"Practical joke" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... but try as she would, she was unable to think of anyone with whom she had ever come in contact, capable of threatening her in this terrible way. She had about decided that the whole thing must be some stupidly conceived practical joke, when she saw her mother cross the hall ...
— The Film of Fear • Arnold Fredericks
... all the rest of it cankered with rust. Whether this sciencer was some obscure Roger Bacon, and had discovered the use of a volatile anaesthetic centuries ago, or whether he was enjoying a solitary practical joke at the expense of two simpletons, is impossible to say. "It is at your choice to believe either or neither," as Westcote says of the two foregoing stories. "I have offered them to the shrine of your judgment, and what truth ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... would make out. He got it. The job was to clean out Billy Buck's corral. Steve found employment for the hands close to home for the day, that no one should miss the result. It is always business first on the ranch, and a practical joke takes precedence over other labours. Steve hung around the corral, where he could peek through the chinks. Hoarse whispers inquiring "Anything up yet?" were for so long answered in the negative, that it seemed the day had been ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... it—except, indeed, the jackdaw. The poor bird was a pitiable object, his head lobbed down, his wings draggled on the floor, his feathers were all ruffled, and with a ghost of a caw he prayed the company follow him; when lo! there was the ring, hidden in some sly corner by the jackdaw as a clever practical joke. His lordship's grace smiled benignantly, and instantly removed the curse; when lo! as if by magic, the bird became fat and sleek again, perky and impudent, wagging his tail, winking his eye, and cocking his head on one side, then up he hopped to ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... doubt the anomalous state of affairs existing between us, which turned all my attacks upon him, (and they were many, either open or covert) into the channel of banter or practical joke (giving pain while assuming the aspect of mere fun) rather than into a more serious and determined hostility. But my endeavours on this head were by no means uniformly successful, even when my plans were the most wittily concocted; for my namesake had much about him, in ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... nothing occurred. On the second, there were tremendous noises, sounds like someone beating a table with a stick. We had, of course, taken every precaution, and we could not explain the noises; but at the same time we could not swear that some ingenious practical joke had not been played upon us. There the matter ended for the time. Some years afterwards, however, I met a member of the family who occupied the house, and he told me that after our visit the bones of a child, evidently long buried, had ...
— The New Revelation • Arthur Conan Doyle
... further milder shocks. I was engaged in shaving early one morning in our little wooden house, when I felt myself pushed violently against the dressing-table, almost removing my chin with the razor at the same time. I suspected my nephew of a practical joke, and called out angrily to him. In an aggrieved voice he protested that he had not touched me, but had himself been hurled by an unseen agency against the wardrobe. Then came a perfect cannonade of nuts from an overhanging tree on to the wooden roof of our modest temporary abode, and still we did ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... to the Comstock's delight in humor of a positive sort. The practical joke was legal tender in Virginia. One might protest and swear, but he must take it. An example of Comstock humor, regarded as the finest assay, is an incident still told of Leslie Blackburn and Pat Holland, two gay ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... said, glancing at his hosts with the quick Californian suspicion of some practical joke. But the honest faces of ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... care; it was a nasty practical joke," cried Tom Long, "and—I beg your pardon, Roberts," he said, suddenly changing his tone, and holding out his hand. "I believe you ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... he did everything else: he treated the matter as something in the nature of a practical joke, and wanted to know if Ethan meditated buying a grand piano or adding a "cupolo" to his house; offering, in the latter case, to give his ...
— Ethan Frome • Edith Wharton
... heard, a hard-headed and conceited sort of fellow, scouted the ghost, and sneered at the fears of his family. He was privately of opinion that the whole affair was a practical joke or a fraud, and waited an opportunity of catching the rogue flagrante delicto. He did not long keep this theory to himself, but let it out by degrees with no stint of oaths and threats, believing that some domestic traitor held the ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... the other hand, possibly Nat may have been seized with a sudden desire to tease his comrades in return for many a practical joke of which ...
— Pathfinder - or, The Missing Tenderfoot • Alan Douglas
... beautiful woman, the slave of his mysterious lady-love, and she promises him speedy fulfilment of his wishes. Finally, close to the attainment of his end, he discovers that his beauty is a myth, the whole a practical joke perpetrated by his merry companions. So Asher ben Yehuda in quest of his mistress is led from ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... of Destiny has been written up from the beginning to the last page) it had been coming for something like six years—and now it had come. The complication was there! I looked at his unshaken solemnity with the amused pity we give the victim of a funny if somewhat ill-natured practical joke. ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... consciousness, death was never wholly out of it, and if they could be joyful with that black drop at the bottom of every cup, it was proof positive that death was not what it seemed. Otherwise there was no logic in the scheme of being, but it was a cruel fraud by the Creator upon the creature; a poor practical joke, with the laugh all on one side. He had got rid of his fear of it in that light, which seemed to have come to him before the fear left him, and he wanted her to see it in the same light, and if he died before her—But there she stopped him and protested that it ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... between the free man and the slave. But in Christian society we have always thought the gentleman a sort of joke, though I admit that in some great crusades and councils he earned the right to be called a practical joke. But we in Europe never really and at the root of our souls took aristocracy seriously. It is only an occasional non-European alien (such as Dr. Oscar Levy, the only intelligent Nietzscheite) who can even manage for a moment to take aristocracy seriously. It may be a mere patriotic bias, though ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... whose eye had grown so nice and critical that she could refuse the suit of many who from their wealth and position thought it impossible to sue in vain, could never look upon this Western giant in a way other than she proposed,—the ridiculous subject of a practical joke. True, he had proved himself no fool in their table-talk, but mere intellectuality and moral excellence counted for little in De Forrest's estimation when not combined with wealth and external elegance. ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... practical joke that did not please me, as it smacked of distrust and defiance. It took place on the same day upon which I had liberated the slave-hunter's people, and engaged them ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... suddenly recollected that he had a commission of a very important nature in the Rue J. J. Rousseau. This was—to buy a monkey. "It is for Wormwood," said he, "who has written me a long letter, describing its' qualities and qualifications. I suppose he wants it for some practical joke—some embodied bitterness—God forbid I should thwart him in ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... man who had robbed Tom and later tried to repay him for playing what appeared to be a practical joke on the robber, did not trouble the Swift premises with his presence before morning. Koku, thrusting Eradicate Sampson aside and striding to his bedroom to report this fact, was what awoke ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Locomotive - or, Two Miles a Minute on the Rails • Victor Appleton
