"Jesting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... eyes that warned against jesting on that subject, and Little stepped aside with a shrug and watched Vandersee as that stolid worthy piloted the ship up to the crazy wharf with ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... Colorado and talk this way!" she said in amazement. "Surely you are jesting. Take the effect on the polling places alone. Compare those of New York with those of Denver, and I have seen them in full operation in both places. In the first is the atmosphere of barrooms; in the second the manners ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... eye goes down; Not more 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 him. ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... said, "this is no matter for idle jesting. Listen what the poor fellow goes on to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 26, 1920 • Various
... is taken to the forest by a relative and there tied to a tree, to which she is considered to be married. She is not taken back to her father's house but to that of some relative, such as her brother-in-law or grandfather, who is permitted to talk to her in an obscene and jesting manner, and is subsequently disposed of as a widow. Or in Sambalpur she may be nominally married to an old man and then again married as a widow. The Savars follow generally the local Hindu form of the marriage ceremony. On the return of the bridal pair seven lines are drawn in front of the ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... girl with velvet eyes, I wonder what you mean Through all our keen anxieties By keeping sweet sixteen. With your dear love to warm my heart, Wretch were I to repine; I was but jesting at the start— ...
— A Little Book of Western Verse • Eugene Field
... life like yours furnish them with a profitable example—a life which has been spent in idleness and the playing of cards? No, Semen Semenovitch. You had far better hand your children over to me. Otherwise they will be ruined. Do not think that I am jesting. Idleness has wrecked your life, and you must flee from it. Can a man live with nothing to keep him in place? Even a journeyman labourer who earns the barest pittance may take an interest ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... she found out. Jack Kilmeny, in evening dress, was jesting in animated talk with India when the engaged couple reentered the room. He turned, the smile still on his face, to greet Joyce as she came forward beside Verinder. The little man was strutting pompously toward Lady Farquhar, the arm of the young ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... jesting," said Belle; "but I can hardly entertain your offers; however, young man, I thank you. I will say nothing more at present. I must have ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... half-jesting tone, but there is no doubt that he gave utterance to the real feelings of his heart. He felt none of that eager thirst for gold which burned, like a fever, in the souls of hundreds and thousands of the men who poured at that time in a continuous ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... stating that he intended to prove the immorality of the principle that "honesty is the best policy," if he proceeded to plead for that virtue not as a repaying policy but as an innate guiding principle of right, no matter what the consequences. In humorous, half-jesting, ironical material, of course, clearness may be justifiably sacrificed to preserving interest. The introduction may state the exact ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... for that. But, if you remember, when you had finished telling me about it, you added that I was not to take the story in earnest, for that you were not really in love with a country girl, but were only jesting; and I was dull and thick-headed enough to believe you. But so fate decreed, and there ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa
... Nibelungenlied. There is sometimes faintly mingled with this (as in the gabz of the Voyage a Constantinoble, and the exploits of Rainoart with the tinel) the spirit, half rough, half sly, of jesting, which by-and-by takes shape in the fabliaux. There is the immense and restless spirit of curiosity, which explores and refashions, to its own guise and fancy, the relics of the old world, the treasures of the East, the lessons of Scripture itself. Side by side with these there ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... the rest, and told him that if he would shut up Helen somewhere alone, in the dark, he would have no more trouble with her; that her father had said that it was the only way to make her study. It was true that Mr. Gleason had remarked, in a jesting way, when told of Helen's neglect of her lessons, that he must get Mr. Hightower to have a dark closet made, and he would have no more trouble; but he never intended such a cruelty to be inflicted on his child. This ...
— Helen and Arthur - or, Miss Thusa's Spinning Wheel • Caroline Lee Hentz
... 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, or take them out and polish them. Oh, I never saw such things! ...
— Fernley House • Laura E. Richards
... the poor knave's wit, civilitie, and good sense, he agreed to halve the businesse, he continuing the fooling, and Patteson—for that is the simple good fellow's name—receiving the salary. Father delighteth in sparring with Patteson far more than in jesting with the king, whom he alwaies looks on as a lion that may, any minute, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... possibility, if he had taken the trouble (which I did many a year back) to examine it. A jest book it certainly is, and the most prosperous of jest books, but undoubtedly never meant for such by the author. A man whose lips are livid with anger does not jest, and does not understand jesting. Still, the Edinburgh Reviewer is right about the proper functions of the book, though wrong about the intentions of the author. The fact is, the man was maniacally in error, and always in error, as regarded ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... he had not, and proffered a request. "Don't let us tell each other anything, Mrs. Travers. Don't let us think of anything. I believe it will be the best way to get over the evening." There was real anxiety in his jesting tone. ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... my dear madam," replied Sir Philip, with a very faint smile, for Sir Philip could not well bear any jesting on the Romans. "I did not only converse with Mr. Marlow on the subject, but I examined carefully the papers he brought down with him, and perceived at once that you have not the shadow of a title to the ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... INGER. So I thought. But what, then, is an hour's jesting talk at the supper-table? Let us try to sweep away all that has separated us till now; it may well happen that the Nils Lykke I know may wipe out the grudge I bore the one I knew not. Prolong your stay here but a few days, ...
