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More "Banter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to dismiss the girl's jealousy. His self-conceit was supreme, and had always stood him in such stead with the young ladies who, to use his own expression, were 'dead nuts on him,' that his love-making, under whatever circumstances, always took the form of genial banter de haut en bas. 'Don't be a bloomin' fool!' was the phrase he deemed of most efficacy in softening the female heart; and the result seemed to justify him, for after some half-hour's wrangling, Clem abandoned ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... in the free-traders' camp. The storm did not abate until nightfall, and during that time the men were engaged in digging their habitations clear of the snow that almost threatened to bury them. In this work, McTavish cheerfully took a hand, and, by his good-humored banter, won his way to the hearts of his fellow-toilers. Notwithstanding his industry, the Hudson Bay man kept his eye open for glimpses of Maria who, as he expected, was constantly about, now that Charles Seguis had returned. He was surprised that Seguis ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... himself with a shower of pasquinades in prose and verse. Lord Falkland has practically put himself at {82} the head of the Tory party, said Howe, and as a political opponent he shall have no mercy. A flood of Rabelaisian banter was poured upon the head of the unhappy nobleman. He was attacked in his pride, his tenderest place. It is impossible not to wish that Howe had shown more moderation. He had, of course, precedent on his side. Nothing which he wrote was so bad as the language of Queen Elizabeth to her councillors, ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... understand that it was time Hermia married. But the fact remained that Hermia had not accepted him. His insistence had always provoked and still provoked one of two moods—either resentment or mockery. She either dismissed him in a dudgeon or cajoled him with elusive banter. Why was he so impatient? There was plenty of time? Was he sure that he wanted to marry her? What did her really know about her heart of hearts? Perhaps, if he knew her better he might not want to marry her. He pleaded in patient calm. The world, it seemed, thought them engaged. ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... Comments, and sometimes might slumber, Yet the Truth they might fancy beneath all my Lumber: But your stupid Jargon is seen through instanter, And your Works give the Wits new Subjects for Banter. Such cler-obscure Aid may I meet again never! For now Milles and I will be laugh'd ...
— Cursory Observations on the Poems Attributed to Thomas Rowley (1782) • Edmond Malone
... well," said Uncle Remus, snapping his huge tongs in order to silence a persistent cricket in the chimney, "dat ef he dast ter back out fum a banter lak dat he never is ter year de las' un it fum Miss Meadows en Miss Motts en de gals, en he march off todes ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... by this exaltation of the regal aspect of her beauty, wherein she gloried. And Sperelli continued to tempt her, always in a tone of banter or entreaty, but adding to the seduction of his voice a gaze so subtle, so penetrating and disturbing that, at length, Donna Ippolita, half offended and blushing faintly, said ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... world; and they asked my opinion. I said, I should like to be 'a Pretty Woman till thirty; then, till sixty, a fortunate and skilful General;'—and not knowing what more to say, but for the sake of adding something, whatever it might be, 'a Cardinal till eighty.' The King, who likes to banter the Sacred College, made himself merry on this; and the Kaiser gave him a cheap bargain of Rome and its upholders (SUPPOTS). That supper was one of the gayest and pleasantest I have ever seen. The Two Sovereigns were without pretension and without reserve; what did not always happen on ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... the whisperings of the battle zone in France. Take a good look at him while he is quiet for ten seconds hand running. Everything about him is tremendous—except his size. He is built to withstand banter, ridicule and jollying; his sturdy nature is guaranteed proof against the battering assaults of unholy mirth from other scouts; his round face and curly hair are the delight of the girls of Bridgeboro; his loyalty is as the mighty rock ...
— Pee-wee Harris • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... while he quite recovers. When Jasper is restored, he lays a tender hand upon his nephew's shoulder, and, in a tone of voice less troubled than the purport of his words—indeed with something of raillery or banter in ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... should drive away Little sweet maidens from the play, Or love to banter and fight so well, That's the thing ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... spoke with a tinge of feeling beneath his banter—"you've added to the list to-night, and I wish you joy of your acquisition! But don't say I didn't ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... up from the company, but Betsy Dan, who cared not at all for Don's banter, contented herself with pushing out her lower lip at him with scorn, in that indescribable manner natural to girls, ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... be such as thine To stir my brain a bit. When 'round this hearth of mine Friends sit and banter wit, She'll shape a well-turned phrase, a subtle jest ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... snuggled down into a corner inside a little strip of shade, and panted like a hunted rabbit. A sickening pain throbbed up from his toe. The train moved slowly at first, and Jimmy knew that he could not hide from the train men in a coal car. On a banter from Piggy Pennington and Bud Perkins Jimmy had ridden on the brake-beam while the switch engine was pulling freight cars about the railroad yards. He had a vague idea that midway of the train, between two box cars, would be a safe place. ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... seventeenth arrondissement, and so the old friendship was picked up where it had been dropped, and the ruddy-faced agent found it both convenient and agreeable to drop in frequently at Madame Caille's on his way home, and exchange a few words of reminiscence or banter for a box of sardines or a minute package of tea. But, with the deterioration in his old friends' wares, and the almost simultaneous appearance of the Salon Malakoff, his loyalty wavered. Flique sampled the advantages ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... us, the town," says the Gentleman's Magazine for January 1752, "has been lately entertained with a kind of farcical performance, called 'The Old Woman's Oratory,' conducted by Mrs. Mary Midnight and her family, intended as a banter on Henley's Oratory, and a puff ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... in fair I 've braced me wi' pride, The bruse I hae won, and a kiss of the bride; And loud was the laughter, gay fellows among, When I utter'd my banter, or chorus'd my song. Dowie to dree are jesting and glee, When poverty parts ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... name for the last sheaf is Boba (Old Woman), answering to the Polish name Baba. The Boba is said to sit in the corn which is left standing last. The person who binds the last sheaf or digs the last potato is the subject of much banter, and receives and long retains the name of the Old Rye-woman or the Old Potato-woman. The last sheaf—the Boba—is made into the form of a woman, carried solemnly through the village on the last harvest-waggon, and drenched with ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... women; for when I ventured to ask questions about their subject their answer was—not always—but in so many cases a solemn owllike "yes-and-no" that I soon learned my place. They did not expect or want a woman to know anything and preferred light banter and persiflage. I like that, too, when it is well done; but I was accustomed to men who ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... moved to laugh outright at this unexpected turn, as he would have done in spite of himself under ordinary circumstances, but he found it a relief to slip back into his tone of easy banter. ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... if not verses, satirical law-papers, the withered Music-master, with a desperate heroism, takes up his lost cause in spite of the world; fights for it, against Reporters, Parlements and Principalities, with light banter, with clear logic; adroitly, with an inexhaustible toughness and resource, like the skilfullest fencer; on whom, so skilful is he, the whole world now looks. Three long years it lasts; with wavering fortune. In fine, after labours comparable ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... was famous for the license of its country folk. Since the day of its foundation by Chalkidian colonists, its inhabitants had preserved their Hellenic traditions intact. The vintage, for example, was celebrated with an extravagance of obscene banter, which scandalized Philip II.'s viceroy in the sixteenth century.[85] During the period of Bruno's novitiate, the ordinances of the Council of Trent for discipline in monasteries were not yet in operation; and it is probable that ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... young lady, you are very complimentary; but, Dolly, no more of this banter. My boat is waiting, and I have but a few minutes to ask you to give me your answer. In all seriousness remember that my future depends upon it. Will you marry me? Will you try to love me? May I go away with the hope that you will look forward ...
— Foster's Letter Of Marque - A Tale Of Old Sydney - 1901 • Louis Becke
... They act like men and women, not like a painting machine; if they experience impulses and emotions they don't entirely stifle 'em. They have time and leisure to foregather, laugh, be silly, discuss, banter, flirt, make love, and cut up all the various harmless capers that humanity is heir to. That's what you mean, but you don't realise it. And you think, and they think, that my solemn and owlish self-suppression is drying me up, squeezing out of me the essence ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... a thousand other little expedients, by which the arts of Quizzing and Banter flourish, practice will soon teach you. If it should be necessary to transcribe a dull passage, not very fertile in topics of humour and raillery; you may introduce it as a "favourable ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... himself to abjure the Prince of Wales, at which bit of irony Washington was greatly amused. The wit of the remark is a little cold to-day, but at the moment, accompanying as it did a solemn act of abjuration, it was keen enough. Washington himself, moreover, was perfectly capable of good-natured banter. Colonel Humphreys challenged him one day to jump over a hedge. Washington, always ready to accept a challenge where riding was concerned, told the colonel to go on. Humphreys put his horse at the hedge, cleared it, and landed in a quagmire on the other side ...
— George Washington, Vol. II • Henry Cabot Lodge
... it was that chatted and laughed there in the warmth of the sunny dining room! For the time being the elders dropped their cares and became as young in spirit as the boys and girls. Jokes, stories and good-humored banter passed back and forth until with one accord everybody rose from the table and sauntered into the library where a great blaze ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... soon as the cloth was removed; but they were by this time become so fond of wine that they would frequently remind me of the health in the middle of dinner by calling out King George Earee no Brittannee; and would banter me if the glass was not filled to the brim. Nothing could exceed the mirth and jollity of these people when they met ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... announced his intention of marrying her, dans les delais legaux, the squire protested. I think I read the whole correspondence, and I remember that in the beginning the elder man took the tone of paradox and banter. 'Behave dishonourably, my dear fellow. I have winked at your mistress heretofore, because boys will be boys; but it is the man who marries. And, anyhow, a woman is so much more interesting in a false position.' But he soon became serious, presently furious, ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... clinging to the raft of one of his ideas, but one by one would grow numb and drop off into the waters of mental indifference. They had a nice sense of satire, and it was a delight for the American to indulge in an easy, inconsequential banter which was full of humour without being labelled funny; but it used to fill him with sorrow to see many of his best controversial subjects punctured by a lazily conceived play of words. He felt that, coming from the New ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... Lapierre's light banter acted as a tonic to the girl's nerves, harassed as they were by a month's travel through the fly-bitten wilderness. More—he interested her. He was different. As different from the half-breeds and Indian canoemen with whom she had been thrown as his speech was from the throaty guttural by means ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... where peasants in bright-coloured shirts and vests lounged. After much haggling and good-humoured banter, Sanine hired one of the little boats. Ivanoff was a deft and powerful oarsman, and the boat shot forward across the water like a living thing. Sometimes the oars touched reeds or low-hanging branches which for a long while after such contact trembled above the deep, dark stream. ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... differing but little from that sung by the Syracusan to Lady Selene, and the popular poetry alike of Italy and Greece is full of those delicate touches of refined sentiment that in Theocritus appear so incongruous with the rough coats and rougher banter of the shepherds. For though the poet raised the pastoral life of Sicily into the realms of ideal poetry, he was careful not to dissociate his version from reality, and he allowed no imaginary conceptions to overmaster his art. He depicted no age of innocence; his poetry reflects no philosophical ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... days after this was written, Lady Bradshaigh, in a letter full of satirical banter, which, however, it may be questionable if Richardson did not receive as replete with the highest compliments ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... geenyus! Name wuz Wesley Cotterl—John Wesley Cotterl—jest plain Wes, as us fellers round the Shoe-Shop ust to call him; ust to allus make the Shoe-Shop his headquarters-like; and, rain er shine, wet er dry, you'd allus find Wes on hands, ready to banter some feller fer a game, er jest a-settin' humped up there over the checker-board all alone, a-cipher'n' out some new move er 'nuther, and whistlin' low and solem' to hisse'f-like and a-payin' ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... your banter, or I shall never get to the end of my story. As to the eggs, I did not manage mine as cleverly as the priest did his. I made a mess of it, bestowing good part of the yolk on my moustache, much to Graziella's amusement. ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... who told me that Mary was engaged to be married. But I had noticed for some days how the neighbors went out of their way to accost her upon our walks; to banter her kindly, to shake hands with her, to wag their heads and look chin-chucks even if they gave none. Her face wore a beautiful mantling red for hours at a time. And instead of being made more sedate by her responsible and settling prospects she shed the ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... once joined the regimental depot in England. It was evident that his lack of learning would prove a barrier to promotion. He found that much of the leisure hitherto devoted to athletic sports must be given to study. Behind "sported oak," while dust accumulated on boxing-glove and foil—neither the banter of his brother officers nor his love for athletics inducing him to break the resolution—he bent to his work with a fixity of purpose that augured well for ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... all those present did I spare my banter. This was the old seneschal, Miriani. He stood at his post by the buffet, and ever and anon he would come forward to replenish Messer Ramiro's cup in obedience to the ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... and Max Wyndham. Colonel Campion sat in heavy silence, and Olga instinctively held aloof. There was something in Max's attitude that puzzled her, but it was something so intangible that she could not even vaguely define it to herself. All his careless banter notwithstanding, she was fully convinced in her own mind that he was not in the smallest degree dazzled or so much as attracted by the brilliant beauty that so dominated her own imagination. Though he laughed and joked in his customary cynical strain, she had a feeling that his mental energies ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... for places in eager expectation, amid banter none too virtuous, whistlings and jostlings. The time for the play had arrived. "Nell! Nell! Nell!" ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... interesting mental horizon, or fructify some faltering thought into a suggestive and affecting image. Such people are worth their weight in gold. Then there is a talker who is worth much silver, a man of irresistible geniality, who has a fund of pleasant banter for all present. This is a great art; banter, to be agreeable, must be of a complimentary kind; it must magnify the object it deals with—a perverse person may be bantered on his strength of character; a stingy person may be bantered on his prudence. There is, indeed, a kind of banter, not unknown ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... his lonely way homeward with a load of provisions. He appeared to be well supplied with funds, but purchased sparingly as became a miserly hermit. And so vicious was his tongue that few cared to converse with him, even the young hoodlums of the town hesitating to harass him with the banter usually accorded the other bizarre ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... armchair Jingo, none of the loud hectoring and swaggering and bravado that distinguish the carpet warrior. On the contrary, when they were talking of the war amongst themselves they had an air of quiet determination, of good-humoured banter, and of easy, serious confidence far more ominous for an enemy than any amount of fluent rant. After the world of politics, with its hair-splitting and word-mincing, it was good to be with soldiers—the men who do the work. They knew no fine political shades, they bandied no epithets; England was ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... Wright charitably allowed it to pass, as she thought it might be construed either as a compliment or a banter. Visitors flocked in, and the insufferable Mrs. Downe Wright declared to all that her Ladyship was astonishingly well; but without the appropriate whine, which gives proper pathos, and generally accompanies this hackneyed speech. Mrs. Finch indeed laboured hard to counteract the effect of this ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... Happy. The biggest ketch you ever seen in your life. It's ketch the Flying U outfit and squeeze the life out of it; that's the ketch." Andy's tone had in it no banter, but considerable earnestness. For, though Chip would no doubt convince the boys that the danger was very real, there was a small matter of personal pride to urge Andy into trying to convince, them himself, without aid from Chip ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... topic of the time; though it was plain that he courted inquiry and remark, which to a certain extent was necessary to the full and pleasant exercise of his faculties. But it was infinitely amusing to hear him banter an obstinate old lawyer on a point of law, catching at his arguments before he had half uttered them, and dissecting them with such wonderful dexterity that the listeners, shaking with laughter, saw, probably for the first time, that the severest logic and the deepest ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... The banter gave the captain a shrewd inspiration. He leaned, and catching one of Harrigan's hands with a quick movement, turned it palm up. It was as he suspected; the palm, though red from the effect of the strong suds and still scarcely healed after the torment of the Mary Rogers, was ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... Leyden, who was long recognized by even those who differed with him on questions of doctrine as "the most learned, polished and modest spirit that ever separated from the Church of England." To the prepotency of this distinguished divine, General Smith often, in a tone of mingled banter and seriousness, attributed not only his habit of mature reflection and love of learning, but also his "moderation combined with firmness" upon all questions which ...
— Heroes of the Great Conflict; Life and Services of William Farrar - Smith, Major General, United States Volunteer in the Civil War • James Harrison Wilson
... very much of a unit, and all bright, witty, and ready to cooperate. Indeed, having a system of fetching each other's hay and filling each other's canteens, they have a better squad organization than we. It has pleased me very much that our banter between the tents at Plattsburg has turned into the friendliest of feeling, so that we naturally seek each other out. We gave them a spread last night, and today are invited ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... Daniel," muttered the inspector lightly. "Go on, little lawyer!" But for all this attempt at banter on his part, I imagined that I saw the beginning of a very natural anxiety to close the conversation. I therefore hastened with what I had yet to say, cutting my words short and almost stammering in ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... he could not have kept from doing it. At last he scratched his hand on the pin which was doing duty for the button he had lost in his scuffle with Sleeny. "Ah!" he said to himself, with humorous banter, "it won't do to be married in a coat ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... said the Queen, in a low voice, tender, but with a sort of banter, "she thought she had the plague spot on her little white shoulders. Didst thou really not know what marks thou bearest, ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... for public life. He had an unfailing readiness, a wide knowledge of affairs, a keen sense of the ridiculous, and a flow of clear and easy language which never failed to give full and precise expression to all that was in his mind. He rarely provoked enmities, preferring light banter to severe invective or unsparing ridicule. Among his associates he was the prince of raconteurs. In conventions few men were heard with keener interest, and every Republican recognised the fact that a ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... spight of this new Abjuration, Did banter the lawful King of this great Nation: Who call'd God's anointed a foolish old Prig, Was both a base and unmannerly Whigg: But since he is Dead No more shall be said, For he in Repentance has laid down his Head; So I wish each Lady, who in mournful Tone is, In Charity Grieve for the ...
— Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6 • Various
... horse back and forth in front of his men, as if to banter me, and I concluded to accept the challenge. I galloped toward him for fifty yards and he advanced toward me about the same distance, both of us riding at full speed, and then, when we were only about thirty yards apart, I raised my rifle and fired; his horse fell to the ground, having been ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... sympathize with the feller's being gone on the girl," he said to himself, undisturbed by Regina's frequent bursts of loud laughter at young Barclay's quiet but persistent banter, "but dammit, why make a conspicuous ass of himself? Why make the whole blessed house party, including his hostess, pay for his being turned down in favor of young Harry? Bad form, I call it. Any one would imagine ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... quite like that sort of thing. But to a certain extent he had laid himself open to banter by the lasting character of his impressions which were connected with the passion of love and, perhaps, were not of such a rare kind as he seemed to think them. What made his comrades tolerant of his ...
— Tales Of Hearsay • Joseph Conrad
... march until the ground shakes and tall buildings tremble. Shoulder to shoulder we will go—all of us— On and on forever. We will not talk nor listen to talk. We will march and we will teach our sons and our daughters to march. Their minds are troubled. Our minds are clear. We do not think and banter words. We march. Our faces are coarse and there is dust in our hair and beards. See, the inner parts of our hands are rough. And still ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... with their likes"—his star was at its zenith. Then indeed, all rules were suspended; no point of order suggested—"The man and the hour had met." His marvellous narratives of quaint incidents and startling experiences, his brilliant repartee, sallies of wit, banter, and badinage have rarely been heard since the days of the Round Table or the passing of ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... shipping out of sight altogether. The air is redolent with the smell of balsam and pine. After nightfall, when the lights are burning in the busy market, and the homeward-bound crowds with baskets and heavy burdens of Christmas greens jostle one another with good-natured banter,—nobody is ever cross down here in the holiday season,—it is good to take a stroll through the Farm, if one has a spot in his heart faithful yet to the hills and the woods in spite of the latter-day city. But it is when the moonlight is upon the water and upon the dark phantom ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... first of that series of offences which, in the poet's vindictive memory, marked him down for elevation to the throne of Dulness which was rendered vacant by the deposition of King Tibbald."[16] There is a rumour that Gay, in revenge for Cibber's banter of "Three Hours After Marriage," personally chastised the actor-dramatist,[17] but there is nothing definitely known about this. Anyhow, Gay was so irritated by the failure of this play that he did not produce anything at a theatre during ...
— Life And Letters Of John Gay (1685-1732) • Lewis Melville
... point of time, after Dante, seems, at first sight, in the juxtaposition, like farce after tragedy; and indeed, in many parts of his poem, he is not only what he seems, but follows his saturnine countryman with a peculiar propriety of contrast, much of his liveliest banter being directed against the absurdities of Dante's theology. But hasty and most erroneous would be the conclusion that he was nothing but a banterar. He was a true poet of the mixed order, grave as well as gay; had a reflecting mind, a susceptible and most affectionate heart; ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... universally popular among the ladies of the families of his artist friends. She would sit smilingly by when the conflicts of the morning were sometimes renewed, for she saw with satisfaction that Anna at least was certainly impressed with Cuthbert's arguments and banter, and afforded very feeble aid to Mary Brander in ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... to them after his daily visit, and lying on the grass, his arms crossed behind his head, and a big cigar between his lips, would gently banter everybody. Tea came at five o'clock, and then Mrs. Decie appeared armed with a magazine or novel, for she was proud of her literary knowledge. The sitting was suspended; Harz, with a cigarette, would move between the table and the picture, drinking his ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... jostled about in congratulation and good-humored banter. Everybody was glad of the boy's success, he was an all round favorite, and some of the men who had won his money ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice
... in his later life, went to Court, when George III. asked him, in a good-natured tone of banter, how his friend Serjeant Glynn was. Glynn had been one of his most furious partisans. Wilkes replied, with affected gravity, "Nay, sire, don't call Serjeant Glynn a friend of mine; the fellow was a Wilkite, which your Majesty knows I ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... baron greeted him with merry banter, and then whispered to him that the regent was expecting him in her private room, where the leaders of the newly arrived musicians had already gone. As Wolf belonged to the "elect," he would conduct him to her Majesty before "the called" who were ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... my little table and began to show them how easy it was to guess which shell the little pea was under. The unlettered hinds gathered in a thick semicircle and began to nudge elbows and banter one another to bet. Then was when Rufe ought to have single-footed up and called the turn on the little joker for a few tens and fives to get them started. But, no Rufe. I'd seen him two or three times walking about and looking at the side-show ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... genuine coherence is apt to be at its best in the first trial, for one of the essences of the rapture of production is the novelty of the new relation. There were times in the forenoons when I met halting stages and was ready possibly to banter a moment. I very quickly encountered a repulse, if she were in the thrall. She would wave her hand palm outward before her face—a mistake ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... brothers for each other was unusually strong, and it is from the unreserved correspondence between Finley and Sidney that some of the most interesting material for this work has been gathered. Both of these brothers possessed a keen sense of humor and delighted in playful banter. The following is written in pencil on an odd scrap of paper and ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... have fallen in love since and it makes a difference,' said Mrs. Swancourt with a faint tone of banter. ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... the tracks hard and smooth by riding their horses up and down those tracks to pack the dirt still more firmly. These tracks were generally one and one-eighth miles long. The Indians would then select a horse which they regarded as especially swift and banter the soldiers for a horse race, which the soldiers were quick to accept, if they were lucky enough to get a furlough. These Fort Riley soldiers always brought their best horses to Fort Larned to race ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... not friends, who should be? Are we not both jackals hunting in the one pack, and jackal does not bite jackal." Then his mood changed with a swiftness which La Mothe soon found to be characteristic, a kindliness cast out the jarring banter from his face, and his luminous eyes grew wistful. "Friends? It is a good word, the very best word in the world. Friends are more than family or kinship, and not many care to call old Francois Villon friend nowadays. There was a time——" He paused, running his hand down the long trail of his beard ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... your good friend, Colonel Mostyn Ray," she remarked, with a note of banter in her ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... mill they passed the time of day with several of the men, who seemed glad to see them, and a good deal of good-natured banter passed between McGinnis and the men to whom he was well known. The Supervisor sent word that he wanted to see the boss, and presently Peavey Jo came out to ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... and began to banter her. The gentleman who was sent to try the slipper, looked earnestly at Cinderilla, and finding her very handsome, said it was but just that she should try, and that he had orders to let every one make tryal. He invited Cinderilla ...
— The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault • Charles Perrault
... issue of Artemus Ward, apparently edited by Mr. John Camden Hotten (Chatto and Windus), this passage is accompanied with the following gloss: "Here again Artemus called in the aid of pleasant banter as the most fitting apology for the atrocious badness of ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... the queen, "your majesty will no longer be surprised, when you understand, that this is not as you suppose a bird, but a man." "Madam," said the king, more astonished than before, "you mean to banter me; but you shall never persuade me that a bird can be a man." "Sir," replied the queen, "far be it from me to banter your majesty; nothing is more certain than what I have had the honour to tell you. ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.
... himself. He liked an engagement of banter; it amused him to call out Irene's spirit, and to conquer in the end by masculine force in guise of affectionate tolerance. To-day he seemed dull, matter-of-fact, inclined to vexation; when not speaking, he had a slightly absent air, as if ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... Ned hurried away to execute his errand, Captain Blyth turned to Sibylla and laughingly began to banter her upon her ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood
... to own that his cutlets could not be relished, even by hungry men. They began to banter him about his "Olympian dish," and indulge in jokes at his expense; but all he cared about was to find out how it happened that the flesh of the guanaco, which was certainly good and eatable food, had turned ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... it off with banter. It was understood that the President should not be told—and that I should not tell him—of my talk with Mr. Sandford. Colonel Lamont undertook to arrange an audience with Mr. Cleveland for me. "You had better wait," ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... was interrupted by one of the women, who seemed bent on keeping up the spirit of banter with which they had begun. She asked him with a leer if he ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... Augustus, he sends a tribute complimentary, yet somewhat stiffly and officially conceived; lines much more cordial to the high-born Aelius Lamia (III, 17), whose statue stands to-day amid the pale immortalities of the Capitoline Museum. We have a note of tonic banter to Tibullus, "jilted by a fickle Glycera," and "droning piteous elegies" (I, xxxiii); a merry riotous impersonation of an imaginary symposium in honour of the newly-made augur Murena (III, 19), with toasts ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... perverse form of resignation had baffled her pleadings and added to her vexations. Words, impatiently heard at the moment, returned upon him, and compunction took its outward effect in crossness. It was all that Jock could do by his good-humoured banter and repartee to keep the peace between the other two who, when unchecked by regard to their mother and Babie, seemed bent on discussing everything ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... yeoman continued, not a bit grieved at the knight's banter, "I even heard the King's fool remark that since the man was so good, the master need must be. And then and there he hazarded a shrewd guess that if this master were not the King, nor Sir Launcelot, then it must need ...
— In the Court of King Arthur • Samuel Lowe
... them. Our married friends live in respectable comfort. Still, the ladies, living in the bush, get to know its more primitive ways, though they may not experience them themselves. So, our domestic arrangements, though made the occasion for a great deal of banter and fun, were neither unexpected nor novel to our lady visitors. But the banquet that was provided for them made them open their eyes indeed. It was something altogether new to the bush. Such a miracle of catering! such marvellous unheard of cookery! It surpassed anything any ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... Tunbridge-Wells, must'nt dispute with me that know the Intreagues of ev'ry Court and Country. Matches an't so easily made up, nor is it probable my slighting him, shou'd make another Lady value him; if it be true, he must have been in League with her some time, and, certainly, I shan't care to be banter'd.——But I'll know that presently;—Where are all my Fellows? prithee, Cozen, bid one of 'em come, hither. ...
— The Fine Lady's Airs (1709) • Thomas Baker
... grave, assisted him toward maintaining the mock-serious tone which he chose to adopt; and Mrs. Thornton's peculiar style of face gave her the same advantage. It pleased each to express for the other an exaggerated sentiment of regard. They considered it banter and badinage. How far it was safe was another thing. But they had known one another years before, and were only resuming ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... passion spent upon the dead. Not only does truth, in these long intervals, un-essence herself, but (what is harder) one cannot venture a crude fiction for the fear that it may ripen into a truth upon the voyage. What a wild improbable banter I put upon you, some three years since —— of Will Weatherall having married a servant-maid! I remember gravely consulting you how we were to receive her—for Will's wife was in no case to be rejected; and your no less serious ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... accompanied by much banter and horseplay among themselves, interspersed with questions to the ship's people, few of which ...
— Tom Slade on a Transport • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... Miss Hitchcock's clear, mocking voice could be heard teasing her cousin Caspar on his performance that afternoon. The heavy young man, whose florid face was flushed with the champagne he had taken, made ineffective attempts to ward off the banter. Parker ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... referee? Would he toll on endlessly before he noticed it? He should know; he'd been close at hand when it happened. He felt a warm emotion, a sense of comradeship, for the referee. He'd surely been square; he'd made Holliday break clean. He felt an impulse to joke with the referee, to banter him, and bid him count a million if ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... and those of other artisans,—all and each of them are nothing else but science.' 'You are munificent indeed,' said Socrates; 'for when asked for one thing, you have given many.' I almost think," continued Harrington, "that, if Socrates were here, he would do what I should not presume to do,—banter you in a somewhat similar way. He would say, that, having asked what a miracle was, Mr. Fellowes told him that half a dozen things were miracles, but did not tell him what every miracle was; that is, never told ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... silver have made the decent four-pronged fork cheaper than the two-pronged steel barbarism, what has followed? Why, this—that the universality of the diffusion has made it hopeless any longer to banter it. There is, therefore, this strict analogy between "the silver fork" reproach and "the bluestocking" reproach—that in both cases alike a recognition, gradually becoming universal, of the thing itself, as a social necessity, has put down forever all idle attempts to ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... 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 character, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... the banter of his words. They shone as the eyes of a fighter meeting odds. There was something leonine about him at the moment, something of the primitive animal roused from its lair and ...
— Greatheart • Ethel M. Dell
... up.' He has reached the stage of framing general notions, and in this respect is in advance of Cephalus and Polemarchus. But he is incapable of defending them in a discussion, and vainly tries to cover his confusion with banter and insolence. Whether such doctrines as are attributed to him by Plato were really held either by him or by any other Sophist is uncertain; in the infancy of philosophy serious errors about morality might easily grow up—they are certainly put into the mouths of speakers ...
— The Republic • Plato
... the "Pictures" were produced, one might, I repeat, have been afraid lest Dickens should go through Italy as a kind of educated Sam Weller. Such prophecies would have been falsified by the event. The book as a whole is very free from banter or persiflage. Once and again the comic side of some situation strikes him, of course. Thus, after the ceremony of the Pope washing the feet of thirteen poor men, in memory of our Lord washing the feet of the Apostles, Dickens says: "The whole thirteen sat down to dinner; ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... evidently thought this an exquisite piece of banter, for by the corner of his mouth I ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... been invented by Iambe, the daughter of the King of Eleusis. Hence, also, came the jesting used in celebrating the rites of Ceres in Sicily, and the custom for people to post themselves on the bridge leading to Eleusis in Attica, and to banter and abuse those going to the festivals. The story of Iambe only marks the rural origin of the metre, and its connection with Ceres, the Goddess of Harvest. Eleusis was her chosen abode, and next in her favour was Paros; and here we ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... of her arose clearly before me—the smile in those frank blue eyes, the proud poise of the head, the banter of the soft voice, and the words spoken. While she had said nothing convincing—merely an expression of womanly sympathy for the sufferings of the patriot army—yet I could not drive away the impression left that she was desirous that final victory ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... field on the other side of the heap; but his jest failed. The earnestness and devout emotion of the boy to the vision of reality which his imagination, aided by the hues of sunset, had thus exalted, were too much for the gross spirit of banter, and the speaker shrank back into his dust-hovel, and affected to be very assiduous in his work as the day was drawing to ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 4, September, 1850 • Various
... round-eyed steady stare. He was a superb type of man. It gave Bradley a feeling of awkwardness to stand beside him and a consciousness of stupidity to listen to their banter, but Ida dismissed Cargill and Birdsell summarily and walked home with Bradley. He was not keenly perceptive enough to see that Ida put Birdsell off with a brusqueness that ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... you are really too flattering!" gravely and gratefully replied the parson. Wilkinson was afraid that his friend's banter might become too apparent, as the simple egotism of the graduate of Durham led him on, so, he changed the subject, and soon had the cleric quoting ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... not being then in vogue), and the descriptions were so pat, that each one who saw them was disposed to apply them in a joking way to any other who was known to practice bundling; and the result was, such a general storm of banter and ridicule that no girl had the courage to stand against it, and continue to admit her lovers to ...
— Bundling; Its Origin, Progress and Decline in America • Henry Reed Stiles
... those present did I spare my banter. This was the old seneschal, Miriani. He stood at his post by the buffet, and ever and anon he would come forward to replenish Messer Ramiro's cup in obedience to ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... So far all had gone well, but she didn't know how long she could match his banter. So she favoured him with a deliberate gaze, and said, "Bridge, is it? I'm fond of the game, but I play only with ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... his aggressiveness, succeeding partially, in that he subdued the quarrelsomeness of his voice and manner to that affectation of banter behind which he concealed habitually his real self, and by which he most ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... that if we are minded to discourse on a life of pleasure, these men won't give us leave to go on, but will presently confess themselves that the pleasures of the body are but short, or rather indeed but of a moment's continuance; if they do not design to banter us or else speak out of vanity, when Metrodorus tells us, We many times spit at the pleasures of the body, and Epicurus saith, A wise man, when he is sick, many times laughs in the ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... Tolstoy's rough banter recalls Rousseau's sarcasm about an opera of Rameau's. In the Nouvelle Heloise, he rails in a similar fashion against the sadly fantastic performances at the theatre. It was, even then, a question of monsters, "of dragons animated by a blockhead of a Savoyard, who had ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... queen, "your majesty will no longer be surprised, when you understand, that this is not as you suppose a bird, but a man." "Madam," said the king, more astonished than before, "you mean to banter me; but you shall never persuade me that a bird can be a man." "Sir," replied the queen, "far be it from me to banter your majesty; nothing is more certain than what I have had the honour to tell ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... difficulty in keeping their buggy in sight. Sometimes Bartley stopped long enough for them to come up, and then, after a word or two of gay banter, ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... asserted that the court of Versailles was at that very moment labouring to counteract Pitt's diplomatists. But though Fox censured the French treaty, which formed the leading topic of the king's speech, he voted for the address, a circumstance for which he received a little banter from the lips of the minister. Pitt remarked:—"I am happy that, notwithstanding the vehemence with which the right honourable gentleman has argued against the address, he is ready to vote for it. I hope he will continue the same line ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... be crude. Still, crudeness is one of life's conditions." There was the slightest flavour of banter in the tone of Ricardo's governor. "Conceivable, but unlikely. Martin is a little crude; but you are not, Mr. Heyst. To tell you the truth, I don't know precisely where he is. He has been a little ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... forehead topped with close-cropped hair, and a scrubby and ill-trimmed fair beard. His bright eyes gleamed with intelligence. He seemed not in the least embarrassed and wore a pleasant smile, free from any shade of banter. ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... banter his antagonist. "You are a fine gentleman," he said; "you have been at Baiae" (Baiae was a fashionable watering-place on the Campanian coast). "Well," said Cicero, "that is better than to have been at the 'matrons' worship.'" And the attack and repartee ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church
... toward maintaining the mock-serious tone which he chose to adopt; and Mrs. Thornton's peculiar style of face gave her the same advantage. It pleased each to express for the other an exaggerated sentiment of regard. They considered it banter and badinage. How far it was safe was another thing. But they had known one another years before, and were only resuming the ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... was a sample of life at Temple Camp for seven days past. Those who were not given to jollying and banter had fallen back on checkers and dominos and other wild sports. A few of the more adventurous and reckless made birchbark ornaments, while those who were in utter despair for something to ...