... ever gave true evidence, it was certain that this man by my side, with a face so refined and ingenuous, was no party to any scheme of crime or outrage. Then it occurred to me to question if I might not be the butt of some elaborate practical joke on the part of friends who had somehow learned the secret of my underground chamber and taken this means of impressing me with the peril of mesmeric experiments. There were great difficulties in the way of this theory; Sawyer would never ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... these accusations. But may I suggest it would be most unfortunate if we had to adjourn this disagreeable question again? (Hear, hear.) I imagine it can be very easily terminated to-night. We are all ready, I am sure, to make allowance for a gentleman who is suffering from the irritation of a practical joke. His questions were undoubtedly offensively put, and Mr Railsford, as I say, was entitled to refuse to answer them. But I ask him, in order to close this painful controversy finally, to allow me as chairman of this meeting, to repeat those questions myself, ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... skeptically still. "In the middle of New York State? And I alone can help him? You sound more and more as if you were playing a rather elaborate and not very funny practical joke. I've driven sixty miles to get here. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... fact, meditating a practical joke as he hurried on his sick call this hot summer's night. His eyes were twinkling, and his lips occasionally relaxed into a smile as he considered the details of this piece of drollery. Once he ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... reign of Henry VII. or there-abouts, we come across the curious ballad of 'The Felon Sow of Rokeby and the Freres of Richmond' quoted from an old manuscript by Sir Walter Scott in 'Rokeby.' It may have been as a practical joke, or merely as a good way of getting rid of such a terrible ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... Amy did not come; nor Joseph, with whom he had quarrelled and with whom he meant to settle his difference as soon as he could get about; nor O'Bannon, whose practical joke had indirectly led to the whole trouble; nor Peter, who toiled on at his ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... made no reply. It was easy to divine the conflict that was raging in his mind, between the hope that the news was true and the fear of being made the victim of a practical joke. "Come, my friend," he said at last, "do you want to poke fun at me? That wouldn't be polite. A debtor is always sacred, and I owe you twenty-five louis. This is scarcely the time to talk of millions. My relatives have cut off my supplies; and my creditors ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... assured him with utmost confidence that the testing of his horsemanship by means of Rocket had been intended only as a practical joke, and that Gowan would never have permitted him to mount the horse had he considered it at all dangerous. Yet the fellow might next undertake jokes containing no element of physical peril and consequently all the more ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... played a practical joke on you. The Green Lady is Glencardine's favourite spectre, ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... lived on his income at Vouvray (Touraine), about 1821; a cunning countryman, father of a marriageable daughter named Claire; was challenged by Felix Gaudissart in 1831, for having played a practical joke on that illustrious traveling merchant, and fought a bloodless pistol ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... Obviously, since her one practical joke costs her her life, the bee can have but small sense of humour; but her fundamentally dismal and ungracious outlook on life impressed me beyond words. She had paralysed locomotion, wiped out trade, social intercourse, mutual trust, ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... everything and was, in truth, the good angel of the boys. He had a warm heart, was a genuine friend, and would have shed his last drop of blood for them; but Terrence was, after all, a young scamp, whose dearest friend was not free from a practical joke. His jokes often became serious affairs and involved himself as well as friends in trouble, though he never ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... results. That very night we were jerked from a sound sleep by a tremendous roar almost in camp. So close was it that it seemed to each of us but just outside the tent. We came up all standing. The lion, apparently, was content with that practical joke, for he moved off quietly. Next morning we found where the tracks had led down to water, not ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... pleasant companions than the Russians," Mr. Robson said. "They more closely resemble the Irish than any people I know. They have a wonderful fund of spirits, enjoy a practical joke, are fond of sport, and have too a sympathetic, and one may almost say a melancholy vein in their disposition, just as the Irish have. They have their faults, of course—all of us have; and the virtue of temperance has not as yet made much way here. Society, in fact, ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... just then of the coins; or did he have some knowledge of the practical joke that had been played on old ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... gone to Brussels now to work honestly, it is for the first time in his life. He lives on the hope of getting money out of an uncle in England—that I know, for he boasts of it to everybody. It is just like him to play a practical joke on strangers. No doubt you have paid him already—n'est-ce pas? I thought as much. Well, never mind! My rooms are next door. I am Elise Delaunay. I work in Taranne's atelier. I am an artist, pure and simple, and I live to please myself and nobody else. But ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Woodrow Wilson, toward the preferential choice, Martine? Would the vote at the election be considered as having the full virtue and vigour of a solemn referendum or was it to be considered as Senator Smith would have it, a sort of practical joke perpetrated upon the electors? Soon the opinion of the people of the state began to express itself in no uncertain way, demanding the carrying out of the "solemn covenant" of the election, only to be answered by the challenge of Senator Smith and his friends to enter ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... them?' asked Raphael, throwing on his pelisse. 'Because, if it has really come to a practical joke of that kind, I shall have the greatest pleasure in employing a counter-irritant. Here, boy! ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... Duchesse, you have the character of being somewhat inconsiderate at times, and, as I am clothed in a sober, solemn character, a jest or practical joke ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... was literally true. The victim of Tobe Cullum's disastrous practical joke had become on a sudden case-hardened, as it were. The consumptive pallor had miraculously disappeared from his cheeks and the homesick look from his eyes. He bore the merciless chaffing at Bishop's with devil-may-care good-nature, and ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... scarcely proceeded a dozen yards before it disappeared. He reached the summer-house—it was empty; he followed the line of hedge—no one was there. It could not have been her, or she would have waited, unless he were the victim of a practical joke. He turned impatiently back to the house, reentered the drawing-room by the French window, and was crossing the half-lit apartment, when he heard a slight rustle in the shadow of the window. He looked around quickly, ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... who, although dedicated to sex, were sexually cancelled by repeated use, like postage-stamps on a much re-directed letter, who efficiently went through the form of passion, yet presented it so empty of all exaltation that their lovers left them feeling as if they were victims of a practical joke. ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... good humoredly, that "a Creator who could fool around with them in that style was above being interfered with by prayer." At first the calamity had been a thing to fight against; then it became a practical joke, the sting of which was lost in the victims' power of endurance and assumed ignorance of its purport. There was something almost pathetic in their attempts ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... "I am alone, he is not here! I shall have time to recover, and then I can return; I am so frightened—I ought not to have come. Perhaps the ladies of the court have arranged this practical joke at my expense. Yes, that is it. It was folly to believe he would dare to ask me to meet him; he is too timid—too humble. Yes, it is a trap laid for me, and I have ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... nearly two thousand years since Christianity began its work, and it is still unaccomplished. Do you know, I sometimes think that all this talk of virtue, and teaching of religion, is a kind of practical joke, gravely kept up to find a church parade of respectability for States, a profession for hundreds, and a means of influencing men by making a tender point in their nervous system to be touched, as with a rod, when necessary—a rod that is held over ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... muscular, neat, clean to the marrow. A judge of the effect of clothes, frugal in food and regular only in habits. With brains enough in his head for twenty men all pulling different ways. A man not bad—a practical joke in earnest." ...
