"Jesting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... those reaches of the river which turn'd crossway, and where the wind by consequence was thwart the stream, the water went very high, and we took so much into the boat, that I began to feel the straw which lay under me at the bottom was wet, so I call'd to the waterman, and jesting told him, they must go all hands to the pump; he answered, he hoped I should not be wet; 'But it's bad weather, master,' says he, 'we can't help it.' 'No, no,' says I, ''tis pretty ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 44, Saturday, August 31, 1850 • Various
... company watch your movements. Nor is the host without curiosity. Some of his servants have instructions to observe you narrowly, lest your glance should fall too often on his wife or children. The other guests' men perceive your amazement at the novel scene, and exchange jesting asides. From the fact that you do not know what to make of your napkin, they conclude that this is your first experience of dining-out. You perspire with embarrassment; not unnaturally. You are thirsty, but you dare not ask for wine, lest you should be thought a tippler. ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... be mentioned here. Speculating wantonly on sacred subjects, and jesting about them, offend us at first; and we turn away: but if in an evil hour we are seduced by the cleverness or wit of a writer or speaker, to listen to his impieties, who can say where we shall stop? Can we save ourselves from the infection of his profaneness? we cannot hope ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VIII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... Josephine with a laugh and a jesting word, but he nevertheless conversed earnestly and seriously with his most intimate personal friends on the subject of his assuming the crown. In the course of one of these interviews, Bourrienne ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... cradle to the grave, the women make quilts. The tiny girl shows you with pride the completed four patch or nine patch, square piled on square, which 'mammy aims to set up for her ag'inst spring.' The mother tells you half jesting, half in earnest, 'the young un will have several ag'inst she has a home of her own.' No bride of the old country has more pride in her dower chest than the mountain bride in her pile of quilts. The old woman will show you a stack of quilts from floor to ceiling of her ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster
... leave to provide himself with another place. Where, in the whole range of history, could we meet with a similar instance of magnanimity? Where, with such a noble picture—of a great soul rising superior to adversity? Seneca in the bath, uttering moral apophthegms with his dying breath—Socrates jesting over his bowl of hemlock juice—were great creatures—immense minds; but Lord Melbourne reading his own dismissal to his friends—after dinner, too!—over his first glass of wine—leaves them at an immeasurable distance. Oh! that we had the power of poor Wilkie! what a picture ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... walk Madame de Rochefide had the lightly jesting tone of a woman who loves, together with a certain tenderness and abandonment of manner. Calyste had reason to think himself beloved. But when, wandering along the shore beneath the rocks, they came upon one of those charming creeks where the waves deposit the most extraordinary ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... as I wish if I tell you?" she asked, trying to mask anxiety with a jesting manner. And when Evander responded gravely, "If I can," ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... weary," he said, "to be forever looking up at the same beams and rafters, and out upon the same cabbage patch. I have a queer humour of my own, too, and I might be jesting and scorning where I should be silent. Sir Arthur and I might not long agree. Besides, what would the country do for its gossip—the blithe clatter at e'en about the fire? Who would bring news from one farm-town to another—gingerbread to the lassies, ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... earth's wild mazes tread, That thou shouldst have clear-sighted sense, And nought that's wrong shouldst e'er commence. When others run in strange confusion, Thy gaze shall see through each illusion When others dolefully complain, Thy cause with jesting thou shalt gain, Honour and right shalt value duly, In everything act simply, truly,— Virtue and godliness proclaim, And call all evil by its name, Nought soften down, attempt no quibble, Nought polish up, nought vainly scribble. The world shall stand before thee, then, As seen by ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... would like:—'This my little covert, make I ne'er it overt'; or:—'Gently, gently, husband mine'; or:—'A hundred pounds were none too high a price for me a cock to buy.'" The queen now shewed some offence, though the other ladies laughed, and:—"A truce to thy jesting, Dioneo," said she, "and give us a proper song: else thou mayst prove the quality of my ire." Whereupon Dioneo forthwith ceased his fooling, and ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... said Grace, putting her arm around Anne. "I was only jesting when I spoke about your love for the stage. I think I understand how you feel, and I hope you get the best part in the play. I know you'll ...
— Grace Harlowe's Junior Year at High School - Or, Fast Friends in the Sororities • Jessie Graham Flower
... no mind even for serious jesting. He broke out into a long lecture which sounded like a chapter of some future history: "But Mrs. Lee, is it possible that you don't see what a wrong path you are on. If you want to know what the world is really doing to any good purpose, pass a winter at Samarcand, at Timbuctoo, ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... faults, I admit, but that is certainly not one of them. I got rid of the importunate people as best I could, though they were utterly unable to fathom my reserve. What would they have said had they known of the minister's offers with regard to my laboratory and my jesting reply, in which I asked for a crocodile skin to hang from my ceiling! They would have taken ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... which leads to the shore; the latter all properly tackled for carrying their loading. Twenty fishing barks were pushed afloat at once, and crowded round the brig with much clamour, laughter, cursing, and jesting. Amidst all this apparent confusion there was the essential regularity. Nanty Ewart again walked his quarter-deck as if he had never tasted spirits in his life, issued the necessary orders with precision, and saw them executed with punctuality. In half an hour the loading ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... to be left with him on my hands for the winter, it seemed well to speak to him upon the subject of economy. The next time he called, I had not about me the exact sum for a night's lodging,—fifty cents, namely—and asked him if he thought a dollar would do He smiled sadly, as if he did not like jesting upon such a very serious subject, but said he allowed to work it out, ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... king 'struck down the noblest of the Humanists, Thomas More, who died the death of a saint, gloriously jesting.' The question of the monasteries is one that is solved by the simple statement that the King wanted money and the monasteries supplied it. Is there any justification for the crimes of Henry? For Chesterton ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... natural antipathy such as has existed in all ages between the dwellers in a town and those in the country, between agriculture and trade. So, while Kinraid and Sylvia kept up their half-tender, half-jesting conversation, Kester was making up his slow persistent mind as to the desirability of the young man then present as a husband for his darling, as much from his being other than Philip in every respect, as from the individual good qualities he possessed. Kester's first opportunity of favouring ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell
... half-vespers[362] high, after they had gone awhile round about the pleasant valley, they wended their way again, even as it pleased their queen, with slow steps towards their wonted dwelling-place, and jesting and chattering a thousand things, as well of those whereof it had been that day discoursed as of others, they came near upon nightfall to the fair palace, where having with the coolest of wines and confections done away the fatigues of the little journey, they presently fell to dancing about the ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... young Italian whose marvellous resemblance to the Marble Faun of Praxiteles is the subject of jesting remark to ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... suitable topic for jesting," Fay frowned. "We're hoping that Tickler will mobilize the full potential of the Free World for the first time in history. Gusterson, you are going to have to wear a ticky-tick. It's becoming impossible for a man to get through modern ...
