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More "Joke" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wit flashed; and Bruce's ready laughter followed every one of his own clever jokes, while Patricia and Marian made their mark as an appreciative audience, enjoying everything that was meant for humor and applauding even the feeblest joke. Altogether it was a great success as a celebration and a happy augury of the future into which ...
— Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge • Pemberton Ginther
... may be sure, Madam, I would not joke if I thought there was any danger. I have been in Chinese typhoons, hurricanes in the Tropics, and storms in the Atlantic, where one would imagine heaven and earth were coming together, and under the blessing of God" (here our captain bowed his head) "I apprehend nothing, Madam, but what ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... do? Which way should he move? How long had he been in Dreiberg? Ah, that would be rich! What a joke! It would afford him a smile in his old age. Carmichael, Carmichael! The vintner chuckled softly as he scribbled ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... Bisyas, and in every case these relatives, with wild yells, and with menacing movements of bolo and spear, collected a sufficient compensation to atone for the imprudence. In one instance I paid the fine imposed upon a half-blind paddler of mine for a very innocent joke that was not appreciated by the ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... a rich joke, and Scarron shall make a song about it. How they will laugh when I explain that we are going to Aunay ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... I. 'If you think it's a joke you jest step to that thar window an' look down at the ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... laughter, in which Father Payne joined. Then he said: "But look here, you know, it's not really a joke—it's horribly serious! A man ought really to be prosecuted for writing such a book. That is the worst of English people, that they have no idea who deserves a biography and who does not. It isn't enough to be a rich man, or a public ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... word of the three and lifting his red-rimmed eyes to the other. He raised to an elbow with a lazy doubling of his body and stared dully for a space before he grinned unpleasantly. "Took 'er home all right, did yuh?" he leered, as if they two were in possession of a huge joke of the kind which may not be told ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... all around me," said the Monkey. "This surely is very strange! I wonder if the Calico Clown has been up to any of his tricks? Maybe he thinks I'm a riddle, and he's going to tell it to the Elephant from the Noah's Ark, or else make a joke of me to the Jumping Jack. I haven't been shut up in a box before—not since the time Santa Claus brought me from his workshop at the North Pole. ...
— The Story of a Monkey on a Stick • Laura Lee Hope
... them, "was below." A path descended across a steep face of sparse grass; and, at the bottom, Polder's interest revived. "It stood there," he indicated a fallen shed beyond a masoned channel, choked with the broken stones of its walls and tangled shrubbery. "You don't suppose a joke that size was the great Gilbert's plant. Here's the drop for the water power; yes, and the iron pinions of the overshot wheel." He climbed down a precarious wall, and stood perhaps twelve feet below them. Securing a rough bolt, he brought it up for their ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... Phil, slapping his thigh as if he appreciated the joke fully. "Have an orange. I always carry some about with me when I'm going ...
— The Circus Boys In Dixie Land • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... there were the six red cabbages on the purple satin lap, a very white hand, with some gold rings on the fingers, slightly holding them together, and streaming ringlets, half hiding a laughing face, drooped over them. Only half hiding! Peter saw the laugh; it was unmistakable. He was made a joke of; his gallantry, his chivalry, were the subject of a jest for a petticoat—for two petticoats: Miss Helstone too was smiling. Moreover, he felt he was seen through, and Peter grew black as a thunder-cloud. When Shirley looked up, a fell eye was fastened ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... here together, 'you have been at Cullerne forty years; have you ever observed any signs of movement in the tower?' 'Sir George,' I said, 'will you wait for your fees until my tower tumbles down?' Ha, ha, ha! He saw the joke, and we never heard anything more about the tower. Sir George has, no doubt, given you all proper instructions; but as I had the privilege of personally showing him the church, you must forgive me if I ask you to step into the ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... front door of the great house in the Via Borra. He remembered that he had been wandering about the streets; but where, or why, or for how long, he had no idea. Julia's page opened the door, yawning, and grinned significantly at the haggard, stony face. It seemed to him a prodigious joke to have the young master come home from jail like a "drunk and disorderly" beggar. Arthur went upstairs. On the first floor he met Gibbons coming down with an air of lofty and solemn disapproval. He tried to pass with a muttered "Good evening"; but Gibbons was no easy ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... pate runs upon this lady as much now she's dead as it did when she was living. For, I suppose, Jack, it is no joke: she is certainly and bona fide dead: I'n't she? If not, thou deservest to be doubly d—d for thy fooling, I tell thee that. So he will have me write for particulars ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... husband because he had once an idea of going to New England to get my little ladyship to wife (for the sake of my father, of course). Mr. P. blushed like a boy and fidgeted terribly, but I didn't care a snap—I am not old enough to be wife to anybody, and I'm not going to mind if people do joke with me about it. I've had better things to think of on this New Year's day—good, heavenward thoughts and prayers and hopes, and if I do not become more and more transformed into the Divine, then are prayers and hopes things of nought. Oh, how dissatisfied I am with myself. How I long to be like ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... pay a visit to the New Wimbledon—and being nothing if not loyal, I chose the day when the shooting for the "Queen's" commenced. My escort informed me with an inane smile, that the Camp had experienced "Bisley weather;" the feebleness of which joke so annoyed me, that I am half inclined to put his name in the pillory of public print—(what a glorious expression for our own Midlothian Mouther)—but I refrain, for reasons connected ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, July 30, 1892 • Various
... proposals of the publishers: "They have made me an offer of fourteen pounds a month to write and edit a new publication they contemplate, entirely by myself, to be published monthly, and each number to contain four wood-cuts.... The work will be no joke, but the emolument is too ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... be ruled with a rod of iron!' It gives a pleasant impression of the spirit of the times, to remember that this could be taken for a genuine utterance of orthodoxy; that De Foe was imprisoned and pilloried, and had to write a serious protestation that it was only a joke, and that he meant to expose the nonjuring party by putting their secret wishes into plain English. ''Tis hard,' he says, 'that this should not be perceived by all the town; that not one man can see it, either Churchman or Dissenter.' It certainly was very hard; but a perusal ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... But I want to find out about them, and who they are, and what their object was in playing this prank—if it was a prank—upon me. It was a pretty expensive joke for them, for it cost ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... hope was this! I realised too soon The special form of Nemesis That waits on the buffoon: The joke I found concerned the gloom Inside a ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 24, 1920. • Various
... weather to the judge in order to impress the Spectator and the country, [Footnote: Spectator 122.] who will not own to a mere citizen among his ancestors, [Footnote: Spectator 109.] and 'very frequently' [Footnote: Spectator 125.] repeats his old stories—Sir Andrew, with his joke about the sea and the British common, [Footnote: Spectator 2.] and his tenderness for his old friend and opponent [Footnote: Spectator 517.]—the volatile Will Honeycomb, whose gallantry and care of his person [Footnote: Spectator 2, 359.] remind us ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various
... them, and of what comfort are they to me now? I am old, lonely, and menials serve me because of my money. How much better are my so-called friends? They fawn upon me with their lips, but deceit is in their hearts. They laugh at me behind my back, and joke about 'Old Dockett' and his money. In all the world there is none who loves me, but many who hate me. One especially there is who desires my death, thinking that he will get my money. That is part of what my riches have ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... me you get away, and just now you looked at me as if you were terrified. Have you such a grudge against me for a joke I played ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... awkwardness of manner: and there are men whose stiffness and awkwardness of manner are such as would freeze the most genial and silence the frankest. Sometimes it arises from ignorance of social rules and proprieties; sometimes from incapacity to take, or even to comprehend, a joke. Sometimes it proceeds from a pettedness of nature, which keeps you ever in fear that offence may be taken at the most innocent word or act. Sometimes it comes of a preposterous sense of his own standing and importance, existing in a man whose standing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... friend, let Mr. Gaston buy him; he can afford it. Do it, Mr. Gaston; it will be both a capital joke and a good action, do ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... spite of his mistakes; and he wasn't abashed for long, when he had pretended to be able to do something that he didn't know how to do, and had been found out. He had a hearty way of laughing about it, as though it were the best joke in all the world—and there was one thing he could really do; he could cast a fly, and they admired his skill in that. And when it came time for them to leave, and bid him good-bye, they were heartily sorry to take leave of him, and hoped they ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... a joke, they will only laugh! But if, by any chance, they show fight, fire at once,' replied the old man, leading the way. Waring followed, his mind anything but easy; it seemed to him like running the gantlet. He held his pistols ready, and glanced furtively around ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... As soon as I rescue Lloyd I'll dash down here on my pony with her behind me. Then we'll slip through the fence and get on the hand-car, and be out of sight around the curve before the rest get here. They won't know where on earth we've gone, and it will be the best joke on them. It's down grade all the way to the section-house, so I can push it easily enough by myself, but I'll need your help coming back, maybe. S'pose you cut across lots to the section-house as soon as I start to the barn, and meet me there. It isn't half as far ...
— Two Little Knights of Kentucky • Annie Fellows Johnston
... her, as I told you. Mr. Royal made as light of the matter as possible, merely saying that something which might prove to have been a real marriage ceremony, though he thought not, had taken place in a joke between his daughter and Stephen Archdale, that the matter was to be thoroughly investigated at once, and if it turned out that Elizabeth was not Mistress Archdale, I had his permission to receive her answer ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II. No. 5, February, 1885 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... conventional habits of the French mind lead easily to ignorance and self-satisfaction. To be frank, the complacent aberrations of French taste, with its passion for Poe and its pathetic confidence in Kipling and Chesterton, have become a standing joke abroad. There is no great reason why the French should know anything of foreign thought and literature; but there is every reason why, knowing nothing, they should refrain from comment. And how many Frenchmen do know anything? When I reflect that hardly one ...
— Since Cezanne • Clive Bell
... croshayed it till 't was discovered that ink an' pa-aper wud projooce wurruds, an' thin th' printin'-press was invinted. Gunpowdher was invinted th' same time, an' 't is a question I've often heerd discussed which has done more to ilivate th' human race. A joke. ...
— Observations by Mr. Dooley • Finley Peter Dunne
... remembered, said very little at all about the people. He had exhausted his eloquence on the fish. I recalled his words when I asked him about Elsket: "She is a daughter of the Vikings, poor thing." That was all. Had he been up to a practical joke? If so, it seemed rather a sorry one to me just then. But anyhow I could not draw back now. I could never face him again if I did not go on, and what was more serious, I could ...
— Elsket - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page
... her book with a discontented sigh. Esther came nearer and spoke in a lower tone. "But before you go," she said, "please don't forget to replace Aunt Amy's ring. If she were to find it gone it would be no joke but a serious shock, as ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... the man leered like a Jack-o'-lantern. "Spiritual retreat, my love—spiritual retreat," he muttered thickly. "Imbibing the spirits, you know." He laughed heavily at his coarse joke. ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... taken on to make it so was the extraordinary possession of the elements of his life that memory and attention had at last given her. There came a day when this possession on the girl's part actually seemed to enjoy between them, while their eyes met, a tacit recognition that was half a joke and half a deep solemnity. He bade her good morning always now; he often quite raised his hat to her. He passed a remark when there was time or room, and once she went so far as to say to him that she hadn't seen him for "ages." "Ages" was the word she consciously ...
— In the Cage • Henry James
... water; a light wavered and disappeared across the pallid fields to the left, a group of starveling trees on a hill slid up into the skyline behind them, and at last it seemed as if some touch of self-control, some suggestion of having had enough of the joke, was shortening the mare's grasping stride. The trap pitched more than ever as she came up into the shafts and back into her harness; she twisted suddenly to the left into a narrow lane, cleared the corner by an impossible fluke, and Fanny Fitz was hurled ignominiously on to Rupert ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... knowledge. Personality that makes discipline easy. Willingness to entertain questions. Realization that students need help. Sense of humor—ability to take a joke. Optimism—cheerfulness. Sympathy. Originality. Progressiveness. Effective expression. Pleasing appearance—"good ...
— Principles of Teaching • Adam S. Bennion
... dangerous sort of service, signor," Giuseppi said hesitatingly. "It is no joke to disobey the officers of the republic, and next time we may not ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... You saw how anxious I was to get to you. That I was subtly drawn to Nelly is only a proof of how you were in my blood. But you're not really Nelly O'Neill. This is some stupid practical joke. Don't torture ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... studied diligently; she read and worked eagerly. Her feelings were strong and deep, but reserved; even as a child she seldom cried, and now she seldom even sighed and only grew slightly pale when anything distressed her. Her mother considered her a sensible, good sort of girl, calling her in a joke 'mon honnete homme de fille' but had not a very high opinion of her intellectual abilities. 'My Natalya happily is cold,' she used to say, 'not like me—and it is better so. She will be happy.' Darya Mihailovna was mistaken. But ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... tale of misfortune suddenly flung at her head, and scarcely sure if it were not a practical joke. The four young women were so charmingly dressed, their hair was so carefully waved, their complexions so pink and white, that it was impossible to believe in their poverty. Besides, they could evidently afford perfume, so luscious that it must be expensive. Mary thought that they ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... from slothful tenderness. And thus they ruin their own tempers and natures, and consequently those of their offspring. Furthermore, if at any time a man is taken captive with ardent love for a certain woman, the two are allowed to converse and joke together, and to give one another garlands of flowers or leaves, and to make verses. But if the race is endangered, by no means is further union between them permitted. Moreover, the love born of eager desire is not known among them; ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... For a joke that is born of a humorist hath but a short time to live and is full of misery. It cometh up and is cut down like a flower. It fleeth as if it were a shadow and ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... The joke was on me, but it had been a glorious day for all that. I retrieved the remains of my down-trodden dummy and started home. I halted midway down to the valley to study some queer records in the sand. Surely ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... circumstances, the sooner you know each other the better. Allow me, therefore, Mr.——, to introduce you to the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, Chancellor of the Exchequer.' The Sunderland shipowner was a little taken aback at first, but he soon recovered his self-possession, and enjoyed the joke quite as much ...
— The Grand Old Man • Richard B. Cook
... good-natured laughter at Reddy's expense. His red hair was as common a subject of joke as was ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... is a joke!" she exclaimed. She chanced to look down at the shattered flask, and her merriment vanished. "But this isn't any joke. Didn't you see the man who was shooting ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... And then, look how he's respected! And his head's screwed on the right way. Yes. And you? You're not a bit like either your father or your mother? What would your father have done, Mitia, do you think, if old Anfisa had lived? That would have been a good joke! I should have liked to have seen how she's have settled him! She was the right sort of woman, your mother! a real plucky one, she was! ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... have sanctified Glastonbury and Wells—Mrs. Devar's blue-moldy joke might even have won a smile—but Cynthia was preoccupied; strange that she, too, should be musing of Simmonds and a hurrying car, for Medenham had told her that the transfer ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... it was hung around the neck of the winner of the last prize. A shout of laughter and a round of applause greeted the presentation of the medal. Laud did not know whether to smile or get mad; for he felt like the victim of a practical joke. Miss Nellie Patterdale stood near him, and perhaps her presence restrained an outburst of anger. Mr. Montague, the father of the commodore, had provided a bountiful collation in the cabin of the Penobscot, and the ...
— The Yacht Club - or The Young Boat-Builder • Oliver Optic
... would make a polite speech, or give a shrug of the shoulders, as the means of getting out of an embarrassing position, Lincoln raised a laugh by some bold west-country anecdote, and moved off in the cloud of merriment produced by the joke. When Attorney-General Bates was remonstrating apparently against the appointment of some indifferent lawyer to a place of judicial importance, the President interposed with: "Come now, Bates, he's not half as bad as ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... strongly object to the spirit of levity which I find in your paper. This is an Earnest Age, sir, and we cannot afford to joke. The Rev. Mr. DODGE has been greatly grieved at the light way in which you have treated such serious subjects as the Divorce Question. He will forward to you a sermon of his own on the topic of "The Jewish Marriage ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 14, July 2, 1870 • Various
... it was not long before this was evinced by a performance which, under other circumstances, might have evoked laughter from those who witnessed it. In this instance, however, the spectators were themselves the victims of the joke—if joke it might be termed—and during its continuance, not one of the three felt the slightest inclination to indulge in mirth. It was thus that the ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... jaw had fallen, and now he sat, leaning forward with his mouth wide open. "Zeby," he said, and his voice sounded as if he had been taken with a sudden hoarseness. "I reckon I am about as fond of a joke and a prank as any man that ever crossed Goose Creek—and some great jokers came along there in the early days—but there was things too sacred for them to joke about. You know what I ...
— Old Ebenezer • Opie Read
... caused such consternation amongst the company as Ivan Nikiforovitch's unexpected arrival created. But Anton Prokofievitch only went off into a fit of laughter, and held his sides with delight at having played such a joke ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... sarcasm that could not sustain itself even by a smile letting Mrs. Burton into the joke, "going to be ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... The detective, greatly vexed, bit his lips; to him the joke was quite devoid of humor. The arrival of a prison guard gave Ganimard an opportunity to recover himself. The man brought Arsene Lupin's luncheon, furnished by a neighboring restaurant. After depositing the tray upon the table, the guard retired. Lupin ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... malicious philosophers can be! I know of nothing more stinging than the joke Epicurus took the liberty of making on Plato and the Platonists; he called them Dionysiokolakes. In its original sense, and on the face of it, the word signifies "Flatterers of Dionysius"—consequently, tyrants' accessories and lick-spittles; besides this, however, ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... moment to explain my sudden departure to Mr. and Mrs. Christie, and then I went with Tom to my lodgings. He looked vastly amused when he saw Duncan's house, and when I told him that I had been there all the time he seemed to think it a capital joke. ...
— Christie, the King's Servant • Mrs. O. F. Walton
... was served, while Mr Adams was saying grace, the captain conveyed his chair from behind him; so that when he endeavoured to seat himself he fell down on the ground, and this completed joke the first, to the great entertainment of the whole company. The second joke was performed by the poet, who sat next him on the other side, and took an opportunity, while poor Adams was respectfully drinking to the master of the house, to overturn ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding
... beyond a joke,' he said, 'What does it mean?' The glance from under the overhanging gray brows ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... sites, surveyed and distributed into town-lots with squares and parks staked out, are only a century before their time, and will redound to the future credit, however fatal to the immediate cash of their projectors. Who can doubt that Cairo of Illinois—the standing joke of tourists, (and the standing-water of the Ohio and Mississippi,) though no joke to its founders—will one day rival its Egyptian prototype? America runs to cities, and particularly in its Northern latitudes. As cities have been the nurses of democratic institutions and ideas, democratic nations, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... A JOKE (cries Jack) without a sting— Post obitum can no man sing. And true, if Jack don't mend his manners And quit the atheistic banners, Post obitum will Jack run foul Of such ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... But really, you know, I find it so hard to believe it is not all a joke, despite the grave deputations that have waited on me, and the serious arguments they have used. The idea ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne
... on his life work. Parsimonious of all he observed, he never related a typical anecdote, or offered a suggestive remark. Praise, even, did not move him, and if by chance he became animated it was to tell some practical joke, some atelier hoaxes, as if he had given himself up to the pleasure of ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... "back-to-the-farm" movement. Leaving the country for the city is often disastrous even for the purpose in view, namely to gain wealth. For wealth gained at the expense of health always proves in the end a bitter joke. The victim proceeds through the rest of his life to spend wealth in ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... joke of it is," muttered Ormsby, as Hedgeby sprang to obey an order, "one can't tell whether a chap like that is laughing at us, or trying to sympathize with ...
— Dave Darrin After The Mine Layers • H. Irving Hancock
... ducke, "by my hat! *a pretty joke!* That men should loven alway causeless, Who can a reason find, or wit, in that? Danceth he merry, that is mirtheless? Who shoulde *reck of that is reckeless?* *care for one who has Yea! queke yet," quoth the duck, "full well and ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... is not so serious as all that, senora," said the Penitentiary. "I think the matter should not be again referred to, and when the one who was stoned says that, the rest may surely be satisfied. And the blow was no joke, Senor Don Jose. I thought they had split my head open and that my brains ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... Sir J. Raton, Selwyn's dog Ravensworth, Lady Ravensworth, Lord Rawdon, Lord Regency, English, question of Regency, French Reynolds, Sir Joshua; Selwyn's joke on Rich, Sir R. "Richard," see Fitzpatrick Richards, Mr. Richelieu, Marechal de Richmond, Charles Lennox, second Duke of Richmond, Duchess of Richmond, Mr. Richmond-on-Thames, a fashionable resort; Duke of York at; theatre Ridley, Sir M. Rigby, Right Hon. Richard Robinson, John, Secretary to the ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... I'd have dragged ye through ennyhow," declared Jim Dow, who had no toleration of a joke on a serious subject. "This hyar boy air a deal too peart ter try enny sech ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... singularly imbued with petty royal pride. He would rather be amiable and familiar with his tailor than agreeable and friendly with the most illustrious of the aristocracy of Great Britain; he would rather joke with a Brummell than admit to his confidence a Norfolk or a Somerset. The Regent was always particularly well-bred in public, and showed, if he chose, decidedly good manners; but he was in the habit very often ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... pint of claret. As he sat eating he kept reading a letter over and over, and each time he read he grinned —he did not smile like a well-behaved man of the world, he did not giggle like a well-veneered Egyptian back from Paris, he chuckled like a cabman responding to a liberal fare and a good joke. A more unconventional little man never lived. Simplicity was his very life, and yet he had a gift for following the sinuosities of the Oriental mind; he had a quality almost clairvoyant, which came, perhaps, from his Irish forebears. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... have played at getting tolerable cooking out of two slovens, one of whom knows nothing, and the other everything but his business,—and have lost the game; we have played at catching trout, and found this the best joke of all. There are beautiful brook-trout on the coast of Labrador. They say so; it is so. Beautiful trout,—mostly visible to the naked eye! Not many of them, but enough to gratify ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... streets skipping. He said it kept him warm. Another of his tricks was to let off fireworks from the roof of his house whenever he heard of the death of anybody of importance. The Returning Officer refused his nomination—which, so far as his nominators were concerned, was intended only as a joke—on the grounds of his being by common report a person of unsound mind. And there, so far as South-west Belfast was ...
— The Master of Mrs. Chilvers • Jerome K. Jerome
... but bees terrible in kitchen & around water-hole. Flipped a dollar to settle name of big ledge. Bud won tails, Burro lode. Must cultivate my sense of humor so as to see the joke. Bud agrees to stay & help develop claim. Still very weak, puttered around house all day cleaning & baking bread & stewing fruit which brought bees by millions so we could not eat same till after dark when they subsided. Bud got stung twice in kitchen. Very peevish ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... a humorist," he observed, "at least in his own rather grim style. But it seems rather too grim a joke for a man to buy a packet of sandwiches when he is just going to ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... mate goes in to dinner." In about half an hour the dinner-bell rang. The boatswain took charge of the deck; some twenty sailors were now stripped, except a pair of light duck trowsers; among the rest was a tall, powerful, coast-of-Africa nigger of the name of Leigh: they used to joke him, and ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... the stable, smiling at Glenn's joke, and heartily delighted to exchange the monotony of his domestic employment, which was becoming irksome, for the sports of the field, particularly as he was now entirely recovered from the effects of his late disasters, and began to grow weary of ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... perfectly well to be true, and what no man in it can by possibility better know to be true than those disinterested supporters of that noble lord, who had the advantage of hearing him and cheering him night after night, when he first became premier—I mean that he did officially and habitually joke, at a time when this country was plunged in deep disgrace and distress—I say, that noble lord, when he wondered so much that the man of this age, who has, by his earnest and adventurous spirit, done the most to distinguish himself ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... If I cannot free thee, I will at least comfort thee, and thou shalt at least have one with thee who will prattle with thee about thy sorest affliction, and whisper courage to thee, and love thee, and whose best joke and best blood shall be at thy service. For thou, my people, art the true Kaiser, the true lord of the land; thy will is sovereign, and more legitimate far than that purple Tel est notre plaisir, which invokes ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... that he had given up a game which, however much longer it might be contested, had evidently begun to be a losing one on his part. But we were mistaken. We found him one morning in high spirits, and evidently in possession of some joke which ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... For things within the vulgar reach, To run of errands, and to preach; Well hast thou judged, that heads like mine Cannot want help from heads like thine; Well hast thou judged thyself unmeet Of such high argument to treat; Twas but to try thee that I spoke, And all I said was but a joke. 1370 Nor think a joke, Crape, a disgrace, Or to my person, or my place; The wisest of the sons of men Have deign'd to use them now and then. The only caution, do you see, Demanded by our dignity, From common use and men exempt, Is that they may not breed contempt. Great use they ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... happened to you two?" exclaimed the captain wonderingly. "Are you trying to put up a joke on me?" ...
— The Pirate Shark • Elliott Whitney
... presented who were presented of the Oxford deputation. The King went beyond his written speech to the men of Cambridge, and put us in a fright. However, it was good-humoured, and of no great harm—a sort of joke. ...