— The Story of the First Trans-Continental Railroad - Its Projectors, Construction and History • W. F. Bailey
... a loud imprecation, and his companions, thronging to the window, were all fiercely incensed at the sight which greeted their eyes. For the famous seven sisters were perpetrating something of a practical joke; they were leaving the castle in a boat, and on perceiving the men's faces at the windows they gave vent to a loud laugh of disdain. Hardly had the angry suitors realized that they were the butt of the ladies' ridicule when they were seized with consternation. ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... did it. It's a silly kind of practical joke, and I know none of the maids would have dared, ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... had gone to stay with Froude in a remote corner of Wales; and wishing to refer to the draft, telegraphed to the Recorder of London: 'Send Homicide Bill.' The official to whom this message had to be sent at some distance from the house declined to receive it. If not a coarse practical joke, he thought it was a request to forward into that peaceful region a wretch whose nickname was too clearly ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... undergo ablution (an operation by the way, that they do not seem altogether to enjoy), to wash the dirt and gum from their fleeces. On such occasions, it is regarded as a lawful thing, a standing and ancient practical joke, to pitch any outsider, who may happen to indulge his curiosity by stopping to look on, into the stream. If he is verdant, he will be very likely to be inveigled into the yard, and in an unguarded moment, be ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... necessary pruning. They're the strictest Socialists that could be imagined. They instinctively have all the principles of a trade union about them. On the whole, it's good for Maudie to be restrained. A little innocent practical joke will do her no harm for once. She must be able to take her share of teasing. Humour is her ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... that as your punishment, for no other punishment will I give you, except to ask you not to play that kind of practical joke again.' ...
— Hollyhock - A Spirit of Mischief • L. T. Meade
... which she had been purposely placed to secure her for a time) three feet ten inches in height. Knowing my pig's excellent temper, even when she has young pigs, and when domestic sows are always most savage, I was once guilty of a practical joke. I got a blacksmith who was quite ignorant of even the existence of my pig, to 'come and ring a pig.' The stye being under a building, he had to enter it at a low door, which was some distance from the ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... these at such a distance from the pavement that while they were absorbed in getting it off a gentleman who happened to be passing had his hat suddenly removed. This accident convulsed everybody but Bess, who in great embarrassment tried to explain that it was not intended for a practical joke. Finally it was caught and broken by the angry driver of a market wagon. Carl, who disliked to give anything up, had ever since been trying to think of ...
— The Story of the Big Front Door • Mary Finley Leonard
... was hung around the neck of the winner of the last prize. A shout of laughter and a round of applause greeted the presentation of the medal. Laud did not know whether to smile or get mad; for he felt like the victim of a practical joke. Miss Nellie Patterdale stood near him, and perhaps her presence restrained an outburst of anger. Mr. Montague, the father of the commodore, had provided a bountiful collation in the cabin of the Penobscot, and the next half hour was given up ...
— The Yacht Club - or The Young Boat-Builder • Oliver Optic
... his friends with a level gaze. He had not expected this so soon after what had been told him. He was not one to be very much interested in the practical joke or the surprise, but this pleased him—the sudden realization that he was free. Still, he had anticipated it so long that the charm of it had been discounted to a certain extent. He had been unhappy here, and he had not. The shame and humiliation of it, to begin with, had been much. Latterly, as ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... quietly to sleep as soon as childhood is over from mere want of opportunity. The boy who wants to trip up his tutor can easily find a string to tie across the garden walk; but when one has got beyond the simpler joys of childhood strings are not so easy to find. To carry out a practical joke of the Christopher Sly sort we require, as Shakespere saw, the resources of a prince. But once grant possession of unlimited wealth, and the possibilities of mischief rise to a grandeur such as the world has never realized. ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... she confined her worship to his talent, and merely patronized the man. Either from sheer mischievousness, or to revenge herself for some real or fancied slight—perhaps, indeed, to mock at his talk of refinement—she perpetrated upon him the practical joke of getting her Irish governess, a Miss Patrickson, to send him notes in English, signed Lady Neville, in one of which an appointment was made to meet him at the Opera. He went to the rendezvous; but no one was there waiting for him. This drew from him a sharp letter of reproach; and Miss Patrickson, ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... to take the affair as a practical joke, but Peter Winn, after an examination of the pigeon, ...
— The Night-Born • Jack London
... minister and editor, A.J. McKelway, who on this occasion and others wrote articles in the Independent and the Outlook justifying the proceedings. Said he: "It is difficult to speak of the Red Shirts without a smile. They victimized the Negroes with a huge practical joke.... A dozen men would meet at a crossroad, on horseback, clad in red shirts or calico, flannel or silk, according to the taste of the owner and the enthusiasm of his womankind. They would gallop through the country, and the Negro would quietly make up his mind that his interest in political ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... subsist on the food which the Boche had left behind him when he fled. Finally, when all our plans were complete, we were notified that the point of attack had been shifted to N——, a village about four miles away. This practical joke we thought in extremely bad taste, but there was nothing for it but to pack up and move as quickly as possible. We learned that our troops at N—— had tried twice to break through the German lines by bombing. A third ...
— Life in a Tank • Richard Haigh
... the city is exalted to the skies! Gen. Lee telegraphed that the enemy had disappeared from his front, probably meditating a design to cross at some other place. Such were his words, which approach nearer to a practical joke, and an inkling of exultation, than anything I have seen from his pen. He has saved the capital. Before the enemy could approach Richmond from "some other place;" Lee would be between him and the city, and if he could beat him ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... Dunnerwust, when they crawled into bed with the lobsters, which they thought were centipedes. It had been one of the funniest incidents of the Fardale days, for both thought they were poisoned by the bites of the creatures, and that they would surely die. The whole thing had been a practical joke, in which Frank had played a prominent part. And now Barney, the mischievous, the loyal, ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... is characteristic of Rossetti, and though I do not at the moment remember to have met with the passage elsewhere, I doubt not it is a quotation. That quotation marks are employed is not in itself evidence of much moment, for Rossetti had Coleridge's enjoyment of a literary practical joke, and on one occasion prefixed to a story in manuscript a long passage on noses purporting to be from Tristram Shandy, but which is certainly ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... A fresh practical joke now occurred to the duke. He had asked for crawfish for his breakfast on the following morning; he intended to pass the day in making a small gallows and hang one of the finest of these fish in the middle of his room—the red color evidently conveying an allusion to the cardinal—so that ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... purpose. The two ladies were placed side by side at table, and the benevolent artist rejoiced to perceive, from the flow of talk, that they were mutually pleased. The next day, to his astonishment, his friend called on him in a state of great indignation, believing herself the victim of a practical joke. "How could you do so?" said she. "You knew that I did not want to know that Mrs. Somerville; I wanted to know the astronomer: that lady talked of the theatre, the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... Ramball's bald head, but he said it was all a "jolly lark;" and then for want of something else to say to express how he was enjoying himself, he made the same remark again, and then laughed aloud. But it was the same sort of laugh as would be uttered by the victim of a practical joke who has suddenly sat down upon ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... simply a practical joke," announced Captain Dale, after a few more words with Stowell. "Have you ...
— The Rover Boys in the Land of Luck - Stirring Adventures in the Oil Fields • Edward Stratemeyer
... that this paper was a practical joke." Then it burst all of a sudden on Stephen. And all this about "Mr Finis", "Oh, ah," and the rest of it had been a cruel hoax, ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... effect of moonlit mist—a shepherd boy bent on a practical joke—a gleam of white waterfall among the darkening rocks? What had she heard? The evening greeting of a passer-by, wafted down to her from some higher path along the fell? distant voices in the farm enclosures beneath her feet? or simply the eerie sounds of the mountain, those weird ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... he is at his whimsical best when he sees himself in a ridiculous light. Lord Kitchener, one of the grimmest warriors ever to serve the British Empire, warmed to the man who made him the butt of a practical joke. There is the unforgettable picture of Admiral Beatty at Jutland. The Indefatigable has disappeared beneath the waves. The Queen Mary had exploded. The Lion was in flames. Then word came that the Princess Royal was blown ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... told her that Terry was holding himself in; that some latent fierceness and iron force in him had emerged into life; and that he meant to have revenge on Constantine Jopp one way or another, and that soon; for she had heard the rumour flying through the hall that her cousin was the cause of the practical joke just played. From hints she had had from Constantine that very day she knew that the rumour was the truth; and she recalled now with shrinking dislike the grimace accompanying the suggestion. She had not resented it then, being herself angry with ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... was such an unexpected and spontaneous feat that his thoughts went wandering again, and he looked at the barrel in a puzzled and aggrieved sort of way, as if he half suspected it of having played him some sort of practical joke. ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie
... angry at the idea of a negro servant playing such a practical joke. I was paying 10 pounds sterling for a thirty-six hour's passage; and as I always treated everybody courteously, it was quite uncalled for and unprovoked. I thought it exceedingly impertinent, and told the captain so. Nevertheless he did not trouble to inquire ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... and of which she by no means understood the danger. She blushed once at finding that she had called him Bertie and, on the same day, only barely remembered her position in time to check herself from playing upon him some personal practical joke to which ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... the passionate moment arrives, is all that Mr. ALEXANDER has to do; but this he does admirably, never under-acting, never over-acting, always as natural as a quiet gentleman, of a peculiarly romantic turn of mind, yet with a keen but chastened appreciation of a practical joke, kept all to himself for five months, should be. Had he been compelled by circumstances to sustain the alias, and to continue playing the part of a Burchell in GOLDSMITH's Vicar of Wakefield for one month longer, could he have done it? However, as the piece ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 7, 1893 • Various
... of note has termed the "maximum and minimum" clause as "the highest practical joke of the whole bill." Little has been said of this clause except in connection with the "minimum." It must be remembered that there is also a "maximum," and it does not augur well for the consumer. Suppose a foreign nation discriminates against our goods; we, acting ...
— History of the United States, Volume 6 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... classrooms, and not scruple to administer sharp rebukes to a teacher whose pupils were disorderly, the effect of this naturally being to make confusion worse confounded. The boys of course hated her with the hatred of which schoolboys alone are capable, and many a practical joke was played at her expense, not, however, with impunity. Still more pronounced, if possible, was the animus entertained against Mrs. Tootle's offspring, and it was upon the head of Master Felix that ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... rule in Ireland by repealing the Act prohibiting the importation of arms, and that there was therefore nothing illegal in what he was doing. But he resigned his secretaryship, which he felt might hamper future transactions of the same kind. The advertisement was no doubt half bravado and half practical joke; he wanted to see whether it would attract notice, and if anything would come of it. But it had also an ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... age Hans was sent to a cloth-weaving factory, where he earned a small weekly wage. The weavers soon discovered that Hans could sing, and the men frequently made him amuse them, while the other boys were made to do his work. One day the weavers played a coarse practical joke on poor sensitive Hans, which sent him flying home in such deep distress that his mother said he should not again return ...
— Denmark • M. Pearson Thomson
... full-blooded Indians had ever ventured on a journey to it. This was rather too much, even for us, sanguine and confiding as we were. We shared a common suspicion that the Cura had changed his tactics, and resolved to play a practical joke upon our credulity—to send us on a fool's errand and laugh at us for our pains. That he had been tampering with the two guides for this purpose, struck us forcibly; for while he professed never to have known any man who had seen the distant city, he recommended these Meztitzos, as brothers, whom ...
