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More "Humor" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... slightest negligence or inaccuracy, and promising them for faithfulness a passport to the glories of heaven. This shows that the author at least took the work seriously. That there is not a trace of humor in the book would doubtless recommend it to the dignified and lethargic orientals for whom it was written. Bokhari seemed to consider himself prophet, priest, and poet-laureate in one. The work has a high position in the Malayan Peninsula, where ...
— Malayan Literature • Various Authors
... interesting and often entertaining. There was always a struggle of some kind on hand. Sometimes it was on a naked question of right and wrong. Sometimes it was on a question of real constructive statesmanship. Moreover, there were all kinds of humorous incidents, the humor being usually of the unconscious kind. In one session of the Legislature the New York City Democratic representatives were split into two camps, and there were two rivals for leadership. One of these was a thoroughly good-hearted, happy-go-lucky ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... the echo of the hoarse laughter after his stories. They found when he spoke in Cooper Union that he had a mind that would have sat unembarrassed and luminous in the company of the men of the age of Pericles. But he had a sense of humor that, had he been there, would have saved Socrates from the hyssop. Mr. Bryce says, that all the world knows the Americans to be a humorous people. [Footnote: Bryce, "American Commonwealth," 2:286.] "They are," he has said, "as conspicuously the purveyors of humor to the nineteenth century as ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... find I am in a desert. In short, the element of distraction is absolutely lacking to me. One needs a certain vivacity to write good things! What can one do to get it again? How can one proceed, to avoid thinking continually about one's miserable person? The sickest thing in me is my humor: the rest doubtless would go well. You see, dear, good master, that I am right to spare you my letters. Nothing is as ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... brothers separated and each tried to work his way to an end of the train, which was composed of five cars. This was by no means easy, for the crowd was in no humor to be jostled or have its ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - or The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht. • Edward Stratemeyer (AKA Arthur M. Winfield)
... the separate and indivisible great ones. In mere writing, mere style, he was not supreme; one seldom or never derives from anything of his the merely artistic satisfaction given by perfect prose. His humor, except of the grim and gigantic kind, was not remarkable; his wit, for a Frenchman, curiously thin and small. The minor felicities of the literature generally were denied to him. Sans genie, il etait flambe; flambe as he seemed to be, and very reasonably seemed, to his friends when as yet ...
— The Human Comedy - Introductions and Appendix • Honore de Balzac
... to our sense of humor in caricature. A recent hit upon the variety stage does still more ...
— Are You A Bromide? • Gelett Burgess
... hunting shirt, with buck-skin leggins, and whose appearance indicated ferocity. Of this kind of personages there were quite a number present at the fort. Usually they would accost the man whom they had thus selected. Sometimes, if their address was appropriate and the humor of the person accosted so inclined, they would get put right, but more frequently they were left to enjoy and cherish their mistake, or were made the subject of a joke. Among the rest there came along quite a rough looking individual fresh ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... nations, have as little political connection with them as possible; and he asked this pertinent and pregnant question, "Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor, or caprice?" In 1823, twenty-seven years after Washington's celebrated address, President Monroe in his annual message to Congress warned the European Powers not to plant any new colonies on any portion ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... some time since Ned had seen his friend Bill Swinton, for Bill was now regularly at work in Mr. Mulready's factory and was only to be found at home in the evening, and Ned had been in no humor for going out. He now, however, felt inclined for a friendly talk again, and the next Sunday ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... on neighborly terms near the family of old Petroff, one of the richest fur merchants in Russia. Old Petroff had a daughter, Matrena, who was magnificent to see, like a beautiful field-flower. She was always in excellent humor, never spoke ill of anyone in the neighborhood, and not only had the fine manners of a city dame but a great, simple heart, which she lavished on the ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... beauty of expression. Horace is every man's companion. He has a word of advice and admonition for all. His criticisms constitute most approved canons of the rhetorician; his sage reflections adorn the page of the moralist; his humor and wit give point and force to the satirist, and his graver maxims are not despised by the Christian philosopher. Juvenal is fierce and denunciatory. His characteristics are energy, force, and indignation; his weapons are irony, wit and ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... in no very good humor for dealing with these gentry. I had a distinct inclination to take him by the collar of the coat and throw him out. I fancy that he divined from my face how I was feeling, for he began hastily to ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... in its development is progressive as well as conservative. To certain modifying influences it is especially sensitive. It is fond of the concrete, picturesque, and novel, and has a high appreciation of humor. These tendencies lead it to invent many new words and expressions which must wait months, years, perhaps a generation, before they are accepted in literature. Sometimes they are never accepted. The history of such words as ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... far from a laughing humor myself. The problem of paying the men raised fresh prospects of trouble, and I reflected grimly that if the money was not found I might be in more danger from my unpaid mercenaries ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... took drumsticks at dinner, ran errands for her mother all the afternoon, gave Meg her place tonight, and has waited on every one with patience and good humor. I also observe that she does not fret much nor look in the glass, and has not even mentioned a very pretty ring which she wears, so I conclude that she has learned to think of other people more and of herself less, and has decided to try and mold her character as carefully as she molds her ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... a man of culture, nor were his tastes elevated, but there was a rough honesty about him, and a good humor, which made him an agreeable companion. Besides, he knew the country, and Ben felt secure in leaving the conduct of the trip ...
— The Young Explorer • Horatio Alger
... breakfast, thought it a good deal of a task for a woman made for soft, kind ways with children and the small domestic animals by the hearth. And then he did have the humor to laugh at himself a little. It showed how she had unconsciously beguiled him, how she had impressed him with her curious implication of belonging to things afar from this world of homespun usages. She was strong and undeniably homespun herself, in every word and look. ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... surgeon. The 'incredulus odi' is too strong in such cases, and it adheres to three out of every four French anecdotes. The French taste is, indeed, anything but good in all that department of wit and humor. And the ground lies in their national want of veracity. To return to England—and having cited an Oriental witness to the English character on this point, let us now cite a most observing one in the West. Kant, in Konigsberg, ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... XXIII. Potui humor ex hordeo aut frumento, in quandam similitudinem vini corruptus. Proximi ripae et vinum mercantur. Cibi simplices; agrestia poma, recens fera, aut lac concretum. Sine apparatu, sine blandimentis, expellunt famem. Adversus sitim non eadem temperantia. Si indulseris ...
— Germania and Agricola • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... battle of Chippewa. He answered blandly, "July 5, 1814." Turning to a friend, he remarked, "There is fame for you." The same party inquired in what State he was born. He answered, "Virginia." "Ah," said the questioner, "I thought you were a native of Connecticut." This left him in a bad humor for the remainder of the evening. The editor of this series has said of him: "General Scott was a man of true courage—personally, morally, and religiously brave. He was in manner, association, and feeling courtly and chivalrous. He was always equal to the danger—great on great ...
— General Scott • General Marcus J. Wright
... two dollars and fifty cents a day," Gordon reminded him, with a dry and bitter humor, "and I have a ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... dangerous. Each, as his or her head protruded through the aperture, began to "let in" on the driver, whose real fault was that of following bad examples. I was a little riled at first myself, but the second and last lady who came out put me in excellent humor. She was not hurt, but had her new silk umbrella broken square in two, and she flashed the pieces before the delinquent's eyes and reeled off the High Dutch to him with vehement volubility. I wished I could have understood her more precisely. Though not more than eighteen, she ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... none, told me of the rare appearing. Aug. 17th, I went to Micheam to Mr. Kemp. Aug. 21st, I went to the Lord Cobham and the Lady Cobham to London. Aug. 23rd, Mr. Cholmely and his mayde ante meridiem hor. 11. The humor so suddenly falling into the calf of my left leg as if a stone had hit me. Aug. 26th, Mr. Heriot 40s.[kk] Auditor Hill, 4. Remember all thing is payd to our nurse at Barnes for the girle Francys Dee from hir birth untyll the ende of her eight month, lacking 12s., ...
— The Private Diary of Dr. John Dee - And the Catalog of His Library of Manuscripts • John Dee
... supposed visit of a burglar, and then made his effect by suddenly turning upon Hewson, and saying with his broad guffaw: "And here you have the burglar in person. He has owned his crime to me, and I've let him off the penalty on condition that he tells you all about it." The humor was not too rank for the horsey people whom St. John had mainly about him, but some of the women said, "Poor Mr. Hewson!" when the host, failing Hewson's confession, went on to betray that he had risen at that unearthly hour to go down to the St. Johnswort Inn for a cup of its famous ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... harsh, without humor. "You know I didn't, and you also know why. But I didn't leave ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... attack from a formidable force of Federal cavalry, which had driven in the scouting party of sixty-five men, after a desperate encounter. I immediately reported the whole affair to Morgan, when, with a spice of humor which never forsakes him, he told me to keep quiet; and, calling up the lieutenant who was in charge of the scouting party, ordered him to narrate the whole affair. The lieutenant could not say how many Federal cavalry there were, but there must have been from three to five hundred, from ...
— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson
... mid-afternoon was shining down upon the desert, but Haidia was no longer in pain. It was evident that she was fast becoming accustomed to the sunlight, though she still kept her eyes screwed up tightly, and had to be helped along by Dodd and Jimmy. In high good humor the three reached the encampment, to find that the blacks were feasting on the dead beetles, while the two eldest members of the party had ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... him, qualifying the grossness of the reality by her own shrewd humor; part he read between the ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... them Cato would keep for himself, giving just as much for them as another had offered. To incline his son to be of this kind of temper, he used to tell him, that it was not like a man, but rather like a widow woman, to lessen an estate. But the strongest indication of Cato's avaricious humor was when he took the boldness to affirm, that he was a most wonderful, nay, a godlike man, who left more behind ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... our heads together over this, Hester," he said, holding up with some pride a long slip of proof. "It will be just in your line. You might run it over after breakfast," he continued, in high good-humor, "and put in the stops and grammar and spelling—you're more up in that sort of thing than I am—and then we will go ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... governing to others, and to weary of Confucius' high-flown lectures. He ceased "to use" Confucius, as the Chinese historians say, and the Sage was therefore indignant, and ready to accept any offer which might come from any quarter. While in this humor he received an invitation from Pih Hih, an officer of the state of Tsin who was holding the town of Chung-mow against his chief, to visit him, and he was inclined to go. It is impossible to study this portion of Confucius' career ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... lady very willingly obeyed these orders, for she also desired the visit from the fascinator, whose presence kept the tyrant in a good humor and on his good behavior. So she pressed Rose Stillwater to accompany them to their ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... at ease, I sit, and play with similes, Loose types of things through all degrees, Thoughts of thy raising: And many a fond and idle name I give to thee, for praise or blame, As is the humor of the game, While I ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... their children to these tables as to schools of temperance; here they were instructed in state affairs by listening to experienced statesmen; here they learnt to converse with pleasantry, to make jests without scurrility, and take them without ill humor. In this point of good breeding, the Lacedaemonians excelled particularly, but if any man were uneasy under it, upon the least hint given there was no more to be said to him. It was customary also for the eldest man in the company to say to each of them, as they came in, ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... may not have understood what I said to her through the speaking-trumpet. A grim humor of despair suggested that at that distance, and in that blustering wind, the faithful maid-servant might have thought that instead of shouting that I loved my Bertha, I was asking her if they had plenty of ...
— The Rudder Grangers Abroad and Other Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... do not conceal it—the happy marriage in which we cast into the common lot our ideas and our sorrows, as well as our good-humor and our affections. Suppress, by all means, in this partnership, gravity and affectation, yet add a sprinkling of gallantry and good-fellowship. Preserve even in your intimacy that coquetry you so readily assume in society. ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... apart and looked out of the window. "It's too dark to read anything now, 'Lige," said Harkutt, with evasive good humor, "and I ain't lightin' ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... remain until the compression is interrupted. The interior of the eye contains three transparent media for the refraction of the rays of light on their way from the cornea to the visual nerve. Of these media the anterior one (aqueous humor) is liquid, the posterior (vitreous humor) is semisolid, and the intermediate one (crystalline lens) is solid. The space occupied by the aqueous humor corresponds nearly to the portion of the eye covered by the transparent cornea. It is, however, divided into two chambers, ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... with great success by the Abbey Company, and have been highly extolled by appreciative audiences and an enthusiastic press. They are distinguished by a humor of ...
— Magic - A Fantastic Comedy • G.K. Chesterton
... going on in other parts, even those near by. The stories told by his brother Jews made Nehemiah sad, and his sadness showed in his face even when he came before the king. This was dangerous, for a part of his duty was to keep the king in a cheerful humor. But his Majesty was not angry, but asked him "Why are you so sad?" Nehemiah answered by telling him the story of his native land and its pitiable condition; and then and there with a prayer in his heart he asked the king to give him a leave of absence, and to permit him to go to Jerusalem ...
— Hebrew Life and Times • Harold B. Hunting
... instant Claire was inclined to be resentful. Then, her sense of humor coming to the rescue, she dropped her heroics and ...
— Martha By-the-Day • Julie M. Lippmann
... however, distance anything in the way of deep rooting that has yet been recorded. The Sheriff is a very deep drainer, and an enthusiast in agriculture, and Nature seems to delight to humor his tastes, by performing a great many experiments at his famous place called Tiptree Hall. He stated, at a public meeting, that, in his neighborhood, where a crop of parsnips was growing on the edge of a clay pit, the roots were observed to descend 13 feet 6 inches; in ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... sense of humor that is always present in his writings, and the spirit of enthusiasm which will appeal to boys who have a love of adventure and are ...
— Cinderella - And Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... this effort at humor. "You haven't dreamed that twenty times with every detail the same, have you? That's how I dream. I see these faces, real faces, again and again. I hear the same cries, the same words, vile words. Oh, I can't tell ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... wall. In the reception room of this building are seven delightful small panels by Charles J. Taylor, showing the early life of Pennsylvania villages. They are painted in the quaint style of old colonial decorations and have charm, humor, naivete and beauty ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry
... passed by in the evening the men were in very bad humor. They had had a fruitless addition to their ride, and some of them were inclined to say that the boys had never seen any man at all, which the boys thought was pretty silly, as the man had eaten at least ...
— Two Little Confederates • Thomas Nelson Page
... Oriental gift of smothering excitement, added to a trick learned from the West of aggressive self-restraint that is not satisfied with seeming the opposite of what one is, but insists on extracting humor from the situation and on ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... years of Dr. Balch's life were spent at number 3302 Gay (N) Street, where a bad fire destroyed many valuable papers and the records of his church. He wrote to a friend: "Only the Parrott (his wife) remains!" Apparently, he never lost his sense of humor. Perhaps it was that which helped to ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... him. Pemberton, however, instead of holding a straight line against Grant, turned at first to the south, with the view of breaking the latter's line of communication. This was not a success, for, as Grant says, with grim humor, "I had no line of communication to break"; and, moreover, it delayed Pemberton when delay was of value to Grant in finishing Johnston. After this useless turn to the southward Pemberton resumed his march to the east, as he should have done in the beginning, ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... up a volume of Dickens without having her mind hark back to those long, quiet evenings. She read a great deal of Dickens at that time. She had a fine contempt for his sentiment, and his great ladies bored her. She did not know that this was because they were badly drawn. The humor she loved, and she read and reread the passages dealing with Samuel Weller, and Mr. Micawber, and Sairey Gamp, and Fanny Squeers. It was rather trying to read Dickens before supper, she had discovered. Pickwick Papers was fatal, ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... guilty of this or not," said Dapper Pete, "it goes to show what a sucker a guy is—even a smart guy. This ain't no sermon against a life of crime I'm pulling, mind you. I'm too old to do that and my sense of humor is workin' too good. I'm only sayin' what a sucker a guy is—sometimes. ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... the White House, and this was my first meeting with him after his inauguration. His unpretending cordiality was what first impressed one, but you soon saw with what sharp intelligence and keen humor he dealt with every subject which came up. He referred very pleasantly to his knowledge of me through Secretary Chase, showing the kindly instinct to find some compliment or evidence of recognition for ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... Lupin, jumping for joy. "You see, baby, what you fall short in is the power of smiling; you're a trifle serious for your age. You're a very likeable boy, you have a charming candor and simplicity—but you have no sense of humor." He placed himself in front of him. "Look here, bet you I make you cry! Do you know how I was able to follow up all your inquiry, how I knew of the letter Massiban wrote you and his appointment to meet you this morning at the Chateau ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... de big supper, den de wrastlin' matches started, and Marster allus give prizes to de best wrastlers. Dere warn't no fussin' and fightin' 'lowed on our place, and dem wrastlin' matches was all in good humor and was kept orderly. Marster wanted evvybody to be friends on our plantation and to stay dat way, for says he: 'De Blessed Saviour done said for us to love our neighbor as ourselfs, and to give and what us gives is gwine ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... Road there are to be had, complete in case, for three-and-sixpence, excellent clocks. She doesn't know the name of the shop, but she believes it begins with "P," and if I could look in as I pass, she would be most grateful. As will be guessed, Anastasia is a wealthy woman with no sense of humor. She knows she has none, and she says she doesn't know what rich people want it for. Of course for poor people it is an excellent thing, because it enables them to look at the bright side of things; but as Anastasia's things, life in ...
— The Professional Aunt • Mary C.E. Wemyss
... motives. He informed Wirz what he proposed doing, so that any unusual commotion within the prison might not be mistaken for an attempt upon the Stockade, and made the excuse for opening with the artillery. Wirz, who happened to be in a complaisant humor, approved of the design, and allowed him the use of the enclosure of the North Gate to ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... contraries by an equable temperament. As to the elements, he has them in their very substance, yet in such a way that the higher elements, fire and air, predominate in him by their power; for life is mostly found where there is heat, which is from fire; and where there is humor, which is of the air. But the inferior elements abound in man by their substance; otherwise the mingling of elements would not be evenly balanced, unless the inferior elements, which have the less power, predominated ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... make no other parts of speech but them. But Homer in a playful humor has comprehended ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... sequence, or result; it has no lifelikeness, no thrill, no stir, no seeming of reality; its characters are confusedly drawn, and by their acts and words they prove that they are not the sort of people the author claims that they are; its humor is pathetic; its pathos is funny; its conversations are—oh! indescribable; its love-scenes odious; its English ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... a satisfied air. He moved along tranquilly, and his closed, thin lips showed no signs of disdain. On the other hand, the Franciscan was in a very bad humor. As he walked toward the table, he kicked over the chairs which happened to be in his way and boxed the ears of one of the cadets. The lieutenant was ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal
... entirely out of joint. He should have lived in the days of "The Three Musketeers." People who looked upon him as working for his own hand entirely misunderstood him. He was absolutely honest, and as absolutely without a sense of humor. To him, to pay taxes, to pay grocers' bills, to depend for protection upon a policeman, was intolerable. He lived in a world of his own imagining. And one day, in order to make his imaginings real, and to escape from his father-in-law's ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... a gringo, with his coppery hair waving crisply under his sombrero, and his eyes that were blue as the bay over there to the east. But when Dade introduced him, Jack greeted his squat host with a smile that was disarming in its boyish good humor, and with language as liquidly Spanish as Manuel's best Castilian, which he reserved for his talks with the patron on the porch when the senora and the young ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... The humor of the mountain woman's serious effort at match-making struck Patty, and she interrupted with a laugh: "There are several objections to that arrangement," she hastened to say. "In the first place Mr. Bethune ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... his way," smiled Cowperwood, who had had an outline of his life, and that of his father, Pope Alexander VI., furnished him at the time of the purchase. Only so recently had his interest in Caesar Borgia begun. Mrs. Sohlberg scarcely gathered the sly humor of it. ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... big, broad-shouldered fellow, hook-nosed, with cold eyes set close. Hair and eyebrows were matted with ice and a coat of sleet covered his clothes. Judging from voice and manner, he was in a vile humor. ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... us have a race," she said. "I don't want to put away childish things. I want to have a good game while I am in the humor. Let us see who will get first to the top of that hill. I like running uphill. I'm off; ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... before, he had seen a stoker on the Almirante Gomez pick up a bit of rope and absently tie knots in it while he exchanged Rabelasian humor with his fellows. He had not looked at Bell at all, but the knots he tied were the same that Bell had last seen tied in a rubber band on a desk in the State Department in Washington. And Bell knew a recognition signal when he saw one. The stoker would be off watch, just ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... usually representing that which is most feared or worst hated among his surroundings. Vaguely realizing from the memory of accidents or unforeseen events that he is dependent on his surroundings, he invests every feature of his environment with a capricious humor reflecting his own disposition, and gives to each and all a subtlety and inscrutability corresponding to his exalted estimation of his own craft in the chase and war; and, conceiving himself to live and move ...
— The Siouan Indians • W. J. McGee
... his arms gravely around Jenkinson, in whose astounded face at last an expression of dry humor faintly dawned. After a moment's survey of Don Jose's impenetrable gravity, he coolly gathered up the gold coins, and saying that he would assess the damages and return the difference, he left the room as abruptly ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... we was all sure crazy when we started on this damn trail," remarked the old man. He was in bad humor on account of his horses, two of which were suffering from poisoning. When anything touched his horses, he ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... activity that prevailed within, those of that room were dark and lifeless, their blinds invariably drawn. The colonel had complained that the daylight hurt his eyes; no one knew whether or not this was strictly true, but a lamp was kept burning at his bedside day and night to humor him in his fancy. For two long months he had kept his bed, although Major Bouroche asserted there was nothing more serious than a contusion of the ankle and a fragment of bone chipped away; the wound refused to heal and complications of various kinds had ensued. He was able ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... in the humor for abstractions, why did he not say to the phalanx of economists who listen so respectfully to the least word that ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... him in a good humor, he said, "Don't be so down-hearted, my lad. You are not the first that has got into trouble and ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... hurt, frightened eyes. He did not believe in the whale, of course, any more than he did in Santa Claus. But like most children, he patiently accepted the fact that grown people are unaccountable overlords appointed by some vast betise, whom, if only through prudential motives, it is preferable to humor. ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... up into the dark eyes of the waiting man, and his own expressed an unwonted good-humor. "Say, wot's doin' at the fort? Gettin' ready for a siege? Or—or are you an' the Padre chasin' the ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... second volume of Poems, issued in 1844, in which the permanent lines of his poetic development appear more clearly than in A Year's Life. The tone of the first volume was uniformly serious, but in the second his muse's face begins to brighten with the occasional play of wit and humor. The volume was heartily praised by the critics and his reputation as a new poet of convincing distinction was established. In the following year appeared Conversations on Some of the Old Poets, a volume of literary criticism interesting now mainly as ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... holds a like place in the latter part of the poem. In the evident pleasure with which the minstrel-knight Volker of the sword-fiddlebow is depicted, as well doubtless as in occasional gleams of broader humor, the hand of the minstrels who wrought on the story in its earlier ballad stages may be seen. And the whole poem, in keeping with its form in an age strongly under church influence, has been tinged ...