— A Political Diary 1828-1830, Volume II • Edward Law (Lord Ellenborough)
... nurse bending fruitlessly over him; but at its wildest he signed to his visitor not to go, and when at last it lulled he went on calmly: "Donizetti ended mad in a gala dress, but I end at least sane enough to appreciate the joke—a little long-drawn out, and not entirely original, yet replete with ingenious irony. Little Lucy looks shocked, but I sometimes think, little Lucy, the disrespect is with the goody-goody folks, who, while ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... great place, that is. There are two big business streets in New York—Wall Street and Division." He broke into a laugh at his own joke and I charitably joined in. I endeavored to take his thrusts good-naturedly and for many minutes I succeeded, but at one point when he referred to us as "manufacturers," with a sneering implication of quotation marks over the word, ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... severely. "This is no joke." An undefined mistrust of his own powers suddenly possessed him in the presence of this mystery. "How do you come to know of ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... to wait in his study for him. He was back in about a half-hour looking sort of worried. Of course Sawyer had to own up. He told 'Horace' that he'd just done it for a joke, but 'Horace' didn't believe him for a cent. And there you are!" Steve ended in breathless ...
— Left End Edwards • Ralph Henry Barbour
... trickle of a brook we turned abruptly up the mountain-side, by a zigzag trail so steep that even the interpreter was forced to walk. As I toiled wearily upward, I looked back to find my dog riding comfortably in my chair. Tired and hot, he had barked to be taken up. The coolies thought it a fine joke, and when I whistled him down they at once put him back again, explaining that it was hard work for short legs. At one of the worst bits of the trail we met some finely dressed men on horseback, who stared ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... William said he "had had it pretty rough, and a part of the time kinder smooth," but never had had matters to his satisfaction. Just before deciding to make an adventure on the Underground Rail Road his owner had been talking of selling him. Under the apprehension that this threat would prove no joke, Henry began to study what he had better do to be saved from the jaws of hungry negro traders. It was not long before he came to the conclusion that he had best strike out upon a venture in a Northern direction, and do the best he could to get as far away as possible from ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... in joke, for he had never conceived of such a thing as a spring of hot water, but he found that his jest might have been said in earnest, for the spring was almost "bilin'," and caused the Bu'ster to pull his hand out again with a roar of surprise ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... the traditions, had a pretty keen eye for a joke. He once sold a splendid horse to a horse-jockey at a fair. The fellow shortly rode his fine horse to water. When he got into the water, lo and behold, the horse vanished, and the humbugged jockey ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... they'll do any harm together, but it is particular, you know. However, she is to come. And nobody else is to come. I did count upon you." Then Mrs. Finn counselled her very seriously as to the bad taste of such a joke, explaining to her that the Duke had certainly not intended that her invitations should be confined to Lady Rosina. But it was not all joke with the Duchess. She had been driven almost to despair, and was very angry with her ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... every volume being beautifully bound. The books are, for the most part, modern, and chiefly French. There are, for example, Sainte-Beuve's 'Livre d'Amour,' which was suppressed after a few copies were struck off, with the author's own corrections; the Fortsas 'Catalogue,' the cruel joke of M. Renier Chalon; first editions of 'The English Spy,' an exceptionally fine copy; Coryat's 'Crambe, or, his Colwork,' 1611; Roger's 'Poems' and 'Italy'; a number of books illustrated by Chodowiecki, the Cruikshank of Germany; ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... with listless gait and spirits gay, They Eastward next pursued their jocund way; With story, joke, smart repartee and pun, Their business pleasure, and their ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... to stop it?" she retorted defiantly, "Give me religion —-I guess you'd tell me. Religion's all right for those on top, but say, it would be a joke if I got it. There ain't any danger. But if I did, it wouldn't pay room-rent ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... he said when I had finished. "Began it as a joke on Rosie, and ended by picking up the broken china out of the road, knowing it would play hob with the tires of the car." Which shows how near one can come to the truth, and yet miss ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... far as the front door, at which, it may be added, she—though by no means impatient—did in point of fact ring twice before the man-servant answered it. Although Mr. Hordle had the reputation of "being fond of his joke" in private life, in his official capacity his manner offered a model of middle-aged sedateness and restraint. To-day neither humour nor reserve were in evidence, but a harassed and hunted look altogether surprising ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... indeed he felt very kindly towards this gentle, simple-minded creature. "I am ready for any amount of conversation on any subject from 'cabbages to kings.'" Then she smiled well pleased at his little joke. ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... my dear son Terence, the real purport of this letter, which is just to put to your soul's conscience, as a dutiful son, whether you ought not to send me a small matter of money to save your poor father's soul from pain and anguish—for it's no joke that being in purgatory, I can tell you; and you wouldn't care how soon you were tripped out of it yourself. I only wish you had but your little toe in it, and then you'd burn with impatience to have it out again. But you're a dutiful son, so I'll say no ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... a number of pleasant stories about the Circuit and the University, which he tells with a simper to his neighbor at dinner; and has always the last joke of Mr. Baron Maule. He has a private fortune of five thousand pounds; he is a dutiful son; he has a sister married, in Harley Street; and Lady Jane Ranville has the best opinion of him, and says he is a most excellent and highly ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... let him have as many as his injured soul required, no one touched him. In fact they were all shaking hands with Jimmy, who was now his smiling self once more and ready to play with the best of them, when suddenly the Biffer took it into his head to make a joke. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, January 5, 1916 • Various
... shakes or suthin', an' I must take her to the doctor. Now look here—you look like a nice kind of a young man. I know it's some kind of antiques and horribles day 'round here, an' all the folks hes on funny clothes and does nothin' on'y joke a body. But let's drop comical talk jest fer a minute an' get down to ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... before the slow versicles were half dragged through. But the parson was not the only musical culprit, nor the worse, by many degrees. It would be absurd to expect much cheerfulness here; a hoarse roar breaks out now and then at some coarse practical joke; but a frank, honest laugh—never. Yet I do wish that imprisoned discontent would vent itself otherwise than in discordant, dismal howling. At this minute a cracked ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... protest against the high charges of the railroad the missionaries always travel in the open car. These three young men were for the first time out of England, and in any fashion were glad to start on their long journey up the Congo to Bolobo. To them whatever happened was a joke. It was a joke even when the colored "wife" of one of the French officers used the broad shoulders of one of them as a pillow and slept sweetly. She was a large, good-natured, good-looking mulatto, ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis
... minutes and was beginning to grow drowsy after his full day in the open air. If it were not for the joke of the thing he ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... goodness' sake, don't give me any more!' cried Lord Findon. 'It's no joke, Eugenie, this sipping business—Where were we? Oh, well, of course I knew we should have to take it—and I don't say I'm not pleased with it. But ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... begged his wife to grant him a last request, and, upon her consent, explained it to be that she would never again marry an old man. Sickness, says Pope in comment, often destroys wit and wisdom, but has seldom the power to remove humour. Wycherley's joke, replies a critic, is contemptible; and yet one feels that the death scene, with this strange mixture of cynicism, spite, and superstition, half redeemed by imperturbable good temper, would not be unworthy of a place in Wycherley's own school of comedy. One could wish that Pope had shown a ...
— Alexander Pope - English Men of Letters Series • Leslie Stephen
... lad's bright, clear eyes looked frankly into the captain's as he continued. "I have been making a fool of myself, Captain. Got into some mischief with a crowd of fellows at school. Of course, I got caught and had to bear the whole blame for the silly joke we had played. The faculty has suspended me for a term. I would have got off with only a reprimand if I would have told the names of the other fellows, but I ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... and Frank a horn and china dog, and all the corners of our stockings were stuffed with nuts and candies. I hope mother got something beside the potatoes and onions which I remember seeing her pull out and unwrap with delightful humor—an old and rather pathetic joke ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... chimney-sweeper, laughing, "so did not know me? Poor duck! won't hurt you; don't be frightened; nothing but old guardian; all a joke!" And then, patting her cheek with his dirty hand, and nodding at her with much kindness, "Pretty dove," he added, "be of good heart! shan't be meddled with; come to see after you. Heard of your tricks; thought I'd catch ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... was the exception, not the rule, in these days!) to the cheerfulness and unconstraint of Burma, with its fine landscapes and merry-hearted population. "It was such a relief to find natives who would laugh at a joke," he once remarked in the writer's presence to the lamented E. C. Baber, who replied that he had experienced exactly the same sense of relief in ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... consisted simply of the more courtly of his colleagues, and was in fact formed under his direction. George Grenville was its nominal chief, but the measures of the Cabinet were still secretly dictated by the favourite. The formation of the Grenville ministry indeed was laughed at as a joke. Charles Townshend and the Duke of Bedford, the two ablest of the Whigs who had remained with Bute after Newcastle's dismissal, refused to join it; and its one man of ability was Lord Shelburne, a young Irishman, who had served with credit at Minden, and had been rewarded ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... stuffed with straw, hung on a pole and paraded through London by Pevensey, March, Selwyn and some dozen other madcaps, while six musicians marched before them. The clothes were thus conveyed to Umfraville's house. I think none of us would have relished a joke like that were he the butt ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... the joke was that the Old Squire and Gram never knew that they had been robbed, and thought only that we had made them a present of some excellent apples. When Theodora saw how chagrined the rest of us were, she kept ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... the waist line with the international boundary line. United States customhouse on one corner of the street, Mexican customhouse in talking distance on the other corner. Great place for holdups, that!" This was a joke, and Jean smiled obligingly. "First the United States holds you up, and then the Mexicans. You get it coming and going. Well, Nogales don't have to stand. ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... conjurer; that it was I that instructed the baker's daughter (with whom he is in love) how to inveigle him into the snare; that it was I that enacted the ghost, that knocked him down, and cudgelled him till he roared again. If I had only not carried the joke too far, but I wished to cool his love a little for my sweetheart. 'T was a ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... mate, also dined with the skipper. He was a tall, powerfully-built man. He was singularly taciturn, and took no share in the conversation unless directly asked. He seemed, however, to be able to appreciate a joke, but never laughed audibly, contenting himself with drawing his lips apart ...
— The Treasure of the Incas • G. A. Henty
... frolicsome fat person. And she was a great joker. The joke that she loved most was this: she loved to bump into people that were flying through the air—to bump into them and knock ...
— The Tale of Mrs. Ladybug • Arthur Scott Bailey
... added; "for were you to come across any one from the house, or to meet master; or were, in the streets, people to press against you, or horses to collide with you, as to make (his horse) shy, and he were to fall, would that too be a joke? The gall of both of you is larger than a peck measure; but it's all you, Ming Yen, who has incited him, and when I go back, I'll surely tell the nurses ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... departs not with the company to-morrow, I will search the castle and find her; for I know every cranny. I will bring about a meeting, so thou mayest beau her privately and win her love before Cedric knows aught; 'twill be a grand joke to play upon him, and 'twill pay him back for trying to hide from us the gem of his castle." They looked into each other's eyes but an instant, and they each understood ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... tender as a lamb—propitious condition for a critic! We opened upon the scene where Mr Burchell so cruelly tries poor Sophia, by offering her a husband in Mr Jenkinson; we know the whole transaction perfectly, the bitter joke, the proposal ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various
... once again we are set to wondering why—except possibly to allay some whimsical twinges of self-respect—dramatists ever try to invent new jokes at all. Even more are we set to wondering why this particular joke ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 10, 1920 • Various
... Jack could joke under almost any serious conditions; but Tom felt relieved to know the worst. They were at the time back again in their appointed ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach
... back in a chair—she didn't struggle, for, when this disorrder grips ye, ye cant move hand nor foot—and had my lady into the land of Nod in half a minute; thin off t' her husband; so here's th' Healer between two stools—spare the whipcord, spoil the knacker!—it would be a good joke if I was to lose both pashints for want of a little unbeequity, wouldn't it—Lash the lazy vagabin!—Not that I care: what interest have I in their lives? they never pay: but ye see custom's second nature; an d'Ive formed a vile habit; I've got to be a Healer among the ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... whole circumstances of the motion of such an assemblage of particles, and so cogent his argument as to the necessity that they must move precisely so, and no otherwise, else the rings would not be stable, that it was a Cambridge joke concerning him that he paid a visit to Saturn one evening, and made ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... there was revelry and boisterous mirth (or what the Auld Lichts took for such) in Tibbie's kitchen. At eleven o'clock Davit Lunan cracked a joke. Davie Haggart, in reply to Bell Dundas' request, gave a song of distinctly secular tendencies. The bride (who had carefully taken off her wedding-gown on getting home and donned a wrapper) coquettishly ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... easily," and sent one of them to examine the house. The messenger found everything quiet, went into the kitchen to light a candle, and, thinking the cat's shining fiery eyes were live coals, he held a match to them to light it. But the cat did not understand the joke, flew in his face, spat at him, and scratched. He was dreadfully frightened, ran away, and was going out of the back door; when the dog, who was lying there, jumped up and bit him in the leg. As he ran through ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... on her pert face. "Of course Rick's idea about stealing a million from quiz shows was just a joke. But, Rick, you gave ...
— The Electronic Mind Reader • John Blaine
... Moscow in 1663-64 was no joke. Lord Carlisle, who was accompanied by his wife and eldest son, although ready to start from Archangel by the end of September, was doomed to spend both the 5th of November and Christmas Day in the gloomy town of Vologda, which they had reached, travelling by water, on the 17th of October. ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... whose insanity differed very much in degree, were looked upon as part and parcel of the town, and people spoke about "our lunatics" just as at Venice people say "nostre carampane." One was constantly meeting them, and they passed the time of day with us and made some joke, at which, sickly as it was, we could not help smiling. They were treated with kindness, and they often did a service in their turn. I shall never forget a poor fellow called Brian, who believed that ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... "Yes." "Well," said the ambassador, "you are mistaken. You are his widow. I have his body in the wagon. You need not feel bad about it, because we hung him thinking he was the horse thief. We soon after found that he was innocent. The joke is ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... has plainly tired you. I cannot have my girl look like that when she's a bride to-day. And you too, sir," he added, surveying Geoffrey, "look a trifle out of sorts. Well, I am not surprised. A dragon is no joke. Come to my study." And he took ...
— The Dragon of Wantley - His Tale • Owen Wister
... is true that to be slow in words is a woman's only virtue, then, indeed, is my state pitiable, for talk I must, and G. is a delightful person to talk to. She listens to my tales of Peter and the others, and asks for more, and shouts with laughter at the smallest joke. I pass as a wit with G., and have a great success. She is going to stay with a married sister for the cold weather. Quite like me, only I'm going to an unmarried brother. I think we are both getting slightly impertinent to our elders. They tease us so at ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... ridge lay a winding bridle-road, skirted by patches of green sward, and occasionally crossed by a sparkling mountain rill. Above us, on the hill-side, was a considerable bog, where crowds of country people were collecting to their daily toil. A merry laugh or boisterous joke occasionally rang clear in the morning air. The mirth went heavily to our hearts. The snatch of song, the unrestrained laugh, the merry glee, broke upon the ear of the wayfarers like the mocking of demons. The consciousness that they then sped, without a beacon ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... down, fetched him wine and unbound the shields, and he seated himself upon his bed, and with fear, agitation, and fatigue he fainted away. Those who had been concerned in the joke were now sorry they had pushed it so far; however, the anxiety his fainting away had caused them was relieved by his returning to himself. He asked what o'clock it was; they told him it was just daybreak. He said no more, and in silence began to dress ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... if at all, regain your hold upon your child, once you have lost it. It does not matter much who disillusions your child about Santa Claus. The disappointment is brief, and soon the child can look upon the legend as a joke. But it does matter very much who tells your child that the stork story is all a lie, and ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... the poet. Shall we have him? He is brimful of conceits and affectations, but he's a tremendous joke.' ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... under the influences of the German tailor's joke, the perfect fit of his new clothes, the fine cloth, and the sight of a graceful figure which met his eyes in the looking-glass. Vaguely he told himself that Paris was the capital of chance, and for the moment he believed in chance. Had he not a volume of poems and a magnificent romance entitled ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... stupidity. They narrate their scandalous doings with the ostensible purpose of obtaining advice as to the best way to get out of their scrapes. They vituperate the humanists in comically bad Latin, which is perhaps the best part of the joke.[269] In this way those who later opposed Luther and his reforms were held up to ridicule in these letters and their opposition to ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... the north," Cecilia answered; "with only old people in it. She will have to write and translate for a great scholar, who is studying mysterious inscriptions—hieroglyphics, I think they are called—found among the ruins of Central America. It's really no laughing matter, Francine! Emily made a joke of it, too. 'I'll take anything but a situation as a governess,' she said; 'the children who have Me to teach them would be to be pitied indeed!' She begged and prayed me to help her to get an honest living. What could I do? I could only write home to papa. He is a member of Parliament: ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... so forth, thus he spoke, "Your Highness must intend a joke; It doesn't stand to reason For one to order salmon brought, Unless that fish is sometimes caught, And ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the show, or the races, or a stock sale, or land ballot, or something; but most of them were tired, or at tea—or in the pubs—and the corners were deserted. Observe how fate makes time and things fit when she wants to do a good turn—or play a practical joke. Harry Chatswood, for instance, didn't know anything ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson
... court at the Hotel de Ville, De Retz was wearing his sword-belt over his archbishop's gown, the little hunchback Conti was generalissimo, and the starving people were pillaging Mazarin's library, in joke, "to find something to gnaw upon." Outside the walls, the maids-of-honor were quarrelling over the straw beds which annihilated all the romance of martyrdom, and Conde, with five thousand men, was besieging five hundred thousand. No matter, they ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... proceedings was very little exaggerated, and, as Crossfield and several others who were present each entertained his own particular circle of friends with the same story, the whole affair became a joke against ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... himself back and roared at the recital of the story, as told by the boys. "I think his description is a pretty good one. Perhaps he was thinking of the family circle?" and John continued to laugh as the boys tried to grasp the full meaning of his little joke. ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Treasures of the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... these last six months; it is to other qualities that one must look for final victory in a war of exhaustion. The Englishman does not look into himself; he does not brood; he sees no further forward than is necessary, and he must have his joke. These are fearful and wonderful advantages. Examine the letters and diaries of the various combatants and you will see how far less imaginative and reflecting, (though shrewd, practical, and humorous,) ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... that!" exclaimed Bunny. Then he laughed, as Wopsie did. It was a little joke on her, when Bunny answered ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue at Aunt Lu's City Home • Laura Lee Hope
... much to hear it," said Senator Wendell gravely; "that is, of course, if it involves no sacrifice of your feelings. We are all friends here, and will go at once into executive session. Let all who have a story to tell, an anecdote to relate, or a joke to perpetrate, feel free to do so. The galleries shall be cleared, and reporters and the public excluded—metaphorically speaking," he added hastily, turning to the newspaper men, who wore a pained expression, "metaphorically speaking, ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... him that he was not joking, nor in a mood to joke; but that he really thought the least vexatious course would be for ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... and, when necessary, that of herald; a groom was master of the horse; a gardener superintended the woods and forests. This, however, is only a traditionary account of the court of Yvetot; and, lest the reader should think it all a joke, we shall specify some of the documentary evidence still extant respecting ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 458 - Volume 18, New Series, October 9, 1852 • Various
... Jose. No one who has known him during his friendly sojourn in this community but will be struck with the conviction that he has acquired that most marvelous faculty of your great American nation, the exhibition of humor and of the practical joke." ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... Coxon's ferocity was nothing new to me; truly I believed he was not quite right in his mind, and expected, as in former cases, that he would come round a bit by-and-by when his insane temper had passed. Still his insinuations were highly dangerous, not to speak of their offensiveness. It was no joke to be charged, even by a madman, with striving to arouse the crew to mutiny. Nevertheless I tried to console myself as best I could by reflecting that he could not prove his charges; that I need only to endure his insolence for a few weeks, and that there was always a law to vindicate ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... treasury-bag, which was always carried with me wherever I went, we made up a tolerable present, both for him and his friends. This old chief had an air of dignity about him that commanded respect, which the other had not. He was grave, but not sullen; would crack a joke, talk on indifferent subjects, and endeavour to understand us and be understood himself. During this visit, the old priest repeated a short prayer or speech, the purport of which we did not understand. Indeed he would frequently, at other times, break out in prayer; ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... drunkard! Mr. Budd is also a very religious man. Indeed, he is warden at the Parish Church. 'He is a small, sleek-headed bachelor of five and forty, whose scandalous life has long furnished his more moral neighbors with an afterdinner joke.' But a very religious man is Mr. Budd! Mrs. Linnett is a very religious woman. She dotes on religious biography. 'On taking up the biography of a celebrated preacher, she immediately turns to the end to see ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... you wish it," chuckled the little man, in high humor. "I would have visited your sloop to-day, Captain Plum, if you hadn't come ashore so opportunely this morning. Ho, ho, ho! a good joke, ...
— The Courage of Captain Plum • James Oliver Curwood
... singing, that she should complain Of other folk Is past a joke, I vow I'll not be ...
— Dick, Marjorie and Fidge - A Search for the Wonderful Dodo • G. E. Farrow
... to laugh at the same moment, and heartily too, as if at a joke, a rather broad joke, on the part of the old cashier. "Go along with you, you sly old Pere Planus!" The old man laughed with them! He laughed without any desire to laugh, simply to do as the ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... idea in which direction they were proceeding, the two chums struggled bravely on, Billy encouraging the flagging Lathrop from time to time with a joke, though these latter were, ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... jokin'," she declared. "I've been a poor relation in this village for a good while and my brother was a shoemaker and on the upper fringe of the town-folk class. My humor bump would have to stick up like Cannon Hill afore I could see any joke in that." ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... America. Evermore thanks for the brave stand you have made for Spiritualism in these writings. But has literature any parallel to the oddity of the vehicle chosen to convey this treasure? I delight in the contents; the form, which my defective apprehension for a joke makes me not appreciate, I leave to your merry discretion. And yet did ever wise and philanthropic author use so defying a diction? As if society were not sufficiently shy of truth without providing it beforehand with an objection to the form. Can it be that this humor proceeds from ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... called, inasmuch as he was a very small poet. And in the book now before us he cannot quote Francis Bugg, the renegade Quaker, without a remark on his unsavoury name. A wise man might talk folly like this by his own fireside; but that any human being, after having made such a joke, should write it down, and copy it out, and transmit it to the printer, and correct the proof-sheets, and send it forth into the world, is enough to make us ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... capital joke!" shouted his listeners, and amid roars of laughter, claimed the bet of fish, and wine. It was duly paid; but Tokutaro never allowed his hair to grow again, and renounced the world, and became a priest under the name ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... seem to be merely "playing at making a livelihood." They always impress me as happy-go-lucky harlequins, to whom this whole business of coming into the world and getting a living for a few years is nothing more nor less than a huge joke. ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... I could half imagine the old turbulent fellow winking slyly at me and saying in that undertone you hear when you forget the thunders for a moment: "Don't you worry about me, little man. It's all a joke, and I don't mind. Only to-morrow and then another to-morrow, and there won't be any smelters or trolley cars or ginger-ale or peanuts or sentimentalizing outers like yourself. But I'll be here ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... to Sara one day: "My father used to say that when he was a boy the phrase, 'American workman' stood for the highest efficiency in the world, but that even in his day the phrase had become a joke. How could you expect this rabble to know that there might be such a thing as an American standard ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... they didn't understand the meaning at all—far from it; and the idea of any one's wanting to take the stranger's place on the water casks was so outrageously ludicrous, that at any other time they would have considered it a devilish good joke and have never ceased ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... they all roar, as people will, at anything, when they have nothing else to do. Even Tita, who, though smiling always, is looking rather depressed, gives way to a merry little laugh. Hearing her, Margaret blesses Randal for his silly old joke. ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... You're a trump, Jack Vernon, and I promise never to call you by that name any more as it annoys you," he replied, chuckling at my joke, though it was at his own expense. He then leant out of the port further so as to get a tight grip of the whip fall, the other fellows holding on to him in turn to prevent his toppling over and joining me below, singing out as soon as their preparations were completed, ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... a stocking," he laughed, "hung up there in the tree, I didn't suppose the birds expected a visit from me." Then old Kris Kringle who loves a joke as well as the best, Dropped a handful of snowflakes into the oriole's ...
— Graded Memory Selections • Various
... fell fast asleep, And dreamt she heard them bleating; But when she awoke, she found it a joke, For ...
— The Baby's Opera • Walter Crane
... sometimes a misfortune an' sometimes a joke. But I hope ye won't vote f'r him. He might be ilicted if ye did. I'd like to raymimber him, an' it might be I cudden't if he got th' job. Who was the prisidint ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne
... and a swift glance at his mother convinced the boy that they had not been parties to any joke. Yet where were the watch ...