— Memoir of an Eventful Expedition in Central America • Pedro Velasquez
... over the slick surface of the jar two or three times, but couldn't find any way to reach the tempting nuts. He stopped and thought about the situation a while, then it seemed to dawn on him that he was the victim of a practical joke. All at once he jumped on the Chief's hand, buried his teeth in his thumb, then hopped to a lumber pile and waited for developments. He got the nuts, jar and all, right at his head. He side-stepped the assault and gloated over his store of pinons ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith
... not gods, who were they? Would any human beings in their senses venture among such people as the Children of the Mist, merely to play off a huge practical joke of which the finale was likely to be so serious to themselves? The idea was preposterous, since they had nothing to gain by so doing, for Nam, it may be observed, was ignorant of the value of rubies, which to him were only emblems employed in their symbolical ceremonies. ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... unless he should feel strongly impelled to go, it was with the mental reservation that he did feel very much in that humor, and, unknown to Mazaro, should thither repair, if only to see whether some of those deep old fellows were not contriving a practical joke. ...
— Old Creole Days • George Washington Cable
... Probably it was a silly practical joke some one wanted to play on me. There are lots quite capable of it, on board! Antoun Effendi said the sunrise was much finer really, from on top of the great sandhill, so we climbed up. And it came out that he hadn't asked me to meet him ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... "Well," you say, "of course it is. It couldn't be otherwise. If it were otherwise it would be ridiculous. A man who made love as though he were preaching a sermon, or a man who preached a sermon as though he were teasing schoolboys, or a man who described a death as though he were describing a practical joke, must necessarily be either an ass or a lunatic." Just so. You have put it in a nutshell. You have disposed of the problem of style so far as it can be ...
— Literary Taste: How to Form It • Arnold Bennett
... treatment could be nothing more than a practical joke—one of those tricks played off upon raw recruits, to teach them the necessity of vigilance, and a nice observance of the rules of the service. When he was overpowered, therefore, he submitted to his fate, whatever it might prove to be, hoping his captors would ...
— In School and Out - or, The Conquest of Richard Grant. • Oliver Optic
... did the next day) he quite recovered his good humour, and, I believe, even chuckled inwardly at the episode. The Babbicombe Independent had an amusing paragraph upon the incident, and opined that some drunken sailors from one of the neighbouring ports were the perpetrators of the coarse practical joke; but we found that the general opinion among the visitors was not so wide of the truth. However, as no one cared for the lady it took less than nine days to get ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... German students. From that hour he became a citizen of the world, or, at least, of Europe, and perhaps, like the prophets, was most honoured when out of his own country. He returned to Dublin and took his degree in medicine, after playing a famous practical joke. A certain medical professor was wont to lecture in bed. One night he left town unexpectedly. Lever, by chance, came early to lecture, found the Professor absent, slipped into his bed, put on his nightcap, and took the class himself. On another day he was ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... the 30th of May 1884, London had been startled and shocked by an explosion of dynamite in St. James's Square, which shattered many houses and inflicted cruel injuries upon several innocent people. It was not so fatal to life as that explosion at the Salford Barracks, which Mr. Parnell treated as a "practical joke." But it excited lively indignation on both sides of the Atlantic, and Mr. Bayard, who at that time was a Senator of the United States, sternly denounced it and its authors on the floor of the American Senate. What he had said as a Senator he thought it right to repeat as ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... on ordinary occasions when his bowling proved expensive. Yesterday's performance, however, stood in a class by itself. It stood forth without disguise as a deliberate rag. One side does not keep another in the field the whole day in a one-day match except as a grisly kind of practical joke. And Mr. Downing and his house realised this. The house's way of signifying its comprehension of the fact was to be cold and distant as far as the seniors were concerned, and abusive and pugnacious as regards the juniors. Young blood ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... good sized fortune inherited from his father, a retired Confectioner, and he was impatiently waiting for the advent of the Republic to secure a political position deserved by so many revolutionary libations. On the fourth of September, possibly as a result of a practical joke, he had thought that he had been appointed Prefect, but when he wanted to take up his duties, the clerk, who had remained in charge of the office, refused to recognize him, which compelled him to retire. A very good natured chap, and moreover inoffensive and serviable, ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... briefly stated by the chronicler. After getting them interested in his photos he confessed frankly that he was an old friend of the family from Oxford. He said that he and Miss Kathleen were planning an innocent practical joke on the family, and asked if he could take the place of one of the servants for that Sunday. He made plain that his share in the joke must not be revealed to any one. And then he played his trump card by showing them the text of the bogus telegram recommending Miss Eliza ...
— Kathleen • Christopher Morley
... the Chapel Royal, St. James's. The pistol missed fire, and the man who presented it, a hunchback, was seized by a boy of sixteen called Dasset. So ridiculous did the group seem, that the very policemen pushed away both captor and captive as actors in a bad practical joke. Then the boy Dasset, who retained the pistol, was in danger of being taken up as the real culprit, trying to throw the blame upon another. At last several witnesses proved the true state of the case. ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... little cough, which struck him as mighty familiar. Their old enemy, Ted Shafter, had an odd way of making such a sound; and there were those who said it was caused by smoking so many cigarettes. Did this cigarette cough mean that Ted and his two cronies were coming to play a practical joke on the campers ...