— Henrik Ibsen's Prose Dramas Vol III. • Henrik Ibsen
... struck on the ears of Cargrim, who was passing at the moment, and he smiled cruelly as he heard the half-joking tone in which it was spoken. Captain George Pendle little thought that the chaplain took his jesting speech in earnest, and was more convinced than ever that the bishop had killed Jentham, and had just been warned by Mother Jael that she knew the truth. This then, as Cargrim considered, was her reason for haunting the bishop ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... through various landscapes, but it is the same river, and, at the last, it brings to us, as "the banks fade dimmer away" and "the stars come out" "murmurs and scents" of the same infinite Sea. Yes, there is only one Philosophy, as Disraeli said, jesting; and Matthew Arnold, among the moderns, is the one who has been allowed to put it into his poetry. For though, before the "Flamantia Moenia" of the world's triple brass, we are fain to bow our heads inconsolably, there come those moments when, a hand laid in ours, we think we know "the hills whence ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... the stir to which his coming had lent some gladness. But his face was yet overcast with the shadows of the grave. In vain Mrs. Vennard fussed and fidgeted, in vain little Jane uttered any of her brisk, but sorry jesting, in vain Vivia's gentle voice;—it all touched Ray's heart no other way than as the rain slips along a tombstone. Vivia folded her work and disappeared; she was going to light a fire in her parlor, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... though he be somewhat unruly, and will abide no correction now these last six years. Sooth to say, there is now no story of his being anywise akin to our late Lord King; though true it is that the folk in this faraway corner of the land call him King Christopher, but only in a manner of jesting. But it is no jest wherein they say that they will gainsay him nought, and that especially the young women. Yet I will say of him that he is wise, and asketh not overmuch; the more is the sorrow of many of the ...
— Child Christopher • William Morris
... to the criminal the methods of psychology, psychiatry and anthropology," he answered with jesting impressiveness. ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... left hand, and a little behind him. Jack, too much agitated to respond to the unseasonable jest, threw up the barrel of his piece, in order to prime, when a bullet came, from nobody knew where, aslant, and put an end to jesting for ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... nothing. But if it be she who sits in yonder carriage, beware, young man! 'Tis dangerous jesting with giants, who can crush us like straws beneath their finger. Your life is in danger," he continued in a whisper; "forget this folly. There are plenty of handsome faces in the world. Throw away the silly flower that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... I left the sick woman's house, and stopped a moment just to give me a "How d'ye" and to drop some railleries founded on my visits to Miss Secker, a single and solitary lady. On reaching Philadelphia, she amused herself with perplexing Jane by jesting exaggerations on the same subject, in a way that seemed to argue somewhat of malignity; yet I thought nothing of it ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... was for this very reason that Mr. Mohun allowed Lily to escape with no more than a jesting reproof. Lord Rotherwood wished to make his cousin's hardihood and enterprise an example to his sister, and, in his droll exaggerating way, represented such walks as every-day occurrences. This was just the contrary to what Emily wished her aunt to believe, and Claude was much diverted ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge
... which she knew not. As the men approached, she 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 sight without ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... solemn complexion, and in his happiest state the opium-eater cannot present himself in the character of L'Allegro: even then he speaks and thinks as becomes Il Penseroso. Nevertheless, I have a very reprehensible way of jesting at times in the midst of my own misery; and unless when I am checked by some more powerful feelings, I am afraid I shall be guilty of this indecent practice even in these annals of suffering or enjoyment. ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... scenes from the ridiculous comedy of the "Pedant Joue" by Cyrano de Bergerac. "These two scenes are good," he said as he was jesting with his friends. "They belong to me by right: I recover my property." After that anyone who treated the author of "Tartufe" and "Le Misanthrope" as a plagiarist would have ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... on which he was treading, and made it safe by a jesting remark and an invitation to Adams and the rest to join ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... Passages relating to this Subject, from the Writings of a good Judge of Wit, and as great a Master of it as perhaps any Nation ever bred, I mean Archbishop Tillotson; "I know not how it comes to pass, says he, that some Men have the Fortune to be esteem'd Wits, only for jesting out of the common Road, and for making bold to scoff at those things, which the greatest Part of Mankind reverence—. If Men did truly consult the Interest, either of their Safety or Reputation, they would never exercise their Wit in such dangerous Matters. Wit is a very ...
— Essay upon Wit • Sir Richard Blackmore
... blaze of the logs in the fireplace of the parlors, but oftenest of all they flocked into Number Six of McCormick Building, where David was confined to his cot. Always there was laughter in Number Six, merry jesting, ready repartee. So it became the mecca of those, who, even more assiduously than they chased the cure, sought after laughter and joy. In the parlors the guests played cards, but in Number Six, deferring silently to David's calling, ...
— Sunny Slopes • Ethel Hueston
... can hardly write or read." I then asked him why he had not calculated his own nativity, to see whether it agreed with Bickerstaff's prediction, at which he shook his head and said, "Oh, sir, this is no time for jesting, but for repenting those fooleries, as I do now from the very bottom of my heart." "By what I can gather from you," said I, "the observations and predictions you printed with your almanacks were mere impositions on the people." ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... his forfeit the favor of one of the women on the other side. Ume was merely a method of choosing partners by the master of ceremonies touching with a wand, called the maile, the couple selected for the forfeit, while he sang a jesting song. The sudden personal turn at the close of many of the oli may perhaps be accounted for by their composition for this game. The kaeke dance is that form of hula in which the beat is made on a kaekeeke instrument, a hollow bamboo cylinder struck upon the ground ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... A jesting device this, which the writer, were he now living, would perhaps think too trivial to make known; yet why should we not recall with pleasure the fact that in his boyish days he could make this harmless little play, to throw an ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... myself hastened to escort her downstairs to her carriage, which stood in waiting at the door—the very carriage and pair of chestnut ponies which I myself had given her as a birthday present. Ferrari offered to assist her in mounting the step of the vehicle; she put his arm aside with a light jesting word and accepted mine instead. I helped her in, and arranged her embroidered wraps about her feet, and she nodded gayly to us both as we stood bareheaded in the afternoon sunlight watching her departure. The horses started at a brisk canter, ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... gave us to wit that thou hadst fallen upon Egil and slain him;—we had parted half in wrath, and thou hast ere now brought death among my kindred. And moreover—Thorolf bore himself at the feast like a wanton boy; he brooked not our jesting, and spoke many evil things. Not till then did Gunnar wax wroth; not till then did he raise his hand upon thy son; and well I wot that he had good and lawful ground ...
— The Vikings of Helgeland - The Prose Dramas Of Henrik Ibsen, Vol. III. • Henrik Ibsen
... lift discharged half its occupants—a merry flock for the most part, hurrying along the corridor, laughing and jesting as they went, while two followed gravely behind, looking to right ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... answer, only grew red for shame. Whereupon my magister left off jesting; and taking the young man's arm, laid it upon the maiden's, in the form of a cross, then opened a vein in each, murmuring some words, while the blood-stream poured down into two silver cups which were held by his ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... turtle-dove, indeed!" exclaimed Orso, and the emotion with which he kissed his sister contrasted strongly with the jesting ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee
... early manhood and in all the exuberance of his rich vigorous nature, surrounded by friends for whom he kept open house, in high contentment with life, eager to respond to all the claims upon his energy. Here came artists and poets, in the pleasant summer days, jesting, dreaming, discussing, indulging in bouts of single-stick or game of bowls in the garden, walking through the country-side, quoting poets old and new, and scheming to cover the walls and cupboards ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... both camps were gathered in a great circle about the fire, singing, jesting and story-telling, both girls forgot their weariness and might have been heard singing the same "merrily we roll along" with great ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... her loveliness was her unconsciousness of self. Even though she might be talking of herself, frankly admitting her beauty, she was really thinking of other people, how she could get to them to help them. This I must emphasize, because, apart from jesting, I would not have it thought that I had fallen under the spell of a beautiful countenance, combined with a motor-car and a patrician name. There were things about Sylvia that were aristocratic, that could be nothing else; but she could be her same lovely self ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... apparelled performers threatened to storm her balcony. Some climbed on each other's shoulders to get nearer her, others even began to swarm up the pillars supporting her balcony. To the delight of the audience the noisy mob eventually clambered up to the railing of the balcony and, jesting, laughing, uttering weird cries, perched on it and ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... was wiser than himself. Furious at the trick which had been played upon him he threatened to take the artist's life. When Buonamico heard this, he sent to tell him to do his worst, wherefore the bishop menaced him with a malediction. But at length he reflected that the artist had only been jesting, and that he should take the matter as a jest, whereupon he pardoned Buonamico the insult, and acknowledged his pains most liberally. What is more, he induced him to come again to Arezzo not long after, and caused him to paint many things in the old ...
— The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8) • Giorgio Vasari
... Parliament, and led and trained there!—that he should take this hostile and harassing line, with threat of worse, was a matter too sore and intimate to be talked about. He did not mean to talk about it. To Lady Lucy he never spoke of Oliver's opinions, except in a half-jesting way; to other people he did not speak of them at all. Ferrier's affections were deep and silent. He had not found it possible to love the mother without loving the son—had played, indeed, a father's part to him since Henry Marsham's death. He knew the brilliant, flawed, unstable, ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... me to be jesting, like that scribe who told me of Krophi and Mophi; for Rhodopis lived in the days of King Amasis and of Sappho the minstrel, and was beloved by Charaxus, the brother of Sappho, wherefore Sappho reviled him in a song. How then could Rhodopis, who flourished ...
— Old Friends - Essays in Epistolary Parody • Andrew Lang
... You laugh; but, jesting apart, perhaps it would have been a more accurate classification than placing her among the ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... written words are a bad medium. The light jesting tone that saves a quip from offense can not be expressed; and remarks that if spoken would amuse, can but pique and even insult their subject. Without the interpretation of the voice, gaiety becomes levity, raillery becomes ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... him not to require sympathy. Besides, the 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 ...
— The Doom of the Griffiths • Elizabeth Gaskell
... the Rhine to avoid suitors'?" roared the baron, purple with rage. "Hark ye, nephew! I like not this jesting. Thou knowest I married one of the Schonberg girls, as did thy father. How 'coy' they were is neither here nor there; but mayhap WE might tell another story. Thy father, as weak a fellow as thou art where a petticoat is concerned, ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... cavaliering it here over half a dozen persons of distinction: remember, too, thy words poor helpless orphan—these reflections are too serious, and thou art also too serious, for me to let these things go off as jesting; notwithstanding the Roman style* is preserved; and, indeed, but just preserved. By my soul, Jack, if I had not been taken thus egregiously cropsick, I would have been up with thee, and the lady too, ...
— Clarissa, Or The History Of A Young Lady, Volume 8 • Samuel Richardson
... the house, not too quietly, and laughing, jesting and romping like school boys, went out to the corrals, with Little Billy tagging eagerly at their heels. The Dean and Phil remained for a few minutes ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... from one of them that, from the tenor of my conversation, it used sometimes to be talked over, that one day or other it "would heave up" that I had helped off some negro to a free state. But these conversations, the witness added, were generally in a jesting tone; and another witness stated that the charge of running off slaves was a common joke among ...
— Personal Memoir Of Daniel Drayton - For Four Years And Four Months A Prisoner (For Charity's Sake) In Washington Jail • Daniel Drayton
... here and there a good-natured raillery, and jesting, which show a sense of humor that goes beyond the limits of mere fun and horse-play. Here is a letter he wrote toward the close of the war, asking some ladies to dine with him in his ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... Italian whose marvellous resemblance to the Marble Faun of Praxiteles is the subject of jesting ...
— 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.
... 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 night with ...