— The Nibelungenlied - Translated into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original • trans. by George Henry Needler
... dam had been done almost wholly by the soldiers, who had worked both day and night, often up to their waists and even to their necks in the water, showing throughout the utmost cheerfulness and good humor. The partial success, that followed the first disappointment of the break, was enough to make such men again go to work with good will. Bailey decided not to try again, with his limited time and materials, to sustain the whole weight of ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... health. Is it not in the lower classes, the so-called working classes, more especially those of them who live in the country, that we see cheerful and contented faces? and is it not amongst the rich, the upper classes, that we find faces full of ill-humor and vexation? Consequently we should try as much as possible to maintain a high degree of health; for cheerfulness is the very flower of it. I need hardly say what one must do to be healthy—avoid every kind of excess, all violent and unpleasant emotion, ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life • Arthur Schopenhauer
... am—sensitive. I am artificial. I cringe or am bumptious or immobile. I am intellectually dishonest, art-blind, and I lack humor. ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... once more the beauty, and not so much the loneliness. Then, just to prove to himself that he was not going to be bluffed by the silence, he began to whistle. And the tune carried with it an impish streak of that grim humor in which, so they tell us, the song was born. It is completely out of date now, that song, but then it was being sung around the world. And sometimes it was whistled just as Jack was whistling it now, to brace a man's courage against the ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... I would have laughed at his effrontery. But the situation was too serious to indulge in any humor. ...
— True to Himself • Edward Stratemeyer
... there grows a tiny plot of grass, and this, you may learn, is the only bit of green thing in Packingtown; likewise this jest about the hog and his squeal, the stock in trade of all the guides, is the one gleam of humor that ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... when a nation has no surrounding nations to fight, it will, as we have just proved, fight itself. When it can have no foreign war, it will get up a domestic war; for the human animal, like all animals, must work off in some way its fighting humor, and the only sure way of maintaining peace is always to be prepared for war. A regular standing army of forty thousand men would have prevented the Mexican war, and an army of fifty thousand well-disciplined ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... cordially, and show us the garden and the grounds on which blonde-haired European boys play in brotherly fashion with pig-tailed Chinese youths. When Brother Onufrio—for this is the name of the door-keeper—is in very good humor and has the time he tells us stories of his experiences in the College of the Holy Saviour in which he has been in active service since its foundation. One of these is the wonderful history of the small Irish lad, Willy Brown, the son of a sea captain, and his friend, the Chinese foundling, ...
— The Shipwreck - A Story for the Young • Joseph Spillman
... in perilous situations before, and had learned the important lesson that if he lost his wits all would be lost. The mountain lion was large and powerful and evidently in full fighting humor. ...
— Dave Porter in the Gold Fields - The Search for the Landslide Mine • Edward Stratemeyer
... science in geology and archaeology, Charles Whittlesey is identified with Cleveland, where the girlhood of the gifted novelist, Constance Fenimore Woolson, was passed. There, too, Charles F. Browne began to make his pseudonym of Artemus Ward known, and helped found the school of American humor. He was born in Maine; but his fun tastes of the West ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... I suppose I'll have to leave you. Keep up a good heart and a spirit of cheerfulness. Stick to your sense of proportion and your sense of humor. Remember that the time will soon pass, and pass happily, too; and then you'll come sailing back to this very dock, and I'll be ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... came back in a good humor, and found me in unimpaired spirits. I had not talked even of "curds," though I had given him several hard cuts on other subjects, when an accident happened which frightened all malicious fun out of me. We were about going out after cane, and Miriam had already pulled on one of her buckskin ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... god of fire, was a sort of jester at the Olympian court, and provoked perpetual laughter from his awkwardness and lameness. He forged the thunderbolts for Zeus, and was the armorer of heaven. It accorded with the grim humor of the poets to make this clumsy blacksmith the husband of Aphrodite, the queen of beauty and ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... basis, as if to manifest in himself the law of compensation, Robert grew vicariously robust, and accepted, with cynical good humor, the irritation of his uncle ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... before the dawn, as we had a journey of thirty-five miles before us. He was in a bad humor; for a man, whom he had requested to keep watch over his tent, while he went into the village, had stolen a fork and spoon. The old Turk, who had returned as soon as we were stirring, went out to hunt the thief, but did not succeed in finding him. The inhabitants of the village were ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... linen immaculate, his hose silken and of a brilliant, dazzling blue. His face was fine, even handsome, but indicating about as much purpose as did his faultlessly correct shoes. There was an extreme, unruffled good humor in his eyes and about his mouth, and with it all as much determination of character as is commonly put into the rosy face ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... wish to call your attention to the good your Sulphur Soap has done me. For nearly fourteen years I have been troubled with a skin humor resembling salt rheum. I have spent nearly a small fortune for doctors and medicine, but with only temporary relief. I commenced using your "Glenn's Sulphur Soap" nearly two years ago—used it in baths and as a toilet soap daily. My skin is now as clear as an infant's, and ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 38, No. 01, January, 1884 • Various
... was on account of a superstition; the gleanings and the grain in the corners of the fields were for the Baal, or god of the field. If they were taken he would be angry. The Hebrews kept the old custom, but with a different aim—not to keep the Baal in good humor, but to make life a bit easier for the poor and unfortunate among their own neighbors. It was in accordance with this law that Ruth, although a foreigner, was allowed to glean after the reapers in the barley field of Boaz of Bethlehem, and thus obtained food to keep herself and her mother ...
— Hebrew Life and Times • Harold B. Hunting
... "When will you get a pastor?" The Young People's Association begins to droop. Even the Sunday-school shows signs of friction, though Deacon Goodsole succeeds in keeping it in tolerably good running order by his imperturbable good humor. One advantage we have gained by this interregnum-only one. Even Mr. Hardcap is convinced that pastoral labors are not so unimportant as ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... his master, and the most unlimited devotion to his interests, even anticipating his wishes and orders, which were always intelligently executed. In fine, he was a Caleb without the growling, and a perfect pattern of constant good-humor. Had he been made on purpose for the place, it could not have been better done. Ferguson put himself entirely in his hands, so far as the ordinary details of existence were concerned, and he did well. Incomparable, whole-souled ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... hands Cambaceres begged earnestly that he would not read a trifling note upon domestic matters. Napoleon persisted, and found it to be a note to the cook containing only the following words, "Gardez les entremetes—les rotis sont perdue." When Napoleon was in good humor at the result of a diplomatic conference he was accustomed to take leave of the plenipotentiaries with, "Go and dine Cambaceres." His table was in fact an important state engine, as appears from the anecdote of the ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... some extent excitable; yet withal a man of excellent judgment and honest as God makes men. No lazy bones occupied a place in Buck's body. He was scrupulously neat and cleanly in all his ways; courteous to every one; always in good humor and always looking upon the bright side of things. A better trail mate ...
— Ox-Team Days on the Oregon Trail • Ezra Meeker
... myself away from the bonds which are dragging me down to destruction; evil companions, strong drink, and exciting play. Excitement is now necessary to my existence. I cannot live without it. This is why we have no more of this kind of enjoyment. To-night I relish it because I'm in the humor; but as a general thing it ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... of the United House-smiths' Benevolent Association.' What is a house-smith, Thorp? Evidently we will have to go and find out for ourselves." He pulled the check-cord and gave the driver the new direction. Pure foolishness, of course, but Indiman was not to be put out of his humor. ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... degree of kindness, and on one occasion saved him from the brutality of the cook. His situation was still one of the most precarious, as the men were continually intoxicated, and there was no relying upon their continued good-humor or carelessness in regard to himself. His anxiety on my account be represented, however, as the most distressing result of his condition; and, indeed, I had never reason to doubt the sincerity of his friendship. More than once he had resolved to acquaint ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... said 'No; that I had for some time that intention, but I had given it up,'—'And why?' said he. I was hesitating upon an answer, when he relieved me from my embarrassment by saying, 'Peut-etre sont-ce des considerations de finance.' As he said it in perfect good humor, and with a smile, I replied, in the same manner, 'Mais, Sire, elles y sont pour une bonne partie.'—'Fort bien,' said he, 'vous avez raison. Il faut toujours proportionner la depense a la recette;' a ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... Bible we have many admirable specimens of the short-story. Jotham's parable of the trees of the wood choosing a king is as good an instance of the nature-fable, touched with fine irony and humor, as could be found. The Hebrew prophet himself was often a story-teller. Thus, when Nathan would bring home the nature of his guilt to David, he does it by a story of the most dramatic character, which loses nothing, and indeed gains all its terrific impact, by being strongly impregnated with moral ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... noble fellows of the old "North West" order in the vicinity. There are thus the elements, at least, of study, society, and amusement. Whatever else betide, I have good health, and good spirits, and bright hopes, and I feel very much in the humor of enjoying the wildest kind of tempests which Providence may send to howl ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... bit of steel drawn to a tension his normal self snapped back into place. His readjustment came with a lurch, a subtle sort of shock. His hands unclenched, the tense lines in his face relaxed, and because that God Almighty he had challenged had given to him an unquenchable humor, he saw another thing where only smirking ghouls and hypocrites had rent his brain with their fiendish exultations a moment before. It was Conniston's face, suave, smiling, dying, triumphant over life, and Conniston was saying, ...
— The River's End • James Oliver Curwood
... stated it to himself, it was only staking one form of loss against another. He paid Confederate money for a runaway negro. If the Confederacy failed, the negro would be free; but then, too, the money would be worthless. So with grim humor he said to himself that he was only changing the form of his risk and could not possibly lose by the result. Thus, by implication of law, the recent subject of transfer by deed was elevated to the dignity of being ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... cultivated classes, it seems strange exceedingly; a mad ignorant notion, quite heterodox, and big with mere ruin. He has been used to decent forms long since fallen empty of meaning, to plausible modes, solemnities grown ceremonial,—what you in your iconoclast humor call shams, all his life long; never heard that there was any harm in them, that there was any getting on without them. Did not cotton spin itself, beef grow, and groceries and spiceries come in from the East and the West, quite comfortably by the side of shams? Kings reigned, what they ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... looking for a quarrel, neither am I in bad humor. I only state that time flies with you when you pass it in the company ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... days. One of the letters calls you the best writer of short stories of the day. Another, from Canada, written by a parent, says that you have written one of the most delightful bits of juvenile humor that he has seen in ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... selection of Howe for the mission of conciliation to America, in 1776, where his associate was his younger brother, Sir William, in whom the family virtues had, by exaggeration, degenerated into an indolent good humor fatal to his military efficiency. The admiral, on the contrary, was not more remarkable for amiability and resolute personal courage than he was for sustained energy and untiring attention to duty,—traits which assured adequate naval direction, in case conciliation should give place, as ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... usefulness. But idling as well as industry has to be judged by its fruits. He was in a real sense seeing life, as he personally needed to see it, not in its passion and mystery, but in its lighter moods of humor and sentiment. Paris frankly seemed to him at this time the most profitable place in the world. Two months after his arrival, he wrote airily, "You will excuse the shortness and hastiness of this letter, for which I can only plead as ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton
... for the first time. Great was the indignation of all that the state councillor should have dared to stigmatize as beggars a band of gentlemen with the best blood of the land in their veins. Brederode, on the contrary, smoothing their anger, assured them with good humor that nothing could be more fortunate. "They call us beggars!" said he; "let us accept the name. We will contend with the inquisition, but remain loyal to the King, even till compelled to wear ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... blackballed a respectable man because all of the members were out of humor; they ruined ...
— Note-Book of Anton Chekhov • Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
... display of erudition were demanded, Ben was ready with the heavy artillery of the unities, and all the laws of Aristotle and Horace, Quintilian and Priscian, exemplified in tragedies of canonical structure, and comedies whose prim regularity could not extinguish the most delightful and original humor—Robert Burton's excepted—that illustrated that brilliant period. But if the graceful lyric or glittering masque were called for, the boundless wealth of Ben's genius was most strikingly displayed. It has been the fashion, set by such presumptuous ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... engaged for the defense. Of me he never thought, for I had never spoken before in a criminal case. When he found that none of the usual speakers were concerned in it, he became so careless that when the humor took him, he sat down, then walked about, sometimes called a servant, to give him orders, I suppose, for dinner, and certainly treated this court in which you are sitting as if it were an absolute solitude. At last he brought ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church
... something, arising from such a variety of sources," replied the young man, his grave face expressive of the fund of true humor within. ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... of unconscious humor in Miss Anthony's remark that "Woman must accept marriage as man proffers it, or not at all." Man is at present blinded by the belief that he must proffer marriage as woman will accept it, or not at all. Society has lodged with her what Mrs. Stanton calls ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... in our catalogue books on every topic: Poetry, Fiction, Romance, Travel, Adventure, Humor, Science, History, Religion, Biography, Drama, etc., besides Dictionaries and Manuals, Bibles, Recitation and Hand Books, Sets, Octavos, Presentation Books and Juvenile and Nursery Literature ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... pride was visible, and enhanced the peculiar, restless glance of his large dark eyes. His physical beauty, which was fully equal to that of Rose, was increased by an aristocratic air, popularly believed to be only found in the scions of noble families. The landlady, in her moments of good humor, used to assert her belief that her lodger was a disguised prince; but if this were the case, he was certainly one that had been overtaken by poverty. His dress, to which the closest attention had been paid, revealed the state of destitution in which he was,—not ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... plate in his hand for steadiness, and sipped the hot, satisfying liquid while the great dock rose and fell. The fact that he was really in command of the vast iron fabric put the American in a serious humor. He ate dinner slowly, listening to the heavy clang of the waves against the iron hull, and to the wind whining and sobbing over the great ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... service," he said, steadily, giving back unwavering gaze for gaze. "I am looking for some information myself, and I am in exactly the humor for a ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... those quiet, gentlemanly fellows, who seem rather too sober for their years. Yet he possessed humor enough, and there certainly was no primness about him. It was he who hailed Jessie on the ground and Amy leaning out ...
— The Campfire Girls of Roselawn - A Strange Message from the Air • Margaret Penrose
... it repeated itself in a different way. 'Thanase was in gay humor that morning. He kissed his wife, tossed his children, played on his fiddle that tune they all liked best, and, while Zosephine looked after him with young zest in her eye, sprang into the saddle and galloped across the prairie a la chapelle to pass a jolly forenoon ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... the woman said in reply. She understood the condition of her husband's mind. She saw clearly that she must humor him. ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... the constitution, formed the majority, and it soon appeared that a new convention was too bold an experiment to be applied for by the requisite number of States. But two States, Rhode Island and North Carolina, still remained out of the pale of the Union, and a great deal of ill humor existed among those who were included within it, which increased the necessity of circumspection in those who ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... drying and smoking meat, and of eating as much as the older men permitted, and everybody wore an aspect of extreme good-humor except One-eye and his master. The dog and the boy alike kept away from the camp-fires and from all grown-up Indians. Towards the middle of the afternoon, Na-tee-kah slipped quietly out at the upper end of the camp, carrying her own buckskin sack ...
— Two Arrows - A Story of Red and White • William O. Stoddard
... than my father; she was of a very bad temper, very vindictive and revengeful, and in every way she had a pleasure in annoying other people, and when she succeeded she invariably concluded her remarks with, "There—now you're vexed!" Whenever out of humor herself from the observations of others, she attempted to conceal her vexation by singing; and having been so many years of her life in the nursery, her songs were usually those little ditties used to pacify ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... and Humor. Two large volumes, 8vo. Profusely illustrated with Wood Engravings and twenty-four Portraits on Steel. Extra cloth, $7; sheep extra, $8; hf mor. $9; hf ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... the offspring. Them the strapping lass in charge seized roughly, and at the risk of dislocating their little limbs, tossed into the air and caught, one on each of her own robust arms, and carried them off stupidly irritated—for want of a grain of humor—at the good-natured laugh this caused, and looking as if she would like to knock ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... story of "King O'Toole and His Goose" is from Samuel Lover's Stories and Legends of the Irish Peasantry, as reprinted in slightly abridged form in William Butler Yeats's Irish Fairy Tales. The extreme form of the dialect is kept as in the original, since the humor is largely dependent on the language of the peasant who tells the story. It will serve as a good illustration for practice work for the amateur story-teller. Probably most teachers would find it necessary to "reduce" ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... in even a worse humor, stood before the fire trying to thaw himself; and while Marianne made haste to warm some wine, he began to speak of the cleared fields which he had skirted. Under the icy covering, however, beneath which they stiffly slumbered, hiding the seed within them, he had guessed nothing of the truth, and ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... what its title indicates, a collection of love affairs—sparkling with humor, tenderness ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... day by day, of observing their whole behaviour. For we were in one room with them from morning to night, unless for the little time I spent in walking. They were always employed, always cheerful themselves, and in good humor with one another; they had put away all anger, and strife, and wrath, and bitterness, and clamor, and evil speaking; they walked worthy of the vocation wherewith they were called, and adorned the Gospel of our Lord in all things." The impression thus made upon John Wesley ...
— The Moravians in Georgia - 1735-1740 • Adelaide L. Fries
... half way through the second volume, at which point the lovers would naturally be involved in the most hopeless and heart-rending difficulties, I thought he would be in a particularly cheerful humor, so I approached him and informed him ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume 8 - Epigrams, On With the Dance, Negligible Tales • Ambrose Bierce
... stairs, and springing into the carriage, ordered the driver to return with all possible speed to the office. Dr. Hillhouse was in bed, but rose on getting the summons from Dr. Angier and accompanied Mr. Ridley. He did not feel in a pleasant humor. The night's indulgence in wine and other allurements of the table had not left his head clear nor his nerves steady for the morning. A sense of physical discomfort made him impatient and irritable. ...
— Danger - or Wounded in the House of a Friend • T. S. Arthur
... away the tears that Stuart's humor had forced from his eyes, and opened the crumpled letter, and, turning his back to the light, read it aloud, while the rest listened with looks of great ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various
... Ribston pippin, his coat is a marvel both in cut and in texture, but his linen is irreproachable, and what hair nature has still left him is most carefully brushed. There is, too, in his small gray Irish eyes a mischievous twinkle, and a fund of honest good humor that goes far to defy the ravages of time. In spite of his seventy years and his quaint attire, he still at times can hold his own ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... gleamed with humor as he heard the virtues of the modest Thad thus extolled to the skies; he knew what was coming, but it pleased him to keep the boys on the anxious seat a while, for this was a every amusing happening to the ...
— The House Boat Boys • St. George Rathborne
... the old woman admitted; "but Merenra is chief commander over Pa-Ramesu and how shall thine appeal to the Pharaoh pass beyond Merenra if he see fit to humor this ravening lord with a breach of the law? The message summoning him in haste to Pithom before the order could be fulfilled was all that saved thee. And if Merenra return ere thou art safely gone, thou art of a ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... presence in that puckered face of age which confronted Chris was horribly disconcerting. Chris blinked and looked again. Yes, they were still there. Eyes so deeply brown they might well have been black, but clear, sparkling, and with a decided glint of humor and mischief. While the boy had been too frightened to move at the sight of Mr. Wicker's ancient cheeks, pinched nose, and hairless head, he was encouraged by the friendly eyes. Chris could not help but like those eyes, even though ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... whatever else we do. If we are to be sent to the bottom of this bay, we will go down with the best grace possible," added Felix, who was certainly in as good humor as ever he was, in spite of the brass gun that protruded at the side of the Fatime. "Do you suppose Captain Scott knows about ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic
... for the Rhine wine. So sat the three together about the highly waxed table, Gleaming and round and brown, that on mighty feet was supported. Joyously rang at once the glasses of landlord and pastor, But his motionless held the third, and sat lost in reflection, Until with words of good-humor the landlord challenged him, saying,— "Come, sir neighbor, empty your glass, for God in His mercy Thus far has kept us from evil, and so in the future will keep us. For who acknowledges not, that since our dread conflagration, When He so hardly ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... reaction? Does he seek to drive us to aspiration by the portrayal of sordidness, to disinterestedness by the picture of selfishness, to illusion by disillusionment? It is impossible to believe that he is unconscious of the humor of his dramatic situations, yet he stoically gives no sign. He even dares the charge, terrible in proportion to its truth, which the most serious of us shrinks from—the lack of a sense of humor. Men would rather ...
— Arms and the Man • George Bernard Shaw
... and base, must Dion therefore sully or injure his virtue by passionate concern for it? For, though the laws determine it juster to revenge an injury than to do an injury, yet it is evident that both, in the nature of things, originally proceed from the same deficiency and weakness. The malicious humor of men, though perverse and refractory, is not so savage and invincible but it may be wrought upon by kindness, and altered by repeated obligations. Dion, making use of these arguments, pardoned ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... made of clay; surely the Lord had never intended such strange doings, and Mistress Martha would willingly have protested against the unpleasant odor thus created by her lodger when he was puffing away, only that she stood somewhat in awe of his ill-humor and of his violent language, especially when Adam himself ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... of himself, but he could not conquer his horrible humor. "Not in the least; I don't blame you." His tone was still cold and his glance averted. She put her handkerchief to her face in vexation, but removed it quickly ...
— Westerfelt • Will N. Harben
... exuberant person with corn-colored hair and bright blue eyes and the most affectionate disposition in the world. She also had a quick, fly-away temper, and more emotions than principles. But her sense of humor was so complete, and her sunniness so steady that nobody demanded great self-sacrifice from her. Who wouldn't give anybody the biggest piece of cake and the best chair and the most presents, for the sake of having a Little Sunshine in the home? At least, that was the way Billy Strong ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... riding suit of light material, with a long-skirted coat which obviously concealed the divided skirt beneath. Her long, brown top boots were white with dust of the trail, and her vicious-looking Mexican spurs hung loosely upon her heels. Her eyes were bright with intelligence and good humor, and her pretty oval face smiled out from under the wide brim ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... those which are fully elaborated; and the few plain rules, by which a thing so informal and easy as an after-dinner speech may be produced, are so illustrated as to make their application almost a matter of course. Good-humor and brevity, an outline and a story—what more is needed, unless it be that serene self-confidence which enables a speaker to say even foolish and absurd things, with the assurance that all goes down at a public dinner? What if you are not the most brilliant, humorous, and stirring speaker ...