— The Grammar School Boys Snowbound - or, Dick & Co. at Winter Sports • H. Irving Hancock
... not answer me for a time, and as I waited I thought that there's nothing like a confession to make one look mad; and that of all confessions a written one is the most detrimental all round. Never confess! Never, never! An untimely joke is a source of bitter regret always. Sometimes it may ruin a man; not because it is a joke, but because it is untimely. And a confession of whatever sort is always untimely. The only thing which makes it supportable for a while is curiosity. ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... and then at Mike and me, with a puzzled expression which seemed to ask: Is this a crazy freak, or an absurd, insulting joke? ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... she departs not with the company to-morrow, I will search the castle and find her; for I know every cranny. I will bring about a meeting, so thou mayest beau her privately and win her love before Cedric knows aught; 'twill be a grand joke to play upon him, and 'twill pay him back for trying to hide from us the gem of his castle." They looked into each other's eyes but an instant, and ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... coach and looks back at his father's figure as long as he can see it; and then the guard, having disposed of his luggage, comes to an anchor, and finishes his buttonings and other preparations for facing the three hours before dawn—no joke for those who minded cold, on a fast coach in November, in the reign of ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... found everything quiet, went into the kitchen to light a candle, and, thinking the cat's shining fiery eyes were live coals, he held a match to them to light it. But the cat did not understand the joke, flew in his face, spat at him, and scratched. He was dreadfully frightened, ran away, and was going out of the back door; when the dog, who was lying there, jumped up and bit him in the leg. As he ran through the yard, past the dunghill, the donkey gave him a good kick with his ...
— The Fairy Book - The Best Popular Stories Selected and Rendered Anew • Dinah Maria Mulock (AKA Miss Mulock)
... composers felt of good words for setting to music, led Julie to try to write some, and eventually, in 1874, a book of "Songs for Music, by Four Friends,"[26] was published; the contents were written by my sister and two of her brothers, and the Rev. G.J. Chester. This book became a standing joke amongst them, because one of the reviewers said it contained "songs by four writers, one of whom was a poet," and he did not specify ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... have seen Mr. Ellsworth laugh. All the time he knew something was wrong, I guess, but he never bothered with things like that. "Settle your own disputes," that's what he always said. The only fellow that didn't take it as a joke was Connie Bennett and just for that reason you'll have to hear ...
— Roy Blakeley's Adventures in Camp • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... not joke, my children," said the Father; "this is a very sad business. I am thankful it has taken place in the absence of your dear Mother, and I forbid you writing her anything about it. This must concern me, and ...
— Fanny, the Flower-Girl • Selina Bunbury
... the biggest joke in the way of an officer that either of the young soldiers had ever seen, it was impossible not to like ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... us, omitting no detail, how he had in a certain 'gay' house met this officer of the guards, a very nice chap and of good family, only without a hap'orth of brains; how they had made friends, how he, the officer that is, had suggested as a joke a game of 'fools' with Viktor with some old cards, for next to nothing, and with the condition that the officer's winnings should go to the benefit of Wilhelmina, but Viktor's to his own benefit; how afterwards they had got on to ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... Blue Flower were companions. Nobody could be unhappy with Bev, least of all the shy Indian girl with a face full of sunshine, now. And I? I walked a pathway strewn with rose petals because the golden-haired Little Lees was beside me. Each day was a frolic day for us, teasing one another and making a joke of life, and for the morrow we took no ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... a big thing for you to create a business if for no other reason than to give employment to less fortunate young men; but you have other responsibilities. Your position, your fortune, they make demands. I'm not one to underestimate the leisure class; I know the old joke about tramps being the only leisure class in America; it's a silly joke, but it ought to make us think. After a bit, if we don't look out, the leisure class, here, will be all women. They'll dominate art and poetry and society—and I must say I ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... courtiers, who had got into such a habit of laughing at little noses that they sometimes found themselves laughing at hers before they had time to think; but this did not do at all before the Prince, who quite failed to see the joke, and actually banished two of his courtiers who had dared to mention disrespectfully the ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... the schoolmaster of Wythburn, and his name Monsey Laman. The dalesmen found the little schoolmaster the merriest comrade that ever sat with them over a glass. He had a crack for each of them, a song, a joke, a lively touch that cut and meant no harm. They called him "the little limber Frenchman," in allusion to a peculiarity of gait which in the minds of the heavy-limbed mountaineers was somehow associated with the idea of ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... fighting Tom so loud o' tongue and ready o' fist—Tom as have cowed so many—there is he fast by the neck and a-groaning, see ye, gossips, loud enough for six, wish I may die else! And the best o' the joke is—the key be gone, as I'm a sinner! So they needs must break the lock to get him out. Big Tom, as have thrashed every man for miles." But here merry voice and laughter ceased and a buxom woman thrust smiling face from ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... This turned the joke upon the advocate of strong drink, and he began to put his wits to work for arguments. "You are from Connecticut, are you?" asked the Southerner. "Yes, and we are an orderly, pious, peaceable people. ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown
... the other, "we ought to have some light to see how to work him free. It would be a tough joke if the whole bunch of us got stuck. I don't hanker after such an experience. Things are pretty dry up here, so we must be careful not to ...
— The Boys of Columbia High on the Gridiron • Graham B. Forbes
... not without hope she might be herself the object of the male presence, which she recognized as that of Tom Helmer, whom almost everybody knew. In a few minutes, however, Letty appeared behind him, and therewith a throb of evil joy shot through her bosom: what a chance! what a good joke! what a thing for her to find out Miss Letty; to surprise her naughty secret! to have her in her power! She would have no choice but tell her everything—and then what privileges would be hers! and ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... langue d'oc, grumble who will. We'll speak it in the stables, at harvest-time, among the silkworms, among lovers, among neighbors, etc., etc. It shall be the language of joy and of brotherhood. We'll joke and laugh with it;—and as for the army, we'll take it to the barracks to ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... humour. But neither was he an ascetic nor devoid of that element of innocent appreciation of the ludicrous and that keen enjoyment of a good story which seem essential to a complete man. His habit was sobriety, but he relished a joke that was free of all taint of uncleanness and that had about it no sting for others. To those whom he best knew and loved he showed his true self, in his playful moods,—as when at Ilfracombe, climbing with his wife and others the heights that overlook the sea, he walked on a little in advance, ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... came with a basket full of tin boxes and packages of papers and talked to Miss Tabor at the door and went away. Then old Peter blundered out and asked her point-blank what it was, and she said it was her estate, almost everything she had, except the house. Buckalew, tryin' to make a joke, said he'd be willin' to swap HIS house and lot for the basket, and she laughed and told him she thought he'd be sorry; that all there was, to speak of, was a pile of distillery stock—" "What?" ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... no joke in it! It is the waste, the pitiful waste of life! Men—slaves to gather gold—become then slaves Beneath its gathered weight. For this one hope, All finer longings perish at their birth. Men's eyes to-day envy no sage or seer Or conqueror except his ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke
... black eyes, red cheeks, and a rich, dark skin. He was a handsome little creature; but when he was tanned, his brother Stephen called him a "Pawnee Indian," which was a heavy joke, and sank deeper into Willy's ...
— Little Grandfather • Sophie May
... knotty hands, his little eyes blinking under stress of the inner fire he had. So it befell that La Testolina saw him, and said something shrill and saucy to her neighbour. The wind tossed him the tone but not the sense. He saw the joke run crackling down the line, all heads look brightly up. The joke caught fire; he saw the sun-gleam on a dozen perfect sets of teeth. Vanna's head was up with the rest, sooner up and the sooner down. Even from that height the little twinkling beacons from the bridge shot her through. ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... the English house of commons, in the early part of the year, which damaged the prestige of Smith O'Brien, and although O'Connell exerted himself in parliament on his behalf, the event gave the arch-agitator satisfaction. He had many a private joke at the expense of O'Brien, and few men could wound with a brighter point than O'Connell in his best moods of satire. Mr. O'Brien was nominated on a committee, and refused to serve, alleging that the affairs ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... doctor!' she thought as she lay in her luxurious bed on lace pillows under a light silk coverlet.... Anna Sergyevna had inherited from her father a little of his inclination for splendour. She had fondly loved her sinful but good-natured father, and he had idolised her, used to joke with her in a friendly way as though she were an equal, and to confide in her fully, to ask her advice. Her ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... he spoke no word of the Turkish tongue, And had seen no Englishman all day long. So he sat there, calm, with a flask of rum, And a cigarette 'twixt finger and thumb, Tranquilly smoking, and watching the smoke, And probably hatching some stupid joke, When in at the door, without a word, Burst a Circassian, hand on sword. And the sword leapt out of its sheath, as a flame Breaks from the coals when the fire is stirred. And Mr. King, with a "What's your game?" Faced the Tchircasse with the wild-beast eyes. "Naow, what do ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... exclaimed. "And upon my word, that's a good joke. This place—Shalecray—is on the very line I'm going by. I wonder I never noticed it. I came up that way not ...
— Great Uncle Hoot-Toot • Mrs. Molesworth
... I take this opportunity of withdrawing an anecdote, happily of no great importance, published in Men of Science, p. 14, about a man personating his twin brother for a joke at supper, and not being discovered by his wife. It was told me on good authority; but I have reason to doubt the fact, as the story is not known to the son of one of the twins. However, the twins in question were extraordinarily ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... worst," Richter answered with keen bitterness. "We knew he was against us, but thought this something of a joke. Well, it seems we were mistaken. These English are obstinate; often without imagination or forethought, they blunder on, and chance, that favors simpletons, is sometimes with them. But remember, that if your father meets with misfortunes, you have ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... the letters were merely friendly and chatty, telling of money troubles, successes and family affairs. To these he recorded a few friendly remarks on wire spool, telling the same joke to each, and slipped each loop of wire into an ...
— The Man Who Staked the Stars • Charles Dye
... Heinie," remarked Frank, though he knew the man could probably not understand him. "I'd do the same if the tables were turned. It'll be a mighty good joke to tell your cronies at mess tomorrow how the Yankee schweinhund thought he had you and then got nabbed himself. But they haven't got me yet. Those laugh best who laugh last, and perhaps I've got ...
— Army Boys on the Firing Line - or, Holding Back the German Drive • Homer Randall
... almost slang, though perhaps more common than it was two hundred years ago, when Swift attacked it. Even now we do not know where it came from. There was a slang word used at the time but now forgotten—bam, which meant a trick or practical joke; and some scholars have thought that bamboozle (which, of course, means "to deceive") came from this. On the other hand, it may have been the other way about, and that the shorter word came from ...
— Stories That Words Tell Us • Elizabeth O'Neill
... an extraordinarily good joke, and he threw back his head and laughed with measureless enjoyment. At the sight of him laughing in that absurd way, the dolls' dressmaker laughed very heartily indeed. So they both ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... rare good sense Ruth controlled herself sufficiently to laugh, and the embarrassment vanished. There were splendid points about this girl's character, not the least among them being the ability to laugh at a joke that had been turned toward herself. At least the effect was splendid. The reasons, therefore, might have been better. It was because her sharp brain saw the better effect that her ability to do this thing immediately produced ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... preaching an eloquent sermon on the 116th Psalm. Afterwards there was a dinner at the house of the States-General, in honour of the stadholder, to which the Admiral of Arragon was likewise bidden. That arrogant but discomfited personage was obliged to listen to many a rough martial joke at his disaster as they sat at table, but he bore the brunt of the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... happened in his blundering way, stopping every minute or so to tell me what a saint I am, and the Lord knows that's a joke, and the gist of it was that he had started for the Ansonia with this woman, but she had changed her mind in the cab and they had gone to the Cafe de Paris instead and spent the evening there. I was pretty sure he was telling the truth, for Addison isn't clever and I ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... interrupted Peterkin; "but, pray, restrain your declarations at this time, and let's have supper—for I'm uncommonly hungry, I can tell you. And it's no joke to charge a whole herd of swine with their great-grandmother bristling like a giant porcupine, at ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... of Kentucky and Miss Kate Gordon of Louisiana. The advisability of attempting to have a woman suffrage measure introduced in the next session of the Legislature was considered. Two men besides the host appeared at this conference, a reporter, who regarded the meeting as something of a joke, and the Hon. R. H. Thompson of Jackson, an eminent lawyer, who came to offer sympathetic advice. Visits were made to the Governor, James K. Vardaman, and other State officials; to the Hinds county legislators who had recently been elected and to others. Most of these gentlemen were polite but bored ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... moreover, it could be performed as well inside the hut as in the largest room of a paper-mill. All they had to do was to pick the bark to shreds. This occupied them the whole evening—during which there was much conversation of a cheerful kind, with a joke or two about oakum-picking in a prison; and of this, not only the task in which they were engaged, but the situation in which they were executing it, did not fail ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... England, if a woman thought her husband had another wife or mistress, she would be ready to kill her and strangle the children if they were not her own. They all laughed heartily at me, and seemed to think it a great joke. I am afraid that Abd el Kadir was a bit of a Tartar in his harim, for they ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... Dame Trot with a basket of eggs, He used his pipe, she used her legs. She danced, he piped, the eggs were all broke; Dame Trot began to fret, Tom laughed at his joke. ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... old past, thrown away that precious thing beyond recovery? How precious it was, I now knew, and felt to the depths of my soul, as I paced the night and wondered if this outcome was Fate's last crudest joke at Murray Davenport's expense. What should I do? Could I remain constant to the cherished design, so well-laid, so painfully carried out, and still keep my back to the past, surrendering the happiness I might otherwise lay claim to? How that happiness lured me! I couldn't give ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... begged his mother to share a joke with him. "I woke up and remembered it's April Fools' Day," he said and chuckled. "Can't you just see Dad's face when he tastes his coffee with two spoonfuls of salt in ...
— Jerry's Charge Account • Hazel Hutchins Wilson
... little sense of the ludicrous, and he is lacking in the elements of intellectual sprightliness and vivacity which lead a Frenchman or an American to appreciate and enjoy a sally of wit, a bon mot, or a joke. Life indeed is better, and a man can bear his burdens with more ease if he has a sense of humour. Some of the great characters in history have often come out of the depths with triumph by reason of the spirit within them which could perceive the flash of wit and apply its medicine ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey
... fellow has thrown me into!" he thought to himself, while many a dire and forceful aspiration passed through his mind. Indeed, the expressions to which he gave vent were most inelegant in their nature. But what was to be done next? He was a Russian and thoroughly aroused. The affair had been no joke. "But for the Superintendent," he reflected, "I might never again have looked upon God's daylight—I might have vanished like a bubble on a pool, and left neither trace nor posterity nor property nor an honourable name for my future offspring to inherit!" (it seemed that our hero ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... so whimsically exaggerated in these stories, that I never had received them as veritable history; and when the Duke of Saxe Weimar told of the coachman's inquiring "Are you the man going to Portland? because, if you are, I'm the gentleman that's a going to drive you," I set it down for a good joke, illustrative, perchance, of a brusquerie of manner which did exist, but not in itself strictly true. I have, however, during my present sojourn here, received good corroborative evidence of ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... came into his eyes, when he took me to a field where the French and British had blown up 3000 German shells abandoned by the enemy at the time of their retreat. The field was strewn with great jagged pieces of metal, and to the old Alsatian it seemed a huge joke that the Germans had had to leave behind so much "food for the guns." After all it was not a bad joke as ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... was a woman of sense who understood a joke. She rejoined: "You might try St. George, sir, the patron saint of warriors." Then becoming serious again, the Sister made an end of the interview. "Our Mother Superior will be much touched, sir, when I report the kind step you have taken ...
— The Exploits of Juve - Being the Second of the Series of the "Fantmas" Detective Tales • mile Souvestre and Marcel Allain
... conjecture is, that gaming was invented by the Lydians when under the pressure of a great famine; to divert themselves from their sufferings they contrived dice, balls, tables, &c. This seems, however, rather a bad joke. ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... will come over us. Ah! Frank, it is all very well for you to smile, you who have been away enjoying yourself for months past hunting elephants and other small game in the interior, but you have no notion how severely our failures are telling on our spirits. Why, Jim there tried to make a joke the other day, and it was so bad that Jack immediately went to bed ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... received with similar honours; and there was a roar of laughter, when one of his brethren slily subjoined the addition of, "A good wife to our brother, to keep the Manse in order." On this occasion David Deans was delivered of his first-born joke; and apparently the parturition was accompanied with many throes, for sorely did he twist about his physiognomy, and much did he stumble in his speech, before he could express his idea, "That the lad being now ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... grave mathematical look Made believe he had written a wonderful book, And the ROYAL SOCIETY thought it was true! So they chose him right in; a good joke it was, too! ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the secret-service man discreetly, "I saw something pretty funny the first night out, Mr. Bayne. It was safe enough with me; I can tell a gentleman from a spy; but if an officer had seen it, the thing wouldn't have been a joke. Suppose we put it this way. There's a person on board I think I know. I haven't got the goods, I'll own, but I don't often make mistakes. My advice to you, sir, is to steer clear of strangers. And if ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... manners that other children have. If it is not one thing it is another; whenever we are alone there is something to complain of, and her last complaint was about her own selfishness." Then he laughed at what he considered a good joke, and in five minutes had ...
— Nerves and Common Sense • Annie Payson Call
... grinned, as if he considered the bare possibility of his doing such a thing a very good joke. I saw that I could not very well depend ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... on the subject of the Flemish account, p. 74., is in error, in assigning to a Count of Flanders the "old story" of the cloaks; it belongs to Robert, Duke of Normandy, who played off the joke at Constantinople in the court of the Greek emperor, as Bromton tells ...
— Notes & Queries 1849.12.22 • Various
... that he was not at home on the day when his temple was visited by the accused boy and his relatives, and that one of the little demons employed by him in carrying off dead people's spirits out of sheer mischief perpetrated a practical joke on ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... dies," remarked Mr. Jaffrey one night, rubbing his hands gleefully, as if it were a great joke, "Andy will find that the old man has left him ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... wide difference of opinion, even among the most discriminating critics, as to what constitutes the point of a good joke. Aside from varying temperaments, this is largely due to one's experience with life in general. Or intimate acquaintance with certain phases of life gives us a subtler appreciation of certain niceties, ...
— Best Short Stories • Various
... menace at close hand, better still, one must have had experience of it directly and almost succumbed to it, to realize that it is not to be taken lightly (—the alleged free-thinking of our naturalists and physiologists seems to me to be a joke—they have no passion about such things; they have not suffered—). This poisoning goes a great deal further than most people think: I find the arrogant habit of the theologian among all who regard themselves as "idealists"—among all who, by virtue of a higher point of departure, claim a right ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... Clarence plead his poverty, his tender age, his inexperience; in vain did he fasten those lustrous blue eyes of his appealingly and tearfully upon Mr. Blinker, and tell him he would make the pecuniary matter all right in the fall, and that he merely shattered a chair over his head by way of a joke. The stony-hearted man was remorseless, and that night Clarence Stanly became a wanderer in the wide, wide world. As he went forth he uttered these words: "H. Blinker, beware! A RED HAND is around, my ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 3 • Charles Farrar Browne
... before I discovered the fact. The artist came to me about six months ago and said, 'It is useless to disguise it from you any longer—they are horses.'"[16] This is the form of introduction that John Bull prefers for his witticisms. He will welcome a joke as hospitably as a visitor, if only the credentials of the one as of the ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... lower note, cryed out again "Cut:" I hearing the word so often repeated, suspecting there might be some joke in it, was not ashamed to ask him that sate next above me, what it meant? And he that had been often present at the like, "You see," said he, "him that carves about, his name is cutter; and as often as he says 'Cut,' he ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... through our usual course of jokes and dinners. One advantage of the country is that a joke once established is good for ever; it is like the stuff which is denominated everlasting, and used as pantaloons by ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... Secretary Davis received this he was in a towering rage, and he announced that day at a Cabinet meeting that he intended to have Lieutenant Derby tried before a court-martial "organized to convict" and summarily dismissed. But the other Secretaries, who enjoyed the joke, convinced him that if the affair became public he would be laughed at, and he abandoned the prosecution of ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... happened I had taken the pledge, under persuasion of the good rector here, the Reverend Mr. Fennick. It is he who has brought me to make this confession, and who takes it down in writing at my bedside. Do you remember how I once hated the very name of a parson—and when you proposed, in joke, to marry me before the registrar, how I took it in downright earnest, and kept you to your word? We poor horse-riders and acrobats only knew clergymen as the worst enemies we had—always using their influence ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... to us. Like that of an Arab Sheik among his tribesmen; like that of a man whose authority needs no keeping up, but is a Law of Nature to himself and everybody. He permits a little bantering even; a rough joke against himself, if it spring sincerely from the complexion of the fact. The poor men are terribly tired of this work: such bivouacking, packing, unpacking; and continual waiting for the tug of battle, which never comes. Biscuits, meal are abundant enough; but ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... "It's only a joke, sir," she said, coolly lifting herself to her feet by grasping his arm. "I'm Mrs. Dall, the Indian agent's wife. They said you wouldn't let anybody see you—and I determined I would. That's all!" She stopped, threw back her ...
— A Drift from Redwood Camp • Bret Harte
... I here only to suffer ignominies?" I asked. "Why have you made me with pride that cannot be satisfied, with desires that turn and rend me? Is it a jest, this world—a joke you play on your guests? I—even I—have ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... nodded Tom. "Explain the joke to the judge, if you can find a judge who's a good and willing listener. What you'll find, at this time, is that a hundred thousand dollars' worth of bail won't get you out of jail. Start along with you," Tom ...
— The Young Engineers on the Gulf - The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater • H. Irving Hancock
... said Thomas, with a happy smile on his pleasant old face, "we can allow ourselves time for a bit of breakfast, or maybe when she does come we shall be past speaking a word to show her she's welcome," and while both of them laughed over his little joke, he made the long-delayed cup of tea, and, though both were too excited to eat, they sat down together ...
— The Story of Jessie • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... was thought likely to be soon elected consul, named Manilius, because he had kissed his wife in the daytime in the presence of his daughter. He himself said that his own wife never embraced him except when it thundered loudly, and added by way of joke, that he was happy when ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... that took a chance on publishing this report from the International Press, in spite of frantic efforts on the parts of the head office to recall it after it had been transmitted. This paper published the account as an April Fool's Day joke, though later it took to itself the credit for having believed it. But by the time April Fool's Day dawned all the world knew that the account was, if anything, an under-estimate of the fearful things ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... paternise the Promenards on a Sunday, with the Swells, With my topper on the skew, And my cloud a-blowin' blue; For a tuppenny smoke and a leary joke they nobble the mam'selles, And if they're nuts on me, wot can I do? Yus, if they're arter me, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, March 11, 1893 • Various
... he'd pet 'n' paw the moke; He'd tickle him, 'n' flatter him, 'n' try him with a joke; 'N' presently that neddy sobers up, 'n' sez "Ive course, Since you puts it that way, cobber, I will ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson
... terms, as to one whom it is dangerous to trust. For discriminations of character she has no names: all whom she mentions are honest men and agreeable women. She smiles not by sensation, but by practice. Her laughter is never excited but by a joke, and her notion of a joke is not very delicate. The repetition of a good joke does not weaken its effect; if she has laughed ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... the left rose the stables; in a cosy nook of this low mass Northwick saw the lights of the coachman's family-rooms; beyond the stables were the cow-barn and the dairy, with the farmer's cottage; it was a sort of joke with Northwick's business friends that you could buy butter of him sometimes at less than half it cost him, and the joke flattered Northwick's sense of baronial consequence with regard to his place. ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... used that trick a good deal; then when the belated audience presently caught the joke he would look up with innocent surprise, as if wondering what they had found to laugh at. Dan Setchell used it before him, Nye and Riley ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... was excessively fond of a joke, and never lost the opportunity when it occurred; now it happened, that in the party invited there was a merchant of the name of Sullivan, who, upon his last visit to England, had returned with a very pretty, and at the same time, ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... tittered; even the Meyer children tittered, for by this time the hatred of the Vrouw Prinsloo for Hernan Pereira was the joke of the place. But Pereira himself pretended not to hear, said good-bye to us all affectionately, adding a special petition for the Vrouw ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... got a joke again' me as 'll last you your life. But it isna religion as was i' fault there; it was Seth Bede, as was allays a wool-gathering chap, and religion hasna cured him, ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... "That foolish joke of calling me M. Rodin may appear very amusing to you, my dear child. I understand it, you being only an echo. Some one has said to you: 'Go and tell M. Charlemagne that he is one M. Rodin. That will be ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... face became suddenly serious. "Aw looky here, Vil, I didn't know these parties was friends of yourn. I'll see't they gits 'em a room, an' I expect I kin dig 'em out some cold meat an' trimmin's. I was only kiddin'. Can't you take a joke?" ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... Mrs. Brown did not know whether to laugh at Bunny for playing a joke or to tell him he must not do such things when there were visitors at the house. But Bunny looked so serious that his mother thought perhaps he did ...
— Bunny Brown and his Sister Sue Giving a Show • Laura Lee Hope
... book, and made it up nineteen hundred pounds in all. We were doing a famous business now; though when I came into the office, we used to sit, and laugh, and joke, and read the newspapers all day; bustling into our seats whenever a stray customer came. Brough never cared about our laughing and singing then, and was hand and glove with Bob Swinney; but that was in early times, before we ...