— Chinese Nightingale • Vachel Lindsay
... enter, each and every one Tumultuous, eager all, with clamorous speech, To hide my stammering welcome and my tears. I am no host carousing long and late, Enticing guests with epicurean hints; Nor am I Timon, sick of this sad world, Who, jesting, cries, "The sky is overhead, And underneath that famous rest, the earth: Show me the man who can have ...
— Poems • Elizabeth Stoddard
... de Remusat, III., 75, 155: "When the minister of police learned that jesting or malicious remarks had been made in one of the Paris drawing-rooms he at once notified the master or mistress of the house to be more watchful of their company."—Ibid., p.187 (1807): "The emperor censured M. Fouche for not having exercised stricter watchfulness. ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... is really a very wise and noble fellow; of a healthy and penetrating intelligence, and with a sound underpinning of earnest and true feeling; as appears when the course of the action surprises or inspires him out of his pride of brilliancy. When a grave occasion comes, his superficial habit of jesting is at once postponed, and the choicer parts of manhood promptly assert themselves in clear and handsome action. We are thus given to know that, however the witty and waggish companion or make-sport may have got the ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... Bes was jesting according to his fashion. But when that night, chancing to go round the corner of the house, I came upon him with a circlet of feathers round his head and his big bow in his hand, addressing three great black men who knelt before him as though he were a god, I changed ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... sleepless night. The most stupendous of Dickey's efforts to enliven the dreary table failed, and there was utter collapse to the rosy hopes they had begun to build. Her brain was filled by one great thought—escape. While they were jesting she was wondering how and where she could find the underground passages of which they had spoken and to what point they ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... be; thou art jesting;—not, at least, the Wilfred of Aescendune I once knew, and by whom I fear I dealt somewhat hardly; he died, and was buried at Oxenford thirty years agone. I saw his dead body; I beheld his burial; I have joined in masses ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... of the lip; a family expression which was familiar and pleasant to her. John Ayliffe accompanied the carriage to the gate of Mrs. Hazleton's park; and there the lady beckoned him up, and in a kind, half jesting tone, bade him keep himself disengaged the next day, as ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... conclusions of Trent by saying that, if there was anything good in them, the king would gladly approve of it, even if it were not decreed by the council. And, at a supper, to which he was invited the same evening at the quarters of the Cardinal of Bourbon, he had to put up with a good deal of rough jesting from Conde and his boon companions, who plied him with pungent questions respecting the Pope and the ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... the "few glasses of champagne," of which he talked so airily, that had all the honor of crowning him king of fate and poet of the world. Long after midnight, upon such and many other occasions, would he and his companions sit laughing and jesting and drinking, some saying witty things, and all of them foolish things and worse; inventing stories apropos of the foibles of friends, and relating anecdotes which grew more and more irreverent to God and women as the night advanced, ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... This jesting speech made Rolf very angry, though he said little in reply. But when the king told Queen Ingerd that evening what he had ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... troubling any one, for none took the least further notice of me. The party was in high spirits—lounging about and jesting—speaking sometimes of trifling matters very seriously, and of serious matters as triflingly—and exercising their wit in particular to great advantage on their absent friends and their affairs. I was too ignorant of what they were talking about to understand much of it, and too ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German (V.2) • Various
... see his face, It had such a jesting look; But while I made up my mind to speak, A small case-bottle he took: Quoth he, "Though I gather the green water-cress, My drink is not ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... woman! this is no matter for jesting. No: though she used me ill, I would not believe her ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... she expostulated. "I think it is hardly a subject for jesting. Marriage is a very serious thing. I hope God will bless dear Meryl with great happiness. I confess, at first, I was disappointed that she chose a Dutch husband; but Mr. van Hert has very good Huguenot blood in his veins, and he is undoubtedly a very ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... may be something portentous in bigness. "Tom" Reed, as he was affectionately called, said many wise things in a jesting way. At a certain crisis in our history he exclaimed: "I don't want Cuba and Hawaii; I've got more country now than I can love." A foreigner might suppose that our politicians had similarly become terror-stricken at the extent of our wealth and the ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... his saddle and peered through the uncertain light to make out if Sliver were jesting. But the latter seemed ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... sad victims of an odious law!—you, whom a jesting world despoils and outrages!—you, whose labor has always been fruitless, and whose rest has been without hope,—take courage! your tears are numbered! The fathers have sown in affliction, the ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... almost simultaneously the further shock of learning that the same adored parent, supposed by her to be a tragedienne of the first water, is in fact no more than a handsome stick, and unable (as they say) to act for nuts. Jesting apart, I am bound to admit that Lady TROUBRIDGE has risen admirably to the demands of her theme, and written a story both direct and appealing. Perhaps (dare I say?) its emotion is rather more secure than its grammar. The fact that she makes a duchess allude ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, March 14, 1917 • Various
... 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 sang ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... feel much in the mood for jesting,' she answered. 'It would rather seem as if I had been made the subject ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... said old man Minick, and while his tone was light and jesting there was in his old face something stern, something menacing. ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... strikes the first sombre note in that exquisite woodland idyll, and shows us the depth of feeling that underlies Rosalind's fanciful wit and wilful jesting. ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... heed of dallying 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 ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various
... jesting only. To think of me undervaluing the military! Why often and often, as a single man with no ties, I have fancied myself enlisting. But now it will be ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... sister disdained reply. She merely reflected how much greater annoyance her brother would have felt had his sporting outfit been delayed and this was the very first piece of luggage he had identified—her trunk the last. However, there was the utmost good nature in their jesting intercourse, and both now turned their attention to the wharf where the "very last" passenger ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... with his pockets full of twenty-dollar gold pieces, with which he had supplied himself for the journey. He thought this piece of money the handsomest coin in the world, and said it made a man feel rich merely to handle it. In a jesting mood, he drew the coins from his pockets, threw them on the table, whence they rolled right and left on the floor, and said: "Just look! I'm simply ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... and made a joy of captivity and sang hymns which sounded like profane music hall songs, and songs with an unction now lost to the world, even as Shakespeare's fools are lost—that gallant company who ran a thread of tragedy through all their jesting. ...