— Toasts - and Forms of Public Address for Those Who Wish to Say - the Right Thing in the Right Way • William Pittenger
... imaginative mind, the innate ability to see and turn to his own uses an interesting and coherent story, and is possessed of the ability to think in drama, and, above all, has the gift of humor, he can write good vaudeville material, even if he has not education or ability to write an acceptable poem, article or short-story. In other words, a mastery of English prose or verse is not necessary for success in vaudeville ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... sentence the company at the table, forgetful of the presence of Doctor Heavyasbricks, showed some disposition at good humor, when the doctor's brows lifted in surprise, and he observed that he thought a man with forty ailments was a painful spectacle, and ought to be calculated to depress a tea-table ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... every one noticed that old lady Saxony held her dainty hemstitched handkerchief quite over her mouth. Fortunately Mrs. Saxony's good sense was as great as her appreciation of humor, and, as she shook her finger threateningly at Dorothea, her twinkling eyes gave everybody leave to laugh. So "Dolly's terrible break," as Conrad called it, really went far to making the dinner a success—that is, if story-telling and ...
— Solomon Crow's Christmas Pockets and Other Tales • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... of humor was not the uppermost sense in her at that moment. She pointed with a peremptory forefinger to Mrs. Rook's letter. "Have you nothing to say ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... the remarkablest bit of sheepskin in its Century. Readers have heard too, That it was proposed to Bruhl, by a grateful Austria, directly on signing the Peace of Dresden: "Our Partition-Treaty stands all the same, does it not?"—and in what humor Bruhl answered: "Hah? Get Russia to join!" Both these facts, That there is a Treaty of Warsaw and that this is the Austrian-Saxon temper and intention towards him and it, Friedrich learned from the Menzel Documents. And if the reader will possess ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Seven-Years War: First Campaign—1756-1757. • Thomas Carlyle
... answered, shortly, out of humor that he should be as careful of Lloyd's comfort as her own. She trudged along, taking no part in the conversation. It was a general one, extending all along the line, for Rob at the tail and Ranald at the head shouted jokes and questions back and forth like end-men at a minstrel show. Laughing ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... slipped away to the beach and sat down alone to brood over it, nursing her ill-humor and missing much enjoyment which she might have had because this—a very doubtful one at the best—was ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley
... master in every sense, having as it were, in himself, a double quantity of being. Robust humor and lofty sentiment alternated so strangely in him, that sometimes he seemed like the natural son of Rabelais, and at others he rose up a very twin brother of the Stratford Seer. There was nothing in him amorphous and unconsidered. Whatever he chose to do was always perfectly ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... that Hubert will come, sir, and then I won't believe that he wrote that cruel letter," cried Sibyl, in a mournful voice, pausing in front of the detective. "I cannot tell you unless you show me the letter," returned Dyke Darrel, resolving to humor her. ...
— Dyke Darrel the Railroad Detective - Or, The Crime of the Midnight Express • Frank Pinkerton
... better humor him in his desire to be left alone," he said to Mrs. Pell. "But of course arrange to be near in case another ...
— Two Boys and a Fortune • Matthew White, Jr.
... do; for you are to note, a companion of patience and sober demeanor, free from profane jests and scurrilous discourse, is worth gold, but is not so easy to be come at. And none other than such jumps with my humor. ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... behind Mollie's straight little back. To quote the latter: She would much rather do things for herself—boys were so clumsy—but they always looked so funny and downhearted when she told them about it, that, just in the interest of ordinary kindness, she had to humor them! ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Army Service - Doing Their Bit for the Soldier Boys • Laura Lee Hope
... the naive and sentimental poets are contrasted. The former, Schiller contends, is concerned with the definite, the latter with the infinite. From the realist we turn easily and with pleasure to actual life; the idealist puts us for the moment out of humor with it. The one follows the laws of nature, the other those of reason. The one asks what a thing is good for, the other whether it is good. Withal, however, Schiller is careful to insist that even the naive poet, the realist, is properly concerned only with true nature, and not with ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... Fit fuga, tectonicas nemo tunc invocat artes; Cum perit artificis non minus usta domus. Se tandem Sydenham febrisque Scholaeque furori Opponens, morbi quaerit, & artis opem. Non temere incusat tectae putedinis [putredinis] ignes; Nec fictus, febres qui fovet, humor erit. Non bilem ille movet, nulla hic pituita; Salutis Quae spes, si fallax ardeat intus aqua? Nec doctas magno rixas ostentat hiatu, Quis ipsis major febribus ardor inest. Innocuas placide corpus jubet urere flammas, Et justo rapidos temperat igne focos. Quid febrim exstinguat, varius quid postulet ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... satisfactory, since it satisfied him that no other attempt could be thought of. In spite of this, however, both the boys had risen to a more cheerful frame of mind. Their future began to look brighter, and the prospect of a rescue served to put them both. into comparative good humor, the only drawback to which was their ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... the vices and follies of his time, and exposes the hypocrisy that reigns in the high places of fashion and power. His dialogues have been imitated by Fontanelle and Lord Lyttleton, but they do not possess his humor or pungency. Lucian does not grapple with great truths, but contents himself in ridiculing those who have proclaimed them; and, in his cold cynicism, depreciates human knowledge, and all the great moral teachers of ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... yourself suddenly flung into the lap of snow-bound winter, to look upon scenes quite different from the foregoing. The Frost King had been playing a good many pranks for a week or two, and once, in a spasm of frigid ill humor, had jammed the mercury in our thermometers a dozen or more degrees below zero, and had held it there quite too long for our comfort. More than once had he shrieked and blustered and stamped his feet incontinently, ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... and experience as an engineer that Major Whistler was particularly qualified for and eminently successful in the important task he performed so well in Russia. His military training and bearing, his polished manner, good humor, sense of honor, knowledge of a language (French) in which he could converse with officers of the government, his resolution in adhering to what he thought was right, and in meeting difficulties only to surmount them, with other admirable personal qualities, made him soon, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 586, March 26, 1887 • Various
... of a quaint humor, and in all her visits to hospitals her aim seemed to be to awake smiles, and arouse the cheerfulness of the patients; and she was generally successful in this, being everywhere a great favorite. One more quotation from the written testimony ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... wouldn't be so overwhelmingly glad to see him when he came back—especially if he had got fat and bald-headed," she added, her face involuntarily twitching into a smile. Cecily, in spite of her serious expression and intense way of looking at life, had an irrepressible sense of humor. ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... was he doing here?" The Senator hesitated, and while she waited for his answer she was struck by a sense of humor in what had happened. She laughed softly. "Good ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... Nick's ill humor soon wore off as he breathed the fresh air, moist from lush meadows, and sweet from hedges pink and white with hawthorn bloom. The thought of being pent up on such a day grew more and more unbearable, ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... had learned more from his own temperament than from political expediency. It was bound up in his love of efficiency and also in his sense of humor. During this same hot conservation controversy he writes to an old friend, "I have no intention of saying anything in reply to Pinchot. He wrote me thirty pages to prove that I was a liar, and rather than read that again I will ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... it very comfortable down there; we have made ourselves at home as well as we could, and are hideously satisfied! Instead of the heroic spirit of our past ages, Jack Pudding now staggers out of the wings in a torn jacket and shows us what kind of humor is engendered by stupidity and brandy, when they have a rendezvous in the head of a porter. If Schiller and Goethe dare once to come out of their exile, then Nestroy's plum-pudding jinnee steps in their ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... circumstance of this story of "Soldiers of Fortune" he could himself have been either Clay or Stuart and he had the humor of MacWilliams. ...
— Appreciations of Richard Harding Davis • Various
... the humor for abstractions, why did he not say to the phalanx of economists who listen so respectfully to the least word that falls ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... ought to keep the people in good humor while the time is passing, I should think," the stranger remarked, laughingly. "And now, would you mind telling me a little about the rules of the great race? I understand that the course covers twenty-five ...
— Fred Fenton Marathon Runner - The Great Race at Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... all of us respected Navvy for his good humor, and especially when he walked up to Marc, and with no show of the mean Indian, patted the glossy neck and then nimbly remounted. Marc, not being so difficult to please as Jim in the way of discomfiting the Navajo, appeared satisfied for the present, and trotted off down ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... bloom and clearness of her complexion were such as absolutely to render necessary the old comparison of the rose and the lily to do them justice. To these were added a voluptuous figure, agreeable manners, the graces and vivacity of wit, and the still more enduring attractions of good humor, purity, and benevolence. A female like her could not but be dear to all who enjoyed her intimacy, and a strong friendship sprang up between her and Baron d'Holbach. Greatly pleased with him at first, Marguerite was afterwards as greatly shocked. When their intercourse ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... and grandmother, my father and mother and all my friends, yet if they came to treat of peace, they ought to have gone in peace." Having finished this harangue, designed for the humiliation of John Washington and his followers, he rose and with grim humor said: ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... began to grow ill-tempered. Paris does not get angry at will. She must be in the humor for it. A volcano possesses nerves. The anger was coming slowly, but it was coming. On the horizon might be seen the first glimmering of ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... to the occasions," put in the clergyman, the humor in the corners of his eyes counterbalanced by the graveness of the lines ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908 • Various
... to weigh the matter, and his sense of humor conquered. He roared with mirth, which was joined in more sedately by the unknown girl. "That settles it. You couldn't start on your campaign in a better way. You shall be the Lady of Mystery in this story! I will not breathe a hint of your identity to Shirley, ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... was not allowed by the Twelve Tables to have the management of his own affairs; therefore the words are not, if he is mad (insanus), but if he begins to be raving (furiosus). For they looked upon madness to be an unsettled humor that proceeded from not being of sound mind; yet such a person might perform his ordinary duties, and discharge the usual and customary requirements of life: but they considered one that was raving as afflicted with a total ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... connected with the two cousins. He was the youngest of the three Englishmen and the embodiment of geniality. He was a blond of the purest type, and his beard, parted in the centre, was brushed back in two wavy, silken masses, while his clear blue eyes, beaming with kindliness and good-humor, had the frankness ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... anyhow," said Matilda Ann, who was standing before the looking-glass, in high good humor, with the new bonnet on, and turning her head from side to side, so that she could the better ...
— Harper's Young People, March 9, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... was in great good-humor to-day, and he kept on laughing till his pipe went out; and, while he laughed, he said, "Why, to be sure, ...
— Cast Away in the Cold - An Old Man's Story of a Young Man's Adventures, as Related by Captain John Hardy, Mariner • Isaac I. Hayes
... her finish, "an epileptic, who succumbed to a congestive attack! See! since you are in a bad humor, let us talk no more about that—you would grieve me, and that would ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... woman who played; but it was always the woman who took up the collection: she seemed to have the greater enterprise and perseverance. Of course in the case of the blackened minstrels, some man appealed to the love of humor rather than the love of beauty for the bounty of the spectators. In the case of an old-time plantation darkey who sang the familiar melodies with the slurring vowels and wandering aspirates of East London, and then lifted a face one-half blackened, ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... was now retired and had been succeeded by Mr. O'Shea, who, in addition to his unexpectedness, was adorned by an abominable temper, an overbearing manner, and a sense of cruel humor. He had almost finished his examinations at the nearest school where, during a brisk campaign of eight days, he had caused five dismissals, nine cases of nervous exhaustion, and an epidemic ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... crept into her voice. Who could wonder? Yet I was not ready to humor her very natural sensibilities by leaving quite so abruptly. The floor interested me; the cushions of that old couch interested me; the sawn boards ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... compromise; to know that black is black and white is white; to be unforgiving, as only cruel young inexperience can be; to flame at a wrong and glow at its righting; and yet to have her contradictions cased in a body of such vivid grace, a mind leavened by humor, and a heart of such sweetness as made her the irresistibly lovable Pretense ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... Whaling, and deeply impressed that veteran with the depth of his information on dogs, horses, and military affairs. He dexterously lost small sums to the post commander at pool and billiards; enough to keep the old gentleman in cigars—and good-humor. He became "serious" in his conversation with the colonel's amiable wife, whose exemplary habit it was to be always found seated at a little table behind a very big Bible when visitors called; though the garrison did say, as garrisons will, that occasionally ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... that you never told me more about this delightful family, and scarcely mentioned Alice who is the life of it, just the noblest girl, unselfish, knows how to do so many things, with lots of talent, with a dry humor, and an odd way of looking at things, and yet quiet and even serious often—one of your "capable" New England girls. We shall be great friends. It had never occurred to Philip that there was any thing extraordinary about the family that ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... about the lake. Agatha envied the happy people who could enjoy such sports, and it had cost her something to admit that they were not for her. A ticket for a concert to which she had thought of going was stuck in a picture frame, but she was not in the humor for music, and putting down the book she held, leaned back languidly ...
— The Lure of the North • Harold Bindloss
... spirit of humor it was therefore decided that on the following morning they would break camp ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... Scotch father's discipline. Our studies supplemented each other and our tastes were similar. We had both lived clean lives and our conversation together was sweet and high, while we both had a sense of humor and a ...
— Alaska Days with John Muir • Samual Hall Young
... hunting and boating and mountain-climbing within easy reach, and a good roof over your head at night, which is no small matter. One is often disqualified for enjoying the woods after he gets there by the loss of sleep and of proper food taken at seasonable times. This point attended to, one is in the humor for ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... Waterfound. He was a man of thirty-two or three, full of the red-blooded life that made Henri like him at once. If this had not been the case, the first few days in the cabin might have been unpleasant, for Henri was in bad humor. He told Weyman about it their first night, as they were smoking pipes alongside the redly ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... greenish-blue eyes that were set far apart and crinkled when they laughed—as ever and oft they did. His features were irregular, his hair unruly, but there was a lovable appeal in the roguish eyes and the charm of humor in a mouth that lifted upward at ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... we all might see. Mrs. Jameson had done what many a novice in trousers-making does: sewed one leg over the other and made a bag of them. They were certainly a comical sight. I don't know whether Flora's sense of humor got the better of her wrath, or whether Mrs. White's expostulation influenced her, but she did not say one word, only stood there holding the trousers, her mouth twitching. As for the rest of us, it was all we could do to keep our faces straight. ...
— The Jamesons • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... declared. "To tell you the truth, I believe it would have annoyed him. He hasn't any sense of humor, you see. Good night, Isaac. If you're writing one of those shattering articles to-night, remember that Ruth can hear you, and don't keep her ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Hussey, who is so very considerable at present, and who is everything in expectation, will give you his assistance. I rejoice to see (that very rare spectacle) a good mind, a great genius, and public activity united together, and united so early in life. By not running into every popular humor, he may depend upon it, the popularity of his character ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... evening, tea was dispatched in the gayest humor in the little Bartlett dining-room. Rose and Phil disappeared in the kitchen to "do" the dishes while Nan and Kirkwood ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... was the parent and which the offspring. Them the strapping lass in charge seized roughly, and at the risk of dislocating their little limbs, tossed into the air and caught, one on each of her own robust arms, and carried them off stupidly irritated—for want of a grain of humor—at the good-natured laugh this caused, and looking as if she would like to knock their ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... not in very good humor, and took ill the jokes of the policeman. Mr. Peterkin, fearing he might not consent to open the door, pressed into his hand a large sum of money. The door flew open; the family could go in. Amanda arrived at the same moment. There was hope of breakfast. Mrs. Peterkin staggered towards the stairs. ...
— The Peterkin Papers • Lucretia P Hale
... mother with keen insight and a delightful sense of humor has to deal with a serious attack of romantic imagination in her very young daughter, who feels responsible for the conduct ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... she had worked herself into, Mary rudely repulsed the arm, and then, fearing that she had wounded her lover's feelings, she took advantage of the teasing and banter to recover her good humor. His arm was permitted to return, and with heads bent together, they ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... Germania, c. 45. Plin. Hist. Nat. xxxvii. 13. The latter observed, with some humor, that even fashion had not yet found out the use of amber. Nero sent a Roman knight to purchase great quantities on the spot where it was produced, the coast of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... equatorial palm-groves grew in startling proximity to the snow-laden pines of the North, and a heterogeneous assembly of all nations and ages poured through the resplendent avenues, chatting and playing pranks on each other with Teutonic good humor. ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... rejoicing. Everybody appeared in good humor. The distended udders of thousands of camels were an assurance of plenty. The burning sun that for nine months had scorched the earth was veiled by passing clouds. The cattle that had panted for water, and whose food ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... crest-fallen. But, after shedding just as many tears as she deemed appropriate, Scarron's widow was clever enough to understand that wisdom lay in acquiescence. She wiped her eyes, and suffered herself to be caressed into a good-humor; was more amiable, more sprightly, more fascinating than ever, with not a trace of disappointment in her looks, save that which lay in the unusual paleness ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... humor, "don't let your frankness expire for the lack of the proper courage. Let your speech continue during the whole run of an honest statement. But it's all right. ...
— Money Island • Andrew Jackson Howell, Jr.
... He saw black pines, with the moon shining between their stiff branches, wood smoke drifting past, and a red fire snapping in the snow. Jake wore ragged furs and his eyes twinkled, as they twinkled now. Jake was a humorous philosopher and if his humor was sometimes thin his philosophy was sound. He was white; one could trust him. Then Jim came back to the room above the store. He liked the way Jake waited on Carrie, although Jake owned he had not been a success when he made a trip in the ...
— Partners of the Out-Trail • Harold Bindloss
... of its political or legal significance or merely because of the sensational testimony that is given. And again a very trivial case may be worth a large amount of space in the daily paper just because of its human interest—because of the pathos or humor that the reporter can bring into it. Thus the resulting reports are hard to classify. Each one depends on a different factor for its interest and each must be written in a different way so that its individual interest may be most effective. However there are general ...
— Newspaper Reporting and Correspondence - A Manual for Reporters, Correspondents, and Students of - Newspaper Writing • Grant Milnor Hyde
... had some contrivance for packing his Committees, whether they happened always to be made up of optimists by nature, whether they were cajoled into good-humor by polite attentions, or whether they were always really delighted with the wonderful acquirements of the pupils and the admirable order of the school, it is certain that their Annual Reports were couched in language ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the men were in a good humor now. For my part, I was horribly cast down. Should the scheme he had now sketched prove feasible, Silver, already doubly a traitor, would not hesitate to adopt it. He had still a foot in either camp, and there was no doubt he would prefer wealth ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... battered in long wars with the doctors,—no droll marplot of a boy, could appear within range, but I could see in the changeful expression of my companion the admeasurement and quiet adjustment of the appeal which either made upon his sympathy or his humor. A flower, a tree, a burst of music, a country market-man hoisted upon his wagon of cabbages,—all these by turns caught and engaged his attention, however little they might interrupt the flow of ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... malady first appeared in a form which was mistaken for mere eccentricity of humor, and some time elapsed before his oddities of fancy and conduct deepened into acknowledged insanity. An incident which might have aroused the suspicions of his friends occurred during the legislative session of 1769, when at the close of a powerful and ingenious speech by Brigadier ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... (Tables of Ancient Coins, &c. p. 153) has observed with humor, and I believe with truth, that Augustus had neither glass to his windows, nor a shirt to his back. Under the lower empire, the use of linen and glass became somewhat more common. * Note: The discovery of glass ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... is normally clear and translucent. Except when resulting from wounds and actual extravasation of blood, however, the redness is seen to be superficial, and if the opacity is confined to the edges, and does not involve the entire cornea, the aqueous humor behind is seen to be still clear and limpid. The fever is always less severe than in internal ophthalmia, and runs high only in the worst cases. The eyelids may be kept closed, the eyeball retracted, and the haw protruded over one-third or one-half ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... loyalty and lack of self-analysis always put him into good-humor. It was as infectious as the jovial temper of Bobby Dane, Thayer reflected enviously, with a sudden memory of the idle talk over their dinner. Strange what had put him on his nerves afterwards! Then his thoughts flew to Lorimer, ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... an oyster-sloop on the windward tack. Only his fun, you know. But Helen never minded it. She said herself that it aimed so much around the corner that whenever she sneezed she blew down her back hair. There were rich depths of humor in that woman. Now, I don't mind if you work into the poem some picturesque allusion to the condition of her nose, so her friends will recognize her. And you might also spend a verse or two on ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... boys 'druther ye stayed in town after dark," the other called back; then, as the mare stumbled into a trot, "Well, come out and see us—if ye kin spare time from the jedge's." The latter clause seemed to be an afterthought intended with humor, for Bowlder accompanied it with the loud laughter of sylvan timidity, risking a joke. Harkless nodded without the least apprehension of his meaning, and waved farewell as Bowlder finally turned his attention to the mare. When the ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... he soon preferred it even to his own, and he found himself concluding that this was not a wild forest rose at all, but a beautiful domestic flower, worthy of care in the plucking. They had several little tilts in the best of humor that confirmed Williams in the growing opinion that the girl's beauty and strength were not all physical. He talked much about Boston and its culture, and spoke patronizingly of that unfortunate portion of the world's people who did not enjoy the advantage of living within the sacred ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... "That comes of association with these untamed Westerners." Yet he plainly showed that he was flattered by her unexpected enthusiasm and more than ready to humor her. ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... art students in Paris, or in some Italian city. The poem is a plea for the freedom of the individuality of a soul against the restrictions imposed by conventional standards of value. Its touches of humor, of human nature, and its summary of two lives in brief, are admirably done. Its rhymes sometimes need the indulgence accorded to ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... features generally, including rather a narrow forehead. His nostrils, however, were well curved, and his thin, straight lips and square chin showed the stiffest determination. He looked fatigued, weary, and harassed; yet it did not appear that he complained of his lot; rather accepted it with sardonic humor. The cares of an opera season and of three other simultaneous managements weighed on him ponderously, but he supported ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... in his demeanor, it rather appeared assumed than easy; and even when most disposed to display lawless indifference to the ordinary regulations of society, in his interview with the Alderman, it had been blended with a reserve of manner that was strangely in contrast with his humor. ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... most delicate subjects, very nearly approaching license, have been pardoned. We would surely exhibit a tyrannical and morose humor to condemn to be burned en place de Greve, by the hand of the executioner, the romances of Manon Lescaut, and Daphnis and Chloe by Longus, as they have been transmitted to us by Paul ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... we have learned that success of any kind is predicated upon keeping ourselves in trim, and in good humor. Keeping in trim is no trick at all. We can make it a part of every physical action and as keeping in trim means perfection of body and soundness of mind we should never neglect to utilize any effort that will help us toward bodily efficiency. ...