— The History of Samuel Titmarsh - and the Great Hoggarty Diamond • William Makepeace Thackeray
... who wore a wig, went out to hunt. A sudden puff of wind blew off his hat and wig, at which a loud laugh rang forth from his companions. He pulled up his horse, and with great glee joined in the joke by saying, "What a marvel it is that hairs which are not mine should fly from me, when they have forsaken even the man on whose ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... known him should have believed him to have done such a deed as that! He remembered well having shown the life-preserver to Erle and Fitzgibbon at the door of the club; and it had been thought that after having so shown it he had used it for the purpose to which in his joke he had alluded! Were men so blind, so ignorant of nature, so little capable of discerning the truth as this? Then he went on till he came to the end of Clarges Street, and looked up the mews opposite to it,—the ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... meaning of which I understand very well. Sorry I shall be to have your blood, or that of others, on my hands; but as sure as there's a heaven, I'll cleave to the shoulder the first man who attempts to break into the spirit-room. You know I never joke. Shame upon you! Do you call yourselves men, when, for the sake of a little liquor now, you would lose your only chance of getting drunk every day as soon as we get on shore again? There's a time for all things; and I've a notion this is a time ...
— The Pirate and The Three Cutters • Frederick Marryat
... ain't no joke nuther!" burst in Peter Marley. "Many a chicken I've lost through tramps ...
— The Rover Boys in the Air - From College Campus to the Clouds • Edward Stratemeyer
... Frisky Squirrel still more. If it had been a joke—a trick of some sort—that Jimmy was going to play on Henry Skunk, he could have understood that. But hens' eggs! Why, everyone knew how fond of hens' eggs ...
— The Tale of Jimmy Rabbit - Sleepy-TimeTales • Arthur Scott Bailey
... friends at this period, and a frequent visitor at his house; and we can still hear in imagination the merry laughter of children, old and young, whom he gathered about him, and who brightened at his ever ready fun. One long-remembered joke was how one evening, at supper at Godwin's, Lamb entered the room first, seized a leg of mutton, blew out the candle, and placed the mutton in Martin Burney's hand, and, on the candle being relit, exclaimed, "Oh, Martin! Martin! I should never have ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... in a softer voice, "I am lazy, I know. Perhaps that is why I adore people who can work. So, although you don't think anything of me, I will do my honest best to get into sympathy with you again; yes, and to help in any way I can. No; it's not a joke. I would give a great deal to see ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... don't joke, for there is no joy in that mad laughter. It is horrible, maddening, even to the hearer. Let us get to work. The father of the girl I love may even now be sinking to his death. We must determine the nature of this deadly stuff, ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... enterprise he was about to join in; but they heard that I had some share in it, and they did not scruple to hint that I might be an adventurer, who would 'diddle' him out of his money. However, John only smiled, and told me all they said, in his frank way, as if it were some good joke. So, finally, we took leave of St. Louis, and came to New York, to organize the great house of Meavy & Prevost: John bearing his share in the concern, forty odd thousand dollars, with many letters to persons of eminence and influence; and I carefully ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... miss, I am only a-feeling for your wings," returned Elizabeth in a droll voice, and then they both laughed, for this was a standing joke between them ever since Dinah had repeated poor old Becky Brent's speech, when the wrinkled hand of the blind and doited old creature had ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... was the mask and which the features. At table, among friends, Mr. Seward threw off restraint, or seemed to throw it off, in reality, while in the world he threw it off, like a politician, for effect. In both cases he chose to appear as a free talker, who loathed pomposity and enjoyed a joke; but how much was nature and how much was mask, he was himself too simple a nature to know. Underneath the surface he was conventional after the conventions of western New York and Albany. Politicians thought it unconventionality. ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... was immediately obvious on his visage; nevertheless he bore up bravely, and even cut a sorry joke at his own expense, while the black giant rolled on his divan, and the tears ran down ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... to make the affair a success—the brightest man on her list, and the one who was to take out Miss Grace Winthrop—saying that he was laid up with a frightful cold and face-ache! He tried to make a joke of it, poor fellow, by adding a sketch—he sketched quite nicely—of his swelled cheek swathed in a handkerchief. But Mrs. Rittenhouse Smith was in no humor for joking; she ...
— A Border Ruffian - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier
... in women. They do what they see others do, they think what they are told to think—like a flock of sheep. Their hair is a joke—absurd frizzles and ear puffs that are always imitated. Their shoes are a tragedy. Their corsets are a crime. But they would die rather than change these ordered abominations. So would I. I flock with the crowd. I hobble my skirts, wear summer furs, powder ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... go without," said Fred, who had not often enough missed a regular meal not to think doing so an honour and a joke. ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... work in clay; to make bricks or tiles; to make, to create. 2. To joke; to make fun. ...
— The Annals of the Cakchiquels • Daniel G. Brinton
... seemed a good joke to him that a bushman should ask for a teetotal drink. "Yes, any amount of it," he answered. "'Johnny Walker', 'Watson's No. 10', 'King ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman
... testifying at once to a total exemption from noxious exhalations or mephitic vapors, I grow tete-montee, rattle-brained; my laugh echoes through these stony chambers, wild snatches of song hover on my lips, odd conceits flit through my brain, I joke, I dash forward with haste; my excitement endows ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... persistently to point to precipitous cliffs or impenetrable thickets. There were no barren hilltops after the first twenty miles. Occasionally we would stop, climb a tree, and try to get a view. But climbing a conifer whose boughs are heavily laden with ice and snow is no joke, and gave very meagre returns. At last, however, we struck a high divide, and from an island in the centre of a lake, occupied only by two lone fir trees, we got a view both ways, showing the Cloudy Hills which towered over the south side of the bay ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... idiot as not to perceive your allusion? If your work appeared, I should make enemies of all those who find, by crooked ways, an easier admittance into court, than by a straight line. Consider their number!" This seems, however, to be an excellent joke. At this moment the censors in Austria appear singularly inept; for, not long ago, they condemned as heretical, two books; one of which, entitled "Principes de la Trigonometrie," the censor would not allow to ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... superstitious man when you talk to him of ghosts and churchyards. He chuckled, and his hair bristled. But after a pause, in which he seemed to wrestle with his own conscience, he said: "Well, well, you are a strange man, Jason; you love your joke. I have nothing to do except to find out ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... self-possession, aplomb, ballast. a bright thought, not a bad idea. Solomon-like wisdom. V. be -intelligent &c. adj.; have all one's wits about one; understand &c. (intelligible) 518; catch an idea, take in an idea; take a joke, take a hint. see through, see at a glance, see with half an eye, see far into, see through a millstone; penetrate; discern &c (descry) 441; foresee &c 510. discriminate &c. 465; know what's what &c. 698; listen to reason. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Frank's consent, another serious question,—and she should take the notion to fly her retirement, and appear inopportunely at some social function clothed as she is now! I fancy her blanket would be a wet one in such a case—if you will pardon the little joke." ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... making a profound bow to the boy in charge of it, passed in before Lord Northcliffe. Nothing was said during the descent. On leaving the lift Mr. H. again raised his hat and bowed low to the boy. When they were out of earshot Lord Northcliffe remonstrated with him on his behaviour. "You shouldn't joke," he said, "with these boys, it makes discipline difficult." "Joke!" exclaimed Mr. H., "good heavens, I wasn't joking; how do I know that to-morrow he will not be the editor of ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... benefit of the New York Observer I will state that a despatch sent round the world in a spiral direction westward 1,200 times, would not really arrive at its destination four years before it started. It is only a joke which suggests it.] ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... deck at my feet, I paused merely long enough to favor the company with parting admonition on their probable future. Then, glad enough to be thus easily rid of them, I lurched heavily forward into the narrow passageway. Some coarse joke launched at my expense attracted the attention of those ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... appearance, sometimes with slight variants, and there are forms of the drinking song in Gammer Gurton's Needle long after, and of Sir John Suckling's "Ballad on a Wedding," apparently somewhat before, their respective publication in their proper places. Here is the joke about the wife and the almanack which reckless tradition has told of Dryden; printed when Lady Elizabeth Howard was in the nursery, and Dryden was not yet at Westminster. Here we learn how, probably about the second ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... boy—big-headed, big-handed, big-footed. He stood there in his shirt-sleeves, his back to Bannon, swearing good-humoredly at the men. When he turned toward him Bannon saw that he had that morning played an unconscious joke upon his bright red hair by putting on a ...
— Calumet 'K' • Samuel Merwin
... whom he played on occasion down at Bixby's. He had no one else to confide in. He kept them up with his progress among the stars and his communication with other life in the cosmos beyond our own, and they made a great joke out of it, from all I could gather. I suppose, because he had no one else to talk to, McIlvaine took it without complaint. Well, as I said, I never heard of him until one morning the city editor—it was old Bill Henderson then—called ...
— McIlvaine's Star • August Derleth
... the only disagreeable part was the being roused. Upon this, the gentleman declared that he knew nothing of mesmerism, and that, had he believed there was any thing in it, he would not have attempted the joke. Another lady present, married, and having a family, was now most anxious to have the experiment repeated upon her. She said she had before sat to an experienced mesmeriser, who had failed, and she ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... koketulino. Jingle tinti. Job tasketo. Jockey rajdisto. Jocose sxercema. Jocular sxercema. Join kunigi. Join hands manplekti. Join together kunigxi. Join with kunigi. Joiner lignajxisto. Jointly kune. Joint (anatomy) artiko. Joint (carpentering) kunigxo. Joist trabo. Joke sxerci. Jolly gajega. Jolt ekskui. Jostle pusxegi. Jot joto. Journal (book keeping) taglibro. Journal (a paper) jxurnalo. Journey (by car, etc.) veturi. Journey (travel) vojagxi. Journey vojagxo. Journeyman taglaboristo. Jovial gxojega. Jowl busxego. Joy gxojo. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... Eve Monsieur Max conceived the splendid joke, carefully arranged, of presenting Madame Joos—who is young and pretty—and the doctor with two parcels, which on being opened contained the child's umbrella and a toy gun. There wasn't even a comic address on the parcels; but Yrma, the ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... wire. That isn't the joke, though. You see he got into a hopeless muddle about which side of the veil he had come out on; and he went off with the other ones, and they wouldn't have him, and he got lost in the veil, running up and down it, calling to us; and just for ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... telltale litter piled up before her door. When I chased her from her hiding-place, she flew down the hill and alighted on a fence-post in the neighborhood of her nest, uttering several screechy notes as I came near her again, as if she meant to say that I was carrying the joke a little too far in pursuing her about. Presently she circled away on oily wings, and ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... repeated to himself; "that is a joke indeed, and Esther, what a quick brain she has—a true daughter of Israel!" and Esther was murmuring within ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... Constitution now stood, women had a right to vote. Accordingly the indomitable old lady was found guilty of violating the law regulating the purity of the ballot-box, and fined one hundred dollars and costs. A good many journals seem to regard this as a good joke on Susan B, as they call her, and make it the excuse for more poor jokes of their own. It may be stupid to confess it, but we can not see where the laugh comes in. If it is a mere question of who has got the best of it, Miss Anthony is still ahead; ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... it amused him perversely. He smiled—but it was closer to a leer—and lunged into his cabin. What he said to Sheila was no joke. He really did have a splitting headache. It had come on suddenly and it was like no headache he had ever known. It pulsed and throbbed and beat against his temples and held red hot needles to the backs of ...
— A Place in the Sun • C.H. Thames
... to the hotel. Said I might as well get my trousseau while I was gadding about this time. Well—I was pretty mad for a minute. But I concluded that father wasn't the only one in our family who is fond of a joke. So I just blushed properly and went off shopping. And I tell you, Grandma, Green Valley will just grow cross-eyed looking at the pretties that I have in these treasure chests. I showed Dad every mortal thing I bought and asked his advice and was oh, so shy—and wondered ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... laugh and joke about it like you do, squire," said Shaddy sadly, as he peered about. "It's serious, my lad. Something very wrong, ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn
... the Captain, rapidly recovering his good humor; "decidedly the best joke of the season! Ha! ha! ha! Of course you have calculated the weight of a wire 240 thousand ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... statistics. When I attempt to bring forward our side they interrupt and shout me down. Now we have declared open war. Last night I got up and left them in possession of the field, and I have told Herr Krauss that the next time he has a session I prefer to dine alone. He treats it as a splendid joke and says I am a ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... most commonplace of commonplaces; a table of gentlewomen and gentlemen—soft-spoken, sweet-tempered, full of human sympathy, who made me, a stranger, one of them. Ours was a fellowship of common books, common knowledge, mighty aims. We could laugh and joke and think as friends—and the Thing—the hateful, murderous, dirty Thing which in American we call "Nigger-hatred" was not only not there—it could not even be understood. It was a curious monstrosity at which civilized ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... suggested that possibly the insight, piquancy and calm wisdom of Omar Khayyam are two-thirds essence of FitzGerald. If so, the joke is on Omar, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... risen to the occasion. He even indulged in a classical joke. "There is something in the name of Helen that attracts," he said. "Were it not for the lady whose face drew a thousand ships to Ilium, we should never have heard of Paris, or Troy, or the heel of Achilles, and all these would be ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... political circles. He does not himself pretend that, on these occasions, he was actuated by public spirit; nor does he appear to have had any private advantage in view. He thought it a good practical joke to set public men together by the ears; and he enjoyed their perplexities, their accusations, and their recriminations, as a malicious boy enjoys the embarrassment of ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... landlord, now entering into his meaning, and taking as a good joke what Wilton had really spoken in sadness—"you should have called it miching, sir—miching on a great scale. Well, that's worse than t'other. Give me the King's Highway, I say! only I'm ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... turf. When he had recovered his breath, he cast about for some new crazy thing to say. When he found it he shouted it out, and rolled about with laughing, with his face still buried in the earth. He received no answer. Surprised by the silence, he raised his head, and began to repeat his joke. He saw Gottfried's face lit up by the last beams of the setting sun cast through golden mists. He swallowed down his words. Gottfried smiled with his eyes half closed and his mouth half open, and in his ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... Franklin should have written this document. The committee, however, knew well that he would be sure to put a joke in it.' ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... dodging, or bracing himself up on the defensive, as the crowd fans him with its rush or jostles up against him,—like the man who fancied himself a teapot, and was forever warning people not to come too near him,—might furnish a subject for a planetary joke not unworthy of translation into the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... large island!" exclaimed the Countess. "And we seem to be making for it. What can it be? Mr. Trent says perhaps it is a mirage. But I think that is his joke. He ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson
... jokes" of which every point in his discourse continually reminded him, though his hearers could not always perceive the association of ideas. This gentleman was very facetious over family jars, which reminded him of a "little joke," which he told; he was also very witty upon the subject of matrimonial disputes in particular, which reminded him of another "little joke," which he also told; but most of all, he was amused at the caprice of womankind, who very often rather liked to be compelled to do as they ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... inimitable Bailie Nicol Jarvie of one of the Terryfications (though not by Terry) of Scott's Rob Roy having made a formal affidavit that he was a real "Edinburgh Gutter Bluid," we suspect some of our readers themselves suspected a joke. The affidavit itself has, however, been printed in the Athenaeum, accompanied by an amusing commentary, in which the document is justly pronounced "a very curious one." ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 58, December 7, 1850 • Various
... for it, and that it is the proper thing nowadays to pitch into every journal which does not, in every part, please every body, whether they be smart or dull; those quick of appreciation, or those slow gentlemen who always come in with their congratulations upon the birth of a joke at the time its funeral is taking place. And so, PUNCHINELLO will do as others do, and will occasionally view, from the loop-hole in his curtain, the successes and failures of his neighbors, and will give his patrons the benefit of ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 5, April 30, 1870 • Various
... ah, my dear, now I look at you, you are a sufferer! To suffer like that is no joke. To have given shelter to a beggar, and he to lead you such a dance! Why don't you ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... in the Leisure Hour remarks:—"It is no joke when a town like New York or London is blocked up for a few hours by snow. Both labour and capital have then to submit to a strike from nature; but it is a more serious matter when a man is snowed up ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... little cuffs with sleeve-buttons to fasten them. These sleeve-buttons, which were a present from Cousin Helen, Clover liked best of all her things. Papa said that he was sure she took them to bed with her, but of course that was only a joke, though she certainly was never seen without them in the daytime. She glanced frequently at these beloved buttons as she sat sewing, and every now and then laid down her work to twist them into a better position, or give them an affectionate pat ...
— What Katy Did • Susan Coolidge
... rise to this effusion was a practical joke played on a pious itinerant preacher, whose sleigh the Maugerville boys had hoisted into the forks of a large willow. The family of Oliver Perley lived at the spot now known as McGowan's wharf. Asa Perley, another of the early Maugerville settlers lived at the head of Oromocto Island ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... happening to be one of those sensible lads capable of laughing, even when the joke was ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... classes embellished their canvas by pasting pictures from Harper's Weekly on them. In many cases, too, the wealthy and the cultured rose to spittoons and other evidences of a sumptuous and luxurious taste. [Washoe people take a joke so hard that I must explain that the above description was only the rule; there were many honorable exceptions in Carson—plastered ceilings and houses that had considerable furniture ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... presence of Vendome. Every reader remembers the story in the "Arabian Nights" of that brother of the talkative barber who threw himself into the spirit of the rich Barmecide's humor, and by outdoing him in the practical joke secured forever his favor and his friendship. Alberoni acted on this principle at his first meeting with Vendome. {159} He outbuffooned even Vendome's buffoonery. The story will not bear minute explanation, ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... tell you if you had only gone on, unforewarned, you would have come out a hero and the master of them all. Only then you would have known me as I truly am, and not as I choose to appear. I have been slandered to you, and you think me a she-devil at least, because I like a joke, and look everybody in the face, and not up to heaven like a saint, or down to earth like a sinner. I also look like a bold word, and am no more a hypocrite in words than I am in deeds; and, first of all, I never make use of calumny to gain my own ends. I know who has ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... brotherly feeling are at an end when it comes to a question of 'ifs' and 'cans.' If your wife lets you have the handling of any of her money!" cried the lawyer, with unspeakable derision; "that's too good a joke for you to indulge in with me. Do you think I believe you will let that poor little woman keep custody of her money a day after she is your wife, or that you will let her friends tie it up for ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... spirit of the times, to remember that this could be taken for a genuine utterance of orthodoxy; that De Foe was imprisoned and pilloried, and had to write a serious protestation that it was only a joke, and that he meant to expose the nonjuring party by putting their secret wishes into plain English. ''Tis hard,' he says, 'that this should not be perceived by all the town; that not one man can see it, either ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... off the birds and hunting for the toad, the Twins spent a busy afternoon. And after the toad was found it was no joke to try to keep it. It was a wonderful hopper and nearly got away twice. At dusk the crows flew away to their nests, and the children were alone in the field until the twilight deepened into darkness. Owls had begun to hoot and bats were flying about, when at ...
— The Spartan Twins • Lucy (Fitch) Perkins
... turns and rides away down the road towards the rear. As he passes he speaks encouragingly to the recumbent Fusiliers, who are getting fidgety at the long detention under fire. "Come out of that, sir," cried one soldier, "a chap's just had his head taken off there!" It is a grim joke that reply which tickles the Fusiliers into laughter: "And what the devil are we here for but to get our heads taken off?" Young Havelock is bent on the perpetration of what, under the circumstances, may be called a pious fraud. His father, who commands ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... not in such a way make a mock of things. An old man, (I speak) with entire sincerity; But you, my juniors, are full of pride. It is not that my words are those of age, But you make a joke of what is sad. But the troubles will multiply like flames, Till they ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... the Delphic oracle for some means of cure. The god prescribed a peculiar form of sacrifice, which would be effective if they could carry it through without laughing. They did their best; but the flimsy joke of a boy upset their unaccustomed gravity, and in this way the oracle taught them that even the gods could not prescribe a quick cure for a long vitiation, or give power and dignity to a people who in a crisis of the public wellbeing were at ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... first time she had gone abroad. They had had a very pleasant month in the Dolomites, and he had taken her to Paris to join the Woodyards, with whom she returned. Whenever she had spoken to Vickers of coming home he had smiled and made a little joke. Once he said, "Not yet,—I cannot go yet, Belle," and she understood that it was "that beast of a woman," as she called Mrs. Conry, who kept him. She wanted to say to him, "Well, Vick, if you won't leave her, why don't you marry ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... for the most part, our womankind are not endowed with the faculty of finding us out! THEY don't doubt, and probe, and weigh, and take your measure. Lay down this paper, my benevolent friend and reader, go into your drawing-room now, and utter a joke ever so old, and I wager sixpence the ladies there will all begin to laugh. Go to Brown's house, and tell Mrs. Brown and the young ladies what you think of him, and see what a welcome you will get! In like manner, let him come to your house, and tell ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... be sane on every topic but that one. Still I will give you another illustration of what the wrong thought on any subject will do. I read a while ago about some college students who decided to play a joke on their professor. This professor had several blocks to walk to the college, and the students decided to place themselves at frequent intervals along his path, and each one was to comment on how badly he looked, and intimate to him that ...
— The Pastor's Son • William W. Walter
... pleased. He was anything but anxious to see the man whose skill had turned the joke against him; and his face betokened his feelings. Had he foreseen the meeting he would certainly have remained in Tralee, and left the job to a subaltern. "Hang it!" he exclaimed, vexed by the recollection, "a fine mess you led me into ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... have related did not get out for some years after the worthy brother and sister had rested from their labors, and it was then related by Mr. N—himself, who was rather (sic) excentric in his character, and, like numbers of his ministerial brethren, fond of a good joke, and given ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... of humor and is easily amused. There is something almost pathetic about the way he goes into convulsions of laughter over such very small jokes. How a man like that would enjoy a real joke! One day he will perhaps hear a real joke. Who knows? It will, however, probably kill him. One grows to love the stage peasant after awhile. He is so good, so child-like, so unworldly. He realizes one's ideal ...
— Stage-Land • Jerome K. Jerome
... a twinkle of the eye accompanying the response, yet I was not certain that this big fellow from the bush had been wounded in that way. I suspected him of a quiet joke. ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... it will prove the best joke of our lives, over which we will often laugh at our fireside hereafter. Come now, cousin, make the best of it; it is the best for you as well as for me. You know I always intended to marry you, and I have the hearty sanction of all the ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... in braiding a watch-chain from her splendid, Titian-red hair. These chains were the fashion of the hour, and the old family doctor, friend as well as physician, paused after a visit to the boy's mother, to joke her about it: "You're making a keepsake for your sweetheart, ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... business if for no other reason than to give employment to less fortunate young men; but you have other responsibilities. Your position, your fortune, they make demands. I'm not one to underestimate the leisure class; I know the old joke about tramps being the only leisure class in America; it's a silly joke, but it ought to make us think. After a bit, if we don't look out, the leisure class, here, will be all women. They'll dominate art and ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... every senseless joke About a soldier, wherever made, Would make us ashamed.... For now we choke Whenever the Colors and you parade! Wherever that O. D. uniform Shall gladden the eyes of we useless men We can't forget who is meeting the storm— That some of you won't come home again! You went.... ...
— With the Colors - Songs of the American Service • Everard Jack Appleton
... rich. He takes too much time for philosophy and gossiping with the women, and he loves a joke too well, and his heart is too kind. He is a universal type, as old as the world is old, Theocritus knew ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey
... "Either it's a joke, or it's the black rabbit getting in his work," answered Bud. "It's from an unknown ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Camp - or The Water Fight at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker
... this is our candidate? So!" he exploded. "I am glad, Mr. McGowan, to shake your hand, and perhaps we'd better do it now, for we might not so desire when the grilling is over. So!" He laughed vociferously at his rude joke, and offered his ...
— Captain Pott's Minister • Francis L. Cooper
... confusion. Tho reduced almost to despair by these baffling inventions of Archimedes, and tho he saw that all his attempts were repulsed by the garrison with mockery on their part and loss to himself, Marcellus could not yet refrain from making a joke at his own expense, saying that "Archimedes was using his ships to ladle out the sea-water, but that his 'harps' not having been invited to the party were buffeted and turned out with disgrace." Such was the end of the attempt at storming Syracuse ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... ordinarily well-equipped animal the human body—the one accorded to the average human being in the great show of creation—almost looks sometimes as if God really must have made it as a kind of practical joke, in the presence of the other animals, on the rest of us. It looks as if He had suddenly decided at the very moment he was in the middle of making a body for a man, that out of all the animals man should ...
— The Voice of the Machines - An Introduction to the Twentieth Century • Gerald Stanley Lee
... to cheat, or, as they call it, "stick" any of their own set, except in matters of horse-flesh; but "sticking" any body out of their own set, especially tradesmen, is considered an excellent joke, and the "sticker" rises several degrees ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... was the servant of a famous florist, and had often seen people pay forty or fifty dollars for such bouquets. He thought the joke was carried too far. However, the count insisted. The roses were piled up in the bottom of the carriage; and, when he had done, he received a handsome fee ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... on half in joke and half in all seriousness, wound up in debates and disputes, and as a result two groups were formed in the house; that of the Sensible folk, comprised by the three criminals and the landlady, and that of the Foolish, in which were enrolled ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... days since M. de B—— wrote to me; I suppose he required eight days to establish a perfect understanding with your mistress; so that, take eight and eleven from thirty-one days, the time between the 28th of one month and the 29th of the next, there remains twelve, more or less!' This joke was followed by shouts ...