— An Unpardonable Liar • Gilbert Parker
... He had 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, from which he emerged with ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... brow— "Must bear such age, I think, as thou. Hear ye, my mates; I go to call The Captain of our watch to hall. 175 There lies my halberd on the floor; And he that steps my halberd o'er, To do the maid injurious part, My shaft shall quiver in his heart! Beware loose speech, or jesting rough; 180 Ye all know John ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... putting forth her best energies, and he was relieved to find that she disposed of her work so lightly; even her frequent calamities were a matter for jesting. They made a joke of the washing of the supper dishes: he insisted on helping her, and would don an apron and do the rougher part of it. He declared that he had never been so well fed before, and that ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... figures stood on the pithead, waiting their turn to go below. The cage rattled up from the depths of the shaft, the men stepped in, and almost immediately disappeared down into the blackness. Arrived at the bottom, they walked along towards the different passages, chaffing and jesting with Tam Donaldson, the ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... that proportion would it cease to be known or felt that there had ever been any hindrances to be smoothed. This, however, is digression, to which I have been tempted by the interesting nature of the grievance. In a jesting way, this grievance is obliquely noticed in the ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... Count Tristan, breathing hard, while his face rapidly changed color; for at one moment it was overspread with a death-like pallor, and then, suddenly grew purple. "Decline? Such a thing is not to be thought of; you are jesting?" ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... ourselves with fundamental seriousness—with that absolute gravity which imperils the publication of a book and entirely prohibits the production of a play on such matters. There is something in human nature beyond my explaining which leads towards jesting in these directions. An instinct, I know, is an instinct; of which a main character is that its exercise shall be independent of any knowledge as to its purpose. We eat because we like eating, rather than because we have reckoned that so many calories ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... version of a chuckle. "Nothing, nothing, Ilya. I was jesting. However, give me a brief ...
— Freedom • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... I started for Atlanta. I felt a good deal as I suppose a man feels when he is on his way to the gallows. In passing through the town of Tuskegee I met a white farmer who lived some distance out in the country. In a jesting manner this man said: "Washington, you have spoken before the Northern white people, the Negroes in the South, and to us country white people in the South; but Atlanta, to-morrow, you will have before you the Northern whites, the Southern whites, and the Negroes ...
— Up From Slavery: An Autobiography • Booker T. Washington
... the stars. Then, as I looked round to my comrade, he stripped himself, and laid his clothes by the wayside. My heart was in my nose: I could no more move than a dead man. But he walked three times round his clothes, and was suddenly changed into a wolf. Do not think I am jesting. No man's patrimony would tempt me to lie. But, as I had begun to say, as soon as he was changed into a wolf, he set up a long howl, and fled into the woods. I remained awhile, bewildered; then I approached to take up his clothes, but they were ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... the superintendent, "this is not a time for jesting! These are not sheep to be guided into the fold, but birds with long, strong wings, ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... circumstances. Nothing was forgotten which could have made the news in the slightest degree more endurable. Every trifling personal belonging was carefully saved and packed in a little box to follow the letter. All of this was done amid much boisterous jesting. And there was the usual hilarious singing to the wheezing accompaniment of an old mouth-organ. But of reference to home, or ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall
... chanced to come against her, as was her wont, proffering her fan, or her essence-bottle, or in some quiet way ministering to their egotism, she now stepped freely forth upon the field of action, nodding and smiling at the young men to whom she might have been at some time introduced; whispering and jesting with some marked young lady, while she made an occasion to arrange her berthe or her ringlets, and adding herself, as if by accident, to any trio or quartette of pre-eminent distinction. She had at length ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... Marching, singing, jesting, they pressed on until their advance guard met the plodding, cheerless, downcast refugees. The French peasants halted in their tracks, staring, unable to believe their eyes. Here, in the flesh, by thousands upon thousands, was the answer to their prayers. ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... Cologne in the bowl of water, dipped a sponge into it, and washed my face, drying it with a soft towel. "Oh, you are quite handsome enough!" she said, mockingly; "you can show your Byron face; 'I come, I see, I conquer,' is written on your forehead. But now I am not jesting; and listen to me, or repent it until your dying hour! If you succeed in winning the divinity you may be a slave, but a cherished slave. You will not know the blessing of love, but you will also be free of the pangs of ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... whether you are laughing at me or yourself, George" says the brother. I never know whether you are serious or jesting. ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... is not at a moment that we can give a positive reply to such grave matters. I content myself in assuring you, that I have for you as much confidence as respect, and should be very happy to obtain your protection." "My protection! Oh, heaven, madame, you are jesting. It is I who should be honored by your friendship." "It is yours; but as yet I am nothing at court, and can do nothing there until I have been presented. It is for my speedy presentation that my friends should labor now." "We will not fail, madame; and if you will allow ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... it round my neck, and then fell to kissing her in madness, continuing for I know not how long, bereft of my senses by the perfume of her hair and the touch of her arms. And then at last, I took her face in my hands. And I said: Away with Chaturika! Thou knowest all, and art only jesting: and my soul quivers in my body at the sound of thy name. And she laughed, as I kissed her very gently on her two eyes, and she said: Perhaps I know: and yet, I will not forgive thee for Chaturika, but on one condition. And I said: Ask anything thou ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain
... 1879, gravely undertook to instruct Edison in the A B C of electrical principles, and then proceeded to demonstrate mathematically the IMPOSSIBILITY of doing WHAT EDISON HAD ACTUALLY DONE. This critic concludes with a gentle rebuke to the inventor for ill-timed jesting, and a ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... present moment; of which kind are any sudden noise or exclamation; or with something which you have already prepared, which may embrace some apologue, or fable, or other laughable circumstance. Or, if the dignity of the subject shall seem inconsistent with jesting, in that case it is not disadvantageous to throw in something sad, or novel, or terrible. For as satiety of food and disgust is either relieved by some rather bitter taste, or is at times appeased by a sweet taste; so a mind weary with listening ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... over them like a wave. They caught the splendid significance of it. They were to offer, in the guise of jesting, their big protest against the folly of sickening over youth by showing how fearlessly they were dancing on toward age. It was more than bravado, more than repudiation of the cowards who hesitated at the onward step. It was loyal and passionate ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... jesting to the fools who prate of life without comprehending its first beginnings. I do not jest with you—put me to the proof! Obey my rules here but for six months and you shall pass out of these walls with every force in your body and spirit renewed in youth and vitality! But Yourself must work ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... 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 should be grave ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... the busy lights which flit about the houses or point the span of the bridges with golden dots, fling long reflections on its surface. Overhead, more peaceful lights are shining. All about us is the rush of tumult and change, men drifting here and there, struggling, weeping, jesting, passing away; but over all God watches, and His ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... It is the fashion in the States to speak of "poor old Punch," and to affect astonishment at seeing in its "senile pages" anything that they have to admit to be funny. Doubtless a great deal of very laborious and vapid jesting goes on in the pages of the doyen of English comic weeklies; but at its best Punch is hard to beat, and its humours have often a literary quality such as is seldom met with in an American journal of the same kind. No American paper can even remotely ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... 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, and washed the oats, to shut ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... are these? 'Twas the hunchbacked horse-groom who passed the night with thee!" "Allah upon thee," replied the Lady of Beauty, "do not worry me about the Gobbo, Allah damn his father; [FN438] and leave jesting with me; for this groom was only hired for ten dinars and a porringer of meat and he took his wage and went his way. As for me I entered the bridal-chamber, where I found my true bridegroom sitting, after the singer-women ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... hear the order of the banquet? The courses were very well arranged—mouldy bread, bacon-rind, tallow candle, and sausage—and then the same dishes over again from the beginning: it was just as good as having two banquets in succession. There was as much joviality and agreeable jesting as in the family circle. Nothing was left but the pegs at the ends of the sausages. And the discourse turned upon these; and at last the expression, 'Soup on sausage-rinds,' or, as they have the proverb in the neighbouring ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... men also used to come to Voronok's house. There were still others, a ragged, grumbling lot, who appeared to carry an air of eternal injury with them, as if they had lost all capacity for smiling and jesting. Voronok took great pains to read the pamphlets with them, and to explain to them anything that was not especially clear. Regular hours were allotted for these readings and conversations. By such ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... this volume has felt the importance of his task, and diligently sought how to distinguish true wit from false,—the pure gold from Brummagem brass. He has carefully perused the Eight learned chapters on "Thoughts on Jesting," by Frederick Meier, Professor of Philosophy at Halle, and Member of the Royal Academy of Berlin, wherein it is declared that a jest "is an extreme fine Thought, the result of a great Wit and Acumen, which are eminent Perfections of ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... consider that this law doth not only condemn words and actions, as I said before, but it hath authority to condemn the most secret thoughts of the heart, being evil; so that if thou do not speak any word that is evil, as swearing, lying, jesting, dissembling, or any other word that tendeth to, or savoureth of sin, yet if there should chance to pass but one vain thought through thy heart but once in all thy lifetime, the law taketh hold of it, accuseth, and also will condemn thee for it. You may see one instance for ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... Yet more newes, brother; the late jesting Monsieur Makes now your brothers dying prophesie equall At all parts, being ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... letter, and I really don't know what to say to you. I should not even have answered you at all, if it had not been that I fancied that under your jesting remarks there really lies hid a feeling of some friendliness. Your letter made an unpleasant impression on me. In answer to your rigmarole, as you call it, let me too put to you one question: What for? What have I to do with you, or you with me? I do not ascribe to you any bad motives ... on ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... as they serve, take either meat or drink in any other posture than standing. This penalty you will bear with patience when you reflect that it is impossible your cowardice could be marked with a slighter stigma." He then gave the signal for packing up the baggage; and the soldiers, sporting and jesting as they drove and carried their booty, returned to Beneventum in so playful a mood, that they appeared to be returning, not from the field of battle, but from a feast celebrated on some remarkable holiday. All the Beneventans pouring out in crowds to meet ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... on speaking terms with her, over and above what might have been natural in an occasional visitor to the Rectory and Maple Cottage. He saw and meant no harm to her in his admiration, and had no idea at present that his occasional smile or idle jesting compliment made the girl's cheeks burn, her heart beat fast, made her nights restless and her days long. He took it for granted that gratified vanity alone made her receive his attentions with pleasure. ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... God's death, my masters, you will find it ill jesting in this presence! What in the fiend's name! Think ye, Elizabeth of England may be tricked and cozened—made game of by a scurvy Italian bookworm and ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... jesting now, yourself," replied Henry, with what was intended for a smile, but which, like his assailant's ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... Middlemas; "you are jesting, or you are jealous. You do yourself less, and me more, than justice; but the compliment is so great, that I am obliged to you ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... that one was rather pretty. This led him to think of Cherry again, and to recall the quaint yet melancholy grace of her figure as she sat on the stool opposite. Why had she withdrawn it so abruptly; did she consider his jesting allusion to it indecorous and presuming? Had he really meant it seriously; and was he beginning to think too much about her? Would she ever come again? How nice it would be if she returned from church alone early, and they could have a comfortable ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... of taste is idle; but it is not idle to observe that when Lamb is read, as he surely deserves to be, as a whole—letters and poems no less than essays—these notes of fantasy and artificiality no longer dominate. The man Charles Lamb was far more real, far more serious, despite his jesting, more self-contained and self- restrained, than Hazlitt, who wasted his life in the pursuit of the veriest will-o'-the-wisps that ever danced over the most miasmatic of swamps, who was never his own man, and who died, ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... and bad talking, and the evil it leads to. S. Paul speaks about it very plainly when he says, speaking of the things that should not be named amongst Christians, "neither filthiness nor foolish talking nor jesting, which are not convenient." Now, boys, all indecent words and conversations are wrong—they are sinful, unmanly, degrading. I know you cannot help hearing much that is wrong. Shame, be it said, to the men of England—yes, men who talk of advancement and freedom, men who are fathers of families, ...