— Tom Slade's Double Dare • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... canoe, they pushed out some twenty or thirty rods into the lake, cast anchor, and threw out their lines. Claud, who baited with grubs, soon had drawn in two, weighing as many pounds a piece, and began to feel disposed to banter the hunter, who had baited with a flap of moose-skin, which he had brought along with him, and which, to Claud, seemed little likely to attract the fishes to his hook. But he soon found himself mistaken; for, turning to give utterance to what was passing in his mind, he beheld ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... repeatedly. A certain expressman now smiled when he saw the long, slim figure approaching with a package under his arm, which from frequent reappearances had become easily recognizable; but as a person becomes accustomed to a physical deformity, Calmar Bye had ceased to notice banter. ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... line of defense. Possibly her explanation, whatever it was, had seemed convincing when she poured it out to him in the heat of their first private colloquy; but now that it was exposed to the cold daylight of judicial scrutiny, and the banter of the town, he was thoroughly ashamed of it, and would have sacrificed her without a scruple to save his professional reputation. But the obstinate Judge—who perhaps, after all, was more inquisitive than kindly—evidently wanted to hear the story out, ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... as he looked after the retreating figure. He had watched Menard grow from a roistering lieutenant into a rigid captain, and he knew his temper too well to mind the flicks of banter. But before the soldier had passed from earshot, he ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin
... out a-laughing, and began to banter her. The gentleman who was sent to try the slipper looked earnestly at Cinderella, and, finding her ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... what it is, and what we can do," said Farnham, and there was no longer any banter ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... comfortably full, followed by hand-bags, blankets and a two-gallon demijohn. They said they had driven from Winona that day, and would stay all night. They ordered supper, and while it was in course of preparation, indulged in a good deal of banter back and forth. Of course, I had formed the determination of becoming acquainted with the contents of that demijohn in some way, by fair means or foul, and became deeply interested in their conversation, ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... from a new angle of vision. Discreetly aloof, he observed, in passing, the complete free-and-easiness of the modern maiden with her modern cavalier; personalities flying; likewise legs and arms; a banter-wrangle interlude over a tennis-racquet; flight and pursuit of the offending maiden, punctuated with shrieks, culminating in collapse and undignified surrender: while a pair of club peons—also discreetly aloof—exchanged remarks whose import ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... he declared, with something of the old banter in his tone. "You are worse than the industrious apprentice. Have I, by chance, the pleasure of speaking to one of ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... at night; my design being to see the ceremonys, this night being the eve of Christmas, at the Queen's chapel. But it being not begun I to Westminster Hall, and there staid and walked, and then to the Swan, and there drank and talked, and did banter a little Frank, and so to White Hall, and sent my coach round, I through the Park to chapel, where I got in up almost to the rail, and with a great deal of patience staid from nine at night to two in the morning, in a very great ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... mockingly, "you do keep me here writing deadly nonsense. Deadly to me! It has already killed my self-respect. And you may imagine," he continued, his tone passing into light banter, "that Montero, should he be successful, would get even with me in the only way such a brute can get even with a man of intelligence who condescends to call him a gran' bestia three times a week. It's a sort of intellectual death; but there is the other one in the background for a journalist ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... away from husbands, etc., till her eyes twinkled, and she laughed much. I had now broken down the barrier, had brought myself to her level, and she as every other woman would have done, took advantage of it, and began to return my chaffing and banter, every woman feels instinctively that when a man is chaffing her (be it ever so decently veiled), about fucking, that she may safely return it: both are at once on a common level. A washerwoman would banter a prince, if the subject was cunt, without the prince being ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... morning, T was probably one of the most thoughtful and judiciously-minded; yet of every one but myself the business in being abroad was sober and reasonable, while mine was utterly ridiculous and silly. And the girl whose banter had driven me to it—perhaps she had attached no seriousness whatever to my petulant vow and had even now forgotten it. With these reflections were mingled the pangs of parting from my home and family; and for a time I was ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... changed in this vein of humorous banter since Shakespeare died. One of the best pieces of Shakespeare criticism ever written is contained in four words of the present Poet Laureate's Ode for the Tercentenary of Shakespeare, 'London's laughter ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... This banter, coupled with the assurance that the girl knew exactly what she was about, cooled Lennon's excitement. ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... would convert them all," he returned, indulging her in this childish banter. "You see, you converted me with only a few words, and I was a ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... study of Aretino. Nola, Bruno's birthplace, was famous for the license of its country folk. Since the day of its foundation by Chalkidian colonists, its inhabitants had preserved their Hellenic traditions intact. The vintage, for example, was celebrated with an extravagance of obscene banter, which scandalized Philip II.'s viceroy in the sixteenth century.[85] During the period of Bruno's novitiate, the ordinances of the Council of Trent for discipline in monasteries were not yet in operation; and ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... Henri's mocking voice, and there, sword in hand, stood my cousin, barring our path. Below him were several brawny ruffians, bearing pikes and clubs, and, last of all, Pillot, who shouted with good-humoured banter, "Aha! the ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... amusements which increase upon us, the town," says the Gentleman's Magazine for January 1752, "has been lately entertained with a kind of farcical performance, called 'The Old Woman's Oratory,' conducted by Mrs. Mary Midnight and her family, intended as a banter on Henley's Oratory, and a puff ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... among them with a jabber of strange terms, a bright smile and ready banter, and I could see that he was to be a quick favourite. I envied him for his ease of manner, a thing I could never compass. Presently ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... Burdette and George Cable, and for a while my gentlest and cheeriest of friends, Bill Nye, joined with me and made the dusty detested travel almost a delight. We were constantly playing practical jokes on each other or indulging in some mischievous banter before the audience. On one occasion, Mr. Nye, coming before the foot-lights for a word of general introduction, said, 'Ladies and gentlemen, the entertainment to-night is of a dual nature. Mr. Riley and I will speak alternately. ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... way before the important purpose I had formed, and to which the banter now recalled me. So fair an opportunity might never offer again. In the vicissitudes of a soldier's life, the chance of to-day should not be disregarded—to-morrow may bring change either in the scene ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... subject to athletics, and was in the highest spirits the rest of the day; but underneath all his fun and banter the question constantly arose in his inner consciousness: How could he elude his roommate's watchfulness and on the coming Saturday escape ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... interrupted the youth, with something of banter in his manner, "you don't think me good, ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... in Peru has been quoted as exhibiting exaggeration in the description of the condor surpassing anything that can be laid to Polo's charge here; but that is, in fact, only somewhat heavy banter directed against our traveller's own narrative. (See Travels in Various Parts of Peru, 1830, ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... very fond of him, was mildly scornful of his Philistine outlook. He cared nothing for books, and the only form of art that appealed to him was the musical comedy. She treated him as a rule with pleasant banter and refused to take him seriously. It required a good deal of energy to keep their friendship on a light footing, for she knew that he had been in love with her since he was eighteen. She could not help feeling flattered, though on her side there was no more than the ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... bearing. There was none of the bluster of the armchair Jingo, none of the loud hectoring and swaggering and bravado that distinguish the carpet warrior. On the contrary, when they were talking of the war amongst themselves they had an air of quiet determination, of good-humoured banter, and of easy, serious confidence far more ominous for an enemy than any amount of fluent rant. After the world of politics, with its hair-splitting and word-mincing, it was good to be with soldiers—the ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... hearty desire to know and be led by the truth; to be taught of God, and conformed to his will in all things, and I venture to promise he will not be suffered to err. But let him avoid disputes about religion, they are seldom productive of any good; let him fortify his mind against banter and ridicule, it is no small degree of persecution. Yet, if he be determined to follow his Lord, he must expect to meet with it, and I know from experience it is hard to bear. I have found the safest way is to receive it in silence; for those who are ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... with a short laugh, relapsing into that light tone of banter which was his most natural mode of expression; "when, one fine day, a hired coach clattered up Sir Rupert Landale's avenue and deposited upon his porch a tattered mariner who announced himself, in melancholy tones that would have befitted the ghost no doubt ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... inferior men all his life; he liked to ride rough-shod; he was never pleased when his path crossed people over whom he could not ride rough-shod. Generally she had accepted his classification of those who opposed him strongly as "blamed idiots"; sometimes with a little of her laughing banter, but usually, his superiority standing out sharp and clear when opposed to the dull Canaanites, endorsing his opinion. "I sort of wish," he went on, with that keen, wire-edged exasperation still sawing in his voice, "that you wouldn't have much to do with that chap. He ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... sensations when they have to think so much of other people's," she responded merrily; and she felt again the strange impulse of retreat, the prompting to fly before the earnestness that appeared in his voice. While he was flippant, her intuitions told her that she might be serious, but when the banter passed from his tone, she turned to it ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... difference of their ages was like another bond between them. Once, when twitted with the uncharitableness of his youth, Mr. Van Wyk, running his eye over the vast proportions of his interlocutor, retorted in friendly banter— ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... medicated draughts are often mentioned in Romances. The reader will recollect the banter upon them in Don Quixote, where the Knight of La enumerates to Sancho the cures which had been performed upon many valorous champions, covered with wounds. The Hindus, in their books on medicine, talk of drugs for ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... kind of ease—the kind that still preserves punctilio. The planter himself seemed to be the dynamo that generated the larger portion of the gaiety and wit. The younger ones at the board found it more than difficult to turn back on him his guns of raillery and banter. It is true, the young men attempted to storm his works repeatedly, incited by the hope of gaining the approbation of their fair companions; but even when they sped a well-aimed shaft, the planter forced them to feel ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... street to the old plaza where their hotel was located. Their transit was an interrupted one, for these four cattlemen were among the best known in the Southwest. All along the route they scattered nods of recognition, friendly greetings, and genial banter. One of them—the man who had formerly been the hard-riding, quick-shooting sheriff of the county—met also scowls once or twice, to which he was entirely indifferent. Luck had no slavish respect for law, had indeed, if rumor were true, run a wild and ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... faire; ils ont des canons?" This was the 3d May, 1631. This probably is about the nadir-point of the Brandenburg-Hohenzollern History. The little Friedrich, who became Frederick the Great, in writing of it, has a certain grim banter in his tone; and looks rather with mockery on the perplexities of his poor Ancestor, so fatally ignorant of the time of day it had ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... easy chat and gay banter of the friendly groups the more to her taste, because she had come from a rather trying quarter of an hour in Rosamond's room, where Mary Browne—with an e as she always explained carefully—was being shown the purchases which had seemingly ...
— Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge • Pemberton Ginther
... rocks beneath his chamber window and was injured fatally. Frischlin was considered one of the best Latin poets of post- classical times; but his genius was marred by his immoderate and bitter temper, which caused him to imagine that the gentle banter and jocular remarks of his acquaintances were insults to be repaid by angry invective and bitter sarcasm, with which his ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... swallow things we don't like sometimes." Then he broke off into a tone of banter. "So you've brought the flag back ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... Penetration, which your Libertines display at some Times, are inconsistent with the Ignorance, Folly and Stupidity they shew at others. It is impossible that Men of Parts, and the least Spirit, how much soever they were in the Wrong, could see themselves defeated, banter'd and exposed with so much Tranquility and Chearfulness; and I can't conceive how any, but egregious Coxcombs, without Sense of Shame, could behave as Alciphron and Lysicles do throughout your ...