— Manon Lescaut • Abbe Prevost
... then ran; and they never fought except with some real or fancied advantage. They were grave, like Indians, for the most part; and they were noisy without being gay. They seldom laughed, except at the pain or shame of some one; I think they had no other conception of a joke, though they told what they thought were funny stories, mostly about some Irishman just come across the sea, but without expecting any one to laugh. In fact, life was a very serious affair with them. They lived in a state of outlawry, in the midst ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... then put into it eight or ten bottles of strychnine, prepared for destroying wolves, and were about leaving when the thought flashed through my mind: "Suppose a relief squad should be sent to us, and should think the whole matter a joke to cheat them out of a drink, and should sample it and die, as they certainly would, we never could forgive ourselves, and would be really their murderers." My knowledge of the fact that a soldier who had made a long march on a hot day would ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... he said, coaxingly, a little huskiness creeping into his voice, and his knees beginning to shake with tremor, "end the joke; 'tis enough to make a laugh, and my arms begin to tire—I can't hold on ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... Rhys," the little doctor said in his cheeriest tones, "only Alexia and I had a little joke all by ourselves." And as he waited coolly for the maiden lady to return to her seat, she soon found herself back there. Then he went over to Mamsie, and said ...
— Five Little Peppers at School • Margaret Sidney
... with Keswick? Was that pique? And then a dark thought crossed his mind. Had he been accepted to punish the other? No, he could not believe that; no woman such as Roberta March would give herself away from such a motive. Had Keswick been joking with him? No, he could not believe that; no man could joke with such ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... of it. "I remember—the chaff about the honours, the orders, the stars and garters. My poor foolish friend, don't be so painfully literal. Don't you know a joke when you see it? It was to worry your cousin, wasn't it? But it ...
— The Tragic Muse • Henry James
... offer of fourteen pounds a month to write and edit a new publication they contemplate, entirely by myself, to be published monthly, and each number to contain four wood-cuts.... The work will be no joke, but the emolument is too tempting ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... This stupid joke was to be fatally punished in Croustillac, who followed his guide with renewed ardor, for was he not going ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... into her husband's, as rapid as those which move the quivering telegraph needles, and yet not unobserved, I think, by Captain Brentwood, for there grew upon his face a pleasant smile, which, rapidly broadening, ended in a low laugh, by no means disagreeable to hear, though Sam wondered what the joke could be, until the ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... man with crisp, curly hair, a wide mouth, a blunt nose, and eyes that twinkled perpetually as though at some inward joke that he did not share with the rest of the world; they twinkled now ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... but he prided himself most on rendering the Thiergarten a "lung" for the people, and, spite of many obstacles, materially enlarging it. Every moment of the tireless man's time was claimed, and besides King Frederick William IV, who himself uttered many a tolerably good joke, found much pleasure in the society of the gay, clever Rhinelander, whom he often summoned to dine with him at Potsdam. Lenne undoubtedly appreciated this honour, yet I remember the doleful tone in which he sometimes greeted my mother with, "Called ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... two respectable, middle-aged people, arrived, they were dismally made acquainted with the sacrilege that had been committed; but as no debts had been contracted in their name, and their letters came in a parcel by the post from Orleans, they laughed heartily at the joke, and enjoyed the idea that Sophie had ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 435 - Volume 17, New Series, May 1, 1852 • Various
... Ogilvy, whose name, so far as he could recollect, he now heard for the first time, and how did she come to leave Godfrey so much money? The story was so strange that he began to wonder whether it were a joke, or perhaps, an hallucination. If not, there must be a great deal unrevealed. The letter which Godfrey said the Pasteur would write was not enclosed, and if it had been, probably would not have helped him much as he did not understand ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... be a chapter, too," he said, with a smile, when she had come to an end; then he added more softly, as though ashamed of his indelicate joke: "There must certainly also be gentlemen in that little town ...
— Bertha Garlan • Arthur Schnitzler
... intellect. Physically, he should be compared with the other mammals, otherwise we should lose our first standpoint of comparison. There is no degradation in this, nor is it an acceptance of the development theory. To argue that man evolved from the monkey is an ingenious joke which will not bear the test of examination, and the Scriptural account may still be accepted. I firmly believe in man as an original creation just as much as I disbelieve in any development of the Flying Lemur (Galeopithecus) from the Bat, or that the habits of an animal would ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... denied nor acknowledged the fact, but turned it off with a joke and a laugh. He was soon as much at home in his old regiment as if he formed a part in it, and when not required by Ronald passed the greater part of his time with his former comrades. As was natural, ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... late is—because—well, because"—the color rushed into her face as she hesitated for a few moments—"because it took me so long to dress. There, now, I have told you! Father said he would tell you all when he came just what did keep me, although I coaxed him not to. Now I have spoiled the joke he was going to have on me, and ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... to be vehemently affronted, but hardly knew how, even in joke, to appear so ; and all the rest helped the matter on, by saying that they should know now how to distinguish his regiment, which henceforth must always be called " the ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... of humor in which the English more excel than that which consists in caricaturing and giving ludicrous appellations or nicknames. In this way they have whimsically designated, not merely individuals, but nations, and in their fondness for pushing a joke they have not spared even themselves. One would think that in personifying itself a nation would be apt to picture something grand, heroic, and imposing; but it is characteristic of the peculiar humor of the English, ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... latter with his accustomed good-nature would laugh." He added, with a touch of characteristic humor, "that the leader of the Free- spoil party suddenly becoming the leader of the Free-soil party is a joke to shake his sides and mine." Distrusting him sincerely on the anti-slavery issue, Mr. Webster showed that on every other question Mr. Van Buren was throughly objectionable ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... any one else takes of it, and if you expect the officers of the court-martial and the civil authorities to take that view of it you've got to get down to work and help me prove that it IS 'tommy rot.' That Miss Post, as soon as she got here, when she thought it was only a practical joke, told them that the road agent threatened her with a pair of shears. Now, Crosby and Curtis will testify that you took a pair of shears from Cahill's, and from what Miss Post saw of your ring she can probably identify that, ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... they were married indeed. Then there ensued a salutation of the bride, the first to kiss her being the minister, and then some respectable old justices and farmers, each with his friendly smile and joke. Then went round the cake and wine, and other good cheer, and the hereditary jokes with which brides used to be assailed in those days. I think, too, there was a dance, though how the couples in the reel found space to foot it in the little ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... When Bombay was gone, Virembo then deputed Kariwami to take the hongo for both at once, mildly requiring 40 wires, 80 cloths, and 400 necklaces of every kind of bead we possessed. This was, indeed, too much of a joke. I complained of all the losses I had suffered, and begged for mercy; but all he said, after waiting the whole day, was, "Do not stick at trifles; for, after settling with us, you will have to give as much more to ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... they didn't stumble right on the beast!" exclaimed Bumpus, who, not wanting to be left by himself in the tent, had crawled out, after taking a cautious look first. "What a rich joke on Brose and his crowd. I can just see 'em scooting for home for all they're worth. Never catch any of that bunch around our camp again on this ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... "Here I am back at school in our sunshiny old south room in Baxter Hall, with the same jolly set of girls popping their heads out of their doors, all along the corridor, to joke with each other; the same old teachers and furniture and surroundings; the same dear old everything, ...
— Cicely and Other Stories • Annie Fellows Johnston
... lane. He had bicycled to Hamblin, instead of driving there with his cousin and her friends, so that he might be able to make his escape earlier and stop on the way back at the deserted house, which was on the road to Hamblin. They had smiled together at the joke of hearing the crowded buck-boards roll by on the return, while they lay close in their hiding above the road. Such childish triumphs still gave her a ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... "was a member of our team. We were close friends and spent many Sunday afternoons on long walks. I can see him now with his India ink pencil sketching as we went along, and I must laugh now at the nerve I had to joke him about ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... the voice was not that of Swing Tunstall. On the heels of this unwelcome discovery Racey made another. The man had dragged out a knife from under his armpit, and was squirmingly endeavouring to make play with it. Racey's intended practical joke on Swing Tunstall was in a fair way to become ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... three respectable names, the joke took; the paper circulated like wildfire and soon contained every business ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2., No. 32, November 5, 1870 • Various
... of no use to joke on this subject; Niagara is, both to the United States and to England, but especially to Canada, a public property. It is the greatest wonder of the visible world here below, and should be protected from the rapacity of private speculations, and not ...
— Canada and the Canadians - Volume I • Sir Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... the door behind me, and sat down facing it. My hand shook as I lit a cigar. This was becoming serious, a ghastly tragedy, in the playing of which I scarcely knew my part. The whole affair had seemed so simple at first, almost humorous. The earliest impression being that it was no more than a good joke. I was willing enough to be an instrument for keeping certain unknown institutions out of a legacy bequeathed them by a crazy man, and saving the property to his rightful heirs. Why not? especially as the very administrators themselves considered it the proper thing to do. Of course a technical crime ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish
... in jest, but her real intent was plain to every one that heard her. Frances, too, laughed so merrily that one might have supposed she considered it all a joke, and her acting ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... inimitably caricatured. Neither Johnson nor Burke wrote anything, and when I perceived that Oliver was rather sore, and seemed to watch me with that kind of attention which indicated his expectation of something in the same kind of burlesque with theirs; I thought it time to press the joke no further, and wrote a few couplets at a side-table, which, when I had finished, and was called upon by the company to exhibit, Goldsmith, with much agitation, besought me to spare him; and I was about to tear them, when Johnson wrested them out of my hand, and in a loud voice read them ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... discomfited; the next breath he bethought himself of a saving joke: "Liftinint, it 'ud sarve erry won av 'em right;" then another ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... "'Now that's a splendid joke,' said his unfeeling friend as he laid down the receiver. 'You've got to go up after that chap. They're getting your 'bus out ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 12, 1919 • Various
... the so-called witch-butter found in the fields. When the Devil is larky, he solicits the witches to dance round him on their brooms, which he suddenly pulls from under them, and uses to beat them with till they are black and blue. He laughs at this joke till his sides shake again. Sometimes he is in a more gracious mood, and plays to them lovely airs upon the harp; and occasionally sons and daughters are born to the Devil, which take up their ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... publicity that seemingly hushed and moonlit bower, sacred to Julia, had been given over. He gulped, flushed, repeated "My heavens!" and then was able to add, with a feeble suggestion of lightness: "I suppose your grandfather understood it was just a sort of joke, didn't he?" ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... at least, that you won't be trusting to your own deserts, my boy," responded the rector, who dearly loved his joke, as he helped ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... understand; we thought this was some new kind of joke—which it was, but not to us. We asked for explanations; all that we wanted was to know how we were to get these things up to the Kaipara. Our colonial friend sighed deeply, and proceeded mournfully to expound ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... country which can enable the people at large to form any just idea as to how their representatives are conducting the public business. He said: "I may make a most careful speech on any important subject before Congress and it will not be mentioned in the New York papers, but let me make a joke and it will be published all over the United States. Yesterday, on a wager, I tried an experiment: I made two poor little jokes during a short talk in the House, and here they are in the New York papers ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... He nodded wisely. "Good-by, Miss Purnell." Refusing to be envious of his friend's good fortune, he laughed cheerily and was gone before she saw through his little joke. ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... self-sacrifice has been proved in these last six months; it is to other qualities that one must look for final victory in a war of exhaustion. The Englishman does not look into himself; he does not brood; he sees no further forward than is necessary, and he must have his joke. These are fearful and wonderful advantages. Examine the letters and diaries of the various combatants and you will see how far less imaginative and reflecting, (though shrewd, practical, and humorous,) the English are than any others; you will gain, too, a profound, a deadly conviction that ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... Cheyne listened to the announcement in far different mood. There was an incredulous stare at Phillis, as though she suspected her of a joke; and then she laughed, a dry, harsh laugh, that was not ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... crowd waiting, and among them two ladies, with their backs to the photographs and bills, looking out into the street. They stand side by side, evidently quite oblivious and indifferent to the motley folk about them, chatting and laughing, taking the wet and windy wretchedness of the night as a joke. They are both plump and rosy-cheeked, dark eyes gleaming and red lips parted; both decidedly good-looking, much too rosy and full-faced, too well fed and comfortable to take a prize from Burne-Jones, very worldly people in the roast-beef sense. Their faces glow in the bright light—merry ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... you were clever at imitating handwriting, Freddy," said Agnes, while the two letters shook in her grasp, "we used to make a joke of it, I remember. But it was no joke when you altered that check Hubert gave you, and none when you imitated his signature to that mortgage about which ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... another to endure hell's tortures hour after hour. All day they waded with numbed feet vainly searching for a footing in the slime. Truly, the agony of a brave man is among the greatest of the world's tragedies to see. As they splashed onward through the tree-trunks, many a joke went forth, though lips were drawn and teeth pounded together. I have not the heart to recall these jokes,—it would seem a sacrilege. There were quarrels, too, the men striving to push one another from the easier paths; and deeds sublime when some straggler clutched at the bole of a tree for support, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... order! Ha, that is the Tarantula dance; Maestro Paolo foots it bravely! Diavolo, what fury! the Tarantula has stung them all. Dance or die; it is fury,—the Corybantes, the Maenads, the—Ho, ho! more wine! the Sabbat of the Witches at Benevento is a joke to this! From cloud to cloud wanders the moon,—now shining, now lost. Dimness while the maiden blushes; light ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... but I couldn't study medicine like my father and grandfather," cried Marietta, laughing outright. The matter seemed a joke to her, but her merriment displeased her severe questioner, ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... the smothered cry of "The bantams! we're bantams!" that burst from the little creature in his arms, indicated that what was a joke to him was a catastrophe to the children, and that his ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... already!" cried Jack, who, even in the midst of danger and excitement, seemed to remain calm and still to have his appreciation of it joke. ...
— Through Space to Mars • Roy Rockwood
... Murray on board to dinner, and Adair, of course, was asked to join them. It was the first time for several years that they had been together with time to talk over old days. Though now and then a shade of melancholy came over Jack's honest face, a joke of Adair's, or some pleasant recollection conjured up by Murray, quickly banished it, and a very pleasant ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... best of it, Aunt Hester, I must tell you the biggest joke you ever heard," cried Fred. Verne, now a handsome and intelligent stripling of eighteen, who had just appeared on the scene in time to have his say also. "You know that they went to Ottawa about a year ago, and shortly afterwards I found a copy of the Ottawa Times with an announcement ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... practical joke on you. The Green Lady is Glencardine's favourite spectre, isn't she—perfectly ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... sort of funny the way that fellow talked because all of us had seen that black face in the shack and a bandit is no joke, especially a negro bandit, but any color is bad enough. Anyway, I was glad to see that Warde was getting crazy like the rest of us. But I didn't know till another minute how ...
— Roy Blakeley's Bee-line Hike • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... your sire provoke, By jest and jeer at better folk, A' solemn thought wad end in smoke, Sae wad his teachin', And fun wad fly in jibe an' joke ...
— Verses and Rhymes by the way • Nora Pembroke
... occupants of high political positions. Mayor, Judge, Governor, Senator, or even President, may be the butt of such indecorous ridicule as shocks or disgusts the foreigner; but nevertheless the personal joke stops short of certain topics which Puritan tradition disapproves. The United States is properly called a Christian nation, not merely because the Supreme Court has so affirmed it, but because the phrase "a Christian nation" expresses the historical form which the religious idealism of ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... sixteenth century, Sidney met with indifferent success. The wit depends on the ugliness, the perversity, and the clownish character of Dametas, his wife, and their daughter Mopsa. It partakes of the nature of the practical joke, and though it no doubt amused the courtiers of Elizabeth, is too clumsy for a more cultivated taste. But although Sidney's comic scenes may no longer amuse, it must be said that they are free from the low coarseness and ribaldry which ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... dear to the youthful mind but which so often seems to be weak and flabby to their elders. His ushers or assistants in the school fell in with his views implicitly, and were content to accept compensation in the shape of personal civilities. It was much better to go shares with the Doctor in a joke than to have to ...
— Dr. Wortle's School • Anthony Trollope
... the fun," he snarled impatiently. "This is no joke, let me tell you, and we'll both find it out if Beauregard ever learns the truth. What did ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... order at once," came the telegram to the factory. The owner perpetrated the only new joke in the millennium. His telegram in reply read: "Your order cannot be cancelled at once. ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... wore a wig, went out to hunt. A sudden puff of wind blew off his hat and wig, at which a loud laugh rang forth from his companions. He pulled up his horse, and with great glee joined in the joke by saying, "What a marvel it is that hairs which are not mine should fly from me, when they have forsaken even the man on ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... not," said Dick, "for this bight is quite twelve miles long, by the look of it, and it will be no joke for four of us to be obliged to pull this heavy boat the greater ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... or not. King Hrorek's mood was very different at different times. Sometimes he would sit silent for days together, so that no man could get a word out of him; and sometimes he was so merry and gay, that people found a joke in every word he said. Sometimes his words were very bitter. He was sometimes in a mood that he would drink them all under the benches, and made all his neighbours drunk; but in general he drank but little. King Olaf gave ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... here all night, even if you thought we was. I'm dashed if the jumping rain wouldn't make anybody think they was drunk. Hey, Jack—does rain-water wash the sense in, or does it wash it out?" And he laughed to himself at the joke. ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... am or not. It's no kind of use for me to take a rich man's son like you before the court. Your father would pay your fine, and you would laugh in your sleeve, and call it a good joke." ...
— In School and Out - or, The Conquest of Richard Grant. • Oliver Optic
... interesting," said Miss Spight. "Do let me know what the joke is about ladies in half-mourning, Mr Lorton—something romantic, I've no doubt." She was always keen to scent out what might be disagreeable to other people, was ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... in poor heart now," said he, "a good deal of it; it has been wasted; it wants first-rate management to bring it in order and make much of it for two or three years to come. I never see an Irishman's head yet that was worth more than a joke. Their hands are all of 'em ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... is stronger and the other weaker. But if women are to have the same employments as men, they must have the same education—they must be taught music and gymnastics, and the art of war. I know that a great joke will be made of their riding on horseback and carrying weapons; the sight of the naked old wrinkled women showing their agility in the palaestra will certainly not be a vision of beauty, and may be expected to become a famous jest. But we must not mind the wits; ...
— The Republic • Plato
... confidence, that shed light on his life work. Parsimonious of all he observed, he never related a typical anecdote, or offered a suggestive remark. Praise, even, did not move him, and if by chance he became animated it was to tell some practical joke, some atelier hoaxes, as if he had given himself up to the pleasure of ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... up (and she has them all) has got the dropsy too, and is swollen and bloated hideously. The other actors never looked at one another, but delivered all their dialogues to the pit, in a manner so egregiously unnatural and preposterous that I couldn't make up my mind whether to take it as a joke or an outrage." And then came allusion to a project we had started on the night of the reading, that a private play should be got up by us on his return from Italy. "You and I, sir, will reform this altogether." ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... Attorney Toole considered everything amusing until it had been proved serious, and he considered the Colonel and Skinner, and the whole Citizens' Party they had been instrumental I organizing, as parts of the same joke. They would stand until he was ready to lazily push out his hand and topple them over. It was almost time to topple them, now, and he was glad to see the Colonel; he motioned him to a seat, ...
— Kilo - Being the Love Story of Eliph' Hewlitt Book Agent • Ellis Parker Butler
... scherzo (lit. musical joke) is a fanciful instrumental composition. It was used by Beethoven as the third movement of the sonata instead of the more limited minuet, but is also often found ...
— Music Notation and Terminology • Karl W. Gehrkens
... to run himself down; he usually does it with his tongue in his cheek. But for the ten years preceding the outbreak of hostilities, the prophets of Fleet Street certainly carried their privilege beyond a joke. Pessimism was no longer an amusing pose; it was becoming ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... they are part of a far larger group of like-minded human beings, and they feel a common thrill in anticipation of the pleasure of the sport. They feel the stimulus that comes from obedience to a common impulse. A shout or a joke arouses a sympathetic outburst from hundreds. When they came together at first most of them were strangers, but common interests and emotions have produced a group consciousness. The game is called, and hundreds in unison fix their attention on the men in action. A hit is made, in breathless suspense ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... approach to each other, an alteration began to be observable, not in the purposes, but in the presentiments of Antigonus. For whereas in all former campaigns he had ever shown himself lofty and confident, loud in voice and scornful in speech, often by some joke or mockery on the eve of battle expressing his contempt and displaying his composure, he was now remarked to be thoughtful, silent, and retired. He presented Demetrius to the army, and declared him his successor; and what everyone thought stranger ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... nature of the Negro soldier is remarkable. He is always fond of a joke and never too tired to enjoy one. Officers have wondered to see a whole company of them, at the close of a long practice march, made with heavy baggage, chasing a rabbit which some one may have started. They will run for several hundred yards ...
— History of Negro Soldiers in the Spanish-American War, and Other Items of Interest • Edward A. Johnson
... impossible that the man should have come to her with such a lie in his mouth as that. Though the words astounded her, though she felt faint, almost as though she would fall in a swoon, yet in her heart of hearts she did not believe it. Surely it was some horrid joke,—or perhaps some trick to divide her from the man she loved. 'Felix, how dare you say things so wicked as ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... was revelry and boisterous mirth (or what the Auld Lichts took for such) in Tibbie's kitchen. At eleven o'clock Davit Lunan cracked a joke. Davie Haggart, in reply to Bell Dundas' request, gave a song of distinctly secular tendencies. The bride (who had carefully taken off her wedding-gown on getting home and donned a wrapper) coquettishly let the bridegroom's father hold her hand. In Auld Licht circles, when one of the ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... prowess of his late conqueror to venture on a rescue. He had once been tempted to do so, and had made the noise which had disturbed Hatchie. The blackleg, without much sympathy for his confederate, had rather regarded the whole scene as a good joke than as a serious affair; and, as he approached the lawyer, his merriment and keen satire were not relished ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... regulations and lay aside the guitar on which he had been softly strumming—also contrary to regulations; would pick up the neglected calculus or mechanics; get interested in the work of explanation, and end by having learned the lesson in spite of himself. This was too good a joke to be kept a secret, and by the time the last year came Billy had found it all out and refused ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... she returned my caress and exhibited to me this fourth jewel in her crown, noticed that I was agitated, and with the smile and the intention of calming me with a joke, said, "Darling, are not two pair a pretty good hand"? We neither of us play poker, but I ...
— The Romance and Tragedy • William Ingraham Russell
... DAVID FRASER," replied the foreman, "we all guess who you are. You have had your week's joke out; and now, I suppose, we must give you your week's wages, and let ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... the officers looked straight before them. Yet it was a valuable lesson. Only a few days before I had read in the newspapers of how the Kaffirs had jeered at the Boer prisoners when they were marched into Pietermaritzburg, saying, 'Where are your passes?' It had seemed a very harmless joke then, but now I understood how a prisoner ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... silence ensued, unbroken by raps or sounds of any sort. When this had continued for some five minutes, Josephine spoke urgently: "Jarvis Burnside, open that door! It's all right to joke, but things do happen, and it's not right to ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... than in its immediate processes that the "artistic" imagination differs from the inventor's or scientist's or philosopher's imagination. We no longer assert, as did Stopford Brooke some forty years ago, that "the highest scientific intellect is a joke compared with the power displayed by a Shakespeare, a Homer, a Dante." We are inclined rather to believe that in its highest exercise of power the scientific mind is attempting much the same feat as the highest type of poetic ...
— A Study of Poetry • Bliss Perry
... Lieutenant Pink wondered in noble disgust whether the expedition was going to end in moonshine after all, and Thomas Jones, sergeant, remarked hourly to his fellow-privates, 'The 17th 'aint come two 'undred miles for this kind of a joke. The bloomin' Maharajer 'ull think we've ...
— The Story of Sonny Sahib • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... begun more abruptly than I meant, and already felt I was stepping on dangerous ground. I thought for an instant I would turn it aside in a joke, then Clara's pale face rose ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell
... will, and who was to be heir to his "property." As the poor fellow in reality possessed no property—his whole effects consisting of a few tattered rags of dress, a tin platter, with an old knife, fork, and spoon—the joke was all the more piquant, and the fellows laughed ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... century, which is given in the Mercurius Rusticus, there is an anecdote which will give a reply to the Query of your correspondent K. The commander of the Parliamentarian forces was Sir Walter Erle; and it was a great joke with his opponents that the pass-word of "Old Wat" had been given (by himself I believe) on the night of his last assault on the castle. The chronicler informs us that "Old Wat" was the usual notice of a hare being found sitting; and the proverbial ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 51, October 19, 1850 • Various
... forgotten that she had ever been an invalid, had indeed, sometimes, to be reminded of that fact. She had quite discarded the little "company" fiction, except now and then, by way of a joke. "Who'd want to be company?" she protested. "I'd rather be one of the family ...
— The S. W. F. Club • Caroline E. Jacobs
... send it?" asked General Waller. "If someone has been playing a joke on me it will not be well for him!" and ...
— Tom Swift and his Giant Cannon - or, The Longest Shots on Record • Victor Appleton
... /n./ Written-only abbreviation for "April Fool's Joke". Elaborate April Fool's hoaxes are a long-established tradition on Usenet and Internet; see {kremvax} for an example. In fact, April Fool's Day is the *only* seasonal holiday consistently marked by customary observances on Internet ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... carry it away for a short distance; and then squatting down with it on the ground close before him, will wait until his master comes quite close to take it away. The dog will then seize it and rush away in triumph, repeating the same manoeuvre, and evidently enjoying the practical joke. ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... "A devilish good joke, I call that," laughed Lord Farquhart. "And they say, too, that the poor old bishop is actually afraid to use the money for fear it—why, I really believe he is afraid that his Satanic majesty did have some ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... jolis yeux bleus!" and if the parlor were brightly lighted so that all from the street might see us, and be invisible to us themselves, I always nodded my head to the outer darkness and laughed, no matter who was present, though it sometimes created remark. You see, I knew the joke. Coming from a party escorted by Mr. B——r, Miriam by Mr. T——t,[1] we had to wait a long time before Rose opened the door, which interval I employed in dancing up and down the gallery—followed ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... that she should speak with the tongues of men and angels; for a while together by the fire happens more frequently in marriage than the presence of a distinguished foreigner to dinner.... You could read Kant by yourself, if you wanted; but you must share a joke with some one else. You can forgive people who do not follow you through a philosophical disquisition; but to find your wife laughing when you had tears in your eyes, or staring when you were in a fit of laughter, would go some way towards ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to be baffled thus. The moment he stopped ironing and began to count the flies on the ceiling, the goose seemed to carry his hand up with it—irresistibly—to the end of his nose, and gave it a good scorching! This was no joke, I can tell you, and in a very short time Bartlemy began so to dread the visits of his two enemies that he never left working a minute, and his needle dashed along like magic. By sunset the coat was done, and sewed in a manner vastly superior to the other tailors, who ...
— Funny Big Socks - Being the Fifth Book of the Series • Sarah L. Barrow
... look like that, you poor darling boys! Peter, little dear Peter ... you must try and understand! You're good at understanding, you know. Oh, take it easy, my dear! Take it easy, and see how it's nothing to matter, how it's all one great joke after all!" Her arm was round his shoulders as he sat on the table's edge; she was comforting him like a child. To her he was always about Illuminato's ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... favorite joke of Cuthbert's to compare himself with that wonderfully humorous character of Spanish literature, who took himself so solemnly even while he furnished merriment for everybody—Don Quixote, the Knight of La Mancha—this wild expedition into the depths of the Northwestern Unknown ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne
... can still joke, Mr. Macdonald, after such a terrible experience. All I can say is that I hope Wally isn't permanently injured. He hasn't your fine constitution, and one never can tell about internal injuries." Mrs. Selfridge sighed ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... continued she. "Well, I didn't mean to dabble in witchcraft to-day further than the lighting of my pipe, but a witch I am and a witch I'm likely to be and there's no use trying to shirk it. I'll make a man of my scarecrow, were it only for the joke's sake." ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... I still thought he was mocking me; but the people gathered about me and all of them said, 'Sell to him, and if he buy not, we will all up and at him and drub him and thrust him forth the city.' So quoth I to him, 'Wilt thou buy or dost thou jest?'; and quoth he, 'Wilt thou sell or dost thou joke?' I said, 'I will sell if thou wilt buy;' then he said, 'I will buy it for thirty thousand dinars; take them and make the bargain;' so I cried to the bystanders, 'Bear witness against him,' adding to him, 'But on condition that thou acquaint ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... Interpreter in 1916, Monsieur Bunge, a native of Le Havre, was a pleasant, lively sort of person, always ready for a joke and an admirer of the British. With him I got on very well; and I learnt one or two things of the French from him. One of them was how sensitive they are in small matters of conversation. If in your heavy English way you did not respond at once with ...
— Q.6.a and Other places - Recollections of 1916, 1917 and 1918 • Francis Buckley
... perfectly familiar. The Japanese servant bows low and kneels to her mistress, and addresses her always in the tone of voice used by an inferior to a superior, yet she will join in a conversation between her mistress and a caller, and laugh with the rest at any joke which ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Japan • John Finnemore
... extraordinary circumstance," said the Baron Manutoli, "that they were jeering at the Conte Leandro at the Circolo just now, about the way the Diva had snubbed him and his verses, and accusing him in joke of having been her murderer. And, as sure as I am now speaking to you, Signor Fortini, he looked in a way then that I—a—a—in short that I thought very odd—turned all sorts of colours. But then, you know, he is always such ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... thermometer this morning I looked and looked again, but unmistakably the temperature was 33 deg.F., above freezing point (out of the sun's direct rays) for the first time since we came down here. What this means to us nobody can conceive. We try to treat it as a huge joke, but our wretched condition might be amusing to read of it later. We are wet through, our tents are wet, our bags which are our life to us and the objects of our greatest care, are wet; the poor ponies are soaked and shivering far more than they would be ordinarily in a temperature fifty degrees ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... the fellow has thrown me into!" he thought to himself, while many a dire and forceful aspiration passed through his mind. Indeed, the expressions to which he gave vent were most inelegant in their nature. But what was to be done next? He was a Russian and thoroughly aroused. The affair had been no joke. "But for the Superintendent," he reflected, "I might never again have looked upon God's daylight—I might have vanished like a bubble on a pool, and left neither trace nor posterity nor property nor an honourable name for my future offspring to inherit!" (it seemed that our hero ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... say that!" cried Pierre Labarre in terror. "Say that it was a joke, my lord, or a misunderstanding. You did ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... had handled too many rebellious captains in his time; they all had a protest of some kind—it was either the crew, or the grub, or the coal, or the way she was stowed. Then he added softly, more as a joke than anything else: ...
— A List To Starboard - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... idea," Mr. Molesworth mused, "that Moyle was an angler. It would be a fair joke, anyway, to borrow his rod and fill up the time.— How long before the relief comes down?" he asked, intercepting the station-master as he came rushing out from his office and ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... 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 bean?" 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 2d 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 of the wood. I was thinking whether taking ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... princess had a great dislike for snakes. Once, by way of a joke, young Sia put a small snake into a parcel, which he gave her and told her to open. She turned pale and reproached him. Then Sia-Kung-Schong also took his jest seriously, ...
— The Chinese Fairy Book • Various
... daughter's husband, a jovial young man, given to jesting. On going to rest he fancied he should be thirsty at night and called Leo to set a pitcher of hydromel by his bedside. As the slave was setting it down, the Frank looked slyly from under his eyelids, and said in joke, 'Tell me, my father-in-law's trusty man, wilt not thou some night take one of those horses, and run away to thine ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Ward's father, the renowned minister at Ipswich, whose book of "The Simple Cobbler of Agawam," was much admired. Mr. Ward said that some of the witty turns therein did give much offence at the time of its printing, but that his father could never spoil his joke for the sake of friends, albeit he had no malice towards any one, and was always ready to do a good, even to his enemies. He once even greatly angered his old and true friend, Mr. Cotton of Boston. "It fell out in this wise," said Mr. Ward. ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... that govern the dative. He could not bear to have the other pupils think, for a moment, that he took these people seriously; he must convey to them that he considered it all trivial, and was there only by way of a joke, anyway. He had autograph pictures of all the members of the stock company which he showed his classmates, telling them the most incredible stories of his familiarity with these people, of his acquaintance with the soloists who came to Carnegie Hall, ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... we have one of the reasons why Dr. Franklin, who was universally confessed to be the ablest pen in America, was not always asked to write the great documents of the Revolution. He would have put a joke into the Declaration of Independence, if it had fallen to him to write it. At this time he was a humorist of fifty years standing, and had become fixed in the habit of illustrating great truths by grotesque and familiar similes. His jokes, the circulating medium of Congress, were ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... cried a merry voice, and another student clapped the fun-loving Rover on the shoulder. "I do believe you would rather joke than eat!" ...
— The Rover Boys in Business • Arthur M. Winfield
... and made a grimace in imitation of one of them. I laughed and shuddered expressively, whereon they all burst out laughing too, and chattered hard to one another. I could make out nothing of what they said, but I think they thought it rather a good joke that I had come past the statues. Then one among them came forward and motioned me to follow, which I did without hesitation, for I dared not thwart them; moreover, I liked them well enough, and felt tolerably sure that they had no intention of ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... which could be compared with the Nile for the volume of its waters, excited their admiration. They were, however, puzzled by the fact that it flowed from north to south, and even were accustomed to joke at the necessity of reversing the terms employed in Egypt to express going up or down the river. This first Syrian campaign became the model for most of those subsequently undertaken by the Pharaohs. It took ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 4 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... then, before John could speak, he went on to give the answer to his question. "Because they don't know how to get their stuff over the footlights. That's why! They had good stuff to work with, but they didn't know what to do with it. I could have told 'em. Do you remember that joke about the dog that swallowed the ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... oppression—but, no more. What say'st thou of this Italy? John Milton Loves well to speak romantic lore of Rome— A poet, though a great and burning light. I would have knowledge of it to confound him; A sober joke, a piece of harmless mirth. What think'st thou then of Rome ...
— Cromwell • Alfred B. Richards
... Lord of Session, 'as this gibbet is built to break people's craigs, and is not uniform without another, I must e'en hang you upon the vacant beam.' And straightway the Lord of Session swung in the moonlight, and Gilderoy had cracked his black and solemn joke. ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... be there, and Reddy started off to find out where Bowser was. Blacky told everyone he met how Reddy Fox had promised to fool Bowser the Hound, and every time he told it he chuckled as if he thought it the best joke ever. ...
— The Adventures of Reddy Fox • Thornton W. Burgess
... requisite to avoid the falls by slinging them on poles tied on diagonally. They place these on their shoulders, and, setting about the work with good humor, soon accomplish the task. They are a merry set of mortals; a feeble joke sets them off in a fit of laughter. Here, as elsewhere, all petitioned for the magic lantern, and, as it is a good means of conveying instruction, ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... ha! that is a good joke!" retorted the soldier, while his companions laughed immoderately. "A Jew without money! I'll wager there is gold and silver in every closet. I know you ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... movement, then you say (or you hear say) what is true, and not much more than what is true. Only about that word picturesque we demur a little: as a chirurgeon, he certainly is picturesque; for Howship upon gunshot wounds is a joke to him when he lectures upon traumacy, if we may presume to coin that word, or upon traumatic philosophy (as Mr. M'Culloch says so grandly, Economic Science). But, apart from this, we cannot allow that simply to say [Greek: Zakunthos nemoessa], woody Zacynthus, ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... first violin is left playing by himself. The origin of this singular piece is thus accounted for. It is said that Haydn, perceiving his innovations were ill received by the performers of Prince Esterhazy, determined to play a joke upon them. He caused his symphony to be performed, without a previous rehearsal, before his highness, who was in the secret. The embarrassment of the performers, who all thought they had made a mistake, and especially the confusion of the first violin, when, at the end, he found he was playing ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... We managed to make a joke of last night—but what that push had in mind was plain murder. I would dearly like," said John Wesley, "to visit Las ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... a moment, and then laughed, deciding boldly that this was a new and elaborate game—a joke, perhaps—which she was too little to understand, but which politeness and good-fellowship alike required her at least to appear to appreciate. They were great friends already, these two. Children always recognised an ally in the man who made so few friends among his peers, and ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... within sight, as we steered to the S.W., of the spot where, for forty-seven days, we had had nothing but ice! ice! ice! Let us hurry on. The West Water (as usual with the water at this season of the year) was covered with fog: in it we steered. The "Resolute," as a capital joke, in return for the long weary miles we had towed her, set, on one occasion, all studsails, and gave us a tow for four hours. When off the mouth of Lancaster Sound, the "Prince Albert" was cast off; and she departed ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... entertains right nobly the lords and ladies of his court in honour of his nephew, for whom all courteous knights and lovely ladies were in great grief. Nevertheless they spoke only of mirth, and, though joyless themselves, made many a joke to cheer the good Sir Gawayne (ll. 536-565). Early on the morrow Sir Gawayne, with great ceremony, is arrayed in his armour (ll. 566-589), and thus completely equipped for his adventure he first hears mass, and afterwards ...
— Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight - An Alliterative Romance-Poem (c. 1360 A.D.) • Anonymous
... growing. We have a splendid exhibit here from our parks and one that I am very proud of and we have a man here, Mr. Dunbar, that we are very proud of; he is a wonder; I confess that I didn't know there were so many nuts to be found in the parks myself—that is no joke. It is a wonderful thing, it is a revelation to me, I never dreamed that you could find such things growing around this part of the country at all. I fancy that most people don't know anything about nuts at all, ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 13th Annual Meeting - Rochester, N.Y. September, 7, 8 and 9, 1922 • Various
... cap with feathers, too; And I march beside the drummer boy on Sundays at review. But now our 'bacca's all give out, the men can't have their smoke, And so they're cross—why, even Ned won't play with me and joke. And the big colonel said to-day—I hate to hear him swear— He'd give a leg for a good pipe like the Yanks had over there. And so I thought when beat the drum, and the big guns were still, I'd creep beneath the tent and come out here across the hill And beg, good Mister Yankee men, you'd give ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... tell a lie," he confessed honestly, "and it was too good to keep to myself. I'm the most generous fellow you ever saw, when it comes to passing along a good story that won't hurt anybody's digestion. You don't care, do you? The joke ain't on you." ...
— The Uphill Climb • B. M. Bower
... each paving-stone was clearly marked out. Mary then saw Katharine raise her eyes again to the moon, with a contemplative look in them, as though she were setting that moon against the moon of other nights, held in memory. Some one in the room behind them made a joke about star-gazing, which destroyed their pleasure in it, and they looked back ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... resentment against the Romans should be felt in every honest heart. At last it found expression. During his visit to Jerusalem in May 66 Florus laid hands upon the temple treasure; the Jews allowed themselves to go so far as to make a joke about it, which he avenged by giving over a portion of the city to be plundered, and crucifying a number of the inhabitants. He next insisted upon their kissing the rod, ordering that a body of troops which was approaching should ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... fine supply of bags. This necessitated a redistribution of dug-outs, and a line of them was constructed sufficient to take a section of bearers. The men christened this "Shrapnel Avenue." They called my dug-out "The Nut," because it held the "Kernel." I offer this with every apology. It's not my joke. ...
— Five Months at Anzac • Joseph Lievesley Beeston
... was our king declared, To ease the nation's grievance, With his new wind about I steer'd, And swore to him allegiance: Old principles I did revoke, Set conscience at a distance; Passive obedience was a joke, And pish for non-resistance. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 482, March 26, 1831 • Various
... see what he does!" cried Randy, who could never let any portion of a joke get away from him, and he hurried down the ...
— The Rover Boys in the Land of Luck - Stirring Adventures in the Oil Fields • Edward Stratemeyer
... boarder here whose face looks like a chapel and every time she opens her mouth you're afraid it's going to be the Lord's Prayer. She wears a wide ruching which makes her look excited; distributes tracts, and can't see a joke. She says she's Miss and leaves envelopes around with "Mrs." written on them in red ink—modest writing fluid ...
— Letters of a Dakota Divorcee • Jane Burr
... unprofitable, the whole thing. At first, to be besieged and bombarded was a thrill; then it was a joke; now it is nothing but a weary, weary, weary bore. We do nothing but eat and drink and sleep—just exist dismally. We have forgotten when the siege began; and now we are beginning not to care ...
— From Capetown to Ladysmith - An Unfinished Record of the South African War • G. W. Steevens
... set mysteriously on the shoulders of that familiar person, in that brown dress, under that hat she knew so well. It made her lose all her hold on reality. She told Mrs. Fyne: "I didn't know where I was. I didn't even know that I was frightened. If she had told me it was a joke I would have laughed. If she had told me to put on my hat and go out with her I would have gone to put on my hat and gone out with her and never said a single word; I should have been convinced I had been mad ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... full-blooded and have already had two strokes; it's hard for me to dance, but, as they say, if you're in Rome, you must do as Rome does. I've got the strength of a horse. My dead father, who liked a joke, peace to his bones, used to say, talking of our ancestors, that the ancient stock of the Simeonov-Pischins was descended from that identical horse that Caligula made a senator.... [Sits] But the trouble is, I've no money! A hungry ...
— Plays by Chekhov, Second Series • Anton Chekhov
... be so fiery! Sure you know of old, that Jack will have his joke, and means no harm. Besides, he's ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... similar expressions, were heard from the seamen, while now and then a broad joke or a loud laugh burst from the lips of the more excited among them. But there was no Dutch courage exhibited. One and all showed the most determined and coolest bravery. The officers whose duty it was to ...
— Paul Gerrard - The Cabin Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... a gigantic farce of the most ingenious construction. The whole comedy hinges on a huge joke, played by a heartless nephew on his misanthropic uncle, who is induced to take to himself a wife, young, fair, and warranted silent, but who, in the end, turns out neither silent nor a woman at all. In "The Alchemist," ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... establish a perfect understanding with your mistress; so that, take eight and eleven from thirty-one days, the time between the 28th of one month and the 29th of the next, there remains twelve, more or less!' This joke was followed by ...
— Manon Lescaut • Abbe Prevost
... say so in the beginning?" said Garth, wondering if this was a joke. "When will you ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... then, including Peter, who was especially uproarious, and who had an idea he had made the joke himself, else why ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... men to tire of all this burlesque of politics and this solemn joke of calling it "great statesmanship," that is breeding these ungainly toadies—squat and warty. A country is great only as her political institutions are good and wise—not merely when it is strong in numbers, large in acres, and swarming with politicians and parasites that are worshipped as great ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... cut off one skirt of his long coat. This excited peals of laughter. When the poor Londoner saw that this was done by a roguish American, at the instigation of his own countrymen, the tear stood in his eye. Even our jolly, big bellied captain, enjoyed the joke, and ordered the boatswain's mate to cut off the other skirt, who, after viewing him amidst shouts of laughter, damned him for a land lubber, and said, now he had lost his ring-tail, he looked ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... day, they had been sent a-fairing for a treat. They swarmed in like small bee-angels, just escaped from some upset celestial hive; they crowded around the booths, buying little toys, chattering, bargaining, and laughing, when my eye caught theirs, as though to be noticed was the very best joke in the whole world. They soon found out the Sensation of the Age, and the mammoth steam bicycle was forthwith crowded with the happy little creatures, raptured in all the glory of a ride. The cars looked like baskets full of roses. ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... There were legends in the place that he did not so much as know the popular heroes and heroines by sight, and that the low comedian had 'mugged' at him in his richest manner fifty nights for a wager, and he had shown no trace of consciousness. The carpenters had a joke to the effect that he was dead without being aware of it; and the frequenters of the pit supposed him to pass his whole life, night and day, and Sunday and all, in the orchestra. They had tried him ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... shower last nite. we all got up and lit lamps and set round in our nite sherts. we lit all the lamps we cood find so we coodent see the litening. father kept telling funny stories, but mother and Aunt Sarah was scart and told him he hadent aught to joke when enny minit he mite be struck by litening. father he said he dident beleave the litening wood strike him enny quicker for not being scart of it then it wood if he gumped and holered o lord every time it litened. well after a while it only litened way of ...
— 'Sequil' - Or Things Whitch Aint Finished in the First • Henry A. Shute
... to ask him as they walked through the woods. Why was it all over? Why shouldn't they go on being good friends and comrades? Couldn't he see that she had only tried to make a little joke to ease the strain? Didn't he know that she really had a wonderful admiration for his talents and a large ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... Tarantula dance; Maestro Paolo foots it bravely! Diavolo, what fury! the Tarantula has stung them all. Dance or die; it is fury,—the Corybantes, the Maenads, the—Ho, ho! more wine! the Sabbat of the Witches at Benevento is a joke to this! From cloud to cloud wanders the moon,—now shining, now lost. Dimness while the maiden blushes; ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... knew everything and of every sort; this was the more pitiable in that it had got into his head with his promotions, and was less presumption than stupidity, and still less vanity, of which he had none. The joke is, that the mainspring of the king's great affection for him was this very incapacity. He confessed it to the king at every step, and the king was delighted to direct and instruct him; in such sort that he grew jealous for his success as if it ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... the products of his own subjective and somewhat peevish intelligence. "I like," says Sydney, "to tell you these things, because you never do so well as when you are humbled and frightened, and, if you could be alarmed into the semblance of modesty, you would charm everybody; but remember my joke against you about the moon: 'D—n the solar system! bad light—planets too distant—pestered with comets—feeble contrivance; could make a better with ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... they will talk the matter over, and discuss which way we went. How the men in each ship will say that the others cannot have used their eyes or exerted themselves, else we must have been overtaken. Messer Francisco, I am indebted to you, not only for having saved the ship, but for giving me a joke, which I shall laugh over whenever I think of it. It will be a grand story to tell over the wine cups, how we cheated a whole Genoese fleet, and carried off the Lido from under their noses. What a tale it will be to relate to a Genoese, when we meet in some port after the war is over; ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... behind the hills, with the broad smile of a tyrant who fully enjoys the joke, when Desmond drew up before his own verandah ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... time at Homburg, and Clancey had given him to understand that he had some sort of vague diplomatic appointment. He had drifted across Bobby's life afterwards in a shadowy way, seeming to have nothing special to do, but to know a great many people and to take life as a sort of a joke. He talked lightly and cynically about serious things, and used foreign expressions with great ease and fluency. It was characteristic of him that since the War he made frequent use of German idioms, and when conversation turned upon passing events he professed ...
— War-time Silhouettes • Stephen Hudson
... discoursing with Lady Jane. The latter did not understand them, to be sure, but it was mortifying to remain silent; still more mortifying to know that you had nothing to say, and hear that little audacious Mrs. Rawdon dashing on from subject to subject, with a word for every man, and a joke always pat; and to sit in one's own house alone, by the fireside, and watching all the men round ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... perfectly true. If it had got about that any one was going to invest thirty thousand pounds—or pence—in Wildcat Reefs, the market would certainly have been convulsed. The House would have rocked with laughter. Wildcat Reefs were a standing joke—except to the unfortunate few who still held any of ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... consent, another serious question,—and she should take the notion to fly her retirement, and appear inopportunely at some social function clothed as she is now! I fancy her blanket would be a wet one in such a case—if you will pardon the little joke." ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... in the Texan's eyes. "General, general! I didn't know 't was you! Give you my word, sir, I thought it was just anybody! We've had orders every morning to say, 'I don't know'—and it's gotten to be a joke—and I was just fooling. Of course, sir, I don't mean that it has gotten to be a joke—only that we all say 'I don't know' when we ask each other questions, and I hope, sir, that you'll understand that I didn't know that 't ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... ha! Excellent! By the way," rejoined the other, "talking of Brussels, do you know who has the glory of that famous joke practised there upon the statues in the park? They give the credit of it to the English, but on what ground, except the celebrity they have acquired in such feats, I could ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... "A bad joke," Frank replied. "If you'd quit studying up slang and read the best authors you wouldn't ...
— Boy Scouts in a Submarine • G. Harvey Ralphson
... used to be, Whenever the minister came for tea, 'At they sat up straight in their chairs at night An' put all their common things out o' sight, An' nobody cracked a joke or grinned, But they talked o' the way that people sinned, An' the burnin' fires that would cook you sure When you came to die, if you wasn't pure— Such a gloomy affair it used to be Whenever the minister came ...
— When Day is Done • Edgar A. Guest
... spoke of her as "one of the family" and she turned out his gas and locked one of his own doors in his face. If it was a secret society, well and good, no matter how desperate its plan. But why did they laugh and joke and play tricks? He was not in the humour. For the time his soul abhorred what seemed to him frippery. He sought intuitively to find relief in action and he began impatiently to look ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... you mean it. I won't pose as a self-sacrificing patriot only. I confess that I am ambitious. You fellows used to call me 'little Strahan.' YOU are all right now, but there are some who smile yet when my name is mentioned, and who regard my shoulder-straps as a joke. I've no doubt they are already laughing at the inglorious end of my military career. I propose to prove that I can be a soldier as well as some bigger and more bewhiskered men. I have other motives also;" and his ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... "That's a joke!" exclaimed the rich brother. "Without a ruble in thy pockets, stupid fellow! Thou evidently desirest to imitate rich people," and then the rich brother laughed and laughed at him. But at the same time he got ...
— Folk Tales from the Russian • Various
... you, you was anything but welcome.'— 'And why wasn't I welcome?' I said. 'I couldn't help it, you know. I'm very sorry to hear I intruded,' I said, still making game of it, you see; for I always did like a joke. 'Well,' she said, 'you certainly wasn't wanted. But I don't blame you, Samuel, and I hope you won't blame me.'—' What do you mean, auntie ?' I mean this, that it's my fault, if so be that fault it is, that you're sitting there now, and not lying, in less bulk by ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... conversing with a circle of gentlemen, and favored me with a gracious nod. As I stood wondering whether this was the end of my introduction, a mustached dandy came between us and said, "Miss Williams, permit me to relate the joke of the season." To my horror he began the story of the cloak. My first impulse was to knock him down, my second to run away; on my third I acted. Interrupting the recital I said: "Begging your pardon, sir, but Miss Williams, I am ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... myself and brooding away in the city." The lad's bright, clear eyes looked frankly into the captain's as he continued. "I have been making a fool of myself, Captain. Got into some mischief with a crowd of fellows at school. Of course, I got caught and had to bear the whole blame for the silly joke we had played. The faculty has suspended me for a term. I would have got off with only a reprimand if I would have told the names of the other fellows, but I couldn't do that, ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... does exist, as I and a few others very well know it does; what a fine joke it would be to see it fly into Paris! But, no. Idle dream! Still, I shall wait and watch. And now, suppose we pay a visit to Berlin and use blunt facts in place of diplomacy? It will ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... is good-hearted, he is also occasionally deplorably trivial. His language is rarely elevated, and his expressions are almost always vulgar. On occasion he does not dislike a joke or a touch of humour. Thus we have seen that he mischievously persisted in addressing Professor Lodge as "Captain." On another occasion he is a long time in finding a person's name—Theodora. Then ...
— Mrs. Piper & the Society for Psychical Research • Michael Sage
... to ask for a window in the breast, it was an allegorical joke, and we cannot even imagine such a contrivance to be a possibility; but it would be quite possible to imagine that the skull and its integuments were transparent, and then, good heavens! what differences should we see in the size, the form, the quality, the movement of the ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; The Art of Controversy • Arthur Schopenhauer
... had an old mother like mine up-stairs, Milton, eating out her heart and her days and her weeks and her months over a husband's grave somewhere in Siberia and a son's grave somewhere in Kishinef, you wouldn't see the joke neither." ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... anxiously, "can't you take a joke? I wouldn't drive anything but the old mair for love or money. And your cameo pin is so beautiful and so ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... said we had taken 700 prisoners yesterday; another rumour puts the number at 2000. I heard at dinner that eighty had come in. Mention was laughingly made of "the lost regiment". I could not imagine at the time that we had lost a regiment and thought it was a joke of the General's, but to-day I find that a whole battalion of K.O.S.B.'s are amissing. Those must be prisoners in the hands of the Turks. They had lost so heavily before that they could not have been at anything like full strength. The curious thing is the officers are ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... not strictly divisible. Moreover, Sarah Winch, whom Chumley Potts drew into conversation, said, he vowed, she came up West from Whitechapel. She said it a little nervously, but without blushing. Always on the side of the joke, he could ask: 'Who can doubt?' Indeed, scepticism poisoned ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... "I've never heard you make a joke before. The idiot of the regiment, and you're his keeper! Man, that's fine. What has come ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... as getting into the hands and mouths of all the devils of hell; and braying spread from one town to another in such a way that the men of the braying town are as easy to be known as blacks are to be known from whites, and the unlucky joke has gone so far that several times the scoffed have come out in arms and in a body to do battle with the scoffers, and neither king nor rook, fear nor shame, can mend matters. To-morrow or the day after, I believe, the men of my town, that is, of the braying town, are ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... Prussian, enchanted. "What a night that will be, my friend!... But now, it is too bad, I really must ask you to step below. Such are my silly orders. I am made responsible for you. What do you think of that for a joke, eh?" ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... Libanius suggests the form of a persecuting edict, which Theodosius might enact, (pro Templis, p. 32;) a rash joke, and a dangerous experiment. Some princes would ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... him in his livelier London days, A brilliant diner-out, though but a curate, And not a joke he cut but earned its praise, Until Preferment, coming at a sure rate, (O Providence! how wondrous are thy ways! Who would suppose thy gifts sometimes obdurate?) Gave him, to lay the Devil who looks o'er Lincoln,[800] A fat fen vicarage, and nought ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... say, to preserve woods, for I take it to be the chiefest part of the business of a Lt. Governor of that province to preserve the woods for the king's use." The protest was ignored; and for thirty years, while the Board of Trade fell almost to the level of a joke, the colonies were managed by a Secretary of State who was likely to be less interested in preserving the woods for the king's use than in advancing the interests of the Whig oligarchy which ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... so different from the crowd he had seen at Wilkins' barn and down at Mike's, that he could not joke her; he could only play the gallant, and he rather ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher
... walking. The extreme tenuity of his frame, I suspect, set him upon it. It was a trial of poising. Twopenny would often rally him upon his leanness, and hail him as Brother Lusty; but W. had no relish of a joke. His features were spiteful. I have heard that he would pinch his cat's ears extremely, when any thing had offended him. Jackson—the omniscient Jackson he was called—was of this period. He had the reputation of possessing ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... not understand; we thought this was some new kind of joke—which it was, but not to us. We asked for explanations; all that we wanted was to know how we were to get these things up to the Kaipara. Our colonial friend sighed deeply, and proceeded mournfully to expound the position. ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... There it is, my child. You will be a man when you come back, and be ashamed to love your mother. Promise me now,' said Lady Armine, with extraordinary energy, 'promise me, Ferdinand, you will always love me. Do not let them make you ashamed of loving me. They will joke, and jest, and ridicule all home affections. You are very young, sweet love, very, very young, and very inexperienced and susceptible. Do not let them spoil your frank and beautiful nature. Do not let them lead ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... him, and he said this for it.) He doesn't like to go to church at all, why I never understood, until just now, he told us the other day that he couldn't bear to hear any one talk but himself, but that he could listen to himself talk for hours without getting tired, of course he said this in joke, but I've no dought it was founded ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... them,) was actually mounted on the wooden horse without a saddle, with his face to the tail, while he was plied by four servants of the household with syringes and squirts, till he had a thorough wetting. "He was a waggish fellow," says Lewis, "and would not lose any thing for the joke's sake when he was putting his tricks upon others, so he was obliged to submit cheerfully to what was inflicted upon him, being at our mercy to play him off well, which we did accordingly." Amid much such nonsense, Lewis's book shows that this poor child, the heir of the British ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... pet joke of Gabriel's did not dissipate the constraint and disappointment left upon the company by Uncle Sylvester's unsatisfying performance and early withdrawal, and they separated soon after, Kitty and Marie being glad to escape upstairs together. ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... the prisoners followed the migration, and the officer ascended to the deck, unconscious of the number and variety of the recruits he had obtained without the formality of an enlistment. The captain of the ship, suspecting that some joke had been practised, or some mischief perpetrated, from the noise below, met the officer at the head of the gangway, and seeing the vermin crawling up his shoulders, and aiming at his head, with the instinct peculiar ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... talking. If it is true that to be slow in words is a woman's only virtue, then, indeed, is my state pitiable, for talk I must, and G. is a delightful person to talk to. She listens to my tales of Peter and the others, and asks for more, and shouts with laughter at the smallest joke. I pass as a wit with G., and have a great success. She is going to stay with a married sister for the cold weather. Quite like me, only I'm going to an unmarried brother. I think we are both getting slightly impertinent to our elders. They tease ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... sensible if they did," replied Croly, who had too much self-conceit to see the point of a joke that was aimed ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various
... The gaunt Norwegian, the owner of this humble dwelling, made such comical grimaces, and winked his little eyes so frequently and eruditely, in endeavouring to fathom their mirth, that I could not restrain myself, and took a conspicuous part in the joke. After arranging, through King, who had come with us, as forming one of the boat's crew, where and how we should sleep, we went into the open air, and R—— and P——, lighting their cigars, again entered into conversation with the Anglo-Norwegian regarding the sports of the country. ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... the great chief of these parts, came to call on Mohamad: several men got up and made some antics before him, then knelt down and did obeisance, then Muabo himself jumped about a little, and all applauded. He is a good-natured-looking man, fond of a joke, and always ready with a good-humoured smile: he was praised very highly, Mpweto was nothing to Muabo mokolu, the great Muabo; and he returned the praise by lauding Tipo Tipo and Mpamari, Mohamad's native name, ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... appearance of being absorbed in each other's talk, and all-sufficient for each other's happiness. It seemed to Clarissa that she had never seen them so united before. Had he been laughing at her last night? she asked herself indignantly; was that balcony scene a practical joke? He had been describing it to Lady Geraldine perhaps this afternoon, and the two had been laughing together at her credulity. She was in so bitter a mood just now that she was almost ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... the unusual that he considered this staggering possibility with equanimity—if the time coefficient was at fault, then how to account for the picture of the professor, in that leaf? Had they both been the victims of a ghastly cosmic joke? ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... of forgetting persons, or pretending to do so, for nobody ever knew when the lapses of recognition were due to intention or absent-mindedness, often tempted other artists to play pranks upon him. He was a man who resented a joke at his own expense, except on a few occasions, and this trait was often turned ...
— Whistler Stories • Don C. Seitz
... summons, and I told Ed Tootle to serve it on you at your orgy—you had no business to expect me to enter any free-for-all inebriates' competition—you know that, 'Gene! It may have been a little extreme as a joke; but if you'd laughed it off as you always do, nobody would have thought anything of it except to chaff you about it. But what do you do? You make as serious a thing of it as if you hadn't been trotting with our crowd for five years or ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... consequent icy discomfort for twenty-four hours and more. And as for the unfortunate ration-parties and men bringing up heavy trench stores, their task was really one of frightful labour, for, for two men to cross a large and slippery muddy series of fields carrying a 100 lb. box between them was no joke. First one would slide up and skate off in one direction whilst the other did his best to hold on, generally resulting in dropping his end of the box or finding himself on the flat of his back. Then the parts would be reversed, ...
— The Doings of the Fifteenth Infantry Brigade - August 1914 to March 1915 • Edward Lord Gleichen
... he said, laughing, "even you could not make it rise to-night. Heigho, Ned! coming to kiss good-night? I say, Ned, tell us what mamma has for Amy's stocking. What a good joke it is, to be sure I We all had the impression you were a little girl, you know, and selected our gifts accordingly. Burt actually bought you a doll. Ha! ha! ha! Maggie had planned to have you hang up your stocking with the children, and ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... performance of most of Shakspere's plays, as these have been accumulated in the theater itself. Perhaps this book might be able to tell us why it is that tradition warrants the same rather trivial practical joke in the performance of the 'Merchant of Venice,' and in the performance of 'Romeo and Juliet,'—the business of embarrassing a servant by repeated bows of mock courtesy and ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... or in bottles; and, whether these were rats, vipers, snails, or frogs, by some strange fatality they were certain to get loose and turn up among his fellow-passengers in car or diligence. To twine snakes around the necks and arms of young ladies playing quadrilles was another harmless joke. "Don't be afraid," he would say: "they won't hurt you. And do be a good girl, and don't make a fuss." He possessed an easy gift of adapting scientific theories and deductions to popular interest and comprehension, and his "Curiosities in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... the baker's daughter (with whom he is in love) how to inveigle him into the snare; that it was I that enacted the ghost, that knocked him down, and cudgelled him till he roared again. If I had only not carried the joke too far, but I wished to cool his love a little for my sweetheart. 'T was a ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... from burla, a joke, fun, playful trick), a form of the comic in art, consisting broadly in an imitation of a work of art with the object of exciting laughter, by distortion or exaggeration, by turning, for example, the highly rhetorical into bombast, the pathetic into the mock-sentimental, and especially by a ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... shoulder holster back inside his unbuttoned waistcoat. "He'll most likely be down round Gafford's stable. Whut's Old Peep been doin', Judge—gettin' himself in contempt of court or somethin'?" He grinned, asking the question with the air of one making a little joke. ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... and perhaps a little more. He was the magistrate all over, from head to foot, and from the gaiters on his ankles to the light blonde whiskers on his face. Although he was quite young, yet no one had ever seen him smile, or heard him make a joke. He was so very stiff that M. Daubigeon suggested he had been impaled alive ...
— Within an Inch of His Life • Emile Gaboriau
... duty. The Pathans and Gurkhas were quite at home at such work, and not only able to take care of themselves, but when stalked by the enemy were equal to a counter-stalk, often most successful. The enemy used to joke with Brownlow's and Keyes's men on these occasions, and say, 'We don't want you. Where are the lal pagriwalas? [as the 14th Sikhs were called from their lal pagris (red turbans)] or the goralog [the Europeans]? They are better shikar [sport]!' The tribesmen soon discovered that the ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... and accepted through the telephone. However, one is subjected to frequent annoyances from wrong connections at the Central Office, and sometimes grave errors are made. Once, through a serious blunder, or a mischievous joke, I lost a dinner in my Legation in Washington. My valet received a telephone message from a lady friend inviting me to dine at her house. I gladly accepted the invitation, and at the appointed time drove to her home, only to find that ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... treasure had lain there, and all the rest of it cankered with rust. Whether this sciencer was some obscure Roger Bacon, and had discovered the use of a volatile anaesthetic centuries ago, or whether he was enjoying a solitary practical joke at the expense of two simpletons, is impossible to say. "It is at your choice to believe either or neither," as Westcote says of the two foregoing stories. "I have offered them to the shrine of your judgment, and what truth soever there is in them, they ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... house; in making sketches for the furniture, and arranging the decorations. You took a real delight in this task, although you were annoyed that you had no personal knowledge of your client. You remember that I said to you sometimes in joke: "Plan it as though it were for me"; and I cannot forget what you replied one day: "I hate the idea of a stranger living in the house which I planned with you ...
— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis
... this is not a hoax," said James, severely. "I presume that you know too well what is due to learned counsel to attempt to make one of their body the victim of a practical joke?" ...
— Mr. Meeson's Will • H. Rider Haggard
... impudence he hath carried out his trial; but that last night, when he brought him newes of his death, he began to be sober and shed some tears, and he hopes will die a penitent; he having already confessed all the thing, but says it was partly done for a joke, and partly to get an occasion of obliging the old man by his care in getting him his things again, he having some hopes of being the better by him in his estate at his death. Home to dinner, and after dinner my wife and ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... in usual ante-Derby Day fashion; beginning to draw picture of his leading WILFRID LAWSON by hand over Epsom Downs. Members opposite snorted disapproval; GRICE-HUTCHINSON abruptly shut up; like the unfinished window in Aladdin's Tower, his carefully-prepared joke unfinished must remain. With this awful warning, ELCHO rose unperturbed and unabashed. Was a success from first moment; SPEAKER artlessly contributed to it; GEDGE had something to say; been popping up whenever ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 11, 1892 • Various
... together—good. "Two more early risin's, and then duff and bruise," is said to be a Thursday remark of the fishermen. The Pelican came in to-day. Stole in in fog, and whistled before flag was up. Good joke on Post. Big day. Pelican goes from here to York, stopping at Ungava on way out and comes back again. Brings supplies. Captain Gray came on shore. Has been with company thirty years, in northern waters fifty years. Jolly, cranky, old fellow. "You'll never ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... thing was the greatest joke imaginable, Rewa Gunga fell into stride beside King and led him away in the ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... listen to their little gossip with interest. They had been setting men, it seems, by the ears; and the drollest little atrocities they do certainly report. Not but we have seen better in the Nenagh paper, so far as Ireland is concerned. But the pet little joke was in La Vendee. Miss Famine, who is the girl for our money, raises the question—whether any of them can tell the name of the leader and prompter to these high jinks of hell—if so, let ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... apartment houses, in office buildings. And we never see children in New York because the janitors won't let the women who live in elevators have children! Don't talk to me! New York's a Little Nemo nightmare. It's a joke. It's an insult!" ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... said. Then he nodded toward Gimp Hines. That the others would also pick Gimp was evident at once. There were bravos and clapping, half for a joke. ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... earnestness, and her action in catching hold of Tom's arm to enjoin silence was so pronounced that, though he had at first regarded the matter in the light of a joke, he soon thought otherwise. He glanced from the girl's face to the dense underbrush on either side of the ...
— Tom Swift and his Aerial Warship - or, The Naval Terror of the Seas • Victor Appleton
... call a practical joke,' were the words of the minister. Do you regard this as a joke, Mr. Stoute?" said the ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic
... crossed the rail in safety, and instantly turned it over, so that his pursuer would step upon it when the cut side was downward. It immediately snapped under his pressure, and precipitated him into the stream, while the young rogue stood by almost killing himself with laughter. But this joke also came very near having a melancholy termination; for the master was floated down several rods into deep water, and with difficulty ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... Being, altogether, a creature of impulses, he certainly could not be ever employed in doxologies, or engaged in the logomachy of churchmen; but he had the sentiment which at a tamer age might have made him more ecclesiastical. There was as much truth as joke in the expression, ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... no wiser Law revoke The Edict that foredestined me to Smoke, My stump to be a Byword and a Jest? - But if a Jest I fail to see the Joke." ...
— The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Jr. (The Rubiyt of Omar Khayym Jr.) • Wallace Irwin
... "Don't joke about it, brother dear. Why are they all so angry with you? Can't you humour them? Why put ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... asked the Calico Clown. "I didn't tell a joke or ask a riddle, did I?" For that is what he sometimes did to make the toys ...
— The Story of a Bold Tin Soldier • Laura Lee Hope
... them on, and as there was ample room for all, and as each new comer increased individual and general security, there was little room for that envy, jealousy, and hatred which constitutes a large portion of human misery in older societies. Never were the story, the joke, the song, and the laugh better enjoyed than upon the hewed blocks or puncheon-stools around the roaring log-fire of the early western settler. The lyre of Apollo was not hailed with more delight in primitive Greece than the advent of the first fiddler among the dwellers of the wilderness, ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... it would be a capital joke on the Princess Volga," mused Beverly reflectively. He did not know what she meant, but regarded her soft smile as the clear title to ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... for a dime apiece. As soon as I rescue Lloyd I'll dash down here on my pony with her behind me. Then we'll slip through the fence and get on the hand-car, and be out of sight around the curve before the rest get here. They won't know where on earth we've gone, and it will be the best joke on them. It's down grade all the way to the section-house, so I can push it easily enough by myself, but I'll need your help coming back, maybe. S'pose you cut across lots to the section-house as soon as I start to the barn, and meet me there. It isn't half as far that way, so you'll ...
— Two Little Knights of Kentucky • Annie Fellows Johnston
... fine,' he answered. He refrained from saying what his heart said: 'It is my last morning; it is not yours. It is my last morning, and the sea is enjoying the joke, and you are ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... Supply to-night on Vote for Houses of Parliament. TONY LUMPKIN turned up again. Last Session, in moment of inspiration, TONY spluttered forth a joke; likened new staircase in Westminster Hall to SPURGEON'S Pulpit. It is just as like the River Thames or Finsbury Park; but that's where the fun lies. Incongruity is the soul of wit. Everybody laughed last Session when TONY, ...
— Punch, or, the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 8, 1890. • Various
... fliers went out they could learn nothing because they dared not land even at Breslau; high-firing guns threatened them everywhere. All they could report was that the streets were full of armed women, which, of course, the General Staff took as an unseemly joke. But toward night a soldier who had managed to escape from Breslau came staggering into Great Headquarters with information that penetrated even that composite Prussian skull: the women of Germany had risen en masse and effected a revolution. ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... it was so amusing. I don't know when I've enjoyed such a hearty joke. How did you come to ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... ill wind that blows nobody any good. The prim man in the cloth boots, who had been unsuccessfully attempting to make a joke during the whole time the round game lasted, saw his opportunity, and availed himself of it. The instant the glasses disappeared he commenced a long story about a great public character, whose name he had forgotten, making a particular happy reply to another eminent and illustrious individual whom ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... thus describes the reception of the news. "On the 5th of February 1886, a very extraordinary thing happened [503]—it was a telegram addressed 'Sir Richard Burton!' He tossed it over to me and said, 'Some fellow is playing me a practical joke, or else it is not for me. I shall not open it, so you may as well ring the bell and give it back again.' 'Oh no,' I said, 'I shall open ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... scientist of the company laugh. But Blaine Asher did not laugh. Serious, his rather thin face grave at he leaned his tall, muscular body above a torsion machine he was adjusting, there was nothing to indicate he had the faintest idea of a joke. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... he, "when you know the town better you will soon see through tricks of this sort; a sick husband and five small children are complaints so stale now, that they serve no other purpose in the world but to make a joke." ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... sharply piercing eyes. What did she think of men and women and things? That was something that Denis had never been able to discover. In her enigmatic remoteness Jenny was a little disquieting. Even now some interior joke seemed to be amusing her, for she was smiling to herself, and her brown eyes were like ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... easily pacified, and, indeed, regarded his rough treatment by two of his own colleagues as a joke rather than otherwise. ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... "Now don't you jump at conclusions. Yes, she pulled up, and I went out to see her. She gave me her hand in the old way, and said; 'Isn't this a joke. The Captain ordered it from Chicago. He saw a picture in one of my magazines of a girl driving one of these things, and here I am. You don't think they'll charge me a special license, do you?' Oh, she's all right. Don't you worry about her. ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... that word "alone" so much, that at last we began to joke about it in the reception-room; outriders and footmen tossed it from one to another when a new guest entered: "Alone!" And we laughed and enjoyed ourselves. But M. Nicklauss, with his extended knowledge of society, considered that ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... you'd been brought up by my mother, sir, you'd know better than to joke about her. What I'm telling you is the truth; and I wouldn't tell it to you if I could see my way to get out of the fix I'll be in when my mother comes here this day to see her boy in his glory, and she after thinking all the time it was against ...
— O'Flaherty V. C. • George Bernard Shaw
... travels, handed him dish after dish in rapid succession, from all of which he helped himself, entirely unconscious of what he was doing. Finally his plate was full to overflowing, perceiving which he became very angry, and it was some time before he could be appeased. A practical joke made no appeal to ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... West India Colonies to enforce the lex talionis, and institute quarantines, which they might do with the same or better reason, against the importation of pleurises and catarrhs from the colder regions of Europe; a practical joke of this kind has been known to succeed after reason, argument, and evidence, amounting to the most palpable demonstration, ...
— Letters on the Cholera Morbus. • James Gillkrest
... to us, and every other lecturer too, just before the Finals, was Do not spend time trying to figure what the examiner was after but answer the question as set; I am more than halfway decided this is some mysterious Oriental idea of a joke but I get busy thinking ...
— The Lost Kafoozalum • Pauline Ashwell
... old Dame Trot with a basket of eggs, He used his pipe, she used her legs. She danced, he piped, the eggs were all broke; Dame Trot began to fret, Tom laughed at his joke. ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... laughing at John, whose appetite made a standing joke among them. But John only laughed with them and went on with his supper. "There can't anybody bluff me out of a good meal," said he, "not ...
— Young Alaskans in the Far North • Emerson Hough
... I could think of such a thing! My dear Scaramouche, you amuse yourself. I beg that you will never, never allude to that little joke of mine again." ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... Santa Claus one time Told this joke on himself in rhyme: One Christmas, in the early din That ever leads the morning in, I heard the happy children shout In rapture at the toys turned out Of bulging little socks and shoes— A joy at which I could but choose To listen enviously, because I'm always just "Old Santa Claus,"— But ere ...
— Songs of Friendship • James Whitcomb Riley
... such was his denseness, that even then, the yokel could not see the point of the joke and the steward had ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... imp!" she said to Quenrede. "But she's a very accomplished imp. I'll tell you the joke afterwards, not now! Lispeth little knows where her string comes from, and she's wrapping up that parcel so placidly! Isn't the Snark looking quite pretty this afternoon? Never saw her with such a color! Well, if you're ready, Queenie, we'll go over to the hostel and get my things. We ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... himself in an abortive effort to insert his foot into the unfilled leg of his pantaloons. "Ha, ha, that's a good un," he exclaimed; "trip yourself up in getting into your own trousers, will you, Deacon Tubman?" and he laughed long and merrily to himself over his little joke. ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... the Professor, and he playfully answered the look by saying, "We really don't want any bear meat to-day, do we?" George thought it was a good joke on the hunters, but Harry was angered. "Let us finish him. See him break ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Mysteries of the Caverns • Roger Thompson Finlay
... some new crazy thing to say. When he found it he shouted it out, and rolled about with laughing, with his face still buried in the earth. He received no answer. Surprised by the silence, he raised his head, and began to repeat his joke. He saw Gottfried's face lit up by the last beams of the setting sun cast through golden mists. He swallowed down his words. Gottfried smiled with his eyes half closed and his mouth half open, and in his sorrowful face was an expression of sadness and unutterable melancholy. Jean-Christophe, with ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... dispiritedly. "People would take it for a joke instead of a scientific treatise if I did," ...
— The Raid on the Termites • Paul Ernst
... enterin' into the sperit of the hoax, an' deemin' it a splendid joke; 'be you-all the maverick who's on that quarter-section ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... up at him with a nervous laugh. Secretly she was wondering how far he was going to carry the joke. ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... grave man, Bladud was by no means destitute of a sense of humour, or disinclined on occasion to perpetrate a practical joke. After contemplating the sleepers for a moment he retired a few paces and concealed himself in the long grass, from which position he pitched one of the huge birds into the air, so that it fell on the captain's upturned visage. The snore changed at once into a yell of alarm, as the mariner sprang ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... is. You mustn't slight my good stories in that way. She meant just what she said. I believe the Porter family own, or did own, Goat Island, and, I suppose, the other bank, and, therefore, the American Fall. The joke—I do dislike to have to explain jokes, especially to you cool, unsympathising Bostonians—is the ridiculousness of any mere human person claiming to own such a thing as the Niagara Falls. I believe, though, that you are quite equal to ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr
... spread all sail; also, beyond discretion, or at all hazards. In galley-slang, to joke a person even to anger; ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... "No joke at all, Crozier; a testimonial of esteem,"—and three gentlemen helped one another to ...
— Crowded Out o' Crofield - or, The Boy who made his Way • William O. Stoddard
... Llano County, where he had recently acquired another ranch with an extensive stock of cattle. It therefore behooved me to keep my reputation unsullied, a rather difficult thing to do when our escapade at Sherman was known to three other trail foremen. They might look upon it as a good joke, while to me it ...
— Reed Anthony, Cowman • Andy Adams
... "Pray don't joke in that way before any one else," said Angela. "It is rather horrid, don't you think? No doubt Mr. Hilliard will be delighted to have you 'play' with him, if you see enough of each other to make it ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... attracted by his looks; and, being a close observer, she soon noted that, though he talked about laboratory matters with Morton, and was ready to joke or sing with Molly and the two older young ladies present, yet every time Sara addressed him, he turned to answer with an eagerly respectful air, different from the rather careless ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... the artist, "and injured my ankle to boot. That's a joke. Look here, Will; you could help me to get my arm free. It's—it's painful; that's ...
— Will of the Mill • George Manville Fenn
... not a brave man, but this demand, in his impecunious condition, instead of terrifying him, struck his sense of humor as an exceedingly good joke. ...
— Joe's Luck - Always Wide Awake • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... from Quisante's group; he had made some joke and they all applauded him. Tillman stood for a moment longer before him, then gave a queer jerk of his head, and turned sharp round on his heel. He came back towards where she stood. She took a step forward and thus crossed his path, Marchmont and the Dean ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... my shoulders. There was nothing to be gained by getting angry. If Terry chose to regard the solving of a murder mystery in the light of a joke, I had nothing to say; though I did think he might have realized that to me, at least, ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... replied the other, reddening; "very well, Syl, let them do so; I can bear a joke, or give a blow, as well as another; so divil may care, such as they give, such as they'll get—only this, let there be no attempt to make me drink whiskey, or else there may be harder hittin' than some o' them 'ud ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... and deeper in the bore, The drop of blood, I lured from him of yore— O'erjoyed to own such specimen unique Were he who objects rare is fain to seek—; Here on its hook hangs still the old fur cloak, Me it remindeth of that merry joke, When to the boy I precepts gave, for truth, Whereon, perchance, he's feeding now, as youth. The wish comes over me, with thee allied, Enveloped in thy worn and rugged folds, Once more to swell with the professor's pride! How quite infallible ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... it. He couldn't talk about anything without it seeming there was a great joke in it somewhere. . . Now, says he, I know you are a moral citizen, George. Morality is mostly funk, and I think you're the funkiest man I ever came across in my travels. Why, you are afraid to speak to your brother. Afraid to open your mouth ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... friend Pope; it was after the publication of the Dunciad. "Of Nonsense there are celebrated professors; Mr. Pope grows witty like Bays in the 'Rehearsal,' by selling bargains (his subscriptions for Homer), praising himself, laughing at his joke, and making his own works the test of any man's criticism; but he seems to be in some jeopardy; for the ghost of Homer has lately spoke to him in Greek, and Shakspeare resolves to bring him, as he has brought Shakspeare, ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... as in the case of a nervous girl whose brother entered her room, covered with a sheet, as a "ghost", a "joke" that was followed by a fit ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... chair that held the little stockings. Santa Claus put a pair of boots on it. They were copper-toed, with gorgeous front pieces of red morocco at the top of the leg. Then, as if he had some relish of a joke, he took them up, looked them over thoughtfully, and put them in the sack again, whereupon the boy Paul burst into tears. Old Santa Claus, shaking with silent laughter, replaced ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... consideration of his youth, beauty, and innocence." The laughter that followed this sally was of the sort which in poetic phraseology is called inextinguishable; and one of the wedding guests who heard the joke and the laughter, assures this writer that the storm of mirthful applause was chiefly due to the delicacy and sweetness of the intonations by which the speaker's facile voice, with its old and once familiar art, made the audience realize the charms of youth, beauty and innocence—charms ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... his joke. He alone seemed to feel no disappointment at Perrichet's oversight. Ricardo was a little touchy on the subject of his personal appearance, and bridled visibly. Hanaud turned ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... to be 'dited, and sent to the Reform School or State's Prison this very night," said she, in her wrath. Prudy thought precisely the same; also Miss Dimple, who looked upon the whole affair as a joke, intended ...
— Little Prudy's Dotty Dimple • Sophie May
... elicited a host of criticisms and panegyrics on his life and character, for the most part flattering, except that in the 'Times,' which was very able but very severe, and not less severe than true. As soon as it was discovered that he was not dead, the liveliest indignation was testified at the joke that had been played off, and the utmost anxiety to discover its origin. General suspicion immediately fixed itself on Brougham himself, who, finding the bad impression produced, hastened to remove it by a vehement but indirect denial of having had any share in, or ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... kettle boils, the young man jumps up, whips the cap off his head, and uses it for a kettle-holder. Who nowadays but looks on with indifference when the barber of the village, if he be near the fire, shakes the loose hair off his cloth into it, and the joke and the laughter goes on as if no sacred operation had just been concluded. Food is consumed on places which, in bygone days, it dared not even ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... a shrill laugh escaped him. He had mistaken The Grinner for another monster of the deep. It was the last joke of life, and ...
— Omega, the Man • Lowell Howard Morrow
... A poor joke, though they both laughed. There Mr. Brotherson passed on, and Sweetwater listened till he was sure that his too attentive neighbour had really gone down the three flights between him and the street. Then he took ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... trying to induce the peasants of the neighbouring villages to found schools, and he had wonderful ideas about the best method of teaching children. These and similar facts make many people believe that he has very advanced ideas, and one old gentleman habitually calls him—half in joke and half in earnest—"our ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... played a joke on you, that's all. Serves you right for fooling with him. That is the ...
— Young Wild West at "Forbidden Pass" - and, How Arietta Paid the Toll • An Old Scout
... people towards the revival of art, which are so obviously out of joint with the tendency of the age that, while the uncultivated have not even heard of them, the mass of the cultivated look upon them as a joke, and even that they are now beginning ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris
... ride. On one of these occasions, he brought the animal back reeking; when Tommy Mitcheson, the bank horse-keeper, a rough-spoken fellow, exclaimed to him: "Set such fellows as you on horseback, and you'll soon ride to the De'il." But Tommy Mitcheson lived to tell the joke, and to confess that, after all, there had been a better issue to George's horsemanship than that which ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... hot cakes. 'But,' said I, 'surely your one watchman can't look after thirty-seven different places.' 'No,' said Bobby, 'but they think he does.' I laughed and commended his ingenuity. 'But the best part of the joke,' said he, 'is that I haven't got any watchman ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... Link Merwell! I know his handwriting almost as well as I know my own," he declared. "He always makes those funny little crooks on his capital letters. I guess that shows what kind of a crook he is," and Phil grinned at his little joke. "What are you going ...
— Dave Porter At Bear Camp - The Wild Man of Mirror Lake • Edward Stratemeyer
... front place; and that is the appearance they offer to their commercial God!' He gazed along the miles of 'English countenance,' drearily laughing. Changeful ocean seemed to laugh at the spectacle. Some Orphic joke inspired his exclamation: 'Capital!' ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... villain!" muttered Horatio. "Ask Miss Kellerton; she knows him. But, villainy aside, what a stupendous joke it is to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... there, but I'll thank you for his passage-money, then, Master Tom," said he, laughing at his joke and I too joining in, our wonderful good fortune having restored all ...
— The White Squall - A Story of the Sargasso Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... I felt that the joke, after all, had been a severe one. Lord Porthoning seemed almost on the point of collapse. His eyes never once left the ...
— An Amiable Charlatan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... that the war fever in 1895 was stronger in the West than in the Eastern States. A traveller crossing the United States at that time would have found the idea of hostilities with England being treated as something of a joke in cultivated circles in New York, but among the people in general to the West of Buffalo and Pittsburg it was terrible earnest. A curious point, moreover, which I think I have never seen stated in England, is that ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... England I found a strong disposition on the part of the British manufacturer and dealer to create a market for his own car as soon as the war is over. Some even talked of a large output of low-priced machines to meet the competition of the familiar car that put the automobile joke on the map. The only American comeback to this growing prejudice is to build factories or assembling plants within the British Isles. This will save excessive freight rates, keep down the costly-tariff "overhead," and get the benefit ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson
... mouse. Ridiculous misfits in the presents made the distribution all the funnier, and the rejoicing was great when Roger, who didn't believe in washing his hands without being told to do so, drew a wee cake of soap. He took it good-naturedly and considered as an added joke, Estelle's hasty and shocked assurance that it was not meant especially ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... that those who know, that those who care, are so idolatrously infatuated with Rufus Daniel Isaacs as to tolerate such risk, let alone such ruin? Are we to set up as the standing representative of England a man who is a standing joke against England? That and nothing else is involved in setting up the chief Marconi Minister as our chief Foreign Minister. It is precisely in those foreign countries with which such a minister would have to deal, that his name would be, and has been, a ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... been circulated in the office, and Harold felt somewhat apprehensive. It was on an occasion very similar to this that George Barstead, formerly in the employ of the New Asiatic Bank in the capacity of messenger, had been rash enough to laugh at what he had taken for a joke of Mr Bickersdyke's, and had been instantly presented with the sack for ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... his settled gloom for the whole of that evening. We used to begin our drinking day at the same well of German damnably defiled, and we paced the same colonnade to the blare of the same well-fed band. That wasn't a joke, Bunny; it's not a thing to joke about; mud-poultices and dry meals, with teetotal poisons in between, were to be my portion too. You stiffen your lip at that, eh, Bunny? I told you that you never would or could have stood it; but it was the only ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... inverted order, himself above, and Rollin, Voltaire, and every other author of reputation, below." When Cooper complained of this, and of some severer language, to Warburton, through a friend, Warburton replied that Cooper had attacked him, and that he had only taken his revenge "with a slight joke." Cooper was weak and vain enough to print a pamphlet, to prove that this was a serious accusation, and no joke; and if it was a joke, he shows it was not a correct one. In fact, Cooper could never comprehend how his head was like a camera obscura! ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... philosophical joke intended to typify the endless and useless arguments of philosophers; I mean the joke about which came first, the chicken or the egg? I am not sure that properly understood, it is so futile an inquiry after all. I am not concerned here to enter on those deep ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... thus rebuked him: 'My son,' stirring his cup with energy, 'Do you allow your squaw thus to trifle with your father?' Perceiving at the same time, by the giggling of the children, that they had entered into the joke, he continued, 'And do you allow your children to make sport of their chief?' Jones and his wife thereupon apologized, and the latter made the amende honorable, by handing him the sugar-bowl, which he took, and with half angry sarcasm filled the ...
— An account of Sa-Go-Ye-Wat-Ha - Red Jacket and his people, 1750-1830 • John Niles Hubbard
... sent to bring Fresh water from the neighb'ring spring; The matter pressed, no time to waste, Jane took her jug, and ran in haste The well to reach, but in her flurry (The more the speed the worse the hurry), Tripped on a rolling stone, and broke Her precious pitcher,—ah! no joke! Nay, grave mishap! 'twere better far To break her neck than such a jar! Her dame would beat and soundly rate her, No way could Jane propitiate her. Without a sou new jug to buy! 'Twere better far for her to die! O'erwhelmed ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... under her chair and dropped into the pail a hot baked brick. The hot brick caused steam to rise from the water and enveloped the child, producing sweating. This was done frequently, and the child considered it a joke, but it relieved her of the bloat. It was in the country and these crude means produced the desired result. By attaching a rubber tube to a steaming kettle and introducing the steam under the covering the same result can ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... is exalted to the skies! Gen. Lee telegraphed that the enemy had disappeared from his front, probably meditating a design to cross at some other place. Such were his words, which approach nearer to a practical joke, and an inkling of exultation, than anything I have seen from his pen. He has saved the capital. Before the enemy could approach Richmond from "some other place;" Lee would be between him and the city, and if he could beat him on the Rappahannock he ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... Mitchell, "it's a sin to keep as good a joke as this in the family! We must drive her around town until the night falls down or ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... of pork or fetch the cake of maple sugar from the cupboard. When she wearied of these strange table-manners and bade him help himself in the usual fashion, he smoothed her ruffled temper with good-humoured excuses, "Quite right. Quite right. I won't do it again; but you always loved a joke, Azalma. When you have youngsters like me at dinner you must ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... later, Goethe had in reality anticipated the anatomist. A passage occurs in a letter to a friend, of a date in 1790, which admits of no doubt. "By the oddest happy chance, my servant picked up a bit of an animal's skull in the Jews' cemetery at Venice, and, by way of a joke, held it out to me as if he were offering me a Jew's skull. I have made a great step in the formation of animals." It is an interesting trait in Huxley's character, to find him zealous in defence of ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... certain that his conduct had been pure, Because a foolish or imprudent act Would not alone have made him insecure, But ended in his being found out and sack'd, And thrown into the sea.—Thus Baba spoke Of all save Dudu's dream, which was no joke. ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... now, holding a grand family council around the centre-table, and Dolly was the principal feature, as usual; and, embarrassing as the subject of said council was, not one of them looked as if it was other than a most excellent joke that Dolly, having been invited into the camps of the Philistines, should find she had nothing to put on to grace the occasion. And as to Dolly,—well, that young person stood in the midst of them in her shabby, Frenchy little hat, slapping one pink palm with a shabby, shapely ...
— Vagabondia - 1884 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... so heavily upon his son's arm that he was compelled to remain. "Say it is a jest, Charles," he cried, in an excited voice. "It is not possible for my son, the brother of my six hero-boys, to speak thus! It is merely a jest, Charles. You wished to joke with your old father. It is not true that you have deserted the flag of our king; put an end to this cruel jest, Charles Henry, and show me your leave of absence which every honest soldier obtains before leaving his regiment. Do you hear, Charles Henry? Show it ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... endowed with courage and self-sacrifice has been proved in these last six months; it is to other qualities that one must look for final victory in a war of exhaustion. The Englishman does not look into himself; he does not brood; he sees no further forward than is necessary, and he must have his joke. These are fearful and wonderful advantages. Examine the letters and diaries of the various combatants and you will see how far less imaginative and reflecting, (though shrewd, practical, and humorous,) ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... the prince blushed at this innocent joke, like a young girl, I should think that he must, as an honourable man, harbour the noblest intentions," said the old toothless schoolmaster, most unexpectedly; he had not so much as opened his mouth before. This remark provoked general mirth, and the old ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... and deserted Moses and her little Linda!" In what way her mother had deserted Mr. Feldt she failed to understand. Of course he wanted to marry them—the comprehensive phrase was his own—but that didn't include him in whatever they did. Principally it made a joke for their private entertainment. Mrs. Condon would mimic his eager manner, "Stella, let me take you both home where you'll have the best in the land," And, "Ladies like you ought to have a loving protection." Linda would laugh in ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... attention to the impending disaster. I cannot divide things easily; I am an indivisible man. But one night I went for a bicycle ride with my wife. She was a Bantam of delight, I can tell you, but she rode very badly. It was starlight, and I was attempting to explain the joke in the paper called, if I recollect aright, Punch. It was an extraordinarily sultry night, and I told her the names of all the stars she saw as she fell off her machine. She had a good bulk of falls. There were lights in the upper windows of the houses as the ...
— The War of the Wenuses • C. L. Graves and E. V. Lucas
... astonishment when I saw what I had taken for his ghost slowly carry his hand to the corner of his hat and raise it without bending the fraction of an inch, I started back a yard or two; and this movement, which Arthur thought was a joke on my part, only increased his merriment. The weasel-hunter was by no means disconcerted; perhaps in his judicial gravity he was thinking that this was the usual way to greet people on the ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... less merry at the expense of the earlier efforts of the student of a strange tongue; but it has been reserved to our own time for a soi disant instructor to perpetrate—at his own expense—the monstrous joke of publishing a Guide to Conversation in a language of which it is only too evident that every word is utterly strange to him. The Teutonic sage who evolved the ideal portrait of an elephant from his "inner consciousness" was a commonplace, matter-of ...
— English as she is spoke - or, A jest in sober earnest • Jose da Fonseca
... of gentlemen, and favored me with a gracious nod. As I stood wondering whether this was the end of my introduction, a mustached dandy came between us and said, "Miss Williams, permit me to relate the joke of the season." To my horror he began the story of the cloak. My first impulse was to knock him down, my second to run away; on my third I acted. Interrupting the recital I said: "Begging your pardon, sir, but Miss Williams, I am the only ...
— A Portrait of Old George Town • Grace Dunlop Ecker
... justify this War. Kaisers and Czars will strut the stage Once more with pomp and greed and rage; Courtly ministers will stop At home and fight to the last drop; By the million men will die In some new horrible agony; And children here will thrust and poke, Shoot and die, and laugh at the joke, With bows and arrows and wooden spears, Playing at ...
— Fairies and Fusiliers • Robert Graves
... space, and weakly swayed from one side to the other. Then he brushed away the frozen tears that gemmed his lashes. It was a joke. Malicious chance was having its laugh at him. Even John Thompson, with his heaven-aspiring whiskers, ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... choice), have, generally speaking, a certain heaviness of character. There are many flashes of wit; but the author has beaten his flint hard ere he struck them out. It is almost essential to the success of a jest, that it should at least seem to be extemporaneous. If we espy the joke at a distance, nay, if without seeing it we have the least reason to suspect we are travelling towards one, it is astonishing how the perverse obstinacy of our nature delights to refuse it currency. When, therefore, as is often the case in Dryden's comedies, two persons ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... "I wish you wouldn't be so blame keerless with your figures of speech. There won't be any ice water for the wicked, it says in the Book, and, anyway, it ain't a fit subject to joke about. ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... also to be caught through many of the humorous passages in Shakspeare. Dromio says of an excessively fat and greasy kitchen wench, "If she lives till doomsday she'll burn a week longer than the whole world!" And Falstaff, cracking a kindred joke on Bardolph's carbuncled nose, avows his opinion that it will serve as a flaming beacon to light lost souls the way to purgatory! Again, seeing a flea on the same flaming proboscis, the doughty knight affirmed it was "a black soul burning in hell fire." In this element of mediaval ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... is a complicated piece of mechanism with numerous cogged wheels fitting into each other; but there is nothing to prove that they can be set in motion. Even supposing "Freiland societies" were to come into existence, I should look on the whole thing as a joke. ...
— The Jewish State • Theodor Herzl
... about 'No one could mind;' and therewith Annaple cried, 'Oh, if you don't mind, we can have our laugh out!' and the rippling laughter did set Nuttie off at once. The peal was not over when May herself was upon them demanding what was the joke. ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Severn laughed hysterically, as If what the doctor had said was a joke. "Hurt me? It's what's going to put me on my feet, doc. I know it now, I been too much alone this last winter, with nothin' but my dogs to talk to when night come. I ain't never been much of a talker, ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... He took a dugout canoe from the old board landing. His friend, Mr. Draper, was with him. It was below the Falls where the river had rapids and rocks. They tipped over and were so soaked that St. Paul had to get along that day without them. It was considered a great joke to ask the dominie if he was converted to immersion, ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... mayor, who an uncommon thing (Because 'twas generous) had done, was sent With a petition to his gracious King,[9] And reach'd St. James's wondrously content. His Majesty found him quite eloquent, Fond of a dinner, fonder of a joke But, needing matter For converse with his stranger worship, spoke Of Norfolk hospitality, and geese; Of turkeys, game, and fowls, that take a lease Yearly to smoke on many a cockney platter, Forgetting not, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 384, Saturday, August 8, 1829. • Various
... brothers-in-law of our hostess. They had all served in Forrest's cavalry as commissioned officers, and were courteous and elegant gentlemen. We would all sit down together at the table of Mrs. House, with that lady at the head, and talk and laugh, and joke with each other, as if we had been comrades and friends all our lives. And yet, during the four years just preceding, the Union and the Confederate soldiers thus mingled together in friendship and amity had been doing their ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... the least, Miss Rhys," the little doctor said in his cheeriest tones, "only Alexia and I had a little joke all by ourselves." And as he waited coolly for the maiden lady to return to her seat, she soon found herself back there. Then he went over to Mamsie, and said something in a ...
— Five Little Peppers at School • Margaret Sidney
... "Now you're making a joke," Meta said serenely as she fed a figure into the calculator. "I've seen old ladies on some planets. They are wrinkled and have gray hair. I don't know how old they are, I asked one but she wouldn't tell me her age. But I'm sure they must be older than anyone on Pyrrus, no one looks ...
— Deathworld • Harry Harrison
... individuals have always been considered a joke, but you are a joke no longer. Instead of being looked upon with friendly tolerance and amusement, you are now viewed with distrust, suspicion, and even aversion! How dare you hoard fat when our ...
— Diet and Health - With Key to the Calories • Lulu Hunt Peters
... half a joke, but if she had laughed—laughed in the wrong way—the chances were that he would have turned on his heel and left her without so much as a good-night. For he was strung up to an abnormal, cruel sensitiveness. Whatever else they ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... her entreaties to mine, although she knew it was only a joke on my part. Smith could not leave Paris without danger of losing his position and replied that he regretted being obliged to deny himself the pleasure of accompanying us. Nevertheless, I continued to press him, and, ordering another bottle of wine, I repeated my invitation. After dinner, I went ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... its outer signs, the universe over our heads—with its cunning little stars in it—is the height of absurdity, as a self-expression. The sky laughs at us. We know it when we look in a telescope. Time and space are God's jokes. Looked at strictly in its outer language, the whole visible world is a joke. To suppose that God has ever expressed Himself to us in it, or to suppose that He could express Himself in it, or that any one can express anything in it, is not to see ...
— The Voice of the Machines - An Introduction to the Twentieth Century • Gerald Stanley Lee
... mischievously up into his radiant face, and then hung her pretty head half shyly, saying, "Oh, you know—his name is—Jones!" She turned away her blushing face after this, and Guy, who never felt so happy in all his life before, laughed merrily over her little joke, then stooping to the pretty lips, yet sweet with their delicious confession, he stole the first long kiss of love! A very strong mark of his affection, if we believe, like Byron, that "a kisses strength, we think, ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... "Were you in Palestine?" And the wife spoke quick: "He didn't get there, that's the joke of it." And the husband said: "It wasn't such a joke. You see it was this way, myself and the bishop, He lived in Springfield, I in Pleasant Plains, Had planned to ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... away and Pud ran along after them for nearly a mile. Finally the horses were stopped and Pud at last came up puffing, blowing and sweating. Mr. Waterman had cautioned every one to be quite serious and not give the joke away. ...
— Bob Hunt in Canada • George W. Orton
... perhaps, was because of Jose and Jose's hostile attitude, standing crosswise of the trail like that, and scowling while he waited, with the fingers of his right hand fumbling inside his sash—for his dagger, perchance! Teresita smiled wickedly, in appreciation of the joke on them both. ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... expected in boys and girls of that age. She said, however, that the Society was making a point of telling people how nicely and how advantageously all of the children had been reared by the late Mr. Bingle. She smiled when she said the "late Mr. Bingle," for it was a capital joke and she had every intention of ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... the song and joke passed from boat to boat, and the lights from the different fires were reflected in the water, the scenery was equally pleasing; but later still, when the lights were out, there being no moon, and the banks overhung ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... those girls are planning some practical joke upon me for Tuesday evening!" Katherine said to herself, as she went ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... part, Captain Frere. A capital joke, I have no doubt; but permit me to say I do not like jesting on such matters. This poor fellow's letter to his aged father to be made the subject of heartless merriment, I confess I do not understand. It was confided to me in my sacred character as ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... strange? I'm glad anyhow that I'm of use in protecting the helpless." The people said if she would perform the operation they would agree, and she sent to Bende for lymph, and was busy for days. It was a difficult task, the people were suspicious, and she had to banter and joke and coax when she herself was at fainting point. Apart from this she doctored men and women for the worst diseases, nursed the sickly babies, and generally acted her old part ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... be a joke on Paul—so I thought—if he or his friends should sneak out to the sloop where she was moored, intending to do her some harm, and find me there all ready for such a visitation. I chuckled to myself while I wended my way to the shore, carrying a ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster
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