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More "Jest" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Say candid, rather. I am somewhat hurt By my reception. If I feel the wound, 'Tis not because I suffer from the jest, But that your lips ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... scheme of vengeance, never to forego it; and I will not change that character. I took up Hawkins when every body forsook him, and made a man of him; and the ungrateful rascal has only insulted me for my pains. Curse me, if I ever forgive him! It would be a good jest indeed, if I were to forgive the insolence of my own creature at the desire of a man like you that has ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... frailties are to ev'ry gossip known: Yet Milton's pedantries not shock the town. Ne'er be the dupe of Names, however high; For some outlive good parts, some misapply. 120 Each elegant Spectator you admire; But must you therefore swear by Cato's fire? Masques for the court, and oft a clumsey jest, Disgrac'd the muse that wrought the Alchemist. "But to the ancients."—Faith! I am not clear, 125 For all the smooth round type of Elzevir, That every work which lasts in prose or song, Two thousand years, deserves to last so long. For not to mention ...
— Essays on Taste • John Gilbert Cooper, John Armstrong, Ralph Cohen
... matter was so extraordinary that even those women who, being members of the Wahima tribe, recognized Kali as the lost heir to the throne, thought that he was jesting with them and were surprised that he wanted to jest at a time that was so heavy for the whole tribe and Fumba. When, however, after the lapse of a few hours they saw a gigantic elephant approaching the ramparts and on it a white palanquin, they fell into a frenzy of joy and received the "Good Mzimu," with such shouts and such ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... exclaimed the other, between jest and earnest, "why did you give me such a start? You told the affair as if Fergus had been shot—however, I'm glad that all's safe in O'Driscol's;—but about the night-boys? Were there any ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... nose and chin that almost met together, and a ghastly expression of cunning, gave her the effect of Hecate. Such was Bessie Millie, to whom the mariners paid a sort of tribute with a feeling between jest ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... possession of Pierre, who, seeking to relieve himself by a jest, exclaimed: "Come, come, at any rate it wasn't the Jesuits who ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... the cottage eaves, when, at the close of day, Kind-hearted mirth and social ease the toiling hour repay; Though coarse the fare, though rude the jest, that cheer that lowly board, There loving hearts and honest ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... you love the red and gold Goes from my life, and leaves it cold And dull and bare, Why should I strive to live and learn And smile and jest, and daily try You from my heart ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... and to the mind. They will realize that it is through wisdom and force and nobility that books retain their hold upon the hearts of men, and not by briskness and colour and epigram. A mind thus stored may have little grasp of facts, little garniture of paradox and jest; but it will be full of compassion and hope, of gentleness and joy. . ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... field for dissipation. In the auberge hard by was a noisy throng, of peasants sitting and standing in a cloud of smoke. Serving-women, hired for the occasion, gaily coifed and be-ribboned, holding bottles and glasses elbowed their way to the men who shouted the loudest for drink, and, catching the jest in the air, gave one as good or as bad in exchange. The scene was one for another Teniers to paint, although there were no costumes to give a local colour to the picturesque. Most of the older men wore the ugly short blouse—generally black in this part of France; but ambitious youths ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... have not dismissed you, although you have deserved it a hundred times; and now, when for the first time you can be useful to me, you have not the courage. I wished to try you. What I said was only a jest. To-morrow, Julio, you will leave my service. You are a liar and ...
— The Amulet • Hendrik Conscience
... labours of many had accumulated, you, gentlemen, well know, that every person in this numerous assembly has had his share in the honours and profits of our common success. It is, indeed, to me a mystery, how the sharp-sighted could suppose so huge a mass of sense and nonsense, jest and earnest, humorous and pathetic, good, bad, and indifferent, amounting to scores of volumes, could be the work of one hand, when we know the doctrine so well laid down by the immortal Adam Smith, concerning the division of labour. Were those who entertained an opinion so strange, ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... demons laughed, how they cursed in jest, how they worked, how luminous were their eyes and haggard faces at the prospect of recapturing one of their fellow-prisoners who had tried to make his escape! Every convict who helped to catch a fugitive was entitled to a remission of six days. ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... was the prejudice against him as a poet; but when his gravestone was placed, with his own expressive line, "Here lies one whose name was writ in water," then a host started up, not of admirers, but of scoffers, and a silly jest was often repeated in my hearing, "Here lies one whose name was writ in water, and his works in milk and water"; and this I was condemned to hear for years repeated, as though it had been a pasquinade; but I should explain that it was from those ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... the homely trick of hanging up their hats on the floor. "Flamby!" he said reproachfully, "I know you are joking, but I don't like you to say such a thing even in jest." ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... Yet a whisper rose, Foolish and causeless, half in jest, half hate. Now wake we and remember mighty blows, ...
— The Seven Seas • Rudyard Kipling
... When the "slave" of the box appears, the hero merely asks for a fiddle that when played upon makes everybody who hears it to dance.[FN388] He hires himself to the King, whose daughter gives him, in jest, a written promise to marry him, in exchange for the fiddle. The King, when the hero claims the princess, insists on her keeping her promise, and they are married. Then follows the loss of the wishing-box, as ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... be a jest, Monsieur Schneider," said Mary, trembling, and turning deadly pale: "you cannot mean this; you do not know me: you never heard of me ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... himself is endowed with supernatural strength; exhausted with the slaughter of his foes, he prays for water to quench his thirst, and a stream bursts forth from the ass's jawbone with which he had just slain the Philistines. Bound in chains, blinded, and made a jest by the idolaters, his prayer for a return of his strength is heard by God, and he destroys a multitude in his ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... Season.—The jest of an ex-minister is as flavourless as a mummy; as unintelligible as its hieroglyphical epitaph. Three days after his fall, his wit, under the sponge of oblivion, has grown as much a mystery as the name of him who built the pyramid, or the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 484 - Vol. 17, No. 484, Saturday, April 9, 1831 • Various
... at an excellent jest, "I have forgotten there was such a god as Hypnos." Then, ignoring ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... quiet but resolute disposition, bantered and teased Hall, which wrought him to such a pitch of excitement that, on meeting James Foster a little while after in front of the tavern, he made the demand of him. Foster at first treated it as a jest; then, when he found Hall was in earnest, decidedly, but civilly, refused; and in such a manner as to put at rest all further conversation. Enraged, Hall instantly turned, swearing to the laughing politicians that ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... where it starts out fresh up in them mountings," the driver said, touching his leaders behind their ears with the lash of his whip. "Runs clean round Ezra's, and's jest as chuckfull o' trout, be gosh, as a ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... ourselves to hear our rude, shameless talk. The women whom we knew deserved perhaps nothing better. But about Tanya we never let fall an evil word; none of us ever ventured so much as to lay a hand on her, even too free a jest she never heard from us. Maybe this was so because she never remained for long with us; she flashed on our eyes like a star falling from the sky, and vanished; and maybe because she was little and very beautiful, and everything ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... what holds thee here in a net. I, too, have a counsel for thee; oh, mark it and keep it, Since I received the same from the Master above: Seek not for faith or for truth in a world of light-minded girls; A thousand suitors reckons this dangerous bride. This jest [of the world], which tickles me, leave to my vagabond self. Accept whatever befalls; uncover thy brow from thy locks; Neither to me nor to thee was option imparted; Neither endurance nor truth belongs to the laugh of the rose. The loving nightingale mourns;—cause enow for mourning;— Why envies ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... Purchase, and cheat, and who can let them pay, Till those black deeds bring on the darksome day. Innocent spenders wee! a better use Shall wear out our short lease, and leave the obtuse Rout to their husks. They and their bags at best Have cares in earnest. Wee care for a jest!" ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... absurdity. It was to her what the remark of some despairing beauty would be among us who, when pressed by two lovers should express a confused willingness to marry both. It was evident that Layelah accepted it as a ludicrous jest. ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... the general finally gave in, arose with a sigh, and said, half in jest, half in annoyance to ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... of the darkness, affixed above the door leading to the rooms occupied by the brothers a painting which represented the adoration of the Magi, beneath which was printed in bold letters, "At the sign of the Three Kings"; a practical jest which afforded great amusement ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... voice and manner this morning, therefore, when he shook his finger at the town beyond the windows, and exclaimed, with a bitter laugh, "Look at it!" was no surprise to his companions. "Jest look at it! I tell you the devil is mighty smart. Ha, ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... "but your fundament is smooth and the swollen haemorrhoids are incised, the surgeon grinning the while," just as the physician of the nineties grinned when some young fool came to him with a blennorrhoeal infection! The ancient jest which accounts for the shaving of the priest's crown is an inferential substantiation of the fact that the evils of antiquity, like the legal codes, have descended through the generations; survived the middle ages, and ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... could jest, however sternly, for his situation was newly complicated by the permission of Congress to attack Boston whenever he might think expedient, "notwithstanding the town and property in it may be destroyed." Such permission was equivalent to a broad hint, and there were not lacking suggestions ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... deep as he could, None could swim so far as he could; 205 None had made so many journeys, None had seen so many wonders, As this wonderful Iagoo, As this marvellous story-teller! Thus his name became a by-word 210 And a jest among the people; And whene'er a boastful hunter Praised his own address too highly, Or a warrior, home returning, Talked too much of his achievements, 215 All his hearers cried, "Iagoo! Here's Iagoo come among us!" He it was who carved the cradle Of the little Hiawatha, ...
— The Song of Hiawatha - An Epic Poem • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... jest were a true compliment. The young manhood of England had maintained its vigour by its love of athletics, and has learned, in the discipline of the athletic club, how to obey and also how to command. Hence it was fitting that to ...
— The Charm of Oxford • J. Wells
... distinguished uncles that tower up at times above the common levels of humanity. At times, when we consider our derived and undeserved share of his inheritance and count the joys it gives us, we have projected half in jest and half in earnest the putting together of a little exemplary book upon the subject of such exceptional men: Celebrated Uncles, it should be called; and it should stir up all who read it to some striving at least towards the glories of the avuncular crown. What this great benefactor did ...
— Floor Games; a companion volume to "Little Wars" • H. G. Wells
... have your jest," said I. "But I see no reason why you should bear me malice. The Count de Lavardin is now a dead man, I hear. I can no longer be against him, nor you for him. Therefore bygones should be bygones, and I suppose you will ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... meagre vineyards, half way to San Vito and just below the thick chestnut woods which belong to the Marchese and feudal lord of that ancient town. And there amongst the showers of reddening vine leaves, she had helped to gather the last grapes of the year, with song and jest and laughter. At noon they climbed the hill again in the October sun, and dined upon the remains of the previous day's feast; then, singing still, they had started on their homeward downward way, happy and not half tired yet when they reached ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... an Association among the Wits of those times to rally Legitimacy out of our Island. A State of Wedlock was the common Mark for all the Adventurers in Farce and Comedy, as well as the Essayers in Lampoon and Satyr, to shoot at, and nothing was a more standing Jest in all Clubs of fashionable Mirth, and gay Conversation. It was determined among those airy Criticks, that the Appellation of a Sober Man should signify a Spiritless Fellow. And I am apt to think it was about the same Time, that Good-Nature, a Word so peculiarly elegant ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... be a king. It was in the hey-day of youth, in the pride of boyish folly. I knew myself when I renounced it. I renounced it to gain —no matter what—for that also I have lost. For many months I have submitted to this mock majesty—this solemn jest. I am its dupe no longer. ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... before. He doubtless hoped that, by sacrificing Raleigh, he might secure the hand of the daughter of the King of Spain for his son, Prince Charles. Raleigh died as Sir Thomas More did (S351), his last words a jest at death. His deeper feelings found expression in the lines which he wrote on the fly leaf of his Bible the ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... Janus, Nature hath framed strange fellows in her time; Some that will ever more peep through their eyes, And laugh like parrots at a bagpiper; And others of such vinegar aspect, That they'll not show their teeth in way of smile, Though Nestor swear the jest be laughable." SHAKESPEARE. ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... new-made bridegroom as a rule shuns Alcohol. And in proportion to his desire to avoid, grows the determination of other men to compel him to drink. The bridegroom is fair game all the world over for the Rabelaisian jest and ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... Enthusiasm Sensitive Plant, Sensitiveness Senvy, Indifference Shamrock, Light-heartedness Snakesfoot, Horror Snapdragon, "No." Snowball, Bound Snowdrop, Hope Sorrel, Wild, Wit Ill-timed Sorrel, Wood, Joy Sothernwood, Jest, Bantering Spearmint, Warm, Sentiment Speedwell, Female Fidelity Speedwell, Spiked, Semblance Spider, Ophrys, Adroitness Spiderwort, Esteem, not Love Star of Bethehem, Guidance Starwort, Afterthought ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... you, say not it is because I have dared. It is because I have not dared. I have said I will protect my soul with the street. I will have my vow written on my forehead. I will throw open my window to the passer-by. Fling it in! I beg you, oh world, whatever it is, be it prayer or hope or jest. It is mine. I have vowed to live with it, to live out of it—so long as I feel your footsteps under my casement, and know that your watch is upon my days, and that you hold me to myself. I have taken for my challenge or for ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... Humiliation, so often had those fair and fertile fields witnessed the rout of the national forces; so often had the armies of the Union marched proudly up the white and dusty turnpike, only to come flying back in disorder and disgrace. With the same rough humor of the soldier, half in grim jest, half in sad earnest, yet always with a grain of hard sense lying at the bottom, the Union veterans had re-named as Harper's Weekly the picturesque landscape that appeared to them so regularly; and Lee's annual invasion of the country beyond the Potomac had come to ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... sarcasms, and the consequent reprimands and even imprisonments be incurred. "L'Empereur n'aime que Josephine et la chasse!" was his exclamation when Napoleon's project of divorce was first bruited about; and for days Paris rang with the sharp jest. "Le char l'attend!" he cried, pausing before the triumphal arch on which stood the horses and empty chariot, the spoils of Venice. But the license of Monsieur Brunet's tongue was little relished by the imperial charlatan,—le claqueur de la Grand ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... the face of this procedure, inasmuch as it learned he was in an exalted frame of mind, nor yet again how it could praise him. For, when anybody bestows great praise or extraordinary honors for a small success or none at all, that person becomes suspected of making a mock and jest of the affair. Still, for all that, when Gaius entered the City he came very near devoting the whole senate to destruction because it had not voted him divine honors. But he contented himself with assembling the populace, upon whom ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... their port in the common room with shaking sides. The newspapers carried the announcement the next morning over the length and breadth of the island, and the leading article writers struggled in their comments to maintain a decent gravity. Did Disraeli mean it, or was it but an idle jest? and what must a man be who could exercise his wit on such a subject? Disraeli was at least as much in earnest as his audience. The phrase answered its purpose. It has lived and become historical when the decorous ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... relative term, like anything else connected with morality. What would be stealing in the immediate neighborhood of a city is not even what the old South County oyster fisherman once described as "jest pilferin' 'round," out here on the edges of the wilderness. I go out with the trailer hitched to the back of my Ford, half a mile in any direction, and I pass roadsides where, if there are any farmer ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... reasons for knowing that he was in every way as good a man as Semyonov—a better one, maybe. He laughed, or sometimes simply looked at his companion, or he would reply in his bad halting Russian with some jest ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... should not jest in so grave a mater; nether wold I that ye should begyn to illud the trewth with sophistrie; and yf ye do, I will defend me the best that I can. And first, to your drinking, I say, that yf ye eyther eat or drynk without assurance of Goddis worde, that in so doing ye displease ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... his family doubtless manufactured cheap scarabs), announced that Hatasu was the "first suffragette." But even those who thought her downtrodden nephew, Thothmes III, justified in erasing every trace of her existence wherever possible, did not smile at this jest. In fact, having Antoun and me to refer to, the Set as a whole sat upon the unfortunate dragoman, trying to talk him down in tombs and temples, or ostentatiously reading Weigall, Maspero, Petrie, Sladen, and Lorimer when ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... Where there is a natural diffidence which makes you shrink from a more bold and open reproof, remember much may be done to discountenance sin, by the silent holiness of demeanor which refuses to smile at the unholy allusion or ribald jest. "A word spoken in due season, how good is it!" "Speak gently," yet speak faithfully: "be pitiful—be courteous:" yet "quit you like ...
— The Mind of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... a ghastly smile, as if he did not precisely see the point of the jest. "Joke or no joke," said he, "I must look to you for some money to put off the infernal creditors, who have begun to flock into the house. There's the bell. Hang me, if it isn't another one! To come to the point, ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... forced to go out and scrub from early morning till late at night and has to leave little Johnnie tied in his high chair to be fed by an older sister on crusts dabbled in the pot of cold coffee. No wonder that so much of our verse "jest growed," like Topsy. And the resulting state of things has but served to reinforce our belief that to make the race of poets spend their days in correcting encyclopaedia proof, or clerking, or running, notebook in hand, to fires—inheres in ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... Ghetto period. The official Ghetto begins with the opening of the sixteenth century, whereas the best parodies belong to a much earlier date, the fourteenth century. Such parodies, in which sacred things are the subject of harmless jest, are purely medieval in spirit, as well as in date. Exaggerated praises of wine were a foil to the sobriety of the Jew, the fun consisting in this conscious exaggeration. The medieval Jew, be it remembered, drew no severe line between sacred and profane. All life was to him equally ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams
... called, quite loud and cheerily, and then he whispered: "Mebbe it ain't so bad. They-all seem friendly. But I'm scared, Joan. If you jest wasn't so dam' handsome, or if ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... "You can jest," says he: "surely that is a good sign. If you were going to refuse me you would not laugh. Beloved,"—taking her into his fond arms again,—"say one little word ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... I'm ekal to the job," said he, "and if you say 'eject' again, why out they go. Only when I looked that outfit over, and saw they was only two of them and six of these jabbering keskydees, why, I jest nat'rally wondered whether it was by and according to the peace and dignity of this camp to mix up in that kind of a muss. I should think they ought to be capable of doin' ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... by saying, "Listen to me, sir; whether it is owing to timidity or to premonition, I grow more and more agitated—it seems to me that misfortune menaces us; on no account would I at this time, and in the condition of my spirits, prolong any further a jest which has already ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... causes may not be so very unreasonable. These things may be no more than one of those penetrating flashes of wit that will sometimes light up and dispel the contentions of an angry man. If they are not that, then they are the grimmest jest that ever set men grinning. Wait and see, if you ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... the whole of life, seemed to Ryabovitch an unintelligible, aimless jest. . . . And turning his eyes from the water and looking at the sky, he remembered again how fate in the person of an unknown woman had by chance caressed him, he remembered his summer dreams and fancies, and his life struck him as extraordinarily ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... old Pill-box declared. Knocked me slap orf my perch, fair 'eels uppards. I tell you I felt a bit scared, And it left me a yaller-skinned skelinton, weak, and, wot's wus, stoney-broke. If it hadn't a bin for my nunky, your pal might have jest done ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, Sep. 24, 1892 • Various
... again, that their manner of life, and their situation is such in their own country, that to say they are happy is a jest. "But who are you, who pretend to judge[103] of another man's happiness? That state which each man, under the guidance of his maker, forms for himself, and not one man for another? To know what constitutes mine or your happiness, is the sole prerogative of him who created us, and ...
— An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African • Thomas Clarkson
... who do not talk, because they do not think of virtue, but of vice; or of praise either, because they are always finding fault with their neighbours. The man who loves a foul story, or a coarse jest—the woman who gossips over every tittle tattle of scandal which she can pick up against her neighbour—what do these people do but defile their own souls afresh, after they have been washed clean in the blood ...
— The Gospel of the Pentateuch • Charles Kingsley
... "Jest not, Petronius; but if the freedom with which I speak of my desire misleads thee, know this,—that bright garments frequently cover deep wounds. I must tell thee, too, that, while returning from Asia, I slept one night in the temple of Mopsus to have a prophetic dream. ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... whether all this was meant in jest or earnest; and perhaps the truth was, that though grandpapa had little liking for new plans, he was too wise not to adopt those which possessed manifest advantage, and only indulged himself in a good deal of playful grumbling, which greatly ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... My husband? Did I hear aright? You are not jesting! Sure you would not jest At such a juncture! Speak, my husband, speak! Is this a plot to cheat a dying man, Or cheat a wife who, if it be no plot, Is worthy death? What ...
— Bitter-Sweet • J. G. Holland
... of mine, who is a man of letters and a philosopher, said to me one day, as if between jest and earnest, "Fancy! since we last met I have discovered a haunted house ...
— Haunted and the Haunters • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... ex-missionary owner of the place. I divined on the instant that this was his habit, to stand by the door before supper and say just those words to the last arrivals. I had a vision of him standing by his mission door aforetime, repeating one jest, or more likely one stale euphuism ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... blond, having a narrow small head, and vivid light blue eyes, and the chest of a stallion; a person whose left eyebrow had an odd oblique droop, so that the stupendous boy at his simplest appeared to be winking the information that he was in jest. ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... asserted that woman makes and rules society. When our women are better educated themselves, their righteous indignation will banish forever from all conversation in which they have a part, the fashionable jests on subjects which do not admit of jest, and the doubles entendres whose power to excite a smile consists in their vulgar and profane suggestions. They are as common in companies of average women as in companies of average men, and they evidence thoughts, and are themselves as much coarser ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... to be no jest, but pretty serious," said I. "But luckily Farrell's located at Wimbledon. ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... no more chances," said the farmer. "I kin tie 'em down here on the edge o' the woods jest as well." And ...
— The Rover Boys in the Air - From College Campus to the Clouds • Edward Stratemeyer
... no humour for a jest to-day, my lord," replied Chiffinch, familiarly. "He is more serious than I have ever before seen him, and takes this terrible fire sadly to heart, as well he may. Mr. Secretary Pepys, of the Admiralty, is with him, and is detailing ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... road to Anywhere, when each day had its story; When time was yet our vassal, and life's jest was still unstale; When peace unfathomed filled our hearts as, bathed in amber glory, Along the road to Anywhere we watched the ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... thee, and 'tis vain to fly, Wilt thou not speak, dear love? I see Thy form half hidden by the tree. Stay if thou love me, Sita, stay In pity cease thy heartless play. Why mock me now? thy gentle breast Was never prone to cruel jest. 'Tis vain behind yon bush to steal: Thy shimmering silks thy path reveal. Fly not, mine eyes pursue thy way; For pity's sake, dear Sita, stay. Ah me, ah me, my words are vain; My gentle love is lost or slain. How could her tender bosom spurn Her husband on his home-return? Ah no, my love is ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... native, "if ye'll jest come down from thar, and throw 'way yer shootin'-irons, I'll give ye the all-firedest ...
— Among the Pines - or, South in Secession Time • James R. Gilmore
... valued them; but perhaps his most remarkable quality was his impartiality. He dispensed his favors with an even hand. He had few favorites, and called no man master. He never outstayed his welcome "and told the jest without the smile," never remaining with one person for more than two or three days at most. A calmer character, a more balanced judgment, a better temper, a more admirable self-respect,—in a word, a profounder sense of what belongs to a gentleman, was never known ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... That is a solemn dooty I can't make up my mind to commit to other people. My teachers enjoy the Lord's day as a day of rest. In it they do no manner of work,—except in cases of necessity or mercy, such as fillin' out diplomas, or when we git crowded jest at the end of a term, or when there is an extry number of poopils, or other Providential call to dispense ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... I saw a lot of pie plant growing in a wild state. I said nothin to nobody, but when it got ripe I saved the seed. This spring I planted that patch of ground with it, anticipatin the biggest crop of pie timber in the State. And, sir, jest as sartin as this white hat was once new," said he, pintin to his old plade out shappo, "when that stuff grode to maturity, I sent a cart lode down to the market, and it was all sent back with a note, statin that burdocks wasn't worth a cuss for pies. But," ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2., No. 32, November 5, 1870 • Various
... chaffering and laughing just as of old. And there they are again at nightfall in the hedge alehouses, eating their toasted cheese and their bread, and drinking the Suffolk ale, and listening to the roaring song and merry jest of the labourers. Now, if they regret England so who are in America, which they own to be a happy country, and good for those of Piedmont and of Como, how much more must I regret it, when, after the lapse of so many years, I find myself in ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... raised at Venice during this period is amongst the worst and basest ever built by the hands of men, being especially distinguished by a spirit of brutal mockery and insolent jest, which, exhausting itself in deformed and monstrous sculpture, can sometimes be hardly otherwise defined than as the perpetuation in stone of the ribaldries of drunkenness. On such a period, and on such work, it is painful to dwell, and I had not originally intended to do so; but I found that the ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... Sandhurst people would have a good long look at him, then," put in the mother with earnestness underlying the jest of her tone. "The poor boy will never pass those exams in the world. It IS ridiculous, as his father always said. If there ever was a man who was made for a soldier, it's Balder. He's a gentleman, and he's connected by tradition ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... different from that of the rulers, who jeered at His claim to supernatural enlightenment, and bade Him show His Messiahship by naming His smiters. The rough legionaries knew nothing about a Messiah, but it seemed to them a good jest that this poor, scourged prisoner should have called Himself a King, and so they proceed to make coarse and clumsy merriment over it. It is like the wild beast playing with its prey before killing it. The laughter ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... accordingly assumed it. He brought the stump and sat it up near the ring. The sisters came down and resumed their sport. "But see," cried the younger sister, "that stump was not there before." She ran affrighted towards the car. They only smiled, and gathering round the stump, struck it in jest, when out ran the mice, and Waupee among the rest. They killed them all but one, which was pursued by the youngest sister; but just as she had raised her stick to kill it, the form of Waupee arose, and he clasped his prize in his arms. The other eleven sprang to their basket and ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... extraordinary place as authority among the Cranford ladies. He himself went on in his course, as unaware of his popularity as he had been of the reverse; and I am sure he was startled one day when he found his advice so highly esteemed as to make some counsel which he had given in jest to be taken ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... moving about putting things to rights, "don't yeh go tirin' of yerself. I know things is in a muss. Some'ow by Saturday night things piles up terr'ble, an' I'm that tired I don't seem to 'ave no 'eart to straighten 'em up. Jest look at that 'ouse! I sez to John, sez I, 'I cawn't do no 'ousekeepin' with all 'em children 'bout my feet. An', bless their 'earts! it's all I kin do to put the bread in their mouths an keep the rags on their backs.' But John sez to me, sez 'e, 'Don't yeh worry, lass, 'bout the rags. Keep ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... hoped the Jews might perhaps yield at that sight, out of fear lest they might themselves afterward be liable to the same cruel treatment. So the soldiers, out of the wrath and hatred they bore the Jews, nailed those they caught, one after one way, and another after another, to the crosses, by way of jest, when their multitude was so great that room was wanting for the crosses, and crosses wanting ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... said, "that if he goes it will be the beginning of the end." She spoke in jest, and although Fulton laughed back at her you could see that what she had said troubled him and hurt him. "As a matter of fact," she went on, "he's been looking for an excuse for some time. And now he thinks he's found one, but it wouldn't pass in a court ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris
... conscience-smitten that he once believed her wholly immersed in wedding-clothes and fashions. What a remarkable, many-sided woman she is! a perfect queen of all society, and an admirable one at that. Everything she says is fresh and crisp, and her little jest well told and well chosen. The professor beams and smiles, though he is no great lady's man. She might be a bon camarade, so free is she from the airy little nothings of society that puzzle scholarly ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... say—of the Countess, was not nearly so soon ended as that of Count Robert, who occupied his time, as husbands of every period are apt to do, in little sub-acid complaints between jest and earnest, upon the dilatory nature of ladies, and the time which they lose in doffing and donning their garments. But when the Countess Brenhilda came forth in the pride of loveliness, from the inner chamber where she had attired ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... equipped with deer's antlers, no value could be assigned to this sketch: but as we know that this particular tribe retains the legend of just such a wonder-beast, we are justified in treating this drawing as something more than a jest. ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... ground; Mexico an empire; England audacious and overbearing as of yore, and France joining to fill our waters with mighty naval armaments. We, having witnessed the dismemberment of our country, and possessing no longer a nationality, but broken into fragments, to become the jest and laughingstock of the world, which would point to us and say, 'These people began to build, and ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... sauce at dinner, and explained in so doing that his friend liked music without melody. Rossini openly protested against this in an article in which he designated the story as a mauvaise blague and at the same time declared that he would never allow himself such a jest at the expense of a man who was trying to extend his influence in the artistic world. When I heard of this, I did not for a moment hesitate to pay Rossini a visit, and was received by him in the friendliest manner, which I afterwards described in a memorandum devoted to reminiscences ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... have all that is here?" so that the cook, who was sleeping in a room hard by, heard it, and raised herself in bed and listened. The thieves, however, in their fear of being discovered, had run back part of the way, but they took courage again, thinking that it was only a jest of the little fellow's. So they came back and whispered to him to be serious, and ...
— Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... of contempt, and because it was good policy Situated as I was betwixt fear and hope The pretended reformed religion The Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day The record of the war is as the smoke of a furnace There is too much of it for earnest, and not enough for jest Those who have given offence to hate the offended party To embellish my story I have neither leisure nor ability Troubles might not be lasting Young girls seldom ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... the questioner; the gaze was grave and thoughtful, and caught the Roman's, and held it while he replied, "Yes, five years. I remember the parting; you went to Rome; I saw you start, and cried, for I love you. The years are gone, and you have come back to me accomplished and princely—I do not jest; and yet—yet—I do wish you were ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... homes, but public places, such as street cars, theaters, schools and churches are too often poorly ventilated. Sleeping, or rather dozing in church is so common that it is a matter of jest. My experience has been that drowsiness comes not from the dullness of sermons, but from the impossibility of getting a breath of ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... a penitent, barefooted, before the council of 1104, Bertrade doing the same; they protested their horror of their past conduct, their resolve to sin no more, and were accordingly absolved. It was this monarch who, by his unseemly jest concerning William the Conqueror, of whom he was both jealous and afraid, nearly brought down upon the Parisians again another Norman. "When is that fat man going to be delivered?" inquired Philippe, with the delicate humor of the Middle Ages. To which the Conqueror replied that ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... 'Whether this be an act of rashness, O father, or an improper act that I have done, whether thou likest it or dislikest it, the words spoken by me shall never be in vain. O father, I tell thee (a curse) can never be otherwise. I have never spoken a lie even in jest.' ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... This encouragement, uttered in jest, was taken in earnest. The soldier thanked her, and rallied visibly at the comparison. "All right," said he, "as you say, it ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... hovered all about him; one received the impression that happiness itself had fluttered to earth and settled upon him. Pelle idolized him, but did not understand him. The master, who at one moment would make sport of his lame leg and the next moment forget that he had one, or jest about his poverty as though he were flinging good gold pieces about him—this was a man Pelle could not fathom. He was no wiser when he secretly looked into the books which Master Andres read so breathlessly; he would have been content with a much ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... think that's a merry jest," says I, "call up Aunty. Why, say, before we get through with this tea stunt of hers that Djickyns party will be runnin' his studio works day and night shifts and rebuildin' Belgium! We're a great team, me and dear old Aunty. We've just ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford
... to stop at hotels like the Savoy in the height of the season,' I replied, thinking that the jest would end there, and that he would now reveal his identity and speak of the tiara. To my surprise, however, he ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs
... Polly, as I write, to look in Mark Lemon's Jest-Book for these stories. They are not in the index there. But I dare say they are in Cotton Mather and Jeremy Taylor. Any way, they are bits of very cheap Greek. Now it is on these stories that the reputation of the Sybarites in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... sense of fascination began to fall upon Cuthbert, as Catesby, taking him familiarly by the arm, led him out into the street, and walked along with him in the direction of his home, drawing him out by questions, and throwing in bits of anecdote, jest, and apt remark, that made his conversation a pleasure and an education. Cuthbert forgot his anxieties and vague suspicions in his enjoyment of the conversation of an accomplished man of the world; ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... SPEED. O jest unseen, inscrutable, invisible, As a nose on a man's face, or a weathercock on a steeple! My master sues to her; and she hath taught her suitor, He being her pupil, to become her tutor. O excellent device! Was there ever ...
— The Two Gentlemen of Verona • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... she demanded rather than asked, in the slangy and jocular tone she employed. "I guess she'll be thanking her stars she's got rid of you;" at which Laura smiled uncertainly, not being sure whether Cousin Grace spoke in jest or earnest. ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... fair boy that runs to her knees, With a shout for his mother, and kiss For the tear-drop that welling he sees To her eyes from her sorrow's abyss,— Though he blooms like a rose, the fair boy, No praise of his beauty is heard; None with him stays to jest or to toy, None to her gives a smile ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... received instructions from Mr. Jones that I was to look into a little matter o' leakage in the back-kitchen sink; also to see what taps, if hany, required seein' to, and gen'ally to put things straight like. So I come round, 'aving the keys, jest to cast a heye over them, as I may term it, preliminry to commencing work in the course of a week or so, as soon as I'm at libity to ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... poured in jest, drink in earnest. All that's yellow isn't butter. But if anybody was to ask you—say, a man who shall be as nameless as he is legless—what I says to you during our discursive promenaid, you answer back and say, 'Kid Shannon, whenever I speaks to him, merely ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris
... was bad at the table, it was worse when they all sat in the front porch after dinner, with nothing to do but watch the darkness settle slowly down over the valley, and listen, to the last sleepy twitterings of the birds. They talked little as they sat there. Now and then Alan would attempt a jest, or Katharine would try to start some fresh subject; but soon the voices would die away, and another silence follow the momentary interruption. So they lingered until long past the time for separation. At length ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... or respectably. The clergyman was disdained even by the county attorney, was hardly tolerated at the table of his patron, and could scarcely marry beyond the rank of a cook or housekeeper. And his poverty and bondage continued so long that, in the times of Swift, the parson was a byword and a jest among the various servants in the households of the great. Still there were eminent clergymen amid the general depression of their order, both in and out of the Established Church. Besides the London preachers were many connected with the Universities ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... word I guess they'll all think about like me," interrupted the Clarkeville official. "Ye jest tell me ...
— The Air Ship Boys • H.L. Sayler
... and all went well. But a time came—mind me, a time always does come. A time came—it was some while after she and I and the child returned from America—when somebody she had confided her history to, told her my claim to her was a mockery, and made a jest of her belief in my right. After that she was never happy with me. She pined and pined, and socked and sighed. She said she must leave me, and then came the question of our child. Then a man advised me how to act, and I did it, for I ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... correlation of mental as well as of physical growth, and we could not probably have had one set of Mr. Darwin's qualities without the other. If he had been more faultless, he might have written better books, but we should have listened worse. A book's prosperity is like a jest's—in the ear of ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... than her cousins, was also less of her age. She was pretty and sweet-tempered, but timid and without energy of character. Her timidity and her littleness made her the jest of her companions, and in their play-hours she had often cause to feel and acknowledge their superiority in age and size; but as their teasing of her proceeded more from unchecked liveliness than real ill-nature, and as she was too gentle to retort upon them, their childish squabbles ...
— The Flower Basket - A Fairy Tale • Unknown
... prayed to be let alone. I came over the last evening of her life to give her the communion. "Ah, sir!" said the mother to me—not bitterly—that is the strange thing, they have so little bitterness—"if Mister 'Enslowe would jest 'a mended that bit 'o roof of ours last winter, Bessie needn't have laid in the wet so many nights as she did, and she coughin' fit to break your heart, for all the things yer ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... but to tempt me to anger,' said Goisvintha, altering her manner with sudden and palpable cunning, more ominous of peril to the fugitive than the fury she had hitherto displayed. 'You jest at me, because I have failed in patience, like a child! But you will shed her blood—you are honourable and will hold to your promise—you will shed her blood! And I,' she continued, exultingly, seating herself ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... Eddie plodded along, "I tried to draw up the 'nouncement with the markin'-brush; but I just couldn't make the letters. So I called in Jabe Pittinger and told him how it was; and I says to him: 'Jabe, I jest naturally can't do it m'self. I wisht you'd send the word round that the factory's goin' to stop next Sat'd'y.' I thought he'd show some surprise; but he didn't. He just shot a splash of tobacco-juice through that missin' ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... superstition and a pondering upon things; even his rustic wariness is innocent in its way. Early that autumn he found the turf on the roof of the stable was beginning to slip down inside. Isak chewed at his beard for a while, then, smiling like a man who understands a jest, he laid some poles across to keep it up. Not a bitter word did he say. And another thing: the shed where he kept his store of provisions was simply built on high stone feet at the corners, with nothing between. After a while, little ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... verbosity coined nonsense with such a facil fluency, that a parcel of alley-gossips at a christening, after the sack had gone twice round, could not with their tattling tormentors be a greater plague to a fumbling godfather, than their lame jest and impertinent conundrums were to a man of my temper. Oaths were as plenty as weeds in ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... At other times PUNCH hangs the devil: this is as it should be. Destroy the principle of evil by increasing the means of cultivating the good, and the gallows will then become as much a wonder as it is now a jest. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... it as a jest. He always shed my frank speeches as humor. "Prejudice, prejudice, Harvey!" he said in mild reproof. ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... between Madame d'Urban's house and his own. As he had made no mystery to anyone of his love affair, nobody took the trouble even to ask him whence he came. However, as there might possibly be persons still unconvinced, he repeated this same jest, for his own satisfaction, three nights running; so that by the morning of the fourth day nobody ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE GANGES—1657 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... fiddler at work sawing industriously at one tune which did good service throughout the entertainment; there was a little furious and erratic reel-dancing, and much loud laughter, and good-natured, even if somewhat personal, jest. The room was one of two which formed the house; the walls were of log; the lights the cheery yellow flare of great pine-knots flung one after the ...
— Lodusky • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... "This is no jest, my lord," he said. "For once in his life this poor fool is in earnest. For I am like to be ruined if I cannot have revenge. Thou knowest how my wife and I live in a little cottage just outside the city walls, and how, with my small earnings, I bought three milch cows. My wife is ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... instruction in worldly wisdom. Chesterfield, who had no children by his wife, Melusina von Schulemberg, illegitimate daughter of George I., whom he married in 1733, adopted his godson, a distant cousin, named Philip Stanhope (1755-1815), as heir to the title and estates. His famous jest (which even Johnson allowed to have merit)—"Tyrawley and I have been dead these two years, but we don't choose to have it known"—is the best description possible of his humour and condition during the latter part of this period of decline. To the deafness was added blindness, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... wasn't for you, Miss Holmes, I believe I'd have a try for him myself, in spite of his gray hair and quick temper—for Mrs. Maxwell says he has a pretty quick temper, but it's all over in a minute," said Wilhelmina, half in jest and wholly ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... dey looks so much like humins, but it's boun' to be done: ef we don't kill 'em dey'll kill us, nip an' tuck.' Den says I, 'Mars Dan—no, I don't say dat—Colonel Boone,' says I, 'what you gwine to do wid de skelps?' Says he, 'Jest let 'em stay whar dey is fur de buzzards.' Den says I, 'Colonel Boone, let me have de skelps to hang up in my cabin to 'member you by.' Says he, 'Burlman Rennuls,' dat's me, you know, Bushie; 'Burlman Rennuls,' says he, 'you's 'tirely ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... citizens, as his grandfather, great-grandfather, etc., but some persons have questioned how the first of the family could prove themselves citizens, according to this popular and careless definition. Gorgias of Leontium, partly entertaining the same doubt, and partly in jest, says, that as a mortar is made by a mortar-maker, so a citizen is made by a citizen-maker, and a Larisssean by a Larisssean-maker. This is indeed a very simple account of the matter; for if citizens are so, according to this definition, it will be impossible to apply it to the first founders ...