— Laugh and Live • Douglas Fairbanks
... thank you good Scholer, this Song was well humor'd by the maker, and well remembred and sung by you; and I pray forget not the Ketch which you promised to make against night, for our Country man honest Coridon will expect your Ketch and my Song, which I must be forc'd to patch up, for it is so long since I learnt it, that I have ...
— The Compleat Angler - Facsimile of the First Edition • Izaak Walton
... The book begins in rapid action, and there is surely "something doing" up to the very time you lay it down, possibly with a sigh of regret because you have reached the end; yet thankful to know that a second volume is within reach. Besides the adventure, there is more or less rollicking humor, of ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... survival of the patriarchal state, holding its own in the midst of an enslaved condition of all the population around. He is a man of large mould, of a robust vigor which gave him a distinct physical preminence amongst his people, with the effusive good humor which belongs, as a rule, to large men, and a hearty bonhomie which with that simple people was a bond to the most passionate devotion. He is quick-witted and diplomatic, with a knowledge of statecraft sufficient for the elementary ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... that Alexandra, pleading a dread of copy-designing peeresses, guards with jealous vigilance the secret of her coronation crown, and gossip adds that she fears to have it duplicated by some enterprising American. It is doubtful if the peculiar humor of the British populace would allow of a full appreciation of this joke. Years and etiquette combined have led her Majesty to the thraldom of the rouge and enamel pot. Like the sensible woman that she is ...
— The Onlooker, Volume 1, Part 2 • Various
... alarming appeal to the sense of the people on theological questions, and was content to proceed in his great work step by step, with a slow, uncertain, and interrupted progress, at the will of that capricious master whose vacillations of humor or opinion he watched with the patience, and improved with the skill, ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... thereby securing virtue," were sown like seed all over the land. The almanac went year after year, for quarter of a century, into the house of nearly every shopkeeper, planter, and farmer in the American provinces. Its wit and humor, its practical tone, its shrewd maxims, its worldly honesty, its morality of common sense, its useful information, all chimed well with the national character. It formulated in homely phrase and with droll illustration what the colonists more vaguely ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... with humor. "I will listen with great pleasure; but don't ask a chemist to judge a pianist. I love music—it is a sweet noise in my ears—but I can hardly distinguish Chopin from Schumann." He faced the girl. "Play for me. I shall be very deeply indebted." As she still hesitated he added: "Please ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... the final aspiration of architecture. Sam Clark's annual hardware turnover is the envy of the four counties which constitute God's Country. In the sensitive art of the Rosebud Movie Palace there is a Message, and humor ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... contempt, expressed in it at all. On the contrary, a quiet smile of satisfaction gave to it almost a merry look. Mr. Jarvice had certain plans for Walter Hine's future—so he phrased it with a smile for the grim humor of the phrase—and fate seemed to be helping toward ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... have me deprive the King of Walter Butler's services, would you?" I asked so gravely that everybody laughed, and we rose in good humor to join the ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... you just as you tackled Eleanor," said Nora, "so we kept away, for we thought after to-day's performances she wouldn't be in a very good humor." ...
— Grace Harlowe's Junior Year at High School - Or, Fast Friends in the Sororities • Jessie Graham Flower
... we raised our eyes and they rested simultaneously upon a sign, "The Empire Hotel for Cats and Dogs." This simple solution of our difficulty put us in such high good humor that we said we wouldn't look up a hotel just ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... "What mistress?" said Antipholus. "Why, your worship's wife, sir," replied Dromio. Antipholus having no wife, he was very angry with Dromio, and said, "Because I familiarly sometimes chat with you, you presume to jest with me in this free manner. I am not in a sportive humor now. Where is the money? we being strangers here, how dare you trust so great a charge from your own custody?" Dromio hearing his master, as he thought him, talk of their being strangers, supposed Antipholus was jesting, and ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... time I saw my father manifestly disconcerted. The little maid's life might be worth no more than a torn ballad if Duke Casimir happened to be in evil humor or had repented him of his mercy of the past night. I saw the Red Axe look aimlessly about for a hiding-place. There was a niche round which certain ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... gentle diluents mostly, for fierce stimulants of wine or strong liquors are abhorrent to the real lover of the Indian weed. Ah! my Juliana, join not in the vulgar cry that is raised against us. Cigars and cool drinks beget quiet conversations, good-humor, meditation; not hot blood such as mounts into the head of drinkers of apoplectic port or dangerous claret. Are we not more moral and reasonable than our forefathers? Indeed I think so somewhat; and ...
— Little Travels and Roadside Sketches • William Makepeace Thackeray
... say That his wife had "such a ridiculous way,— She'd, humor that child Till he'd soon be sp'iled, And then there'd be the devil to pay!" And the excellent wife, with a martyr's look, Would tell old Flash himself "he took No notice at all Of the bright-eyed doll Unless when he spanked him ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... thing that anything characteristic in Jesus survived at all. But it did. His sayings have the sparkle of genius and personality; the illustrations and epigrams which he threw off in fertile profusion are still clinchers; even his humor plays around them. Critics undertake to fix on the genuine sayings by internal evidence. Only a mind of transcendent originality could win its way to posterity through ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch
... broad-shouldered fellow, hook-nosed, with cold eyes set close. Hair and eyebrows were matted with ice and a coat of sleet covered his clothes. Judging from voice and manner, he was in a vile humor. ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... but irrational. The conversation between God, the angels, and the Devil is a mere prologue, intended to bring Napoleon and Ivan-angel on the stage and lay the foundation of the plot. The story-teller's keen sense of fun and humor is shown in many little touches, but he never means to be irreverent. The whole legend is set forth in the racy, idiomatic, highly elliptical language of the common Russian muzhik, and is therefore extremely difficult of translation; but I have tried to preserve, as far ...
— Folk-Tales of Napoleon - The Napoleon of the People; Napoleonder • Honore de Balzac and Alexander Amphiteatrof
... demarcation between the Emperor and Turks. We may add as a third, the interference by the King of Prussia in the domestic disputes of the Dutch. Great Britain, it is said, begins to look towards us with a little more good humor. But how true this may be, I cannot say with certainty. We are trying to render her commerce as little necessary to us as possible, by finding other markets for our produce. A most favorable reduction of duties on whale-oil ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... was proved by subsequent events to be a touch of wholly unconscious but very grim humor. The French were utterly unsuited for liberty, as the Americans understood the term, and to most of them the destruction of British rule was a misfortune. The bold, self-reliant, and energetic spirits among them, who were able to become Americanized, and to adapt themselves ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... two straggling files along either side of the road, thus leaving the central space free for the officers, and Maurice could not help noticing their anxious, care-worn air, in striking contrast with the jollity and good-humor of the soldiers, who were happy as children to be on the move once more. As the squad was near the head of the column he could even distinguish the Colonel, M. de Vineuil, in the distance, and was impressed by the grave earnestness of his manner, and his tall, rigid form, swaying in cadence to ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... his voice the moment he spoke; those whiskers were false; he didn't want to be recognized, and I thought it as well to humor his fancy, but ...
— Cowmen and Rustlers • Edward S. Ellis
... at the moment quite angry with him; but a little reflection restores me; I see that Mr. Allston is not a flatterer but a friend, and that really to improve I must see my faults. What he says after this always puts me in good humor again. He tells me to put a few flesh tints here, a few gray ones there, and to clear up such and such a part by such and such colors. And not only that, but takes the palette and brushes and shows me how, and in this way he assists me. I think it one of the greatest ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... finding the loveliest of women under every roof that sheltered him; sometimes, perhaps, of that tipsy rhymester whose record of his good and bad fortunes at the hands of landlords and landladies is enlivened by an occasional touch of humor, which makes it palatable to coarse literary feeders. But in truth these papers have many of the characteristics of private letters written home to friends. They are written for friends, rather than for a ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... Rover! you can't talk to me in that fashion," roared Bill Glutts. He had been in a more or less bad humor all the afternoon, and the defeat had not improved his temper. "I say you got in my way, and that is why ...
— The Rover Boys on a Hunt - or The Mysterious House in the Woods • Arthur M. Winfield (Edward Stratemeyer)
... of the pioneers at the blacksmith's shop formed a kind of merry-go-round club. One would tell a story in his own odd way, and another would say, "That reminds me," and tell a similar story that was intended to exceed the first in point of humor. One of Thomas Lincoln's favorite stories was "GL-UK!" or, as he sometimes ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... said the stranger, smiling with equal but more deliberate good-humor. Then, seeing that his interlocutor still lingered a hospitable moment in spite of his quick eyes and the jarring impatience of the machinery, he added hesitatingly, "I fancy I've wandered off the track a bit. Do you know a Mr. ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... think he ever carried it so far as he was accused of doing. Nay, I think he sometimes had to prick up his zeal before assuming the flagellum. For a successful, brilliant man like himself,—full of humor and wit,—eminently convivial, and sensitive to pleasure,—the temptation rather was to adopt the easy philosophy that every thing was all right,—that the rich were wise to enjoy themselves with as little trouble as possible,—and that the poor (good fellows, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... good humor and without personalities. Owing to Australian voting and to a more sensitive public opinion, the election was much purer than that of 1888. The Republicans defended McKinley protection, boasting of it as sure, among ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... undivided object of attention, when every thing possible was done for it by everybody in the house, condescended often to be very graceful and winning and playful, and had numberless charming little ways and tricks. The difference between Lillie in good humor and Lillie in bad humor was a thing which John soon learned to appreciate as one of the most powerful forces in his life. If you knew, my dear reader, that by pursuing a certain course you could bring upon yourself ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... said, 'I've determined to become a physician. I presume you've heard that, and I'm determined to become a good one, too. You may not know it, but I have always liked boys. I don't say that I dislike girls,—but I do like boys. (Harvey is developing a sense of humor.) When I visited my college chum—Joe Atkinson—this last summer, I was surprised to learn that he was the Scout Master to a troop of eight boys. He lives in Springfield, Illinois. I had a corking visit and a fine time with the kids, two of whom ...
— Ethel Hollister's Second Summer as a Campfire Girl • Irene Elliott Benson
... put in the Countess. "You know, Markham, I don't mind your being bearish with me. In fact, I've taken it as the greatest of compliments. I thought that humor of yours was my special prerogative of friendship. But now alas! When I see how uncivil you can be to others I have a sense of lost caste. And you—instead of being amusingly whimsical and entt—are in danger of becoming merely bourgeois. ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor, ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... wedding, singing like a thrush, jumping like a kid, and bustling about after his old fashion. When he left a marriage, he would go to dig a grave, and nail up a coffin. Then he would become very grave, and though nothing of this appeared in his gay humor, it left a melancholy impression which hastened the return of his attacks. His wife was paralyzed, and had not stirred from her chair for twenty years. His mother is living yet, at a hundred and ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... mustn't play tricks on Anvik," reminded Tad. "I have an idea that he hasn't much of a sense of humor. He might lose his temper and run away and leave us after we were deep in the interior ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Alaska - The Gold Diggers of Taku Pass • Frank Gee Patchin
... great obligation of being the first and only person who has excited me to frequent and boundless gayety. The sparks of his wit were frequent, slight surprises; his was a slender dart, and rebounded easily to the hand. I like the scintillating, arrowy wit far better than broad, genial humor. The light metallic touch pleases me. When wit appears as fun and jollity, she wears a little of the Silenus air;—the Mercurial is what ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... turn away. I could not. The gray eyes, once flashing with the light of kindly humor, now softened with sympathy, now glowed with pity. Pity! The thought of it stirred me with anger. The justice of it made me rage. She saw in the chair a thin, broken figure, a drawn brown face, a wreck of a man. Yesterday—a soldier. To-day—a hero. To-morrow—a crippled ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... the feeling on the frontier, however. The frontiersmen were in no humor to sit still and wait for the Indians to scalp them at their plows or burn them in their beds. Their cry was, ...
— Four American Indians - King Philip, Pontiac, Tecumseh, Osceola • Edson L. Whitney
... with them—with all the vast brotherhood of humanity. Now and then, to be sure, faint echoes in her of her father, touches of youthful assurance, youthful grandiloquence, stirred the young man's sense of humor; but it was quickly quelled by an irradiating tenderness that showed her limitations as symptoms of an influence that, in its foolish aspects, he would not have had her too clearly recognize; her beautiful, filial devotion more than compensated for her filial blindness—nay, sanctified it; ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... the compression is interrupted. The interior of the eye contains three transparent media for the refraction of the rays of light on their way from the cornea to the visual nerve. Of these media the anterior one (aqueous humor) is liquid, the posterior (vitreous humor) is semisolid, and the intermediate one (crystalline lens) is solid. The space occupied by the aqueous humor corresponds nearly to the portion of the eye covered by the transparent cornea. It ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... such a disproportionately large gun—or, in fact, for packing any gun at all. And Montoya also feared that Pete might get into trouble. Pete was pugnacious, independent, and while always possessing enough humor to hold his own in a wordy argument, he had much pride, considering himself the equal of any man and quite above the run of youths of the towns. And he disliked Mexicans—Montoya being the one exception. This morning he did not pack his gun, but hung it on the cross-tree of the pack-saddle. ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... splendid, the weather was more lovely than usual, if such a thing could be, and everybody was in the gayest humor. ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... elected to that relationship by the common consent of the community; their fitness being established by great age, by decided individuality or eccentricity of character, by uncommon lovableness, or by the possession of an abundant wit and humor. There was no formality about the thing; certain women were always called "Aunt Sukie," or "Aunt Hitty," or what not, while certain men were distinguished as "Uncle Rish," or "Uncle Pel," without previous arrangement, or the consent of the ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... people, for purposes not specifically mentioned, were assembled in the great square of the Exchange in the well-conditioned city of Rotterdam. The day was warm—unusually so for the season—there was hardly a breath of air stirring; and the multitude were in no bad humor at being now and then besprinkled with friendly showers of momentary duration, that fell from large white masses of cloud which chequered in a fitful manner the blue vault of the firmament. Nevertheless, about noon, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... him now with frowning impatience. You were supposed to humor delusions, weren't you? Only, could you surrender and humor a wild idea which might mean your death? If Thorvald wanted to go island-hopping in chance of discovering what never had existed, Shann need not accompany him. And if the officer tried ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... think much of sorrow or the grave. That face said, "It is nothing, it will all end better than people think." So I have inherited from him, not only my good temper, but a habit of going often to the churchyard, which is good, when done in a proper humor; and then also I take in the Intelligencer, just as ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... threatened with his ministers or Parliament, always avoided it by timely concessions. Whatever happened, he used to say, he was resolved "never to set on his travels again." Charles's charm of manner, wit, and genial humor made him a popular monarch, in spite of his grave faults of character. One of his own courtiers well described him as a king who "never said a foolish thing and ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... out at this. It was like ragging a down scale, that rippling crescendo, and Judith needed no other assurance of her friend's good humor. ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... tissue, as Virchow calls it, common in embryonic structures, seen in the vitreous humor ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... another voice, which Denman recognized as Dwyer's. "And here, you blooming crank, take a drink and get into a good humor." ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... quite in the humor to do anything. The day was exceedingly hot and the sun on its downward course in the heavens was like a red ball. Most of the party scattered for naps and letter writing and did not ...
— The Motor Maids at Sunrise Camp • Katherine Stokes
... JOKES.—This is one of the most original joke books ever published, and it is brimful of wit and humor. It contains a large collection of songs, jokes, conundrums, etc., of Terrence Muldoon, the great wit, humorist, and practical joker of the day. Every boy who can enjoy a good substantial joke ...
— The Bradys Beyond Their Depth - The Great Swamp Mystery • Anonymous
... a person who possessed what a friend of his called "the awful power of insight"; but his mood was always cheerful and equal, and his mind peculiarly healthful, and the airy splendor of his wit and humor was the light of his home. He saw too far to be despondent, though his vivid sympathies and shaping imagination often made him sad in behalf of others. He also perceived morbidness, wherever it existed, instantly, as if by the illumination of his own steady cheer; and he had ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... with his brother, W. H. Fry, who was a journalist by profession (long the musical critic of The Tribune) and an amateur composer of more than respectable attainments. Mr. Maretzek, in his "Crotchets and Quavers"—a book generally marked by characteristic good humor, but not free from malevolence—tries to make it appear that Mr. Edward Fry went into operatic management for the express purpose of performing his brother's operas; but while the animus of the statement is enough ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... court of judicature could meet, in which he was not heard to talk of Catiline and Lentulus. Indeed, he also filled his books and writings with his own praises, to such an excess as to render a style, in itself most pleasant and delightful, nauseous and irksome to his hearers; this ungrateful humor, like a disease, always cleaving to him. Nevertheless, though he was intemperately fond of his own glory, he was very free from envying others, and was, on the contrary, most liberally profuse in commending both the ancients and his contemporaries, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... set to watch and nurse-tend him; a pitchfork was got, on the prongs of which they intended to reach him bread across the ditch; and a long-shafted shovel was borrowed, on which to furnish him drink with safety to themselves. That inextinguishable vein of humor, which in Ireland mingles even with death and calamity, was also visible here. The ragged, half-starved creatures laughed heartily at the oddity of their own inventions, and enjoyed the ingenuity ...
— The Poor Scholar - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... last was left alone sitting upon the tribunal, while the word went through all the multitude that Venus was come to feast with Bacchus, for the common good of Asia.[72] On her arrival, Antony sent to invite her to supper. She thought it fitter he should come to her; so, willing to show his good humor and courtesy, he complied, and went. He found the preparations to receive him magnificent beyond expression, but nothing so admirable as the great number of lights, for on a sudden there was let down altogether so great a number of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... he saw the humor of the situation, and he could not help admiring the nerve of the queer ...
— Frank Merriwell's Cruise • Burt L. Standish
... explanation of this is given by one of the Fusilier Marin Lieutenants—that the blue cap and the red pompon of the famous fighting sailors of France looked strangely to the Germans, who took the wearers for francs-tireurs, terror suggesting the idea. But this is the kindly humor of Brittany. The saucy sailor caps could not have looked strangely to German eyes, because a few weeks earlier those "Girls with the red pompon" had held the German army corps at Melle, and not even terror could have made them look other than ...
— Golden Lads • Arthur Gleason and Helen Hayes Gleason
... in no gentle terms of an outfit that would pull out without troubling to throw his pack saddle from the wagon or taking pains to picket an extra horse. His fretfulness passed, however, as he smelled the hot coffee and he repaired to the wagon, his ill humor dissipated. ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... village of Catskill, and began his long sleep in 1769. His wife was a shrew, and to escape her abuse Rip often took his dog and gun and roamed away to the Catskills, nine miles westward, where he lounged or hunted, as the humor seized him. It was on a September evening, during a jaunt on South Mountain, that he met a stubby, silent man, of goodly girth, his round head topped with a steeple hat, the skirts of his belted coat and flaps of his petticoat trousers meeting at the tops of heavy boots, and the face—ugh!—green ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... that night, however, the look of the world and all that is in it changed speedily for Letty, and terribly. He arrived in great good humor—somebody had been praising his verses, and the joy of the praise overflowed on his wife. But when, pleased as any little girl with the prospect of a party and a new frock, she told him, with gleeful gratitude, of ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... sometimes took him to a lonely barn on the tymor's estate, where his business was to thresh out grain with a flail. One day while he was at this labor the tymor came to the barn. He was in a very bad humor, and when he saw Smith he began to offer him every insult. This made the young soldier very angry. He looked around him. No one was in sight, and he had in his hands his heavy flail. At last the tymor struck him with his riding whip, at which John Smith ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... and woman. In short, emancipation stood only for a reckless life of lust and sin; regardless of society, religion and morality. The exponents of woman's rights were highly indignant at such a misrepresentation, and, lacking in humor, they exerted all their energy to prove that they were not at all as bad as they were painted, but the very reverse. Of course, as long as woman was the slave of man, she could not be good and pure, but now that she was free and independent she would prove how good she ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... you can laugh," said the new general manager of the Mill. "It's darned funny now, but I can tell you that there wasn't much humor in it for me then. We had lived too close together from that first moment when we found ourselves in the same company for me to feel comfortable as a common buck private, watchin' you strut around in the gentleman officer class, and not ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... Forest, had stirred his manliness, making him conscious of his fretfulness, and then ashamed. His mother, who had dreaded the long holiday, wondered at his content. Katherine wondered a little too. The Forest of Arden made a very nice game, and it was pleasant to have Maurice in a good humor, but she did not quite ...
— Mr. Pat's Little Girl - A Story of the Arden Foresters • Mary F. Leonard
... her after she has passed us by. We shall not pretend that her features are perfect, but their trifling irregularities contribute to an impression of individuality and character. Her mouth, for example, is a bit large, but it speaks for good humor. Even at fifteen, her lips suggest firmness and decision. Her forehead is high and broad, and her head is well set on straight shoulders. Her dark hair is combed back smoothly and braided and the braid is doubled and tied with a red ribbon. The same color flashes in a flowing ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... what we want? No one can," said she. "You don't mind my fidgeting about the room this way, do you? I seem a little out of humor to-day—not myself at all, as I was told ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... (9%). The other thirty percent decided on grounds not connected with public affairs. They ranged from not quite seven who decided for ethical tone, down to one twentieth of one percent who cared most about humor. ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... looking pretty sober, and she sighed some, now and then; but pretty soon she got to asking about Mary, and Sid, and Tom's aunt Polly, and then Aunt Sally's clouds cleared off and she got in a good humor and joined in on the questions and was her lovingest best self, and so the rest of the supper went along gay and pleasant. But the old man he didn't take any hand hardly, and was absent-minded and restless, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... at first had drawn back; they had looked at their comrade darkly, beneath their berets, as they might at a deserter with whom they meant to deal—later on. But at his last words they smiled a smile of grim humor. Beneath the beards a whisper grew; whatever its import, it had the power to move all the hard mouths to laughter. As they also turned away, their shrugging shoulders and the scorn in their light laughter seemed to hand us ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... his own jest, while in better humor he climbed to examine the neat, tiny cradle and its contents. The hen darted at him in a frenzy. "Now, where do you come in?" he demanded, when he saw that she was ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter
... out the candle and lay in the high, old four-post bed, I again felt as small as I really am, and I was in danger of a bad collapse from self-depreciation when my humor came to the rescue. I might just as well have gone on and slept between Henrietta and the wall, as was becoming my feminine situation, for here my determination to assert my masculine privileges was keeping a real man doing sentry duty up and down a moonlight ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... Aunt Pattie Boyden with some trepidation; for Constance, besides being ill, had not been in the best of humor ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... His ill-humor was, of course, of later growth. While Eugenie Grandet was being written, between July and November of 1833, Balzac was quite content to estimate it at its higher value. During the period of its composition, he had fallen, perhaps for the first time in ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... commenting on the individual characteristics of the cattle, and, sometimes, of the men loading them. In such instances he found opportunity to pay off old scores. Incidentally he kept the men in good humor ...
— Partners of Chance • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... in it, broke his windows and wrecked his store. The next morning, while Radford was ruefully contemplating the ruin, and doubtless concluding that he had had enough of a country where the local idea of neighborly humor found such eccentric expression, he hailed a passer-by named Greene, and challenged him to buy his establishment for four hundred dollars. This sort of trade was always irresistible to these Western speculators, and Greene at once gave his note for ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... The good humor of the Maverick Deep-Sea Hotel, its rag-time, its boarders from the yacht, the charm of the row of tents with the girls in them sleeping their healthful sleep out in the midst of the river wind, the masts, the chimneys, stars, and city lights, ...
— Making Both Ends Meet • Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt
... is why you will find a file of that interesting journal in the home of all well-to-do Britons. It is the back number that amuses him—which merely proves that he is a deliberative person who weighs even his humor carefully before ...
— A House-Boat on the Styx • John Kendrick Bangs
... did, my dear fellow; there's the ghastly humor of it; the dire tragedy, rather." As he spoke he struck his closed hand gently but firmly on the table, and regarded the reporter with the compressed lips of one who is about to vent ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... of the agonies and the ecstacies of cold-steel war. Few such narratives are so replete with quiet, meditative asides, bold delineations of daily life in camp and on the march, descriptions of places and peoples, and—by no means least—the raucous, all relieving humor of the common soldier who resolutely makes merry to-day because to-morrow he may die. Thus, to young Dickert did the routine of the military become alternately matters grave or gay. Everything was grist for his mill: the sight of a pretty girl waving at his passing ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... her that takes hold of the heart, and we remember her after she has passed us by. We shall not pretend that her features are perfect, but their trifling irregularities contribute to an impression of individuality and character. Her mouth, for example, is a bit large, but it speaks for good humor. Even at fifteen, her lips suggest firmness and decision. Her forehead is high and broad, and her head is well set on straight shoulders. Her dark hair is combed back smoothly and braided and the braid is doubled and tied with a red ribbon. The same color flashes in a flowing bow at her throat. ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... of heart, yet shrewd therewith; Slow to resolve, but firm to hold; Still with parable and with myth Seasoning truth, like Them of old; Aptest humor and quaintest pith! (Still we smile o'er the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... and Berwickshire gave A humor endowed with effects so provoking, That when the whole House looks unusually grave You may always conclude that Lord ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... no humor to be trifled with; and so I returned to my room to think it over. I saw that Estella would have to barricade herself in her room. How could she support life in the meantime? The first requisite was, therefore, food. I went at once to Michael, the ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... content to talk. Joan listened eagerly to his tales of the road, never tiring of Don's vagabond adventures. After the worried months of monotony and pain, the afternoons of reminiscence were tonic for them both. Lazy humor crept back to Brian's eyes. At times he whistled. Wind and sun were tanning his skin to ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... bright spirit had inherited no trace of their harshness and gloom. The windows of his soul opened to the sunlight of a joyous faith. His optimism and genial humor inspired gladness and good sense in others. With an old story he prepared their minds to receive new ideas, and with a parable he opened their hearts to generous feelings. All men loved him because he loved them. They knew that his heart was in their happiness, and that ...
— The Song of the Stone Wall • Helen Keller
... and beautiful old lace, was a charming hostess, and the girls were soon talking naturally and easily. Judith looked down the table at Nancy; she didn't want to look at her and yet she must. Nancy, radiating friendliness and good-humor, smiled at Judith as much as to say, "Isn't it jolly?" But Judith hardened her heart and pretended that she didn't see her. The ice-cream was delicious and the tiny cups of black coffee afterwards made them feel ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... other man to get seasick out here where we can't get enough water to drink?" she asked, with a sudden tangent of humor that made Bud laugh uproariously, and seemed to relieve the strain ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... on Craven's shoulder and the other on Cuthbertson's). Bless you, my children! (Cuthbertson, a little wounded in his dignity, moves away. The Colonel takes the jest in the utmost good humor.) ...
— The Philanderer • George Bernard Shaw
... the forty-four. And he saw that they were more than frightened—they were in an ugly humor, almost ferocious. The article had goaded them into a ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... burned far in their depths. The forehead was ample and smooth, as far as could be seen, for rather longish brown hair hung over it, with a negligent, sullen effect. The general expression was of an odd painwearied dismalness, curiously warmed by the remnant of an unquenchable humor. ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... my part had, however, not disarmed him. I had the proof of it the next day, and the way he showed his humor was even marked by an exhibition of wretchedly ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... study has, to our knowledge, ever been done in the same way. Mr. Eggleston is a reliable reporter of facts; but he is also an exceedingly keen critic. He writes history without the effort to merge the critic in the historian. His sense of humor is never dormant. He renders some of the dullest passages in colonial annals actually amusing by his witty treatment of them. He finds a laugh for his readers where most of his predecessors have found yawns. And with all this he does not sacrifice the dignity of history for an instant."—Boston ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... right—perfectly right—I grant that—but the application is wrong. It makes a great difference. Yes, he is a marvelous character. I do not suppose that any other statesman ever had such a colossal sense of humor, combined with the ability to totally conceal it. I may except George Washington and Cromwell, and perhaps Robespierre, but I draw the line there. A person not an expert might be in Judge Hawkins's company a lifetime and never find out he had any ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... was of middle size, with fair hair, inclining towards auburn, blue eyes, and a clear red and white complexion. Her expression was one of habitual sweetness and good-humor, while a continual half-smile played about her rosy mouth. She was plump, good-natured, and cozy,—altogether a most ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... minded passin' on a freak to Mr. Robert, for he often gets a laugh out of 'em. But Mr. Ellins is different. The site of his bump of humor is a dimple at the base of his skull, and if he traces up the fact that I'm the one who turned Rupert and his pirate yarn loose in the general offices my standin' as a discriminating private sec. is goin' to get ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... as large. Soon the boy was sitting by the kitchen fire eating a bowl of the most delicious broth he had ever tasted. Round-faced Brother Hilarius, who had charge of the kitchens, was in so good a humor over the trout that he suggested to Padraig that he might herd sheep for the Abbey. The monks did a great deal of the work about their farms and in their workshops themselves, but there was still much to do, and they ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... children as chickens under shelter. All in the fort were cheerful, and the men joked with the gush of humor which danger starts in Americans. I saw then the ready laugh that faced in its season what was called Indian summer, because the Indian took then advantage of the last pleasant weather to make raids. ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... cleverness in it. The situations are presented with skill and force, and the letters are written with great dramatic propriety and much humor.—St. ...
— The Love Affairs of an Old Maid • Lilian Bell
... encomiastic verses addressed to himself, were fully equal to the exigencies of the office under the new order of things; he was by profession a eulogist, not a dramatist. He was a Tory; and the King was out of humor with the Whigs. He was pretentiously moral and exemplary of life and pen, and so suited the Queen. The duties of the office were conformed, as far as practicable, to the royal tastes. Their scene was transferred from the play-house ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... into one ear and out the other, without seeming for an instant to arrest Mr. Shackford's attention. The idea of Slocum not accepting money—anybody's money—presented itself to Mr. Shackford in so facetious a light as nearly to throw him into good humor. His foot was on the first step of the staircase, which he now began slowly to mount, giving vent, as he ascended, to a serious of indescribable chuckles. At the top of the landing he halted, and ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... hope," replied Montfanon, adding, with ill-humor: "Dorsenne is a fool; that is what Dorsenne is. And Gorka is a wild beast; that is what Gorka is." And he related the episode which had just taken place to the two men, who were so surprised that the doctor, bandage in hand, paused in his ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... aggravated by the state of my exchequer. I expected an ultimatum from my banker by every post. Yet this influence was nothing to the other. It was Raffles I loved. It was not the dark life we led together, still less its base rewards; it was the man himself, his gayety, his humor, his dazzling audacity, his incomparable courage and resource. And a very horror of turning to him again in mere need of greed set the seal on my first angry resolution. But the anger was soon gone out of me, and when at ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... startling parody, which was regarded by the boys as a veritable stroke of genius, failed to impress the adult villagers with the conviction that a poet was budding. Yet how much of quiet humor and lively imagination is betrayed by these four lines. How easy it is now to look back at the small boy and picture him sympathizing with his little friend tormented by the heat and the pests of his kind, and making him sigh for the rest that seemed to lurk in the rustling leaves ...
— A Little Book of Western Verse • Eugene Field
... the meal Albert was uneasily conscious that his grandfather was looking at him from under the shaggy brows, measuring him, estimating him, reading him through and through. He resented the scrutiny and the twinkle of sardonic humor which, it seemed to him, accompanied it. His way of handling his knife and fork, his clothes, his tie, his manner of eating and drinking and speaking, all these Captain Zelotes seemed to note and appraise. But whatever the results of his scrutiny and appraisal might be he kept them entirely ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... was almost out. It was so late in the spring that none at all was needed, but we liked it to look at. As for the little girl and me, we should hardly have known how to get on without it, and the little girl's mother chose to humor us, so we wasted a great deal of wood, as ignorant people would think, and were just as comfortable with the sky smiling and the trees budding all around us as if we had been in the midst of snow-drifts and howling storms. This afternoon the sun had been shining right in upon ...
— The Wagner Story Book • Henry Frost
... together, and be moved by the same motives. He informed Wirz what he proposed doing, so that any unusual commotion within the prison might not be mistaken for an attempt upon the Stockade, and made the excuse for opening with the artillery. Wirz, who happened to be in a complaisant humor, approved of the design, and allowed him the use of the enclosure of the North Gate to confine ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... themselves on this extraordinary occasion, and, as their manner is, seemed disposed to make a ring,—when suddenly Antonio, who was the challenged, turning the tables upon the hot challenger, Don Gusman, (who, by the way, should have had his sister,) balks his humor, and the pit's reasonable expectation at the same time, with some speeches out of the new philosophy against duelling. The audience were here fairly caught,—their courage was up, and on the alert,—a few blows, ding dong, as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... in the Rue de la Victoire, while Bonaparte returned alone to the salon. Everything furnished an object of comment in such a company as was there assembled; the absence of Moreau, the return of Bonaparte unaccompanied, and the visible good humor which animated his countenance, ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... thing in fiction since Mr. Meredith and Mr. Hardy; must take its place, by virtue of its tenderness and pathos, its wit and humor, its love of human kind, and its virile characterization, as the first great English novel that has appeared in the twentieth century."—LEWIS MELVILLE in New York ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... again, we met the governor alighting from his carriage at the door. Intercepting him, we asked a moment's interview, which was granted, though with ill grace. It was plain that he was sadly out of humor. Apologizing to him for our intrusion at so late an hour and so immediately after his return to his hotel, we told him of our projected visit, described the measurements, photographs and other data we were gathering, reminding ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... laugh here came in, and Burke stopped and said he was most happy if a small dehorned Irish bull of his could put the House in such good humor, and went on with his speech. Soon, however, there were cries of "Shame!" from the Tories, who thought Burke was speaking disrespectfully ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... you my supper ready?" he said, not unpleasantly, for his victory over Kit and the meditated revenge of the next day had put him in good humor. ...
— The Young Acrobat of the Great North American Circus • Horatio Alger Jr.
... weigh the matter, and his sense of humor conquered. He roared with mirth, which was joined in more sedately by the unknown girl. "That settles it. You couldn't start on your campaign in a better way. You shall be the Lady of Mystery in this story! I will not breathe a hint of your identity to Shirley, and no one else knows, of course. ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... had actually begun he delighted in the soldiers' grim humor in the face of death. He told story after story about the "boys," laughing, with tears in his gray eyes, at their heroism in danger. He never laughed at the private soldier, except in the pride of his hearty patriotism. But he made constant fun of the assumptions of generals ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... bolted, I turned eagerly to Rutli for an explanation. It then appeared that during his occasional visits to the garden he had often been an object of amusement and criticism to the men on account of his size, which seemed to them ridiculously inconsistent with his great good humor, gentleness, and delicacy of touch. They had doubted his strength and challenged his powers. He had responded once or twice before, lifting weights or even carrying one of his critics at arm's length for a few steps. But he had reserved his final ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... somewhat annoyed by the sly jokes and grave humor of mine host, of the hotel, concerning his misfortune, and the giggling of the waiters and chamber-maids, gladly accepted Captain Bowline's invitation, and was soon seated at his hospitable and well loaded table, for ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... this way the Ford family led a happy and contented life, yet it was easy to see that Harry, naturally of a grave disposition, became more and more quiet and reserved. Even Jack Ryan, with all his good humor and usually infectious merriment, failed to rouse him ...
— The Underground City • Jules Verne
... as not to be too undignified, and George saw the humor of the situation. He did not want to pursue the subject any further, and John graciously turned the conversation by announcing the discovery ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Adventures on Strange Islands • Roger Thompson Finlay
... great enthusiasm. He seems to have no ambition beyond his present duties, perhaps never had any; at any rate, he now passes his life with a sort of gruff contentedness, grumbling and growling, yet in good humor enough. He is conscious of his peculiarities; for when I asked him whether it would be well to make a naval officer Secretary of the Navy, he said, "God forbid, for that an old sailor was always full of prejudices ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... a day of drying and smoking meat, and of eating as much as the older men permitted, and everybody wore an aspect of extreme good-humor except One-eye and his master. The dog and the boy alike kept away from the camp-fires and from all grown-up Indians. Towards the middle of the afternoon, Na-tee-kah slipped quietly out at the upper end of the camp, carrying her own buckskin sack nearly full of something, and nobody thought ...
— Two Arrows - A Story of Red and White • William O. Stoddard
... taste for natural history; but in his character he was earnest and reflective, and very eager for knowledge. Sumichrast took pleasure in the boy's intelligence, and often amused himself by arguing with him. From the flashes of childish humor which he would display on such occasions, my friend sometimes gave him the ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... captain on the expedition to the Scioto. Pushing ahead of the rest, he was attracted by the sound of laughter in a canebrake. Hiding himself, he soon saw two Indians approach, both riding on one small pony, and chatting and laughing together in great good-humor. Aiming carefully, he brought down both at once, one dead and the other severely wounded. As he rushed up to finish his work, his quick ears caught a rustle in the cane, and looking around he saw two more Indians aiming at him. A rapid spring to one side on ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... now made good his foothold up the first four or five steps. "Well, you've no objection to my going, at any rate?" he said, with a wave of one hand, in his cheerful good-humor. "You don't put a veto on ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen
... him—a decision greeted with satisfaction by the pair in whose behalf he besought her friendly offices. The versatile invention and deft fingers of the little brunette were welcome to the heavily-taxed housekeeper, as were her gay good-humor and words of cheer and affection to the younger of her companions. The two girls became more confidential in six days than eighteen years of neigbborly intercourse had sufficed to make them. Mabel's innate delicacy and excellent common sense would, in ordinary circumstances, have barred ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... "There is fame for you." The same party inquired in what State he was born. He answered, "Virginia." "Ah," said the questioner, "I thought you were a native of Connecticut." This left him in a bad humor for the remainder of the evening. The editor of this series has said of him: "General Scott was a man of true courage—personally, morally, and religiously brave. He was in manner, association, and feeling courtly and chivalrous. He was always equal ...
— General Scott • General Marcus J. Wright
... were many strangers. Flowers were in demand. The copper pieces were ringing against one another all the hours through in her leathern bag. The cobbler was in such good humor that he forgot to quarrel with his wife. The fruit was in such plenty that they gave her a leaf-full of white and red currants for her noonday dinner. And the people split their sides at the Cheap John's jokes; he was so droll. No one saw the leaks in his kettles or the hole in his ...
— Bebee • Ouida
... bringing with him more of his manuscript and some other copying which he wished Cicely to do. He had never known until now how much he needed a secretary. He saw only the ladies, Ralph having gone off to try to shoot some woodcock. The young man was not in a good humor, for he had no dog, and his discontent was increased by the reflection that a fine setter had been presented to him, and he had not yet come into possession of it. He wanted the dog, Congo, because he thought it was a good ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... than the others, perhaps, in the scientific aspects of the business, I asked Edmund to tell us something more about the nature of his wonderful invention. He responded with great good humor, but rather in the manner of a schoolmaster addressing pupils who, he knows, cannot entirely ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... so ridiculous?" said Elsie to the others. "But I suppose we had better humor him; he wont give us any rest till we do; he's so persistent. When he gets headed one way, he's like a pig." Elsie began to pull at the bridle to bring her horse alongside a stump. "Puss and I can get some flowers during ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... passed away, the sun re-appeared, the rough winds changed to soft breezes, and our depressed spirits rose correspondingly. By the time the orange groves in the suburbs of Jaffa came into sight, the tourists were in a gay and cheerful humor. But when we arrived at the pier of Jaffa, we discovered that the sea still felt the effects of the gale. The surf was rolling high and the angry waves were breaking violently over the ugly-looking rocks in the harbor, hiding them for an instant from view and sending the snowy spray high into ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... mere verbal facility of others and to underestimate himself in the comparison—indeed, a certain humility was strongly marked in him, even as regards his art, though he was self-confident also. When he was unconstrained his great powers of observation, his shrewdness of judgment, his bubbling humor, and a picturesque vivacity of phrase not uncommon among artists made him one of the most entrancing ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... been so long together that we had heard each other's stories told over and over again till we had them by heart; each one knew the whole history of each of the others, and we were fairly and literally talked out. Singing and joking we were in no humor for; and in fact any sound of mirth or laughter would have struck strangely upon our ears, and would not have been tolerated any more than whistling or a wind instrument. The last resort, that of speculating upon the future, seemed now to fail us; for our discouraging ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... description of Satan on his throne in Paradise Lost, iii. 8. What do you learn in this canto of Elizabethan or chivalric manners and customs? 9. Describe the procession at the court of Pride. 10. What satire of the Romish priesthood in xviii-xx? 11. Note examples of Spenser's humor in xiv and xvi. 12. Point out the classical influence (Dionysus and Silenus) in the description of Gluttony. 13. Subject of the interview between Duessa and Sansjoy. 14. Point out the archaisms in l. 10; ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... guess my ignorance; so I hit upon what I thought to be rather a good idea. I kept my eye on the two young students, and followed them. When they tittered, I tittered; when they roared, I roared; and I also threw in a little snigger all by myself now and then, as if I had seen a bit of humor that had escaped the others. I considered this particularly artful ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... America and England. He was nothing of a visionary, nothing of a political pedant, nothing of a doctrinaire. Franklin himself had not a more practical understanding, or more of large, plain, roundabout sense. He had, too, Franklin's shrewdness, his love of humor, and his relish for the natural pleasures of life. He had a large amount of patience, the least showy, but perhaps the most important, of the qualifications of a great statesman. And in his glorious career he was warmly and generously sustained, not merely by the king, and by the favored classes, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... admonitions. In all ages up to the present, Jewish moralists have relied on the parable as their most effective instrument. The poetry of the Jewish parables is characteristic also of the parables imitated from the Jewish, but the latter have a distinguishing feature peculiar to them. This is their humor, the witty or humorous parable being exclusively Jewish. The parable is less spontaneous than the proverb. It is a product of moral poetry rather than of folk wisdom. Yet the parable was so like the proverb that the moral of a parable often became a new proverb. The diction of the ...
— Chapters on Jewish Literature • Israel Abrahams
... peculiar a situation? Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor, or caprice? It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world; so far, I mean, as we are now at liberty to do it; for let me not be understood as capable of patronizing infidelity to existing engagements. I hold the maxim ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... the rites of hospitality, but do not open their hearts. If you ask them they will tell you a story, but it will not be such a story as they tell when alone. They will fear your ridicule and suppress their humor and pathos: so thoroughly have they learned to distrust pale faces, that when they know that he who is present is a friend, they will still shrink from admitting him within the secret ...
— Legends, Traditions, and Laws of the Iroquois, or Six Nations, and History of the Tuscarora Indians • Elias Johnson
... to the sofa and sitting beside Marchbanks, still in a bantering humor). Well, Eugene, why are you so sad? Did the onions make ...
— Candida • George Bernard Shaw
... unaccustomed to obey injunctions from men of such a complexion, curled his lip in scorn, and showed a spirit of defiance, but on the approach of two police officers, whom the court had ordered to arrest him, he submitted himself. We were gratified with the spirit of good humor and pleasantry with which Mr. J. described the astonishment and gaping curiosity which Americans manifest on seeing colored men in offices of authority, particularly on the judicial bench, and their evident embarrassment ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... towards those that are within. For the former; it is certain, that heresies, and schisms, are of all others the greatest scandals; yea, more than corruption of manners. For as in the natural body, a wound, or solution of continuity, is worse than a corrupt humor; so in the spiritual. So that nothing, doth so much keep men out of the church, and drive men out of the church, as breach of unity. And therefore, whensoever it cometh to that pass, that one saith, ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... later writers came into the field the centres of literary effort had shifted to new localities. Sicily became the field of the choicest lyric poetry, giving us Theocritus, with his charming "Idyls," or scenes of rural life, and his songful dialogues, with their fine description and delightful humor. Following him came Bion and Moschus, two other bucolic poets, whose finest productions ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... little fire of gorse, and walk through the smoke once or twice. So we built the fire and walked through the smoke, the Lizard coughing and cursing until I feared he might overdo it by smothering us both. Then stamping out the last spark—for he was a woodsman always—we tramped on in better humor with destiny. ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... it should be established, I insist upon it every person, by the 14th Charles Second, has this power as well as the custom-house officers. The words are: "it shall be lawful for any person or persons authorized," etc. What a scene does this open! Every man prompted by revenge, ill-humor, or wantonness to inspect the inside of his neighbor's house, may get a writ of assistance. Others will ask it from self-defence; one arbitrary exertion will provoke another, until society be involved in tumult and ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... intimate friends, and many anecdotes are related of them. Boileau had wit—Racine humor, and a natural turn for raillery. The contests of the two were often amusing. The king was much pleased with the dramatist, and gave him a suit of apartments in the palace, and the privilege of attending his parties. Madame de Maintenon made a great favorite ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... Dotty was fairly awake, her love for her friends came back again, and her good humor with it. She made Fly bleat like a lamb and spin like a top, ...
— Little Folks Astray • Sophia May (Rebecca Sophia Clarke)
... construct a web that would more surely entangle Mr. Arnold. Even her sanguine spirit was chilled and filled with misgivings by her husband's manner. Mildred, too, was speedily made to feel that only a very serious cause could banish her father's wonted good-humor and render him so silent. Belle and the little ones maintained the light talk which usually enlivened the meal, but a sad constraint rested on the others. At last Mr. Jocelyn said, abruptly, "Fanny, I wish to see you alone," and she followed him to their room with a face that grew pale ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... he answered, "Forgive him, on account of his age; for thou canst not certainly be unacquainted with this, that old men and infants have their minds exactly alike; but thou shalt have from us, who are young men, every thing thou desirest, and shalt have no cause to complain." With this good humor and pleasantry of the young man, the king was so delighted, that he began already, as though he had had long experience of him, to have a still greater affection for him, insomuch that he bade him take his diet in the king's palace, and be a guest at his own table every day. But ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... grievously wrong Duke William," cried Harold, indignantly, "to suppose, merely in that playful humor, for which ye Normans are famous, that he could lay force ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... reached the pond, however, all ill feelings were forgotten, and the sight of the glassy oval, well-filled with skaters, completely restored the four little Blossoms to their usual good humor. ...
— Four Little Blossoms and Their Winter Fun • Mabel C. Hawley
... prescribed laws of charity: and if I hold the true anatomy of myself, I am delineated and naturally framed to such a piece of virtue; for I am of a constitution so general that it consorts and sympathizeth with all things: I have no antipathy, or rather idiosyncrasy, in diet, humor, air, anything. I wonder not at the French for their dishes of frogs, snails, and toadstools; nor at the Jews for locusts and grasshoppers; but being amongst them, make them my common viands, and I find they ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... slave coughs or sneezes during a meal, if he pursues the flies too slowly, if he lets a key fall noisily lo the floor, we fall into a great rage. If he replies with too much spirit, if his countenance shows ill humor, have we any right to have him flogged? Often we strike too hard and shatter a limb or break a tooth." The philosopher Epictetus, who was a slave, had had his ankle fractured in this way by his master. Women were no more humane. ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... that he was recognized. Flight, instant and permanent, had been his original intent. Now it would not do. Bolder measures must be devised. He appealed to the head-waiter to help him carry out a joke, and that functionary, developing a sense of humor under the stimulus of a twenty-dollar bill, procured him on the spot an ill-fitting coat and a black string tie, and gave him certain simple directions. When the patroness of Art next observed the object of her patronage, he was performing the ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... 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 ...
— Child-life in Art • Estelle M. Hurll
... principle, I suppose," answered Dr. Surtaine, with entire good humor. "In the Pierce matter you left it. How ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... from the pen of Artemus Ward was written in the last days of his illness, and was found amongst the loose papers on the table beside his bed. It contains the last written jests of the dying jester, and is illustrative of that strong spirit of humor which even extreme exhaustion and the near approach of death itself ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 7 • Charles Farrar Browne
... kissing me on the cheek. Not wishing to have any unpleasantness with him on aunt's account, I said to myself, 'You are nothing but a simple, little, contrary, foolish child, in a man's form, and I shall have to humor you as I would a little boy, for you have only the mind of one.' I told him if he, as a young gentleman of honor, would never say one word more to me about kissing, he could kiss my cheek just once, which he did and was quiet afterwards. ...
— A California Girl • Edward Eldridge
... His humor was vastly improved, and he watched the passing throngs with an expression more suited to his boyish good looks than that of anger and mortification which had rested upon him ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... she said, laughing at his humor. "I should have said, where any of the others live. Of course you will give me your address, after being so kind as to see me to—some ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... what had done been cooked up for de big supper, den de wrastlin' matches started, and Marster allus give prizes to de best wrastlers. Dere warn't no fussin' and fightin' 'lowed on our place, and dem wrastlin' matches was all in good humor and was kept orderly. Marster wanted evvybody to be friends on our plantation and to stay dat way, for says he: 'De Blessed Saviour done said for us to love our neighbor as ourselfs, and to give and what us gives is gwine to come back to us.' Missy, de Good ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... account of her bright vivacity, quick wit and keen sense of humor, therefore I sat listening to her pleasant chatter. Exiled as I was in a foreign land, I seldom spoke English save with Hutcheson, the Consul, and even then we generally spoke Italian if there were others present, in order that our companions should understand. ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... added, with that accent of sedate humor which at times characterized him: "But tell him, too, to spare his horses—to spare his horses. It is not necessary ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... pleaded a sick headache and refused to talk. Inez had no such reticence, however, and at the post-office that night Judith's troubles ran neck and neck in popular interest with Little Marion's. Both situations were of a nature to appeal to Lost Chief's sense of humor. Douglas appeared during the session and learned that Charleton's wife had ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... Better let me burn this, as I did the other, and not be foolish. She will never see it," and John made a gesture as if he would put it in the stove, but Anna caught his hand, saying imploringly: "Please humor me this once. She may see it, and ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... father appeared in good humor, Halbert ventured to prefer a request, which, however, he had little hope of ...
— Brave and Bold • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... time that day he was spurned, and by a friend. This time it was the deacon himself who drove him from his wife's room, whither he had betaken him with true instinct to ascertain the household intentions. The deacon seemed to be, if anything, in a worse humor than even Jack himself. The doctor had told him that afternoon that Mrs. Pratt was a very sick woman, and that, if she was to pull through at all, she must be kept from all worriment in an atmosphere which fairly bristled with it. The deacon felt that he had a contract on his hands which ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... brings around the family circle. But if the wife and the husband are both out in the bitter contests of the day, making speeches, electioneering with voters, pushing their way to the polls, they will both be apt to go home in a bad humor, and there will not be much happiness in a family during the remainder of the day which follows such a scene. And while they are both out what will become of the children? Are they to take ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... I know he wouldn't do it if I'd married him," she added mentally, resuming her walk. Martha Lacey's sense of humor was not keen, but suddenly the mental picture of Judge Trent's shrewd, thin countenance, as it might appear in pillowed slumber surmounted by the high hat, overwhelmed her and she laughed silently. Then she frowned with reddening cheeks. "Hannah's ...
— The Opened Shutters • Clara Louise Burnham
... relation whatever to the weather we are to have later in the season. This is coming to be pretty generally understood. While the newspapers each year comment upon the groundhog and his shadow upon that day, year by year the notice has more of humor in it, and fewer people pay any attention ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... piled at one end and the food at the other, and each camper was to help himself to what he chose. There was a good deal of laughing and scrambling at this morning meal. It started everybody off in a good humor, and in time it became the hour for jokes and absurdities that will never die out as long as there are boys and girls enough to ...
— The Motor Maids at Sunrise Camp • Katherine Stokes
... full of a quaint humor, which seemed to burst out from every line of his features, and twinkle merrily in his bright eyes. Often in the midst of his most exciting revivals he could not resist the desire to fasten his dry jokes upon one of his converts. No man loved a joke better, or was ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... conversation between God, the angels, and the Devil is a mere prologue, intended to bring Napoleon and Ivan-angel on the stage and lay the foundation of the plot. The story-teller's keen sense of fun and humor is shown in many little touches, but he never means to be irreverent. The whole legend is set forth in the racy, idiomatic, highly elliptical language of the common Russian muzhik, and is therefore extremely difficult of ...
— Folk-Tales of Napoleon - The Napoleon of the People; Napoleonder • Honore de Balzac and Alexander Amphiteatrof
... chin did not in the least hide a smile that was surprisingly boyish and winning. And when he spoke his cracked good-natured voice was perfectly in character, evidently that of a man possessing full self-respect and confidence, yet brimming over with easy kindliness and humor. ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... began to talk. Lister thought it cost her something, but she sketched her working companions with skill and humor. She used their accent and their French-Canadian gestures. Lister laughed and led her on, although he got a hint of strain. The girl was not happy and he had noted her wistful look when she talked about England. At length she got up, and stopping ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss
... set of sentiments which pulled him first this way and then that, he decided that the only thing possible for him was to put a "great divide" of distance between himself and her. This he had done—and to what purpose? Apparently merely to excite her ridicule!—and to prick her humor up to the mischievous prank of finding out where he had fled and following him! And she—even she—who had kept him aloof ever since that fatal moment on the seashore,—had discovered him on this lonely hill-side, and had taunted him with her light mockery—and actually said that "to ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... a large man, with full lips and a sweet smile; very plain and rough in his exterior, but with that solid imperturbable ease and good-humor which is infectious, and like great grassy hills in the sunshine, quiets even an irritated egoism, and makes it rather ashamed of itself. "Well, how are you?" he said, showing a hand not quite fit to be grasped. "Sorry I missed you before. Is there ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... he could truthfully humor the old lady's harmless pride here. "We're off to-morrow for the jolliest sort of a time at the seashore. Freddy Neville, the nicest little chap in college, has a place up somewhere on the New England coast, and four of us are going there for ...
— Killykinick • Mary T. Waggaman
... clearness of statement and perfect propriety of speech, added to the personal prestige which surrounds any man so distinguished as the orator, had secured a well-bred attention. But there was not yet that eager, fixed intentness, sensitive to every tone and shifting humor of the speaker, which shows that he thoroughly possesses and controls the audience. There was none of that charmed silence in which the very heart and soul seem to be listening; and at any moment it would have been easy ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... a sudden short laugh. "An Iron Cross would have been a wonderful reward for breaking up a man's life friendship. An Iron Cross! My word! Where's your sense of humor, Werner?" ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... not there. My father, great, simple, countryman's soul, I knew, Will, and Mary Shakespeare I know. Would she might learn she could do more with John through laughter, dear heart; but the right is ever stronger with Mary than the humor of the thing. My father and Mary I have known. And you, you I knew when in your rage you fell upon the maid, baby that you were at five, and beat her with your fists because she wantonly swept your treasures—a rose petal, a beetle wing, a pebble, ...
— A Warwickshire Lad - The Story of the Boyhood of William Shakespeare • George Madden Martin
... natives, everywhere, were much the same thing to him; if he distinguished it was in favor of those who did not suppose themselves cultivated. If again he had a choice it was for the females; they seemed to him more amusing than the males, who struck him as having an exaggerated reputation for humor. He did not care much for Clementina's past, as he knew it from Mrs. Milray, and if it did not touch his fancy, it certainly did not offend his taste. A real artistocracy is above social prejudice, when it will; he had known some of his ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Puson, or "Jack Paunch," as he would be called in English, is a favorite character in Tagalog folk-lore. His adventures are considered to be the height of humor, and a recital of these never fails to be repaid with peals of appreciative laughter. The character is merely a conventional one, to which all sorts of stories, no matter how inconsistent with each of the others, may be ...
— Philippine Folk-Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss, Berton L. Maxfield, W. H. Millington,
... one of the rarest and most agreeable of phenomena, namely, the actual beginning of a legend which the world is unwilling to let die. The book made Sir Walter Scott's sides ache with laughter, and reminded him of the humor of Swift and Sterne. But certain New Yorkers were slow to ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... i. e., we must not, change the nature of these people. We must train them gradually to see the truth for themselves. They are now on the level of their environment, and believe in the efficacy of killing sheep and oxen to the stars and the gods. We will use a true pedagogical method if we humor them in this their crudity for the purpose of transferring their allegiance from the false gods to the one true God. Let us then institute a system of sacrifices with all the details and minutiae of the sacrificial systems of the heathens and star worshippers. We shall impose this ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... Mrs. Cochrane, her broad good-natured face beaming with health and good humor, "what difference does it make? Your neighbors are only too glad of a chance to show their goodwill for yourself, ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... need of a touch of humor in his work. The sadness of human failure and loss, the insuperable difficulties of his task, the combined woes of his parish, the decorum and seriousness of pulpit work—all operate to dry up the healthy spring of humor that ...
— The Minister and the Boy • Allan Hoben
... out a little volume of tales, which we may well infer from his previous performances are charmingly replete with grace, good humor, and a keen perception of whatever is peculiar to his subject. The title of the book is Deutsche Abende (German Evenings). It contains three stories: "Nice People," "What is Happiness?" and "The Son of the Forester." Published ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... some care. They are not in the least artificial, and yet not careless or hasty. They have all that easy and graceful flow, that transparent narrative, that unconscious charm, which we find in his published writings; and we not unfrequently discern gleams and touches of that exquisite humor which was the best gift bestowed upon his mind. Brief as our notice is, we cannot refrain from quoting in illustration of our remark a few sentences from a letter to Thomas ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... straight enuf. [With grim humor.] They wouldn't bloody well pay that for a 'airy ape's skin—no, nor for the 'ole livin' ape with all 'is 'ead, and body, ...
— The Hairy Ape • Eugene O'Neill
... woman of her tribe,—was in the habit of visiting us, with her hopeful grandson, who had "a gift for preaching" as well as for many other things not exactly compatible with holy orders. He sometimes brought with him a tame crow, a shrewd, knavish-looking bird, who, when in the humor for it, could talk like Barnaby Rudge's raven. He used to say he could "do nothin' at exhortin' without a white handkercher on his neck and money in his pocket,"—a fact going far to confirm the opinions of the Bishop of Exeter ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... speeches. No wonder! People were taken unawares. We were unprepared for war, and the changes it had brought;—we were as unprepared as the woman who said, in speaking of unexpected callers, "I had not even time to turn my plants." There was much unintentional humor. One lady, whose home was one of the most beautiful in the city, and who entertained lavishly, told us, in her address on "Economy," that at the very outbreak of the war she reduced her cook's wages from thirty to twenty dollars, and gave the difference ...
— The Next of Kin - Those who Wait and Wonder • Nellie L. McClung
... of this author and his strong interest in people endear him to the reader; we feel these qualities in his writings long before meeting him—a certain urbanity, a tolerant insight and sympathy, and a quiet humor. These draw us to him. Perhaps after cherishing his writings for years, cherishing also a confident feeling that we shall know him some day, we obey a sudden impulse, write to him about a bird or a flower, ask help concerning a puzzling ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... plan, every man could live without work: there would be what might be called a "vagabond's wage,'' sufficient for existence but not for luxury. The artist who preferred to have his whole time for art and enjoyment might live on the "vagabond's wage''—traveling on foot when the humor seized him to see foreign countries, enjoying the air and the sun, as free as the birds, and perhaps scarcely less happy. Such men would bring color and diversity into the life of the community; ...
— Proposed Roads To Freedom • Bertrand Russell
... of hard times. Discouragement and ill-humor displaced the buoyant optimism with which peace had been heralded. "What is independence?" asked a writer in A Shorter Catechism. "Dependence upon nothing" was the cynical answer. In many States the popular discontent found vent in ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... published in 1595, is a dramatized old wife's story told to three erring fancies, Frolic, Antic and Fantastic, quite in the style of a fairy tale, "always wavering in the peculiar twilight, between profound sense and nonsense, between childish play and matured humor." Two brothers who have lost their sisters appear, and then an insolent giant, swaggering with a double-edged sword and attended by an enamored fool, and finally a knight-errant devoting his fortune to pay the stingy sexton for the burial of a victim ...
— The Critics Versus Shakspere - A Brief for the Defendant • Francis A. Smith
... objected to the friendship. He was nearly six feet high, with a robust yet agile frame, a finely formed head, and an uncommmonly interesting countenance. His eyes were large, dark, and full of ardor and animation. His conversation was full of wit and humor. He was very proud, and would be under pecuniary obligation to no one. He was also very generous with his own money. Of the first five hundred pounds which he received for his poems, he immediately gave two hundred to his brother Gilbert ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... foreign (9.5%), or general (7.2%), or editorials (9%). The other thirty percent decided on grounds not connected with public affairs. They ranged from not quite seven who decided for ethical tone, down to one twentieth of one percent who cared most about humor. ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... the writing as it is entertaining in the reading. It is actual comedy of the most artistic sort, and it is handled with a freshness and originality that is unquestionably novel."—Boston Transcript. "A feast of humor and good cheer, yet subtly pervaded by special shades of feeling, fancy, tenderness, or whimsicality. A merry ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... Princess as a little girl, says: "She seems in good health, and appears lively and good-humored." It may be that the good-humor was, in great part, the result of the ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... that not till I had caught the last glimpse of him, as he disappeared over a knoll, did I awake to my position as a sportsman, and realize what an opportunity to distinguish myself I had unconsciously let slip. I clutched my gun, half angrily, as if it was to blame, and went home out of humor with myself and all fox-kind. But I have since thought better of the experience, and concluded that I bagged the game after all, the best part of it, and fleeced Reynard of something more valuable than ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... required to form a successful military chief. He conciliates his people by friendly and familiar treatment, but declines to spoil them by yielding to their inclinations when they are adverse to their true interests. He has a ready humor, which shows itself in smart sayings and repartees, that take occasionally the favorite Oriental turn of parable or apologue. He is mild in his treatment of the prisoners that fall into his hands, and ready to forgive even the heinous crime of rebellion. He has none of the pride of the ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... if not in combination. The dramatists of whom we are about to speak represented them in juxtaposition, and rarely succeeded in vitally combining them so as to produce symmetrical works. Their comedy and tragedy, their humor and passion, move in parallel rather than in converging lines. They have diversity; but as their diversity neither springs from, nor tends to, a central principle of organization or of order, the result is often a splendid anarchy of detached scenes, more ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... understood in the presence of 'infima,' or as signifying 'last,' or 'lowest,' in a strict philosophical sense, for that would contradict the account of the formation of the world given by Hesiod, and which is here closely followed by Ovid; indeed, it would contradict his own words,—'Circumfluus humor coercuit solidum orbem.' The meaning seems to be, that the waters possess the lowest place only in respect to the earth whereon we tread, and not relatively to the terrestrial globe, the supposed centre of the system, inasmuch as the external surface ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... so little exacting and so indulgent; and, in consequence, young Belvidero, accustomed to treat his father unceremoniously, had all the faults of a spoiled child. He treated old Bartolommeo as a wilful courtesan treats an elderly adorer; buying indemnity for insolence with a smile, selling good-humor, submitting to ...
— The Elixir of Life • Honore de Balzac
... work, Don Quixote, is presented as the most courteous and affable of gentlemen, wise on all points except those pertaining to chivalry. It was not only, however, the masterly drawing of the characters of Don Quixote and his squire, Sancho Panza, which made the book popular; the inexhaustible fund of humor has made it to the present day a book which every one delights ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... its development is progressive as well as conservative. To certain modifying influences it is especially sensitive. It is fond of the concrete, picturesque, and novel, and has a high appreciation of humor. These tendencies lead it to invent many new words and expressions which must wait months, years, perhaps a generation, before they are accepted in literature. Sometimes they are never accepted. The history of such words as buncombe, dude, Mugwump, gerrymander, and joy-ride illustrate for English ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... and horse play of young men bucketing about big pastures in the moonlight. But as it was given, very softly at that bad time in that terrible camp of death, it was the one thing in the world that could have restored, as it did restore, shaken men back to their pride, humor, and self-control. [Cheers.] This may be an extreme instance, but it is not an exceptional one. Any man who has had anything to do with the service will tell you that the battalion is better for music at every turn, happier, more easily handled, with greater ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... justice of the peace, and returned to Poker Flat. I am aware that something more might be made of this episode, but I prefer to tell it as it was current at Sandy Bar,—in the gulches and bar-rooms,—where all sentiment was modified by a strong sense of humor. ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... dream of; a real beauty; springtime! A flower!' 'You must excuse me, but if your mistress is really like springtime and a flower, you (pray excuse me for being so blunt) are not exactly that, and perhaps I should not exactly be in a mood to humor you, my dear lady, in the same way ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... belonged to the fierce class of anti-slavery men who were inspired by humane sympathy with the slave and righteous abhorrence of slavery, but also by hatred of the slaveholder. What he himself seemed to enjoy most in his talk was his sardonic humor, which he made play upon men and things like lurid freaks of lightning. He shot out such sallies with a fearfully serious mien, or at least he accompanied them with a grim smile which was not at all like Abraham Lincoln's hearty laugh at his ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... Maymeys from Cuba. The humor of it might have struck Jennie if she had not been so Scotch, and so hungry. As it was, a slow, sullen, heavy Scotch wrath rose in her ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber
... that were to be made use of in this journey, to gain us a passage through many a tower, stair, and postern, were in the hands of the authorities, whose subordinates we never failed to coax into good humor. ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... he had visited, and especially as to the Mississippi, on which the young warrior, seeing no reason to disguise the truth, gave him all the information he required. La Salle now made him the present of a hatchet, to engage him to say nothing of what had passed, and, leaving him in excellent humor, repaired, with some of his followers, to the Illinois camp. Here he found the chiefs seated at a feast of bear's meat, and he took his place among them on a mat of rushes. After a pause, he charged them with having deceived him in regard to the Mississippi, adding ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... Mrs. Ashmeade, "whether more to admire the justice or the sardonic humor of the performance. Here after hundreds of entanglements with women, John Charteris manages to be shot by a jealous maniac on account of a woman with whom—for a wonder—his relations were proven to be innocent. The man needed killing, but ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... and, with his customary patience, submitted to the customary lecture on his stupidity as a player. Brauner was once more in a good humor. Having agreed to tolerate Mr. Feuerstein, he was already taking a less unfavorable view of him. And Mr. Feuerstein laid himself out to win the owner of three tenements. He talked German politics with ...