— The Strange Cabin on Catamount Island • Lawrence J. Leslie
... Karl Maria's indignation burst over bounds at some unusual indignity; and he played a practical joke on the king. Meeting an old woman in the palace one day near the door of the royal sanctum, she asked him where she could find the court-washerwoman. "There," said the reckless Weber, pointing to the door of the king's cabinet. The king, who hated old women, was in a transport of rage, and, on ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... of the sails were hauled in and made fast, and one or two were reefed up close, and the big chimney swayed, and the threatening clouds drifted forwards at a different pace from our own, till my very fingers felt giddy with unrest; but not another practical joke did I suffer from that day, for every man's hand was needed ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... satisfied with his own mental condition, and so utterly unconscious of his short-comings in point of intellect, that he could not have treated an educational scheme of which he was himself to be the subject as anything but an amiable lunacy on Jack's part, or at the worst, as a practical joke. Jack was good company; that was with him the chief consideration; his madness was harmless and had the advantage of being entertaining; he was moreover at heart a good fellow, and the stanchest and most loyal of friends. Harry was often heard to express the most ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... this that old Mr. Bowdoin came down town, one morning, in a particularly good humor. To begin with, he had effected with unusual success a practical joke on his auguster spouse. Then, he had gone home the night before with a bad cold; but (having given a family dinner in celebration of his wife's birthday and the return to Boston of his grandson Harley, and confined himself religiously to dry champagne) he had ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... for curiosity," said McElvina, continuing his mirth. The proprietor of the dog, a young Frenchman, dressed very much "en calicot," did not, however, seem quite so much amused with this practical joke; he cocked his hat fiercely on one side, raised his figure to the utmost of its height, and walking up, en grand militaire addressed McElvina, with "Comment, monsieur, vous avez fait une grande ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... safe to presume upon the timidity or ignorance of folks. The most demure may be the most courageous. A gentleman who attempted to play a practical joke in order to test the courage of a servant, was nonplused in a very unexpected way. Here is ...
— Toasts - and Forms of Public Address for Those Who Wish to Say - the Right Thing in the Right Way • William Pittenger
... savages. At least the animals do not make the innocent suffer for the guilty, and give their lives unjustly. Should a soko try to take another's wife he is publicly punished by the tribe. These animals have a great sense of humour and fully enjoy a practical joke. Strangely enough, they never attack women and children, but if any man approaches them with a spear or gun, they try to rush upon him, often at the expense of their own life, and wrest the weapon from him. Most of them are exceedingly kind and civilised in their actions, and natives always say, ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... brought home to him, and the president, who had laughed in his sleeve at the practical joke, looked very grave at the falsehood; Rustication was talked of and even Expulsion. Then Wardlaw came sorrowfully to Penfold, and said to him, "I must have been awfully cut, for I don't remember all that; I had ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... living at Cross Street, Croydon, has been made the victim of what must be regarded as a peculiarly revolting practical joke, unless some more sinister meaning should prove to be attached to the incident. At two o'clock yesterday afternoon a small packet, wrapped in brown paper, was handed in by the postman. A cardboard box was inside, which was filled with coarse salt. On emptying this, Miss ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... girl. "Okay, Jan. Now, to carry on where Scotty left off, if we assume the ghost is man-caused, we have to assume it isn't a practical joke, or that ...
— The Blue Ghost Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... deduction, superimposing surmise upon suspicion and suspicion in turn upon premise and fact, I am forced, against my very will, to conclude that, forgetting the dignity due one in my position, some person or persons to me unknown made a partially successful attempt to enact a practical joke of the most unpardonable character, having for a chosen victim none other than myself. I say partially successful, because at the moment when the plot approached its climax a subtle inner sense warned me to have a care and I refused to proceed farther, thus robbing ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... legerdemain; prestigiation^, prestidigitation; magic &c 992; conjuring, conjuration; hocus-pocus, escamoterie^, jockeyship^; trickery, coggery^, chicanery; supercherie^, cozenage^, circumvention, ingannation^, collusion; treachery &c 940; practical joke. trick, cheat, wile, blind, feint, plant, bubble, fetch, catch, chicane, juggle, reach, hocus, bite; card sharping, stacked deck, loaded dice, quick shuffle, double dealing, dealing seconds, dealing ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... direction from which it had come. He had not gone far before he heard the rapid galloping of a horse, apparently going in the direction of Wakulla. Although he fired his own rifle repeatedly, he got no response, and he finally concluded that Mark was playing a practical joke, and had ridden home after firing his gun without waiting for him. Thus thinking, he turned his own horse's head towards home, and an hour ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe
... send them immediate relief in bread, wine, and doctors. The gay, good-natured, thoughtless lad no mere harboured malice for the chastisement than if his tutor had caught him idling; but things went deeper with Malcolm. True, he had undergone many a brutal jest and cruel practical joke from his cousins; but that was all in the family, not like a blow from an alien king, and one not apologized for, but followed up by a rebuke that seemed to him unjust, lowering him in his own eyes and those of Esclairmonde, and making ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... hand as he passed out, but she snatched it away. "Uncle," she said, coming directly to him, "can it be that you sanction anything so wicked as this? It seems as if you and aunt were permitting my cousin to put upon me a cruel practical joke." ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... fond of practical jokes," he said, "and this I suppose is my last grand practical joke. But I want you to understand that the joke is really practical. I flatter myself it will be of very practical use to the cause of progress and common sense, and the killing of such superstitions everywhere. ...
— The Trees of Pride • G.K. Chesterton
... Madame Hanska. In his pride and satisfaction, he showed it to many friends, Madame Carraud being among the number; but she, with her usual rather provoking common-sense, refused to share his enthusiasm, and suggested that it might have been written as a practical joke. To this insinuation Balzac gave no credence; he naturally found it easy to believe in one more enthusiastic foreign admirer, and he was seriously troubled by the fact that the first dizain of the "Contes Drolatiques," which certainly would ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... is most amusing," declared the bright little woman. "He's always playing some practical joke or other. After dinner he is usually the life and ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... confectioner, and he looked forward with impatience to the Republic, when he should obtain the well-merited reward for so many revolutionary draughts. On the Fourth of September—probably through some practical joke—he understood that he had been appointed prefect, but on attempting to enter upon his duties the clerks, who had remained sole masters of the offices, refused to recognize him, and he was constrained to retire. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... call to mind any instance which would convey some notion of the Indian's aptness in this line, and yet not involve myself, but I cannot. I would say, in a general way, that the Indian is a plausible being, and one needs to be wary with him, and not too loth to suspect him of meditating some dire practical joke, which shall issue in the utter confusion and discomfiture of its victim, whilst its author shall appropriate the main comfort and jubilation. Though the Indian, perhaps, does not conceive these in the determinedly hostile ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... Pablo was so furious that he spoke seriously of challenging Auguste to a duel to the death, and it required a stern order from the countess to make him give up his bloodthirsty design and Auguste his practical joke. ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... of the adventure from the lips of the heroine herself, and she got many presents from her numerous visitors; in the third place, the Council of Ten offered a reward of five hundred ducats to any person giving such information as would lead to the arrest of the perpetrators of the practical joke, even if the informer belonged to the band, provided ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... there was no one in the verandah, and I couldn't wait. Of course you know what's in the wind. The Colonel came on that advertisement of yours in 'The Pioneer' just before tiffin, and you should have heard him swear! He showed it to Major Wyndham, and asked: 'Was it a practical joke?' But the Major seemed quite cut up; said he knew nothing about it, and you would probably have good reasons to give. The rest didn't take it so quietly; but of course I understood at once. For God's sake, old chap, cancel that confounded advertisement, and take back your eight hundred. ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... practical joke in which Richard Harris Barham (better known by his nom-de-plume of Thomas Ingoldsby) ever personally engaged, was enacted when he was a boy at Canterbury. In company with a schoolfellow, D——, now a gallant major, he entered ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... himself, to disturb the course of ministerial negotiations, and to spread confusion through the political circles. He does not himself pretend that, on these occasions, he was actuated by public spirit; nor does he appear to have had any private advantage in view. He thought it a good practical joke to set public men together by the ears; and he enjoyed their perplexities, their accusations, and their recriminations, as a malicious boy enjoys the embarrassment ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... made it likely that he was the "Man in the Red Tie" whom we remember at the Oxford Commemoration some thirty years ago. In short, he was the very embodiment of all that was most abhorrent to the old traditions of the schoolmaster's profession; and proportionately great was the appositeness of a practical joke which was played me on my second or third morning at Lyonness. I was told to go for my mathematical lesson to Mr. Rhomboid, who tenanted a room in the Old School. Next door to his room was Mr. Grey's, ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... from neighboring farms drove up to the Schmidt homestead and asked Fritz to join them in a hunt for "Elbadritchels," he unhesitatingly agreed to make one of the number, unaware that he had been selected as the victim of a practical joke, and, as usual, was one of the jolliest of the crowd. They drove through a blinding downpour of rain and dismounted on reaching a lonely hill about three miles distant. They gave Fritz a bag to hold. It was fashioned of burlap ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas
... devil do you tell me such lies?" exclaimed the young man in a fury; "it's some d——d practical joke in the most infernal bad taste, and, by God! I have ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... office, and again peered sharply in at Sam Pickering. His first wild thought was that Sam had descended to a practical joke. If so it was a tasteless proceeding. But he must be game. It was surely a joke, and Sam and the others in the office would be watching him for signs of anguish. His machine steadily clicked off the item. ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... typifies Childe Harold in the symphony of that name. But Berlioz carried his idea to extremes, and fairly earned the half-reproach of Wagner, who said of him: "He ciphers with notes." That Berlioz could write with more direct beauty is shown by his practical joke at the expense of the critics; for he pretended to unearth an old piece by a certain Pierre Ducre, which they praised greatly in contrast with his own works, and after they had done their worst, Berlioz proved that he himself was the ...
— Woman's Work in Music • Arthur Elson
... had not moved the shadows three inches before Jim had reached the conclusion that this world was all a practical joke, of so low an order that no sensible man would even laugh at it, and he drew a letter from his pocket in proof thereof. It was a thin letter, written on delicate paper in a delicate hand, and it showed much wear. He read for ...
— The Mascot of Sweet Briar Gulch • Henry Wallace Phillips
... of dust when he first landed at Farnham Hall. It didn't take him long to get arrested as a highwayman, and right on top of that I had to kill a fine horse in order to keep the horse from killing Sparkfair. He's as full of queer quirks and unexpected moves as an egg is full of meat. If there's a practical joke perpetrated, I generally look for Sparkfair at the bottom of it. About nine times out of ten I find him there. Still, he's not malicious, and in a case of emergency I believe I can depend upon him to be on the right side. For instance, when the boys started a rebellion against manual labor Sparkfair ...
— Frank Merriwell's Son - A Chip Off the Old Block • Burt L. Standish
... fourth Act. How is the joke of the Host against Dr. Caius and Sir Hugh Evans avenged? Is this reference to the "three Cozen Jermans" that are said to run away with the Host's horses, liklier to be an allusion seriously made to a real event or to make use of it as an entirely fictitious intrigue and practical joke in the Play? Is this mock happening such as could be clear by the method of enacting it and one entirely consonant with this Comedy as a farce-mosaic of laughable tricks? (See pp. 120-121, 179-180, also Note on IV. iii. 6). Discuss probabilities. ...
— Shakespeare Study Programs; The Comedies • Charlotte Porter and Helen A. Clarke
... the "live wire octette"—even Timothy and Libbie—were highly delighted by the outcome of Tommy's joke. For, if there is fun in such a practical joke as Tommy had tried to carry through, they thought there was double fun in seeing ...
— Betty Gordon at Mountain Camp • Alice B. Emerson
... unhappy Baron walked on, as a merchant walks on the day before he stops payment; he was lost in conjectures as to the reasons of the depravity buried in the depths of Valerie's heart, and still believed himself the victim of some practical joke. As they crossed the Pont Royal, life seemed to him so blank, so utterly a void, and so out of joint from his financial difficulties, that he was within an ace of yielding to the evil prompting that bid him fling Crevel into the river and ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... it," he said; "that is my own home, and I am too well known there to merit suspicion. It must have been meant for a practical joke," and the detective's thoughts were turned to ...