— Politics - A Treatise on Government • Aristotle
... nature, and many are kind-hearted and full of varied wit, poetical imagination, and graceful expression. To the original characteristics of the Greek epigram, Martial, more than any other poet, added that which constitutes an epigram in the modern sense of the term: pointedness either in jest or earnest, and the ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... a pretty jest of tobacco which was this: A certain Welchman coming newly to London, and beholding one to take tobacco, never seeing the like before, and not knowing the manner of it, but perceiving him vent smoke so fast, and supposing his inward parts to be on fire, ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... between the Bailiff of Vevey and the Prior of St. Bernard, on the occasion of their present meeting. Peterchen was known to the brotherhood, and, though a Protestant, and one too that did not forbear to deliver his jest or his witticism against Rome and its flock at will, he was sufficiently well esteemed. In all the quetes, or collections of the convent, the well-meaning Bernois had really shown himself a man of bowels, and one that was disposed ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... Folks, sh - - t and write, and mend honest Bog's Trade, For when you sh - - t Rhymes, you help him to Bread: He'el feed on a Jest, that is broke with your Wind, And fatten on what you ...
— The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany - Parts 2, 3 and 4 • Hurlo Thrumbo (pseudonym)
... to flag; their guards had been less courteous than at first, sickness had attacked two or three, gloomy apprehensions were troubling the minds of many. Still we had a pleasant dinner, and the song and the jest went round as before. The two midshipmen were the merriest of the party, and paid, as may be supposed, the most devoted attention to the two young ladies whom they thought fit to admire. Their happiness was, however, disagreeably interrupted ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... zee him, zur," the landlord answered, eyeing the stranger askance; "he be out, jest at present. He do go vur a walk, mostly, down yonner in the bottom alongside the brook. Mebbe if you was to vollow by river-bank you med come up wi' him by-an'-by ... and mebbe, agin, ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... specimens from an herbarium. But it showed the awl-shaped leaves, and thread-like stalk with its tiny round seed-vessels, like those of our common shepherd's-purse, and Jimmy knew it at once. "There's a dreffle lot o' that peppergrass out in deep water there, jest where I ketched the big pick'ril," he said quietly. "I seen it nigh a foot high, an' it 's juicier and livin'er than them dead sticks in your book." At our request he accompanied the unbelieving botanist and myself ...
— Fishin' Jimmy • Annie Trumbull Slosson
... books may entitle me to serious consideration. If I can get the editors to take more stories, why I suppose there'll be more books. But please don't perform any more serious consideration stuff over 'em. Because me'n Georgie Cohan, we jest aims to amuse. ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... who was kept in England by the British Association till September 10, wrote that he was going abroad for the rest of September, and proposed to spend some time at Menaggio, whence he hoped to effect a meeting. He winds up with a jest at his recent unusual occupation:—"I have had no end of righteousness accounted to me for helping to entertain Bishops at Cambridge." Hence the ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... needs to be lifted to a higher standard on these matters. The subject of marriage is too sacred to jest about, and people in general think it no harm to toy with the word and all that pertains to ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... repute, celebrated for his excellence in some of the comedies of Congreve. The characters which he played may have been comic ones, but he was a serious man. Indeed, his gravity was so well known in his lifetime that it was reckoned the height of wit, when he was dead, to father off upon him a Jest Book! This joke, bad as it was, was better than any joke in the book. It made him famous, so famous that for the next hundred years every little bon mot was laid at his door, metaphorically speaking, the puniest youngest brat of them ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... brought you here to jest with you, nor yet, as you think, to condemn you to die, though your life is justly forfeit to me and my people, whom you would have betrayed again to their oppressors. Now, listen! You brought me back from death to life, and for my life I will give you ...
— The Romance of Golden Star ... • George Chetwynd Griffith
... hit hain't a lady! Hain't yo' done tol' her to git off an' come in? Looks like yer manners, what little yo' ever hed of 'em, fell in the crick an' got drownded. Jest yo' climb right down offen thet cayuse, dearie, an' come on in the house. John, yo' oncinch thet saddle, an' then, Horatius Ezek'l, yo' an' David Golieth, taken the hoss to the barn an' see't he's hayed an' watered 'fore yo' come back. ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... others: and he that shall judge those he walketh not with, or say, as you, that they, like Ephraim, are 'joined to an idol, and ought to repent and be ashamed of that idol before they be shewed the pattern of the house'; and then shall back all with the citation of a text; doth it either in jest or in earnest; if in jest it is abominable; if in earnest his conscience is engaged; and being engaged, it putteth him upon doing what he can to extirpate the thing he counteth idolatrous and abominable, out of the churches abroad, as well as that he stands in relation unto. This being ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... acquainted, I'll tell you in brief, If you would but listen awhile; For this very jest, among all the rest, I think it may cause you ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... be there. It was empty! They looked into each other's faces with blank astonishment. Everything had been so strangely true, and so strangely false, up to this moment, that they could not comprehend this failure at the last moment. It was the strangest, saddest jest! It brought Middleton up with such a sudden revulsion that he grew dizzy, and the room swam round him and the cabinet dazzled before his eyes. It had been magnified to a palace; it had dwindled down to Liliputian ...
— The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... seen Done at the Mermaid! heard words that have been So nimble, and so full of subtile flame, As if that every one from whence they came Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest, And resolved to live a fool the rest Of ...
— Familiar Quotations • Various
... they began to set to work about noon yesterday, the Duchess of Milan could not contain her amazement at seeing my wife sewing with as much vigour and energy as any old woman. And my wife told her that, whatever she did, whether it were jest or earnest, she liked to throw her whole heart into it and try and do it as well as possible. Certainly in this case she succeeded perfectly, and the skill and grace with which she carried out her idea gave me indescribable ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright
... of the perishable glory and the imperishable hope of man. He looked up into the vast countenance of the crouching Sphinx and vainly tried to read the meaning of her calm eyes and smiling mouth. Was it, indeed, the mockery of all effort and all aspiration, as Tigranes had said—the cruel jest of a riddle that has no answer, a search that never can succeed? Or was there a touch of pity and encouragement in that inscrutable smile—a promise that even the defeated should attain a victory, and the disappointed should ...
— The Story of the Other Wise Man • Henry Van Dyke
... cross my inclinations, do you, father?" asked Julie, half in earnest, half in jest. "Am I to marry to please you and not to ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... bishops, but still less was she fervent for God's glory and public Reformation. Accordingly, on the first Court day she handed Knox's letter, perhaps unread, to the Bishop of Glasgow, with the words, 'Please you, my Lord, to read a Pasquil.' The unwise jest came to Knox's ears, and some years after he published his letter with resentful additions and interpolations. In these he assumed—much too soon—that there was no longer hope of the Regent becoming personally convinced of the Evangel. But he ...
— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes
... not altogether freed from the contagious influence of a prevailing superstition. Yet the result of his calculations in these two instances left so unpleasing an impression on his mind, that, like Prospero, he mentally relinquished his art, and resolved, neither in jest nor earnest, ever again to ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... he can do well enough, 'f he's jest a mind to! nothin' wantin' but the will! There's a pair on 'em," said the driver, "but I won't never drive 'em together. Staples drove the pair last summer. He says they'd run till they dropped down dead. I guess they would. He's a putty critter enough, and well made, but dreadful ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... parent, while laboring, under age and infirmity, to wean him from a course of dissipation and vice. Little indeed did he suspect that his virtuous offspring was absolutely enacting his part, for the purpose of having a good jest to regale Norton with in the course ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... cards," he suggested. "What's the matter with a game of solitary? I've known men to put in hull winters alone, up in the mountains, jest eating and sleeping ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... head on his shoulder and sob: 'I wanted you to love me'; but that would have been to abase herself too much; yet the tears fell as she answered, trying to smile: 'It was only that you hurt me; even in jest I cannot bear to have you say that I could have been ...
— Franklin Kane • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... licenses of that court did not only make the Love which the Vulgar call Romantick, the object of Jest and Ridicule, but even common Decency and Modesty were almost ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... attempts to make herself attractive to her husband when she knows that she is not what she has been, and—worst of all—the love that she spends on her children. That particular sort of heavy-handed jest was specially dear to Bronckhorst. I suppose that he had first slipped into it, meaning no harm, in the honeymoon, when folk find their ordinary stock of endearments run short, and so go to the other ...
— Victorian Short Stories of Troubled Marriages • Rudyard Kipling, Ella D'Arcy, Arthur Morrison, Arthur Conan Doyle,
... glass! There lies the slime! 'Tis but a jest; I but keep time, Thou hellish pest, To thine own chime! [While the WITCH steps back in rage and astonishment.] Dost know me! Skeleton! Vile scarecrow, thou! Thy lord and master dost thou know? What holds me, that I deal not now Thee and thine apes a stunning blow? No more respect to ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... Chota Rani," exclaimed my sister-in-law, "dressing so early in the day! One of their Bande Mataram meetings, I suppose. Robber Queen!" she called out in jest to Bimala. "Are you counting ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... and shrugged as if at a gracious jest, and Mrs. Fowler observed in her crisp, matter-of-fact manner: "Yes, my daughter has a genuine instinct for dress, and, as you say, that is very rare. She carries her clothes well, doesn't she? It's such a blessing to be tall—though my husband insists ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... meat he liketh best, For bread no more together shall we break. Nay, soon from all my labour must I rest, But eat ye well, and drink the red wine, lest Ye blame my house-wifery among men dead." And all they took her saying for a jest, And sweetly did they laugh at that ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang
... hear him, though," laughed Hozier, with a warning pressure that suspiciously resembled a hug. These two were children, in some respects, quicker to jest than to grieve, better fitted for ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... Some canderdates air dead an' gone, an' some hez ben defeated, Which 'mounts to pooty much the same; fer it's ben proved repeated A betch o' bread thet hain't riz once ain't goin' to rise agin, An' it's jest money throwed away to put the emptins in: But thet's wut folks wun't never larn; they dunno how to go, Arter you want their room, no more 'n a bullet-headed beau; Ther' 's ollers chaps a-hangin' roun' thet can't see pea-time's past, Mis'ble as roosters in a rain, heads down ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... reproachfully. "I cannot jest on so serious a matter," he said, resolving to make the attempt to re-establish his dignity with Alice. "I think, Miss Groff, that you perhaps hardly know how absurd your supposition is. There are not many men of distinction in Europe with whom my cousin is not personally acquainted. A very young ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... as it would seem, for a jest. Compare the description of Giants in Dante, Inf. XXI and XXII. Perhaps Leonardo had the Giant Antaeus in his mind. Of him the myth relates that he was a son of Ge, that he fed on lions; that ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... February, 1835; Op. 31 (B flat minor), published in December, 1837; Op. 39 (C sharp minor), published in October, 1840; and Op. 54 (in E major), published in December, 1843. "How is 'gravity' to clothe itself, if 'jest' goes about in dark veils?" exclaims Schumann. No doubt, scherzo, if we consider the original meaning of the word, is a misnomer. But are not Beethoven's scherzos, too, misnamed? To a certain extent they are. But if Beethoven's scherzos often ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... contrived to score one on the friar's crown: but in the careless moment of triumph a splendid sweep of the friar's staff struck Robin's out of his hand into the middle of the river, and repaid his crack on the head with a degree of vigour that might have passed the bounds of a jest if Marian had not retarded its descent ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... we're off for Turkey, Lord knows when we shall come back! Breezes foul and tempests murky May unship us in a crack. But, since life at most a jest is, As philosophers allow, Still to laugh by far the best is, Then laugh on—as I do now. Laugh at all things, Great and small things, Sick or well, at sea or shore; While we're quaffing, Let's have laughing— Who the devil cares for more?— Some good wine! and who would lack it, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... and he kin git a clip on the jaw, like I give my man once. No, sir. Bears is better company than is men. I know for I've tried 'em both. Take my advice and when ye wants to git another husband, jest ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders in the Great North Woods • Jessie Graham Flower
... Sir, the court, In troth, stays for you. I am mad, a mule That never read Justinian, should get up, And ride an advocate. Had you no quirk To avoid gullage, sir, by such a creature? I hope you do but jest; he has not done it: 'Tis but confederacy, to blind the rest. ...
— Volpone; Or, The Fox • Ben Jonson
... what appeared a reasonable interval, long enough for it not to seem that she was too much elated over it, she remarked, "An', by-de-way, Mr. Peters, I must tell you what a lovely Christmas gif' I have just received by de hand of Mr. Pier. He has jest presented me with his yaller-wheeled buggy, an' I sho' is proud of it." Then, turning to Pierre, she added, "You sho' is a mighty generous gen'leman, ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various
... do not ask, when back on Blighty's shore My frozen frame in liberty shall rest, For pleasure to beguile the hours in store With long-drawn revel or with antique jest. I do not ask to probe the tedious pomp And tinsel splendour of the last Revue; The Fox-trot's mysteries, the giddy Romp, And all such folly I would fain eschew. But, propt on cushions of my long desire, Deep-buried in the vastest of armchairs, Let me recline what time the roaring fire Consumes ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 11, 1917 • Various
... sell, an' I concluded I'd go along next day; 't wa'n't more 'n' seven mile from the Centre, down by a piece o' piny woods, an' the woman was Miss Adams. I used ter know George Adams quite a spell ago, an' he was a likely feller. Well, it come on to snow jest as fine an' dry as sand, an' the wind blew like needles, an', come next day, when I started to foot it down there, I didn't feel as though I could ha' gone, ef I hadn't been sure of a good bargain; the snow hadn't driv much, but the weather had settled down dreadful ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... a chin-beard of considerable length, and the remainder of his face was blue with shaving, Challoner could only suppose himself the subject of a jest. He was no longer under the spell of the young lady's presence; and with men, and above all with his inferiors, he was capable of some display ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... falsehood spoken by me before, O blessed lady, even in jest. What need then be said of (such a solemn occasion as) preparing sanctified food with the aid of Vedic formulae after igniting the fire? It was ordained of yore by Destiny, O amiable one! I have ascertained it all by my penances. All the descendants ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... you was, too, my lads, to run through a gap that way. And now look here, you, jest recklect all this; you've both got your necks in nooses, and Mr Brymer here's got hold o' the other ends of the ropes, so as he can pull 'em any time he likes, and he will too if you don't stick pretty close to your dooty. ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... many stumps. Thinkin' that, of coorse they'll think it's o' no use to try to cross the river and give chase, 'cause I've got a long start o' 'em, an' so, d'ye see, they'll give me up an' think no more about me. Good! very good! But p'r'aps it's jest poss'ble that feller whose paw I tickled may sometimes recall ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... tears in my eyes—was a sort of chorus, in general; and affected to be convulsed with mirth at the comic parts, and to be overcome with fear when there was any passage of an alarming character in the narrative. This rather put me out, very often. It was a great jest of his, I recollect, to pretend that he couldn't keep his teeth from chattering, whenever mention was made of an Alguazill in connexion with the adventures of Gil Blas; and I remember that when Gil Blas met the captain of the robbers in Madrid, ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... evidently playing with scepticism; for himself, he had no heart to jest upon the subject. The Scotch sceptic acknowledged that the metaphysical riddles of his "absolute scepticism" exercised, and ought to exercise, no practical influence on himself or any man; that the moment he quitted them, and entered into society, "they appeared to him so frigid and unnatural" ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... war! Those marches put something into him I like. Even at this distance his mettle is but little softened. As soon as he gets warmed up, it all comes back to him. He catches your step and away you go, a gay, adventurous, half-predatory couple. How quickly he falls into the old ways of jest and anecdote and song! You may have known him for years without having heard him hum an air, or more than casually revert to the subject of his experience during the war. You have even questioned and cross-questioned him without firing the train you wished. But get him out ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... MR. Y. You jest! Then they cut down your rations, so that every day, every hour you feel a distinct difference between life and death; all life's functions are repressed; you feel yourself grovelling, and your soul, which should be bettered ...
— Plays: Comrades; Facing Death; Pariah; Easter • August Strindberg
... I stared at him that he should stoop to jest, yet having a ready leap of comradeship toward him for it; then suddenly his mood changed. Close to me he edged, and began talking with a serious shrewdness which showed his mind brought fully to bear upon the situation. "You say, sir," said he, "that Mistress Mary ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... in spite of you, and I know to whom to apply. Do you think you can play fast and loose with me and my love? No, no! I used to believe in you; I turned, a deaf ear to your traducers. My mad passion for you became known; I was the jest and the butt of the town. But you have opened my eyes, and at last I see clearly on whom my vengeance ought to fall. He was formerly my friend, and I would believe nothing against him; although I was often warned, I took no notice. But ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - LA CONSTANTIN—1660 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... disturbs the calm of Winter's rest, But quiet and serene on earth's broad breast Is shrub and bush and seed in loamy hold; The buds on elm are waiting to unfold, Our biddie hen wears crimson on her crest. This gorgeous day, when children laugh and jest, And run and dance ...
— Clear Crystals • Clara M. Beede
... unruliness diffused itself among us and, under its influence, differences of culture and constitution were waived. We banded ourselves together, some boldly, some in jest and some almost in fear: and of the number of these latter, the reluctant Indians who were afraid to seem studious or lacking in robustness, I was one. The adventures related in the literature of the Wild West were remote from my nature but, at least, ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... Shih, does away with rotten old customs. Wang Hsi-feng imitates in jest (the dutiful son), by getting herself ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... long I waited—waited with soul aflame— And then through the still of evening, humming a tune, you came; Came with a jest on your smiling lips, and eyes that were all too gay; And the light died out of my waiting heart with the words that I ...