— The Creature from Cleveland Depths • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... feeble, fretful voice, and in a minute the poetry had all gone out of her head, and she was by her boy's side, feeding him, jesting with him, and planning how the first day of his convalescence should be celebrated by a grand festival, inviting the two others to tea in his room. It was her own room, from which he had never been moved since the first night. How familiar ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... situation. Madam de Warrens sent me to him two or three mornings, under pretense of messages, without acquainting me with her real intention. He spoke to me gayly, on various subjects, without any appearance of observation; his familiarity presently set me talking, which by his cheerful and jesting manner he encouraged without restraint—I was absolutely charmed with him. The result of his observations was, that notwithstanding the animation of my countenance, and promising exterior, if not ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... one of my hobbies,' said he. 'I have made my dark room up there. But, dear me! what an observant young lady we have come upon. Who would have believed it? Who would have ever believed it?' He spoke in a jesting tone, but there was no jest in his eyes as he looked at me. I read suspicion there and annoyance, but ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... no jesting mood. With clasped hands she turned to her cousin. "Oh, Hugh," she cried, "isn't it wonderful? to think of all those beautiful things living here alone,—I don't mean alone, but all by themselves—year after year, with no one to see them, ...
— Fernley House • Laura E. Richards
... Marian had paused directly in front of the lens of the camera. Maid Marian looked up and made a light, jesting remark, gazing straight into the midshipman's eyes. Dave, smiling, bent forward to hear ...
— Dave Darrin's Second Year at Annapolis - Or, Two Midshipmen as Naval Academy "Youngsters" • H. Irving Hancock
... Durante Alighieri came into the world, for he was born on a May morning, and the Florentines were making holiday. There was mirth and jesting within the tall grey houses round the little church of San Martino. The Alighieri dwelt in that quarter, but more humbly than their fine neighbours, the Portinari, the Donati, ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... of Chaucer; and you will find that, while it is for the most part full of thoughts of beauty, pure and wild like that of an April morning, there are, even in the midst of this, sometimes momentarily jesting passages which stoop to play with evil—while the power of listening to and enjoying the jesting of entirely gross persons, whatever the feeling may be which permits it, afterwards degenerates into forms of humour which render some of quite the greatest, wisest, and most moral of English ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... him. His damnable imagination! And there was conceit of a sort. Probably nobody paid any attention to him after the initial shock and curiosity had died away. There was Scarron in his wheel chair—merry and cheerful and brave, jesting with misfortune; and men ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... a part of human comedy, has not spared the humours of children. Yet they are fitter subjects for any other kind of jesting. In the first place they are quite defenceless, but besides and before this, it might have been supposed that nothing in a child could provoke the equal passion of scorn. Between confessed unequals scorn is not even suggested. Its derisive proclamation of inequality has no sting and no meaning ...
— The Children • Alice Meynell
... and shame the devil: I am but a poor servant; but I think gentlefolks should be civil. Besides, you found fault with our victuals one day that you was here; I remember it was on a Tuesday, of all days in the year. And Saunders, the man, says you are always jesting and mocking: Mary, said he, (one day as I was mending my master's stocking;) My master is so fond of that minister that keeps the school— I thought my master a wise man, but that man makes him a fool. ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... may be found everywhere; Kshatriyas may be found everywhere; so also Vaishyas and Shudras, O Karna, women of chastity and excellent vows may also be found everywhere. Everywhere men take delight in jesting with men and wounding one another. Lustful men also may be found everywhere. Everyone on every occasion can command skill in speaking of the faults of others. No one, however, knows his own faults, or knowing them, feels shame. Everywhere are kings devoted to their respective religions, and employed ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... me that honor?" Loristan said to The Rat, and to even these words he gave the right tone, neither jesting nor too serious. Because it was so right a tone, The Rat's pulses beat only with exultation. This god of his had looked at his maps, he had talked of his plans, he had come to see the soldiers who were his work! The Rat began his drill as if he had ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... overpowering love he bore to the child seemed to demand fuller vent than tender words; it made him like, yet dread, to upbraid its object for the fearful contrast foretold. Still Squire Griffiths told the legend, in a half-jesting manner, to his little son, when they were roaming over the wild heaths in the autumn days, "the saddest of the year," or while they sat in the oak-wainscoted room, surrounded by mysterious relics that gleamed strangely forth by the flickering fire-light. The legend was wrought into the boy's mind, ...