— A Letter to Dion • Bernard Mandeville
... she began, in a tone of gentle banter, as she stroked the helpless hands. "Were you worried? I'm so sorry! I asked Miss Munch to let you know. Didn't she?... I went over to Mr. Flint's to take dictation. The storm washed out the track. I tried to make the boat in Mr. Stillman's car, but we broke down and missed it.... I had to stay ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... the evening passed with the banter that invariably took place when Rube was of the party. It was late when they left the Squire's, the constable going along with them, and all singing merrily as birds on ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer
... wrote a letter to Dean Swift, in which he says, "The Earl of Oxford was removed on Tuesday; the Queen died on Sunday. What a world this is, and how does fortune banter us!" In other {48} words, Bolingbroke tells Swift that full success seemed within his grasp on Tuesday, and was suddenly torn away from him on Sunday. But the most characteristic part of the letter is a passage which throws a very blaze of light over the unconquerable levity ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... seemingly mocking smile, he appears about to lead her back into the ballroom, there is, at least so I like to read the music, a pretty little laugh, as much as to say, "Can't you read my real feelings under my mask of banter," a tender glance indicated by a retard on a charmingly expressive little turn of the melody—and she ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb
... at his banter of this red-tape official, the official himself stood gasping like a fish out of the water, and trying to realise the insult levelled at his dignity. Jobson—a small man—sidled round to the front of him and made a ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... in his delightful essay on Huxley said that in the Huxley home there was more jest, joke and banter than in any other place in London. The air was surcharged with mirth, and puns, often very bad ones, were tossed back and forth with ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... the pet topic of Toryism, from whom he certainly provoked some retaliation, is only paralleled in Blackwood. We have included the Shakespeare and the Moxon as attractively brief samples on the approved model of savage banter, and the Jane Eyre as perhaps the most flagrant example of bad taste to be found in these merciless pages. It was George Henry Lewis, by the way, who so much offended Charlotte Bronte by the greeting, "There ought to be a bond between us, for we ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... particular, and he advanced with great gravity, saying, "Gentlemen, your most obedient servant:—give me leave to introduce my friend Mr. Random to your society." Then, turning to me, "Mr. Random, this is Mr. Bragwell—Mr. Banter, sir—Mr. Chatter—my friend Mr. Slyboot, and Mr. Ranter sir." I saluted each of then in order, and when I came to take Mr. Slyboot by the hand, I perceived him thrust his tongue in his cheek, to the no small entertainment of the company; but I did not think proper to take any ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... object of the characters in The Courts of Idleness (WARD, LOCK) was to amuse themselves, and as their sprightly conversations were often punctuated by laughter I take it that they succeeded. To give Mr. DORNFORD YATES his due he is expert in light banter; but some three hundred pages of such entertainment tend to create a sense of surfeit. The first part of the book is called, "How some passed out of the Courts for ever," and then comes an interlude, in which we are given at least one stirring war-incident. I imagine that Mr. YATES ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 22, 1920 • Various
... a top hat or a morning suit in Monte Carlo," she said, furious at his banter. "Let us talk about ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... Why, my chap, you looks as if ye didn't much mind what come t'yer nose, I reckon. You looks an old poacher, you do. Tall ye what 'tis'!" He changed his banter to business, "That bird's mine! Now you jest hand him over, and sheer off, you dam young scoundrels! I know ye!" And he became exceedingly opprobrious, and uttered contempt of the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... not having the least conception that it could be otherwise. To tell them that she felt ashamed for herself and for them would be to betray her agitation, while to decline their offers to dress her would prolong their banter and insistence. She flushed, her beautiful eyes grew dim, red blotches came on her face, and it took on the unattractive martyrlike expression it so often wore, as she submitted herself to Mademoiselle Bourienne and Lise. Both these women quite sincerely tried to make her look pretty. She was so ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... the room. Afterward, as they wheeled from time to time in their chairs, they bitterly insulted each other with the utmost good-nature, taking unerring aim at faults and riddling personalities with the quaint and cynical humour of a newspaper office. Throughout this banter, it was strange to note how infrequently the men smiled, particularly when ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... night with the decencies of family affection, and Bessie delivered the elder lady over to her maid. Then the girl sank down again, and lay musing in her deep chair before the fire with her book shut on her thumb. She looked rather old and worn in her reverie; her face lost the air of gay banter which, after the beauty of her queer eyes and her vivid mouth, was its charm. The eyes were rather dull now, and the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... narrative of the frenzy of Mr. John Dennis," published in the Miscellanies of Pope, Swift, and Arbuthnot, and said to have been written by Pope, is a grave banter on his usual violence. It professes to be the account of the physician who attended him at the request of a servant, who describes the first attack of his madness coming on when "a poor simple child came to him from the printers; the boy had no sooner entered ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... have returned a sharp reply to this banter, but she was very anxious to find a physician for Phoebe, and so thought it best to ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... up my little table and began to show them how easy it was to guess which shell the little pea was under. The unlettered hinds gathered in a thick semicircle and began to nudge elbows and banter one another to bet. Then was when Rufe ought to have single-footed up and called the turn on the little joker for a few tens and fives to get them started. But, no Rufe. I'd seen him two or three times walking about and looking at the side-show pictures with his mouth full of peanut candy; ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... her comrade, Ilse Westgard; she exchanged gossip and banter with the Cossacks, argued with them, laughed ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... thing. Who would jeer, and jest, as she stood before the altar, and pledged fidelity unto death to her betrothed partner? And why, I would ask, should the preliminaries of marriage be treated as a theme fit only for levity and merriment? It is said that we Americans are peculiar for banter on this subject. One scarcely hears it alluded to in society, except with a laugh, or a jest. As a natural consequence of this state of feeling, and this style of conversation relative to the affections, it is not easy to know when one speaks as he ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... Chairman was Lord Rattley. Lord Rattley, a peer with very little money and a somewhat indecorous past, rarely honours the Tregantick bench by attending sessions; but for once he was here, and at once started to banter Sir Felix on ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... a little strip of shade, and panted like a hunted rabbit. A sickening pain throbbed up from his toe. The train moved slowly at first, and Jimmy knew that he could not hide from the train men in a coal car. On a banter from Piggy Pennington and Bud Perkins Jimmy had ridden on the brake-beam while the switch engine was pulling freight cars about the railroad yards. He had a vague idea that midway of the train, between two box cars, would be a safe place. When the ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... prefect had transferred Abel to the seventeenth arrondissement, and so the old friendship was picked up where it had been dropped, and the ruddy-faced agent found it both convenient and agreeable to drop in frequently at Madame Caille's on his way home, and exchange a few words of reminiscence or banter for a box of sardines or a minute package of tea. But, with the deterioration in his old friends' wares, and the almost simultaneous appearance of the Salon Malakoff, his loyalty wavered. Flique sampled the advantages of Hippolyte's establishment, and, being won over thereby, ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... her fingers twitched convulsively at the handle of her parasol. Here was her lover saying to her all that she had dreamed he might say, saying in an earnest, trembling voice that he loved her; in a voice so different to his customary tone of banter, that she for a moment almost believed in his sincerity; yet as she averted her face and looked over the bay she could see clearly in her mind's eye the little picture which had remained in it from yesterday—her lover holding ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... a sudden spirit of banter Terry turned to the Major: "Before I begin, Major, I wish to congratulate you upon having won to the bliss of matrimony without violating that bachelor formula which you so ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... conversation, books, and newspapers. The Dutchman hates to be interfered with, and resents the advice of candid friends, and cannot stand any 'chaff.' He has his kind of humour, which is slow in expression and material in conception, but he does not understand 'banter.' He is liberal in theories, but intensely conservative in practice. He will agree with a new theory, but often do as his grandfather did, and so in Holland there may be seen very primitive methods side by side with fin de siecle thought. ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... Molly looked more like a stately young empress than an impecunious doctor's daughter as she floated into the room, to be embraced and complimented by the Lavender Lady and to receive a generous meed of admiration, seasoned with a little gentle banter, ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... of the scholars who had sat here and there, Miss Ludington began gently to banter Ida about this and that boyish sweetheart, and divers ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy
... all the vases, trained some vines, and then with some needlework went out on the veranda. At the table she listened and responded interestedly to Mrs. Merlin's bromidic remarks, was gentle with the children and most flatteringly deferential to Kurt. Of her former banter and coquetry toward him there was no trace. After the children had gone to bed, she played cribbage with Mrs. Merlin ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... were better to cancel the preceding paragraphs. Is not any savor of banter out of place in the reception we are bound to accord to an alleged solution of the unthinkable problem which underlies creation and man's position therein? If the impulse which first controlled us is not denied expression, it is because ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... pecuniary transaction happened to my father whilst doing the business of the rent-day. He was receiving sums of money from the tenants in succession. After looking over a bundle of notes which he had just received from one of them, a well-known character, he said in banter, "James, the notes are not correct." To which the farmer, who was much of a humorist, drily answered, "I dinna ken what they may be noo; but they were a' richt afore ye had your fingers in amang 'em." An English ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... you lapse into such talk, you fully justify the precaution. I was just thinking what a young lady you had grown into,' he answered in a tone of banter, under which, however, she felt a rebuke; and while directing her attention to the Pantheon, he took care to get within ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... conference, confabulation, chat, parley, causerie, parlance, confab; dialogue, interlocution; soliloquy, monologue; palaver, buncombe, blarney, blandishment, flattery, flummery; chaff, banter, raillery, persiflage, badinage, asteistn; chatter, babble, chit chat, gibberish, jargon, twaddle, fustian, moonshine, hanky-panky, jabbering, rhapsody, rant, grandiloquence; ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... I'll start at once." Fred dropped his banter. "I'll tell you what, Nancy. I may not be able to do much right off, but I'll promise you that he has a fair chance before ...
— The Calico Cat • Charles Miner Thompson
... Braund, and Barnes, is a Banter on Criticks, and Genealogists, who make such a Pother about the Orthography of Names and Things, that many Times, three Parts in four of a Folio Treatise, is taken up in ascertaining the Propriety of a Syllable, by which Means the Reader is ...
— A Learned Dissertation on Dumpling (1726) • Anonymous
... to color my fancy for a horse. As for a mistress, or for those fugitive affairs of the heart which English fashion countenanced—nay, on which fashion insisted—I had no part in them, and brooked much banter from the gay world in consequence. It was not merely lack of money, nor yet a certain fastidiousness implanted, nor yet the inherent shrinking of my English blood from pleasure forbidden, for my Renault blood was hot enough, God wot! It was, I think, all of these reasons that kept ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... "What has made you think of it so suddenly?" said I. "Do you not want to catch some more canaries?" said she. "I suspect," said I, "that you would like to have ours escape." "Perhaps," said she, "that would be a relief to you from your present embarrassment." Then I saw that all this was banter. She wished to teaze me a little. The truth is, I have two fine singing canaries and a mocking-bird. Some of my pro-slavery friends delight to pester me about them. They say that they mean to issue a habeas corpus, and take them before Justice Bird, (who, you know, queerly enough, happens to ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... was exchanging some gay banter with Paul and did not hear. But Ruth and Alice did, and the latter could not avoid a thrust at the scornful ones. To Ruth, in an unnecessarily loud voice, ...
— The Moving Picture Girls in War Plays - Or, The Sham Battles at Oak Farm • Laura Lee Hope
... our out-spoken host. I soon found that we were not likely to learn anything of the interesting subject from Armitage himself, for he was remarkably reticent, and I saw that it would not do to banter him, or allude in any ...
— Adventures in the Far West • W.H.G. Kingston
... only as a matter of policy, and was not capable of being wilfully unjust. Palmerston, essentially superficial, delighted in banter, and knew how to divert grave opposition by playful levity; LINCOLN was a man of infinite jest on his lips, with saddest earnestness at his heart. Palmerston was a fair representative of the aristocratic liberality ...
— Memorial Address on the Life and Character of Abraham Lincoln - Delivered at the request of both Houses of Congress of America • George Bancroft
... same token you are all sweetness and blue eyes and dearness and dimples," he punished her. Then the banter in his ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... loose. Would you mind very much, Squaw-talk-far-off?" He ducked and peered into her face again, and again his face sobered. "What's the matter?" he asked, in an entirely different tone—which Miss Georgie, in spite of her mood, found less satisfying than his banter. ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... you look, Chevalier!" said she, in a tone of half banter. "One would think I had accused you of murder instead of saving a fair lady's life in the forest; although woman-killing is no murder I believe, by the laws of gallantry, as ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... own expense; laughed and took snuff in extra proportions, and gave me a whole guinea instead of half a one, saying that I should go to live with him in Fools' Paradise, where little pigs ran about ready roasted with knives and forks in their backs; adding more banter and nonsense of the same kind, to the utter bewilderment of ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... in vain for some airy nothing with which to answer his nonsense. I never have had the gift of repartee. I can talk well enough about subjects that interest me when I am conversing with some one whom I know well, but the frothy persiflage, the light banter that forms the conversation's stock in trade of so many women, is an alien tongue ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... upon the water's edge was largely one of sentimental banter between merry maid and enamored man, in which Edwin reached the conclusion that his charmer could give cards to the jolliest little "jollier" in Baltimore. She asked him about his past and present girl friends, and pouted deliciously ...
— The Mermaid of Druid Lake and Other Stories • Charles Weathers Bump
... which the woman said this left no doubt in the man's mind of her meaning. She was not trifling with him now, he knew. In her low-voiced words he found no trace of banter, of sophistry, nor of aught that he might ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... slurred, with a paucity of bracelets and lack of necessary pins, we hurriedly and sneakingly enter the drawing-room, and find all our guests already come together. Mother gives us an almost imperceptible glance of gentle reproach, but father is so occupied in bantering a strange miss—banter in which the gallant and the fatherly happily join to make that manner which is the envy and admiration of the neighborhood—that he seems unconscious of our entrance. An intuition, however, tells us that this is not the case, but that he is making a note of ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... this gay banter, and then as Adele played a lively strain, the Lord of Misrule gave a clever clog dance on ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells
... vanquished as they walked slowly back to the marquees; but it was with somewhat of a crestfallen air that Montague advanced to present Sylla with the cup that she had won. He feared that she would be merciless in this her hour of triumph, and dreaded the banter to which he might be subjected. But Sylla knew well the virtue of moderation, and was, besides, far too pleased with her success to be hard upon ...
— Belles and Ringers • Hawley Smart
... Ahmed saw the pavilion, which the fairy called the largest in her treasury, he fancied she had a mind to banter him, and his surprise soon appeared in his countenance; which Perie Banou perceiving, she burst out a laughing. "What! prince," cried she, "do you think I jest with you? You will see that I am in earnest. Noor-Jehaun," said she to her treasurer, taking the tent out of prince Ahmed's hands, "go ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... naive enough to renew his banter. She took her seat on the corner sofa, and looked straight into his face: "Do we really intend to ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... claim to be Irish on her mother's side and so was a ready-witted match for the doctor's Celtic exuberance; though to Wargrave watching it seemed that Burke's easy banter cloaked a ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... did not feel himself "altogether disqualified for it by nature."[23] "I have refrained, as much as human frailty will permit, from all satirical composition,"[24] he said. For satire he seems to have substituted that kind of "serious banter, a style hovering between affected gravity and satirical slyness," which has been pointed out as characteristic of him.[25] Washington Irving noticed a similar tone in all his familiar conversations about ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... that he can treat with the small vivifying details given by such knowledge, and by such knowledge alone. There is an advance in character, an advance in "interior" description—the Vollichon family circle, the banter and the gambling at Lucrece's home, the humour of a precieuse meeting, etc. In fact, whatever be the defects[263] in the book, it may almost be called an advance all round. A specimen of this, as of other pioneer novels, may not ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... an extreme anguish by writhing in his chair. Miss Swan laughed in spite of herself, and they began to talk in their usual banter, which Miss Carver never took part in, and which Lemuel was quite incapable of sharing. If it had come to savage sarcasm or a logical encounter, he could have held his own, but he had a natural weight and slowness ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... riding his horse back and forth in front of his men, as if to banter me, and I concluded to accept the challenge. I galloped towards him for fifty yards and he advanced towards me about the same distance, both of us riding at full speed, and then, when we were only about thirty yards apart, I raised my rifle and fired; his ...
— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody
... followed had difficulty in keeping their buggy in sight. Sometimes Bartley stopped long enough for them to come up, and then, after a word or two of gay banter, was ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... delight as they took their stand at the steps of the Piazzetta to receive the oncoming barges, for the "Calza" were the very darlings of their eyes, and never had they been more brilliant. With true Venetian comradery the crowd tossed them light banter on the names of their divisions, with pantomimic interpretation, in ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... ought to be the most heart-rending. There is never a touch of noble moral sentiment, to relieve the monotony of mockery that lightly laughs at you, and tantalizes you, page after page, from the beginning to the end of the book. The banter is not good-natured; though, on the other hand, it cannot justly be pronounced ill-natured; and it is, in final effect upon the reader's mind, bewildering and depressing in the extreme. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity,—such ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... colloquy, conference, confabulation, chat, parley, causerie, parlance, confab; dialogue, interlocution; soliloquy, monologue; palaver, buncombe, blarney, blandishment, flattery, flummery; chaff, banter, raillery, persiflage, badinage, asteistn; chatter, babble, chit chat, gibberish, jargon, twaddle, fustian, moonshine, hanky-panky, jabbering, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... pleasant travelling companions and at times are the cause of many amusing incidents which beguile the tedium of the journey. Also they often lead to your picking up chance acquaintances. I have known one stone placed in a dimly lighted corridor of a train productive of much merriment and harmless banter. Being of considerable weight they do not readily respond to a playful kick, but having no sharp corners they are seldom responsible for serious injury to ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... see no good reason why I should not introduce myself to the reader as Ralph Rover. My shipmates were kind, good-natured fellows, and they and I got on very well together. They did, indeed, very frequently make game of and banter me, but not unkindly; and I overheard them sometimes saying that Ralph Rover was a "queer, old-fashioned fellow." This, I must confess, surprised me much; and I pondered the saying long, but could come at no satisfactory conclusion ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... meet in your journey might notice the set of it, I suppose. Fancy, men in love don't think so much about how they look to other women." It is difficult to say whether a tone of playful banter or of gentle reproach prevailed ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... begun his questioning merely in a spirit of banter, but as she stubbornly persisted in her refusals, he began to think that she really had had some ridiculous adventure, and was determined to find out what it was. So he set traps for her, and cross-questioned her, secretly amused at the quick-witted way in which ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... muttered in an undertone across to Naismith, while Dick and the girls were in the thick of exclamatory and giggling banter, "here's some stuff for that article of yours, if you touch upon the Big House. I've seen the servants' dining room. Forty head sit down to it every meal, including gardeners, chauffeurs, and outside help. ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... privilege, Monsieur, to be an Englishman?" she began with polite banter. "You are the conquerors, the millionaires; yours are the palaces, and the high and honorable places! But you, Monsieur, you are not too proud ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... friends. They were warned by a man whom they met that hostile Indians were lurking in the neighborhood. Still they went on, forgetting their danger in the enjoyment of shooting ducks. Finally, however, one of the party said he would not go further, and the other joined him. This led Radisson to banter them, saying that he would go ahead and kill game enough ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... sort of banter and small talk, not worth deluging the reader dead with, they passed away the time ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... Jim Gollop's makeup was that underneath all his banter, and his lightness, and his irresponsible sense of humor, there lurked something which made him keep his resolutions. He was a pretty good sort after all. Just a very human, contented, work-a-day man who liked other good fellows, was sorry for those who took life too seriously, ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... picnics, rowing-matches, moonlight strolls, nutting expeditions in the October woods,—Alice declared that it was a whirl of dissipation. The fondness of Ruth, which was scarcely disguised, for the company of agreeable young fellows, who talked nothings, gave Alice opportunity for no end of banter. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... strung for banter. If she had not been one of those who went to mock, but remained to pray, she had gone to church with the thought of the cloak-that-was-to-be uppermost in her mind, and she had come down the long church stair with ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell
... comfortable to sit before the fire, which protested, in a fire's cheery, human way, against the depression of the murky world outside, and to banter Judith. ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... lost a great many men, he took a fancy to visit their camp. There he perceived little strength, less courage, but much disorder. From that time, foreseeing that things would go ill with them, as it since happened, he began to banter now one and then another, and be very free of his cutting jests; so some of Pompey's captains, playing the good fellows to show their assurance, told him, Do you see how many eagles we have yet? (They were then the device of the Romans in war.) They might be of use to you, replied Cicero, if you ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... on in low tones, had passed under cover of noisy mirth, snatches of song, banter, and gigglings; nobody paid heed to the two men talking in a corner. Yet the stranger lowered his voice to a ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... that he supplied to his hands. That was according to HIS rule of social equality by the camp fire, he said.... And where was all Lady Bridget's vaunted socialism if she jibbed at such a simple illustration of the first principles of socialism? Of course, Bridget had taken his banter in good part, and with a pretty grimace had told him she would get out a consignment of the stuff her Aunt Eliza gave at Christmas to the old men in their Irish village ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... the vertebrae of the spine. The Bishop was declaring with rhetorical exaggeration that there was hardly any evidence on Darwin's side. "What have they to bring forward?" he exclaimed. "Some rumoured statement about a long-legged sheep." But he passed on to banter: "I should like to ask Professor Huxley, who is sitting by me, and is about to tear me to pieces when I have sat down, as to his belief in being descended from an ape. Is it on his grandfather's or ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... and brilliant speech he poked rare fun at the dinner-debating members who were so ready to participate in the festivities of the society and so lax in attending the discussions. He not only did this with delicious banter and pointed sarcasm; but, with an audacious touch all his own, he coupled the toast with the name of one member present. This brought the ruffled gentleman up on to his legs, and, smarting under Mr. Chamberlain's ironical philippics, he tried to pay back "our young friend" for what ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton
... that Bad Rufe Tolliver might come back, and because of Devil Judd's anger at their attempt to capture young Dave, grew wary and rather pacificatory: and so, beyond a little quarrelling, a little threatening and the exchange of a harmless shot or two, sometimes in banter, sometimes in earnest, nothing had been done. Sternly, however, though the Falins did not know the fact, Devil Judd continued to hold aloof in spite of the pleadings of young Dave, and so confident was the old man in the balance of power that lay with ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... Farrago, That Drydens and Popes wrote three Centuries ago; Though they stared at my Comments, and sometimes might slumber, Yet the Truth they might fancy beneath all my Lumber: But your stupid Jargon is seen through instanter, And your Works give the Wits new Subjects for Banter. Such cler-obscure Aid may I meet again never! For now Milles and I will ...
— Cursory Observations on the Poems Attributed to Thomas Rowley (1782) • Edmond Malone
... come over Henry, and an attitude of proud reserve had taken the place of the careless banter with which he usually regaled the crew. He married Miss O'Brien in imagination to a strong man of villainous temper and despotic ideas, while the explanations he made to Miss Harcourt were too ingenious and involved to be confined in the space ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs
... the nicht afore last I gaed to the Hilltap to see Tibby, an' as usual there was a lad or twa in the kitchen, an' the crack was gaun screevin' roond. But I can tak' my share in that," continued Tammas modestly, "so we fell on to the banter. ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... cheap counterfeits of silver have made the decent four-pronged fork cheaper than the two-pronged steel barbarism, what has followed? Why, this—that the universality of the diffusion has made it hopeless any longer to banter it. There is, therefore, this strict analogy between "the silver fork" reproach and "the bluestocking" reproach—that in both cases alike a recognition, gradually becoming universal, of the thing itself, as a social necessity, has put down forever all idle attempts ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... of the four men under sentence sounding in his ears, and their hands, stretched our through the gratings in their cell-doors, clasped in frantic entreaty before his very eyes, it was particularly remarkable. Indeed, Mr Dennis appeared to think it an uncommon circumstance, and to banter himself upon it; for he thrust his hat on one side as some men do when they are in a waggish humour, sucked the head of his stick with a higher relish, and smiled as though he would say, 'Dennis, you're a rum dog; you're a queer fellow; you're capital ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... you!" cried Steve eagerly; "that is what I do feel, but people are so ready to banter ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... Spanish, besides I don't know how many Indian sign-languages." Now I was patting the groom on the back. I sat facing the ladies, so it was impossible to see the expression on his face. I kept up this banter till we arrived at the Department. I bade the ladies good day. I do not recollect when I enjoyed ten minutes ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... liking by your knowledge. I thought every schoolboy knew the cuckoo-flower!" cried Adelaide, trying to seem natural and not bitter in her banter, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... once." Fred dropped his banter. "I'll tell you what, Nancy. I may not be able to do much right off, but I'll promise you that he has a fair chance before ...
— The Calico Cat • Charles Miner Thompson
... went to her room for a fresh handkerchief. She would accompany Helen home, would manage to slip into the library alone, and put it partly under a book, so that it would appear to be hidden, and thus account for it not having been seen before; or better yet, she would catch it up playfully and banter Helen on her carelessness in leaving her love letters so exposed. This last seemed a very clever plan, and with her spirits quite elated, Juno drove around with Helen, finding no one in the parlor below, and felicitating herself upon the fact that Helen left her alone while ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... and inmost meaning of it; it was the all-compelling Womanhood, the sacred spark, guarded and precious, which set men's hearts aflame; and for him, henceforth, because of that one, it made all women sacred. He answered her, banter for banter. ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... portentous age of reticence and pose, was wholly free from solemnity, and when he heard or saw what was ludicrous was not afraid to laugh at it. Sir Robert Peel was an excellent hand at what our fathers called banter and we call chaff. A prig or a pedant was his favourite butt, and the performance was rendered all the more effective by his elaborate assumption of the grand seigneur's manner. The victim was dimly conscious that he was being laughed at, but comically uncertain ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... next 'move' (to use a Platonic expression) will 'shut him up.' He has reached the stage of framing general notions, and in this respect is in advance of Cephalus and Polemarchus. But he is incapable of defending them in a discussion, and vainly tries to cover his confusion with banter and insolence. Whether such doctrines as are attributed to him by Plato were really held either by him or by any other Sophist is uncertain; in the infancy of philosophy serious errors about morality might easily grow up—they are certainly put into the mouths of speakers in Thucydides; ...
— The Republic • Plato
... rough banter in excellent part. He sipped his beer, and grinned like a cat at his own expense. But after the guffaws had subsided, he said, "Thee's not told un about that five pound ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... Greece, he only gave the substance of the article he had written for the Revue des Deux Mondes, as the paper was yet unpublished all the remarks were novel, and the anecdotes fresh and sparkling. The tone of light banter and raillery in which he described public life in Greece and Greek statesmen, might have lost some of its authority had any one remembered to count the hours the speaker had spent in Athens; and Nina was certainly indignant at the hazardous effrontery ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... beforehand. I should, for my part, anticipate a greater danger in the familiar attitude of the English metropolitan Press and public toward an experiment they dislike and incline to dread:—the cynical comments, the quotations between inverted commas, the commiserating shrug, cold irony, raw banter, growl of menace, sharp snap, rounds of laughter. Frenchmen of the Young Republic, not presently appreciated as offensive, have had some of these careless trifles translated for them, and have been stung. We favoured Germany with them now ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... stand out from his head, shorn to the very skin, and the whole of his diminutive barrel-like body expressed a spirit of banter. ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... is, Happy. The biggest ketch you ever seen in your life. It's ketch the Flying U outfit and squeeze the life out of it; that's the ketch." Andy's tone had in it no banter, but considerable earnestness. For, though Chip would no doubt convince the boys that the danger was very real, there was a small matter of personal pride to urge Andy into trying to convince, them himself, without aid from ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... to do in honour of this international episode?' she asked. There was a slender vein of humour in Miss Ericson's character, and she occasionally exercised it gently at the expense of her friend's hobby. Mr. Sarrasin always enjoyed her mild banter hugely. Now, as ever, he paid it the tribute ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... worldly matters. His other convictions Captain Whalley never intruded. The difference of their ages was like another bond between them. Once, when twitted with the uncharitableness of his youth, Mr. Van Wyk, running his eye over the vast proportions of his interlocutor, retorted in friendly banter— ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... inconsistent with the Ignorance, Folly and Stupidity they shew at others. It is impossible that Men of Parts, and the least Spirit, how much soever they were in the Wrong, could see themselves defeated, banter'd and exposed with so much Tranquility and Chearfulness; and I can't conceive how any, but egregious Coxcombs, without Sense of Shame, could behave as Alciphron and Lysicles do throughout your Dialogues. ...
— A Letter to Dion • Bernard Mandeville
... "Very well, see you to-morrow. Meanwhile, be good. Flee the giddy lure. Go home to your little bed and sleep sweet." There was seriousness under his good-natured banter. "Come along and I'll see you as far ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... taken place between Ben and Captain Delmar shortly after my making my appearance: what occurred did not transpire, but this is certain that, upon the marine's return to the kitchen, one of the grooms, who ventured to banter him, received such a sound thrashing from Ben that it put an end to all further joking. As Ben had taken up the affair so seriously, it was presumed that if there had been anticipation of the hymeneal rites he was himself the party who had been hasty; and that now he was married, ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... tone of banter: "Knowing that you, fair lady, are ever thinking of me, and that my name is ever upon your fair lips in prayer, will spur me to renewed effort, for surely no cavalier ever had a more lovely mistress or a ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... people took part jointly in many affairs, but Bob got Marjorie to himself as much as possible. The others chaffed them a good deal, but as the banter was all good-natured, ...
— The Radio Boys with the Revenue Guards • Gerald Breckenridge
... comic gentlemen—such beings, as, more or less depressed in their own proper environment, on excursions suddenly see themselves in their true light, irresistibly facetious. These funny gentlemen, mostly husbands, seated themselves near to large groups of indulgent women and kept up an exquisite banter directed at each other's personal defects, or upon the idiosyncrasies of any bachelor or spinster near. These funny gentlemen kept alluding to the excursion as the "Exertion." If the boat rolled a little they said, "Now, Mother, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... other way (tract societies not being then in vogue), and the descriptions were so pat, that each one who saw them was disposed to apply them in a joking way to any other who was known to practice bundling; and the result was, such a general storm of banter and ridicule that no girl had the courage to stand against it, and continue to admit ...
— Bundling; Its Origin, Progress and Decline in America • Henry Reed Stiles
... to turn it all to banter relieved her at once. "It was pitiable," she nodded gravely to Marion; "his nerve left him when they made such ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... juxtaposition, like farce after tragedy; and indeed, in many parts of his poem, he is not only what he seems, but follows his saturnine countryman with a peculiar propriety of contrast, much of his liveliest banter being directed against the absurdities of Dante's theology. But hasty and most erroneous would be the conclusion that he was nothing but a banterar. He was a true poet of the mixed order, grave as well as gay; had a reflecting mind, a ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... protested against it, and said the offense was indictable at common law. Harwood stood stoutly for his rights and privileges, and for Yale democracy, which he declared his pipe exemplified. There was much good-natured banter of this ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... we met at breakfast, we looked somewhat pale, I suspect. My uncle was inclined to banter us, and told us that we should not mind such things, as he had felt several since he had been on the island, and no harm had come from them. I saw him, however, soon after that looking somewhat anxiously, I thought, up at the mountain, from which wreaths ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... their gay banter, wondering, as many thoughtful people have wondered before her, at the light-hearted abandon of these other girls. "It must be fun to be like that," she reflected, "but I don't believe I should want to change places with any of them. They only see their own little piece of things, ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... preach. You'd soon lose your influence if you did. It's a case of being, Darsie, rather than doing; being your truest, sweetest, highest self when you are with these men, so that they may feel your influence through all the fun and banter. Lots of fun, please; you can't have too much of that; a dull girl is soon left to herself. People in general don't half realise the influence of just right thinking—the atmosphere which surrounds a person ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... mother and grandmother, at forty; and so on—such she might have lived and died, and been none the worse for her reclusion, had she not leaned more than half out of her window in the Vicolo one bright April morning of her sixteenth year, to exchange lively banter with a friend below, and been seen by Messer Alessandro del Dardo, who within the cuirass of Sub-Prefect of Padua nourished the heart of an approved Poet; been seen of him for the miracle of young beauty she really was. ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... of them sat in at the meal, with a considerable clashing of cutlery on tin plates and cups. It was evident to Lambert that his presence exercised a restraint over their customary exchange of banter. In spite of the liberality of the cook, and the solicitation on part of his numerous hosts to "eat hearty," Lambert could not help the feeling that he was away off on the edge, and that his arrival had put a rein on the spirits ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... in women and therefore became quite as formidable as Delilah when she chose to assert herself. To say that Mr. Yankton was dazzled but mildly expresses his feelings; he was ravished, though in no mood for banter. Had their meeting occurred under more auspicious circumstances, he undoubtedly would have complimented her on her charming appearance; but for one who had been eating his heart out during eight consecutive hours solely on her account, it was ...
— When Dreams Come True • Ritter Brown
... man retorted pertly. "Everyone's doing this sort of thing now. Come along, dad. See the fun." He caught his father's arm and they re-entered, taking the stairs, this time, to the boxes above. From one came a man's laughing banter. "That's he," Frank whispered, Hastily he drew his half reluctant father into a vacant box. A waiter brought them beer, collected half a dollar and inquired if they wanted "Company." ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... never once looked toward the beach, and I maintained the banter with such success all unconsciously she sipped coffee from the china cup, ate fried evaporated potatoes, and spread marmalade on her biscuit. But it could not last. I saw the surprise that came over her. She had discovered the china plate from which she was eating. She looked over the ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... trivial one, but it diverted attention for a time from the fact of Paul's absence, and when the religious went back to the house and found Brother Andrew returned to his old duty as doorkeeper, the laughter was renewed, and there was some playful banter. ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... citadel could be had at any time for the asking, George began his sapping and mining operations with great vigor. He made Aun' Sheba sit down and give directions for supper, which he and his two colored men carried out. Mrs. Bodine was the only one who would jest with him, and he had a word of banter with her; and a cheery word for every ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... the women of the neighborhood always came out, even on washday, to see that Claude (his name was Claude Willlams) measured the cream properly. There was much banter about this. Mrs. Kennedy always said she wouldn't trust him "fur's you can fling a ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... professional attire, were of the party, the women a good deal worse than the men; and they all returned together to Holly Street, where a meal had been prepared in the front parlours, the landlady having generously placed them at the disposal of her lodgers for the occasion. There was a good deal of banter and side jokes were bandied about from one to another; which was galling to young Chetwynd, and made him devoutly thankful that none of his own companions and friends were present. When at last Bella rose from the table to change her gown for the pale grey he himself had chosen, with the big hat ...
— If Only etc. • Francis Clement Philips and Augustus Harris
... Wakes of that season were given by music, going the rounds of invitation to the mirth or festivals which were awaiting them. In this there was some propriety, some object; but where is there any in such a solemn piece of banter as that of music going the rounds and disturbing people in vain? For, surely, any meditation to be thereby excited on the holiness of the ensuing day could hardly be of great avail, in a bed, between sleeping and waking. But such is the power ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... of some very fishy transactions on his part, three undeniable half-crowns had been distinctly observed in his overcoat pocket the previous week. "And how should he come by these by honest means?" indignantly inquired Banter. "He says he's out of work, and he's not got the courage ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... often stroll out to them after his daily visit, and lying on the grass, his arms crossed behind his head, and a big cigar between his lips, would gently banter everybody. Tea came at five o'clock, and then Mrs. Decie appeared armed with a magazine or novel, for she was proud of her literary knowledge. The sitting was suspended; Harz, with a cigarette, would move between the table and the picture, drinking his tea, putting a touch ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... ideas, but one by one would grow numb and drop off into the waters of mental indifference. They had a nice sense of satire, and it was a delight for the American to indulge in an easy, inconsequential banter which was full of humour without being labelled funny; but it used to fill him with sorrow to see many of his best controversial subjects punctured by a lazily conceived play of words. He felt that, coming from the New World, he was in a position to give knowledge ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... politician seeks to galvanise a new party by a series of novels, the romances cannot be works of literary art. If a young man wants only to advertise his own smartness, he will not produce a beautiful thing. And if a statesman out of office wishes to amuse himself by alternate banter and laudation of the very society which he has led and which looks to him as its inspiration, the result will be infinitely entertaining, but not a great work of art. Disraeli therefore with literary gifts of a very high ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... name isn't Rachel," said Joan, a little hurt. For it was not in flippancy or banter that he had called her out of her name; his eyes were not within a hundred leagues of that place, his heart away with them, it ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... genial laugh of Gay At Pope's defiant ire! How Parnell's sallies brought in play The rapier wit of Prior! And how o'er all the banter's shift— The laughter's fall and swell— Upleaped the great guffaw of Swift, With "Vive ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... said Uncle Remus, snapping his huge tongs in order to silence a persistent cricket in the chimney, "dat ef he dast ter back out fum a banter lak dat he never is ter year de las' un it fum Miss Meadows en Miss Motts en de gals, en he march off todes Mr. Benjermun ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... the men who came to the flat, whether they were army officers or radicals who hated the army, had the easy gentleness, the acceptance of women without embarrassed banter, for which she had longed in Gopher Prairie. Yet they seemed to be as efficient as the Sam Clarks. She concluded that it was because they were of secure reputation, not hemmed in by the fire of provincial jealousies. Kennicott had ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... quickly enough, a blue jacket fastened over the calico lining, and her cheeks aglow with blushes, for here was a double embarrassment—to face Arthur's banter for the first time since her engagement, and to be introduced to the great Miss Rollo in a dressing-jacket! "The great Miss Rollo," however, turned out to be a simple-looking girl, who looked much more afraid of her companions than her companions were of ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... unfledged young creature, "bill still yellow," so to speak;—and marks himself chiefly by a visible hankering after that troublesome creature Marwitz, who is always coquetting. Friedrich's conversation, especially to me Wilhelmina, seems "GUINDE, set on stilts," likewise there are frequent cuts of banter in him; and it is painfully evident he distinguishes my Sister of Anspach and her foolish Husband, whom he has invited over hither in a most eager manner, beyond what a poor Wilhelmina with her old love can pretend to. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... returned a sharp reply to this banter, but she was very anxious to find a physician for Phoebe, and so thought it best ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... wheel his barrow, which was full of gravel, over Davy's toes. The said toes were sticking quite bare through great holes in an old pair of woman's boots. Then he began to tease him rather roughly. But Davy took all his banter with just the same complacency and mirth with which he had received the ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 1 • George MacDonald
... disagreed on innumerable things, deep down, underlying all, there was a permanent unity. She liked him for a certain stern soberness that was his, and for his saving grace of humor. Seriousness and banter were not incompatible. She liked him for his gallantry, made to work with and not for display. She liked the spirit of his offer at Happy Camp, when he proposed giving her an Indian guide and passage-money back to the United States. ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... a letter to Dean Swift, in which he says, "The Earl of Oxford was removed on Tuesday; the Queen died on Sunday. What a world this is, and how does fortune banter us!" In other {48} words, Bolingbroke tells Swift that full success seemed within his grasp on Tuesday, and was suddenly torn away from him on Sunday. But the most characteristic part of the letter is a passage which throws a very blaze of light ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... charming were always proud. Not because he was an earl—nobility was plentiful enough at Edinburg then—but because he was himself. It was a pleasure just to sit beside him, and to meet his pleasantness with cheerful chat, gay banter, ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... somehow that she had been cheated. Why had he not told her? Why did he let her play and romp and joke and banter with him as though they had been children and equals? It wasn't fair! He was just laughing, at her! Just laughing at her! All her spirit was in ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... the notes, is academic banter, that of a university man, who is mocking the notes of learned editors. This humour is not the humour of Dickens, who, however, may very well have written the Introduction to Cruikshank's version. ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... the rain!" said I. And he laughed again at me. It was not banter. The whole look and air of the man testified to a thorough soldierly, manly contempt of little things—of all things that might come in the way of order and his duty. An intrinsic independence and ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... scarcely any courtier who fears God's anger more than the displeasure of his master. A pension, a title, a ribbon, are sufficient to make one forget the torments of hell and the pleasures of the celestial court. A woman's caresses expose him every day to the displeasure of the Most High. A joke, a banter, a bon-mot, make more impression upon the man of the world than all the grave notions of his religion. Are we not assured that a true repentance is sufficient to appease Divinity? However, we do not see that this true repentance is sincerely expressed; at least, we very rarely see great thieves, ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... accustomed to the ceaseless banter of Burley's two comrades—a banter entirely American, and which at first she was unable to understand. But now all things American, including accent and odd, perverted humour, had become very dear to her. The clink-clank of the muleteer's big spurs always set her heart beating; ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... ever such an impudent rascal?" roared the judge. "Dolt think that, after all the pains I have been at to get an answer, thou canst banter me with such sham stuff as this? Hold the candle to his brazen face, that ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... Old North State derided the pretensions of the commonwealths that flanked her on either side, and Georgia was not slow to give South Carolina as good as she sent. All this seemed to be harmless banter, but the rivalry was old enough and strong enough to encourage the hopes of the Union leaders that the Confederacy would split along state lines. The cohesive power of the Revolutionary war was not sufficiently ...
— The Creed of the Old South 1865-1915 • Basil L. Gildersleeve
... all witty dogs, thought I to myself, trying to make the best of the matter, for I saw it would not do to resent what they said; they can't mean any harm, though they are certainly very impudent; so I tried to laugh off their banter, but as soon as ever I could, I put down my name and ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... sparkled with banter—"I'll tell you ef you'll fus' aansweh me a riddle; will you? 'Caze ef you don't I ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... ceased to joke and banter. The situation was serious. Some tried to smoke, but their parching thirst was thus only aggravated—they threw ...
— The Mintage • Elbert Hubbard
... of Brand, Braund, and Barnes, is a Banter on Criticks, and Genealogists, who make such a Pother about the Orthography of Names and Things, that many Times, three Parts in four of a Folio Treatise, is taken up in ascertaining the Propriety ...
— A Learned Dissertation on Dumpling (1726) • Anonymous
... who was vaguely understood to be "in insurance" at present, parted his long coat-tails before the Baltimore heater, and drifted readily to reminiscence. Louise and Theodore (as the family Bible too stiffly knew Looloo and Tee Wee) sat together on a divan, indulging in banter, with some giggling from Looloo—none from grave Theodore. Chas informally skimmed an evening paper in a corner, with comments: though the truth was that precious little ever appeared in any newspaper which was news ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... nearly five minutes. Where was he? What up to? Would he miss his appointment? No, I caught a glimpse of him at the door getting rid of hat and overcoat, pausing a moment with tall bent head to banter Rose, the little Chinese girl who usually drifted from table to table with cigars and cigarettes. Then he was coming ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... property, but unfortunately didn't. She calmly appropriated the bunch, and distributed it in portions to those nearest her. Peachy's cheeks flamed. She was a hot-tempered little soul underneath her gay banter. ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... an interesting event in Haydn's career. In the course of some banter at the house of Rogers, Campbell the poet once remarked that marriage in nine cases out of ten looks like madness. Haydn's case was not the tenth. His salary from Count Morzin was only 20 pounds with board ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... opposite which my father has written "good sneers"—but it should be remembered that he used the word "sneer" in rather a special sense, not as necessarily implying a feeling of bitterness in the critic, but rather in the sense of "banter." Speaking of the 'true believer,' Fleeming Jenkin says, ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... table. "I will not listen to you give vent to the national craving. I will hold on to the illusion of having found one unmercenary human being, even if she had to be buried in the depths of Harpeth Valley to keep her so." There was banter in Everett's voice and a smile on his lips, but a bitterness lay in the depths of his keen dark eyes and an ugly trace of cynicism filtered through ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... still fatuously regarded it rather as owing to his own hurried and unfinished declaration. It was true that he hadn't said half what he intended to say; it was true that she might have misunderstood it as the conventional gallantry of the situation, as—terrible thought!—the light banter of the habitual love-making American, to which she had been accustomed; perhaps even now she relegated him to the level of Greyson, and this accounted for her singular impassiveness—an impassiveness that certainly was singular now he reflected upon it—that might have been even contempt. ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... couches by the stewards' boys nudging, and pushing, and flapping table-cloths over them. I shaved and made a neat toilette, and came upon deck just as we lay off that little Dutch fort, which is, I dare say, described in "Murray's Guide-book," and about which I had some rare banter with poor Hicks and Lady Kicklebury, whose sense of humor is certainly not very keen. He had, somehow, joined her ladyship's party, and they were looking at the fort, and its tri-colored flag—that floats familiar in Vandevelde's pictures—and ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... provost-marshal ever gave a more hazardous gauntlet to run, thought I, and I said as much; but my musings brought only a good-humoured banter from ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... to judge from his statement that he had nothing of the jester or scoffer in him.[161] But if Luis de Leon was relatively poor in humour, he had an abundant store of mordant sarcasm and a faculty for ironic banter, as Medina and Castro learned to their chagrin.[162] Pacheco's opinion of Luis de Leon's versatile talent is borne out by the scrap of evidence given at the trial by Francisco de Salinas—the sightless ...
— Fray Luis de Leon - A Biographical Fragment • James Fitzmaurice-Kelly
... of gossip and banter, the horses retained their air of solemn rumination, twisting their lower jaws from side to side ...
— The Little Regiment - And Other Episodes of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... against our sceptical historian, we can discover but slender traces of profound and exquisite erudition, of solid criticism and accurate investigation; but we are too frequently disgusted by vague and inconclusive reasoning; by unseasonable banter and senseless witticisms; by imbittered bigotry and enthusiastic jargon; by futile cavils and illiberal invectives. Proud and elated by the weakness of his antagonists, he condescends not to handle the sword of controversy."—Monthly Review, ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... in point of fortune I mean," answered the other. "And yet, as to that now, how much do you imagine your friend is to have?"—"How much?" cries Jones, "how much? Why, at the utmost, perhaps L200." "Do you mean to banter me, young gentleman?" said the father, a little angry. "No, upon my soul," answered Jones, "I am in earnest: nay, I believe I have gone to the utmost farthing. If I do the lady an injury, I ask her pardon." "Indeed you do," cries the father; "I am ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... note to the window, half angry with herself that a kind of banter, in which certainly there was very little wit, should have power enough to disturb her. But though the shaft might be a slight one, it was winged with a will; the intensity of Mrs. Evelyn's enjoyment ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... a little touch of banter, "I know you rank it higher, which is curious, as it did not in the least shake your belief." (III. p. 14; see also p. 16, "to me it was an absolutely ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... her!" exclaimed the thick one, lorgnetting the graceful Constance with a fishy eye as the temporary flower girl joyously greeted Ashley Loring and Val Russel and Bruce Townley, pinned bouquets upon them and exchanged laughing banter with them. ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... execution could be given than the fact that Moore has always with them passed, and still passes, for an eminently melodious poet. What then remains? Chiefly this. In one class of writing, liveliness of witty banter, along with neatness; and, in the other and ostensibly more permanent class, elegance, also along with neatness. Reduce these qualities to one denomination, and we come to something that may be ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... be, a privilege by which nature would seem to have put beyond doubt the divinity of woman: a mother. It is true that it is within his reach to be a father; but what is 'paternity' compared with motherhood? The very word wears a droll face, as though accustomed to banter. Let us venture on the bull: that, though it be possible for most men to be fathers, no man can ever be a mother. Maybe a recondite intention of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception was the accentuation of the fact that man's share in the sacred mystery of birth is so small ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... tenderness Hugh Noland would have told him the real reason for wanting to get away, but something in the banter of being admonished to be a man took away the ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... the hard, brilliant Irish intellect so often is. He liked people to talk to him. He liked to know the colours of people's minds. He liked to be amused. His merriest talk was like playing catch with an apple of banter, which one afterwards ...
— John M. Synge: A Few Personal Recollections, with Biographical Notes • John Masefield
... the Knowledge, good Sense and Penetration, which your Libertines display at some Times, are inconsistent with the Ignorance, Folly and Stupidity they shew at others. It is impossible that Men of Parts, and the least Spirit, how much soever they were in the Wrong, could see themselves defeated, banter'd and exposed with so much Tranquility and Chearfulness; and I can't conceive how any, but egregious Coxcombs, without Sense of Shame, could behave as Alciphron and Lysicles do throughout your Dialogues. They are Fellows without Feeling or Manners. If among ...
— A Letter to Dion • Bernard Mandeville
... his canoe, they pushed out some twenty or thirty rods into the lake, cast anchor, and threw out their lines. Claud, who baited with grubs, soon had drawn in two, weighing as many pounds a piece, and began to feel disposed to banter the hunter, who had baited with a flap of moose-skin, which he had brought along with him, and which, to Claud, seemed little likely to attract the fishes to his hook. But he soon found himself mistaken; for, turning to give utterance to what ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... into the contraction of one syllable, and ever since is become proper English.' [Footnote: North, Examen, p. 574; for the origin of 'sham' see p. 231. Compare Swift in The Tatler, No. ccxxx. 'I have done the utmost,' he there says, 'for some years past to stop the progress of "mob" and "banter"; but have been plainly borne down by numbers, and betrayed by those who promised to assist me.'] At a much later date a writer in The Spectator speaks of 'mob' as still only struggling into existence. 'I dare not answer,' he says, 'that mob, rap, pos, incog., and the like, will not in time be ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... humor and executive thoroughness. He knew how many pounds of cotton a certain man or woman was likely to pick within the working hours of a day, and he marked the clean and the trashy pickers; and the play of his two-colored temperament was seen in his jovial banter of the one and his harsh reprimand of the other. But to-day a hired man stood at the scales to see the cotton weighed. The Major walked abroad throughout the fields. As he drew near, the negroes hushed their songs and their swaggering talk. They bowed respectfully ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... more Chieftain had always had a good-night pat on the flank from Tim, and in the morning, after the currying and rubbing, they had a little friendly banter, in the way of love-slaps from Tim and good-natured nosings from Chieftain. Perhaps many of Tim's confidences were given half in jest, and perhaps Chieftain sometimes thought that Tim was a bit slow in perception, but, all ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... thought gave sweetness to their labour, and the responsibilities devolving upon them imbued the sacred holiday with a meaning and charm that it had never had before for them. They bubbled over with importance and with the glory of it. A sister and a brother could not meet without a friendly banter. ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... that her stool touched the chair. She bent her cheek upon the shrivelled hand resting upon the arm. The excitement and feverish banter of Truedale affected her painfully. She reproached herself bitterly for having left him to the mercy of his loneliness and imagination. Her interest in, her resentment for, Conning faded before the pitiful display ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... solemn thing. Who would jeer, and jest, as she stood before the altar, and pledged fidelity unto death to her betrothed partner? And why, I would ask, should the preliminaries of marriage be treated as a theme fit only for levity and merriment? It is said that we Americans are peculiar for banter on this subject. One scarcely hears it alluded to in society, except with a laugh, or a jest. As a natural consequence of this state of feeling, and this style of conversation relative to the affections, it is not easy to know when one speaks ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... was who taught the use Of the bow and the spear, and sent the moose Into the Indian banter's hands; Glooskap ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... constant visitors had observed that we always drank His Majesty's health as soon as the cloth was removed; but they were by this time become so fond of wine that they would frequently remind me of the health in the middle of dinner by calling out King George Earee no Brittannee; and would banter me if the glass was not filled to the brim. Nothing could exceed the mirth and jollity of these people when ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... vigorous debate between her old-fashioned ideas and the brand-new theories of the age of education: Then Alice would come in and make the dispute a subject for sprightly mockery. Alice was the Princess in those days. He quarrelled with her often, but only to resume the tone of affectionate banter an hour after. Alice was now Mrs. Rodman, and had declared that she hated him, that in her life she would never speak to him again. Would it not have been better if things had gone the natural course? Alice would no doubt have married Daniel Dabbs, ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... Fun—known by his broad grin, by his loud tone, and by his rude banter. Head foremost forcing himself in, came he, and brought with him a heap of coarse caricatures, and they were ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... subject, I cannot but transcribe, from his excellent work, a distinguished passage in support of the Christian Revelation. After shewing, in decent but strong terms, the unfairness of the INDIRECT attempts of modern infidels to unsettle and perplex religious principles, and particularly the irony, banter, and sneer, of one whom he politely calls 'an eloquent historian', the ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... questions and comers had only one answer!—"Que faire; ils ont des canons?" This was the 3d May, 1631. This probably is about the nadir-point of the Brandenburg-Hohenzollern History. The little Friedrich, who became Frederick the Great, in writing of it, has a certain grim banter in his tone; and looks rather with mockery on the perplexities of his poor Ancestor, so fatally ignorant of the time of day it had ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... would include even the gnadige Frau," said Paul, who had laughed only to hide the uneasiness that Yerba's approach to the tabooed subject had revived in him. She shook her head; then, recovering her tone of gentle banter, said, "There—I've made a confession. If the colonel talks to you again about my conquests, you will know that at present my affections are centred on the Baron's mother. I admit it's a strong point in his—in ANYBODY'S—favor, who can show an unblemished maternal pedigree. What a pity it is ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... in this vein of humorous banter since Shakespeare died. One of the best pieces of Shakespeare criticism ever written is contained in four words of the present Poet Laureate's Ode for the Tercentenary of Shakespeare, 'London's laughter is thine'. ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... the third step, which lifted me not only to a level with my new and beautiful ally, but even above her, was gained by me in a controversy on professional science, with especial relation to physicians. The countess, in a very spirited bit of banter, ridiculed the whole profession and its science, stating that, in her belief, our entire pathology, therapeutic, etc., was not worth the sand strewn over the prescriptions. She declared that in the treatment of internal maladies medical science has made no progress since Galen's ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... pray you, mademoiselle," said Raoul. "I feel that you are all, of both sexes, of a different age from me. You can laugh, and you can banter agreeably. I, mademoiselle, I loved mademoiselle de—" Raoul could not pronounce her name—"I loved her; well! I put faith in her—now I am quits by ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... the name for the last sheaf is Boba (Old Woman), answering to the Polish name Baba. The Boba is said to sit in the corn which is left standing last. The person who binds the last sheaf or digs the last potato is the subject of much banter, and receives and long retains the name of the Old Rye-woman or the Old Potato-woman. The last sheaf—the Boba—is made into the form of a woman, carried solemnly through the village on the last harvest-waggon, and drenched ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... And as it is not a bad one, I see no good reason why I should not introduce myself to the reader as Ralph Rover. My shipmates were kind, good-natured fellows, and they and I got on very well together. They did, indeed, very frequently make game of and banter me, but not unkindly; and I overheard them sometimes saying that Ralph Rover was a "queer, old-fashioned fellow." This, I must confess, surprised me much; and I pondered the saying long, but could come at no satisfactory conclusion as to that wherein my old-fashionedness ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... a laugh the cool, light scorn of her banter. Yet something in him warmed to his environment. He had the feeling of having come into more intimate touch with her past than he had yet done. The sight of that plain little bed went to the source of his emotions. How many times had his love knelt beside it in her night-gown and offered up her ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... her approaches with a banter, and had suffered her to get hold of his hand; but at the mention of the piece of silver, he hemmed, looked grave, and turning to us, asked if we had not better continue our walk. "Come, my master," said the girl archly, "you'd not be in such a hurry, if you knew ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... time; though it was plain that he courted inquiry and remark, which to a certain extent was necessary to the full and pleasant exercise of his faculties. But it was infinitely amusing to hear him banter an obstinate old lawyer on a point of law, catching at his arguments before he had half uttered them, and dissecting them with such wonderful dexterity that the listeners, shaking with laughter, saw, probably for the first time, that the severest logic and ...
— Discourse of the Life and Character of the Hon. Littleton Waller Tazewell • Hugh Blair Grigsby
... time has substituted a bourgeois good-humor which respects the family circle, and haunts the kitchen-stairs; for the biting jeer, intended to make some victim uncomfortable, it gives the sarcastic or sprightly banter, not unconscious of an effort at moral amelioration; for the sententious sagacity, and humorous enjoyment of the nature of man, it gives bright thoughts and a humanitarian sympathy. But, on the whole, the intellectual ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... Nae banter frae Lord Deas, Nae promises o' fees That never will be paid afore the judgment-day, Nae lies dubbed "information," From the worst rogues in the nation,— The days o' my Circuits ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... met that day - The world of work and the world of play; And the grimy lads from the reeking shaft Nudged each other and grinned and chaffed. 'Got 'em all out!' 'A cousin of mine!' So ran the banter at Pennarby mine. ...
— Songs of Action • Arthur Conan Doyle
... professions with equal results. He was glad that Oliver had been found worthy enough to be admitted to such a circle. He loved, too, to hear his son's voice and watch the impression his words made on the room. As the evening wore on, and he listened to his banter, or caught the point of the jests that Oliver parried and heard his merry laugh, he would slip his hand under the table and pat his boy's knee with loving taps of admiration, prouder of him than ever. His own pleasures so absorbed him that he continued to sit almost ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... there), is discovered in him: without wit himself, but much the cause of wit. None oftener shook the Tabagie with inextinguishable Hahas: daily, by stirring into him, you could wrinkle the Tabagie into grim radiance of banter and ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... to know me, sir," said Peveril; "and if so, I think I may fairly ask you your purpose in thus bearing me company, and the meaning of all this rhapsody. If it be mere banter, I can endure it within proper limit; although it is uncivil on the part of a stranger. If you have any farther purpose, speak it out; I am not to be ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... superiority that was resented by her Southern sisters as well as by her Northern partners. The Old North State derided the pretensions of the commonwealths that flanked her on either side, and Georgia was not slow to give South Carolina as good as she sent. All this seemed to be harmless banter, but the rivalry was old enough and strong enough to encourage the hopes of the Union leaders that the Confederacy would split along state lines. The cohesive power of the Revolutionary war was not sufficiently strong to make the States sink ...
— The Creed of the Old South 1865-1915 • Basil L. Gildersleeve
... bet as gentlemen bet, nor to back a well-heeled bird, nor to color my fancy for a horse. As for a mistress, or for those fugitive affairs of the heart which English fashion countenanced—nay, on which fashion insisted—I had no part in them, and brooked much banter from the gay world in consequence. It was not merely lack of money, nor yet a certain fastidiousness implanted, nor yet the inherent shrinking of my English blood from pleasure forbidden, for my Renault blood was hot enough, God wot! ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... had heard nothing of the news which had been learned over night at headquarters, they were as merry as could be, and indulged in much raillery over old Peter's lectures to his master. But the old man said little in answer to their banter this morning; his master was long in returning, and Stadinger had reached the age when he borrowed trouble, and it rested heavily upon him. Finally Walldorf got out of all patience with ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... a little coldness to appear on her face. Rude banter was all very well, but it mustn't go too far. (Secretly she allowed to herself sometimes that this old man had elements of the cad in ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... to a warm bed, at that hour. The summons, then, to the Wakes of that season were given by music, going the rounds of invitation to the mirth or festivals which were awaiting them. In this there was some propriety, some object; but where is there any in such a solemn piece of banter as that of music going the rounds and disturbing people in vain? For, surely, any meditation to be thereby excited on the holiness of the ensuing day could hardly be of great avail, in a bed, between sleeping ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... voice of her banter which she had been using for one which was expressively earnest in its ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... will forgive me. I do but speak in banter. It has been said that a good woman, fitly mated, grows doubly good; but how often have we seen a bad man mated to a good woman turned into a good man? Why, I myself was not wholly good till I married my wife; and, if the eminent soldier and gentleman in whose honor we are here—and may he be ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... possessed the native haughtiness of good birth, and that indescribable something which may be called "pedigree." So, on Monday her turn would come. And, moreover, the Marquise knew that as soon as people learned that the stranger was her cousin, they would suspend their banter and look ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... hardly merits an analysis. Critias, looking ill, is met by Triepho. After a little banter, in which Triepho makes fun of the gods by whom Critias swears, and of their history ( 2-18), Critias confesses that the cause that has made him pale is the hearing bad news at an assembly of Christians. Having first heard two Christian sermons, the ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... labouring to counteract Pitt's diplomatists. But though Fox censured the French treaty, which formed the leading topic of the king's speech, he voted for the address, a circumstance for which he received a little banter from the lips of the minister. Pitt remarked:—"I am happy that, notwithstanding the vehemence with which the right honourable gentleman has argued against the address, he is ready to vote for it. I hope he will continue the same line of conduct throughout the session; for, if he makes a practice ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... afternoon rain began falling, and at mess time the mess hall became the stage for exceptionally spirited banter and wild conjecture as to what would happen on the morrow. Confidential battle orders carried the information that artillery preparation would begin at midnight, continuing with great concentration until 5:30 a.m., zero hour, when the attacking forces of nine American ...
— Aces Up • Covington Clarke
... fantastic or ultra refinement. At length, however, when cheap counterfeits of silver have made the decent four-pronged fork cheaper than the two-pronged steel barbarism, what has followed? Why, this—that the universality of the diffusion has made it hopeless any longer to banter it. There is, therefore, this strict analogy between "the silver fork" reproach and "the bluestocking" reproach—that in both cases alike a recognition, gradually becoming universal, of the thing ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... the stewards' boys nudging, and pushing, and flapping table-cloths over them. I shaved and made a neat toilette, and came upon deck just as we lay off that little Dutch fort, which is, I dare say, described in "Murray's Guide-book," and about which I had some rare banter with poor Hicks and Lady Kicklebury, whose sense of humor is certainly not very keen. He had, somehow, joined her ladyship's party, and they were looking at the fort, and its tri-colored flag—that floats familiar in Vandevelde's pictures—and at the lazy ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the servants of the Justices' retinue and the soldiers of the garrison, who used the place as their common lounge, looking on the whole thing as a mighty cheap form of sport, and roaring with laughter at the rude banter and ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... think I have sense enough to love you," said Fanny, still in a tone of banter. "We part as friends, however, and if you insist on coming to call upon my sister, Mrs Barton, of course I cannot help it, only do not for a moment suppose that I give you ...
— The Ferryman of Brill - and other stories • William H. G. Kingston
... you mid meet in your journey might notice the set of it, I suppose. Fancy, men in love don't think so much about how they look to other women." It is difficult to say whether a tone of playful banter or of gentle reproach prevailed in ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... thundered past the fortifications of Paris, and said, as people do say in such circumstances, "Why, I believe I've been asleep!" Roderick shook himself like a great bear, and asked if we had passed Chantilly; the Perfect Fool began his banter, and roared for a cab as the lights of the station twinkled in the semi-darkness. I could scarce believe, as I watched his antics, that he was the man who had spoken to me of great mysteries ten minutes before. Still less could I convince myself that he had not many days to live. So are the fateful ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... proud to speak. There is music as the audience rustles and murmurs into its place with eager expectation. Then there is a prayer. Then Mr. Choate, the president of the day, with his customary felicity and sparkling banter, speaks of the origin of the ancient and mysterious brotherhood. "And now," he says, in ending, "I introduce to you him who, whenever and wherever he speaks, is the orator of the day." Mr. Phillips rises, and buttons his frock-coat across his white ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... spirit of banter the playwright and the star were left alone with the manuscript of the play. As he read on, Douglass was carried out of his own impassivity by the changes in the face before him. It became once more elusive, duskily mysterious in its lines. A ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... intended in the beginning; while the younger ones, and especially the children, were full of mirth and jollity, challenging each other to trials of speed and skill, laughing good-naturedly at little mishaps, and exchanging jests and good humored banter. ...
— Christmas with Grandma Elsie • Martha Finley
... warblers of many species, sparrows of different kinds, shore birds and ducks, the sweet-songed thrushes. Little tepid breezes wandered up and down, warm in contrast to the faint snow-chill that even yet lingered in the shadows. Sounds carried clearly, so that the shouts and banter of the rivermen were plainly audible up the reaches of the river. Ashore moist and aggressive green things were pushing up through the watery earth from which, in shade, the last frost had not yet departed. At camp the fires roared invitingly. Charlie's grub was hot and grateful. ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... who loved Emilie could see through all her banter a tinge of melancholy. It was clear that Maximilien Longueville still reigned over that inexorable heart. Sometimes she would be as gentle as she had been during the brief summer that had seen the birth of her love; sometimes, again, she was unendurable. ...
— The Ball at Sceaux • Honore de Balzac
... necessary pins, we hurriedly and sneakingly enter the drawing-room, and find all our guests already come together. Mother gives us an almost imperceptible glance of gentle reproach, but father is so occupied in bantering a strange miss—banter in which the gallant and the fatherly happily join to make that manner which is the envy and admiration of the neighborhood—that he seems unconscious of our entrance. An intuition, however, tells us that this ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... hope I may never have to do that again. What is that you mean?' This he said very seriously. There was usually in his voice something of a tone of banter,—a subdued cynicism,—which had caused everybody near him to be afraid of him, and which even yet was habitual to him. But now that was all gone. Was there to be any new source of trouble betwixt ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... great lawyer trembled, as many a witness had trembled of old under his own cross-examination. But he tried to pass it off just at first with a little society banter. He bowed, and smiled, and pretended to look arch—look arch, indeed, with that ashen, white face of his!—as he answered, with ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... deep-laid political scheme for centralizing the government and setting up a hereditary aristocracy. The press teemed with invective and ridicule, and the feeling thus expressed by the penny-a-liners was shared by able men accustomed to weigh their words. Franklin dealt with it in a spirit of banter, and John Adams in a spirit of abhorrence; while Samuel Adams pointed out the dangers inherent in the principle of hereditary transmission of honours, and in the admission of foreigners into a secret association possessed of political influence in America. What! cried the men of Massachusetts. ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... have been levelled against our sceptical historian, we can discover but slender traces of profound and exquisite erudition, of solid criticism and accurate investigation; but we are too frequently disgusted by vague and inconclusive reasoning; by unseasonable banter and senseless witticisms; by imbittered bigotry and enthusiastic jargon; by futile cavils and illiberal invectives. Proud and elated by the weakness of his antagonists, he condescends not to handle the sword ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... lack of learning would prove a barrier to promotion. He found that much of the leisure hitherto devoted to athletic sports must be given to study. Behind "sported oak," while dust accumulated on boxing-glove and foil—neither the banter of his brother officers nor his love for athletics inducing him to break the resolution—he bent to his work with a fixity of purpose that augured ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... Popes wrote three Centuries ago; Though they stared at my Comments, and sometimes might slumber, Yet the Truth they might fancy beneath all my Lumber: But your stupid Jargon is seen through instanter, And your Works give the Wits new Subjects for Banter. Such cler-obscure Aid may I meet again never! For now Milles and I will be ...
— Cursory Observations on the Poems Attributed to Thomas Rowley (1782) • Edmond Malone
... levity which the widow of J. Rodney Potts, for one, would have found it impossible to condone. "I am a light old woman," she had said to me; "I laugh at the world even when I fear it most." There was a desperate sprite of banter in her eye when she made this confession, a sprite that leaped forth to be gay when I shrived her. But, though we sacredly observed all mirthful conventions in our dallying, I knew that Miss Caroline had more than enough to ponder of matters weighty. I knew that she was likely ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... was good-natured banter. There was not a sign of panic in the army. The men at once formed themselves into line of battle, according to their instructions, and opened a terrible fire upon the weeds in which the warriors lay concealed. Hundreds of bullets swept every part of the cover, and then the cannon sent in ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... for banter. Action was forward and it always straightened out the short-circuitings of Sandy's mental reflexes toward womankind. He touched Pronto's flanks with the dulled rowels he wore, and the pinto broke into a lope. A big boulder was perched upon the nigh side of the ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... have a way of making friends unconsciously. I can see that," Mrs. Tellingham said, kindly. "Now, do not be discouraged. You will make friends among the girls in just the same way. Don't mind their banter for a while. The rough edges will ...
— Ruth Fielding on Cliff Island - The Old Hunter's Treasure Box • Alice Emerson
... touches on Mary of Guise (who once treated him in a spirit of banter), he deals a stab at her name and fame. On all that concerns her personal character and political conduct, he is unworthy of credit when uncorroborated by better authority. Indeed Knox's spirit is so unworthy that for this, among other reasons, Archbishop Spottiswoode ...
— John Knox and the Reformation • Andrew Lang
... possible; each shred being in breadth about the eighth of an inch, and the work of the teeth! Pairs were demolished in this way during the progress of the Life of Sheridan. A third called your attention to a note written in a strain of the most playful banter, and announcing the next "tragi-comedy meeting." A fourth repeated a merry impromptu; and a fifth played a very pathetic air, composed and adapted for some beautiful lines of Mrs. Opie's. But to return to Mayfield. Our desire to go over the cottage which he ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 356, Saturday, February 14, 1829 • Various
... company of course excepted—many people, perhaps most people, are as infants. They have little sense of humor. They don't like jokes. Raillery in writing annoys and offends them. The coarseness apart, I think I have met very, very few women who liked the banter of Swift and Fielding. Their simple, tender natures revolt at laughter. Is the satyr always a wicked brute at heart, and are they rightly shocked at his grin, his leer, his horns, hoofs, and ears? Fi donc, le vilain monstre, with his shrieks, and his capering crooked legs! Let him go and get ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... resignation. In his prose he shows the cavalier spirit,—aggressive, light-hearted, self-confident. Like Carlyle, he dislikes shams, and protests against what he calls the barbarisms of society; but he writes with a light touch, using satire and banter as the better part of his argument. Carlyle denounces with the zeal of a Hebrew prophet, and lets you know that you are hopelessly lost if you reject his message. Arnold is more like the cultivated Greek; his voice is ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... senator, Toombs began to prod Lamar about his speech in the House upon the occasion of the death of Charles Sumner. Lamar was not quick to quarrel, though when aroused a man of devilish temper and courage. The subject had become distasteful to him. He was growing obviously restive under Toombs' banter. The ladies of the household apprehending what was coming ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... on, but hearing nothing of General Williams, and knowing the strength of the position, did not attack. He had a brass band with him, which he made play "Dixie," in the hope that it would lure the enemy out; but this strategical banter was treated with profound indifference. General Williams had marched on the north side of the Holston river to Rogersville, and thence to Greenville, where we met him upon our return next day. His command was about ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... desire to stand outside the red-and-white striped walls of the tent-house and listen unseen. Inside there was always cheer: at night the crackle of fire and the glow of light, the happy laughter of the gentle-hearted Scotchwoman, and the affectionate banter of her "big mountain man," who looked more like a brigand than the luckiest and most contented husband in the mountains—the luckiest, quite surely, with the one exception of his brother Clossen, who had, by some ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... persuaded the young man to go and take lessons. After he had gone through the course he came back, and Socrates proceeded playfully to banter him. ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... hit you before, didn't you?" he inquired, edging quickly in on his opponent and beginning an amazing bout of shadow boxing. "Well, come on, then!" He laughed as Swope struck out at him, and continued his hectoring banter. "As I remember it your head hit the ground before ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... lined the shore, where peasants in bright-coloured shirts and vests lounged. After much haggling and good-humoured banter, Sanine hired one of the little boats. Ivanoff was a deft and powerful oarsman, and the boat shot forward across the water like a living thing. Sometimes the oars touched reeds or low-hanging branches which for a long while after such contact trembled ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... place, then," said Samoval, ever on the same note of banter, "I should have been tempted to steal ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... for what we do not ourselves perform. These traits of his were regarded as characteristics hopeful rather than the reverse; none of his friends and relatives foresaw danger in them. He was a capital boy for his elders to trot out and banter. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... his birses; but she bamboozled him with her banter, and raised such a laugh against him, that he was fairly driven from the council room, and I was myself obliged to let her go, without ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... her arose clearly before me—the smile in those frank blue eyes, the proud poise of the head, the banter of the soft voice, and the words spoken. While she had said nothing convincing—merely an expression of womanly sympathy for the sufferings of the patriot army—yet I could not drive away the impression left that she was desirous that ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... better to cancel the preceding paragraphs. Is not any savor of banter out of place in the reception we are bound to accord to an alleged solution of the unthinkable problem which underlies creation and man's position therein? If the impulse which first controlled us is not denied expression, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... logic and metaphysics. He says, that in writing his first book, he knew no characteristics of me, except that I was "a gentleman, a scholar, and a very indifferent metaphysician" At the risk of encountering yet more of banter and insult, I shall here quote what the third "Prospective Reviewer" says on this topic. (Vol. x. ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... no 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 ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... The biggest ketch you ever seen in your life. It's ketch the Flying U outfit and squeeze the life out of it; that's the ketch." Andy's tone had in it no banter, but considerable earnestness. For, though Chip would no doubt convince the boys that the danger was very real, there was a small matter of personal pride to urge Andy into trying to convince, them himself, without aid from Chip or any ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... propose to do in honour of this international episode?' she asked. There was a slender vein of humour in Miss Ericson's character, and she occasionally exercised it gently at the expense of her friend's hobby. Mr. Sarrasin always enjoyed her mild banter hugely. Now, as ever, he paid it the tribute of ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... Benson," said Superintendent Galloway, nodding his head at the innkeeper with a kind of ferocious banter. "You're really a first-class villain, upon my soul! But this precious story with which you've tried to bamboozle us is not complete. Would it be putting too much strain on your inventive faculties to ask you, while you are about it, to give us your version of how the money ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... professions of religious diversity. Yet he straitjacketed his liberalism when he denied responsible men the right to attack laws, both civil and canonical, with "ludicrous Insult" or "with Buffoonery and Banter, Ridicule or Sarcastick Irony."[26] ...
— A Discourse Concerning Ridicule and Irony in Writing (1729) • Anthony Collins
... in Greek. Ay, ay, Pollaki toi: What's your name?"—"Ay, what's your name?" says the justice to Adams; who answered, "It is Aeschylus, and I will maintain it."—"Oh! it is," says the justice: "make Mr Aeschylus his mittimus. I will teach you to banter me ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... to Lady Selene, and the popular poetry alike of Italy and Greece is full of those delicate touches of refined sentiment that in Theocritus appear so incongruous with the rough coats and rougher banter of the shepherds. For though the poet raised the pastoral life of Sicily into the realms of ideal poetry, he was careful not to dissociate his version from reality, and he allowed no imaginary conceptions to overmaster his art. He ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... lost, however, on my host, who persisted. I did not want to give myself away, so, simulating a tone of light banter, ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... hotel was located. Their transit was an interrupted one, for these four cattlemen were among the best known in the Southwest. All along the route they scattered nods of recognition, friendly greetings, and genial banter. One of them—the man who had formerly been the hard-riding, quick-shooting sheriff of the county—met also scowls once or twice, to which he was entirely indifferent. Luck had no slavish respect for law, had indeed, ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... did not put it very well, but she knew he put it sincerely, and her reply held a vein of banter which he might not have ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... to think so much of other people's," she responded merrily; and she felt again the strange impulse of retreat, the prompting to fly before the earnestness that appeared in his voice. While he was flippant, her intuitions told her that she might be serious, but when the banter passed from his tone, she turned to it instinctively as ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... Philip on the other hand held himself well in reserve and gave no outward indication of the deep emotion which stirred within him. At last the train came and from one of the long string of Pullmans, Gloria alighted. She kissed her brother and greeted Philip cordially, and asked him in a tone of banter how he enjoyed army life. Dru smiled and said, "Much better, Gloria, than you predicted I would." The baggage was stored away in the buck-board, and Gloria got in front with Philip and they were off. It was early ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... lambent outer radiance springing from some great inner sea of light and fire in the man. The voice, if he speak to you, is of similar physiognomy: clear, melodious and sonorous; all tones are in it, from that of ingenuous inquiry, graceful sociality, light-flowing banter (rather prickly for most part), up to definite word of command, up to desolating word of rebuke and reprobation; a voice "the clearest and most agreeable in conversation I ever heard," says witty Dr. Moore. [Moore, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. I. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Birth And Parentage.—1712. • Thomas Carlyle
... entirely grave about it, although it was only a piece of banter which she felt that Nola would appreciate. But Nola was not in an appreciative mood, for she was a full-blooded daughter of the baronial rule. She jerked her head like a vicious bronco and reined hurriedly away from Frances as she extended ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... from which the fur was coming off, though the room was warm; a few railroad hands who laid sooty mittens on the table; the smart station-agent; a number of storekeepers and clerks. Now and then boisterous laughter rang out, and one group indulged in rather pointed banter, while the way that several of them used their knives and forks left much to be desired; but nobody regarded the girl with marked attention. For all that, she was sensible of some relief when Prescott came in and moved ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... hint of something more than banter in his voice. They had reached the end of the terrace, and were slowly descending the steps. But at his last words, Lady ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... in the printed work. Dr. Grainger, or some of his friends, it should seem, having become sensible that introducing even Rats in a grave poem, might be liable to banter. He, however, could not bring himself to relinquish the idea; for they are thus, in a still more ludicrous manner, periphrastically exhibited in his ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... desire for occupation made me soon skilful. We talked as we worked. When I had nothing to do, I read new books to her, for I had my part to keep up as a man weary of life, worn out with griefs, gloomy, sceptical, and soured. My person led to adorable banter as to my purely physical resemblance—with the exception of his club foot—to Lord Byron. It was tacitly acknowledged that her own troubles, as to which she kept the most profound silence, far outweighed mine, though the causes I assigned for my misanthropy ...
— Honorine • Honore de Balzac
... from which debarked two men, each comfortably full, followed by hand-bags, blankets and a two-gallon demijohn. They said they had driven from Winona that day, and would stay all night. They ordered supper, and while it was in course of preparation, indulged in a good deal of banter back and forth. Of course, I had formed the determination of becoming acquainted with the contents of that demijohn in some way, by fair means or foul, and became deeply interested in their conversation, looking for a favorable chance to carry my point. I noticed that one of them was very boastful ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... replied, and there was a little tinge of banter, if not of sarcasm, as well as a good deal of seriousness in her voice: "And suppose, in one of the Indian villages through which you might pass, a sun or ghost dance, or even the ceremony of the devil worship or dog feast might be going on, who knows but ...
— Oowikapun - How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... expressman now smiled when he saw the long, slim figure approaching with a package under his arm, which from frequent reappearances had become easily recognizable; but as a person becomes accustomed to a physical deformity, Calmar Bye had ceased to notice banter. ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... packful of gold!" cried the young Indian, striking an expectant attitude. "Will you let us see the treasure?" In spite of his banter there was gladness in his ...
— The Wolf Hunters - A Tale of Adventure in the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... frequently imprisoned, he was not inferior, nor was he at times less an adventurer. His "Mercurius Aulicus" was devoted to the court, then at Oxford. But he was the fertile parent of numerous political pamphlets, which appear to abound in banter, wit, and satire. Prompt to seize on every temporary circumstance, he had equal facility in execution. His "Paul's Church-yard" is a bantering pamphlet, containing fictitious titles of books and acts of parliament, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... her little white hand to him. The comedians asked many questions about his first experiences in Paris, and inquired mischievously whether he had brought his cloak, his purse, and his handkerchief home with him, to which de Sigognac joyfully answered in the affirmative. In this friendly banter he soon forgot his sombre thoughts, and asked himself whether he had not been the dupe of a hypochondriac fancy, which could see nothing anywhere ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... cried the simple old father, as the girl tripped away in hot haste to seek for it; "I forbid you to make such a guy of yourself. You must not take my little banter, darling, in such a matter-of-fact way, or I ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... string) is annotated in pencil in many places. I may quote one passage opposite which my father has written "good sneers"—but it should be remembered that he used the word "sneer" in rather a special sense, not as necessarily implying a feeling of bitterness in the critic, but rather in the sense of "banter." Speaking of the 'true believer,' Fleeming ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... had almost ceased to ring when a lady, dressed plainly in black, but graceful and tall, came rapidly out of Carewe Street, turned at the corner by the little drug-store, and went toward the church. The boy was left staring, for Crailey's banter broke off in the middle of ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... be a long way below decks. It had all the appurtenances of a regular store—chopping block, hangers, etc.—and the butcher himself was a genial soul, who took Tom in hand without any ceremony after the usual banter with the flippant young Archibald, who here took his departure, leaving ...
— Tom Slade with the Colors • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... my sister who told me that Mary was engaged to be married. But I had noticed for some days how the neighbors went out of their way to accost her upon our walks; to banter her kindly, to shake hands with her, to wag their heads and look chin-chucks even if they gave none. Her face wore a beautiful mantling red for hours at a time. And instead of being made more sedate by her responsible and settling prospects ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... from Temple's Travels in Peru has been quoted as exhibiting exaggeration in the description of the condor surpassing anything that can be laid to Polo's charge here; but that is, in fact, only somewhat heavy banter directed against our traveller's own narrative. (See Travels in Various Parts ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... top hat or a morning suit in Monte Carlo," she said, furious at his banter. "Let us talk about somebody else than ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... an air of doubt, shrugged her shoulders, and told him that he was really too chicken-hearted. Her one great aim now was to embroil him with the Quenu-Gradelles, and she employed every means she could think of to effect her purpose, both anger and banter, as well as affectionate tenderness. She also cherished another design. When she had succeeded in marrying Florent, she would go and administer a sound cuffing to beautiful Lisa, if the latter did not ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... of the young men at mess was more than ever jarring. What cared he, a man on the high road to forty, to know how many snipes Lieutenant Smith had shot, or what were the performances of Ensign Brown's mare? The jokes about the table filled him with shame. He was too old to listen to the banter of the assistant surgeon and the slang of the youngsters, at which old O'Dowd, with his bald head and red face, laughed quite easily. The old man had listened to those jokes any time these thirty years—Dobbin himself had been fifteen years hearing them. And after the boisterous dulness ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... her at once. The defeat of Uncle Martin had given him courage. He would turn the same battery on Phillida. No; not the same. He could not ridicule her. She was never quite ridiculous. Her plane of motive was so high that his banter would be a desecration. It was not in his heart to add to the asperity of her martyrdom by any light words. But perhaps he could find some way to bring her to a ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... complimentary, yet somewhat stiffly and officially conceived; lines much more cordial to the high-born Aelius Lamia (III, 17), whose statue stands to-day amid the pale immortalities of the Capitoline Museum. We have a note of tonic banter to Tibullus, "jilted by a fickle Glycera," and "droning piteous elegies" (I, xxxiii); a merry riotous impersonation of an imaginary symposium in honour of the newly-made augur Murena (III, 19), with toasts and tipsiness and noisy Bacchanalian ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... five days?' said Robert, more than half inclined to banter his wife. Then he fell into meditation as Catherine made no answer. 'I believe with men of that sort,' he said at last, 'relations to women are never more than half-real—always more or less literature—acting. Langham is tasting an experience, to be ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... argued, mockingly, "you do keep me here writing deadly nonsense. Deadly to me! It has already killed my self-respect. And you may imagine," he continued, his tone passing into light banter, "that Montero, should he be successful, would get even with me in the only way such a brute can get even with a man of intelligence who condescends to call him a gran' bestia three times a week. It's a sort of ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... chattering, swilling mob are employing their muddled minds on frivolity or obscenity, or worse things still. You will hear hardly an intelligent word; you will not catch a sound of sensible discussion; the scraps of conversation that reach you alternate between low banter, low squabbling, objectionable narrative, and histories of fights or swindles ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... him. He had a pink face like a girl's, a broad forehead topped with close-cropped hair, and a scrubby and ill-trimmed fair beard. His bright eyes gleamed with intelligence. He seemed not in the least embarrassed and wore a pleasant smile, free from any shade of banter. ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... discuss abominable soup in Calais, had we not?" continued Blakeney in the same tone of easy banter, "and wine that I vowed was vinegar. Monsieur... er... Chaubertin... no, no, I beg pardon... Chauvelin... Monsieur Chauvelin and I quite agreed upon that point. The only matter on which we were not quite at one ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... strength and activity was a greater protection to him than his inoffensive good-nature. But the loud admiration of Offutt gave them umbrage. It led to dispute, contradictions, and finally to a formal banter to a wrestling-match. Lincoln was greatly averse to all this "wooling and pulling," as he called it. But Offutt's indiscretion had made it necessary for him to show his mettle. Jack Armstrong, the leading bully of the gang, was selected to throw him, and expected an ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... defying the magistracy, when they would interfere with their privilege of becoming boys. So I suppose we must attribute it to something or other in human nature. Meanwhile, there stands the new-comer, surrounded by a circle of his new associates, who forthwith proceed to frighten, and to banter, and to make a fool of him, to the extent of their wit. Some address him with mock politeness, others with fierceness; and so they conduct him in solemn procession across the Agora to the Baths; and as they approach, they dance about him like madmen. But this ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... curious and somewhat anxious glances which were turned toward him. There was something in his appearance which cast an unpleasant chill over every one of the little assembly. Even the Colonel, though an outsider, felt himself disagreeably impressed by Travers' new bearing, and the good-natured banter which he had held in readiness for the new arrival died away on his lips as he responded to the cold, formal bow. For some minutes no one spoke. Travers was busy arranging some papers which he had brought with him, and only when he had laid these out to his satisfaction did he rise to address ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... out. He wrote many papers in the Repository and Monitor, an acute and clever tract on the Voluntary controversy, entitled Calm Answers to Angry Questions, and was the author of a capital bit of literary banter—a Congratulatory Letter to the Minister of Liberton, who had come down upon my father in a pamphlet, for his sermon on "There remaineth much land to be possessed." It is a mixture of Swift and ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... he attempted to warn the Princess that if the man were not a maniac he was more dangerous, she asked him bluntly if her husband had constituted him her dragon, and thereafter in half contemptuous banter she gave him the nickname ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... about English musicians, her banter about the provincial festivals had stung him. The word "provincial" rankled. If it applied to him, to his talent! If he were merely provincial and destined to remain so because ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... vehemently for many hours together. His prominent, heavy-lidded eyes rolled sideways amorously and languidly, the bedclothes were pulled up to his chin, and his dark smooth moustache covered his thick lips capable of much honeyed banter. ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... not really any thought among us of poking fun at Edmund; we respected and admired him far too much for that; nevertheless, catching the infection of banter from Jack, we united in demanding, in a manner which I can now see ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... admiration of their bearing. There was none of the bluster of the armchair Jingo, none of the loud hectoring and swaggering and bravado that distinguish the carpet warrior. On the contrary, when they were talking of the war amongst themselves they had an air of quiet determination, of good-humoured banter, and of easy, serious confidence far more ominous for an enemy than any amount of fluent rant. After the world of politics, with its hair-splitting and word-mincing, it was good to be with soldiers—the men who do the work. They knew no fine political ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... harmonious tones give to her speech the charm that is no less conspicuous in her manners, who knows how to talk and to be silent, who cares for you with delicate feeling, whose words are happily chosen and her language pure? Her banter caresses you, her criticism does not sting; she neither preaches or disputes, but is interested in leading a discussion, and stops at the right moment. Her manner is friendly and gay, her politeness is unforced, her earnestness is not servile; she reduces respect to ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... mine doubly thick—so they will seem like packets. I may even write that famous journal and send it in instalments to you!" Then suddenly the banter died of her eyes and voice and she said half-sentimentally: "Dear old Jack! Most of every one I shall miss you. I hope things will go famously for you. You have ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... of verses likes to have fun poked at them, even in the form of friendly banter, but Lady Mary seems to have borne ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... keep the conversation to a tone of banter, acrimonious though it had to be, Derek was unable to pronounce the two brief syllables without betraying some degree of anger. Glancing up at him as she shrank under her weight of jewels, Mrs. Bayford found him very big and menacing; but she was a brave woman, and ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... little table and began to show them how easy it was to guess which shell the little pea was under. The unlettered hinds gathered in a thick semicircle and began to nudge elbows and banter one another to bet. Then was when Rufe ought to have single-footed up and called the turn on the little joker for a few tens and fives to get them started. But, no Rufe. I'd seen him two or three times walking about and looking at the side-show ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... task, for few or no houses have their own water supply; and around each fountain one can see half a dozen by no means slatternly maidens, splashing and flirting the water one at another, while they wait their turn with the pitchers, and laugh and exchange banter with the passing farmers' lads. Many in the street crowds are rosy-cheeked schoolboys, walking decorously, if they are lads of good breeding, and blushing modestly when they are greeted by their fathers' acquaintances. They do not loiter ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... two coaches, and so equal was their speed, that in consequence of the mutual delay caused by changing horses, they frequently passed each other on the road, the driver, guard, and outside passengers of both coaches uniformly grimacing at each other amidst a storm of groans, cheers, and banter on both sides. So equal, however, were their relative powers of progress, that no effort on either side was found sufficient to enable any one of them to claim a victory. On the contrary, their contests generally ended in a dead heat, or something very nearly approaching it. On the night ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... in the neatest expressions. It is international; the contrast of American and foreign ways runs through it, and Mr. Howells has added the contrast of the old and the new Americanism. The hero is a Western journalist, a Mugwump, much given to banter of the American ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 1: Curiosities of the Old Lottery • Henry M. Brooks
... not pretend to Banter: He knows my Tongue too well: (Aside.) No, Gardy, I have thought of a way will Confound him more than all I cou'd say, if I shou'd talk ...
— The Busie Body • Susanna Centlivre
... What, not a word! Suppose I banter him a little. He deserves it, For never trusting this affair to me. (Aside.) —Why don't ...
— The Comedies of Terence • Publius Terentius Afer
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