— Cross Roads • Margaret E. Sangster
... most dutiful slave?" whispered he, and his breath fanned her cheek. "Ah, no. But do not forget our conversation, loveliest of women. Things spoken in jest often come true in the end." She looked up and smiled as if enchanted at the idea. Then she rose, and when he grasped one of her hands she made no effort to wrest it away. He imprinted a long-drawn kiss on it. She shivered and then rapidly glided into the adjoining room, where the ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... examined the lock. It was a simple one, and as my idea now was to free myself without raising an alarm, I decided to unscrew it with my pocket-knife. I was still confused, but inclined to consider my imprisonment a jest, perhaps on the part of Charlie Jones, who tempered his religious fervor with a fondness ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... had left us, we used to hold long and frequent conversations about them, and I noticed that Peterkin's manner was now much altered. He did not, indeed, jest less heartily than before, but he did so less frequently, and often there was a tone of deep seriousness in his manner, if not in his words, which made him seem to Jack and me as if he had grown two years ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... himself, and a soft look came into his eyes. The girl was making a jest of a situation that would have appalled multitudes of her over-civilized sisters, and he marvelled at her courage. The glow in his eyes grew brighter as he stared into vacancy. Some day-dream softened the stern lines in ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... "rules of the road," and these rules contribute greatly to our convenience and safety. Such rules are the result of the common sense of man working upon his everyday problems. To violate one of these practical rules is to be a blunderer, and blundering is a subject for jest rather than bitter denouncement. Hence the humorous and satirical note ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... frocks and tunics with one shoulder; yes, by Jove, you go ahead and give them armor and mount them on horses and, if you like, take them to Spain; and let's bring them in here, so that they may take part in our assemblies." Valerius said this in jest, but the women hearing him (many of them were hanging about near the Forum inquisitive to know how the affair would come out) rushed into the assembly denouncing the law; and accordingly, as it was speedily repealed, they put on some ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) • Cassius Dio
... difficulty of getting labour, penalties, and damage caused by cattle, even of Bismarck, the war of 1866, and Napoleon III., whom Kollomietzev called a hero. Kollomietzev gave vent to the most retrograde opinions, going so far as to propose, in jest it is true, a toast given by a certain friend of his on a names-day banquet, "I drink to the only principle I acknowledge, ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... prattling and poetizing about the mysteries of love, the delightful life of youth with full cups and empty purses, the pleasures of travel and of poetry, the Roman and still more frequently the Veronese anecdote of the town, and the humorous jest amidst the familiar circle of friends. But not only does Apollo touch the lyre of the poet, he wields also the bow; the winged dart of sarcasm spares neither the tedious verse-maker nor the provincial who corrupts the language, but it hits none ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... so as to try and make out whether his ally was speaking in jest or earnest; and there was enough feeble light in the east to enable him to read pretty plainly that the lad was ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... if a guy wants a bath, there's the river, all full o' 'gators and cattawampuses and things. And if ye eat, I s'pose ye rustle yer own grub and pay for eatin' it off that slab table there. There's jest one thing ye can say for this dump—a feller can spit on the floor. But with all them cracks in it he might not hit it, at that. Mother of mine! To think Missus Ryan's li'l' boy should ever git caught stayin' in a hole like this, along o' drunks and skiddin' she-goats ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... he replied, "you insist, Mave; but I'll tell you what—I'll put Peggy in a coach yet, when I come into my fortune; an' so you'll insist, will you? Jest look at that wrist of yours," he replied, seizing hers, but with gentleness, "and then look at this of mine; an' now will you tell me that you'll insist? Come, Darby, we're bound for the Bank; there's not a beech there but's a hundred feet high, an' that's higher than ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... profess to understand the language of birds; but the passage in the text is probably intended only in jest. ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... all dead, and my children is all dead, and I'm dead, too. Women don't live, you know, they jest work." This last in a low, confidential tone as she stretched the wrinkles of her face into a ghastly grin. "I've heard of you," she went on. "You think you are going to make the women live same as men. You can't do it. We ain't for ourselves, we are jest made ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... man to speak hoped it was not an accident; and again the second man, fearing that someone might have missed it, repeated the old jest about presence of mind and absence ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 24, 1917 • Various
... rejoined he. "You are fast recovering, I see. There is not much the matter with a midshipman when he is able to fling a sly jest in the face of his captain. But—midshipman? My dear Ralph, you are no longer such. How could I be so forgetful? Your commission has come out by the packet which arrived yesterday, and the admiral will hand it you the first time you call upon him. Now let me ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... was in anything but the mood for joking, yet a certain dour humour in the jest caught his fancy and persuaded him against ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... and with many a knight to bear him company rode, not eager and swift, like a prince who went to find a treasure, but steady and slow, as we should go to meet sorrow. Not one of the hundred men who followed dared to lilt a lay or fling a laughing jest from his mouth. All rode silent among their gay trappings, for so ...
— The Story and Song of Black Roderick • Dora Sigerson
... wild huntsman in the ballad is nothing to him, all except the sublimity—intending very seriously to take the first he can. He is now about one in particular, but I won't tell where it is because we have considered so many houses in particular that our considerations have come to be a jest in general. I shall be heartily glad, at least I think so, for it is possible that the reality of being bricked up for a lease time may not be very agreeable. I think I shall be heartily glad when a house is taken, ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... what was jest to the soldiers, I saw, by his face, was fierce enough earnest to him. We walked on a little, ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... colored paper filling the air before it, and the people still reverently bowing down to the host. The solemn and impressive chanting of the priests kindled the pious enthusiasm of the multitude, and as the line passed the cafes and estaminets, or smoking houses, the pipe, the drink, and the gay jest were abandoned, to pay homage to the faith of ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic
... was no necessity for suppressing his remarks, for he had spoken his mind as freely on them elsewhere as in these letters. But any personal reflections written on the spur of the moment, in confidence or in jest, have been struck out, however strong the temptation sometimes of leaving them. Many expressions, too, of his kind feelings towards me have been omitted. If some have been left, I hope I may be forgiven for a pride ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... snow-flakes, encompassed in blackest darkness, the little column toiled steadily on through sludge ankle-deep, those in the rear judging by the quantity of snow lodged on the hats and coats of those in front, the load that they themselves were carrying. Not a word, a jest, or a snatch of song broke the silence ...
— The Campaign of Trenton 1776-77 • Samuel Adams Drake
... then explained how the tavern had lost its custom when the old stage line was broken up by the railroad. The introduction of steam was, in Mr. Sewell's estimation, a fatal error. "Jest killed local business. Carried it off, I 'm darned if I know where. The whole country has been sort o' retrograding ever sence steam ...
— Miss Mehetabel's Son • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Fancy and Observation resided; and from their union sprang this numerous and whimsical progeny. This is the head of George Alexander Stevens, long known and long respected; a man universally acknowledged of infinite wit and most excellent fancy; one who gave peculiar grace to the jest, and could set the table in a roar with flashes of merriment: but wit and humour were not his only excellencies; he possessed a keenness of satire, that made Folly hide her head in the highest places, and Vice tremble in the bosoms of the great: ...
— A Lecture On Heads • Geo. Alex. Stevens
... was aimin' to do that assessment work and couldn't jest lay my hands on the time. I'd been a millionaire three years and didn't know it. Then this damned Morse butts in and euchres me out of the claim. Some day him and me'll have a settlement. If the law don't ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... at him to see if he was in jest or earnest. Her look staggered him a little, but he repeated his question. She cast her eyes down ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... me to hear from Obed that he and Margit had determined on a sea voyage, and wished to book their passages to the Canton River and back in the Macartney. I had often given this invitation in jest: but such voyages merely for health and pleasure were then far from common. Yet there was no single impediment to their going. They had no children: they were well-to-do: they had now a hind, or steward (one Stephens), to whose care they might comfortably leave the farm. To be ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... see your eagerness in that direction, Francisco, and I did but jest with my daughters. You have not yet asked me what is the destination of the Lido, for that is the name of your new vessel. This time you are going quite in a new direction. In the spring we are certain to have war with Genoa, and as Parma and Hungary will probably both take side against us, ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... big as you," he said, "but if I was the same shape, I'd go to a bush carpenter, and get him to trim me down with an adze." Then after this jest, he resumed seriously. "Well, Ted, it is just this. Lizzie says that she likes Sydney but you do not, and that you will never stay there for more than a week at a time. Now, that isn't doing the square thing by her. You and I as well, never think that the ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
... bloated face of the Belgian: all those maimed and broken men condemned to live and carry on the living flesh the pranks of shell fire. For it was surely better to be torn to pieces and to die than to be sent forth a jest. ...
— Young Hilda at the Wars • Arthur Gleason
... luxury of plain speech, wondered in vain what they had done to offend her. Her desire was now towards new friends, new faces. Her sense of humour appeared to be departing from her; it became unsafe to jest with her. On the other hand, she showed herself greedy for admiration and flattery. Her former chums stepped back astonished to watch brainless young fops making their way with her by complimenting her upon her blouse, ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... stopped for a moment to ladle out a dipperful of water from the wooden pail he carried upon his left arm, while now and then he stopped to hear some complaint of a weary man, to promise aid or seek to jest away the prisoner's melancholy. ...
— The New Land - Stories of Jews Who Had a Part in the Making of Our Country • Elma Ehrlich Levinger
... am going to give you—my wife. You have had her from the first, and now she is yours." For one frightful moment there was no sound; even the men's breathing was hushed, and they sat slack-jawed, stunned, half-minded to believe this some hideous, incredible jest. But the maniacal light in Cortlandt's eyes, and Anthony's chalk-white, frozen countenance soon showed them the truth. Some one gasped, another laughed hysterically, the sound breaking in his throat. ...
— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach
... time she saw no one, and commenced to fear that the whole thing had been a gruesomely real, practical jest. So she stopped her horse and imitated the signal whistle as well as she could. It was repeated immediately behind her—almost in her ear, and she turned to make out the dark ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand
... to make her happy and contented; and there is nothing I can imagine that would make me more unhappy than to fail in the effort. I know I should be much happier with you than the way I am, provided I saw no signs of discontent in you. What you have said to me may have been in the way of jest, or I may have misunderstood you. If so, then let it be forgotten; if otherwise, I much wish you would think seriously before you decide. What I have said I will most positively abide by, provided ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... and craftily bringing her to the son-in-law after the wedding-feast, is scarcely due to the invention of an individual. The shepherd's tricks, by which Jacob colours the sheep as he likes, have quite the flavour of a popular jest. The observance of hospitality or transgressions against it, occupy a prominent place in the Genesis of the Jehovist; Lot's entertainment, and the Sodomites' insulting maltreatment, of the Deity who comes among them in disguise, is an incident ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... squeaking train"; but he was no sooner a minister of Charles than he flung himself into the debauchery of the Court with an ardour which surprised even his master. "You are the wickedest dog in England!" laughed the king at some unscrupulous jest of his counsellor's. "Of a subject, sir, I believe I am!" was the unabashed reply. But the debauchery of Ashley was simply a mask. He was in fact temperate by nature and habit, and his ill-health rendered any great excess impossible. Men soon found that ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... Lay here all night and breakfasted at railway hotel. J.H. Hayford, editor Laramie Sentinel, told us of the bill to repeal the woman suffrage law in Wyoming. The law had been passed by a Democratic legislature as a jest, but five Democrats voted for repeal and four Republicans against it, in one house, and in the other, three Republicans voted against and every Democrat for the repeal. Governor Campbell, a Republican, vetoed this repeal bill and woman suffrage ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... the present time, though all his sensations were more or less new to him. And his mother's sudden and rather eccentric opposition unexpectedly strengthened his determination. He might laugh at what he called her originality, but he could not afford to jest at the prospect of her giving Clare an account of his life. She was quite capable of it, and would ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford
... coustume," etc. Baum, ii., App., 102, 103. Nemours, after his conspiracy was discovered, fled from court. He wrote, however, disclaiming any ulterior object in his invitations to the young Prince of Orleans, to whom he had in jest proposed to go with ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... sound sleeper. It has been a standing jest in the family that nothing could ever wake me during the night; and yet somehow on that particular night, whether it may have been the slight excitement produced by my little adventure or not, ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... missed you yesterday, and they hope nothing was the matter at home. Among them are brazen jades who chatter saucily with the guards, and these are the best treated of all. They are asked no gruff, surly questions, but with a wink and a jest ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... joke?" said Handyside sadly. "That's very generous of you, Alan, if I may say so,—to quote Caw—but the Green Box is too hard and cold a fact to jest about." ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... abundantly facetious, which took much with the Queen, when it suited with the season, as he was well able to judge of the times; he had a very quaint saying, and he used it often to good purpose, "that he loved the jest well, but not the loss of his friend;" and that, though he knew that "VERUS QUISQUE SUAE FORTUNAE FABER," was a true and good principle, yet the most in number were those that numbered themselves, but I will never forgive that ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... There was held the great council of the Immortals. When the ocean was quiet, Poseidon had left it to visit Olympus. There came Hephaestos, quitting his subterranean fires and gloomy laborers, to jest and be jested with, sitting by his beautiful queen. There, while the sun hung motionless in mid-heaven, Apollo descended from his burning chariot to join the feast. Artemis and Demeter came from the woods and fields to unite in the high assembly, and war was suspended while Ares made love to ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... place, comrades,' she heard a voice say, then laughter. A little water? What had Eberhard Ludwig said? 'One might stand a siege here if one turned the waters on from inside; I don't believe anything but a sea-serpent could enter!'—idle words spoken in jest. Was there a chance left? If she could find the lever—but it would not turn—the hinges must be locked with rust. She was seeking wildly along the wall now, her hands rasped and bleeding with scraping against the rough surface. She remembered Eberhard ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... o' my grandmother keep the water out?" growled Tom, scornfully. "Why, she couldn't keep it out if we set her in it. I jest got one peep, and then the water hid it, but there's a hole pretty nigh big enough for you to ...
— The Lost Middy - Being the Secret of the Smugglers' Gap • George Manville Fenn
... "Couldn't tell ye jest what happened. They went off int' the house. Nex' day the boss tol' me he wa'n't no longer a poor man an' was goin' t' sell his farm an' leave for Californy. In a tavern near where we lived the stranger died sudden ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... me a hard blow in wanton play; I growl with new-born ecstasy; Then speaks she in a sweet vain jest, I wot "Allons lout doux! eh! la menotte! Et faites serviteur Comme un joli seigneur." Thus she proceeds ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... in jest about those cups in order to induce them to laugh," old goody Liu at these words, mused within herself, "but, who would have thought that she actually has some of the kind. I've often been to the large households of village gentry on a visit, and even been ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... His royalty is not the blare of trumpets, but the 'Hosanna!' from a thousand throats. That is not the sort of King that the world calls a King. The Roman soldiers might well have thought they were perpetrating an exquisite jest when they thrust the reed into His unresisting hand, and crushed down the crown of thorns on His ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... foller. Never was handled right when I was a colt. Don't you wait fer me, feller, you jest sift along in and I'll ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... you, Seer Marcous?" she exclaimed, seizing my hand rapturously. I verily believe she thought I was in earnest, for when I turned aside my jest, she pouted in disappointment and declared that it ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... with its enemies. He certainly must have thought it open to ridicule; and now that it is recalled to his memory, (he had, I believe, wholly forgotten the circumstance,) he recollects that he did treat it with some levity. But is it a fair inference from a jest on this unseasonable lamentation, that he was then an enemy to monarchy, either in this or in any other country? The contrary perhaps ought to be inferred,—if anything at all can be argued from pleasantries good or bad. Is it for this reason, or ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... objects of no little jealousy on the part of other personages belonging to the court circle. The exceedingly sarcastic and malevolent tongue of the Baroness Kotze, and the somewhat coarse flavor of the ever-ready jest and quip of her jovial, loud-voiced, hail-fellow-well-met mannered husband did not tend to ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... luved him, for he never yoosed us rite. He hated the Whigs ez bad ez we did, but after we beat em and elevated him to the Presidency, the stealins didn't come in ez fast ez we expected. Never shel I forgit the compliment he paid me. Jest after his election I presented myself afore him with my papers, an applicant for a place. He read em, and scanned me with ...
— "Swingin Round the Cirkle." • Petroleum V. Nasby
... uncles that tower up at times above the common levels of humanity. At times, when we consider our derived and undeserved share of his inheritance and count the joys it gives us, we have projected half in jest and half in earnest the putting together of a little exemplary book upon the subject of such exceptional men: Celebrated Uncles, it should be called; and it should stir up all who read it to some striving at least towards the glories of the avuncular crown. ...
— Floor Games; a companion volume to "Little Wars" • H. G. Wells
... despotic ruler. Later generations could recognise that his supreme merit was that he made England one. He did not die in England. In 1087 he fought with his lord, the king of France, Philip I. In anger at a jest of Philip's he set fire to Mantes. As he rode amidst the burning houses his horse shied and threw him forward on the pommel of his saddle. He was now corpulent and the injury proved fatal. On September 9 he died. When the body was ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... this remark, because the hearers felt uncertain whether he meant the pronoun for a jest. To evade the difficulty, old O'Beirne bade Dan fetch a mug for a drop of poteen, and meanwhile ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... can't yeh give a poor feller a couple of cents t' git a bed? I got five, and I gits anudder two I gits me a bed. Now, on th' square, gents, can't yeh jest gimme two cents t' git a bed? Now, yeh know how a respecter'ble gentlem'n feels when he's down on ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... we take her no more seriously than she takes us. I maintain that one should always talk of philosophy with a smile. We owe it to the Eternal to be virtuous but we have the right to add to this tribute our irony as a sort of personal reprisal. In this way we return to the right quarter jest for jest; we play the trick that has been played on us. Saint Augustine's phrase: Lord, if we arc deceived, it is by thee! remains a fine one, well suited to our modern feeling. Only we wish the ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... by moi bedside hours every day, Polly," he said, "and it's moi turn now to take thy place here. Jack ha' brought over all moi books, for oi couldn't make shift to carry them and use moi crutches, and oi'll explain all the pictures to Jarge jest as Maister ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty
... he remembers." Very likely there may be people who can read this, even the "all in black," without laughing, and among them I should suppose must be the somebody or other, whose name we too have forgotten, who is said to have imagined that he had more than parried Sydney's unforgiven jest about the joke and the surgical operation, by retorting, "Yes! an English joke." I have always wept to think that Sydney did not live to hear this retort. The classical places for this kind of summary work are the article just named on Ceylon, and that on Waterton. But the most inimitable single ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... Colville stopped short, while a cold bewilderment bathed him from head to foot. It must be some sort of jest, though he could not tell where the humour was, and he could not treat ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... imitate the rector, in his manner of performing the ceremony, as we deem the matter to be too serious for jest; but we will say, never before was ceremony performed in so strange a manner. However, to all intents and purposes, they were married; and at the conclusion of the service, the bridegroom slipped a fifty-dollar note into the rector's hand, and then conducted his lovely ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... which were displayed so as to spare the luckless ones the slightest jolt or pain while being carried in uncomfortable positions and attitudes over the thickly dust-strewn and uneven road. The fortitude of the badly battered was wonderful. They forgot their sufferings, and were even bandying jest and joke. Their cheeriness under the most terrible conditions was soul-moving. No one can testify more truthfully to the Tapley cheeriness of the British soldier under the most adverse conditions ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... monks in pursuit of the female laity; and how in due course he had been taken out barefooted and down to the parlour, where was a supper fit for the duke, and at it twelve jolly friars, the roaringest boys he had ever met in peace or war. How the story, the toast, the jest, the wine-cup had gone round, and some had played cards with a gorgeous pack, where Saint Theresa, and Saint Catherine, etc., bedizened with gold, stood for the four queens; and black, white, grey, and crutched friars for the four knaves; and had ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... "Um-ah! Jest look at 'em!" murmured Jeff. "Golly! I kin git one as easy as not outen dat open box! Wait till ...
— The Story of a China Cat • Laura Lee Hope
... him in somebody's doorway. Hullo! Here's the house of that County Council! I fancies now it is rather in your way! You're up to everythink, you swells are, from "Betterment" to the claims of Cabby. You've a lot to learn; so jest have a turn—as I hope ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, May 17, 1890. • Various
... appetite and luxury Are forced their empire to resign; The wanton sport, the jest obscene, The ignoble sway of sleep and wine, And all the plagues of languid sense Feel the ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius
... wen he dies, but Billy says they are all true but the facks. Uncle Ned sed cude I tell one, and I ast him wot about, and he sed: "Wel Johnny, as you got to do the tellin I'le leav the choice of subjeck entirely to you; jest giv us some thing about a little boy that went and ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... cry, Phillis," said Bacchus, snuffing and blowing his nose; "and I thought I might be wanted for somethin, so I jest took a small drop to ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... Russians, amused themselves with making game. I have said they were in great spirits, particularly Count Theodore; indeed he was generally the gayer of the pair—his sister being evidently the more prudent—and in this respect they resembled the Lorenskis. Many a jest, however, on the non-appearance of the wolves went round our sledge, of which I remember nothing now except that we all laughed till the old ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal, No. 421, New Series, Jan. 24, 1852 • Various
... war ter jest tie 'em up, or wrop 'em in a bit of canvas, they'd go straighter, and wouldn't scatter round so bad," remarked old Trull, who was not an uninterested spectator of ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... thankless task before you, subject to ribald jest, to the cold, heartless sneer, to obloquy and abuse of all sorts from our and even your sex, who are most immediately to be benefited by your labors, will have this great truth to console and stimulate you, that in every ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... I ain't here to try to take up things that can't be took up ag'in." Apparently he had prepared the speech carefully, and now he went on with more ease: "I'm leavin' these here parts for some place unknown. Before I go I jest want to say I know I was wrong from the beginnin'. All I want to say is that I was jest all sort of tied up in a knot inside and when I seen you with him—" He stopped. "I hope you marry some gent that's worth you, only they ain't any such. An'—I want to ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... could I jest about it? When you go I face the desert again. You have come like water into my life—are you going out of it forever to-morrow? May I never hope to see you again—or hear from you?" She rose in amazement; he was between her and the door. ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman
... reader will forgive me for my luckless description of the procession to lay the corner stone of the Halifax Lunatic Asylum, in Chapter I. No person can trifle or jest with the object of so noble a charity. But the procession itself was pretty much as I have described it; indeed, pretty much like all the civic processions I have ever witnessed in any country. The following account of the results of that good ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... for the kindly words, for he knew that they were meant and not said merely in jest. The idea that he had perhaps injured Marzio in the Cardinal's estimation was very painful to him, in spite of what he had felt that morning. Moreover, the prelate's plain, common-sense view of the case reassured him, and removed a doubt that had long ago disturbed his peace of mind. On reflection ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... dares say such a thing? Does she say so? It may be that once or twice a few words escaped me in jest. You know how it is—when I found myself face to face with a pretty woman—you know how it is—if only not to cut ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... to jest, my baby Prince, and the joke is fairly good. But why did you willingly thrust your head into the lion's mouth? When you were free, why did you not stay free? We did not know we had left a single person in Pingaree! ...
— Rinkitink in Oz • L. Frank Baum
... mimic of the woods! thou motley fool! Who shall thy gay buffoonery describe? Thine ever-ready notes of ridicule Pursue thy fellows still with jest and gibe. Wit—sophist—songster—Yorick of thy tribe, Thou sportive satirist of Nature's school, To thee the palm of scoffing we ascribe, Arch scoffer, and mad Abbot of Misrule! For such thou art by day—but all night long Thou pour'st a soft, sweet, ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... behest, His menial train attend the stranger-guest; Whom Pallas with unpardoning fury fired, By lordly pride and keen reproach inspired. A Samian peer, more studious than the rest Of vice, who teem'd with many a dead-born jest; And urged, for title to a consort queen, Unnumber'd acres arable and green (Otesippus named); this lord Ulysses eyed, And thus burst out the ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... put down his cup, trying to smile and make a jest of the words. "Suppose a fellow had it in him to be a rascal, and nobody ever knew ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... impertinent! Do you mean to go any further? We are a fighting race, we Brodies. O, you may laugh, sir! But 'tis no child's play to jest us on our Deacon, or, for that matter, on our Deacon's chamber either. It was his father's before him: he works in it by day and sleeps in it by night; and scarce anything it contains but is the labour of his hands. Do you see ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XV • Robert Louis Stevenson
... nor Shooe. These Sot-weed Planters Crowd the Shoar, In hue as tawny as a Moor: Figures so strange, no God design'd, To be a part of Humane kind: But wanton Nature, void of Rest, Moulded the brittle Clay in Jest. At last a Fancy very odd Took me, this was the Land of Nod; Planted at first, when Vagrant Cain, His Brother had unjustly slain; Then Conscious of the Crime he'd done From Vengeance dire, he hither run, And in a hut ...
— The Sot-weed Factor: or, A Voyage to Maryland • Ebenezer Cook
... life. At other times PUNCH hangs the devil: this is as it should be. Destroy the principle of evil by increasing the means of cultivating the good, and the gallows will then become as much a wonder as it is now a jest. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... at the other end; and the scene was embellished by a ruined castle in the distance, and a quantity of skulls and cross-bones in the fore-ground. Elizabeth could not but think it unkind of him to jest on this matter, while her eye-lids were still burning and heavy from the tears it had caused her to shed; but she knew Rupert well enough to be certain that it was only a sign that he was out of temper, and had not yet conquered his old boyish love of teazing. She ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... old King dies in peace. Aldwin dies likewise, and to them succeed their sons, Alboin and Cunimund—the latter probably the prince who made the jest about the brood-mares—and they two will fight the quarrel out. Cunimund, says Paul, began the war—of course that is his story. Alboin is growing a great man; he has married a daughter of Clotaire, king of the Franks: and now he takes ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... Ahmed saw the pavilion, which the fairy called the largest in her treasury, he fancied she was joking, and his surprise appeared in his face. Pari Banou burst out laughing. 'What! Prince,' cried she, 'do you think I jest with you? You will see presently that I am in earnest. Nourgihan' said she to her treasurer, taking the tent out of Prince Ahmed's hands, 'go and set it up, that the prince may judge whether the sultan his father will ...
— Fairy Tales From The Arabian Nights • E. Dixon
... that the United States was stunned is but to expose the inadequacy of language. The whole world was stunned. It confronted that blight of the human brain, the unprecedented. Human endeavour was a jest, a monstrous futility, when a lunatic on a lonely island, who owned a yacht and an exposed village, could destroy five of the proudest fleets of Christendom. And how had he done it? Nobody knew. The ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... everyone around me, ay, even the women and the tenderest juveniles! clap the hands and laugh in their sleeves with merriment at quirks and gleeks in which—in spite of all my classical proficiency—I could not discover le mot pour rire or crack so much as the cream of a jest, but must sit there melancholy as a gib cat or smile at the wrong end ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... explain either that secret power he possessed or the fascination he exerted. "It is not always the most brilliant actions which best expose the virtues or vices of men. Some trifle, some insignificant word or jest, often displays the character better than bloody combats, pitched battles, or the taking of cities. Also, as portrait painters try to reproduce the features and expression of their subjects, as the most obvious presentment of their characters, ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux
... partly because I was so new to them, and partly because Harry Truelocke often took part in them also. My merry and kind playfellow, I wonder if you have yet any heart for such simple pleasures? or if, in the midst of miseries and perils, you can still jest and laugh? ...
— Andrew Golding - A Tale of the Great Plague • Anne E. Keeling
... turn with disgust from that affected prudery, arising, if not from a participation, at least from a knowledge of evil, which induces certain ladies to cast down their eyes, look grave, and shew the extent of their knowledge, or the pruriency of their imaginations, by discovering in a harmless jest nothing to alarm their experienced feelings. I respect that woman whose innate purity prevents those around her from uttering aught that can arouse it, much more than her whose sensitive prudery continually reminds one, that she ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... to make his welcome good, as he expressed it, he carried with him an armful of fat-pine splinters. Miss Becky Staley had a great reputation in those parts as a fortune-teller, and the schoolgirls, as well as older people, often tested her powers in this direction, some in jest and some in earnest. Free Joe placed his humble offering of light-wood in the chimney corner, and then seated himself on the steps, dropping his ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... observing it. A colleague of his at the Illinois bar has told how on circuit he sometimes came down in the morning and found Lincoln sitting alone over the embers of the fire, where he had sat all night in sad meditation, after an evening of jest apparently none the less hilarious for his total abstinence. There was no scope for this brooding now, and in a sense the time of his severest trial cannot have been the saddest time of Lincoln's life. It must have been ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... boy. "Where the king goes I go, and where I go thou shalt be my companion. See, senors," he said, turning to the others, "how the ready faith of boyhood puts your fears to shame. To his Majesty the terrors of this goblin cave are but a jest which frightens the old and only rouses the young to courage. The king may find the recesses of the cavern filled with gold and jewels; he who goes with him may share them. This boy is my ...
— Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... White Riding Hood was fined ten shillings, under the clause, or sent to prison for so many days. 'Why, Lord bless you, sir,' said the Police-officer, who showed me out, with a great enjoyment of the jest of her having been got up so effectively, and caused so much hesitation: 'if she goes to prison, that will be nothing new to HER. She comes from Charles Street, ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... prolifick Mr. Fielding," as the Prompter calls him, attributed its condemnation to causes other than its lack of interest. In his Advertisement he openly complains of the "cruel Usage" his "poor Play" had met with, and of the barbarity of the young men about town who made "a Jest of damning Plays"—a pastime which, whether it prevailed in this case or not, no doubt existed, as Sarah Fielding afterwards refers to it in David Simple. If an author—he goes on to say—"be so unfortunate [as] to depend on the ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... have it, my dear," said he. "You see, my ambition to found a country of my own, where a man may have a real ambition. This dirty village here is too narrow a field for talents like yours or mine. Let me tell you, Napoleon has played a great jest with Mr. Jefferson. There is nothing in the Constitution of the United States—I am lawyer enough to know that—which will make it possible for Congress to ratify the purchase of Louisiana. We cannot carve new States from that country—it is already settled ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... swept out of Fernhurst station on the last morning, with its waving hands and shoutings, was a shriek from the Buller's day-room: "Wait for the Three Cock!" Gordon laughed for a second, and then looked bored. The jest had ceased to have a shred of humour left upon it. It was naked and ought ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... immediately by a bagacay which a lad threw at it, which struck it clear to the heart. It is a thing that would cause laughter in Europa, and there would be little esteem for the valor which does not despise such weapons, and they would jest at so frail violence. But it is certain that, at close range, there is no crueler weapon; and it is also certain that, the day on which these Moros have bravery enough to get within range, on that day any ship must yield. For they send in ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... minutes later, after perpetrating a jest which completely convulsed his auditors, the War Office official rose to his feet, endeavoured to adjust a monocle—with no success—smoothed his tunic, winked long and expressively, and with an air of melancholy ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... Markkam. Poor Richard's Almanack gives it twice, as "the foot of a master is the best manure" and "the eye of a master will do more work than both his hands." It is perennial in its appeal. The present editor saw it recently in the German comic paper Fliegende Blaetter. But the jest is much older than Cato. It appears in Aeschylus, Persae, 171 and Xenophon employs it in ...
— Roman Farm Management - The Treatises Of Cato And Varro • Marcus Porcius Cato
... starved his own cause, so slender an advantage was obtained against him. I retired before the vote I have mentioned; as Mr. Fox was complicated in it, I would not appear against him, and I could not range myself with a squadron who I think must be the jest of Europe and posterity. It now remains to settle some ministry: Mr. Pitt's friends are earnest, and some of them trafficking for an union with Newcastle. He himself, I believe, maintains his dignity, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... disposed to go very far with the bishops, but still less was she fervent for God's glory and public Reformation. Accordingly, on the first Court day she handed Knox's letter, perhaps unread, to the Bishop of Glasgow, with the words, 'Please you, my Lord, to read a Pasquil.' The unwise jest came to Knox's ears, and some years after he published his letter with resentful additions and interpolations. In these he assumed—much too soon—that there was no longer hope of the Regent becoming personally convinced of ...
— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes
... not jest—nor are ye thralls," replied Leif, assuming a look and tone of unwonted seriousness. "Give me your attention, friends; and thou, Karlsefin, take note of what I say, for I care not to talk much on this ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... though he has never been an apprentice he can do something towards mending a cart or a door. He makes stands with wires to put flowers in for the farmers' parlours, and strings the dry oak-apples on wire, which he twists into baskets, to hold knicknackeries. He is witty, and has his jest for everybody. He can do something of everything—turn his hand any way—a perfect treasure on the farm. In the old days there was another character in most villages; this was the rhymer. He was commonly the fiddler too, and sang his own verses to tunes played ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... Brainard, with what was meant to be a gentle jest, "no one can break my heart except Leroy. I should not care enough about ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie
... [Footnote: This incident is mentioned by La Motte-Cadillac; by the intendant, who reports it to the minister; by the minister Ponchartrain, who asks Frontenac for an explanation; by Frontenac, who passes it off as a jest; and by several ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... felt perfectly sure whether he was in jest or earnest. She looked at him again to see what he meant—which was not very easy, for Sir Tom meant two things directly opposed to each other. He meant what he said, and yet said what he knew was nonsense, and laughed at himself inwardly with a keen recognition of this fact. Notwithstanding, ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... of her head, and a red spot of indignant fire came in each of her cheeks. "Joe Smith?", she cried. "A blasphemous wretch! And there is nothing, Mr. Finney, that so well indicates the luke-warmishness into which so many have fallen as that his blasphemy is made a jest of." ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... with much beer, Mulcahy opened his projects to such as he deemed fittest to listen. And these were, one and all, of that quaint, crooked, sweet, profoundly irresponsible and profoundly lovable race that fight like fiends, argue like children, reason like women, obey like men, and jest like their own goblins of the rath through rebellion, loyalty, want, woe, or war. The underground work of a conspiracy is always dull and very much the same the world over. At the end of six months—the seed always falling on good ground—Mulcahy spoke almost ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... told him of our friendship and how you trust to me in the matter, he said, 'You must tell him all you think. Tell him what I think, if you can guess it, if you will. Nay, I am not jesting. This is no jest, but life and death, perhaps more.' I asked what he meant by that, for he was very serious. This was when we had come back to town, and he was having a cup of tea before starting on his return to Amsterdam. He ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... never was anything more truly Grecian than that triple epithet; and were it possible to introduce it either into the Iliad or Odyssey, I should certainly steal it." This of course was written in jest; and had the translator been disposed to exemplify his own pleasantry, he might have found an opportunity in the well-known line of the sixth book of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 574 - Vol. XX, No. 574. Saturday, November 3, 1832 • Various
... the particular counts. He says that I am a doer of evil, and corrupt the youth; but I say, O men of Athens, that Meletus is a doer of evil, in that he pretends to be in earnest when he is only in jest, and is so eager to bring men to trial from a pretended zeal and interest about matters in which he really never had the smallest interest. And the truth of this I will endeavour to prove ...
— Apology - Also known as "The Death of Socrates" • Plato
... be afraid of reely. It's jest imagination. Poor old Kurt—he thought it would happen. Prevision like. 'E never gave me that letter or tole me who the lady was. It's like what 'e said—people tore away from everything they belonged ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... in your house, what will be said? I shall have the appearance of a conqueror, who thinks little, so long as he succeeds, of passing over the body of the conquered. They will reproach me with occupying the bed still warm from Albert's body. They will jest bitterly at my haste in taking possession. They will certainly compare me to Albert, and the comparison will be to my disadvantage, since I should appear to triumph at a time when a great disaster ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... nothing unless it were the royal purple of the sunset, trailed like a robe across the shoulders of the grave unsmiling hills, which guarded it round about. In Heart's Desire it was so calm, so complete, so past and beyond all fret and worry and caring. Perhaps the man who named it did so in grim jest, as was the manner of the early bitter ones who swept across the Western lands. Perhaps again he named it at sunset, and did so reverently. God knows ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... to stone. Exhausted and almost breathless, Lyubka sank on to his bosom and leaned against him as against a post, and he put his arms round her, and looking into her eyes, said tenderly and caressingly, as though in jest: ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... at the Bastimentos, near Porto-Bello, the treasure, consisting of above six millions sterling, had been unloaded and carried back to Panama, in pursuance of an order sent by an advice-boat which had the start of Hosier. This admiral lay inactive on that station, until he became the jest of the Spaniards. He returned to Jamaica, where he found means to reinforce his crews; then he stood over to Carthagena. The Spaniards had by this time seized the English South-Sea ship at La Vera Cruz, together with all the vessels and effects belonging ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... so, when he made a ghost of me almost three hundred years ago. I had a character through life of loving a jest, and did not belie it at the last. But I had also as general a reputation for sincerity, and of that also conclusive proof was given at the same time. In serious truth, then, I am a disembodied spirit, ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey
... —," able to perform feats of agility, a "jest nominal," depending on the first part ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... Bolingbroke and Prior set out for France last Saturday. My lord's business is to hasten the peace before the Dutch are too much mauled, and hinder France from carrying the jest of beating them too far." ("Journal to Stella," August 7th, 1712. See vol. ii., p. 381 of present edition). The result of Bolingbroke's visit was the signing, on August 19th, of an agreement for the suspension of arms for four ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... and with her hand She gave a mournful wave: "Oh, do not jest, dear sir!—it is Turf from ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... trifling a matter; for there is really a power of analysis and a grasp of "inner meaning" that is most remarkable. Sir Walter has very acutely commented on this little "exercise," and has shown that it reached much higher than a mere jest. It brought out the extraordinary capacities of the book which have exercised so many minds. For "The Pickwick Examination," he says, "was not altogether a burlesque of a college examination; it was a very real and searching examination in a book which, brimful as it is of merriment, mirth, ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... public men, of parties in Church and State, whether in England or in Germany, there was no necessity for suppressing his remarks, for he had spoken his mind as freely on them elsewhere as in these letters. But any personal reflections written on the spur of the moment, in confidence or in jest, have been struck out, however strong the temptation sometimes of leaving them. Many expressions, too, of his kind feelings towards me have been omitted. If some have been left, I hope I may be forgiven for a pride ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... would have transformed the famous advice of Uriah Heep to "Always be obliging." Certainly, no pleasanter company could be found, whether for man or woman; whatever the hour, however mixed the company, Jasper Vermont had always a smile, a jest, or a new and piquant scandal. In the smoking-room he would rival Mortimer Shelton in apparently good-natured cynicism. In a duchess's boudoir he would enliven the afternoon tea hour with the neatest of epigrams ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... This and such-like is what we seem to overhear; this and such-like is what Milton did overhear; not much more than this and such-like are most of us prepared to say even now when we read the story. And yet the story is surely worth more. One fails to see, after all, that it yields only matter for jest and the repetition of commonplaces. What are the facts? Two human beings, long dead and gone, but then alive and with the, expectation of many years of life before them, had hardly been banded together in church when ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... Hermia's lover, and that he was solemnly engaged to marry her, was in the utmost rage when she heard herself addressed in this manner; for she thought (as well she might) that Lysander was making a jest of her. "Oh!" said she, "why was I born to be mocked and scorned by every one? Is it not enough, is it not enough, young man, that I can never get a sweet look or a kind word from Demetrius; but you, sir, must pretend in this disdainful manner to court me? I thought, Lysander, you ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Also, it introduced Bairnsfather to us. "The Better 'Ole" became almost an institution; we could speak with authority on "'oles." And "When the 'ell's it goin' to be strawberry?" was the unfailing jest at meal-times, as we scraped the layer of flies from the top of the ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... branches, he began to whisper a plan of assault upon that house, which made the gloom more depressing than it was before. It was a crucial moment; we realised, with a cold suddenness, that here was no jest—we were standing face to face with actual war. We were equal to the occasion. In our response there was no hesitation, no indecision: we said that if Lyman wanted to meddle with those soldiers, he could go ahead ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... there was less hubbub and some quiet swearing; much splashing in tubs, much cigarette smoke. Men entered each other's rooms, half-clad in satin breeches, silk stockings, and ruffled shirts, asking a helping hand in tying queue ribbons or adjusting stocks, and lingered to smoke and jest and gossip, and jeer at one another's finery, or to listen to the town news from those week-enders ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... too, Bill. You'll sense the meaning o' that more, next winter. Think of nateral gas for us fellows, and cute little stoves and grates; where you can jest turn it on and off with a thumbscrew. No wood splittin' and sawin', no luggin' baskets of coal, no dust, no smoke, no charges. My! Bill, it's ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... outside o' hell—as the feller says. I'm not sayin' the women ain't doin' their part, mind you. They're doin' noble, an' you couldn't git me to say a thing ag'in women as women. They're a derned sight better'n we are. That's jest the point. We got to keep 'em better'n we are, an' what's more to the point, we don't want 'em to find out they're better'n we are. Just as soon as they git to be as overbearin' an' as incontrollable ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... you understand, Harry. Here are three white feathers. They were sent to you in jest? Oh, of course in jest. But it is ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... lavished at the expense of the President, gibes and jeers and taunts marked the journey from its beginning to its end. "My policy" was iterated and reiterated, until the very boys in the streets, without knowing its meaning, knew it was the source and subject of ridicule, and made it a jest and a by-word at Mr. Johnson's expense. The whole journey came to be known as "swinging around the circle," and its incidents entered daily into the thoughts of the people only as subjects of disapprobation on the part of the more considerate, and of persiflage and ribaldry on ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... baronet-squires flock together, and yonder stands a knot of grizzled colonels with the professional air of men awaiting orders. Here is the old Duke of Bayswater, listening through his eyeglasses, while Geoffrey Ripon and Featherstone have a quiet jest with Mr. Sydney. ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... in my opinion, a just maxim, that our deliberations can receive very little assistance from merriment and ridicule, and that truth is seldom discovered by those who are chiefly solicitous to start a jest. To convince the understanding, and to tickle the fancy, are purposes very different, and must be promoted by different means; nor is he always to imagine himself superiour in the dispute, who is applauded ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson
... Saxon who speaks, or is it Will Spotterbridge?' I asked, remembering his jest concerning his ancestry, but no answering smile came upon his rugged face. Gathering up his bridle in his left hand, he shot one last malignant glance at the bleeding officer, and galloped off along one of the tracks which lead to the southward. I stood gazing after him, but he never sent so ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... friend. "Why jest this. These here tew have been holding me off and on for three days, wanting me to get 'em a ship to take 'em to Esquimalt. First they wanted to go for ten, ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... don't get riled so soon," again ventured Parsons. "I was jest goin' to tell you that I've been proposing to Carpenter ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... that were covered with the old stripes that he had given himself. At last Master Richard faced about again; and again, as he looked upon the solemn face of the man, he began to laugh. It seemed a marvellous jest, he thought, that so long a consideration should be given to so small a matter as a whipping. I am glad I was not there to bear that laughter; I think it would quite ...
— The History of Richard Raynal, Solitary • Robert Hugh Benson
... wore gaily on. Louder grew the chorus of balloons and stickier grew the pop-corn balls. The courting-box was humming with laughter and jest. The Spartan hero began to rebel. Why should he allow himself to be tortured thus when there might be a way of escape? He recklessly resolved to put his fate to the test. Rising abruptly, he went down to the promenade and passed slowly along ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice
... design'd that for a pair of Gloves for me; which when I seem'd unwilling to accept of, as looking somewhat mercenary; No, Madam, says he, this is what I freel'y offer, and cann't therefore be thought mercenary: But now you talk of that, I'll tell you a good Jest was put last Week upon a Friend of mine, a Linnen-Draper, who 'tho he'd so much Holland of his own, wou'd needs be taking up of other Folk's. For this old Cuckold-Maker being got Fluster'd, and something late out one Night ...
— The London-Bawd: With Her Character and Life - Discovering the Various and Subtle Intrigues of Lewd Women • Anonymous
... Gerald. "Don't call them terrible; you will hurt their poor old feelings. I know them of old, Horatio; fellows of infinite jest." ...
— The Merryweathers • Laura E. Richards
... overlept herself in this instuns, and I've been very careful ever since to deal square with the public. If I was the public I should insist on squareness, tho' I shouldn't do as a portion of my audience did on the occasion jest mentioned, which they was employed in ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 5 • Charles Farrar Browne
... individual, who gave himself up to smuggling with more success than others, of his beautiful residence, of the property which he possessed near the village,—in short, of a number of particulars which it seemed impossible for any but an inhabitant of Cadaques to know. My jest produced an unexpected effect. Such circumstantial details, our guards said to themselves, cannot be known by a roving merchant; this personage, whom we have found here in such singular society, is certainly a native of Cadaques; and the son of the apothecary ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... know how he done it; mostly nobody knows how Jefferson Worth does things. There was a man with him who knowed you and, as I was some disinclined to leave you under the circumstances, Mr. Worth fixed it up for you, too, then we all jest throwed you in and fetched you along. Mr. Worth with the other man and his kid are comin' on in a buckboard. They'll catch up with us where we camp to-night. I don't mind sayin' that I plumb admired your spirit and action and—sizin' up that police bunch—I could see your talents ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... all this bewildering effect of frivolity, the first term I'd make use of in describing Vick's character would be Touch-me-not. I believe there's a flower called that—noli me tangere—or some such name. Well, that's Vicky Van. She'd laugh and jest with you, and then if you said anything by way of a personal compliment or flirtatious foolery, she was off and away from your side, like a thistle-down in a summer breeze. She was a witch, a madcap, but she had her own way in everything, and ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... the matter—jest ter go ter the ply? An' besides, my missus can't come if she wanted, she's got the kids ...
— Liza of Lambeth • W. Somerset Maugham
... suppose, whether I am speaking in jest or earnest. In the most solemn earnest, I assure you; though such is the strange course of our popular life that all the irrational arts of destruction are at once felt to be earnest; while any plan for those of instruction on a grand scale, sounds like a dream, ...
— Aratra Pentelici, Seven Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture - Given before the University of Oxford in Michaelmas Term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... similar story to this in one of our old English jest-books, Tales and Quicke Answeres, 1535, as follows (I have modernised the spelling): As an astronomer [i.e. an astrologer] sat upon a time in the market place, and took upon him to divine and to show what their fortunes and chances should be that came to him, ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... still, But what I say is neither here nor there: I knew his father well, and have some skill In character—but it would not be fair From sire to son to augur good or ill: He and his wife were an ill-sorted pair— But scandal's my aversion—I protest Against all evil speaking, even in jest. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... though animated, had been chiefly earnest and serious; here it was all touch and go, sally and repartee. The subjects were the light on lots and lively anecdotes of the day, not free from literature and politics, but both treated as matters of persiflage, hovered round with a jest and quitted with an epigram. The two French lady authors, the Count de Passy, the physician, and the host far outspoke all the other guests. Now and then, however, the German Count struck in with an ironical ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and faithful, etc.; and the more slight the variation of the meaning, the more likely is the fallacy to be successful; for when the words have become so widely removed in sense as 'pity' and 'pitiful,' every one would perceive such a fallacy, nor would it be employed but in jest.(263) ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... time we never saw land, for we had lost all reckoning, and no one cared to steer—the same dreadful visitation took place. Habit had, to a degree, hardened the men; they now swore and got drunk as before, and even made a jest of the boatswain of the middle watch, as they called him, but at the same time they were worn out with constant fatigue; and one night they declared that they would pump no longer. The water remained in the vessel all that day, and we retired to our hammocks as usual, when at midnight the same ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... without meaning, thick biting lips, hair and eye-brows of dark chestnut, and well planted; the most speaking and most beautiful eyes in the world; few teeth, and those all rotten, about which she was the first to talk and jest; the most beautiful complexion and skin; not much bosom, but what there was admirable; the throat long, with the suspicion of a goitre, which did not ill become her; her head carried gallantly, majestically, gracefully; ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... Mediaeval Dancing to the 14th Century. Dancing in Churches and Religious Dancing. The Gleemen's Dance. Military Dances. The Hornpipe. Tumbling and Jest Dances. Illustrations of Gleemen's Dance, Hornpipe, Sword Dances, Tumbling and Various ...
— The Dance (by An Antiquary) - Historic Illustrations of Dancing from 3300 B.C. to 1911 A.D. • Anonymous
... silence was broken by many a shout of exultation or banter, many a merry sound of jest or fun, as the back of the night's task was fairly broken. One husker mimicked the hoot of an owl in the thickets below; another sang a melody popular at the time, the refrain of ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... "You jest go round an' ketch on to the kid's wagin," said she, "an' I'll take care of her." With that her strong little hands made a vicious ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... wrong, and the power to bear all that can be inflicted by evil agents. It speaks the truth and it is just, generous, hospitable, temperate, scornful of petty calculations and scornful of being scorned. It persists; it is of an undaunted boldness and of a fortitude not to be wearied out. Its jest is the littleness of common life. That false prudence which dotes on health and wealth is the butt and merriment of heroism. Heroism, like Plotinus, is almost ashamed of its body. What shall it say then to the sugar-plums and cats'-cradles, to the toilet, compliments, quarrels, cards and custard, ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... announced solemnly to Amarilly on her return from the theatre. "He's a switchman and I'm agoin' to fix up the attic fer him. I don't jest see how we air agoin' to manage about feedin' him. Thar's no room to the table now, and thar ain't dishes enough to go around, but you're so contrivin' like, I thought you might find out a way." Memories of the footlights were temporarily banished upon hearing ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... stage. He thought he was doing his full duty as a loyal Briton, and even—this was when he promised a regular sixpence a week to the Smokes Fund—going perhaps a little beyond it. First hints and suggestions that he should enlist he treated as an excellent jest, and when at last they became too frequent and pointed for that, and began to come from complete strangers, he became justly indignant at such "impudence" and "interference," and began long explainings to people he knew, that he wasn't the one to be bullied ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... built of shadows on its boundary. It moved with frightful quietness. It seemed confident of its power. It swirled and eddied by the piles of the wharf, and there it found a voice, though that was muffled; yet now and then it broke into levity for a moment, as at some shrouded and alien jest. ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... to live heah agin. So mah woman, she says dat Ah should see if yo'all is heah yet and does yo'all want anythin'. Lucy, she's bin a-livin' heah, dat is, her mammy and pappy and her pappy's mammy and pappy has bin heah since befo' old Massa Ralestone done gone 'way. So Lucy, she jest nachely am oneasy 'bout yo'all not ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... the ferryman with a chuckle. "Scairt, were you? Why didn't you git them young Winsted fellers, that jest started up, to rescue yer? Might ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton
... Mr. Conors, and he treats me none the better fer it. A week come Tuesday he stalks into the bar here, and, before my customers, he threatens to put me into the road if I fail to have the amount fer him on the due date. I jest talked back to him with no fear in me eye, and he cooled off wonderfully. I have since got the money together, and a hundred dollars to pay on the principal, and to-morrow I'm goin' to give it ...
— Nancy McVeigh of the Monk Road • R. Henry Mainer
... heavenly influence over every bosom. All hearts owned the grateful effects of the late rescue. The rapturous joy of Edwin burst into a thousand sallies of ardent and luxurious imagination. The high spirits of Murray turned every transient subject into a "mirth-moving jest". The veteran earl seemed restored to health and to youth; and Wallace felt the sun of consolation expanding in his bosom. He had met a heart, though a young one, on which his soul might repose; that dear selected brother of his affection was saved from the whelming ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... "if that ain't goldenrod! I do b'lieve it comes earlier every year, or else the seasons are changin'. See them elderberries! Ain't they purple! You jest remember that bush, an' when we go back, we'll fill some pails. I dunno when ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... princesses were very glad at being thus saved, and they thanked the lad for having delivered them from the power of mountain giants. He himself fell deep in love with the youngest princess, and they vowed to be true and faithful. So they travelled, with mirth and jest and great gladness, and the lad waited on the princesses with the respect and care they deserved. As they went on, the princesses played with the lad's hair, and each one hung her finger-ring in his long ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends; Scandinavian • Various
... had one night been "commanded down with a dish for Mistress Anne for supper"; adding that she caused him "to sup with her, and she wished she had some of Wolsey's good meat, as carps, shrimps, and others."[187] And this was not said in jest, since Heneage related it as a hint to Wolsey, that he might know what to do, if he wished to please her. In the same letter he suggested to the cardinal that she was a little displeased at not having ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... of hypocrisy bow down to his four-inch wooden saint, and the same weight of honesty not worship his four-foot live one? And I have a jest for you, shall make my small queen merry ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... I should jest on such a subject;—or that if I had a mind to do so I should tell you? You must keep my secret. You must not tell your uncle. It must come to him from myself. At the present moment he does not in the least ...
— Kept in the Dark • Anthony Trollope
... hand, Cadby, thou hast kill'd me enough. What! never the sooner for a merry word. I meant not good earnest, to your maship I vow. I did but jest, and spake but in bord: Therefore of friendship put up ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... know de way—go long wid you, gal, and don't be botherin' me, 'case I don't feel like bein' bothered—now, mind I tell yer.—Here, you Cad, set down on dis stool, and let that cat alone; I don't let any one play with my cat," continued she, "and you'll jest let him alone, if you please, or I'll make you go sit in de entry till your mother's ready to go. I don't see what she has you brats tugging after her for whenever she comes here—she might jest as well leave yer at home to darn your stockings—I ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... one's ease) A tiro de canon (within cannon shot) Es mas habil que yo, con mucho (he is cleverer than I by far) Con ser amigo y todo (although he be a friend) Contra el norte (facing the north) De ano en ano (from year to year) De balde (for nothing, gratis) De bobilis (without effort) De broma (in jest) De buenas a buenas (willingly) De buenas a primeras (straight away) De capa caida (crestfallen) De contado (of course) De dia, etc. (by day, etc.) De jaleo (on the spree) De luto (in mourning) De mejor en mejor (from better to better) iAy or ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano
... student took this for a joke, but it was not a jest. Eugene had dined in the house that night for the first time for a long while, and had looked thoughtful during the meal. He had taken his place beside Mlle. Taillefer, and stayed through the dessert, giving ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... the Alveston and Radborough Medical Clubs, of both of which Jenner was a member, he so frequently enlarged upon his favorite theme, and so repeatedly insisted upon the value of cow-pox as a prophylactic, that he was denounced as a nuisance, and in a jest it was even proposed that if the orator further sinned, he should then and there be expelled. Nowhere could the prophet find a disciple and enforce the lesson upon the ignorant; like most benefactors ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... like a caterpillar," he said, recalling the time when his father had given him the pony; he was a boy then, and the pony was as much to him, it went through his mind, as Alice had ever been. Was it all a jest, an irony? ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... an island!" choosing to ignore the jest. "That's one of the best things about a boat—that it takes ...
— More Jonathan Papers • Elisabeth Woodbridge
... of another, like from like. The weed Beareth not lilies, neither do apes breed Antelopes. Thou art healed of thy pain Not by the wearing of an iron chain— An iron chain forsooth!"—(hereat he laughed As 'twere a huge rare jest) "but by the draught Which I prepared for thee with mine own hands From certain precious simples grown in lands It irks me tell how many leagues away: Which medicine thou ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... supernatural strength; exhausted with the slaughter of his foes, he prays for water to quench his thirst, and a stream bursts forth from the ass's jawbone with which he had just slain the Philistines. Bound in chains, blinded, and made a jest by the idolaters, his prayer for a return of his strength is heard by God, and he destroys a multitude ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... little hysterically, but McGuire treated the mirth as a compliment to his jest and joined in with a tremendous guffaw. His eyes were still wet with mirth as she said: "Too bad you have to waste time like this, with such a fine warm day for sleeping. Couldn't you trust the corral bars to take care ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... all up and down. 'You're a lady of con-siderable personal attractions,' he said, musingly, as if he were criticising a horse; 'and I want one that sort. That's jest why I trailed you, see? Besides which, there's some style ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... completely at fault. She had sighed that she could not meet him without restraint or embarrassment, for, as she had assured herself, "It would be such fun." She had supposed that she could laugh at him and with him indefinitely—that he would be a source of infinite jest and amusement. He had banished all these illusions in a few brief moments. How could she make sport of a man who had coupled her name with that of his dead mother? His every glance, word, and tone expressed sincere respect and admiration, and, she had to admit to herself, ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... most conspicuous in the atmosphere in smoke "effects," in the "lurid," the "mystery"; such are the perfervid words. But let us take the natural and authentic light as our symbol of Cleopatra, her sprightly port, her infinite jest, her bluest vein, her variety, her laugh. "O ...
— Hearts of Controversy • Alice Meynell
... Length (not the 'gaiter) And he was aperiently a well-proportioned snaik. When he was all ashore he glared upon The iland with approval, but was soon "Astonished with the view and lost to wonder" (from Wats) (For jest then he began to see the Alegaiter) Being a nateral enemy of his'n, he worked hisself Into a fury, also a ni position. Before the Alegaiter well could ope His eye (in other words perceive his danger) The Snaik had enveloped his body just 19 Times with "foalds ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... kinswoman, there is no shame in loving a courtly knight better than a country thane,—and do not laugh neither, Rowena, for grave-clothes and a thin visage are, God knows, no matter of merriment. Nay, as thou wilt needs laugh, I will find thee a better jest—Give me thy hand, or, rather, lend it me, for I but ask it in the way of friendship. Here, cousin Wilfred of Ivanhoe, in thy favour I renounce and abjure—Hey! our cousin ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... gone on, so far, in a mixture of confidential jest and earnest, that had long grown naturally out of our familiar relations, begun as mere children. But Agnes, now suddenly lifting up her eyes to mine, and speaking in a different ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... Porthos and Bicarat. Porthos made a thousand flourishes, asking Bicarat what o'clock it could be, and offering him his compliments upon his brother's having just obtained a company in the regiment of Navarre; but, jest as he might, he gained nothing. Bicarat was one of those iron men who never ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... were a betting man,' said the druggist. 'You'd better either put up or shut up. I'll jest bet you ten dollars even that Bryan ...
— Tales of the Road • Charles N. Crewdson
... is a relative term, like anything else connected with morality. What would be stealing in the immediate neighborhood of a city is not even what the old South County oyster fisherman once described as "jest pilferin' 'round," out here on the edges of the wilderness. I go out with the trailer hitched to the back of my Ford, half a mile in any direction, and I pass roadsides where, if there are any farmer owners ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... "and bring me another somewhat larger. These dainty trifles cannot serve, when 'tears run down like a river.' Nay, look not distressed, my good fellow. I do but jest. Yonder wet Knight ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... holy angels moulting? He was only a poor Master of Arts, he went on; and as the question somewhat touched upon divinity, he durst not venture to conclude. A silly old priest from Montargis, who was among the company, treated the young rascal to a bottle of wine in honor of the jest and the grimaces with which it was accompanied, and swore on his own white beard that he had been just such another irreverent dog when he ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... holdin' the book in one han', An' you turn a stray g in their doin's, an' tack an odd d on their an'; There ain't no great good comes of speakin' the words so polite, as I see, Providin' you know what the facts is, an' tell 'em off jest as they be. An' then there's that readin' in corncert, is censured from first unto last; It kicks up a heap of a racket, when folks is a-travelin' past. Whatever is done as to readin', providin' things go to my say, Shan't ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... meet them, we try to determine which of their moods is dominant, that we may know how to treat them. If the severe mood be on, we would just as soon think of whistling at a funeral as indulging in a jest; but if the cloud be off, we have a sprightly friend and a pleasant time with him. Goldsmith's pedagogue was a man of moods, and his pupils ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... Chris, who was plucky enough when he understood the nature of the threatened danger. "Golly, I jest reckon dis nigger got to stay and look ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... insight needed to interpret the situation. Like many men of robust and heedless temperament, he was more used to bend others' moods to his own than to enter fully into theirs. His way of approaching the subject had been unfortunate, beginning as he had with a jest. The sequel was destined ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... became enraged, strode in to Frohman, and told him what Dillingham had said. Frohman laughed so heartily that he almost rolled out of his chair. After the Englishman left he went out and congratulated Dillingham on his jest. From that day dated a Damon and Pythias friendship between the two men. They were ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... in the direction of the Cove. "An' that school gal 'way down at Abercrombie, learning her knitting, an' letters, an' crying her dandy eyes out for the mother who had to leave her there when she passed over to you? Say, Les, you best go on. Jest go right on an' I'll ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... often overshadowed by the skilful juxtaposition that shifts them where they are but dimly seen, while other things stand forth in a strong light and are thus looked upon as all important. So the merry quip and jest at the Latin and Greek studied by the Negro bring far more than a passing laugh—they really bring discredit upon the whole higher training where none is actually intended. It causes the old friends of higher learning to pause, and take it far too literally, ...
— The Educated Negro and His Mission - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 8 • W. S. Scarborough
... instruments of music. The show-booths were the first on entering the fair, being situated on the north side of the high road. Here were three companies of players, viz. the Norwich company, a very large booth; Mrs. Baker's, whose clown, Lewy Owen, was "a fellow of infinite jest and merriment;" and Bailey's. The latter had formerly been a merchant, and was the compiler of a Directory which bore his name, and was a work of some celebrity and great utility. Fronting these were the fruit and gingerbread ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 333 - Vol. 12, Issue 333, September 27, 1828 • Various
... was it. And then there was a ghost in it that sent the shivers down my back; 'n' a king 'n' queen; 'n' the king looked for all the world like Deacon Ember, Jenny Lowe's grandpa, that died before you was born; 'n' I declare, I did enjoy it! 'Twas jest like bein' alive in history times! Why, I ain't had sech shivers down my spine's the ghost give me, sence that day, till I seen you standin' there tryin' to wash your hands without any water, 'n' your eyes rollin' fit to scare ...
— A Bookful of Girls • Anna Fuller
... three more such books may entitle me to serious consideration. If I can get the editors to take more stories, why I suppose there'll be more books. But please don't perform any more serious consideration stuff over 'em. Because me'n Georgie Cohan, we jest aims ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... the dreadful state of the literati in London, as it respects religion, and of their having laughed at him, and believed him to be in jest, when he professed ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... received by sympathy. A violent lover in like manner is very much disp pleased when you blame and condemn his love; though it is evident your opposition can have no influence, but by the hold it takes of himself, and by his sympathy with you. If he despises you, or perceives you are in jest, whatever you say has no ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... before the victorious Queen's Own or the University Rifles—either corps being considered quite sufficient to snuff out the little band of patriots who dared to beard the British Lion in his den. The wine and the jest passed gaily round, until so secure were they of their position and the defeat of the invaders, a landing was effected At Fort Erie where the skull and cross-bones of St. George once again floated over the village, and assured the inhabitants that they were not yet lost to wheezy old ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... a joke?" said Handyside sadly. "That's very generous of you, Alan, if I may say so,—to quote Caw—but the Green Box is too hard and cold a fact to jest about." ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell
... entertainingly than Johnson ever did, and thereby overtops his subject. And when in reply to the intimation that Boswell was going to write his life, Johnson answered, "If I really thought he was, I would take his," he spoke a jest ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... boating-parties on the Nerbada. The Marble Rocks are often resorted to by pic-nic parties in the moonlit evenings; and one can easily fancy that to have a dusky dead body float against one's boat and sway slowly round alongside in the midst of a gay jest or of a light song of serenade, as is said to have happened not unfrequently here, is not an occurrence likely to heighten the spirits of revelers. Occasionally, also, the black, ugly double snout of the magar (or Nerbada crocodile) may pop up from ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... late before we thought of going in, that a messenger was sent to seek us, and many a fine jest we had to encounter when we ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... educational defects, as they must be called, there was nothing in either the character or person of the Division Commander to command respect or inspire fear. Eccentric to a most whimsical degree, his oddities were the jest of the Division, while they were not in the least relieved by his extreme nervousness and fidgety habits of body. That there was nothing to inspire fear is, however, subject to exception, as his whims kept subordinates in a continual fever. The art of being practical—adapting ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... they, let their pretended cause be what it will, that are returning again to Babel. Are her plagues pleasant or easy to be borne? Or dost thou think that God is at play with thee, and that he threateneth but in jest? Her plagues are death, and mourning, and famine, and fire (Rev 18:8); are these things to be overlooked? And they that, as before is hinted, shall receive the mark of the beast in their forehead, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Cattle to the tiger, carrion to the kite, And rags and bones to wicked wolves without the wall at night. Naught he found too lofty, none he saw too low— Parbati beside him watched them come and go; Thought to cheat her husband, turning Shiv to jest— Stole the little grasshopper and hid it in her breast. So she tricked him, Shiva the Preserver. Mahadeo! Mahadeo! turn and see! Tall are the camels, heavy are the kine, But this was Least of Little Things, O little son ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling
... all these, "Pray, Menippus," said he, "what does mankind really think of me?" "How should they think of you," said I, "but with the utmost veneration, that you are the great sovereign of the gods." "There you jest," said he, "I am sure; I know well enough how fond they are of novelty, though you will not own it. There was a time, indeed, when I was held in some estimation, when I was the great physician, when I was everything, ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian
... will fire upon any one who opens the door." He turned and fixed his eyes steadily upon the pale face of the secretary. "I said to you that you were the prisoner of your king to-day. You would not understand my jest. I will force you to see that I am in earnest. The guards stand before this, door; the other door leads to my apartment, and I will close it. You shall not work with me to-day; you are not worthy of it. You are a bold rebel, deserving punishment, ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... A private on trial for the greatest of military crimes seraphically advising a chief of staff to read books! There were not enough words in the dictionary to rebuke the insubordination of such conceit! The only way to look at the thing was as a kind of grim jest. He retrieved his vexation with a laugh as ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... unmanageable goat in one of the palace courtyards, whose name was Old Rowley, and the courtiers considered the beast as affording so just an emblem of the character of the king, that they gave the king his name. Charles, instead of resenting it, entered into the jest; and one day, as he was going into the apartment of some of the ladies, be heard them singing a song, in which he figured ridiculously as the goat. He knocked at the door. They asked who was there. "Only Old Rowley," ...
— History of King Charles II of England • Jacob Abbott
... 'The Robbers' he had made Spiegelberg refer to the Swiss canton of the Grisons as the 'Athens of modern scalawags.' Tradition has it that the passage was a thrust at an unpopular Swiss overseer in the academy. It is probable, however, that it was in no way malicious, but merely a thoughtless jest at the expense of a canton which had actually got a bad reputation for lax enforcement of the law. Be this as it may, the passage gave offence to a patriotic Swiss named Amstein, who aired his grievance in print and demanded a retraction. When Schiller paid no attention to this, ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... in the care of the Great Bear," said the Onondaga confidently. "Tandakora will rage if we tell him some day that we were here, to be taken if he had only seen us. Now Lennox awakes also! O Dagaeoga, you have slept and missed all the great jest." ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... said Sam. "Not at de fust, though. Ah'd jest get mah new clothes on an' den walk down de street so't ob cahless like an' in two minutes yo' gwine see ebbery wench in town jes' a follerin' me. Oh, say, golly, mebbe dem niggahs wouldn't be ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and the Treasure Cave • Ross Kay
... earth,' By rapine enriched, though a beggar by birth; In genius the lowest, ill-bred and obscene; In morals most Wicked, most nasty in mien; By none ever trusted, yet ever employed; In blunders quite fertile, in merit quite void; A scold in the Senate, abroad a buffoon, The scorn and the jest of all courts but his own: A slave to that wealth that ne'er made him a friend, And proud of that cunning that ne'er gain'd an end; A dupe in each treaty, a Swiss in each vote; In manners and form, a complete Hottentot. Such an one could you find, of all men you'd commend him; ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... strength in my journeying. Anything sent to Baring's will reach me; you cannot know what a line from you would be to me, how I would treasure it as the most sacred of things and the most precious, until we meet. And so, a bientot, for we must never say 'goodbye,' even in jest. I feel as though I were launching this letter at a venture, as sailors throw a bottle overboard when they fear they are lost. I have not yet tested the post-office, and I feel a kind of uncertainty as to ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... see them. A little before the Duke went to Supper, Bateman himself was brought to him, but the Duke turn'd away from him without any further Notice than coldly saying, that he thought he was very strangely taken. The Wags of the Army made a thorough jest of him, and said his military Conduct was of a piece with his Oeconomy, having two Days before this March, sent his young handsome Wife into England, under the Guardship of the young Chaplain ...
— Military Memoirs of Capt. George Carleton • Daniel Defoe
... do you think it's safe to put that cold stuff into your stomick?" said the Widow Leech to a young married lady, who, finding the air rather warm, thought a little ice would cool her down very nicely. "It's jest like eatin' snowballs. You don't look very rugged; and I should be dreadful ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... who fared the best: Sad mortals! thus the gods still plague you! He lost his labor, I my jest; For he was drowned, and I've ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... trick-goat, and he kinder reckoned that she might do for some one of his tablows. So he axed her if she'd mind standin' with the goat and a tambourine for Jephthah's Daughter, at about the time when old Jeph comes home, sailin' in and vowin' he'll kill the first thing he sees,—jest as it is in the Bible story. Well, Polly didn't like to say it wasn't HER that performed with the goat, but the Pet, for thet would give the Pet dead away; so Polly agrees to come thar with the goat and rehearse the tablow. Well, Polly's thar, a little shy; and Billy,—you bet HE'S all there, and ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... a chair, ma'am," he said. "Jest set down and take it right easy. Lay off your wraps, and I'll put 'em on the bunk. You mustn't worry about ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough
... of both, and carry on the conversation on both sides. On such an occasion the girl should smile with her head bent down, and if the female friend say more on her part than she was desired to do, she should chide her and dispute with her. The female friend should say in jest even what she is not desired to say by the girl, and add, "she says so," on which the girl should say indistinctly and prettily, "O no! I did not say so," and she should then smile and throw an occasional glance towards ...
— The Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana - Translated From The Sanscrit In Seven Parts With Preface, - Introduction and Concluding Remarks • Vatsyayana
... those most closely connected with it sensed the misfortunes that attended it. The greater part of the people along the route were good-humored and pleased; they marveled at the trains as they passed, cheered the Duke and the authorities with him, listened with delight to the band, and made a jest of the rain. A holiday crowd, you know, is usually quite patient. Hence the delays that fretted the guests and the officials of the road did not annoy the ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... "Ef you war ter jest tie 'em up, or wrop 'em in a bit of canvas, they'd go straighter, and wouldn't scatter round so bad," remarked old Trull, who was not an uninterested spectator of ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... foe in thine own soul, The sloth, the intellectual pride, The trivial jest that veils the goal For which our fathers lived and died; The lawless dreams, the cynic art, That rend ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... "It's a jest that has cost him dear," answered the other, as he watched his brother search the girl's clothes and then slip his murderous hands beneath her pillow. He ...
— The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes
... Mrs. Pike, "if that ain't goldenrod! I do b'lieve it comes earlier every year, or else the seasons are changin'. See them elderberries! Ain't they purple! You jest remember that bush, an' when we go back, we'll fill some pails. I dunno when ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... the overturned boat, built a fire and prepared their first cooked meal out of doors. In the failing light, Sue got out her rifle and gave Sam his first lesson in marksmanship, his awkwardness making the lesson half a jest. And then, in the soft stillness of the young night, with the first stars coming into the sky and the clean cold wind blowing into their faces, they went arm in arm up the hill under the trees to where ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... cowboy Las Vegas. An', boss, he turns out to be a gun-slinger from Texas. I was in Turner's. Hed jest happened to step in the other room when Las Vegas come bustin' in on his hoss an' jumped off.... Fust thing he called Jeff an' Pedro. They both showed yaller. An' then, damn if thet cowboy didn't turn his back on them an' went to the bar fer a drink. But he was ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... keep a diligent eye upon all signs of occupation by the enemy, that is to say, our friends the salvages. Be very careful in this matter, an' please thee, good Billington, for shouldst thou think it a merry jest to lead us into danger of any sort, I fear me thou 'dst find it but ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... words," replied Del Ferice, calmly, "I am perfectly right in my surmises. I see it in your face. Of course," he added, with a laugh, "it is mere jest. But the thing is quite possible. If I fulfilled your desire of just and poetic vengeance, what ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... that's a merry jest," says I, "call up Aunty. Why, say, before we get through with this tea stunt of hers that Djickyns party will be runnin' his studio works day and night shifts and rebuildin' Belgium! We're a great team, me and dear old Aunty. ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford
... cardinal pronounced that this were a good order to take with vagabonds. But a certain parasite sayeth in jest that this were then an excellent order to take with the friars, seeing that they were the veriest vagabonds that be; a friar thereupon took the jest in very ill part, and could not refrain himself from calling the fellow ribald, villain, ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... several hours the men had been called on neither to march nor fight. As they lay in the woods, and the pickets, firing on the enemy's patrols, kept up a constant skirmish to the front, the laugh and jest ran down the ranks, and the unfortunate Pope, who had only seen "the backs of his enemies," served as whetstone for ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... had led a rough life, I had been no saint. I had always been ready for jest or dance or intrigue with a pretty woman, and sometimes women far above me had cast their eyes down on the arena, as in Spain ladies do in the bull-ring to pick a lover out thence for his strength; but I had never cared. I had loved, laughed and wandered away with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... set down. I was jest wishin' I had somebody to talk to. Take that chair right by the door so's you ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... stepped outside and dispatched a messenger for the two men, who presently came; the one glum and offended, thinking in his slow way that he had been made a jest of, and that the money his wife so loved had not, after all, been found. The other, as always, proud and alert ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... evening of October 24, Hamilton invited all the officers not on actual duty to dine in his cabin. The scene may be easily pictured. The captain at the head of his table, the merry officers on either side, the jest, the laughter, the toasts; nobody there but the silent, meditative captain dreaming of the daring deed to be that night attempted. When dinner was over, and the officers alone, with a gesture Hamilton arrested the attention of ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... went and from the hunter's description made the sketch which I give below. The old man said: "Well, you sure got it this time. That's exactly like it was. One pair was jest foolin', one was fencing and was still perlite; but that third pair was a playin' the game for keeps. An' for givin' the facts, that's away ahead of any photograph ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... say, rather coarsely, when next I did see him, that I hoped 'Fungoids' was 'selling splendidly.' He looked at me across his glass of absinthe and asked if I had bought a copy. His publisher had told him that three had been sold. I laughed, as at a jest. ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... privily taken the measure of the body of Osiris, he caused a chest to be made of exactly the same size, and it was very beautiful and highly decorated. This chest he brought into a certain banqueting room, where it was greatly admired by all who were present, and Typhon, as if in jest, promised to give it to that man whose body when tried would be found to fit it. Thereupon the whole company, one after the other, went into it, but it did not fit any of them; last of all Osiris himself lay down in it. Thereupon ...
— Legends Of The Gods - The Egyptian Texts, edited with Translations • E. A. Wallis Budge
... raise them on their feet again; or, if that be beyond human means, I shall not join the party-cry which insults their fall—I certainly shall not exult in that melancholy pageant of mixed mirth and scorn, in which, like the old Roman triumph, the soldier with his ruthless jest and song goes before the chariot, and the captive monarch follows behind; wearing the royal robe and the diadem only till he has gratified a barbarous curiosity or a cruel pride, and then exchanging them for the manacle and the dungeon. I deprecate the loss of these alliances; and yet I ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... watching you fly, when that little chap belonging to Cragan, the fisherman, got overboard, out in the lake; and this same gent, he saw Frank dive right off his aeroplane like a bullfrog, and save little Tommy. That jest took him by storm, he told Mr. Quackenboss, and he meant to get you boys for his company if money could do it, but it all ended in ...
— The Aeroplane Boys Flight - A Hydroplane Roundup • John Luther Langworthy
... the wrong, Was everything by starts and nothing long; But in the course of one revolving moon, Was chymist, fiddler, statesman and buffoon.... Beggar'd by fools, whom still he found too late, He had his jest, but ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... the sad, and the broken, Often he lingered, a well-beloved guest; Dear was his voice, whatever the word spoken, Sweetening their day with a song or a jest. ...
— The Miracle and Other Poems • Virna Sheard
... might mount behind his companion, and as they now rode along at an easier pace Francesco realised that he and Fanfulla were the only two that had come through that ugly place. The gallant Ferrabraccio, hero of a hundred strenuous battles, had gone to the ignoble doom which half in jest he had prophesied himself. His horse had played him false at the outset of the charge, and taking fright it had veered aside despite his efforts to control it, until, losing its foothold, man and beast ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... I dare say it seems all a matter of jest and sport to you; yet, after our riding in the centre of a tornado for uncounted miles, coming forth with hardly a scratch or a bruise to show for it all, who dare say such things may not ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... back there." He stopped, lighted his pipe, and then said slowly, with much deep thoughtfulness, "If I was that man I'd ride some tonight! I'd keep right on ridin' until I'd put about seven thousand miles between me an' Buck Thornton. An' then ... well, then, I guess I'd jest naturally dig a hole an' crawl in it so deep nothin' but ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... there not to interrupt one in the relation of his tale, or to feed it with odde interlocutions: One shall learne also not to laugh at his own jest, as too many used to do, like a Hen, which cannot lay an ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... There is more of jest than of sorrow in the last line. It is an act of courtesy. Through all these songs, however, there is a continuous expense of beauty, of a very fortune of admiration, that entitles Campion to a place above ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... dozen of Sidney's sonnets with appreciatory comment. "Newspapers Thirty Years Ago" is particularly interesting for its reminiscences of the days when Lamb wrote half a dozen daily jests for "The Morning Post" at sixpence per jest, and for its sketches of Daniel Stuart and Fenwick, two diversely typical journalists of a century since. "Barrenness of the Imaginative Faculty in the Productions of Modern Art" is a criticism of the prevailing taste in art matters, inspired by Martin's "Belshazzar's Feast," and contrasts ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... attachment to the true cause: these are assembled to shape-out a plan. They sanctioned what was past; shaped as they could what was to come. They were scornfully called Barebones' Parliament, the man's name, it seems, was not Barebones, but Barbone—a good enough man. Nor was it a jest, their work; it was a most serious reality—a trial on the part of these Puritan Notables how far the Law of Christ could become the Law of this England. There were men of sense among them, men of some quality; men of deep ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... from the field, grow old in poverty, wretchedness, and contempt? Can you consent to wade through the vile mire of dependency, and owe the miserable remnant of that life to charity which has hitherto been spent in honor? If you can, go; and carry with you the jest of Tories and the scorn of Whigs, the ridicule, and, what is worse, the pity of the world. Go—starve and be forgotten. But if your spirit should revolt at this, if you have sense enough to discover, and spirit enough to oppose, tyranny under whatever garb it may assume, whether it be the plain ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... the New Testament and his Praise of Folly—has already been mentioned. In a series of satirical dialogues—the Adages and the Colloquies—he displayed a brilliant intellect and a sparkling wit. With quip and jest he made light of the ignorance and credulity of many clergymen, especially of the monks. He laughed at every one, himself included. "Literary people," said he, "resemble the great figured tapestries of Flanders, which produce effect only ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... hard to rival him in jest and joviality; I drank much more than my usual quantity of wine—but it was useless. The gay words came fainting from my heart, and fell dead on my lips. The wine fevered, but did not exhilarate me. Still, the image of the dark beauty of the morning ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... has a stormy voice and makes the heart of a young man like me very poor for fear!" the aged Tsiskwa coughed out, and they all greeted the great man's jest with a laugh of appreciation, and felt it was well that one so old could at once be so sage and so merry. But there came a time when they ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... been no witness to the killing of Jocint; but there were few who did not recognize Gregoire's hand in the affair. When met with the accusation, he denied it, or acknowledged it, or evaded the charge with a jest, as he felt for the moment inclined. It was a deed characteristic of any one of the Santien boys, and if not altogether laudable—Jocint having been at the time of the shooting unarmed—yet was it thought in a measure justified by ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... "Well, I'll jest fire, to let 'em know there's powder 'n shot round here," said the fiend. "If it hits any on 'em roamin' round, he won't know what hurt him;" and levelling his gun at random, with his drunken, unsteady hand he fired. The bullet whistled ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... true, for to be a gentleman is to be brave, honest, courteous, and nothing more. But the gentlemen of different nations are like brothers brought up in different schools. An Englishman who should demand satisfaction by arms, of another Englishman, for a hasty word spoken in jest, would be considered a lunatic in the clubs, and if he carried his warlike intentions into effect with the consent of his adversary, and killed his man, the law would hang him without mercy as a common murderer. On the other hand, a German who should refuse a duel, or not demand ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... think o' that jug before. The Injuns come into the castle, and asked for fire-water. I never gin 'em none, and shan't begin now. They were lookin' for hosses, and went to the barn. They took that jug of whiskey, but it's jest like camphene. 'Tain't fit ...
— Field and Forest - The Fortunes of a Farmer • Oliver Optic
... The jest practised so successfully upon our friend the Buck occasioned a general laugh at his expense, a circumstance which filled, him with serious mortification, if not with actual resentment, for it so happened, that one of his great foibles ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... there's goin' to be fight'n'. I'm goin' to try to p'vent it, but I shan't be able to. Why, if you was to get hurt, who'd eveh tell yo' po' deah mother? I couldn't. I jest couldn't! You ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... back!' Kamal has gripped him by the hand and set him upon his feet. 'No talk shall be of dogs,' said he, 'when wolf and grey wolf meet. May I eat dirt if thou hast hurt of me in deed or breath. What dam of lances brought thee forth to jest at the dawn with Death?' Lightly answered the Colonel's son:—'I hold by the blood of my clan; Take up the mare for my father's gift—By God she has carried a man!' The red mare ran to the Colonel's ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... for I saw at once, by his speech, that he was Cornish; but I did not like to turn him away, for he said that he was willing, and accustomed to the sea. So I gave him a trial, and he has turned out a first-rate sailor. He is chary of speech, and not given to jest or laughter; but he is always quick, and willing to obey orders; taking whatever comes in good part, and bearing himself just the same, in storm, as ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... recorded favourite among them; the songs, far other than hymns, which Dennis Hanks and his other mates would pick up or compose; and the practice in rhetoric and the art of exposition, which he unblushingly afforded himself before audiences of fellow labourers who welcomed the jest and the excuse for stopping work. The achievement of the self-taught man remains wonderful, but, if he surmounts his difficulties at all, some of his limitations may turn to sheer advantage. There ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... Policeman, greatly astonished, and pausing a moment in spite of himself. "You'll see him in a moment. Jest help me to lift a corner o' this 'ere tarpaulin, and I'll show him to you." He ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... his diplomatic negotiations, but they extended into the night, and, it being too late to return to camp, he was sumptuously lodged in an apartment of the Alhambra. In the morning one of the courtiers about the palace, somewhat given to jest and raillery, invited Don Juan to a ceremony which some of the alfaquis were about to celebrate in the mosque of the palace. The religious punctilio of this most discreet cavalier immediately took umbrage at what he conceived a banter. "The servants of Queen Isabella of Castile," replied he, stiffly ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... the ships becalmed Even to thirst and famine; when instead They fed on leather, gnawed wood, and ate mice As did the Patagonian giants, when They begged such vermin for a savage feast. Then Fate, her jest outworn, blew them to shore On the green islands called the Isles of Thieves, And brought them to more islands—and still more, A kingdom of bright lands in sunny seas. Here did the Admiral land, and raise the Cross Above ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... laughter broke from the group of Carthaginian officers that had ridden behind and who now clustered around him. The calm that no devotion, no suffering, no danger of men could move, was gone; the schalischim had turned from his measuring of the enemy to smile and jest with his friends. Thereupon they threw back their heads and laughed loud and long; and then the Africans noted it, and hoarse cries of joy broke from their ranks. "The schalischim must be sure of victory. Praise be to Melkarth!" Sergius saw a captain of one of the squares run ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... A propos, when I first opened upon the just-mentioned poem, in a careless tone I said to Mary, as if putting a riddle, "What is good for a bootless bene?" [3] To which, with infinite presence of mind (as the jest-book has it) she answered, "A shoeless pea." It was the first joke she ever made. Joke the second I make. You distinguish well, in your old preface, between the verses of Dr. Johnson, of the "Man in the Strand," and that from "The Babes in the Wood," I was thinking whether, ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... gives of the "trenchant expressions" are "hapless" and "malefactors." I beg to assure him (and any others who may need the assurance: I trust there are none) that all such words have been used in jest, and with no idea that they could possibly annoy any one, and that I sincerely regret any annoyance I may have thus inadvertently given. May I hope that in future they will recognise the distinction between severe language used in sober earnest, ...
— A Tangled Tale • Lewis Carroll
... a formal letter of defiance," answered Bois-Guilbert; "but, by our Lady of Bethlehem, if it be not a foolish jest, it is the most extraordinary [v]cartel that ever went across the drawbridge ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... imagine the affair to be only the mischievous trick of some idler. Indeed, such was not likely; the times were superstitious, nor were there any persons connected or at variance with the family who were liable to be suspected of having played off such a foolish and wicked jest at the expense of the minister, even if any motive for doing so had existed. The minister, therefore, hastened up stairs to change his coat, leaving the Bible containing the document from the dead on the table; while his sister, ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various
... that court did not only make the Love which the Vulgar call Romantick, the object of Jest and Ridicule, but even common Decency and Modesty were almost abandoned as formal ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... hours an' more jest to catch two little fish! If I let you go your own way, Nat Nason, you'll be in the ...
— From Farm to Fortune - or Nat Nason's Strange Experience • Horatio Alger Jr.
... acquaintances who are men of moods. Whenever we meet them, we try to determine which of their moods is dominant, that we may know how to treat them. If the severe mood be on, we would just as soon think of whistling at a funeral as indulging in a jest; but if the cloud be off, we have a sprightly friend and a pleasant time with him. Goldsmith's pedagogue was a man of moods, and his pupils ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... little as he said these words, to apprise the ladies of the part assigned to each of them, and not, perhaps, without the wish of conveying to the ears of Catherine the page-like jest which lurked ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... depart, the pilot's boy told the admiral, that the English ship ought now to be called the Cacafuego, not theirs, as it had got all their rich loading, and that their unfortunate ship ought now to be called the Cacaplata, which jest excited much mirth.[29] ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... Newcome could hear the lad and his friends talking, singing, and making merry overhead. Something would be said in Clive's well-known tones, and a roar of laughter would proceed from the youthful company. They had all sorts of tricks, bywords, waggeries, of which the father could not understand the jest nor the secret. He longed to share in it, but the party would be hushed if he went in to join it—and he would come away sad at heart, to think that his presence should be a signal for silence among them; and that his son could not be merry ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... this exposition had wavered back and forth between jest and protest. But his eyes wandered towards those pigeon-holes again, and his mien and accents drew on a ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... was ready for the trip to New York City. The clock in the office marked the hour as one. A toddied individual in a great buffalo coat waited for her outside, hiccoughing and bandying jest with the half-frozen men who had spent the night with him in the forlorn hope ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... he returned, pressing tenderly the hand she had again slipped into his. "But you must not be vexed with Rosie. Could you not see that all she said just now was in sportive jest?" ...
— Elsie's Vacation and After Events • Martha Finley
... one idea was to make use of him, to hand over the young girl to him and be rid of her. Her former offer of the black mare on the condition that he stayed another week appeared now as a grim jest, a cynical wager. This time she was in earnest. Whereas, if she had been ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... inch of the vast Piazza, without the circle of soldiery, occupied by eager spectators. Over this vast assemblage, amid the impending thoughts which the incidents of the hour and the memory of the Past inspired, reigned a profound silence; no laugh or jest, such as bespeaks a holiday, no heartless curiosity, such as accompanies a mere public show, no vulgar excitement was evident; on many faces dwelt an expression of awe and pity,—on others an indignant frown,—on ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... great number of wives, that he told them they might soon expect to have the pleasure of seeing the Christians, with whom they would have the opportunity of diverting themselves; and that, believing him in jest, they laughed heartily at the news, on which he caused most of them to be put to death. After this cruel deed, he set fire to a large apartment filled with rich dresses and valuable moveables belonging to the late Inca Huana Capac, and retired from Quito, having first made another ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... "He never talks, jest saws wood. Only Britisher I ever liked. Plays cards like ...
— His Own People • Booth Tarkington
... of words, the schoolboy's vain parade, Of books and cases—all his stock in trade— The pert conceits, the cunning tricks and play Of low attorneys, strung in long array, The unseemly jest, the petulant reply, That chatters on, and cares not how, or why, Strictly avoid—unworthy themes to scan, They sink the speaker and disgrace the man, Like the false lights, by flying shadows cast, Scarce seen when ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... but he has remained a bibliographical rather than a literary rarity. Few except the people who collect first editions—not, as a rule, the public for a poet—have had the chance of possessing Death's Jest-Book (1850) and the Poems (1851). At last Beddoes has been made accessible, the real story of his death, that suicide so much in the casual and determined manner of ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... first no words to tell her gratitude to Sir Gawayne, but when she had recovered a little she spoke: "Alas! Sir Gawayne, I fear you do but jest. Will you wed with one so ugly and deformed as I? What sort of wife should I be for a knight so gay and gallant, so fair and comely as the king's own nephew? What will Queen Guenever and the ladies ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... these foreign hordes. It was the custom at the time of the Restoration to say that the complaints and narrations of those who were exposed to these excesses were exaggerated by fear or hatred. I have even heard very dignified persons jest pleasantly over the pretty ways of the Cossacks. But these wits always kept themselves at a distance from the theater of war, and had the good fortune to inhabit departments which suffered neither from the first nor ...
— The Private Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Constant
... with counter-charges against Ord, whom he accused of purloining Father Pandoza's shoes, when the soldiers in their fury about the ammunition destroyed the Mission. At the time of its destruction a rumor of this nature was circulated through camp, started by some wag, no doubt in jest; for Ord, who was somewhat eccentric in his habits, and had started on the expedition rather indifferently shod in carpet-slippers, here came out in a brand-new pair of shoes. Of course there was no real foundation for such a report, but Rains was not above small ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... rogue," replied the spider, "yet methinks you should have more respect to a person whom all the world allows to be so much your betters." "By my troth," said the bee, "the comparison will amount to a very good jest, and you will do me a favour to let me know the reasons that all the world is pleased to use in so hopeful a dispute." At this the spider, having swelled himself into the size and posture of a disputant, began his argument ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... lan' a-massy!" yelled Dinah presently in distress. "Sam Johnson, you jest turn dat hoss around quick," and she jerked at the reins herself. "You heah, Sam? Quick, I tells you. Get back to dat house. I'se forgot to bring—to ...
— The Bobbsey Twins in the Country • Laura Lee Hope
... Urich were so amused at hearing this that every morning while the stranger staid in the neighborhood they yelled as if being cruelly beaten, and the visitor published the article in which was mentioned the barbarous custom of the people of the Odenwald. Forest-master Urich would often say in jest to his boys, 'Come now, and get your cudgeling, which is to serve you for ...
— Pixy's Holiday Journey • George Lang
... Mortimer now, and her husband's a kinder Barrin or some sorter furrin noble,—she was in Paris, not mor'n two weeks ago! Said she was dyin' to come back to the ol' place agin, but she wa'n't none too well, and didn't guess she c'd manage it. Ef ye said ye seen her here las' night—why—well, I'd jest think ye'd bin dreamin'. P'raps ye're a little under the weather—bin ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... your heart) to object than to defend, to pull down than to set up. And your talents were admirable for that kind of work. Then your huddling together in a critical dictionary a pleasant tale, or obscene jest, and a grave argument against the Christian religion, a witty confutation of some absurd author, and an artful sophism to impeach some respectable truth, was particularly commodious to all our young smarts and smatterers ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... for dinner. Put off your other business. I was looking for you in the Agora and could not find you."[*] Also there thrusts in a half genteel, half rascally fellow, one Palladas, who spends all his evenings at dinner parties, being willing to be the common butt and jest of the company (having indeed something of the ability of a comic actor about him) in return for a share of the good things on the table. These "Parasites" are regular characters in Athens, and no symposium is really complete without them, although often their fooleries ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... The mate, though in view of the place referred to, saw no figure near it, nor at any other part of the quarter-deck, though he looked round and round. Next day the report went from one to the other that a ghost was on board, which filled some of the sailors with alarm, while others made a jest of it. Next night a boy (a stowaway) was so dreadfully alarmed in his bunk by something he saw or felt (we do not know which), that he cried out so loudly as to waken all the seamen in bed. The boy was sure it was the ghost seen ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... presume is why we meet with numerous instances of nervous exhaustion among merchants and manufacturers. The lawyer and clergyman offer examples, but I do not remember to have seen many bad cases among physicians. Dismissing the easy jest which the latter statement will surely suggest, the reason for this ...
— Wear and Tear - or, Hints for the Overworked • Silas Weir Mitchell
... Augustine was too sincerely religious not to take fright at the tone of artists. At the first dinner Theodore gave, she heard a young painter say, with the childlike lightness, which to her was unintelligible, and which redeems a jest from the taint of profanity, "But, madame, your Paradise cannot be more beautiful than Raphael's Transfiguration!—Well, and I got tired ...
— At the Sign of the Cat and Racket • Honore de Balzac
... parts of his kingdom: finally, he consented to figure as the hero of a day of public fasting and humiliation for the tyranny of his father and the idolatry of his mother. And while he was acquiescing to each fresh demand with a shrug of his shoulders and a whispered jest to Buckingham, and in his heart as much hatred for his humiliators as he was capable of feeling for anybody, he was all the while urging on Montrose to strike that wild blow for his crown which was to lead the ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... was hangman, too, upon occasion, being never so well pleased as when employed in the due chastisement of his master's lieges. He was, moreover, a man of infinite humour, generally consoling his dear unfortunates under their visitations by some coarse and galling jest. ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... a senatoribus projectus est, is the concise expression of Gregory of Tours, (l. ii. c. xi. in tom. ii. p. 168.) An old Chronicle (in tom. ii. p. 649) mentions an indecent jest of Avitus, which seems more applicable to Rome ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... street-vendors around the Church of the Holy Sepulchre; stepping back into an archway to avoid a bag-footed camel, or a gaily caparisoned horse, or a heavy-laden donkey passing through a narrow street; exchanging a smile and an unintelligible friendly jest with a sweet-faced, careless child; listening to long disputes between buyers and sellers in that resounding Arab tongue which seems full of tragic indignation and wrath, while the eyes of the handsome brown Bedouins who use it remain unsearchable in their Oriental ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... shrinking away, laid a hand on her lips and stared with distended eyes. "RUINED?" she gasped, unable to believe him—incredulously, as if at some barbaric jest. "Ruined?" She had turned quite white. "Oh," she cried, wetting her lips, "does it mean there is nothing left? How did it happen? Oh, it can't ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... bragging of his skill with the gun, his victories in love, his feats of strength—baring his chest, arms, legs, and inviting the company to admire his muscles. He jested from sunrise until sundown, and never made a jest that did not hurt. Worst of all was it when he schooled le Chameau to sing his obscenities ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... my daughter, peace! You've had your full revenge, and we have had Enough of laughter since the day began. We must not squander all these precious hours In jest and merriment; for when the sun Shall rise to-morrow, we shall separate, Not knowing we shall ever meet again. Meetings like this are rare this side of Heaven, And seem to me the best mementoes left Of ...
— Bitter-Sweet • J. G. Holland
... nuthin; Wuth more than anything except the Sole of man! I mean pewer Are, Sextant, I mean pewer Are! O it is plenty out o dores, so plenty it doant no What on airth to do with itself, but flize about Scatterin leaves and bloin off men's hats; In short its jest as free as Are out dores; But O Sextant! in our church its scarce as piety, Scarce as bankbills when ajunts beg for mishuns, Which sum say is purty often, taint nuthin to me, What I give aint nuthing to nobody; but ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... and talk man-fashion!" shouted the timber-dealer. "You couldn't make no more fuss if I come to seize your farm. I'll make it eighty, an' I'll tell you jest one thing more: if you're holdin' out, thinkin' I'll give you more, you can hold ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
... of the following sketches, letters, etc., has been known to us for lo, these many years. We have always found him "a fellow of infinite jest," and one who, "though troubles assailed," always looked upon the bright side of life, leaving its reverse to those who could not behold the silver lining to the darkling clouds of their moral horizon. We ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... falling on their knees before him, and entreating his pardon. Then they would put shoes on his feet, and robe him in a citizen's garb. Such a mistake, they would say, must not happen again. The end of their jest was to make him "walk the plank," and with the sarcastic permission to depart unharmed, they let down a ladder into the sea, and compelled him to descend, under penalty of being still more summarily thrown overboard. ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church
... Jest hear it! I swanny, if that bird doesn't stop predictin' wet weather, I'll get so scared I won't durst put in my corn afore June. They's some birds like killdeers an' bobwhites 'at can make things pretty plain, but I never heard a bird 'at could jest speak words out clear an' distinct ...
— The Song of the Cardinal • Gene Stratton-Porter
... love is still an emptier sound, The modern fair one's jest; On earth unseen, or only found ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... stoves and other, clay-workers, with playful reference to the material, and perhaps to the use of fire in baking the ware. If that is all your 'Prometheus' means, you have aimed your shaft well enough, and flavoured your jest with the right Attic tartness; my productions are as brittle as their pottery; fling a stone, and you may smash ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... seen them with the eye, and heard them speak and sing, and scold and jest, and laugh and weep, and even pray! And I have sketched them, as you shall see some day, good reader! And let me tell you that their beauty was by no means maddening: the standard of female loveliness has gone up, ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... I, lad. Yes, I found you not guilty; and I jest tipped you a wink, from the box, to let you know as it were all right; but my eye! what a game we had had of it. Never had such a game, in all my ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty
... serious matters," cried Mr. Brown, with more solemnity than I ever gave him credit for. "There are many things in this world that we cannot account for, and yet it is out of place to jest ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... sy so! It gives me a turn to 'ear anybody talk so presumptuous. Don't you do it, m'm. If 'e is a little better, it's enuff to make the Almighty tyke 'im, jest to ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... his pranks ever since, as a frail boy with an unreasonable and dominating male parent, he had discovered that they were one way in which he could compete with hardier souls, at times even surpass them. Never mind the audience, he thought. The jest ...
— This is Klon Calling • Walt Sheldon
... Ketchim sadly; "and then comes the awful voice of the Lord, 'This night thy soul shall be required of thee!' Fellows, I want to pray for you; and I want you both to promise me that you will take up seriously the consideration of your souls' welfare. It's too grave a subject for jest," addressing himself solemnly ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... mean nothin' mean, now," he insisted, earnestly. "I'm jest leadin' up to the pint sorter natural like—breakin' the thing ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... don't spoze she ever worried about his angel qualities after that time. I spoze he cut up dretful and said words she never dremp of his knowin' by sight, and she wuz jest as surprised and horrified as she would have been to had a lamb or a cooin' dove bust out in profanity. But he wuz a likely man, and got over it quick, and wuz most too good to her for a spell afterwards, as pardners have ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... the concrete, as illustrated by the contents of your safe. I will delay the company only while I say a very few words more; but really this question of the restoration of your million, raised half in jest as it was, so vitally touches the central and fundamental principle of our social order that I want to give you at least an outline idea of the ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... where a moment ago this very man had been the subject of our talk, and silenced were the wits that but an instant since had been making free with his name and turning the Languedoc courtship—from which he was newly returned with the shame of defeat—into a subject for heartless mockery and jest. Surprise was in the air for we had heard that Chatellerault was crushed by his ill-fortune in the lists of Cupid, and we had not looked to see him joining so soon a board at which—or so at ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... the Irishman's heart was torn with conflicting feelings, and although, from the mere force of habit, he could jest with the old woman when she paid her daily visits, there was no feeling of fun in his bosom, but, on the contrary, a deep and overwhelming sorrow, which showed itself very evidently on his expressive face. He groaned ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... me the nevergitovers, I know! She's my own sister's child that married a good-for-nothing and is jest like her father." ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... you who are fond of a bit o' fun and amusement, jest you stop and invest a penny in this little article I am now about to introdooce to your notice, warranted to make yer proficient in the 'ole art and practice of Photography in the small space of five seconds and a arf—and I think you'll agree with me as it ain't possible to become an expert photographer ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 9th, 1892 • Various
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