— The Doom of the Griffiths • Elizabeth Gaskell
... not communicate this opinion to the prisoner, but he treated the subject in a jesting manner, and told him that if he heard any more of such nonsense he would inform the prison authorities and his liberty would ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... voice in the joyous jesting of youth. And—marvel and miracle—then and there, those lean brown folk did take up the jest, and laughingly gathered on the sun-seared sands. They formed sets and danced—danced a dance of the indomitable, at high noon, the heat blinding, the sand hot under feet not all of which were shod. ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... the tale of our life For a sheltered people's mirth, In jesting guise—but ye are wise, And ye know what the jest ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... situation appealed forcefully to Miss Stanton's sense of humour, and she thoroughly enjoyed the old man's jesting. "If he can rise above a condition like that," she thought, "he must be a splendid man." She longed to comfort, to help ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... him. And this it was that so speedily broke up the whole throng. Within little more than a minute of the most violent uproar of hundreds of human voices, my brother-in-law and I were able to stroll arm-in-arm through the moonlit streets, quietly jesting and laughing, on our way home; and then it was that, to my amazement and relief, he informed me that he was accustomed to this sort of life ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... in his "Ten Years' Residence in the Valley of the Mississippi," observes, page 144,—"I have surely had it in my heart to impress them with the importance of the subject (religion). I have scarcely noticed an instance in which the subject was not received either with indifference, rudeness, or jesting. Of all races of men that I have seen, they seem most incapable of religious impressions. They have, indeed, some notions of an invisible agent, but they seemed generally to think that the Indians had their god as the whites had theirs." And again, "nothing will eventually ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... it, and you'll know us again." "Oh, Mother Shipton, and is that yourself? and how pleased we is to see ye, and just tip us yer welwet purse, and we'll give it yer back when we're this way again." And not all the rigor of the attendant warders was enough to suppress such jesting. ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... his usual light jesting manner but very seriously. Hugh's lips parted,—Mrs. Rossitur looked with a sad thoughtful look at Fleda,—Mr. Rossitur walked up and down looking at nobody. Fleda ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... they determined to remain where they now were, and make this their home. One day they moved off some distance from the lodge for the purpose of hunting, having left the wampum captured with the woman. They were very successful, and amused themselves, as all young men do when alone, by talking and jesting with each other. One of them spoke and said, "We have all this sport to ourselves; let us go and ask our sister if she will not let us bring the head to this place, as it is still alive. It may be pleased to hear us talk and be in our company. ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... classed with negroes, and seated with them; but in nearly all towns the negroes had seats by themselves. The black women were all seated on a long bench or in an inclosed pew labelled "B.W.," and the negro men in one labelled "B.M." One William Mills, a jesting soul, being asked by a pompous stranger where he could sit in meeting, told the visitor that he was welcome to sit in Bill Mills's pew, and that it was marked "B.M." The man, who chanced to be ignorant of the local custom of marking ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... spoken in jesting vein, but the twitching of his bushy eyebrows bespoke his disappointment and irritation. I sat helpless and unhappy, staring into the fire. A long silence was broken by a sudden exclamation from Holmes, who dashed at a cupboard, ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle
... as kind and attentive to me as possible, and there was no want of food (oxen being slaughtered daily, sometimes ten at a time, more than sufficient for the wants of all), yet to endure the dancing, roaring, and singing, the jesting, anecdotes, grumbling, quarreling, and murdering of these children of nature, seemed more like a severe penance than any thing I had before met with in the course of my missionary duties. I took thence a more intense disgust ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... reporters. The other reporters were sharpening their pencils and laying out their note books. Some—the younger ones—were listening with a species of reverence, which they would soon outgrow, to the official jesting of the coroner. Others were squabbling over the right and title to certain chairs which possessed the extraordinary advantage of being a foot or two nearer the coroner than the other chairs. This is a grave cause of dispute among ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... will!" Kochel exclaimed with a loud laugh. "My hand upon it Navarrete. I'll keep silence, but you! Don't gossip about that! Not on any account! The jesting blow might do the master harm. Excuse me for to-day; there is a great deal of writing to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Oh, you dear man!" and she laughed outright, liking to tease where she deeply loved, knowing him through and through, as he never could know her. Then she saw that he was not in the mood for jesting with an edge to it; nor was she. "At all events, you did not let me see that letter—now I am ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... every honest Christian to receive my words—though sometimes barbed with scorn or satire—as coming from a heart that is made to break with sorrow and to turn seriousness into jesting at the sight now beheld at Leipzig, where there are also pious people who would venture body and soul for God's Word and the Scriptures, but where a blasphemer can thus openly speak and write, who esteems and treats God's holy words no better than ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther
... storm of indignation raised by it was still raging in pulpits and periodicals. In tracing the genesis of the human race back to its sources, Mr. Darwin had left Adam out altogether. We had monkeys, and "missing links," and plenty of other kinds of ancestors, but no Adam. Jesting with Mr. Beecher and other friends in Elmira, I said there seemed to be a likelihood that the world would discard Adam and accept the monkey, and that in the course of time Adam's very name would be forgotten ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... am not jesting, mother dear, but am very much in earnest. I really want to earn money of my own, and shall be so much happier if I have a regular occupation. And you want me to be happy, do ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams
... short before he would be compelled to make his debut in his new character, as the man with the iron jaw, mailed fist and steel legs, so he gripped his heavy sword, which none but he could wield (see Walter Scott, who preceded the present writer by some years). I hope you will forgive this jesting, but Jim was a great hand to make fun in the very presence of danger, a trait peculiar to the American character, and so I may be pardoned for following in his footsteps, for I, too, am ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... see the pictures, but to see me. Have a good look at me. Why study copies of nature when you can look at such a remarkable original as I?" But there were to be no more days of mirth and gaiety for the jesting grocer. His appeal was rejected, and he was ordered for ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... people. The sacred way which led from Athens to Eleusis was rich in such memorials. The nine days of the wanderings of Demeter in the Homeric hymn are the nine days of the duration of the greater or autumnal mysteries; the jesting of the old woman Iambe, who endeavours to make Demeter smile, are the customary mockeries with which the worshippers, as they rested on the bridge, on the seventh day of the feast, assailed those who passed by. The torches in the hands of Demeter are borrowed ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater
... on his conversion that day. He was in brilliant form for the rest of the day, quoting poetry and jesting in the highest ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... feet, of rough pine lumber, with tar-paper weather-proofing and no floor, but he did it entirely with his own hands at a material cost of twelve dollars; and he put his soul into it. There were two stalls, one for Blazing Star and one for supplies. There was much good-humoured jesting at the "Horse Preacher" while the stable was building and the story went the rounds that he often used the empty stall for a study, in preference to the silent little room in the house. In any case, he hand-picked the hay to guard against the poisonous loco-weed, ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... languages Brantome asserts that she became proficient. "But albeit she knew how to speak good Spanish and good Italian," he says, "she always made use of her mother tongue for matters of moment; though when it was necessary to join in jesting and gallant conversation she showed that she was acquainted with more than ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... jesting, honestly. I've never been so far from it in my whole life. I don't blame you ...