— Boys - their Work and Influence • Anonymous
... 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
... being accomplished the agent returned to the depot to take the train back to St. Louis when he was surprised to see the supposed sufferer stumping around on his crutches on the depot platform, laughing and jesting over the ease with which he had ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... the other, and in a perversity born of long restraint, she added: "He is not the man," in a jesting tone with ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... earnestly, eager every ear, France fought furiously, forsaking foolish fear, Great German garrisons grappled Gallic guard, Hohenzollern Hussars hammered, heavy, hard. Infantry, Imperial, Indian, Irish, intermingling, Jackets jaunty, joking, jesting, jostling, jingling. Kinetic, Kruppised Kaiser, kingdom's killing knight, Laid Louvain lamenting, London lacking light, Mobilising millions, marvellous mobility, Numberless nonentities, numerous nobility. Oligarchies olden opposed olive offering, Prussia pressed Paris, Polish protection ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... be offended. I am not jesting." He stood before her in the path, and would have taken her hand, but she ...
— Added Upon - A Story • Nephi Anderson
... German; and when there is supper he will always have old Jacob to tell him tales, in which he says that there is no beginning, no era, nor Hegira, no Anno Domini, but only the war of Seventy. But he is a hard-hearted young Kerl, and will of necessity have his jesting. Only ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... I answered with cheerful paradox. But she would have none of my jesting, and if I hadn't allowed her to wash and bind it up right away I'm afraid I wouldn't have got any tea that night. When she finished she placed her hands upon my shoulders and kissed me full on ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... had somewhat the air of a navy officer; but he tackled me with great solemnity. I could make fun of what he said, for I do not think it was very wise; but the subject does not appear to me just now in a jesting light, so I shall only say that he related to me his own conversion, which had been effected (as is very often the case) through the agency of a gig accident, and that, after having examined me and diagnosed my case, he selected some suitable tracts from his repertory, gave ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... such a feeling not engender? To tell you the truth, I had supposed that YOU were jesting in your letter; wherefore, my heart was feeling heavy at the thought that you could feel so displeased with me. Kind comrade and helper, you will be doing me an injustice if for a single moment you ever suspect that I am lacking in feeling or in gratitude towards you. My heart, believe me, ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... are not jesting here. In the very spirit of serious truth, we assure you, that the delusion about "jentaculum" is even exceeded by this other delusion about "prandium." Salmasius himself, for whom a natural prejudice of place and time partially obscured the truth, admits, however, ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... don't tell her that." The young man spoke quickly. His tone was half jesting, half earnest. He stood looking at the two faces, glancing from one to the other with a look of baffled resentment. "A living shame!" he ...
— Unfinished Portraits - Stories of Musicians and Artists • Jennette Lee
... women are beginning to judge for themselves the proper sphere of action, and are not only jesting about what they should do under other circumstances, but are already entering upon such paths as their taste and capacity indicate. Some will doubtless make mistakes, which experience will rectify, and others will perhaps persist in striving to do that which it will be very evident they have ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... I was up she could conceal it with a Corking-pin. Thus appointed, Ned led the Way, saying, the onlie Occasion on which a Gentleman needed not to excuse himself to a Lady for going first, was when they were to ride a Pillion. Noe more jesting when once a-Horseback; for, after pacing through a few deserted Streets, we found ourselves amidst such a Medly of Carts, Coaches, and Wagons, full of People and Goods, all pouring out of Town, that Ned had enough to do to keep cleare of 'em, ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... said of Eugenie that gave me pain. It was their free speech about Aurore. I have not repeated their ribald talk in relation to her—their jesting innuendoes, their base hypotheses, and coldly brutal sneers whenever her ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... name not those savory things, there's no jesting with my Stomach; it sleeps now, but if it wakes, wo be to your ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... them, but what we imagine is in them. Let it be felt that the things you hold to be wrong must expect from you neither compromise nor show of friendship; that you are the open and declared enemy of unclean speech, filthy jesting, secret sins, with their hints and implied fascinations, brainless pursuits, frivolous conversation, and low down levels of existence, and, with the exception of those whose enmity it is a distinction to have, ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... him. It would have been some consolation, could he have known what was said at the Bernards', when the family gathered around the table in the evening. Mrs. Bernard alluded more than once to the gap his absence made in their little circle; and the Judge, in his jesting way, wished that somebody would shoot him again, if it might be the means to bring him back. Even Anne expressed regret at his loss, since his company had been such a pleasure ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... Archbishop of Granada, began to smack of the apoplexy from which he had so recently escaped. Perhaps, the meeting being one of hilarity, the younger nobles became restive under the infliction of a very long and very solemn harangue. At any rate, as the meeting broke up, there was a good dial of jesting on the subject. De Hammes, commonly called "Toison d'Or," councillor and king-at-arms of the Order, said that the President had been seeing visions and talking with Saint Andrew in a dream. Marquis Berghen asked for the source whence he had ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... "I 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 ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)