— The Fortune Hunter • David Graham Phillips
... as Michael, muffled comfortably in his sables, entered the celebrated street and walked along it, leisurely, in a direction leading directly away from his distant palace. He had no definite goal in mind. He was in the high humor of immediate success. Many-colored Moscow lay all about him: his city, wherein he was known to and feared by, nearly every man. Labyrinth though it was, there was scarcely a corner, an alley, a court-yard in that most jumbled of cities that he did not know. Moscow belonged to him ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... are like angels' visits,—extremely rare," it began. "I am afraid I have frightened you away, as I have frightened the parson. I thought you had more wit than he to discern between mannerism and downright ill-humor. This evening the temperature is equable,—not the sign of a brooding cloud: so put on your hat, like a good girl, and come over. Miss Mewlstone and I will be prepared to ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... as many as can be collected, and that out of an old Printed Book, are these; Philip Sparrow, Speak Parrot, The Death of King Edward the Fourth, A Treatise of the Scots, Ware the Hawk, The Tunning of Elianer Rumpkin: In many of which, following the humor of the ancientest of our Modern Poets, he takes a Poetical Liberty of being Satyrical upon the Clergy, as brought him under the Lash of Cardinal Woolsey, who so persecuted him, that he was forced to take Sanctuary at Westminster, where Abbot Islip used him with ...
— The Lives of the Most Famous English Poets (1687) • William Winstanley
... on earth, he calumniated himself. For instance, he told me, that at a certain hour, every evening, he had intolerable fits of ill-humor. Well, Mr. Finlay and M—— always went to see him precisely at that fatal hour, and they invariably found him gay, pleasant, ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... there was an unmistakable tremor in the voice, "one day when she was cross she asked for a drink of water; Nick was sitting in the room and jumped up and brought it to her, but she was so out of humor she shook her head and would not take it from him; she was determined I should hand it to her. I thought she was unreasonable and I told Nick to set it on the bureau, and I let Nellie know she shouldn't have it unless ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... have thought it faint-hearted to shrink at every little molehill of difficulty; she had plenty of what the boys call pluck (no word is more eloquent than that), and a fund of quiet humor that tided her safely over many a slough of despond. If any one could have read Bessie's thoughts a few minutes after the laboring engine had ceased to work, they would have been as follows, with little staccato ...
— Our Bessie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... Criticism. Diversity of judgment is a notable feature in the history of criticism. It tends to shake one's confidence in the critical art. It often happens that what one critic praises another condemns. This fact has been presented by Irving, with delightful humor. "Even the critics," he says in the conclusion of the "Sketch Book," "whatever may be said of them by others, the author has found to be a singularly gentle and good-natured race; it is true that each has in turn objected to some one or two articles, and that these individual ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... Meadows would confess to the most private faults in an experience meeting, and, if he did not, Sister Meadows would do it for him. They lacked the sense of humor, which, being interpreted, is a part of the sense of proportion. They shrank from the illuminating quality of wit as if it were a sacrilege—this auto-seriousness was even an important part of William's character. He put on solemnity like a ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... go again!" warned the recalcitrant. "If you don't stop eating that mustache you'll have stomach trouble that no Scotch whisky will ever cure. The whole thing is in a nutshell," a sly humor creeping into his eyes. "I am tired of writing ephemeral things. I want to write ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... as though the expression of my face appealed to her sense of humor. Evidently the lady was no longer afraid of me, nor greatly ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... straight to the place, entered, and asked back the captive. The audience looked at the little boy with amazement, while the judges joked and laughed at him. But without being discomposed, he explained the purpose of his visit. The incident put Robespierre in good humor, and he told the child that his teacher had not taught him anything. Immediately, as a proof of the contrary, the youngster began to recite his lessons. Robespierre was so delighted that, in the midst of general laughter, he lifted ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... our hats to all the loyal, anonymous, untiring men and women who have worked in private employment and in Government and who have endured rationing and other stringencies with good humor ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... proceeded from Tom, who kept on repeating it, parrot-fashion—an exact imitation, but with no idea of its meaning. I had heard the baby whimpering a little time before, and Tom had remarked that these four words produced the happiest effect in restoring good-humor; so he learned them, accent and all, on the spot, and used them as a spell or charm on the next opportunity. I think even the poor baby was puzzled. But one cannot feel sure of what Tom will do next. A few evenings ago I trusted him to wheel the perambulator about the garden-paths, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... tugging viciously at his gloves. He was in very bad humor. The policeman at the Mulberry Street door got hardly a nod for his cheery "Merry ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... followed, as if across the foundation of the fallen wall of Jericho; and found, to her surprise, that Mrs. Macintosh, knowing her by sight, received her with condescension, and Annie, grateful for the good-humor which she took for kindness, told her simply that she had come to see whether she would accept ...
— Far Above Rubies • George MacDonald
... English and visitors from abroad, who delighted in pacing the shady walks, listening to the wit and wisdom of Sir Thomas, or conversing with the daughters, who had been highly educated, and had much of their father's humor and sprightliness. Even Henry VIII. himself, then one of the most brilliant and graceful gentlemen of his time, would sometimes arrive in his royal barge, and talk theology or astronomy with Sir Thomas; or, it might be, crack jests with him and his daughters, or listen to the music ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... this ceremony, leering with a wistful eye at the roast meat, which looked so inviting, and smelt so savory, I could not abstain from making that a bow likewise, adding in a pitiful tone, good bye, roast meal! This unpremeditated pleasantry put them in such good humor, that I was permitted to stay, and partake of it. Perhaps the same thing might have produced a similar effect at my master's, but such a thought could never have occurred to me, or, if it had, I should not have ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... yet I implore you to humor me in this. . . . You have not already despatched an answer ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... all persons whom he addressed, and as many resources in his mind for getting out of the difficulty, he fancied that they had discovered the object of his visit, and felt that he should not select a moment of ill humor for preparing the way to friendship. Therefore, seating himself near the bed, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... not smile. There was nothing about this diligent, ill-fed, little worker that appealed to his sense of humor. ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... becoming a parasite'!" (Yes, there was humor in those eyes. I could see them sparkle.) "Out of the mouths of babes!" she exclaimed, "verily, out of the mouths of babes! You are young to ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... setting suggests the life of art students in Paris, or in some Italian city. The poem is a plea for the freedom of the individuality of a soul against the restrictions imposed by conventional standards of value. Its touches of humor, of human nature, and its summary of two lives in brief, are admirably done. Its rhymes sometimes need the indulgence ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... she a sense of humor and of the fitness of things? Has she self-control, or does she, for example, ...
— A Guide to Methods and Observation in History - Studies in High School Observation • Calvin Olin Davis
... lover I would not hesitate a moment! What sort of devotion has rewarded mine? You have housed and fed me, just as you give a dog food and a kennel because he is a protection to the house, and he may take kicks when we are out of humor, and lick our hands as soon as we are pleased to call to him. And which of us two will have been the ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... pair!" answered Father Loriot, returning abruptly to his shop. And he added to himself, with a chuckle at the anticipation: "I hope Father Dagobert's big prowler will be in a bad humor, and give that villainous pug a shaking by the skin ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... hereafter to show more at large, whereby they drew out their armies), nor to seize or sell any man's goods or children that were in the camp. Whereupon the people with a mighty concourse immediately took arms, marched forth, and (which to them was as easy as to be put into the humor, and that, as appears in this place, was not hard) totally defeated the Volsci first, then the Sabines (for the neighboring nations, hoping to have had a good bargain of the discord in Rome, were up in arms on all sides), and after the Sabines ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... challenged admiration, and would have had a dash of insolence in them if the expression had not been corrected by a pleasant smile, which showed a range of bright white teeth beneath a jet-black moustache, and the good-humor of the glance that tempered the frank roving boldness of the well-opened eye. When it has been added that he was in the very prime of manhood, a man of some thirty-five or thereabouts, I think that the reader ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... blood has been bathed again and again in the perfect air. Tyndall records that he once staggered out of the murks and disease of London, fearing that his lifework was done. He crawled out of the hotel on the Bell Alp and, feeling new life, breasted the mountain, hour after hour, till every acrid humor had oozed away, and every part of his body had become so renewed that he was well from that time. In such a sanitarium, school of every department of knowledge, training-place for hardihood, and monument of Nature's grandest work, man does well to ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren
... Paymaster, Lord Hardwicke retained his office as Lord Chancellor, and Mr. Samuel Sandys, who had moved the resolution calling for Walpole's dismissal, took Walpole's place as Chancellor of the Exchequer. There seems some humor in the appointment of such a man ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... was liked by all his comrades for his good humor and frank and sympathetic character. Later, in the regiment, he gained naturally and without effort the affection of his equals and the respect of his subordinates. The latter were grateful to him for the real, cordial and inspiring interest he showed in their welfare, for he was familiar with ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq
... appeared to be in a very ill-humor, and Mr. Eyre tried to find out the reason. At last Wylie said in an angry tone, "The dogs have eaten the skin." It seems he had hung the skin of a kangaroo upon a bush, intending to eat it by-and-bye, ...
— Far Off • Favell Lee Mortimer
... trait of humor comes in sometimes when it is quite embarrassing, as it was to Sam Jones upon one occasion, when in the midst of a sermon before a ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... many handsomer faces were familiar in Paris at that day, but none more gallant, and, indeed, its chief charm was its almost audacious air of self-reliance, of unfailing courage, of changeless composure, and unconquerable humor. The eyes were bright and laughing. Even now, although the man was undoubtedly angry, his eyes still smiled in unison with his lips. His dark hair fell gracefully about his shoulders. He wore a somewhat faded white ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... if you were; you would miss so much. Through humor philosophy reaches its culmination; humor is the foundation upon which the palace of reason erects itself. The two ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... that seems so sad and strange and near. I am even out of humor with pictures; a bit of broken stone or a fragment of a bas-relief, or a Corinthian column standing out against this lapis-lazuli sky, or a tremendous arch, are the only things I can look at for the moment,— except the Sistine Chapel, ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... whom he spoke came forward. He was a slight, fair-looking boy of about thirteen; and his face had a laughing, good-humor'd expression, which even the charge now preferr'd against him, and the stern tone and threatening look of the teacher, had not entirely dissipated. The countenance of the boy, however, was too unearthly fair for health; it had, notwithstanding ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... enjoyment, or to men of such abstinence as to account it for their benefit to retire from its first approaches; when even the most amazed and sensual admirers of corporeal delights remain no longer in their gaudy and pleasant humor than their pleasure lasts them. What remains is but an empty shadow and dream of that pleasure that hath now taken wing and is fled from them, and that serves but for fuel to foment their untamed desires. Like as in those that dream they ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... these tables as to schools of temperance; here they were instructed in state affairs by listening to experienced statesmen; here they learnt to converse with pleasantry, to make jests without scurrility, and take them without ill humor. In this point of good breeding, the Lacedaemonians excelled particularly, but if any man were uneasy under it, upon the least hint given there was no more to be said to him. It was customary also for the eldest man in the company to ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... the three Englishmen and the embodiment of geniality. He was a blond of the purest type, and his beard, parted in the centre, was brushed back in two wavy, silken masses, while his clear blue eyes, beaming with kindliness and good-humor, had the frankness ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... passport for the deputies who were to carry it to the court. But the duke was unwilling to terminate a war in which he had (whether deservedly or not) acquired so much reputation, and reluctant to be forced to resume the place of a subject near a brother whose capricious and jealous humor he had already experienced. He therefore either refused or delayed compliance with the admiral's demand.[698] Coligny succeeded, however, in forwarding the document to his cousin Francis, Marshal ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... take-it-or-leave-it principle, I suppose," answered Dr. Surtaine, with entire good humor. "In the Pierce matter you left it. How do you like ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... sweep of depression engulf him like a leaping wave. Joan was in the humor to profit by any arrangement that would break her bondage to sheep; Tim Sullivan had been bringing her up, unconsciously, but none the less effectively, to fit into this scheme for marrying her to his old friend's rakish son. When the day came for Joan to ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... error in one of the papers caused no end of amusement to every one except Monty and Miss Drew. The headlines had announced "Magnificent ball to be given Miss Drew by her Finance," and the "Little Sons of the Rich" wondered why Monty did not see the humor of it. ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... purchases, saw the wonder in his eyes grow, based upon a faith that still accepted Aladdin as an ever-present possibility, and realized that Bobby was getting almost as much fun out of this game as he himself. He began to humor him further by consulting his taste in the matter of ties and waistcoats, though he found that the latter's sporting instincts led him to colors too pronounced to harmonize with his own ideas. Still he appreciated the fact that Bobby was indulging in almost as many thrills as though he were actually ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... disappeared in an instant. Well, my friends, guess my astonishment when I found she was blind! Ha! ha! a clever fellow that merchant! I ran at once to the magistrates, but the rogue was already gone from Pompeii. So I was forced to go home in a very ill humor, I assure you; and the poor girl felt the effects of it too. But it was not her fault that she was blind, for she had been so from her birth. By degrees, we got reconciled to our purchase. True, she had not the strength of Staphyla, and was ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... appreciation to be discussed is the appreciation of humor. Perhaps this does not belong with the other type, but it certainly has many of the same characteristics. Calkins defines a sense of humor as "enjoyment of an unessential incongruity.... This incongruity must be, as has been said, ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... perilous situations before, and had learned the important lesson that if he lost his wits all would be lost. The mountain lion was large and powerful and evidently in full fighting humor. ...
— Dave Porter in the Gold Fields - The Search for the Landslide Mine • Edward Stratemeyer
... a sense of humor, John; but you was born without it. But, I tell you, it makes me young again. Why, it makes a woman old to feel she can do just as she pleases and not git talked about; and I feel I ain't got one foot in the grave ...
— Drusilla with a Million • Elizabeth Cooper
... young people on the staff of a newspaper—and it is one of the prettiest, sweetest and quaintest of old fashioned love stories, * * * a rare book, exquisite in spirit and conception, full of delicate fancy, of tenderness, of delightful humor and spontaneity. ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... felt so sure of her that he refurnished the whole palace, and had made, by all the dressmakers of the city, dresses enough to last a lady for a lifetime. But, alas! when the ambassador arrived and delivered his message, either the princess was in a bad humor, or the offer did not appear to be to her taste; for she returned her best thanks to his majesty, but said she had not the slightest wish or intention to be married. She also, being a prudent damsel, ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... going, the waiters evidently mistaking him for nothing less than a German Count, judging from the alacrity with which they flew about to execute his orders. We had been out but a few short hours before we began to miss Frank Lincoln, whose never-failing fund of humor had helped to while away many an hour and who had bid us farewell at Melbourne, having decided to remain for some little time in Australia. Among our fellow-passengers in the cabin were a couple of civil engineers ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... his apparent tolerance and good humor, there was a great deal of the arbitrary and despotic in Mr. Jefferson's nature. Stern principle alone enabled him to keep his native imperiousness within ...
— Thomas Jefferson • Edward S. Ellis et. al.
... agreed to do the next day, the seventh day since the case came under my management, and the fourteenth day from the beginning of the disease. The sick man was out of humor. To my question, "Would you like something to eat!" he drawled, "Na-a-aw! I never intend to eat any more; but I would like to know when my bowels are going to move." Of course I could not tell him any more than I had told him before, namely, ...
— Appendicitis: The Etiology, Hygenic and Dietetic Treatment • John H. Tilden, M.D.
... in the matter of detail, like the two slightly differing views of a stereoscopic picture, they bring out into bold relief the real character of the peculiar institution. Uncle Tom's Cabin lent to the structure of fact the decorations of humor, a dramatic plot, and characters to whose fate the touch of creative genius gave a living interest. But, after all, it was not Uncle Tom, nor Topsy, nor Miss Ophelia, nor Eliza, nor little Eva that made the book the power it proved to stir the hearts of men, but the great underlying tragedy ...
— Frederick Douglass - A Biography • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... he did gloomily, Macleod accompanying him. It was about a quarter of an hour before he had completed his toilet; and then they set out to walk back to Prince's Gate. Mr. Ogilvie was in a better humor. ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... distinguished success came with the acclaim accredited to his novel, SMILES, "The Best-Loved Book of the Year," and its sequel, SMILING PASS. With delicate humor and a sincere faith in the beautiful side of human nature, Mr. Robinson has created for himself a host of enthusiastic admirers. In his new book he chooses a theme, suggested perhaps by the old proverb quoted above ("Pilpay's Fables"). His setting ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... returning from the plantation, and, though Andrews always made light of it, and laughed at him, he evidently thought about it a great deal. It seemed to be a kind of relief to him to discuss it with Andrews, and so the latter used to humor ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton
... of the mock gravity, the broad humor, and often exquisite wit of those meetings, but it is impossible to give you any adequate idea of them. Burlesque lectures on all conceivable and inconceivable subjects were frequently read or improvised by members ad libitum. ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... grim humor in this suggestion of Young's that tickled my fancy; and it was, indeed, allowing for the quaintness of his phrasing of it, but an expression of my own thoughts. But my reflection was upon the curious incongruity of it all, and upon the way in which religious faiths supplant each ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... This stern humor did not last long. Arnolfo himself had other notions; much more Cimabue and Giotto; most of all, Nature and Heaven. Something else had to be taught about Christ than that He was wounded to death. Nevertheless, ...
— Mornings in Florence • John Ruskin
... the mischievous boy furnishes the real pleasure for the worker with boys. The fellow whose eyes can twinkle and who will play a practical trick on the friend he most respects is always a delight. It is he that keeps the crowd in good humor, who is generally deepest and most abiding in his affection, and who at the drop of the hat would fight to the last ditch for his friend. To handle him rightly does not require a six-foot rod, or a half-inch rule. But the Teacher must keep ...
— The Boy and the Sunday School - A Manual of Principle and Method for the Work of the Sunday - School with Teen Age Boys • John L. Alexander
... eyes of his race in all the generations, caught by looking skyward for a light that dawned not upon earth. His expression was sad, and the beautiful smile that illumined his face, radiating compassion, kindness, gentleness and the humor of the Kelt, made me think of a brilliant noontide sun ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... disposition to leave the task of governing to others, and to weary of Confucius' high-flown lectures. He ceased "to use" Confucius, as the Chinese historians say, and the Sage was therefore indignant, and ready to accept any offer which might come from any quarter. While in this humor he received an invitation from Pih Hih, an officer of the state of Tsin who was holding the town of Chung-mow against his chief, to visit him, and he was inclined to go. It is impossible to study this portion of Confucius' career ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... these occasions in rare good humor and with cheerful enthusiasm. He was a young man of many accomplishments. His knowledge of affairs was wide and extensive. His cleverness and wit had made him famed far and wide. His occasional poems, written for sport and festivals, ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman
... of heart, and genial humor, made him an object of high respect and warm regard among his professional brethren. And now, sir, as memory passes in review the pleasant incidents which marked our social and professional intercourse, the smitten heart shrinks in sadness ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... of a humourist, as Englishmen are apt to become when they have an opportunity of living in their own way. I like his hobby passing well, however, which is, a bigoted devotion to old English manners and customs; it jumps a little with my own humor, having as yet a lively and unsated curiosity about the ancient and genuine characteristics of ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... say had never been accustomed to indefiniteness about anything—must have impressed the men under his command with the confidence that he knew his business and that they must follow him. Yet it could twinkle on occasion with a pungent humor as he told his story, which did not take him long but left you long a-thinking. A writer who was as good a writer as he was a soldier if he had had the same experience could have made a book out of it; but then he ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... at the blacksmith's shop formed a kind of merry-go-round club. One would tell a story in his own odd way, and another would say, "That reminds me," and tell a similar story that was intended to exceed the first in point of humor. One of Thomas Lincoln's favorite stories was "GL-UK!" or, ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... distinguished from all their multifarious calls—on seven of the thirty-one days. They were more tuneful in January, and still more so in February; so that the titmouse, as becomes a creature so full of good humor and high spirits, may fairly be said to sing all winter long. The robin's music was a pleasure quite unexpected. I was out on Sunday, the 30th, for a few minutes' stroll before breakfast, when the obliging stranger (I had not seen a robin for a fortnight, ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... was thin almost to emaciation. Garrison was short and stockily built, with a powerful physique. His hair, eyes and mustache were as black as coal. He had a fine set of even white teeth, and was so full of jest and humor that it was safe to conclude it was something said by him that had caused Jim ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... climbed—and get out at the other. A simple operation, and one not helpful to mother Mary's housekeeping labors; but she never minded that, because the novel punishment always sent the grumbler down-stairs again in good humor. ...
— Divided Skates • Evelyn Raymond
... man on the claybank went on, carried forward by his own interest, but helpless to deny himself the guilty pleasure of falling in with Braile's humor, "he had 'em goun' lively, about midnight, now I tell you: whoopun' and yellun', and rippun' and stavun', and fallun' down with the jerks, and pullun' and haulun' at the sinners, to git 'em up to the mourners' ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... Madame Gianclis, had not put her in a humor to concede Madame Blavatsky's soul, or any part of it, to Mrs. Athelstone. Promptly on hearing of her pretensions, so rumor had it, the Boston woman had announced the reincarnation of Theosophy's high priestess in herself. And Boston believers were ...