— Captain Pott's Minister • Francis L. Cooper
... the simple complexity of the simplest and most primal emotions, with love and joy and wonder, the half-fearful triumph of swift inertia, attained at last in the full element of life. The others were different; they were dimpling and laughing and jesting in their unintelligible guttural. Their faces knew nothing of the seriousness of the bride's. One of them was exceedingly pretty, with a beauty unusual in her race. Her high cheek-bones were covered with the softest rosy flesh, ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Gascon, when it came to a spirited discussion of pert and often most daring themes, with young ladies, of whom he made but one requirement, that they be handsome, otherwise it was not worth his while. I inherited from him this inclination to enter into subtle discussions with ladies, in a jesting tone; indeed I have ever carried this inclination over into my style of writing, and when I read corresponding scenes in my novels and short stories it once in awhile seems to me as though I heard my father ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... entirely dispersed, would it not be a merry conceit for us to appear upon the scene as two loyal yeomen, who had ridden all the way from Hampshire to strike in against the King's enemies? We might chance to get some reward in money or in land for our zeal. Nay, frown not, for I was but jesting. Breathe our horses by walking them up this hill. My jennet is as fresh as when we started, but those great limbs of thine ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... unheeded by the unhappy girl, whose anguish rendered her indifferent to all that surrounded her; and after a while a keen pang thrilled her heart, as she heard Dr. Grey's pleasant voice jesting with Stanley on the lawn. His happiness seemed an insult to her misery, and she stopped her ears to exclude the sound ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... time Archie disliked the Governor. His unsympathetic attitude toward the elopement was intolerable. A round of abuse would have been more palatable than this ironic jesting. The Governor saw that he had gone too far and immediately shifted ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... too dubious to be entirely palatable to my feminine pride; but I was careful not to hint this to Miss Darrell, and she went on in the same light jesting way. ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... man laughed derisively. He had resumed his seat by the other's side. "Pho!" he said, "you'll be jesting. For the power, it's but a name. If he were to use, were it but the thin end of it, it would run into his hand! The boys would rise upon him, and Flavvy'd be the worst of them. It's in the deep bog he'd be, before he knew where he was, and never'd he come out, Luke Asgill! ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... streets were crowded. Billy understood it to mean that he might lose his companion and took a grip. That little hot hand clinging tight to his, the sore feet recklessly scouring the walk, the hungry child panting for breath as he tried to keep even, the brave soul jesting in the face of hard luck, caught Sinton in a tender, ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... the men of Siloam was visited on them for sins not unlike those which seem to invite a similar judgment from offended Heaven upon our modern Siloams, and is no jesting matter. Nay, in view of the many recent terrible visitations which have fallen upon different parts of our country, many voices have already been raised proclaiming them as marks of Divine wrath against national sins, perpetrated by a ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... to put his heart in a sling," said Smith, laughing heartily at what he thought would be taken as a brilliant piece of jesting. But he erred. Anderson went home in a great flurry and privately cautioned every member of the household, including Rosalie, to treat Bonner with every consideration, as his heart was weak and liable to give him great trouble. Above all, he cautioned them to keep the distressing news ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... The jesting salutation came from Harry Carradyne. Despatched in search of the truants, he had found Kate at the Vicarage, making much of the last new baby there, and devouring a sumptuous tea of cakes and jam. Miss West? Oh, Miss West was sitting in the church ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various
... through sex that the "desolate of the earth are set in families," and love and generosity have sway instead of selfishness. For this reason we ought to regard sex with reverent thought, to hold it sacred to the highest purposes, to speak of it ever with purest delicacy, and never with jesting or prurient smiles. I do not want you to center your thought on the physical facts of sex, but I would like to have you feel that womanhood, which is the mental, moral and physical expression of sex, is a glorious, divine gift, to be received with ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... introductions to his cantos, and the additions to Boiardo's passages of description and character (those about Rodamonte, for example, so admired by Foscolo), if Berni occasionally spews a comparative want of faith which you regret, he does it with a regret on his own part, visible through all his jesting. Lastly, the singular and indignant strength of his execution often makes up for the trustingness that he was sorry to miss. If I were asked, in short, which of the two poems I should prefer keeping, were I compelled to choose, I should first complain of being ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... dogwood thrived as if conscious that theirs had been no ordinary transplanting; while Minturn's half- jesting prophecy concerning the travellers in the ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... was utterly different from what she had expected. She had imagined a gay, crowded room, wild gamblers shouting in their excitement, a band playing delirious waltz music, champagne corks popping merrily, painted women laughing, jesting loudly, all kinds of revelry and devilry and Bacchic things undreamed of. This was silly of her, no doubt, but the silliness of inexperienced young women is a matter for the pity, not the reprobation, ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... changed as red as a rose: and so with a smile and a blush, they made up this jesting match, that after proved to a marriage in earnest, Rosader full little thinking he had wooed ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... So, jesting and questioning, she accepted his arm and made the circle of the rooms. Everywhere they heard fragments of the same topic. Americans were there from both sections. She saw a pretty woman from Alabama nod and smile, but put her hands behind ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... at all," said Alette, as, with jesting defiance, she turned her pretty little head towards him; "because my last word is, in every case, a different kind ...
— Strife and Peace • Fredrika Bremer
... let the chair go up and go down and sway about very unsteadily, besides that every step was with a jolting motion. It kept Daisy in constant uneasiness. Dr. Sandford walked on just before with his gun; Alexander Fish came after, laughing and jesting with the other boys. ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 2 • Susan Warner
... telling him what seemed to me the drollest touches. He heard me out, as usual when displeased, and then opened fire on me with red-hot shot. To belittle a noble story was easy; it was not literature, it was not art, it was not morality; there was no sustenance in such a form of jesting, there was (in his favourite phrase) 'no nitrogenous food' in such literature. And then he proceeded to show what a fine fellow David was; and what a hard knot he was in about Bathsheba, so that (the initial ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... ground on which he was treading, and made it safe by a jesting remark and an invitation to Adams and the rest to join him at ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... promised with a laugh; for he thought Gerard was jesting: and the latter went off into a deep sleep ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... dragons of San Francisco; old orchards of New England; the oily Gulf of Mexico where tramp steamers puff down to Rio; a snow-piled cabin among somber pines of northern mountains. Elsewhere, elsewhere, elsewhere, beyond the sky-line, under larger stars, where men ride jesting and women smile. Names alluring to the American he repeated—Shenandoah, Santa Ynez, the Little Big Horn, Baton Rouge, the Great Smokies, Rappahannock, Arizona, Cheyenne, Monongahela, Androscoggin; canyon and bayou; sycamore and mesquite; Broadway ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... the open space nearest the door stood a gleeman, a dancing, harping, foul-mouthed fellow, who was showing off ape's tricks, jesting against the English, and shuffling about in mockeries of English dancing. At some particularly coarse jest of his, the new Lord of Bourne burst into ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... the second time had sought her son. Her stern, grave face, her angry eyes, the repressed pride and emotion that he saw in every gesture, told him that the time for jesting ...
— A Mad Love • Bertha M. Clay
... his bed in Paris: "The wittiest sarcasms of mortals are only an attempt at jesting when compared with those of the great Author of ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... times when jesting is out of place," said the young wife, reproachfully; "and it seems to me that when we are alone in this vast wilderness, with many and many a long mile between us and a white settlement, we ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... don't think public affairs should be lightly handled, and are constantly falling into the error that when a person is arguing the most conclusively, by showing the gross and ludicrous absurdity of his adversary's reasoning, he is jesting, and not arguing; while the argument is, in reality, more close and stringent, the more he shows the opposite picture to be grossly ludicrous—that is, the more effective the wit becomes. But, though all this is perfectly true, it is equally certain that danger attends ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... parable spake he not unto them." The parable differs from the fable proper in dealing with more fundamental or ideal truth. The fable moves on the plane of the prudential virtues, the parable on the plane of the higher self-forgetting virtues. Because of that difference there is in the parable "no jesting nor raillery at the weakness, the follies, or the crimes of men." All is deeply earnest, befitting its high spiritual point of view. As a rule the parables use for illustration stories of what might actually happen. Two of ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... manner as to be out of the comprehension of those that heard it, and so equivocal as to fit almost any circumstance that might happen afterwards. It is conceiving very irreverently of the Almighty, to suppose he would deal in this jesting manner with mankind; yet all the things called prophecies in the book called the ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... since we may conclude it is precisely because stammerers find that a very rapid utterance increases their defect that they force themselves to speak deliberately, and also not to tire the vocal muscles. Hence, apart from the jesting inference which M. Claretie, in French journalist's fashion, is bent son twisting out of the scientific statistics, there would appear to be a mutual influence, perfectly comprehensible, of rapidity in utterance and a tendency to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... at him, open-eyed; not, apparently, that she exactly supposed he was jesting, for the expression of such a desire was not necessarily facetious; but as if he must have spoken with an ulterior motive. In fact, he had spoken from the simplest of motives. The girl beside him pleased him unspeakably, and, suspecting that her charm was essentially ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... appealingly at the faces before him. Brave and adventurous men he knew them to be, jesting with death, and tempered to perils in this land where hardship rises with the dawn, but they ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... ended, 'say now that you have been jesting; that this is a piece of wit with which you would begin in a suitable way an extraordinary day; this is ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... not afraid, Mr. Sherry. And I am not jesting about the hat-making. All of my mother's family were very expert at it, and quite often I have seen as much as twenty-five or thirty Mexican dollars paid for one of our hats. We could have sold ten times the number had we been able to ...
— The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton - 1902 • Louis Becke
... and revengers of my death." And so it fell out, some days afterwards, as these same thieves were drinking in an inn, a flight of crows came and lighted on the top of the house; whereupon the thieves, jesting, said to one another, "See, yonder are those who are to avenge the death of him we despatched t'other day," which the tapster overhearing, told forthwith to the magistrate, who arrested them presently, and thereupon ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... the best cordial against the consumption of the spirit; wherefore jesting is not unlawful, if it trespasseth not in quantity, ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... and others whom I have known have had presentiments of their approaching death. Some have been killed on the occasion they expected, while others who appeared equally certain of being summoned away have come out of action without scratch. Others, again, whom I have seen laughing and jesting as if they had a long lease of life before them, have, within a few hours perhaps, been stretched lifeless on the deck. I have come to the conclusion, therefore, that no one can tell when his last moment is to come, and that consequently ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... endeavored to shrink out of sight behind a perpendicular projection of the wall, and nearly succeeded. They had passed, indeed, before they noticed her. Then they turned and gazed curiously at her; and one of them made some remark, apparently of a jesting nature, for they both laughed. Then again they turned and moved on out of ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... on past sorghum fields the current swings. To Christian Jim the Mississippi sings. This prankish wave-swept barque has won its place, A ship of jesting for the human race. But do you laugh when Jim bows down forlorn His babe, his deaf Elizabeth to mourn? And do you laugh, when Jim, from Huck apart Gropes through the rain and ...
— Chinese Nightingale • Vachel Lindsay
... to and fro, minute after minute, hour after hour. Inside, my lord Bishop, drenched in debt, dining with his clergy, drinking "most excellent wine" with them, unbending his mighty mind with them, exchanging boisterous stories with them, jesting with them, laughing with them, until his face grows as red as the glowing turf on his hearth. Presently a footfall on the gravel, and outside the window a hungry, pinched, anxious face looking nervously into ...
— The Little Manx Nation - 1891 • Hall Caine
... his only resting place for the night, than an emperor in his purple robe. In the group amongst whom Rodolphe lived, they affected, after a fashion common enough amongst some young fellows, to treat love as a thing of luxury, a pretext for jesting. Gustave Colline, who had for a long time past been in intimate relations with a waistcoat maker, whom he was rendering deformed in mind and body by obliging her to sit day and night copying the manuscripts of his philosophical works, asserted that love was a kind of purgative, ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... long-neglected and much-poached estate; and on the way home French expressed a hope that, now they were to settle at Heston, Roger would take up some of the usual duties of the country gentleman. He spoke in the half-jesting way characteristic of the modern Mentor. The old didactics have long gone out of fashion, and the moralist of to-day, instead of preaching, ore retundo, must only "hint a fault and hesitate dislike." But, hide it as he might, there ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... roosters on the great landed estates were too high and mighty to condescend to anything like jesting. One of them crowed and called out with such gusto that it sounded as if he wanted to be heard clear up to the sun: "This is Herr Dybeck's estate; the same this year as last year; this year as ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... heavily upon me. The Great Author of the Universe, the Aristophanes of Heaven, was bent on demonstrating with crushing force to me, the little earthly so-called German Aristophanes, how my weightiest sarcasms are only pitiful attempts at jesting in comparison with His, and how miserably I am beneath Him in humor, in ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... deny, that their losses in killed have been extraordinarily light during two years of warfare. How are these admitted and certain facts compatible with any general refusal of quarter? To anyone who, like myself, has seen the British soldiers jesting and smoking cigarettes with their captives within five minutes of their being taken, such a charge is ludicrous, but surely even to the most biassed mind the fact stated ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle
... joking and badinage that should never be heard among well-bred young people in society—that about courtship and marriage. Much harm, much blunting of fine sensibilities, much destruction of that delicate modesty which is the priceless dower of young girlhood, comes of such jesting and joking where it is permitted without restraint or reproof. A young girl may not be called upon to reprove it, but she certainly can shun the company of those who are given to such vulgarity (for no other term ...
— Letters to a Daughter and A Little Sermon to School Girls • Helen Ekin Starrett
... and in the conventionality of the response she realized anew that the jesting-time was by between them and she had a man to ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane
... judge by your figure and complexion you have lived hard since I saw you last! I cannot surely be QUITE so naked as your ladyship!—I beg your pardon, madam! I trust you will take it I am but jesting in a dream! It is of no consequence, however; dreaming or waking, all's one—all merest appearance! You can't be certain of anything, and that's as good as knowing there is nothing! Life may teach ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... subject for jesting,' I said gravely; and I rose from my seat to move away. She laughingly caught hold of both my ...
— Dwell Deep - or Hilda Thorn's Life Story • Amy Le Feuvre
... opera. Lauraguais had the temerity to attempt to carry off the young beauty, but, the enterprise failing, he had recourse to another expedient. One evening, supping with some friends, the conversation turned naturally on the star which had just risen, and there was much jesting over the maternal anxiety of Arnould mere. Lauraguais, laughing, instantly offered to lay an immense wager that within fifteen days Mme. Arnould would no longer attend Sophie to the opera. The bet was taken, and the next day a handsome but modest-looking ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... with a censor whose sympathies were too purely literary, literary in too narrow a sense, would not scruples of some other kind begin to intrude themselves, scruples of the student who cannot tolerate an innocent jesting with "serious" things, scruples of the moralist who must choose between Maeterlinck and d'Annunzio, between Tolstoi and Ibsen? I cannot so much as think of a man in all England who would be capable of justifying the ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... much amused at this turn, for his allusion to college was in a jesting way, occasioned by the fact that Nat had obtained permission to use the library of Cambridge College, to which place he frequently walked to consult volumes. It was a great advantage to him, to enjoy the opportunity to examine works ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer
... pleasing sight as the three young people, the picture of life, health and joyous spirits, side by side, laughing, jesting, and with never a thought of danger, moved out to the middle of the river and then sped toward its source, with the easy, beautiful movement which in the accomplished skater is the ideal of grace. The motion seemingly was attended ...
— Cowmen and Rustlers • Edward S. Ellis
... shot again, holding lower and more firmly, out of mere guesswork, and landed appreciably closer although still within the zone of ridicule. And somebody else shot, and somebody else, and another, until we all were whooping and laughing and jesting, and the jets flew as if from the balls of a mitrailleuse, and the can rocked and gyrated, spurring us to haste as it constantly changed the range. Presently it was merely a twist of ragged tin. Then in the little silence, as we paused, ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... The banker having reaped a good harvest put down the cards, and Tiretta told him in good Italian that he was a cheat, to which the Piedmontese replied with the greatest coolness that he lied. Thinking that the quarrel might have an unpleasant ending, I told him that Tiretta was only jesting, and I made my friend say so, too. He then left the company ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... as soon as the king lands, and has thrown off his cloak, he darts his spear at him, from a distance of about thirty paces, and the king must either catch the spear in his hand, or suffer from it: there is no jesting in the business. Having caught it, he carries it under his arm, with the sharp end downwards, into the temple or heavoo. On his entrance, the assembled multitude begin their sham-fights, and immediately the air is obscured by clouds of spears, made for the occasion with blunted ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... in other words: That man is noble who doth fear no fate Which may afflict humanity; but, like A gallant soldier, meets the charge half way, And takes his wounds a-jesting. Now ev'ry one of us, whom Nature whips, Must take it meekly; for she means our good; And learn to ...
— The Scarlet Stigma - A Drama in Four Acts • James Edgar Smith
... Queene: and it seems indeed he had more of her eare than every body else, and would be with her talking alone two or three hours together; insomuch that the Lords about the King, when he would be jesting with them about their wives, would tell the King that he must have a care of his wife too, for she hath now the gallant: and they say the King himself did once ask Montagu how his mistress (meaning the Queene) did. He grew so proud and despised every body, besides suffering nobody ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... bought tobacco and ammunition—a most usual procedure, and clumped out again. Young Pete strolled to the door and watched them enter the adobe saloon across the way—Tony's Place—the rendezvous of the riders of the high mesas. Again a group of cowboys arrived, jesting and roughing their mounts. They entered the store, bought ammunition, and drifted to the saloon. It was far from pay-day, as Pete knew. It was also the busy season. There was some ulterior reason for so many riders ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... begin my old tricks, to earn a little money;" and he drew up in the market-place. But the people had been as heavily visited as at Nismes, and were in no mood for jesting. When he began to vend his nostrums, an old man of severe aspect held up his ...
— Jacques Bonneval • Anne Manning
... ingenuous. It makes marriage to be a necessary and unavoidable trouble; friendships and societies and familiarities, to be intolerable. It multiplies the evils of drunkenness, and makes the levities of wine to run into madness. It makes innocent jesting to be the beginning of tragedies. It turns friendship into hatred; it makes a man lose himself, and his reason and his argument, in disputation. It turns the desires of knowledge into an itch of wrangling. ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... the other grimly, 'let me remind you once again, that the habit of light jesting—persiflage—is so essentially Irish, you should keep it for your countrymen; and if you persist in supposing the career of a private secretary suits you, this is an incongruity that will totally unfit you ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... element of iron in the clay of which it is made, and so curious is it to strangers that it has become a familiar saying that few people leave Milwaukee without carrying away "a brick in their hats," this being doubtless in part a jesting allusion to the apparently all-pervading spirit of the gay Gambrinus apparent there and the numberless manufactories of the foaming lager. Yet methinks this is no longer a more striking characteristic there than elsewhere, in spite of the ...
— The World As I Have Found It - Sequel to Incidents in the Life of a Blind Girl • Mary L. Day Arms
... Fougeres ended his education with Duval-Lecamus. During these studied and these different transformations Fougeres' habits and ways of life were tranquil and moral to a degree that furnished matter of jesting to the various ateliers where he sojourned; but everywhere he disarmed his comrades by his modesty and by the patience and gentleness of a lamblike nature. The masters, however, had no sympathy for the good lad; masters prefer bright fellows, eccentric ...
— Pierre Grassou • Honore de Balzac
... of my social duties, and then scribbled endless doggerel in a highly Byronic mood to deliver my mind upon the subject, after which, feeling amazingly better, I went to bed and slept profoundly, satisfied that I had given "society" a death-blow. But really, jesting apart, the companionship of my own family—those I live with, I mean—satisfies me entirely, and I have not the ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... late YORICK, assumes a friendly and patronising air towards YORICK's successor, a Court Fool, apparently so youthful that he may still be supposed to be learning his business. So when His Royal Highness Hamlet has what he considers "a good thing" to say, Mr. TREE places the novice in jesting near himself, and pointedly speaks at him; as e.g., when, in reply to the King's inquiry after his health, he tells him that he "eats air promise-crammed," adding, with a sly look at the Court Fool, "you cannot feed capons so." Whereat the Fool, put into a difficult position, through his fear ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 16, 1892 • Various
... Jesting light-heartedly over the coming encounter, the diners strolled out of Vinton's and down College Street in the direction of the campus. Arline was the first to leave them. Her good night to the four girls from Wayne Hall was cordial in the extreme, but to ...
— Grace Harlowe's Second Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... submissive Israel heard and saw At Sinai's foot the Giver of the Law. Less stern he seems, who sits in equal Mate On the twin throne and shares the empire's weight; Around his lips the subtle life that plays Steals quaintly forth in many a jesting phrase; A lightsome nature, not so hard to chafe, Pleasant when pleased; rough-handled, not so safe; Some tingling memories vaguely I recall, But to forgive ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... also, a retirement so near London did not make noise enough. You see, a retiring statesman is like that fine carp,—the farther he leaps from the water, the greater splash he makes in falling into the weeds! But," added Mr. Caxton, in a repentant tone, "this jesting does not become us; and if I indulged it, it is only because I am heartily glad that Trevanion is likely now to find out his true vocation. And as soon as the fine people he brings with him have left him alone in his library, I trust he will settle to that vocation, ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... please and willing to confide; not trained to confine acts of good-will within the stern limits of duty. He was of the temperament called melancholic, scarcely concealed by an exterior of lightness of humor,—having a deep and fixed seriousness, jesting lips, and wanness of heart. And this man was summoned to stand up directly against a power with which Henry Clay had never directly grappled, before which Webster at last had quailed, which no President had offended and yet successfully ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... "all that may be very good, but——" But just then the coffee came in, with biscuits and gingerbread, which made an important diversion in the entertainment, which now took a livelier character. Mrs. Gunilla imparted to Elise, with jesting seriousness, a variety of good counsel on the education of her children. She sent for and recommended particularly a certain Orbis Pictus, which she herself had studied when a child, and which began ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... in no humor for jesting. Damas. I see you understand something of the grammar; you decline the non-substantive "small-swords" with great ease; but that won't do—you must ...
— The Lady of Lyons - or Love and Pride • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... them, points clearly to the absolute necessity of excluding the Chinese carpenters and bricklayers; and, further, as regards the missionaries, that there can be but one answer, and that in a Christian sense, to the question asked by jesting Pilate. In effect they say that circumstances alter cases, and that might is right—a plea which may perhaps suffice to salve the conscience of an opportunist politician, but ought to appeal less forcibly ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... got very friendly together. The girls proposed to start with us on the morrow, if you please! And, jesting apart, every one was anxious to know the hour of our departure. Now, when you are going to crawl into your canoe from a bad launch, a crowd, however friendly, is undesirable; and so we told them not before twelve, and ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... with this covenant. It is more than serious, a sacred covenant. It is very dangerous jesting with edged tools. This covenant is as keen as it is strong. Do not play fast and loose with it, be not in and out with it; God is an avenger of all such: He is a jealous God, and will not hold them guiltless, who thus take His name in vain. They who swear by, or to ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... were more quiet and dignified in their deportment than usual. There was no loud talk, no jesting; even Fred Harper looked thoughtful and serious. Each member seemed to feel the responsibility of winning the race resting like a heavy burden ...
— All Aboard; or, Life on the Lake - A Sequel to "The Boat Club" • Oliver Optic
... the magnificent, and the luxurious, is our national fault, Lucius; it betrays itself in every department of civil and social life, and not unfrequently declines into a degrading effeminacy. If any thing ruin us, it will be this vice. I assure you I was rather jesting than in earnest, when I bade you look to your toilet. When you shall have seen some of our young nobles, you will find reason to be proud of your comparative simplicity. I hear, however, that you are not now far behind us ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... am so pleased, dear! And yet—yet, do you know, I wish that you had not done it. It has given me a shock. I shall never be quite sure whether you are jesting or serious. I shall never feel that I ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)
... glow lay rosiest, the young lord sat in the great raised chair, jesting with his Danish page who knelt on the step at his side. Now the boy's answering provoked him to laughter, and he put out a hand and tousled the thick curls in his favorite caress. One of the tresses caught in ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... impiety. When he landed at Peloponnesus, he went into the temple of Jupiter Olympius, and disrobed his statue of a golden mantle of great weight, an ornament which the tyrant Gelo[283] had given out of the spoils of the Carthaginians, and at the same time, in a jesting manner, he said "that a golden mantle was too heavy in summer and too cold in winter;" and then, throwing a woollen cloak over the statue, added, "This will serve for all seasons." At another time, he ordered the golden beard of AEsculapius of Epidaurus to be ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... the proposals and letter; and having read them, burst into an affected laugh: How wise ones may be taken in!—Then you did not know, that I was jesting with you all this time!—And so you would have me carry down ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... regarded his daughter with a stern, slow stare; not so much surprised as annoyed by an untimely jesting. He ate a hot biscuit in two un-Fletcherized mouthfuls, and put more sugar in his large cup of tea. "You've got your Mother all worked up with your nonsense," said he. "What ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... is Sir Andrew Freeport, a merchant of great eminence in the city of London. A person of indefatigable industry, strong reason, and great experience. His notions of trade are noble and generous, and (as every rich man has usually some sly way of jesting, which would make no great figure were he not a rich man) he calls the sea the British Common. He is acquainted with commerce in all its parts, and will tell you that it is a stupid and barbarous way to extend dominion by arms; for true power is to ...
— The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others
... heard him retorting, as he assisted me to doff my doublet. "Do I jest? Diable! you Gascons are a slow-witted folk! I have a taste for allegory, my friend, but that never yet was accounted so low a thing as jesting." ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... he was bored by the jesting of Vatinius with Nero, Lucan, and Seneca, he took part in a diatribe as to whether woman has a soul. Rising late, he used, as was his custom, the baths. Two enormous balneatores laid him on a cypress table covered with snow-white Egyptian byssus, and with ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... farewell! memory-haunted synagogues; farewell! sacred temple; farewell! long-bearded priests; farewell all! we must go to prayer: our Lord said that we should be sanctified." And thus in long line the one hundred and twenty file up the stairs to the Chamber of Blessing. There is no lightness, no jesting, no quibbling, no bickering; all are serious, terribly in earnest, intent on "the promise of the Father." There is Peter, impulsive and eager, whole-hearted and enthusiastic; there is the meek and quiet Mary, who sat ...
— The Heart-Cry of Jesus • Byron J. Rees
... the four men: There they were, Nikitin and Andrey, Semyonov and Trenchard—Two Wise Men and Two Fools—surely the rivalry was ludicrous in its inequality ... and yet God does not judge as men do. Nikitin and Semyonov or Andrey and Trenchard? Who would be taken and who left? I recalled Semyonov's jesting words: "Even though it's the wise men succeed in this world I don't doubt it's the fools have their way in ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... times he must have been a pirate; but no one dared to speak to him on the subject, for more than once he had been punished for striking those who had offended him; indeed, he nearly killed one old man who was jesting with him when he was at work, having made a stab at him with his knife screwed in his socket, but his foot slipped, and the blow missed. Spicer was brought up before the council for this offence, and would have been discharged had ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... tale-telling, jesting talk, ribaldry, buffoonery, P; harlatrye, jesting Lat. scurrilitas (eutrapelia), W; ...
— A Concise Dictionary of Middle English - From A.D. 1150 To 1580 • A. L. Mayhew and Walter W. Skeat
... may be bread; and if they are bread, I pray that they may be stones.' So with that, the woman let them fall; and sure enough, stones they were, and stones they are to this day." Our guide told us this same anecdote, in a queer, half jesting, half believing way, and pointed out the stones to us. I thought to myself that if they had not been stones in the first place, they must have been very heavy bread—too hard ...
— Stories and Legends of Travel and History, for Children • Grace Greenwood
... Prince, who entered With the other lady's portrait, Raised up mine, but so rebellious Was he to what you had asked him That, instead of his presenting One, he wished to keep the other. Since he mine will not surrender To my prayers and my entreaties: Angry at this ill-timed jesting I endeavoured to regain it, That which in his hand is held there Is my portrait, if you see it; You ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... was but jesting. And so you've fixed upon her. But I hear that Mr. Rich has set his face against so many songs. He won't take your Polly merely because ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... hope to do anything for him. On all days, in all places, you must count yourself on duty and under orders. You cannot pledge a man in the wine cup to-night, and to-morrow plead with him to escape for his life. You cannot join in the "foolish talking and jesting, which are not convenient," [26] and afterwards reason of "righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come": or if you do, people will not listen. You will find that, like Lot, you have "lost your spiritual credit." "He seemed as one that ...
— Tired Church Members • Anne Warner
... and answered her gentle bantering so well as I might, the while that I peered intent and wondering at her through the gloom; for truly Rumour had told no tale to equal the beauty of this strange maid; who now stood jesting with so sweet a spirit, and claiming kinship of Cousinhood with me, as was truth, now that I did wake ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... the State, always believing in his loyalty—if not to Gustave of Maasau, at least to Maasau the Free. Any dimmest doubt of Selpdorf's patriotism had never during all that period entered into the soddened brain of his master. But to-night, as the Duke recalled the half-jesting proposal to disband the Guard, made by the Chancellor on the day of the review, and added to that hint the pregnant significance of Valerie's speech, he realised that evil days were overtaking him, that his most trusted minister had been bid for and bought by his foes, and that it now ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... and I am wrong; My quibbles are not worth a song, And I sophistically tease My fancy sad to tricks like these. 120 I could not cheat you if I would; You know me and my jesting mood, Mere surface-foam, for pride concealing The purpose of my deeper feeling. I have not spilt one drop of joy Poured in the senses of the boy, Nor Nature fails my walks to bless With all her golden inwardness; And as blind nestlings, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... deft, strong hands, and heard again the tender cadence of his voice as he said: "I hope you are not in pain? We will release you very soon." She dwelt long upon the final scene at the table, when, with a jesting word on his lips, but with love in his eyes, he took her hand to remove the marks of her bonds; and the flush that came to her was not one of anger—it rose from the return of her joy of those few ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... leap. At last the train was stopped and brought back to the scene of desolation. It terminated like the bombardment of Fort Sumter—"no one hurt," and all occasioned by a hot-box that could have been cooled in a very few minutes. Much swearing and good-humored jesting were now engaged in. Such is the result of the want of presence of mind. A wave of the hat at the proper moment as a signal to the engineer to stop, and all would have been well. It was told once of a young lady crossing a railroad track in front of a ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... Pope's figure was an easy one for those clumsy caricaturists to draw. Any stupid hand could draw a hunchback, and write Pope underneath. They did. A libel was published against Pope, with such a frontispiece. This kind of rude jesting was an evidence not only of an ill nature, but a dull one. When a child makes a pun, or a lout breaks out into a laugh, it is some very obvious combination of words, or discrepancy of objects, which provokes the infantine satirist, or ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... through the sprouting grass,'" answered the hemp-dresser in a slightly hoarse but terrible voice. "You must be jesting, my poor friends, singing us such time-worn songs. You see very well that we can stop you at the ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... deep in the speaker's personal history. They were the utterances of a man who had stood for years at the 'mules,' catching, when he could, through the coarse panes of factory glass, the dim blue outlines of distant moors. Here were noise, crowd, coarse jesting, mean tyrannies, uncongenial company—everything which a nervous, excitable nature, tuned to poetry in the English way through religion, most loathed; there was beauty, peace, leisure for thought, for holiness, ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... understand what I meant. But to have it drag along for a fortnight seems to take all the heroism out of it, and leave it as flat!" She looked at her mother with a smile that shone through her tears, and a pathos that quivered round her jesting lips. "It's easy enough to be sensible for other people. But when it comes to myself, there I am! Especially, when I want to do what I oughtn't so much that it seems as if doing what I didn't want to do MUST be doing what I ought! But ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... topic. Love, how regarded. As a Mystery. Burns' lament. As an Illusion. An Impulse. A Weakness. A Disease. Romantic views of Love. A Fatalism. "Matches made in Heaven." Some say, "Love can be Suppressed." Associated with Lower Propensities. A theme for Jesting and Sport. Quotation, shewing its holy nature. The mind not to dwell ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... Jesting apart, I heartily wish your plans success, and if there are any more definite ways in which I can help, let me know, and I will do my best. You will want, I should think, a physical and a philological committee to organise schemes: ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... can tolerate a state of society in which any man, for what seems to him good and sufficient reason, for anything from biting the thumb at him to jesting about his whiskers, may take the life of another, why shall we not tolerate the man who will take another's property because the taker deems the other has too much or has ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann |
