorial Satire • George du Maurier
... my father was speaking, with a pleasant, contented face upon him, only a little roguish and droll. ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... Pommer, who was somewhat of a general favorite because of his unaffected, frank demeanor. Occasionally it became a trifle rough or rude; but you always knew where you had him. With special ardor he saluted Frau Kahle, and it looked almost droll to watch the contrast between him, a burly, corpulent fellow, and this tiny, fragile figure that ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... without exception, this story is delightfully droll, humorous and illustrated in harmony ...
— Daddy's Girl • L. T. Meade
... altogether. Great printed sheets will be read by every one every day; and even the laziest of this lazy race will not think it labor to perform this toil. They won't like to eat in the morning without their papers, such slaves they will be to this droll greed for knowing. They won't even think it is droll, it is so ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... picked it out upon the keyboard, and (to my surprise) instantly enriched the same with well-sounding chords, and sang, as she played, with a very droll ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... case of emergency," said the droll, "we have no time to lose or to stand on the ceremony of fashionable etiquette. Here to-day, gone to-morrow—is the motto of Marseilles! Hola! Messieurs, shall we not make the most of new acquaintances when they may be ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... would frequently, against his own interest, persuade a litigant of the injustice of his case, and induce him to throw it up. If not the undisputed leader of his circuit, he was the most beloved. Sometimes he disturbed the court by his droll and humorous illustrations, which called out irrepressible laughter but generally he was grave and earnest in matters of importance; and he was always at home in the courtroom, quiet, collected, and dignified, awkward as was his figure and ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... be a queer sort of a beggar, I fancy." "You're another queer beggar" was the reply. "I am Gillott, the penmaker. My banker tells me you are clever, and I have come to buy some pictures." "By George!" quoth Turner, "you are a droll fellow, I must say." "You're another," said Gillott. "But do you really want to purchase those pictures," asked Turner. "Yes, in course I do, or I would not have climbed those blessed stairs this ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... remarkable fact that all the queer freaks, like clubs and corals, the cranks and tomfools, in droll shapes and satanic colors, the funny poisonous looking Morels, Inkcaps, and Boleti are good wholesome food, but the deadly Amanitas are like ordinary Mushrooms, except that they have grown a little ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... unlike the pugnacious Aunt Becky, whose attack was so spirited and whose thrust so fierce; and when Lily told a diverting little story—and she was often very diverting—Aunt Becky used to watch her pleasant face, with such a droll, good-natured smile; and she used to pat her on the cheek, and look so glad to see her when they met, and often as if she would say—' I admire you a great deal more, and I am a great deal fonder of you than you think; but you know brave stoical Aunt ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... me quite agreeably. The African cannot avoid being comic. He is the grotesque element in our civilization. He will be droll even under the severest punishment. His contortions of body, his grimaces, his ejaculations of "O Lor'! O Massa!" as the paddle or the lash strikes his flesh, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... fear, she walked, not sideways as always, but erect, her chest thrown out, which gave her figure a droll, stilted air of importance. Her shoes made a knocking sound on the floor, and ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... essence of the Old Comedy, where not merely the subject, but the whole manner of treating it was sportive and jocular. The unlimited dominion of mirth and fun manifests itself even in this, that the dramatic form itself is not seriously adhered to, and that its laws are often suspended; just as in a droll disguise the masquerader sometimes ventures to lay aside the mask. The practice of throwing out allusions and hints to the pit is retained even in the comedy of the present day, and is often found to be attended with great success; although unconditionally reprobated by ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... term of contempt that rose to her lips, called forth by I know not what confused and mysterious mental ratiocination. She said: 'That woman is a demoniac.' This epithet, applied to that austere and sentimental creature, seemed to me irresistibly droll. I myself never called her anything now but 'the demoniac,' experiencing a singular pleasure in pronouncing aloud this word ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... more in detail, Clovelly is built in what was once a torrent-bed, and the village tumbles down from the top of the cliff to the very edge of Hartland Bay. The droll, Italian-like cottages cling to the hillside, or seem to grow directly out of the gray rock. At first, the street descends rather gradually and straight, but after a short distance, it zigzags first to left and then to right, twists and turns, takes one under parts of houses, ...
— John and Betty's History Visit • Margaret Williamson
... the laugh of a Conrad Lagrange unknown to the world. "No," he said with mock seriousness, "'doggie,' doesn't do at all. He's not that kind of a dog. His name is Czar. That is"—he added, giving full rein to his droll humor—"I gave it to him for a name. He has made it his title. He did that, you know, so I would always remember that he is ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... began a song, in the course of which he made a variety of gesticulations, not only to our entertainment, but to the great satisfaction of all the people about him. His song was to the full as musical as that of the people of Tanna, but it seemed to be of a droll or humorous nature, from his various ludicrous postures, and from the particular tone of the whole. The language was utterly distinct from that of Tanna, but not harsh or ill suited to music. It seemed likewise to have a certain metre, but very different from that slow and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... small tables, filled with many human bodies. About the walls are paintings and banners in sharp colors; above our heads hang innumerable gaudy lanterns of wood and paper. We sit in furs, shivering with the cold. The food passes endlessly, droll combinations in brown gravies—roses, sugar, and lard—duck and bamboo—lotus, chestnuts, and fish-eggs—an "eight-precious pudding." They tempt curiosity; my chop-sticks are busy. ...
— Profiles from China • Eunice Tietjens
... had the States army come before the city than a Spanish captain observed—"We shall now have a droll siege—cousins on the outside, cousins on the inside. There will be a sham fight or two, and then the cousins will make it up, and arrange matters ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... some divertisement,—bid 'em come in; nay, Sir, you stir not. [Ex. Page. 'Tis for your delight, Sir, I do't; for, Sir, you must understand, a Man, if he have any thing in him, Sir, of Honour, for the case, Sir, lies thus, 'tis not the business of an Army to droll upon an Enemy—truth is, every man loves a whole skin;—but 'twas the fault of the best Statesmen in Christendom to be loose in the hilts,—you ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... I see you are. O! all the servants will lead merry lives here, now; we shall have singing and dancing in the little hall, for the Signor cannot hear us there—and droll stories—Ludovico's come, ma'am; yes, there is Ludovico come with them! You remember Ludovico, ma'am—a tall, handsome young man—Signor Cavigni's lacquey—who always wears his cloak with such a grace, thrown round his left arm, and his hat set on so smartly, ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... excitement of the moment young Bougainville recognized him and something droll flashed ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Byle, is exquisite! It is worth coming a thousand miles by stage coach and flatboat, to meet so droll an adventure with such a nondescript amphibian. He has a prodigious gift of gab, plain and ornamental. Did you take note of his metaphors? 'Rose of Sharon' is good.—By the way, we can't be far from the Bower of Bliss. We must ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... things! the darling kittens," she kept on saying, as she jumped from side to side of the basket so as, not to lose any of the droll gambols of the seven or eight little kittens that were scrambling and rolling ...
— Heidi • Johanna Spyri
... impossible to enumerate the many good things of this sort which Holmes has written, full of wit and wisdom, and of humor lightly dashed with sentiment and sparkling with droll analogies, sudden puns, and unexpected turns of rhyme and phrase. Among the best of them are Nux Postcoenatica, A Modest Request, Ode for a Social Meeting, The Boys, and Rip Van Winkle, M.D. Holmes's ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... 19.-Interministerium. Droll cause in Westminster Hall. The Duke of Cumberland and Edward Bright. Sir Ralph Gore. Bon-mots ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... With all his masterfulness he was very considerably in awe of Miss Allis. There was a not-to-be-daunted expression in her extraordinary eyes which made him feel that a love tilt with her would be a somewhat serious business. He pictured himself as an ardent lover; he would cut a droll figure in that role, he knew; emotions were hardly in his line. He might feel such an assertive emotion as love quite as strongly as anyone, in fact, did, but could he express himself with faultless consistency? He rather ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... suggested by "the affable Archangel," has perhaps been made a difficult subject in order to produce the droll fallacies of astronomers: ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... professional as to be quite amusing. He talked of the Duke, said he was a good man to do business with, quick and intelligent, and 'how well he managed that little correspondence with Huskisson,' which was droll enough, for Huskisson dined there ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... Brown, Secretary of the Board of Admiralty, to whom also he wrote that Robert Morris had sent him orders to join the French frigates at Rhode Island and be under their command. "Mr. Morris," wrote Barry, "must be unacquainted with his rank or he must think me a droll kind of a fellow to be commanded by a midshipman. I assure you I don't feel myself so low a commander as to brook such orders. I suppose he will be much offended. I assure you although I serve the country for nothing I am determined ...
— The Story of Commodore John Barry • Martin Griffin
... under a bushel. In his own proper person children avoided him, but they crowded about this Santa Claus, encircling his legs, gurgling with joy when they were lifted to his shoulder, their laughter ringing through the church at his droll antics. A sense of mystery grew when he opened a pack on the pulpit stairs, a pack unfamiliar in its outward aspect to the Committee on Entertainment. Every girl had a little doll dressed in fashionable attire, and every ...
— The Romance of a Christmas Card • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Cagliari, it is probable that I should have retained a much more favourable recollection of Mr Hobhouse than of Lord Byron; for he was a cheerful companion, full of odd and droll stories, which he told extremely well; he was also good-humoured and intelligent—altogether an advantageous specimen of a well-educated English gentleman. Moreover, I was at the time afflicted with a nervous dejection, which the occasional exhilaration ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... is written in a droll, satirical strain, and shows a great familiarity with the topics of ancient and modern literature. The rest of the volume consists of translations from Anacreon, Horace, and other Greek and Latin poets, and many original pieces; one of which latter, entitled "The Prodigal ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... "They are very droll," said Suzanne to the conscript in the moonlight by the studio wall. "She walked always with those big eyes that saw nothing, and yet she kisses me on both cheeks as though she were my sister, and gives me—see— ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... termination est, as high'st for highest, bigg'st for biggest, though sometimes used by the poets, are always inelegant, and may justly be considered grammatically improper. They occur most frequently in doggerel verse, like that of Hudibras; the author of which work, wrote, in his droll fashion, not only the foregoing monosyllables, but learned'st for most learned, activ'st for most active, desperat'st for most desperate, epidemical'st for most ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... and distinctly—ushering in Titmouse; on whom the door was the next instant closed. He felt amazingly flustered—and he would have been still more so, if he could have been made aware of the titter which pervaded the fourteen or twenty people assembled in the room, occasioned by the droll misnomer of the servant, and the exquisitely ridiculous appearance of poor Titmouse. Mr. Quirk, dressed in black, with knee breeches and silk stockings, immediately bustled up to him, shook him cordially by the hand, and led him up to the assembled guests. "My ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... cannot but think that we live in a bad age, O tempora, O mores! as 'tis in the adage. My foot was but just set out from my cathedral, When into my hands comes a letter from the droll. I can't pray in quiet for you and your verses; But now let us hear what the Muse from your car says. Hum—excellent good—your anger was stirr'd; Well, punners and rhymers must have the last word. But let me ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... entreat him to take greater care of his invaluable life, and hint that if any calamity occurred to him, the campaign would ipso facto come to an end. Andreas knew that MacGahan was quizzing him, but it was exceedingly droll how he purred and bridled under the light touch of that genial humourist, whose merits his own countrymen, to my thinking, have never adequately recognised. The old story of a prophet having scant ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various
... 'tis very droll, said the lady, smiling, from the reflection that this was the second time we a had been left together by a parcel of nonsensical contingencies,—c'est bien comique, said ...
— A Sentimental Journey • Laurence Sterne
... Duvall. At her side was seated her lover and affianced husband, his dark, handsome features lighted up with an expression of proud triumph, almost amounting to scorn. Then there was Corporal Grimsby, very shabby, very sarcastic, and very droll; near him sat the Honorable Timothy Tickels, wearing upon his sensual countenance a look of uneasiness, and occasionally betraying a degree of nervous agitation that indicated a mind ill at ease. At intervals he would glance suspiciously and stealthily at the Chevalier—for that ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... Thackeray's work, a melancholy conviction of the vanity of all things human. Vanitas vanitatum, as he wrote on the pages of the French lady's album, and again in one of the earlier numbers of The Cornhill Magazine. With much that is picturesque, much that is droll, much that is valuable as being a correct picture of the period selected, the gist of the book is melancholy throughout. It ends with the promise of happiness to come, but that is contained merely in a concluding paragraph. The ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... uttered unintentionally than by premeditation. There is no such thing as being "droll to order." One evening a lady said to a small wit, "Come, Mr. ——, tell us a lively anecdote;" and the poor fellow was mute the rest ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... as that ought to be a brave fellow, a veritable hero? Well, perhaps. But I know an Indian who is called Le Blanc; that means white. And a white man who is called Lenoir; that means black. It is very droll, this affair of the names. It ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... to prepare to go in, the Doctor looked down the path to where the Divorcee was still standing. After a moment's hesitation he took her lace scarf from the back of her chair, and strolled after her. The Sculptor shrugged his shoulders with such a droll expression that we all had to smile. ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... of a touch of gum on the insect's back, and had placed in the grasp of each fly a piece of pine an inch long, cut into the shape of a rifle. The walking motion of the fly's feet twirled and balanced the stick in rather droll burlesque of musketry drill; and a dozen of these insects-at-arms, disposed in open order on the counter, were ministering to ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... "Thou'lt make a droll squire to wait in a Lord's household," said he. "Hast ever been ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle
... ever anybody heard a cause since the world began; Lord Newton just awakened from clandestine slumber on the bench; and the second President Dundas, with every feature so fat that he reminds you, in his wig, of some droll old court officer in an illustrated nursery story-book, and yet all these fat features instinct with meaning, the fat lips curved and compressed, the nose combining somehow the dignity of a beak with the good nature of a bottle, and the very double chin with an ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... like the Blackie we had always known that we were at our ease immediately. The sun shone in at the window, and some one laughed a little laugh somewhere down the corridor, and Deming, who is Irish, plunged into a droll description of a brand-new office boy ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... a cigarette. How very little, to be sure, escaped that swift and silent mind! At luncheon the Chief had scrupulously avoided making, the slightest allusion to the thoughts with which Desmond's mind was seething. Instead he had told, with the gusto of the born raconteur, a string of extremely droll yarns about "double crosses," that is, obliging gentlemen who will spy for both sides simultaneously, he had come into contact with during his long and varied career. Desmond had played up to him and repressed the questions which kept rising to his lips. Hence the Chief's ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... Dictator, on the other hand, appeared to enjoy an unusual flow of spirits; his laugh, which was youthful and pleasant to hear, sounded frequently from the garden; by the modulation and the changes of his voice it was obvious that he told many droll stories and imitated the accents of a variety of different nations; and before he and the young clergyman had finished their vermouth all feeling of distrust was at an end, and they were talking together like a pair ...
— New Arabian Nights • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the dry, well-kept, level road eastward, towards the Belgian frontier. She laughed and chatted as the hours went by. She had been in London last spring, she told me, and had stayed at the Savoy. The English were so droll, and lacked cachet, though the hotel was smart—especially ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... pomp this day to muster before the King and the Duke, and shops in the City are shut up every where all this day. He carried me to an ordinary by the Old Exchange, where we come a little too late, but we had very good cheer for our 18d. a-piece, and an excellent droll too, my host, and his wife so fine a woman; and sung and played so well that I staid a great while and drunk a great deal of wine. Then home and staid among my workmen all day, and took order for things for the finishing of their work, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... arguments mean in reference to any expression of thought. I delight in telling what I think, but if you ask me how I dare say so, or why it is so, I am the most helpless of mortal men. I do not even see that either of these questions admits of an answer. So that in the present droll posture of my affairs, when I see myself suddenly raised into the importance of a heretic, I am very uneasy when I advert to the supposed duties of such a personage who is to make good his thesis against all comers. I certainly shall do no ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... shouldn't complain," said she, glancing indicatively round. "One can still be out of doors, and yet not get the wetting one deserves. And the view is so fine, and these faded old frescoes are so droll." ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... the mysteries which men much wiser than I declare to pass all human understanding. Ask Decius if he can defend the faith of Athanasius against that of the Arians; he will smile, and shake his head in that droll way he has. I believe,' he added after a brief hesitancy, 'in Christ and in the ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... worst they might match their women with his, if he still came on; for themselves such a victory would be a disgrace; a set of mad women, a general in a snood, a little old drunkard, a half- soldier, and a few naked dancers; why should they murder such a droll crew? However, when they heard how the God was wasting their land with fire, giving cities and citizens to the flames, burning their forests, and making one great conflagration of all India—for fire is the Bacchic instrument, Dionysus's very birthright—, then they ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... a smile stirred about Ryder's mouth. 'I would not pain her for the world,' he said. 'She is a kindly little woman, and her hospitality is charming; but you must admit she is droll. What ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... absent, and, thirdly," sinking her voice, "she sends for her malles, which contain doubtless—who knows?—plans of London, designs of the fortresses, and perhaps a telegraphy without wires—Marconi, what do I know? Mademoiselle must admit that it has the air droll?" ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 30, 1914 • Various
... turned out to be so much less negligible than his brilliant friend. She remembered thinking him rather shy, less accustomed to society; and though in his quiet deprecating way he had said one or two droll things he lacked Mr. Popple's masterly manner, his domineering yet caressing address. When Mr. Popple had fixed his black eyes on Undine, and murmured something "artistic" about the colour of her hair, she had thrilled to the depths of her being. Even now ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... fiend than you were shown up for; to having made it impossible mother should not take proceedings." There!—she had brought it out, and with the sense of their situation turning to high excitement for her in the teeth of his droll stare, his strange grin, his characteristic "Lordy, lordy! What good will that do you?" She was prepared with her clear statement of reasons for her appeal, and feared so he might have better ones for his own that all her story came in a flash. "Well, Mr. Pitman, I want to get ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... to defend herself with much vivacity against this charge, and they continued to converse in the same light strain for some time longer; Coleman, as usual, being exceedingly droll and amusing, and the young lady displaying a decided talent for delicate and playful badinage. In order to enter con spirito into this style of conversation, we must either be in the enjoyment ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... conversation, the possessive pronoun your is sometimes used in a droll way, being shortened into your in pronunciation, and nothing more being meant by it, than might be expressed by the article an or a: as, "Rich honesty dwells, like your miser, sir, in a poor house; as, your pearl ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... meals with me, and one cat on each side of me, on stools, and we had Poll to talk to us. Now for a word or two as to the dress in which I made a tour round the isle. I could but think how droll it would look in the streets of the town in which I was born. I wore a high cap of goat's skin, with a flap that hung, down, to keep the sun and rain from my neck, a coat made from the skin of a goat too, the skirts ...
— Robinson Crusoe - In Words of One Syllable • Mary Godolphin
... quite himself again. He had settled the point which had been worrying his mind, and doubtless considered himself established as a man of sentiment in my opinion. Before we had finished our morning's stroll, he was singing as blithe as a grasshopper, whistling to his dogs, and telling droll stories: and I recollect that he was particularly facetious that day at dinner on the subject of matrimony, and uttered several excellent jokes, not to be found in Joe Miller, that made the bride elect blush and look ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... Gafferson, in that forlorn environment on the Belize road, and his success in making them laugh drew him on to other pictures of the droll side of life among the misfits of adventure. The ladies visibly dallied over their tea-cups to listen to him; the charm of having them all to himself, and of holding them in interested entertainment by his discourse—these ladies ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... hard task to invent A Hundred Droll Tales, since not only have ruffians and envious men opened fire upon him, but his friends have imitated their example, and come to him saying "Are you mad? Do you think it is possible? No man ever had in the depths ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac
... two strange opposites two of the most dreaded of the myrmidons of Tristan l'Hermite, no less than his two chief hangmen, Trois-Echelles and Petit-Jean. Trois-Echelles was the long, cadaverous hangman; Petit-Jean was the stout, droll hangman, but when it came to a push and a pinch, both were hangmen and hung in the same manner, if not with the same manners. Petit-Jean pulled a flagon of wine from under the platform of the gallows, lifted it to his lips, ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... little dark, sir," Addison replied, with a smile as droll as his own. "But I suppose it was all because of that rainbow in the morning that you told us to look ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... the elegiac and the pathetic, indulging herself in sentimental poetry, and keeping a store thereof in her thread-case, which she had cut from the "Christian Mirror." Miss Roxy sometimes, in her brusque way, popped out observations on life and things, with a droll, hard quaintness that took one's breath a little, yet never failed to have a sharp crystallization of truth,—frosty though it were. She was one of those sensible, practical creatures who tear every veil, and lay their fingers on every spot in pure business-like ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... object which moves from place to place, and persons who are closely connected with it, so that through a series of scenes a change in the position of the object mechanically brings about increasingly serious changes in the situation of the persons. Let us now turn to comedy. Many a droll scene, many a comedy even, may be referred to this simple type. Read the speech of Chicanneau in the Plaideurs: here we find lawsuits within lawsuits, and the mechanism works faster and faster—Racine ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... and droll, Rigwoodie hags wad spean a foal, Lowping an' flinging on a crummock, I wonder didna turn ...
— Tam O'Shanter • Robert Burns
... Sir Francis is a thorough gentleman. They're not his boys, but her ladyship's, and she has spoiled 'em, I suppose. Let 'em grow wild, Grant. I say, my lad," he continued, looking at me with a droll twinkle in his eye, "they want us to train them, and prune them, and take off some of their straggling growths, eh? I think we could make a difference in ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... and a certain indescribable combination of sweetness and melancholy in his quiet smile. He never laughed audibly, but he had a quick sense of the comic, and his eye would laugh when his lips were silent. He would say queer, droll, unexpected things which passed for humour; but, save for that gleam in the eye, he could not have said them with more seeming innocence of intentional joke if he had been a monk of La Trappe looking up from the grave he was digging in order to ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... him into a scout, and drives him out of the orderly-room, out of the barrack square, to wander in Himalayan passes and ride across the deserts of Africa. Baden-Powell is a nomad. The smart cavalry officer who can play any musical instrument, draw amusing pictures, tell delightfully droll stories, sing a good song, stage-manage theatricals—do everything, in short, that qualifies a man to take his ease in country houses, loves more than any other form of existence the loneliness and the wildness of the scout's. Often, he tells us, ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... gesture of the stranger, his weak, lisping voice, his bent knees and thin hands, his very cap and long frieze coat—everything about him suggested good-nature, something innocent and droll. ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... at a distance working your way through the underwood, and seeing you through the leaves advancing with eager and rapid steps to the spot, conceals himself behind the entrance, and as you are just on the point of entering the hut, your foot just on the step, the droll sportsman puts his ugly head out of the window, as a yellow tortoise would his out of his shell, asking you, in most polite terms, what o'clock it is; or if it should chance to be raining a deluge at the time, remark ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... by all I hear; surely it is because my faith is small. Ah. me! how long? how long?—A precious discourse to me. He preached my experience.—The solution of the text was a gratification, while I heard profitably. He made a very droll remark when describing those 'who make their belly their God;' he said 'they make their kitchen their temple, their cook and butcher their priests, and their belly their God.'—I felt my soul blessed and encouraged while hearing of sin being destroyed, with an earnest longing for its accomplishment. ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth
... of driving forward to divert the mob; who leap and shout and caper with delight, and lash the laggers along with great indignation indeed, and with the most comical gestures. I never saw horses in so droll a state of degradation before, for they are all striped or spotted, or painted of some colour to distinguish them each from other; and nine or ten often start at a time, to the great danger of lookers-on I think, but exceedingly to my entertainment, who have the comfort ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... of them—I remember he was the adjutant—held in his hand a wax candle (three to the pound). Whether he had himself seized it in the enthusiasm of my narrative of flood and field, or it had been put there by another, I know not, but he certainly cut a droll figure. The room we were in was a small one off the great saloon, and through the half open folding-door I could clearly perceive that the festivities were still continued. The crash of fiddles and French horns, and the tramp of feet, which had lost much of their elasticity since the entertainments ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... was a droll one, was Monsieur Callow, and a gentleman too. I never had a billiard-marker like him. He could play any man, and lose by one point; and he could recite and sing; and oh, he eat so little! Every one laughed at ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed
... Scotland. The poetical chroniclers Barbour, Henry the Minstrel, and Wyntoun, are familiar names, as are likewise the poets Henryson, Dunbar, Gavin Douglas, and Sir David Lyndsay. But the authors of the songs of the people have been forgotten. In a droll poem entitled "Cockelby's Sow," ascribed to the reign of James I., is enumerated a considerable catalogue of contemporary lyrics. In the prologue to Gavin Douglas' translation of the AEneid of Virgil, written not later ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... his jeweled staff. Although the shaggy man cried out and tried to leap backward and escape, it proved of no use. Suddenly his own head was gone and a donkey head appeared in its place—a brown, shaggy head so absurd and droll that Dorothy and Polly both broke into merry laughter, and even Button-Bright's ...
— The Road to Oz • L. Frank Baum
... whimsical resentment of his droll playfulness; she laughed with him, and taking his arm, walked up and down the porch. They talked of many things—of Louise's persistent stubbornness, and of a growing change in the conduct of Tom—his abstraction and his gentleness. He had left uncut the leaves ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... fine white boys, apprentices, and a couple of stout slaves: we had, in addition, taken on board an old apprentice of the pilot's, who as we started had volunteered to accompany his once master. This was a droll subject, a regular long-sided dare-devil of a South Carolinian: he was full three sheets in the wind when we sailed, and managed to keep the steam up by the contributions liberally proffered during our short season ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... fortune-telling book, by Bob Antrobus." In the Diary of the sprightly Louisa Josepha Adelaide, Countess of Bute (afterward so unfortunate a wife and an even more unfortunate mother), she describes a droll scene at a Scotch castle one evening, in which the unexpected statements of "The Square of Sevens" as to the lives and characters of the company "put to the blush several persons of distinction" who rashly tempted its wisdom—especially ...
— The Square of Sevens - An Authoritative Method of Cartomancy with a Prefatory Note • E. Irenaeus Stevenson
... a proud and gorgeously upholstered lady lolling languidly in a motor car, and looking extremely pleased with herself—not without reason; and I had met two successful men of great presence, who reminded me somehow of "Porkin and Snob"; and I had noticed a droll little bundle of a baby, in a fawn-coloured woollen suit, with a belt slipped almost to her knees, and sweet round eyes as purple as pansies, who was hunting a rolling apple amongst "the wild mob's million feet"; and I had seen a worried-looking matron, frantically ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... Pierre proved droll companions, ready to jibe at anyone or anything in perfect good nature, so that it was an hour before Leonard strolled outside. As he had no further duty, he climbed a long ladder to the top of the high dock wall and walked ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... young, handsome, suave, of what the newspapers insist on calling distinguished bearing. He spoke English pleasantly but imperfectly. He possessed a capital fund of anecdote, and Warburton, being an Army man, loved a good droll story. It was a revelation to see the way he dipped the end of his cigar into his coffee, a stimulant which he drank with Balzacian frequency and relish. Besides these accomplishments, he played a very smooth hand at the great American ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... distinct account of the port. This menace cowed them down like so many bullies, and they fell into a moody but vindictive silence, their looks discovering the internal oaths of revenge. It was really droll, if the words used allow the expression, to hear how the captain blended Italian, Maltese, and Arabic oaths and abuse in his rage. Now "Santo Dio!" now "Scomunicat!" Sacrament! now "Allah!" "Imshe," ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... Gibbon reveals himself as a man with little dignity or heroism. There is a droll story that is apt to suggest itself when one thinks of Gibbon. At one time, when asking a dignified lady for her hand in marriage, he fell upon his knees in proper lover-like manner. Unfortunately Gibbon ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... went the pies, for Mrs. Smith had not much to give, and her spirit was generous, though her pastry was not of the best. It looked very droll to see pies sitting about on the thresholds of closed doors, but the cakes were quite elegant, and filled up the corners of the towel handsomely, for the apron lay in the middle, with the oranges right and left, like ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... was hanged for cutting purses, and up comes our Fox to quiz George. Says he, knowing Selwyn's penchant for horrors, 'George, were you at the execution of my namesake?' Selwyn looks him over in his droll way from head to foot and says, 'Lard, no! I never ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... this day must envy the manufacturers of the good old times when they remember that then the would-be purchaser had to look up the maker and court his pleasure. He had to sign a written contract, the terms of which sound droll enough to us. The time limit for construction was from six to twelve months and the payments were, generally, so much cash, so many casks of wine, a certain amount of corn, wheat, and potatoes, while geese, chickens, ...
— How the Piano Came to Be • Ellye Howell Glover
... right, brother; that was a droll affair:' and then, addressing himself to me, he continued, 'You remember your Uncle Terence? A funny dog he was, and in his young days the very devil for lovemaking and fighting. Look here,' said the speaker, pointing to a small circular perforation in his side, which had been neatly patched. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... the very stare Says, plain as language, Sir, have you been there? Do tell me, has a Potawattomie a soul, And have the tribes a language? Now that's droll— They tell me some have tails like wolves, and others claws, Those ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... keep them for play! She's going to St. Jude's, you may be sure of it, to stare at this fine wedding, instead of being at home, in a cotton gown and white apron, making beds. Mrs. Latimer must be a droll mistress, to give her liberty in this way. What's that fly for?" sharply added Miss Corny, as one drew ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... hope, Miss Gryll, you will not laugh at Lord Curryfin: for you may be assured nothing will be farther from his lordship's intention than to say anything in the slightest degree droll. ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... up. He was a droll youth, and curiosity was his besetting sin. "Say, fellows, I wonder why he told us not to go up-stairs. I bet you there's something to be seen from up there, or he would not have told us not to go. Any of you boys willing to ...
— Private Peat • Harold R. Peat
... "aye, aye." It is used as an expression of triumph and its employment in this connection is both droll and picturesque. ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... evening, when resting, in a convenient lane near the mill. They had rolled out a long peeled log on which they lounged while they whittled and talked. After Mr. Lincoln came to town the men would start him to story-telling as soon as he appeared at the assembly ground. So irresistibly droll were his "yarns" that, says Mr. Roll, "whenever he'd end up in his unexpected way the boys on the log would whoop and roll off." The result of the rolling off was to polish the log like a mirror. Long after Lincoln had disappeared from Sangamon "Abe's log" ...
— McClure's Magazine December, 1895 • Edited by Ida M. Tarbell
... in despair, Her tears falling like rain: She had never spun a thread in her life, Nor ever reeled a skein! Hark! the door creaked, and through a chink, With droll wise smile and funny wink, In stepped a little quaint old man, All humped, and crooked, and ...
— On the Tree Top • Clara Doty Bates
... her husband took her visiting she went and behaved there just as queerly as at home; when guests came to her house, she zealously served them refreshments, taking no interest whatever in what was said, and showing preference toward none. Only Mayakin, a witty, droll man, at times called forth on her face a smile, as vague as a shadow. He used ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... constant recurrence of some words in a quaint and queer connection, which gives a grotesque and somewhat repulsive mannerism to many sentences. Of these the commonest offender is 'quite;' which appears in almost every page, and gives at first a droll kind of emphasis; but soon becomes wearisome. 'Nay,' 'manifold,' 'cunning enough significance,' 'faculty' (meaning a man's rational or moral power), 'special,' 'not without,' haunt the reader as if in some uneasy dream which does not rise to the ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... ordinary Satyrs, artists delighted in depicting little Satyrs, young imps, frolicking about the woods in a marvellous variety of droll attitudes. These little fellows greatly resemble their friends ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... things the assumption of the reporter of the A. Z. that Wagner himself had never conducted his Lohengrin better than Franz Lachner, appeared to me very droll. It is well known that Wagner has never heard this work, let alone conducted it!— Ignorance of this kind is, moreover, not the worst on the other side, where intentional and unintentional ignorance and lies (not to mince the matter) are ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... was generally acknowledged to be a "comedian." No one ever saw him in a temper, or heard him speak a sharp word. He had a droll, woebegone face that never smiled, but a face everybody—from the mayor to the poorest mill hand—loved and respected. How often Benson had come in from school, ill-tempered and sour-visaged at something that had gone wrong in the class-room, ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... 1710, Steele (Tatler, No. 246) dates from Lloyd's his Petition on Coffee-house Orators and Newsvendors. And Addison, in Spectator, April 23, 1711, relates this droll incident: "About a week since there happened to me a very odd accident, by reason of one of these my papers of minutes which I had accidentally dropped at Lloyd's Coffee-house, where the auctions are usually kept. Before I missed it, there were a cluster of people who had found it, and were ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... Thuvia, and Phaidor, daughter of Matai Shang. They each love John Carter. Ha-ah! but it is droll. Together for a year they will meditate within the Temple of the Sun, but ere the year is quite gone there will be no more food for them. Ho-oh! what divine entertainment," and she licked the froth from her cruel lips. "There will be no more food—except each ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Rivers, with a droll inflection. They all laughed, and Burke clucked at the team. "Well, good-bye, boys; ...
— The Moccasin Ranch - A Story of Dakota • Hamlin Garland
... be born a Prince, who should one day develop into a King. It chanced that Nature had a sense of humor—so Nature paid me a droll compliment. She gave me a futile ambition to be a man—me, whom she had decided was to be ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... It was a droll procession of men with mice and a lady with a parrot that got under way and moved in among the Japanese fans and swinging lanterns of the next room in the suite of Burnett's friend. Five little individual tables were laid there and on each table lay a Japanese creature ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... probe of inquiry a little deeper. How did M. Pouillard happen to remember? Mais, it was because the young man was very droll; he was of the cold blood. When Victor, le garcon, would have brought news of the emeute, he had said, breakfast first, and ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... her heart. She acted in obedience to the dictates of the law of kindness, and she felt lighter and happier than she had done for a long time. Fred was by degrees quite cheered, and amused his companions by his droll talk for some way. Spying, however, one of his school-fellows on the rocks at a distance, he and John, joined him abruptly, and thus Emilie and ...
— Emilie the Peacemaker • Mrs. Thomas Geldart
... talk to his altered future, and the obligations and interests that lay before him; but he shrugged away from the subject, questioning her instead about the motley company at Violet Melrose's, and fitting a droll or malicious anecdote to each ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... "'Thou art a droll knave,' replies Guttorm, for he was ever fond of a joke; 'but thou art wise also, therefore I advise thee to make a pattern pair of wings for the men; ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... to speak of Literature. The stranger expressed himself with enthusiastic admiration of Racine. A droll incident happened during our dialogue. My gentleman wanted to let down a little sash-window, and could n't manage it. 'You don't understand that,' said I; 'let me do that.' I tried to get it down; but succeeded no better than he. 'Monsieur,' said he, 'allow me to remark, on my side, that ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... Heaven knows how many times that comedy-proverb of Musset called 'A door must either be open or shut,' has been gravely played by the Sardinian Parliament and the prime minister!" It is with a very droll effect that a French paper has revived this curious description, a propos of the perpetual repetition of the drama played by the French Assembly and the French president, in which the constant threats of resignation on the one hand are invariably followed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... a very clever man, he was neither wise nor good. He could not bear to vex himself, nor anybody else; and, rather than be teased, would grant almost anything that was asked of him. He was so bright and lively, and made such droll, good-natured answers, that everyone liked him who came near him; but he had no steady principle, only to stand easy with everybody, and keep as much power for himself as he could without giving offence. He loved pleasure much ...
— Young Folks' History of England • Charlotte M. Yonge
... he was so frightened and horrified that he wanted to run away, but his legs trembled and shook so badly that he couldn't. Then it struck him as a very funny thing for Jack to come to life, especially as the expression on his pumpkin face was so droll and comical it excited laughter on the instant. So, recovering from his first fear, Tip began to laugh; and the merry peals reached old Mombi's ears and made her hobble quickly to the hedge, where she seized Tip's collar and dragged him back to where she had ...
— The Marvelous Land of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... compensated by a man who was just behind us at the ticket window. He asked for a ticket to Asbury Park. "Single, or return?" asked the clerk. "I don't believe I'll ever come back," he said, but with so unconsciously droll an accent that the ticket seller screamed ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... as to bring up all my journal with you. My Papa has promised me, he will bring up my baby house with him. I shall send you a droll figure of a young lady,[64] in or under, which you please, a tasty head Dress. It was taken from a print that came over in one of the last ships from London. After you have sufficiently amused yourself with it I am ...
— Diary of Anna Green Winslow - A Boston School Girl of 1771 • Anna Green Winslow
... "might be produced against some of our sex, who join too readily to droll upon, and sneer at, the misfortune of any poor young creature, who has shewn too little regard for her honour: and who (instead of speaking of it with concern, and inveighing against the seducer) too lightly ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... perhaps, most of us do. At one time he was infinitely flattered by the attentions of Count Dorsay, who, no doubt, considered him a personage. This odd combination was the cause of great amusement to his friends, who were, of course, on the look out for droll incidents. There was many a story in circulation. One was that Forster, expecting a promised visit from "the Count," received a sudden call from his printers. With all solemnity he impressed the situation on his man. "Now," he said, "you will tell the Count that I have only just gone round ...
— John Forster • Percy Hethrington Fitzgerald
... your paper," said Lousteau. "Stop, there is a superb engraving in the top drawer of the chest there, worth eighty francs, proof before letters and after letterpress, for I have written a pretty droll article upon it. There was something to lay hold of in Hippocrates refusing the Presents of Artaxerxes. A fine engraving, eh? Just the thing to suit all the doctors, who are refusing the extravagant gifts ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... was dressed for her part in a white towel pinned around her and a pointed cap of paper on her head. Very droll she looked, but she was not so easy to manage as the doll. Beads she refused to swallow, but thrust them out on her small pink tongue, and she struggled violently when a drop of the medicine was given to her. In fact, her struggles made Helen's arm ...
— Kristy's Rainy Day Picnic • Olive Thorne Miller
... and the shelter. It was a secret source of humiliation to her that there had as yet to her knowledge been no one with whom her sister had exchanged vows; if her conviction on this subject could have expressed itself intelligibly it would have given you a glimpse of a droll state of mind—a dim theory that a bright girl ought to be able to try successive aspirants. Delia's conception of what such a trial might consist of was strangely innocent: it was made up of calls and walks ...
— The Reverberator • Henry James
... Kenny, his eyes droll and tender. "I suppose you belong to the ferryman's union." He dropped his knapsack into the boat and busied himself with the painter. "If the boat had two oars," he told her laughing, "or I one arm, I know I could manage. As it is, ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... told that "he should be extremely reserved on the head of pleasantry," and that "as to sallies of wit, it is still more dangerous to let them fly at random; but he may repeat the smart sayings of others if he will, or relate part of some droll ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... like you, m'sieur, some months ago. There was a little child with her, and the two were quite alone. They are very intrepid, are the English mam'zelles. She did not know a word of our language. But that was droll, m'sieur! A French demoiselle would never voyage ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma • Hesba Stretton
... in Nuremberg. You will no doubt look down upon me with contempt since, instead of being able to mould and cast splendid statues, and such like, all I can do is to hoop casks and tubs." Reinhold burst out laughing, and cried, "Now that I call droll. I shall look down upon you—eh? because you are a cooper; why man, that's what I am; I'm nothing but a cooper." Frederick opened his eyes wide in astonishment; he did not know what to make of it, for Reinhold's dress was in keeping with anything sooner than a journeyman cooper's on travel. ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... all tarnished with ashes and soot. A bundle of toys he had flung on his back; And he looked like a pedler just opening his pack. His eyes, how they twinkled! his dimples, how merry! His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry; His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow, And the beard on his chin was as white as the snow. The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth, And the smoke, it encircled his head like a wreath. He had a broad face, and a little round belly That shook when he laughed, like a bowl ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris
... for wee Dollie was never long unhappy. She had almost forgotten how vexed she had been, and she laughed as she saw small bubbles sailing, sailing away to the meadow. Softly she hummed, and then little words, describing what she saw, fitted quaintly into the droll melody— ...
— Princess Polly's Playmates • Amy Brooks
... one told a story which was at all verging on the marvellous, he was sure to tell another which would be still more incredible. He played the fiddle and sang to his own accompaniments, which were very droll, as he extracted very strange noises from his instrument; sometimes his bow would be on the wrong side of the bridge, sometimes down at the keys; besides which, he produced sounds by thumping the fiddle as well as by touching ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... proper person children avoided him, but they crowded about this Santa Claus, encircling his legs, gurgling with joy when they were lifted to his shoulder, their laughter ringing through the church at his droll antics. A sense of mystery grew when he opened a pack on the pulpit stairs, a pack unfamiliar in its outward aspect to the Committee on Entertainment. Every girl had a little doll dressed in fashionable attire, and every boy a brilliantly colored, splendidly noisy, tin trumpet; but hanging ...
— The Romance of a Christmas Card • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Madrid he had spoken ill of the religious orders, so as not to be out of harmony with his surroundings, considering them anachronisms, and had hurled curses against the Inquisition, while relating this or that lurid or droll story wherein the habits danced, or rather friars without habits, yet in speaking of the Philippines, which should be ruled by special laws, he would cough, look wise, and again extend his hand downwards to ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... Kuno carried him home; and they were the best of friends from that day forth. I don't say it's a discreditable story, you observe," continued Mr. Gottesheim; "but it's droll, and that's the fact. A man should think before he strikes; for, as my nephew says, man to man was ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... graceful as May. Villebecque himself was a celebrity in characters of airy insolence and careless frolic. Their old man, indeed, was rather hard, but handy; could take anything either in the high serious, or the low droll. Their sentimental lover was rather too much bewigged, and spoke too much to the audience, a fault rare with the French; but this hero had a vague idea that he was ultimately destined to ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot; A bundle of toys he had flung on his back, And he looked like a peddler just opening his pack. His eyes—how they twinkled! his dimples how merry! His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry! His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow, And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow; The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth, And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath; He had a broad face and a little round belly, That shook when he laughed, like a bowlful ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... a remarkable fact that all the queer freaks, like clubs and corals, the cranks and tomfools, in droll shapes and satanic colors, the funny poisonous looking Morels, Inkcaps, and Boleti are good wholesome food, but the deadly Amanitas are like ordinary Mushrooms, except that they have grown a ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... unrivalled performer whose man-of-business he is, in attempting a populacity (we must coin a new word for a new thing) for which he was exquisitely unfitted. What more stiffly awkward than his essays at easy familiarity? What more painfully remote from drollery than his efforts to be droll? In the case of a man who descends so far as Mr. Seward, such feats can be characterized by no other word so aptly as by tumbling. The thing would be sad enough in any prominent man, but in him it becomes a public shame, for in the ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... Benefit of Humour in Philosophers can always do more Philosophy. Assisted by a sense of humour: Witness the droll experiment Of this same scientific gent. For he, his frugal breakfast finishing, (The eggs and bacon fast diminishing) Noted how o'er his marmalade A Wasp was buzzing undismayed. General Reflection: We all are apt to be inhosp- Attitude of Man towards Itable to the humble ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Nov. 1, 1890 • Various
... is suggested by "the affable Archangel," has perhaps been made a difficult subject in order to produce the droll fallacies of astronomers: ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... buffoon, jester, merry-andrew, zany, harlequin, droll, punch, mime, farceur, scaramouch, grimacier jackpudding; boor, lout, gawk, gawky, lubber, put, bumpkin, churl, carl, tike; rustic, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... mamma, you droll child," Mrs. Frederick said, and those ladies accordingly met, after an absence of more than fifteen years. During Emmy's cares and poverty the other had never once thought about coming to see her, but now that she was decently prosperous in the world, her ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Be sure she thinks you half a cat. But you're a Dog and know your job: Oft have I seen you hob-a-nob, And grandly gracious to unbend With a Great Dane, your humble friend. As on the lawn with him you roll, He makes your very being droll. Yet how you set to work to flout him, To tease and gnaw and dance about him! You risk the pressure of his paws, Plunge all you are within his jaws, And, swelling to a final rage, With pin-point teeth the fight engage, While he ...
— The Vagabond and Other Poems from Punch • R. C. Lehmann
... you didn't expect to hear such good French, did you, away down east here? But we speak it real well, and it's generally allowed we speak English, too, better than the British.' 'Oh,' says he, 'you one very droll Yankee, dat very good joke, Sare; you talk Indian and call it French.' 'But,' says I, 'Mister Mount shear; it is French, I vow; real merchantable, without wainy edge or shakes—all clear stuff; it will pass survey in any market—it's ready stuck and seasoned.' ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... varied the idea by placing on her stamps a tiger's head surrounded by a broad circle of inscriptions. Owing to the short comings of native art the tiger is more often droll than ferocious. ...
— What Philately Teaches • John N. Luff
... Ambrosianae" or the London "Punch." His chair is wide, so that he can easily roll off on the floor when he wants a good time at laughing. His inkstand is a monkey, with the variations. His study-cap would upset a judge's risibilities. Scrap books with droll caricatures and facetiae. An odd stove, exciting your wonder as to where the coal is put in or the poker thrust for a shaking. All the works of Douglass Jerrold, and Sydney Smith, and Sterne, the scalawag ecclesiastic. India-rubber faces ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... was caused by the sight which the architect had invited the prefect to come and enjoy, and which was certainly droll enough. The front of the gate-keeper's house was quite grown over with ivy which framed the door and window in its long runners. Amidst the greenery hung numbers of cages with starlings, blackbirds, and smaller singing-birds. The wide door of the little house stood open, giving a view into ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... your way through the underwood, and seeing you through the leaves advancing with eager and rapid steps to the spot, conceals himself behind the entrance, and as you are just on the point of entering the hut, your foot just on the step, the droll sportsman puts his ugly head out of the window, as a yellow tortoise would his out of his shell, asking you, in most polite terms, what o'clock it is; or if it should chance to be raining a deluge at the time, remark in compassionate accents, "Why, ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... way, said of him that he was "as brave as ten lions, each with two tails and two sets of teeth." Sir Charles rivalled Mr. Roebuck, the radical English commoner, in the scantiness of his commendations; his droll eulogy of Sir Hugh Gough will therefore be appreciated. On the 8th of February, Sir Harry Smith made his junction with the army of his chief, and was received in terms not more flattering than just from a general who never refused to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... the remark to the totally unprovided side of his table; he turned his head just in time to catch Westby's humorous mouth and droll droop of an eyelid. The other boys smiled, and Irving's ...
— The Jester of St. Timothy's • Arthur Stanwood Pier
... But there is room for everybody and everything in our huge hemisphere. Young America is like a three-year-old colt with his saddle and bridle just taken off. The first thing he wants to do is to roll. He is a droll object, sprawling in the grass with his four hoofs in the air; but he likes it, and it won't harm us. So let him roll,—let ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... for a virtuous woman to refuse a man so ugly as you represent this secretary to have been. Had he been handsome and polite, her virtue would then have been clear. I think I know who he is, and, if it were my turn, I could tell you another story about him that is no less droll." ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. III. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... in the Spanish drama, was the comic under-plot, and the witty gracioso or droll, the parody of the heroic character of the play. Much of his power over the people of his time is also to be found in the charm of his versification, which was always fresh, flowing, and effective. The success of Lope de Vega was in proportion to his rare powers. For the forty or fifty ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... "Wherefore droll?" asked Joliet, with a huge surprise, which lasted him all through his next sentence. "I come here to marry my daughter. Everything is ready; we count on your presence at the wedding; the lawyer has ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... matriculation, and signed the registrar's book on a fresh page; but when Fred had written his name under Ramsey's, and blotted it, he took the liberty of turning over the leaf to examine some of the autographs of their future classmates, written on the other side. Then he uttered an exclamation, more droll than dolorous, though it affected to be wholly the latter; for the shock to Fred was by no means so painful as ...
— Ramsey Milholland • Booth Tarkington
... little things! the darling kittens," she kept on saying, as she jumped from side to side of the basket so as, not to lose any of the droll gambols of the seven or eight little kittens that were scrambling and rolling and falling ...
— Heidi • Johanna Spyri
... suppose he has been 'plucked,' as the gentlemen call it, or 'ploughed,' does your brother say? University slang is very droll. He has not taken his degree, I suppose, and they want him to work before going up again. I am sorry for your father, too, for I don't think it will be very easy to get anything into Clarence Copperhead's mind. But there is no harm at all in him, and he used to ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... anybody's goin' to be mad it ought to be me," said the cap'n, lifting his brows with that droll look he wore when he intended to indicate that he was fooling. "I guess I've got to wash my own dishes an' bake my own johnny-cake for a spell. ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... man of great drollery, and it would almost make you laugh to look at him. I never saw but one other man whose quiet, droll look excited in me the disposition to laugh, ...
— The Story of Young Abraham Lincoln • Wayne Whipple
... of her overwrought feelings was so droll that Bessie with some difficulty refrained from laughing outright, but she knew how very real all this was to Hatty, so she exercised self-control, and ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... lie down all the evening from sheer fatigue, but she made light of her weariness, concealed the treatment she had received from the girls, and the dejection it was beginning to occasion in spite of her courage; she even made the little home group laugh by her droll accounts of the day. Then they all petted and praised and made so much of her that her spirits rose to their usual height, and she said confidently, as she went to a long night's rest, "Don't you worry, little mother; I didn't expect to get broken in to my work ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... for the strange mind of Pepys. He is, however, capable also of moralising. "Oh, that the King would mind his business!" he would exclaim, after having delighted himself and his readers with the most droll accounts of His Majesty's frivolities. "How wicked a wretch Cromwell was, and yet how much better and safer the country was in his hands than it is now." And often he will end the bewildering account with some such bitter comment as the assertion "that every ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... brothers, too,—only Richard,—Oh! by the way, I did torment him this morning, he is so grave and good, and he was just beginning a nice lecture at the gate, when the driver called, and poor Richard had only time to send his love to you. Wasn't it droll, though, that lecture being cut so short?" and Annie threw herself down in the great cushioned ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... officiated as cook, whose various blunders and expedients in his novel situation, and in the wild scenes and wild kind of life into which he had suddenly been thrown, had made him a kind of butt or droll of the camp. Tom, however, began to discover an ambition superior to his station; and the conversation of the hunters, and their stories of their exploits, inspired him with a desire to elevate himself to the dignity of their order. The buffalo in such immense droves presented a ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... are finished, the author, eager to amuse himself, in spite of the small amount of merry ink remaining in the left cup, steals and bears eagerly therefrom a few penfuls with great delight. These said penfuls are, indeed, these same Droll Tales, the authority on which is above suspicion, because it flows from a divine source, as is shown in this ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... he wasn't before he will be now," said Neale, feelingly. "I'll tell you, General, Larry's red-headed, a droll, lazy Southerner, and he's made fun of by the men. But they don't understand him. They certainly can't see how dangerous he is. Only I don't mean that. I do mean ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... escaped that swift and silent mind! At luncheon the Chief had scrupulously avoided making, the slightest allusion to the thoughts with which Desmond's mind was seething. Instead he had told, with the gusto of the born raconteur, a string of extremely droll yarns about "double crosses," that is, obliging gentlemen who will spy for both sides simultaneously, he had come into contact with during his long and varied career. Desmond had played up to him and repressed the questions which kept rising to his lips. Hence the Chief's unexpected tribute ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... doorstep a very queer-looking old person, short of figure, round as a ball, his head sunk between very high and rounded shoulders, and with short stumpy legs. He was curiously attired in a whole-coloured suit of gray; a droll-shaped jacket the great collar of which reached far up the back of his head, surmounted a pair of voluminous breeches which suddenly tightened at the knee. I imagined him to be the butler in morning dishabille; and when he accosted ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... of inquiry a little deeper. How did M. Pouillard happen to remember? Mais, it was because the young man was very droll; he was of the cold blood. When Victor, le garcon, would have brought news of the emeute, he had said, breakfast first, ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... off, and Nannie, accustomed to go wherever she pleased, strayed into the darkness and tumbled down. The incident stopped all work for a time, and created a lot of good-humoured chaff. The Irishman was especially droll, and endeavoured to carry it off by swearing he knew it was the goat, but he wanted some other fellow to have a go at it. "But no fear," said he; "every one of ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... exchange is perceptibly on the increase. It arises from the travelling propensities of the Americans, and the constant intercourse mutually maintained by the inhabitants of the different States. A droll or an original expression is thus imported and adopted, and, though not indigenous, soon becomes engrafted on the general stock of the language of the ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... is true; but the sweet cider is admirable, and as for the cheesecake, we would back it against all the Times Square variety that Ben De Casseres rattles about. It is delightful and surprising to find on Hudson Street an ordinary so droll and Dickensish in atmosphere, and next door is a window bearing the sign WALTER PETER. We feel sure that Mr. Holliday, were he still living in those parts, would have cajoled the owner into changing that E ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... specimen of the aboriginal civilization found here by the Spanish conqueror, Coronado, and his eager gold-seekers, in 1540. For now, as then, the members of the tribe reside together in one immense community building. It is rather droll to find among these natives of the desert the idea of the modern apartment house; but, in this place, as in all the settlements of the Pueblo Indians, communal dwellings were in existence long before the discovery of America, and the mesa of ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... a good deal after this and one of the first consequences of their doing so was that Pemberton stuck it out, in his friend's parlance, for the purpose. Morgan made the facts so vivid and so droll, and at the same time so bald and so ugly, that there was fascination in talking them over with him, just as there would have been heartlessness in leaving him alone with them. Now that the pair had such perceptions in common it was useless for them to pretend they didn't ...
— The Pupil • Henry James
... too droll—that plucky horse, dashing along with the rest, shooting over the fences, up to time, and acting like a soldier charging under command. I could just have gone down and kissed the splendid creature, and the whole crowd—thousands and thousands—set up shout after shout that you could ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... accompanied by her maid, Susan. Through a misapprehension of personalities his lordship addresses a love missive to the maid. Susan accepts in perfect good faith, and an epistolary love-making goes on till they are disillusioned. It naturally makes a droll and delightful little comedy; and is a story that is particularly ...
— The Devil - A Tragedy of the Heart and Conscience • Joseph O'Brien
... saw such a droll morsel lying on her napkin she laughed, sent for Kitty Gray, stroked her, and called her "Good pussy, pretty pussy; and the brightest pussy too that I ...
— The Twin Cousins • Sophie May
... his pagan accordion, and the himene which will never be forgotten by the Tahitians, "Hallelujah! I'm a bum!" Kelly had gone over the water to the jails of the United States, where life is hard for minstrels who sing such droll songs. ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... language of the plains, was called the "bull-wagon boss"; the teamsters were known as "bull-whackers"; and the whole train was denominated a "bull-outfit." Everything at that time was called an "outfit." The men of the plains were always full of droll humour and exciting stories of their own experiences, and many an hour I spent in listening to the recitals of thrilling adventures and ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... she exclaimed, "this is very kind of you. You have been keeping Louise company, I hope. And see what droll things happen! It is your friend, Mr. Barnes, who has brought me home this evening, and who will take a whisky and soda before he goes. Is ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... She was diaphane, diaphanous ... impalpable as cigarette-smoke ... a little nose like nothing at all, with nostrils like infinitesimal sea-shells. Anyone could have made a mouthful of her.... Ah! Cre nom d'un chien! Life is droll. It has no common sense. It is the game of a mountebank.... I've never told you about Fleurette. It was ...
— The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol • William J. Locke
... them without the mask, their cynicism forgotten, mingling cries and tears over the sorrows of the world. But neither she nor any third person would ever see their social discretion thus betrayed, and she concludes, in her droll way, "C'est une vision!" In another letter to Mme de Grignan (June 6, 1672) she says of the Duke, "Il connait quasi aussi bien ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... happened to be the case. The laird was what his country neighbours called "a droll, careless chap", with a very limited proportion of the fear of God in his heart, and very nearly as little of the fear of man. The laird had not intentionally wronged or offended either of the parties, and perceived ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... be impressed, for the first time, by a recognition of the fact that an absence of the sacred gift of humour is often a great advantage to mortal happiness, and even to mortal success. There was clearly and obviously a droll and humorous side to the career and the companionship of Captain Sarrasin and his wife. How easy it would be to make fun of them both! perhaps of her more especially. Cheap cynicism could hardly find in the civilised world ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... Have his prey sent him in an iron cage? By Jove, he shall not have her! O! no, no; "He sends his younger son, the Count Paolo, To fetch Francesca back to Rimini." That's well, if he had left his reasons out. And, in a postscript—by the saints, 'tis droll!— "'Twould not be worth your lordship's while to shut Paolo in a prison; for, my lord, I'll only pay his ransom in plain steel: Besides, he's not worth having." Is there one, Save this ignoble offshoot of the Goths, Who'd write such garbage to ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... little Poem, with much of the grotesque in its half-dozen Embellishments, and some tripping work in its lines. "The End," with "Who danced at the Wedding?" and the tail-piece—a devil-bantling, rocked by imps, and the cradle lit by torches—is droll enough. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 471, Saturday, January 15, 1831 • Various
... conversation reminded me of the hunting stories I had heard in the log cabins in Indiana, and I amused myself with thinking how some of the narrators would appear among my high-bred friends. There is such a quaint vivacity and droll-cry about that half-savage western life, as always gives it a charm in my recollection. I thought of the jolly old hunter who always concluded the operations of the day by discharging his rifle at his candle after he had snugly ensconced ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... think we free-born Yankees—descendants of the Puritan Fathers—were going to claim relationship with any of those effete European aristocracies, did you?" with a droll look at Sara. ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... always said he was lookin' forward to the day when he could afford to get as drunk as he sometimes thought he'd like to be. He was a droll sort of a cuss, Jake was. He claimed he'd been savin' up his appetite and his money for nearly three years so's he could see which would last the longest in ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... midnight lamp shall gleam As in old nights; the chaplets woven then— Withered, perhaps, by time—may grace us yet; The laurel faded is the laurel still, And some of us are heroes to ourselves. And amber wine shall flow; the blue smoke wreathe In droll disputes, with metaphysics mixed; Or float as lightly as the quick-spun verse, Threading the circle round from thought to thought, Sparkling and fresh as is the airy web Spread on the hedge at morn in silver dew. The scent of roses you remember well; In the green vases they shall bloom again. And ...
— Poems • Elizabeth Stoddard
... given the fifth hour in the day as his lecture period because he was the only one able to hold the attention of students who had already been listening to four long and difficult lectures. He enlivened the dry subject with funny stories, droll comparisons and interesting descriptions, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... stories and sang songs. Edith Overman had a keen sense of humor and she told some anecdotes that were exceedingly droll. Ethel and Edna Whitely vied in asking conundrums. Kate Hollister then related her capital story, "The ...
— How Ethel Hollister Became a Campfire Girl • Irene Elliott Benson
... Turning and screwing his mouth round, too, Till his nose seemed bent To catch the scent, Around some corner, of new-baked pies, And his wrinkled cheeks and his squinting eyes Grew puckered into a queer grimace, That made him look very droll in the face, And also very wise. And wise he must have been, to do more Than ever a genius did before, Excepting Daedalus, of yore, And his son Icarus, who wore Upon their backs Those wings of wax He had read of ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... and his dress still bore many tokens of his former profession. His big head swayed upon his thin neck; his droll, though emaciated features constantly changed their expression, and even when he was not coughing, his ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... delighted his children with romances. "Like Dr. Hopkins, he believed that the class-room should be a jolly place, and used to say that no recitation was complete without at least one good laugh. 'Laughter makes sport of work,' he said." His teaching sometimes came in a droll story. "Once there was a woodchuck.... Now, woodchucks can't climb trees. Well, this woodchuck was chased by a dog and came to a tree. He knew that if he could get up this tree the dog could not catch him. Now, woodchucks can't ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... Dec. 19.-Interministerium. Droll cause in Westminster Hall. The Duke of Cumberland and Edward Bright. Sir Ralph Gore. Bon-mots ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... the women with hooped petticoats and high head dresses; clergymen with five or six tier wigs; men with cocked hats and queues; and female servants with mob caps. That to Emblem Fifteen, upon the sacraments, is peculiarly droll; the artist, forgetting that the author was a Baptist, represents a baby brought to the font to be christened! and two persons kneeling before the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... see you are. O! all the servants will lead merry lives here, now; we shall have singing and dancing in the little hall, for the Signor cannot hear us there—and droll stories—Ludovico's come, ma'am; yes, there is Ludovico come with them! You remember Ludovico, ma'am—a tall, handsome young man—Signor Cavigni's lacquey—who always wears his cloak with such a grace, thrown round his left arm, and his hat set on so smartly, ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... one of the youths, "are just the old-fashioned arguments of BUTLER, Which it is surely droll of all things to find a sceptic ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... Great printed sheets will be read by every one every day; and even the laziest of this lazy race will not think it labor to perform this toil. They won't like to eat in the morning without their papers, such slaves they will be to this droll greed for knowing. They won't even think it is droll, it ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... after this anecdotical digression. Saadi gives this whimsical piece of advice to a pugnacious fellow: "Be sure, either that thou art stronger than thine enemy, or that thou hast a swifter pair of heels." And he relates a droll story in illustration of the use and abuse of the phrase, "For the sake of God," which is so frequently in the mouths of Muslims: A harsh-voiced man was reading the Kuran in a loud tone. A pious ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... honour of the royal guests, a pantomimic "masque" of the gods and goddesses of Olympus is introduced. The divinities, instead of appearing in genuine Grecian attire, present themselves in the mongrel costume visual on such occasions in the time of Queen Elizabeth. This is droll enough, but more whimsical still is the style of their dancing. This, too, is meant as an imitation of the limited choregraphic savoir faire of the age. It is as if Mons. Deshayes had triumphantly ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 488, May 7, 1831 • Various
... are redolent of the hearty fun and strong masculine sense of our old friend Sam Slick. The last work of Mr. Haliburton is quite equal to the first. Every page of the 'Old Judge' is alive with rapid, fresh sketches of character; droll, quaint, racy sayings; good-humoured practical jokes; and ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... who had just administered the kick slipped and fell upon her, whereat the crowd fairly split with laughter. It was so droll! ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... loudly and distinctly—ushering in Titmouse; on whom the door was the next instant closed. He felt amazingly flustered—and he would have been still more so, if he could have been made aware of the titter which pervaded the fourteen or twenty people assembled in the room, occasioned by the droll misnomer of the servant, and the exquisitely ridiculous appearance of poor Titmouse. Mr. Quirk, dressed in black, with knee breeches and silk stockings, immediately bustled up to him, shook him cordially by the hand, and led him up to the assembled ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... all I hear; surely it is because my faith is small. Ah. me! how long? how long?—A precious discourse to me. He preached my experience.—The solution of the text was a gratification, while I heard profitably. He made a very droll remark when describing those 'who make their belly their God;' he said 'they make their kitchen their temple, their cook and butcher their priests, and their belly their God.'—I felt my soul blessed and encouraged while hearing of sin being destroyed, with an earnest longing ...
— Religion in Earnest - A Memorial of Mrs. Mary Lyth, of York • John Lyth
... songs of an exquisite Leander.. . I really believe that, at the last meeting, he sung alone in this manner three quarters of an hour at different times, the assembly repeating the last line of the verse."—"How odd!" exclaims a common woman alongside of Morellet, "how droll, passing all their time here, singing in that fashion! Is that what they come here for?"—Not alone for that: after the circus-parade is over, the ordinary haranguers, and especially the hair-dresser, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... make your acquaintance. (To the girls, who are hanging on to him.) Leave me alone, children! (To ALBIN.) So you, too, are having a look at this droll tavern? ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... liveliness, which threw such a charm about the former writings of Timothy Titcomb. No story can be pronounced a failure which has vivacity and interest; and the volume before us adds to vivacity and interest vigorous sketches of character and scenery, droll conversation and incidents, a frequent and kindly humor, and, underlying all, a true, earnest purpose, which claims not only approval for the author, but respect for ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... little country village miles and miles away, and (although one of Fritz's aeroplanes flew over the church as bold as brass just before we got in) the quiet and peace of the place is very refreshing. And, droll to relate, I'm writing this in bed, with a touch of flu—such a bed, too, all soft and billowy. In ordinary life it would be condemned as a "feather" bed, but now it ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson
... found the girl to be natural and unaffected, without a trace of conceit, gifted with a keen sense of humour and evidently as full of the joy of living as a school-boy. He thought her laugh delightfully musical, and it was frequently and readily evoked by Burke's droll remarks or the quaint oracular sayings from the self-possessed elf on Wargrave's knee. Her admiration of and genuine affection for Mrs. Dermot was very evident ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... the fashion; she was a wit as well as a beauty; a fascinating droll; dazzling and bewitching, the idol of every youth. Eugene de Vere was roused from his premature exhaustion, and at last found excitement again. He threw himself at her feet; she laughed at him. He asked leave to follow her footsteps; she ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... it is the feather bed on which Wilford Cameron once slept, a part of Katy's "setting out," which never found its way to Madison Square. Morris himself did not think much of feathers, but he made no objection when Aunt Betsy insisted on sending over the bed kept for so many years, and only smiled a droll kind of smile when he one morning met it coming up the walk in the wheelbarrow which ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... run in the most droll vein of true rural humor. The performers seem to be made for the dances, and the dances for the performers; so well assorted are the figures to the representation. Several eminent painters in the grotesque stile, ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... day? There was a print in that paper of an assemblage of Teetotalers in "Sadler's Wells Theatre," and we straightway recognized the old Roman hand—the old Roman's of the time of Plancus—George Cruikshank's. There were the old bonnets and droll faces and shoes, and short trousers, and figures of 1820 sure enough. And there was George (who has taken to the water-doctrine, as all the world knows) handing some teetotal cresses over a plank to the table where the ...
— John Leech's Pictures of Life and Character • William Makepeace Thackeray
... household matters, but in other affairs of life. Whenever she had visitors,—and she and James were hospitable in the extreme,—she was pretty sure to end up, sooner or later, if James were present, with some droll criticism of him, as much to his delight ...
— By The Sea - 1887 • Heman White Chaplin
... was superb, and every shade of color and character was represented. In the vernacular of the farm, the mulatto girls are called "strawberry blondes," and one that would have attracted attention anywhere was led out by a droll, full-blooded negro, who would have made the fortune of a minstrel troupe. She was tall and willowy. A profusion of dark hair curled about an oval face, not too dark to prevent a faint color of the strawberry from glowing in her cheeks. ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... steps,—(it is a long way, Monseigneur;— )and he mounted quickly, I slowly,—but always keeping my eye upon him. At last we reached this platform, and the moonlight was beautiful, and clear as day. Then my little priest sat down and began to laugh. 'Ha, my Lapui!' he said, 'Is it not droll that this should be all a lie! All this fine building, and all the other fine buildings of the kind in Paris! Strange, my Lapui, is it not, that this Cathedral should be raised to the worship of a God whom no one ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... talk a good deal of her journey; and she told the story with so much simplicity, speaking with unfeigned gratitude and affection of the friendships she had made, and touching with quiet mirthfulness upon the droll events, as if she hardly knew herself that they were droll, that ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... many good stories which have for their point the passions of the natural man breaking forth, in members of this persuasion, in a shape more droll than distressing. One of the best of these is a north-country anecdote preserved by Francis Douglas in his Description of the East Coast of Scotland. The hero was the first Quaker of that Barclay family which produced the apologist and ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... the smiling brother of our guild who may chance to read it at some remote future day. The physician of whom I now write was one who already dreaded bleeding, thought less of medicines than his fellows, and was, in fact, exceptionally acute. He did some droll things for the sick prelate, and had reasons yet more droll for what he did, but his practice was, as may happen on the whole, wiser than his reasons for its use. His patient was a man once bulky, but now thin, overworked, worried, subject to asthma, troubled with a bad stomach, prone to ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell
... into a pawn-shop and bought a pistol. He was in a fever to get back to his lodgings. He found Minetti waiting for him. He tried to conceal the pistol, but he knew that Minetti had seen it. Minetti was as pleasant as one could imagine. He told the most droll stories of his life in London. It appeared that he had lived there in a hotbed of exiled radicals; but he, himself, seemed to have no convictions. Everything he described was touched with a certain ironic humor. When he rose to go ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... expressed by the repose of one small figure in the lap of a colossal effigy, which I understood to mean rest in Abraham's bosom; but the artist has bestowed far more interest and feeling upon the fate of the damned, who are all boiling in rows of immense pots. It is doubtful (considering the droll aspect of heavenly bliss as figured in the one small saint and the large patriarch) whether the artist intended the condition of his sinners to be so horribly comic as it is; but the effect is just as great, for all ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... burlesques, who resembled each other, the precieux seeking wit and believing that all literary art consisted in saying it did not matter what in a dainty and unexpected fashion; the burlesques also sought wit but on a lower plane, desiring to be "droll," buffoons, prone to cock-and-bull stories or crude pranks in thought, style, and parody. Voiture is the most brilliant representative of the preieux and Scarron the most prominent ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... thousand dollars," he answered, the look of trouble deepening in his eyes, but his lips were smiling. He had a quaint sense of humor, and at his last gasp would have noted the ridiculous thing. And surely it was a droll malignity of Fate to bring him here to her whom, in this moment of all moments in his life, he wished far away. Fate meant to try him to the uttermost. This hurdle of trial ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... vehemently on Smart to stop. "What is it, Sir, a beere or a helephant?" "Go back, Smart, just under that tree. Now then stop, stand steady, while I scramble up here. I thought so, look! look! did you ever see anything so droll." So saying, he pulled out from the branches of a huge tree two quiet, wise-looking parrots, not quite fledged, that were seated side by side in a hole in the tree. They did not seem in the least discomposed, but gazed on us with great gravity. "They are neither blue nor yellow, but dear mother, ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... their seats to-night and looked around the room they saw a droll sight. The old lady, who had been knitting on the veranda, was seated at a small table in one corner; and on each side of her in a chair sat a cat! One cat was a gray "coon," the other an Angora; and both of them sat up as grave as ...
— Jimmy, Lucy, and All • Sophie May
... replied, looking at Jacquet. "Wasn't it a funeral with thirteen mourning coaches, and only one mourner in the twelve first? It was so droll we all ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... earnestness in the thing. Either there should be some side-action of mirth to make it less intense, or of tragedy to render it less photographic; and unless, Dr. Marmion, you would consent to be solemn, which would indeed be droll; or that The Padre there—how amusing they should call him that!—should cease to be serious, which, being so very unusual, would be tragic, I do not know how we are to tell the artist that he has missed a chance of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... written on the signboard: "read me, and judge if you understand! So you stopped in your journey because I called, scenting something unusual, something droll. Thus, although I am nothing, and even less, there is no one that sees me but lingers here. Stranger, I am a law of the universe. Stranger, render the law ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
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