— The False Gods • George Horace Lorimer
... never before seen, nor in good sooth heard of, such an instrument. For weeks past almost all night curious groups took possession of it at intervals, and doubtless it did much to enlarge their idea of science and knowledge of celestial phenomena, for often Dr. Kane's idle humor induced him to stand by and explain the various theories touching comets,—their velocity, their substance or lack of substance, their recurrence, their status in the astral economy,—and cognate themes. As he was ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... the ungrasped prize; the features of the usurer contract, the hand is clenched, the brow is wrinkled, and woe betide the luckless debtor whose misfortunes would lead him to the banker's bureau during the eclipse of his good-humor! ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... said Levi, smiling quietly. "You're getting extravagant, Hyams. Besides, fancy the humor of sitting next to a pickpocket with this ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs
... take her toast and tea up to her," she begged. With that toast and tea she intended to pass along the good word Uncle Darcy had given her—"the line to live by." But Tippy was in no humor to be adjured by a chit of a child to bear up and steer right onward. Such advice would have been coldly received just ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... better, are you?" retorted Arkwright, with nervous humor. Then, because he was embarrassed, he said the one thing he had meant not to say: "Don't you think I'm quite a stranger? It's been some ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... manner is, seemed disposed to make a ring,—when suddenly Antonio, who was the challenged, turning the tables upon the hot challenger, Don Gusman, (who, by the way, should have had his sister,) balks his humor, and the pit's reasonable expectation at the same time, with some speeches out of the new philosophy against duelling. The audience were here fairly caught,—their courage was up, and on the alert,—a few ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... over his consternation and evidently extracted some humor from the situation, as his dark face ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... companions, strong drink, and exciting play. Excitement is now necessary to my existence. I cannot live without it. This is why we have no more of this kind of enjoyment. To-night I relish it because I'm in the humor; but as a general thing it is unbearable—too ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... than his crew, after a masterpiece of invective by the judge, who painted hell vividly. This pirate leader was dragged fainting to the gallows, and there was much sympathy for him, as it was said, "His humor of going a-pirating proceeded from a disorder of the mind ... occasioned by some discomforts he ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... and its interest was proved in that time and troubles were soon forgotten. Thus her mother found her, and thanks to the respite from Ilga's haunting words she was able to respond to the visitor's greeting with something of her usual happy humor. ...
— Polly of Lady Gay Cottage • Emma C. Dowd
... back dismayed. As the epoch of Cuculain shows us our valor finding its apotheosis, so shall we find in Find and Ossin and Oscar the perfect flower of our genius for story and song; for romantic life and fine insight into nature; for keen wit and gentler humor. The love of nature, the passion for visible beauty, and chiefly the visible beauty of our land, will here show itself clearly,—a sense of nature not merely sensuous, but thrilling with hidden and mystic ...
— Ireland, Historic and Picturesque • Charles Johnston
... the very fringe of the ocean with the roll of waves at the very edge of its windows, and a far-reaching view of the Caribbean where the ceaseless Zone breeze is born. There stands the famous statue of Columbus protecting the Indian maid, crude humor in bronze; for Columbus brought Indian maids anything but protection. Near at hand in the joyous tropical sunshine lay a great steamer that in another week would be back in New York tying up in sleet and ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... all this and longed to inspire her brilliant cousin with some manful purpose which should win for him respect as well as admiration. But she found it very hard, for though he listened with imperturbable good humor, and owned his shortcomings with delightful frankness, he always had some argument, reason, or excuse to offer and out-talked her in five minutes, leaving her silenced ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... began to talk; but the Frenchers carry cannon and ports, and never show their faces outside of Frontenac, without having some twenty men, besides their Squirrel, in their cutter. No, no; this Scud was built for flying, and the major says he will not put her in a fighting humor by giving her men and arms, lest she should take him at his word, and get her wings clipped. I know little of these things, for my gifts are not at all in that way; but I see the reason of the thing—I see its reason, though ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... at this more boisterously than the degree of humor warranted. He began definitely to feel that sense of discomfort which in the last half-hour he had been only afraid of. It was not the commonplace fact that Guion might be short of money that he dreaded; it was the ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... aut qualis sit humor aut quae istius differentiae, et quomodo gignantur in corpore, scrutandum, hac enim re multi veterum laboraverunt, nec facile accipere ex Galeno sententiam ob loquendi varietatem. Leon. Jacch. com. in 9. Rhasis, cap. 15. cap. ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... Fenwick said in high good-humor. "Give me the cold meat, and ask your husband to get me a bottle of brandy. I shall feel all the better for a thorough wash, and don't be long, my good woman, for I have never been so hungry in my ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... the girls had no voice to object. They were by this time so convulsed with suppressed merriment that they had hard work not to shriek aloud their laughter. For, in spite of the tragic revelations the morrow would bring forth, the situation was so undeniably ridiculous that they could not resist its humor. ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville • Edith Van Dyne
... conspicuous figure in the student world; but that night he astonished his friends by his eloquence, his reckless humor, and his capacity for drinking. He made a speech for "Woman," which bristled with wit, cynicism, and sarcastic epigrams. One young man, named Vinter, who was engaged, undertook to protest against his sweeping condemnation, and declared that Ralph, who was a universal favorite among the ladies, ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... Augustus takes colonel-ships and his petty kingship of the future too seriously to see even the humor of appointing oneself ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... new rector, art ta? I thowt as mich as another ud spring up as soon as th' owd un wur cut down. Tha parsens is a nettle as dunnot soon dee oot. Well, I'll leave thee to th' owd lass here. Hoo's a rare un fur gab when hoo' taks th' notion, an' I'm noan so mich i' th' humor t' argufy mysen today." And he took his pipe from the mantelpiece and strolled out with an imperturbable air. But this was not the last of the matter. The Rector went again and again, cheerfully persisting in bringing the old sinner to a proper sense of his iniquities. There would be some ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... stairway and Bright Effie came often to see her father there. Sabre had spoken to her in the little cupboard or just outside it. He had delight in watching the most extraordinary shining that she had in her eyes. It was like reading an entertaining book, he used to think, and he had the idea that humor of that rarest kind which is unbounded love mingled with unbounded sense of the oddities of life was packed to bursting within her. All that she saw or heard seemed to be taken into that exhaustless fount, metamorphosed into the most delicious sensations, ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... death, as he kneeled on the sharp stones at our feet. He could hardly speak, and I dragged him up and made him sit upon the trunk of a fallen tree. I was indeed glad that he was still alive, for though Balsamides had not yet told me the events of the night, I could see that he was in no humor to be trifled with. Even I, who am peaceably disposed towards all men, felt my blood boil when the fellow told how he and the Bekji had robbed the body of Alexander Patoff, and thrown it into the Bosphorus ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... after the picture was taken. She was not posing consciously, as were some of the others, but was sitting in a natural attitude, with one arm over the back of her chair, and with her hands clasped before her. Her face was full of a fine intelligence and humor, and though one of the other princesses in the group was far more beautiful, this particular one had a much more high-bred air, and there was something of a challenge in her smile that made any one who looked at the picture smile also. Carlton studied the face for some ...
— The Princess Aline • Richard Harding Davis
... Vicar of Wakefield, was by nature a lover of happy human faces, and she could be playful herself on occasion; but she had little if any of the saving sense of humor. ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... present time, known to the literary world, liked for the good or the mischief he did with equally facile good humor, he let himself float with the stream, never caring for the future. He ruled a little set of newcomers, he had friendships—or rather, habits of fifteen years' standing, and men with whom he supped, and dined, and indulged his wit. He earned from seven to eight hundred francs a ...
— The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... in a blooming and interesting wife: reconciled to a middle sphere of life, as he was to a humbler and a higher one before. He has shaved off his whiskers, and accommodates himself to an apron with perfect good humor. A gentleman connected with this establishment dined at the "Wheel of Fortune" the other day, and collected the above particulars. Mr. Plush blushed rather, as he brought in the first dish, and told his story very modestly over a pint of excellent port. He had only ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... good-mornings to Johnny Cass, so 't he wouldn't feel lonesome," she explained; and the tender bit of remembrance was followed out by the children for days afterward. Was it not enough to put us in a gentle humor? ...
— The Story of Patsy • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... track and drew us against the dripping bushes. After one such excursion, which had nearly been the ruin of us, and which by calling out coachee's scourging powers had put him thoroughly in good-humor, he turned to us ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... monumental and epigraphic sense, left fewer traces than in the Andalusian peninsula. A few short legends, imperfectly read upon either silver or bronze coins, and that was all, at least up to recent times. Such penury as this distressed savants and even put them into pretty bad humor with the Cadiz archaeologists. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 832, December 12, 1891 • Various
... perhaps two or three years older than my father; she was of a very bad temper, very vindictive and revengeful, and in every way she had a pleasure in annoying other people, and when she succeeded she invariably concluded her remarks with, "There—now you're vexed!" Whenever out of humor herself from the observations of others, she attempted to conceal her vexation by singing; and having been so many years of her life in the nursery, her songs were usually those little ditties used to pacify or amuse ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... a still more troubled frown; little mouth hard set; and breathing so that you could hear him six forms off. True, the new Head had been goaded by other outrages, the authors of which had not omitted to remove their names; but the want of humor, the amazing want of humor! As if it had not been a sign of first-rate stuff in Tod! And to this day Felix remembered with delight the little bubbling hiss that he himself had started, squelched at once, but rippling out again along the rows like tiny scattered lines of fire when ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... situation appeared, it was not without a grim humor. Neither could afford to take his eyes from the other's; the tension was great, till at last a smile wavered over the expressionless face of the Ute. Red Cloud answered the smile, and in that instant a treaty of ...
— Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... with rude humor, painted The ruddy tints of health On haggard face and form that drooped and fainted In the ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... I'd go and spoil everything by getting seasick," moaned Lucile, in the same toneless voice, and then, as a flash of her old saving humor came to the front, she turned to the girls with a suggestion of a smile. "I suppose I'll have to come to the lemon ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... we all humor your conceit and give you our parting words, as if the ship were at hand which was to sail the mighty void, and bear you safely to your ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... to be, to remain there concealed, and to await this attack which, for some reason or other, they were expecting. And then, as the possibilities connected with such an event spread themselves out before me, my sense of humor suddenly asserted itself, and, to Louis' amazement, I laughed in his face. I came back from this world of fanciful figures, of mysterious robberies, of attempted assassinations, to the world of every-day things. It was Louis—the maitre d'hotel, ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... moved slowly from the grinning face to the garments heaped in the man's arms. They were cold and critical eyes and there was no humor ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... tied up in such a way that they could call out to one another, as the humor seized them. And hence, there was more or less exchange of comments on the bill of fare ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel
... confess to the most private faults in an experience meeting, and, if he did not, Sister Meadows would do it for him. They lacked the sense of humor, which, being interpreted, is a part of the sense of proportion. They shrank from the illuminating quality of wit as if it were a sacrilege—this auto-seriousness was even an important part of William's character. He put on solemnity like a robe ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... would arrange them in University Hall for declamation, so as to cover as much space as possible. They did not understand this until he said, "Now we have a larger audience, if not more numerous;" and this placed every one in the best of humor. ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... after he returned home, Mrs. Farnham was in a state of remarkable good humor. Frederick had brought her pleasant news from the city. The house they had been building in one of the avenues was completed, and ready for its furniture. There was a promise of endless shopping excursions and important business of all ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... Secretary of the Treasury. After an absence from public life for six years, he was elected a Member of the 36th Congress. Here he was regarded as the "peacemaker" of the House. In the contest for speaker, he made a long speech, in which he exhibited marked ability, humor, pathos and persuasive eloquence. As chairman of the committee of thirty, he did all that man could do to quiet the storm, to compromise and soothe the contending factions, but this was beyond human power. He was re- elected to the ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... an unfeeling spirit, pervading all, would have filled a physiognomist with disgust. These characteristics, fully visible at this moment, were usually modified in public by a sort of commercial smile,—a bourgeois smirk which mimicked good-humor; so that persons meeting with this old maid might very well take her for a kindly woman. She owned the house on shares with her brother. The brother, by-the-bye, was sleeping so tranquilly in his own chamber that the orchestra of the Opera-house ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... facility of others and to underestimate himself in the comparison—indeed, a certain humility was strongly marked in him, even as regards his art, though he was self-confident also. When he was unconstrained his great powers of observation, his shrewdness of judgment, his bubbling humor, and a picturesque vivacity of phrase not uncommon among artists made him one of the ...
— Artist and Public - And Other Essays On Art Subjects • Kenyon Cox
... really fresh and cooked to perfection. The hash of New Zealand mutton, however, which followed, was not so much to this fastidious young officer's taste, but quantities of fine strawberries, supplemented by a jug of rich cream, put him once more into a good humor. He did not know that Kate had spent one of her very scarce sixpences on the cream, and that the girls had walked a mile-and-a-half through the hot sun ...
— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade
... The humor of Smollett, although genuine and hearty, is coarse and vulgar. He was superficial where Fielding showed deep insight; but he had a rude conception of generosity of which Fielding seems incapable. It is owing to this that "Strap" is superior ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... Dibbott, the chaperon, about St. Marys. But most of all he explored the mind of Elsie Worden. It was like opening successive doors to his own intelligence. She startled him with her intuition, delighted him with her keen sense of humor, and seemed to grasp the man's complex nature with superlative ease. And, yielding to her charms, Clark, for the first time in his life, felt that he must go slow. It was a new country to him. Previous experience had left no ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... that the men were in no humor to be trifled with, and there was little doubt but the strangling would follow unless he obeyed. It was possible to delay the explanations for a few seconds, and thus give Fred so much more time to ...
— Down the Slope • James Otis
... boy—a boy rather overtrained; she was far more boyish than Wayne. She had a certain queer beauty, too; not beauty of Adelaide's type, of structure and coloring and elegance, but beauty of expression. Life itself had written some fine lines of humor and resolve upon her face, and her blue-gray eyes seemed actually to flare with hope and intention. Her hair was of that light-brown shade in which plentiful gray made little change of shade; it was wound in a knot at the back of her head and gave her trouble. She was always pushing ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... her, of love and tenderness. The duke, in order to forward his suit, besides employing his brother's ambassador, sent over Simier, an agent of his own; an artful man, of an agreeable conversation, who soon remarking the queen's humor, amused her with gay discourse, and instead of serious political reasonings, which he found only awakened her ambition, and hurt his master's interests, he introduced every moment all the topics of passion and of gallantry. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... Ismail asked, and began to cackle with the cruel humor of the "Hills," that sees amusement in a man's undoing, or in the destruction of his plans. His humor ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... and retired. His first compliment when he saw her a little time afterwards was, "Pray, madam, are you as proud and ill-natured now as when I saw you last?" To which she replied with the greatest good humor, "No, Mr. Dean; I will sing for you now, if you please." From this time he conceived the greatest esteem for her, and always behaved with the utmost respect. Those who knew Swift, took no offence at his bluntness ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... personal property he presented the animal to a poor Mexican woman, leaving her to face any resulting embarrassments. Ten minutes later he swung himself under a west-bound freight, and in due time arrived in California, somewhat dirty and fatigued, but in excellent humor. ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... prize is the schooner St. George, bound for Wilmington, via the Bermudas, with a cargo of salt, saltpetre, etc., and worth perhaps four thousand dollars. We send our prize list on board the flagship, and have a nice chat over the capture. It puts us in good humor, and our vessels chassee around each other till afternoon, when we separate, to hear shortly that the schooner, on being searched, has disclosed rich merchandise, gold, Whitworth guns, &c., hidden under her nominal cargo of salt. So hurra ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... at my assurance, but I was surprised at hers; at her having the energy, in her state of health and at her time of life, to wish to sport with me that way simply for her private entertainment—the humor to test me and practice on me. This, at least, was the interpretation that I put upon her production of the portrait, for I could not believe that she really desired to sell it or cared for any information I might give her. ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... commander-in-chief of the army here, was taken prisoner. Thousands of soldiers have passed as usual. In the afternoon a company of Prussians arrived, whose captain had mistaken the route, which put him in an abominable humor, having made his men march fifty miles out of their way and also risking a court-martial on his own account. He ordered Monsieur S. to open the garage door, in the hope of lodging his men there for the night. Unluckily the chauffeur, being absent, had the key, ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow
... our time. Mrs. Osbourne could not have been at that time more than thirty-five years of age—a grave and remarkable type of womanhood, with eyes of a depth and sombre beauty that I have never seen equalled—eyes, nevertheless, that upon occasion could sparkle with humor and brim over with laughter. Yet upon the whole Mrs. Osbourne impressed me as first of all a woman of profound character and serious judgment, who could, if occasion called, have been the leader in some great movement. But she belonged ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... and so he expects every body to wait upon him, and try to amuse him, as if that were his right. He gives his mother a great deal of trouble, by first wanting this and then that, and by uttering a great many expressions of discontent, impatience and ill-humor. Thus his accident is not only the means of producing inconvenience to himself, but it makes the whole family uncomfortable. This is boyishness of a very ...
— Stuyvesant - A Franconia Story • Jacob Abbott
... was my paternal blessing, for "Mr. Howells" had been a kind of spiritual progenitor and guide ever since my first meeting with him in '87. His wisdom, his humor, his exquisite art, had been of incalculable assistance to me, as they had been to Clemens, Burroughs, and many others of my fellow-craftsmen, and his commendation of me to my intended wife almost convinced me, for the moment, of my worthiness. ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... answers. That meant either looking them up in the book or asking his father. Jerry's dad knew a good deal about geography, yet after answering a few questions he was likely to say, "How can you expect to learn if you don't find out for yourself?" He seemed to be in a good humor tonight. Jerry thought he might be good for answers to at least ...
— Jerry's Charge Account • Hazel Hutchins Wilson
... mysterious, and in better humor. He supervised with determination, and seemed to know how to calculate the exact effect of everything. Breboeuf was marvellously transformed into a little flying spider, running backwards and forwards strengthening Haviland's web. The Honorable seemed to act slowly, but really with deliberation ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... pretty level-headed sort of a fellow!" replied Mr. Buck. "He is out of humor just now because he has always denied that he visited the mine during his two weeks of absence. He is one of the men who dislike very much to be caught in ...
— The Call of the Beaver Patrol - or, A Break in the Glacier • V. T. Sherman
... enforced in the A.V.I.S., forbade them giving instant vent to their curiosity, but after the Society adjourned Anne was besieged for explanations. Anne had no explanation to give. Judson Parker had overtaken her on the road the preceding evening and told her that he had decided to humor the A.V.I.S. in its peculiar prejudice against patent medicine advertisements. That was all Anne would say, then or ever afterwards, and it was the simple truth; but when Jane Andrews, on her way home, confided to Oliver Sloane her firm belief that there was more behind Judson ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... climax, Theodora noted the gurgle of the child's sobs. She told herself that it was like water bubbling from a bottle, a large earthen bottle. Then she reproached herself for her misplaced sense of humor. ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray
... warm and sympathetic lines. All men liked him and those who knew him best loved him heartily. Under his gruffness there was a lot of sentiment and tenderness. After his reserved moments, when he was silent and cold, he would burst forth into indulgences of fine, dry humor, like an effervescent fluid which gains in sparkling vigor by remaining corked awhile. It was commonly said—and often said by Judge Graver, of the Supreme Court—that old Colfax remained in the comparative obscurity of a probate judgeship simply from ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... the height of the wrangle, the whole matter is dropped, peace reigns and the regular business is resumed as if nothing had happened. These tempests clear the air for a year, and everybody is in better humor having discharged his accumulation of grudges and animosities. I have heard closer speech, more sententious, more convincing and in more direct and forcible language in town meeting than from any other forum. Men are not so much ambitious of eloquence as they are to carry ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... Paris was rejoicing in the expected return of the king, appointed for the next day, Gondy alone, in the midst of the general happiness, was dissatisfied; he sent for the two men whom he was wont to summon when in especially bad humor. Those two men were the Count de Rochefort and the mendicant of Saint Eustache. They came with their usual promptness, and the coadjutor spent with them ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Revolution. He was with the army at the retreat of the Delaware, on the memorable crossing of the 25th of December, 1776, and relates the story of the battle on the succeeding day, with enthusiasm. He gives the details of the march from Trenton to Princetown, and told us, with much humor, that they 'knocked the British around lively,' at the latter place. He was also at the battle of Springfield, and says that he saw the house burning in which Mrs. Caldwell was shot, ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... prospect of walks and drives with them, and of the biggest share of all the cherry and apple cakes, seemed more attractive than the very doubtful circumstances in which the others would be placed. So Rikli became quite reconciled to her lot, and was in good-humor again. ...
— Gritli's Children • Johanna Spyri
... bark. "Funny?" he said. "I'm absolutely hysterical with joy and good humor. I'm out of my mind with happiness." He paused. "Anyway," he finished, "I'm out of my mind. Which puts me in good company. The entire FBI, Brubitsch, Borbitsch, Garbitsch, Dr. Thomas O'Connor and Sir Lewis Carter—we're ...
— Supermind • Gordon Randall Garrett
... aimless even to have been prompted by a conscious effort of the will. But this book is one of the least results of that momentary sweep of the eye. Another was, that Van Berg did not enjoy the symphony at all, and was soon in a very bad humor. That casual glance had revealed, not far away, a face that with his passion for beauty, at once riveted his attention. His slight start and faint exclamation, caused Ik Stanton to look around also, and then, with a mischievous and observant twinkle in his eyes, the ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... presently he regarded her with a flicker of humor in his eyes, she thought. "You didn't say that as if you meant it, Sylvia," he declared. "You didn't say it as if you quite believed it. But I'm going to show you that you're right. What we've been together, Sylvia, you ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... figure and air of good humor comforted me a little; but in all the other houses I went to, at the Horwiches, the Frantz-Tonis, the Durlaches, everywhere I heard only lamentations. The women especially were in misery; the men said nothing, but walked about with heads ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... the chin protrusive, and the cervical vertebrae a trifle more curved in their position, ten to one Gwendolen's words would have had a jar in them for the sweet-natured Rex. But everything odd in her speech was humor and pretty banter, which he was only anxious to turn toward ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... village took her to Naples, and her own story is that she was adopted soon after by some foreigners 'who wished to make me an educated and learned girl. They wanted me to take a bath every day and comb my hair every day,' she explains, with some humor. ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... God. I wish once more to lead Your hearts in prayer, and follow with my own The leading of your song of thankfulness. Then will I lease and leave you for the night To such divertisement as suits the time, And meets your humor. ...
— Bitter-Sweet • J. G. Holland
... roast meat, which looked so inviting, and smelt so savory, I could not abstain from making that a bow likewise, adding in a pitiful tone, good bye, roast meal! This unpremeditated pleasantry put them in such good humor, that I was permitted to stay, and partake of it. Perhaps the same thing might have produced a similar effect at my master's, but such a thought could never have occurred to me, or, if it had, I should not have ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... His sardonic humor hurt her worse than his anger; and she went quickly to the brook to cleanse the towel again. Returning presently, she washed the new wound, and bandaged it; then examined the splints on the broken leg to assure herself that, as nearly as she could determine, no ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
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