— Dyke Darrel the Railroad Detective - Or, The Crime of the Midnight Express • Frank Pinkerton
... or sat in the hedges, quietly sharing out their breakfasts; and one and all, as the Sheriff rode in through the gap on his grey horse, greeted him with laughter, as a set of children might laugh over an innocent practical joke. ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... a word of explanation to him his bonds were removed and he was put in an automobile and carried off to rejoin the other members of the unlucky sightseeing party. He never did find out whether he had been made the butt of a hideous practical joke by a half-mad brute or whether his tormentor really meant to send him to death and was deterred at the last moment by fear of the consequences. One thing he did learn—there had been no court-martial. Thereafter, during his captivity, Stevens was treated with the utmost kindness by all the officers ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... bit his nails. He was a lean creature, unshaven and sidelong, and he had the furtive and self-conscious air of one who perpetrates a practical joke. Miss Gregory watched him with some impatience; she had yet to learn that a Portugee of the Coast will even lose money to inconvenience ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... victim of a practical joke, I sprang out and brought my fish-pole down on what I supposed to be the head of a fellow disguised in a big overcoat. There was a roar that was plainly heard for miles, and a monster ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... which expresses a hope that the ball will be a success, and reiterates the regret of her Highness that she could not be present. Luckily this communication has not been shown to the Duchess. I told the Duke, who read it to me, knowing I had been with you all the evening, that it was likely a practical joke on the part of the Prince; but the Duke, who is rather a serious person, does not take kindly to that theory, and if he knew the Prince he would dismiss it as absurd—which it is. I have asked him not to show the telegram to anyone, so there is ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... to a practical joke!" I thought, and a bitter feeling of disappointment assailed me, as I asked myself why I had not gone in the second boat to help save ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... Folks considered it only another odd fad on the part of the deacon. They prophesied that he would sooner or later he sorry for having anything to do with such a good-for-nothing scapegrace as Nick Lang, who would not hesitate to play some nasty practical joke on his benefactor when the notion seized him and he had grown ...
— The Chums of Scranton High at Ice Hockey • Donald Ferguson
... very obvious practical joke," he said angrily. "It seems a pity that I should have been compelled to ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the mountain's top got farther and farther away. But Cody, who had scaled not only its summit, but the flagpole that tipped it, knew its habit of piling one small hill up behind the other, as though, like a grotesque Gulliver playing a practical joke, it delighted in fatiguing and disappointing the Liliputians that swarmed up from its base. Crosby and Bombey and the twins, with the Misses Blind-Staggers,—blinder than ever to-day for the glare on their blue goggles,—had yielded long since. They were ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... had actually spent yesterday at the king's palace on Mount Khalak. He perceived that he must give them more definite attention than his half-idle device of the wine—intended as that had been as a mere hyperspatial practical joke, not in the least irreconcilable with ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... villain and a coward; he would have been the first to volunteer and the loudest to urge on the others, but he had heard Fatima's hoofs behind him, and knew we were safe, and, rascal that he was, could not resist his practical joke nor his negro love of ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... a foundation for the "Blithedale Romance," and caused no further injury than the loss of his money. It would have required a Thackeray to have realized and described the humorous side of it—the highly practical joke of so many well-educated and cultivated people making life unnecessarily hard ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... in business, and nobody was sorry. He enjoyed his practical joke and his glass of Madeira, which had made at least three voyages round the Cape. His temperament, like his person, was just unctuous enough to enable him to slip ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... twice over, and then the letter. No, my eyes were not playing tricks. But still, could it be some practical joke? I put the envelope to my face. Ah, it was she, it was the perfume of that flower! She had really written; she had ...
— The Other Side of the Door • Lucia Chamberlain
... narrative which has been called the Joyce- Armstrong Fragment is an elaborate practical joke evolved by some unknown person, cursed by a perverted and sinister sense of humour, has now been abandoned by all who have examined the matter. The most macabre and imaginative of plotters would hesitate before linking his morbid ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... turn to! She had tried to take counsel with Mrs. Peyton, but the beautiful woman was still, at fifty, a spoiled child, far younger in many ways than Margaret herself; she would only laugh, and advise her to get rid of Miss Sophronia by some trick, or practical joke. ...
— Margaret Montfort • Laura E. Richards
... the doctor, on the sore subject of his profession; and he plays you a practical joke, in return, with a dose of laudanum. He trusts the administration of the dose, prepared in a little phial, to Mr. Godfrey Ablewhite—who has himself confessed the share he had in the matter, under circumstances which shall presently be related to you. Mr. Godfrey is all the ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... drew a long breath, but still hoping against his better judgment that the affair was what its originators considered, a practical joke, he restrained all ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... towards her, his face a little flushed with the wine. "Gloria, with your ability as an actress we could play the biggest practical joke in the history of ...
— Mother America • Sam McClatchie
... by slow torture while I was at Atlanta, as shall be shown in the proper place; and there is no reason to suppose that the percentage at other prisons was not as large or larger. The sufferings short of death that are due to it cannot be calculated. A practical joke?—yes; but there is a practical purpose back of it. The miserable men who are practised upon by this means, helpless but hoping, are led to believe that they may buy freedom at the price of treachery to their fellows. Can it be ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... sufficiently boiled, it would be poured into a pan and put into the open air to cool. Here was an opportunity for the beaux of the village which could not be missed. They would steal, if possible, the whole, pan and all, and entail a second making on the unfortunate victims of their practical joke. ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... It can be nothing but some foolish practical joke! It consists merely of the word 'Zagazig' repeated six or seven times—which can ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... words—then he gave it up, choked out a deep, strong oath, and departed for good. Afterward I saw him several times below during the trip; but he was cold—would not look at me. Idiot, if he had not been in such a sweat to play his witless practical joke upon me, in the beginning, I would have persuaded his thoughts into some other direction, and saved him from committing that ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... courtyard, and in the distance was heard the baying of two hounds, entertaining each other with their melancholy music. The master of ceremonies began to be impatient; he thought that, the impertinent private secretary had been indulging in some practical joke or mystification at his expense; but as he drew near to the Spree, he heard the light stroke of oars in the water. Pollnitz hastened forward, and his eyes, accustomed to the darkness, discovered a skiff drawn up near ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... Mr. Elkins as the best practical joke he had ever heard of; and Cornish suggested that for a man to stop in Homeric laughter on Broadway might be pleasant for him, but was embarrassing to his companions. By this time Cornish himself was better-natured. Jim took charge of our movements, and commanded us to a dinner with ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... learn on arrival to what he had been committed; but that was for a while so much a part of his first general impression that the particular truth took time to detach itself, the first general impression demanding verily all his faculties of response. He almost felt for a day or two the victim of a practical joke, a gross abuse of confidence. He had presented himself with the moderate amount of flutter involved in a sense of due preparation; but he had then found that, however primed with prefaces and prompted with hints, he hadn't been prepared at all. How COULD he ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James |