... that deprecators spoke of its "tobacco-paper" and "scurvy letter." Like Defoe's review, it was strong in Foreign War intelligence, but beyond this the aim was to attract readers, not by political sarcasm or coarse jesting, but by sparkling satire on the foibles of the fashionable world. Addison says that the design was to bring philosophy to tea-tables, and to check improprieties "too trivial for the chastisement of the law, and too fantastical for the cognizance of the pulpit," and that these ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... gittin' to the high ground with a thirty-thirty; and if any one should inquire you can tell 'em that your pore friend's mind was deranged by cuttin' too many palo verdes." He smiled, but there was a sinister glint in his eyes; and as he rode home that night Hardy saw in the half-jesting words a portent of the never-ending struggle that would spring up if ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... Isak and Sivert were called in to witness the signatures to these. When it was done, the gentlemen wanted to buy over Isak's percentage for a ridiculous sum—five hundred Kroner. Geissler put a stop to that, however. "Jesting apart," he said. ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... public spirit and honesty of my countrymen, fellow-citizens, and associate members of the Council would prevent it from injuring our trade at home or abroad, he alluded to that story, by no means in the jesting way with which he formerly mentioned the vexatious incident that redounded to the honour of no one more than that of his own shrewdness, which at that time—seven years ago—was so often ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... moment later the splash of a boat taking water close to the nearest gun-port. Jeremy stretched as far as his chain would allow, and through a crevice saw four men start to row toward shore. There was some coarse jesting and laughter on deck, then one of the crew sent a "Fare ye well, Bill!" after the departing gig. The hail was answered by the voice of the Jamaican, Curley. Half an hour later the boat returned, carrying only three. Jeremy, straining ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... display of the power I derived from them; I will have done with adventures, and at the fitting moment I will act with calmness, prudence, and all the benignity possible. It is better so. My coalition, half-serious, half-jesting, with the army, had for its object to protect me against the violence of the Orbajosans and of the servants and the relations of my aunt. For the rest, I have always disapproved of the idea of what ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... "stool" is ingenious, and would be a probable reading, if the scene opening had discovered Antony with Cleopatra on his lap. But, represented as he is walking and jesting with her, "fool" must be the word. Warburton's objection is shallow, and implies that he confounded the dramatic with the epic style. The "pillar" of a state is so common a metaphor as to have lost the image in the thing meant to ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... hear through Mrs. Clayton that reaction has occurred, and that you manifest repentance for your recent violence toward one who always means you well. A little jesting on the part of your guardian, my dear girl, should meet with a very different reception, and handsome women must submit to compliments with a good grace, or run the risk of being called prudes or viragos. ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... "And I'm not jesting," Jasmine added, with a forced smile. "But tell me what has gone wrong with all your plans. You don't mind what Tynemouth says. Of course you will ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... volatile nature kindles the philosophy of hers. She knows now that Floyd Grandon did not marry her for love, that he did not even profess to, and that in most marriages there is at least a profession of love at the beginning, and it is very sweet. Even such half-jesting love as these two young people make unblushingly before her face, in the naughty audacity of youth, is delightful. Mr. Grandon could never do or say such things; he ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... who don't yet know what life is, and are afeard of death. Well, we come before th' masters to state what we want, and what we must have, afore we'll set shoulder to their work; and they say, 'No.' One would think that would be enough of hard-heartedness, but it isn't. They go and make jesting pictures on us! I could laugh at mysel, as well as poor John Slater there; but then I must be easy in my mind to laugh. Now I only know that I would give the last drop of my blood to avenge us on yon chap, ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... I could see that there was no mirth in her heart when she thought of herself as the Princess Mary; she was not jesting. ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... spoken of the discussions between Benjamin and John Collins upon important subjects. When other boys were accustomed to spend their time in foolish talking and jesting, they were warmly discussing some question in advance of their years, and well suited to improve their minds. One of the subjects was a singular one for that day—female education. Legislators, statesmen, ministers, and teachers did not believe that girls ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... was accused saw plainly that these merchants' opinion must convict him, yet he would say something in his own justification. But the child, instead of ordering him to be impaled, looked at the caliph, and said "Commander of the faithful, this is no jesting matter; it is your majesty that must condemn him to death, and not I, though I ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.
... on the jesting way a while farther, and said, "Prithee, do not talk of dying; how do we know we shall ever ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... Edgecombe seemed fairly crazed by his joy. After so many long years of hopeless grief and wistful longing, to find his loved ones, safe and sound, far more beautiful than of yore! Surely enough to turn the gravest of men into a laughing, jesting, voluble lad! ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... solace to his conscience. All his future destiny was thus at the mercy of an accident most likely to happen. The second cause of his disquietude was the jealous hatred of Madame Campvallon toward the young rival she had herself selected. After jesting freely on this subject at first, the Marquise had, little by little, ceased ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... with joy, for all the servants knew him plainly; and they brought him in haste to the room of their mistress, in the semblance of whom the maid rose up from supper and welcomed him gladly. And afterwards she sat down to supper again the second time, and Rhun with her. Then Rhun began jesting with the maid, who still kept the semblance of her mistress. And verily this story shows that the maiden became so intoxicated, that she fell asleep; and the story relates that it was a powder that Rhun put into the drink, that made her sleep so soundly that ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 3 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... my jesting. "It is not exactly a story for boys," he said. "I go on then. The sign, as you call it, was not very plentiful but very much to the purpose, and when Mr. Powell heard (at a certain moment I felt bound to tell him) when he heard that I had known Mrs. Anthony before her marriage, that, ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad |
