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More "Humorous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... pretended to dodge the two reporters of the Floresville Gazette. The paper had a man to kodak us whenever we appeared on the street, and ran our pictures every week over the column headed 'Educational Notes.' Andy lectured twice a week at the University; and afterward I would rise and tell a humorous story. Once the Gazette printed my pictures with Abe Lincoln on one side and Marshall P. Wilder ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... Daily Gazette, in spite of it being only in a couple of volumes, and containing for an introduction the following rather lengthy sentence:—"If the devil were in a laughing mood, what could seem more grimly humorous to him than the vision of a fair young spirit striving consciously after ethereal perfection, but overweighted unconsciously by the bonds and fetters of human infirmity and passion, and dragged at last headlong down the abysmal descent to ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 3, 1887 • Various
... Gayfield's humorous epistle amused the party much, and Bob felt complimented by the attention paid to the finish of his studies of Metropolitan Life and Manners. The fine appearance of the morning determined them on a stroll through the ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... local colour, revision of choice of words, heart-rending erasions. And here, my child," I concluded, bringing out the beautiful, clean, smooth typed copy—"here is the finished work itself, light, pleasant, fluent, humorous and, most important ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 8, 1919 • Various
... a town that charmed at once. It stands in brilliant sunlight—and that sunlight seems to have an eternal quality—in a nest of enfolding hills. Two rivers with the humorous names of Bow and Elbow run through it; they are blue with the astonishing blueness ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... is careful to mingle instruction with entertainment; and the humorous touches, especially in the sketch of John Holl, the Westminster dustman, Dickens himself ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... pipe. He is just taking up the paper again when the door from the hall is opened, and the manservant TOPPING, dried, dark, sub-humorous, in a ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... see! Wot ef I get a hundred thousand folks to pay me for tellin' it? But, speakin' o' this young feller, I calkilated to send him to the Turkey Buzzard Hotel;" and he looked at his sister with a shrewd yet humorous smile. ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... them they saw the kind of symbolical writing that they could remember, as well as understand. They also evidently liked the quaint style of suggestiveness that was a characteristic of these allusive devices: and, it is more than probable that there frequently lurked in them a humorous significance, which by no means tended to detract from their popularity. Devices of this same order have never ceased to be in favour with Heralds and lovers of Heraldry. They were used in the sixteenth century at least as commonly as in the thirteenth; but, as would be expected, in ...
— The Handbook to English Heraldry • Charles Boutell
... breaths and smiling at a knowledge of the fog outside which makes half-past eight o'clock on a December morning as dark as twelve o'clock on a December night. Under such conditions the soft, thick, yellow gloom has its picturesque and even humorous aspect. One feels enclosed by it at once fantastically and cosily, and is inclined to revel in imaginings of the picture outside, its Rembrandt lights and orange yellows, the halos about the street-lamps, ...
— The Dawn of a To-morrow • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... we will recognize any of him but his head and shoulders. I have seen him served up in country inns with a pickled walnut in the socket of each eye; and in life, and at home, he has the attentive, inquisitive, watchful, humorous eyes common to ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... with that sly shrewdness so characteristic of him, so well symbolized by his mulberry badge—a humorous shrewdness almost, which makes him one of the most delightful rogues in history, just as he was one of the most debonair and cultured. He may indeed be considered as one of the types of the subtle, crafty, selfish politician that was ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... waiting. What surprise will the reader feel, on understanding that, independently of ourselves and Mr. Jardine, there were but seventeen persons present, including men, women, and children! We had, as we expected, a recapitulation of the old lecture, with the exception of its humorous appendages, in reprobation of the Hair Powder Tax; and the twice-told tale, even to the ear of friendship, in truth ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... English in Woodbridge College, walked along Tutors' Lane in the gathering dusk of a March afternoon. Persons whose knowledge of collegiate dons is limited to the poverty-stricken, butterfly-chasing genus created by humorous scenario writers would be surprised to learn that our hero—for such he is to be—was young, sound of wind and limb, and at the present moment comfortably clothed in a coon-skin coat. The latter touch might be accounted for by such persons on ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... were, doubtless, not silent. Even in modern times songs have been by no means without influence on public affairs; and we may therefore infer that, in a society where printing was unknown and where books were rare, a pathetic or humorous party-ballad must have produced effects such as we can but faintly conceive. It is certain that satirical poems were common at Rome from a very early period. The rustics, who lived at a distance from ...
— Lays of Ancient Rome • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... herself and really gets on with her business. Thanks to her friends, whose kindness she frankly acknowledges, Miss LORIMER was able to see native life under conditions impossible to a less privileged traveller, and she misses no feature in it that is either humorous or enlightening. It is a model book of its kind, valuable up to a certain point and always pleasant to read. Some of the author's adventures might easily have excused a reckless use of notes of exclamation. But only once does she give way to this weakness, and this I pardon her, for I should ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 27, 1917 • Various
... over a barrel, so, with a parting threat, I left him. A tent nearby was being run as a restaurant, and there I had a cup of coffee. Of the man who kept it, a fat, humorous cockney, I made enquiries regarding the girl. Yes, he knew her. She was living in ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... ever again enjoy that rapture of unresisting humorous appreciation of 'Pickwick'. I felt myself to be in the company of a gentleman so extremely funny that I began to laugh before he began to speak; no sooner did he remark 'the sky was dark and gloomy, the air was damp and raw,' than I ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... understood in Olympus that Porkins must not be disappointed. What will happen to him in the next world I do not know, but it will be something extremely humorous; in this world, however, he is to have all that he wants. Accordingly the ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne
... can be said of the German aristocracy as a whole. "Serenissimus" is to-day as frequently the subject of bitter, if often humorous, caricature in the comic press as ever he was. A few of the class, like Prince Fuerstenberg, Prince Hohenlohe, Count Henkel-Donnersmarck and some others engage successfully in commerce; many are practical farmers and have done a good deal for agriculture; ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... that luxury, which custom had made a necessity, filled his daily life full of trifling annoyances and surprises which were often unpleasant and sometimes humorous; but the new and arid order of things kept him so busy that he had little time for the apathy, bitterness, or self-commiseration which, in linked ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... so long! A thousand, perhaps ten thousand such, end to end, and we have the life of a world. And what is that? A cycle! A thing self-created, self-destructive: then of human life—nothingness. Oh, it's humorous! Our life, a ten thousandth part of that nothingness; and so full of tiny—great struggles and worries!" She was silent a moment, her throat trembling, a multitude of expressions ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... He looked so much older when sternness set his face, leaving no hint of that teasing gleam in his eyes, that pleasing little humorous ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... as "The Bantam," in allusion to her small size but plucky disposition, or sometimes, in reference to her sarcastic powers, as "The Sark," which by general custom became "The Snark." On the whole Miss Strong's pithy, racy, humorous style of teaching made her a far greater favorite than mistresses of duller caliber. She had a remarkable faculty for getting work out of the most unwilling brains. Her form always made excellent progress, and she had a reputation for obtaining record successes ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... poetry of life need not always be solemn, any more than life itself need not always be sober. It may be gay, witty, humorous, satirical, disbelieving, farcical, even broad and reckless, since life is all these; but it must never be insincere. Insincerity, which is not always one of the greatest sins of the moral universe, becomes in the world of art an offence of the first magnitude. Insincerity in life ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various
... I was now fifteen, and took the articles down stairs for the purpose of exposing Master Fred, but what did I get for my pains? In justification he told the story of yesterday, in his own peculiarly humorous way; and when I saw myself thus reflected, the ridiculous tendency of my words and manner struck me forcibly, and I was almost ready to laugh. But the others did that abundantly for me, while wondering where I had picked up such notions; and Grandmother Chesbury, I verily believe, ...
— A Grandmother's Recollections • Ella Rodman
... dialect writers. In Scotland alone there is a large number, some of the more recent bearing such well-known names as those of R.L. Stevenson, George Macdonald (Aberdeen), J.M. Barrie (Forfarshire), and S.R. Crockett (Galloway). Dean Ramsay's humorous Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character must not be passed over. For Ireland we have William Carleton's Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry, and the novels by Lever and Lover. Cumberland has its delightful stories of Joe and the Geologist, and Bobby Banks' Bodderment. ...
— English Dialects From the Eighth Century to the Present Day • Walter W. Skeat
... lover. Spanish influence is shown in the introduction of the alcouviteira Branca Gil, probably suggested by Juan Ruiz' trotaconventos or by Celestina. The Exhorta[c,][a]o da Guerra begins with humorous platitudes, perogrulladas, after the fashion of Enzina. Gil Terron has increased his classical lore, and Trojan and Greek heroes are brought from the underworld, the dramatis personae including Polyxena, Penthesilea, ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... good idea, that," said Jimmy Silver, laughing, as he always did when any humorous possibilities suggested themselves to him. "If he brings in somebody to improve on you, and then somebody else to improve on him, and then another chap to improve on him, he ought to have a decent house ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... and proper. We could fill pages with them, and they would prove most profitable reading in our loose, profligate, and adulterous age. Those other references which are also found in Luther's writings should be studied in their connection. Leaving out of the account humorous references and playful remarks, which only malice can twist into a lascivious meaning, they are indignant and scornful expostulations with the defenders and practisers of vice that flaunted its shame ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... selected this piece of Yorkshire oddity as his especial body servant; but if the choice were queer, it was at least successful, for an honester, more faithful, hard-working, and withal, better hearted, and more humorous varlet never drew curry-comb over horse-hide, or clothes-brush ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... reconciliation. O'Neill and his mother were both people of warm but forgiving tempers: the arrest was fresh in their minds; but when Mr. Marshal represented to them the whole affair, and the verger's prejudices, in a humorous light, they joined in the good-natured laugh, and O'Neill declared that, for his part, he was ready to forgive and to forget every thing, if he could but see Miss Phoebe in ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... the sketches are written in a humorous vein, but the opening one, 'Eight O'Clock,' is a little tragedy in dialogue that is very touching. The book should afford a great deal of amusement for the discriminating reader who knows good work ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... his story, and then came his cross-questioning, and who should rise and start the job but David Andrews, suave and humorous and deadly. Peter had always been afraid of Andrews, and now he winced. Nobody had told him he was to face an ordeal like this! Nobody had told him that Andrews would be allowed to question him about ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... discovery. There was no doubt it was the same card he had given to the Indian. True, that Indian might have given it to another—yet by what agency had it been brought there faster than the coach traveled on the same road, and yet invisibly to them? For an instant the humorous idea of literally accepting Foster's challenge, and communicating his discovery to Miss Cantire, occurred to him; he could have made a funny story out of it, and could have amused any other girl with it, but he would not force himself ...
— Trent's Trust and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... sleep, he must know how to make news. Every story written in the city room is first passed on by the city editor, who turns it over to the copy readers for correction. Even the length of each story is determined by him, and often the nature of it, whether it shall be humorous, pathetic, tragic, or mysterious. To his desires and idiosyncrasies the reporter must learn quickly to adapt himself. Sometimes the city editor may err. Sometimes, during his absence, he may put in authority eccentric substitutes, smaller men who issue arbitrary commands and require ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... genius. No smallest peculiarity of manner or speech escaped her, and she could become a dozen different persons in a minute. John laughed as he listened, but not so heartily as he was wont to laugh at her humorous sayings. He had been too deeply stirred in the long interval of solitude before she returned. His cheeks were flushed and his voice unsteady. She soon felt the effect of his manner, and her gayety died away; before long they were sitting in silence, ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... handsome present, in addition to the sum that had been agreed upon. By this time Stephen had come to appreciate the good qualities of Hurka, whose unfailingly good temper and gaiety had lightened the journey, and whose humorous stories of his adventures, and of the obstinacy and folly of his employers, raised a smile even on the ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... who understood nothing about education, permitted her to do whatever she pleased, that she might gain her affections and keep her to herself. This young lady had been well brought up by her virtuous mother; she was genteel and humorous, and could joke very pleasantly: when she had a colour she did not look ugly. No one can imagine what mad-headed people were about this Princess, and among the number was the Marechale d'Estrees. Maintenon was very properly recompensed for having given her these companions; for the consequence ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... of his contemporaries actually were, he might spend the time in preparing a speech, composing some non-committal epic or drama, jotting down memoranda for a history, or concocting an epigram or satire to embody his humorous fancies or to relieve his exasperation. If, as was often the case, he kept in the house a salaried Greek philosopher—in a large measure the analogue of the domestic chaplain of the later seventeenth century—he might enjoy his conversation and pick his brains; ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... pushing himself up through the loose head of the upright hogshead, and looking into the face of the discomfited Jenkins, with a broad smile of satisfaction upon his always humorous phiz. ...
— Off-Hand Sketches - a Little Dashed with Humor • T. S. Arthur
... and the fire was never for one instant allowed to get low. The wind and rain had ceased, but the dripping of the branches still kept up an excellent imitation of a downpour. In particular, Maloney was vigilant and alert, telling us a series of tales in which the wholesome humorous element was especially strong. He lingered, too, behind with me after Sangree had gone to bed, and while I mixed myself a glass of hot Swedish punch, he did a thing I had never known him do before—he mixed one for himself, and then asked me to light him over ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... stuck about his head in violently rigid and entangled tufts, rendering it a matter of wonder how anything in the shape of a hat could stick on. His brow was a countless mass of ever-varying wrinkles, which gave to his sly visage an aspect of humorous anxiety that was highly diverting—and all the more diverting when you came to know that the man had not a spark of anxiety in his composition, though he often said he had. His dress, like that of most Jack tars, ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... dropped on the little veranda under a canopy of moon-flowers, exultant but quite overcome. How glad and proud his mother would be—and Mavis. While he sat there Arch Hawn rode by, his face lighted up with a humorous knowing smile. ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... the Deuill vnderstands Welsh, And 'tis no maruell he is so humorous: Byrlady hee's a ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... vehicle of children, but only Imperial Rome and the new world of to-day have ever had an inkling of the significance that might give them in the state. They did their work, he thought, as the ploughed earth bears its crops. Apart from their function of fertility they gave a humorous twist to life, stimulated worthy men to toil, and wasted the hours of Princes. He left the thought of women outside with his other dusty things when he went into his study to write, dismissed them from his mind. But our modern world is burthened with its ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... taken the smallest part in any genuine athletic exercise, he is as free with his opinions as he is unsparing of the adjectives wherewith he adorns them. He talks learnedly of "upper-cuts" and "cross-counters," and grows humorous over "mouse-traps," "pile-drivers on the mark," and "the flow of the ruby." Having absorbed four whiskeys-and-soda, he will observe that "if a fellow refuses to train properly, he must expect to be receiver-general," and, after lighting his tenth ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, April 5, 1890 • Various
... into an affair so strange as this, might commit an irreparable blunder; and this she did not want Hillard to do. She was secretly pleased with his strong face and shapely head. There was neither beard nor mustache to hide the virtues or defects. The chin was square but not heavy, the mouth humorous, kindly and firm, the nose bridged; and the brown eyes, sleepy yet with latent fires, were really handsome. She knew all about him; she was not afraid to be alone with him; nor was it really necessary to wear a mask. But the romance in her heart, that she believed to be ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... and bent to hold a twig in the coals, that he might light a cigarette. "All right, I'm the guilty party. Let's have the consequences of my evil deed," he advised, settling back on his heels and lowering an eyelid at Manuel in behalf of this humorous partner ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... said Hewson, recalled to a humorous sense of St. John's behavior. "I felt sorry for him; though," he added, darkly, "I can't say that ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... much more, the magistrates of the "Italian republic"—answering their master's denunciations of vengeance, both in this world and the next, with a humorous scorn very refreshing in that age of the world to contemplate. The expanding influence of the Dutch commonwealth was already making itself felt even in the ranks of ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... historiographer and him whose room he occupied. In his epistle to Congreve, alluding to the same circumstance of Rymer's succeeding to the office of historiographer, as Tate did to the laurel, on the death of Thomas Shadwell, in 1692, Dryden has these humorous lines: ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... strange drama to let free the unhappy Durie, and relieve him from the power of his enemies. The Warden accordingly despatched a messenger to Christie's Will, with the laconic and emphatic demand—"Let the brock out o' the pock"—a return of Will's own humorous message, which he well understood. Will and his associates accordingly went about the important deliverance in a manner worthy of the dexterity by which the imprisonment had been effected. Having ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... said Roberts; "we're a very humorous lot, we British—very amusing indeed, but best at a distance, for we're rather prickly, and easily induced to make use ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... told me that the way in which I watched him from the corner of my eye was the most humorous thing in the paper. At the beginning his head was bowed, and for some time he showed no emotion of any sort, but as I went on and it grew worse and worse, he gave way to a burst of merriment and I saw that I ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... the alliance. The scene at the house of the worthy judge— the crowd of low rascals piping, drumming, and capering, and felicitating themselves on their pretended kinsman the merchant's marriage—is highly humorous. This does not occur in the Persian story, because it is the kazi, who has been duped into marrying the dyer's deformed daughter, and she is therefore simply packed off ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... the first in size, but it was a very satisfactory creature to look at. The judge's temper was quite normal when he sat down at dinner. When, at Miss King's request, he lit his cigar in the drawing-room afterwards, he began to take a humorous view of ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... companions came in during a lesson, and at once all the pipes of the humorous /jet d'eau/ were opened: the "thumblings" and "pointerlings," the "pickers" and "stealers," as he used to call the fingers; the "falings" and "galings," meaning "f" and "g;" the "fielings" and "gielings," meaning "f" and "g" sharp, ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... those who are gifted or cursed with the proverbial duck's back, have these experiences and these remembrances of them. But most men either simply grin and bear it, or carrying the grin a little farther, console themselves by regarding their own disappointments from the ironic and humorous point of view. Crabbe, though not destitute of humour, does not seem to have been able or disposed to employ it in this way. Perhaps he never quite got over the terrible and, for the most part unrecorded, year in ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... I do in friendship counsaile you To leaue this place; Albeit you haue deseru'd High commendation, true applause, and loue; Yet such is now the Dukes condition, That he misconsters all that you haue done: The Duke is humorous, what he is indeede More suites you to conceiue, then I to ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... husband liked to tell her so. Her good points were still too potent, although none could deny that all confidence in her efficiency was shattered past repair. The situation finally reached a point where it inspired reflections of a more or less humorous order. ...
— Paste Jewels • John Kendrick Bangs
... this speech with a humorous look, in which there was something of gratitude, but more ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... make for the admirable artist when I say that his truth is interfused with poetry. He spurns the literal and yet superabounds in the characteristic, and if he makes the strange familiar he makes the familiar just strange enough to be distinguished. Everything is so human, so humorous and so caught in the act, so buttoned and petticoated and gartered, that it might be round the corner; and so it is—but the corner is the corner of another world. In that other world Mr. Abbey went forth ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... would always be all right and that nothing really and permanently uncomfortable could possibly happen. A very fair man, with red hair, and radiating wrinkles all round his eyes—phenomenon due to his humorous outlook on the world. He laughed at her because she travelled with all her bonds of the City of Paris on her person. He had met her one night, and the next morning suggested the Ostend excursion. Too sudden, too capricious, of course; but she had always desired ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... purposes. And secondly, in the mistaken view entertained regarding him at each successive period of his public life. Passing under review the whole career of this political phenomenon, you naturally pause before its strangest and its most humorous feature, viz., that, although living under the closest inspection, he was misunderstood year after year. Who would, consequently, deny the possibility at least, of Bismarck's being so misunderstood, by friend and foe, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... respected. As one of the admirers of my peculiar genius remarked, to the confusion of another of the editorial fraternity, it takes Philemon W. Strain to hit off the follies and weaknesses of mankind with his humorous pen. But if it is often his duty to condemn, it is sometimes, also, his privilege to admire, as you cannot have failed to notice within the ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... Candy Man was a presentable young fellow. If his face seemed at first glance a trifle stern, this sternness was offset by the light in his eyes; a steady, purposeful glow, through which played at the smallest excuse a humorous twinkle. ...
— The Little Red Chimney - Being the Love Story of a Candy Man • Mary Finley Leonard
... herself no longer, but gave way to an uncontrollable fit of laughter. "O Sol!" she gasped explanatorily, as she threw herself alternately against him, Mrs. Sol, and a bowlder, "you'll kill me yet! O Lord! first we take possession of this man's property, then we claim HIM." The contemplation of this humorous climax affected her so that she was fain at last to walk away, and confide the rest of her ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... hoodlums, one of whom is himself the sinner, have been blabbing, says he. [Page 85] His accuser points to the beaten down hina-hina grass as evidence against him. At this the brazen-faced culprit parries the stroke with a humorous euphemistic description, in which he plays on the word hina, to fall. Such verbal tilting in ancient Hawaii was practically a defense against a charge of moral obliquity as decisive and legitimate ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... had four definite ambitions: first, to secure an election to a coveted secret society; second, to become one of the editors of the Yale Record, an illustrated humorous bi-weekly; third (granting that I should succeed in this latter ambition), to convince my associates that I should have the position of business manager—an office which I sought, not for the honor, but because I believed it would enable me to earn an amount of money ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... droll, laughable, farcical, witty, jocular, jocose, ludicrous, burlesque, facetious, risible, absurd, waggish, humorous, jesting. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... by one of his hungriest parishioners, a Mrs. McGillicuddy, one of those poor old washerwomen whose woes pile up till they are almost laughable to a less humorous heart than the little preacher's. He asked her to wait and returned ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... served. And there is one other noticeable point. In this trilogy Aeschylus, for the first time, has attempted some touches of character in two of the humbler parts, the Watchman in Agameninoni, and the Nurse in the Choephoroe. The Watchman opens the play, and the vivid and almost humorous sententiousness of his language, his dark hints, his pregnant metaphors drawn from common speech, at once give a striking touch of realism, and form a pointed contrast to the terrible drama that impends. A very similar effect is produced at the crisis of the Choephoroe by the speech of the ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... letters of Joseph Howe, the brilliant Nova Scotia "agitator," to Lord John Russell, in answer to that statesman's speech of June 3, 1839, when he argued against responsible government, and quoted the Upper Canadian manifesto as his text. These letters make a wonderful piece of sustained and humorous satire, of which every word was true and every word applicable to Ireland. Howe's portrait, for example, of the average Colonial Governor applies line for line to the average Chief Secretary, coming at an hour's notice to a country he has never seen, and knows nothing ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... again, in this section of a tragedy we find humorous or semi-humorous passages. On the whole such passages occur most frequently in the early or middle part of the play, which naturally grows more sombre as it nears the close; but their occasional introduction in the Fourth Act, and even later, affords variety ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... interview, Mr. Ritchie would have devoted much of the space to himself, his record, his future plans. Not at all. It was all about Johnnie Dundee, for whom personally he seems to have an affectionate friendship and for whose work a rueful and decidedly humorous appreciation. He analyzed with great sapience the psychological effect on the audience of Mr. Dundee's ring-system of perpetual motion. He described with great delight a punch that Mr. Dundee had landed on the very top of his head. In fact Mr. ...
— The Native Son • Inez Haynes Irwin
... afterwards that, when he heard this, he fairly groaned. He wasn't by any means humorous as a rule, and, so far as he was concerned, the joke had gone far enough; and he used to add as a warning that a man may go so far in a joke he can't help but go farther—'tis like hysterics with women. At any ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... together in the production of The Bon Gualtier Ballads, which acquired such great popularity that thirteen large editions of them were called for between 1855 and 1877. They were also associated at this time in writing many prose magazine articles of a humorous character, as well as a series of translations of Goethe's ballads and minor poems, which, after appearing in Blackwood's Magazine, were some years afterwards (1858) collected and published in a volume. ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... general conviction. He expected resistance in the subsequent discussion; so did I. But it was all a mistake; there was no adverse current, no opposing conviction, no resistance; merely here and there a half-humorous, but unsuccessful attempt to entangle him in his talk. The meeting agreed with all that had been said regarding the antiquity of the earth and of its life. They had, indeed, known it all long ago, and they rallied the lecturer for coming amongst them with so stale a story. It was quite plain that ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... need for such supernatural restraints exercised by a privileged body, and secondly, that they are absolutely without any feeling of class or caste—prince and pauper meeting on terms of frank and humorous equality—the race thus being the only pure and untinctured democracy the world has ever known.] The chain which bound provincial China to the metropolitan government was therefore in the last analysis finance and nothing but finance; and if the ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... maintain his ground against it. Or where the subject is too grave to admit this, he colours his exaggeration with all the bitterness of irony or vehemence of passion. Such are his frequent delineations of Gabinius, Piso, Clodius, and Antony;[249] particularly his vivid and almost humorous contrast of the two consuls, who sanctioned his banishment, in his oration for Sextius.[250] Such the celebrated account (already referred to) of the crucifixion of Gavius by Verres, which it is difficult to read, even at the present day, without ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... for the eye and shoulder. In the tombs have been found many household belongings, beautiful gold and silver work, beside the offerings put there to appease the gods. Chairs have been found, which, humorous as it may sound, are certainly the ancestors of Empire chairs made thousands of years later. This is explained by the influence of Napoleon's Egyptian campaign, but there is something in common between the two times so far apart, ...
— Furnishing the Home of Good Taste • Lucy Abbot Throop
... ghastliest of ghost-stories, and the most humorous of word-pictures, for the benefit of the audience in Mrs. Sheldon's drawing-room; and now, after tea, they sat by the fire talking of the ghost-story, and discussing that unanswerable question about the possibility of such spiritual appearances, ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... looked at me; then, although by nature a grave man, he gave a low, humorous chuckle, and regarded me with ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various
... the conquest of the human soul by the irresistible operation of divine force is so foreign to modern thought and faith that Bunyan's similitude no longer seems a verisimilitude. The pages abound with quaint, humorous, and lifelike touches;—as where Diabolus stations at Ear-Gate a guard of deaf men under old Mr. Prejudice, and Unbelief is described as "a nimble jack whom they could never lay hold of";—but as compared with the ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... her a seer.... The bare, bald outline of "Die Waffen nieder!" ("Ground Arms!"), which is all we have been able to attempt, can give but a faint, feeble idea of its power and pathos, and none at all of the many light and humorous touches, the well-drawn minor characters, the thrilling episodes, the piquant glimpses of the great world of Austria and France, which relieve the gloom of the ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... period when no one's nerves were in any degree normal—least of all the nerves of the eternally hammered Germans. Even the fiercely advancing Franco-Americans, the "Here-We-Comes," had lost the grimly humorous composure that had been theirs, and waxed sullen and ferocious ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... respective lovers, a knight and a clerk, is decided by Cupid in a Court composed of birds, which assume their sides according to their different natures. Whatever the source of the idea, its management, and the whole workmanship of the poem, especially in the more humorous passages, ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... practical advantage whatever. The girl will call me insulting names when I pay her a visit, and will push me violently in the chest when I get near her; her golden-haired infant will say I am a bad man and may even refuse to kiss me. The comic man will cover me with humorous opprobrium, and the villagers will get a day off and hang about the village pub and hoot me. Everybody will see through my villainy, and I shall be nabbed in the end. I always am. But it is no matter, I ...
— Stage-Land • Jerome K. Jerome
... brothers noticed that he was rather ill at ease, instead of being humorous and lightly caustic as usual, 'the will's ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... comment that her view of the confession—for the poem is merely, as Mr. Chesterton says, "the typical confession of a boy"—was very much less lachrymose than that of mon pauvre ami. Unconsciously, then, here—but in another poem soon to be discussed, not unconsciously—there sounds the humorous note in regard to men which dominates so many of women's relations with them. "The big child"—to some women, as we all know, man presents himself in that aspect chiefly. Pauline, remarking of her lover's "idea" that it was perhaps as unintelligible to him as to her, is a tender exponent of ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... that the Austrian landwehr may be able to follow,"—a well-known humorous song, ridiculing the slowness ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... confessed that the company and conversation of my departed guests, especially of Lysander, were such as to leave a void which could not easily be supplied. For my part, from some little warmth each sister betrayed in balancing the solid instruction of Lysander and the humorous vivacity of Lisardo, against each other, I thought the former had made a powerful impression upon the mind of Belinda, and the latter upon that of Almansa: for when the probability of a speedy revisit from both of them was mentioned the sisters betrayed unusual marks of sensibility; ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... had come out during his absence. He was clean and fit as ever, shaven, his fair hair scrupulously parted at the side, bright in the sunshine, his short, fair moustache closely clipped, his eyes with their humorous kind twinkle, which was so deceptive. He was dressed in black, his clothes sat well on his well-nourished body. Yet as he lingered before the flower-beds in the morning sunshine, there was a certain isolation, a fear about him, ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... some in barrels of clothing. And the barrels of clothing solved another problem; for no longer did their contents consist solely of articles of feminine attire. "Biled shirts" poured out of them; socks and breeches, derby hats, coats and negligees; until Aunt Nancy with a humorous twist to her thin lips inquired if there were thirty men in this establishment ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund
... as to the exact line to take, while the kindly eyes covered him with their shrewd, humorous twinkle. "You see," Thor tried to explain, "that if she could get the idea that there's any other stand to take toward trouble than that of kicking against it, she might be in a fair way to get better. At present she's like a prisoner ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... her companion with commendable gravity, but with humorous twinkle about his eyes. "Is it worth all the long journey, and all the excitement in which your mother tells me you've been plunged ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... his genial, humorous eye on her and said: "Don't be too grateful, Miss Ludolph; he is a young man, and only did his duty. Now if I had been so fortunate you might have been ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... for a few minutes, if no longer. And in the meanwhile—" he smiled with a touch of his old humorous resignation to things in general—"we might do worse than have some chota hazri. What a brute I was to upset you before you had had ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... humorous face to suggest his fear of the ordeal; as he did so, I took a good look at him. Charlie might easily have said a little more about his looks, had it been in his line, for, so far from being only "not pock-marked," he was something more like a young Apollo: ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... fellow, and my father and he became friends at once, while he was quite humorous ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn
... A humorous story is related of the interest which Hannah's conversation created in the minds of her elders. When laid aside by illness she was attended by a noted physician, Dr. Woodward, who one day became so absorbed in his patient's intellectual discourse that he forgot ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... in the postulate that lines in young people's hands speak as to the future, and in old men's as to the past. Later he goes on to affirm that lines in the hand cannot be treated as mere wrinkles arising from the folding of the skin, unless we are prepared to admit that wrinkled people are more humorous than others, alluding no doubt to the lines in the face caused by laughter, a proposition which does not seem altogether convincing or consequential, unless we also postulate that all humorous men laugh at every joke. There is a line in ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... roar of laughter as he arose and set the boy on his feet. "I am not laughing at you, my boy," he said, though Jerome's wondering, indignant eyes upon his face were, to his thinking, past humorous. ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... took all responsibility and proceeded most effectively in his own way. Amidon's instructions by telephone, to prepare a statement of disbursements to be made public, he regarded as one of Brassfield's jokes. His suggestion that he meant to stand on a platform of principles seemed equally humorous. To propose such ridiculous things in a perfectly serious way, and laugh at the victim's credulity in "biting" on the hoax, was quite in harmony with the relations among the members of the set to which they belonged, where practical jokes, merciless chaffing and perpetual efforts to ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... evening, with frequent attendance in the church. Mr. Rizal did not forget his church duties, but was far from being so assiduous in his practice of them, and the discussions in the home frequently turned on the comparative value of words and deeds, discussions that were often given a humorous twist by the husband when he contrasted his wife's liberality in prayers with her more careful ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... to 107. It was during his election tour that he delivered an address at Totnes, which Greville described as not merely 'a very masterly performance,' but 'one of the cleverest and most appropriate speeches' he had ever read, and for which his friends warmly complimented him. It was a powerful and humorous examination of the Tories' professed anxiety for Reform, and of the prospects of any Reform measures being carried out by ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... unless he was at least comfortably the worse for liquor. This view of drunkenness is admirably depicted in Dickens's Pickwick Papers, where intoxication is treated throughout as something merely humorous. ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker
... others waved ancient banners. They brought in the Boar's head on a large silver dish, and Coningsby raised it aloft. They formed into procession, the Duchess distributing rosemary; Buckhurst swaggering with all the majesty of Tamerlane, his mock court irresistibly humorous with their servility; and the sweet voice of Lady Everingham chanting the first verse of the canticle, followed in the second by the rich ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... the house," he said with a humorous glance at the door. "I don't always bring one o' the walls with me when I come into ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... vicious models, and fantastic styles of architecture, and brought into fashion artists without capacity or taste. There was not in his kingdom a more discerning judge of painting; but he had no imagination for the higher class of art. He preferred the exquisite and humorous realities of the Dutch painters to the poetic or historic schools of Italy; and, though a studious collector, he gave no great impulse to native talent. In music he had both taste and skill: he encouraged an art which formed one of his enjoyments; and if ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 545, May 5, 1832 • Various
... family, with his banjo, and strewed sand on the porch and danced "Chicken in the Bread Tray" and did buck-and-wing wonders for half an hour longer. Incredibly, wild and boisterous things he did. He sang, he told stories that set all but one shrieking, he played the yokel, the humorous clodhopper; he was mad, mad with the revival of the old ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... the largest dogs had followed the first cat over the heads of the orchestra, and a stampede of the audience was in progress, the dogs and cats under the feet of men and women, who were jumping on chairs or rushing towards the exits. The curtain went down without the humorous dialogue that ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... promise to renew them when they drooped. On these occasions there was something in her smile which showed how conscious she was of the effect she produced, though it must be said that it was rather a humorous than a designing consciousness, and savoured more ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... TRAGEDY" brings us near to the period of the "Men and Women;" and displays, for the first time in Mr. Browning's work, a situation quite dramatic in itself, but which is nevertheless made by the characters, and imagined for them. It is a story of moral retrogression; but, setting aside its very humorous treatment, it is no "tragedy" for the reader, because he has never believed in that particular "soul," though its proprietor and his friends are justly supposed to do so. The drama is divided into two acts, of which the first represents the "poetry," the second the prose, of a certain Chiappino's ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... highly pleased with these lively and humorous compositions; and wherever this subject was mentioned, never failed to produce his supplement upon the occasion: "It is strange," said he, "that the country, which is little better than a gallows or ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... these writings of Mrs. Shelley's. The fact that the same mind which had revelled, a few years earlier, in the fantastical horrors of Frankenstein's abortive creation, could now dwell on the melancholy fate of Proserpine or the humorous disappointment of Midas, and delight in their subtle poetical or moral symbolism—this fact has its significance. It is one of the earliest indications of the revival, in the heart of Romanticism, of the old love of classical ...
— Proserpine and Midas • Mary Shelley
... alluded to will be familiar to all who know the poet as distinguished from the Bard of Avon. It is found in the second "English Eclogue," under the caption of the "Grandmother's Tale," and has to do with the escapade, long famous in the more humorous annals of Southey's native city, of blear-eyed Moll, a collier's wife, a great, ugly creature whose voice was as gruff as a mastiff's bark, and who wore habitually a man's hat and coat, so that at a few yards' distance ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... them." To illustrate the first clause he drew a graphic picture of a London carter in Cornhill loosening the harness, when his horse had surmounted the incline, taking the bit out of its mouth, and fastening on the corn-bag; and he applied the second clause with humorous wisdom to the behaviour of preachers. As the carter in the stable "lays" the hay to his horse, so the preacher has to "lay" the food to the congregation. The carter must not put the food too high, where ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... period, we find his Don Juan—in itself an epitome of all the marvellous contrarieties of his character—the Vision of Judgment, the Translation from Pulci, the Pamphlets on Pope, on the British Review, on Blackwood,—together with a swarm of other light, humorous trifles, all flashing forth carelessly from the same mind that was, almost at the same moment, personating, with a port worthy of such a presence, the mighty spirit of Dante, or following the dark footsteps of Scepticism over the ruins of past ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... in all his dealings with his fellow men, and meanness of any sort is utterly beneath him. He has a happy way of seeing the humorous side of life, and he is ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... at their own sweet will, see down the court along which they are strolling, three lampions flare, which indicate some big place or other where the "respectables" do congregate; and the woman says to her companion, with a humorous sarcasm, "Put forward your best foot!" that is, we must be very correct passing along here in ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... were wildly enthusiastic and were not particular as to how many troopers they fondly took farewell of, women smiled and laughed, though there were often tears in their eyes, and the men were laboriously humorous. A band played airs which the bandmaster considered suitable to the occasion, the troops, swarming on the railings and the rigging, sang lustily snatches of song; and finally, amidst the fortissimo strains of the National ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... these depending on whether Dauger has, or has not, told La Riviere the story of his past life.[1] Moreover, Lauzun was never, said Louvois, to be allowed to enter Fouquet's room when Dauger was present. The humorous point is that, thanks to a hole dug in the wall between his room and Fouquet's, Lauzun ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... as guests, for like periods of time, to the best hotel. And this I developed, giving the facts and figures, the constable fees and the mileage, and the court and jail expenses. Oh, it was convincing, and it was true; and I did it in a lightly humorous fashion which fetched the laugh and left the sting. The main objection to the system, I contended, was the defraudment and robbery of the tramp. The good money which the community paid out for him should enable him to riot in luxury instead ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... sense of the humorous again stole in among the solemn phantoms of his thought. He felt his limbs growing stiff with the unaccustomed chilliness of the night, and doubted whether he should be able to descend the steps of the scaffold. Morning would break and find him there. The neighbourhood ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... several books of verse, now out of print, before doing those which contain his representative work: "The Laughing Muse", 1915; "The Mirthful Lyre", 1917; and "Ballads of Old New York", 1920. While Mr. Guiterman is widely known as a humorous poet, he is also an accomplished poet ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... for it represents the loftiest and noblest type of the Anglo-Saxon race. The other portraits are vapid, affected, and conventional, without character or expression; but this is superb. The broad imperial brow, the firm, aquiline, and sensitive nose, the mouth proud, humorous, and passionate, the full orbits of the eyes, and the resolute, massive jaw, all indicate a temperament and brain of which the greatest deeds in letters, arts, or arms, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... he was twenty-five; he excelled my own adult stature, and walked with the free grace of a well-bred English gentleman. His dark hair grew thick, rising from his forehead in a wave; his face was long and thin, and a slight mustache veiled a humorous tender mouth. There was about the man a pervading sympathy; the desire to be friends was the first characteristic of his manner; he was talkative, eager, enthusiastic. If a man were good it seemed to Owen but natural; ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... no doubt that the part he had undertaken to play would be difficult. He could see its humorous side, but he had not been a prodigal; indeed he was by temperament and habit steady-going and industrious. The son of a small business man in Montreal, he had after an excellent education abandoned ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... me; then, although by nature a grave man, he gave a low, humorous chuckle, and regarded me ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various
... lifelong we may turn to the devotion that was loud and fleeting. The love-songs are many and well picked: one is the madrigal from Thomas Lodge's Eitphues' Golden Legacy, which "he wrote," he says, "on the ocean, when every line was wet with a surge, and every humorous passion counterchecked with a storm;" and which (the madrigal) had the good fortune to suggest and name Shakespeare's archest character, Rosalind. We cannot dwell upon this perfumed chaplet of love-ditties. Mrs. Richardson is here doubtless in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... monarchs of my acquaintance cannot be quite sure of their spelling, I could, at a pinch, make myself fairly well understood by the general public, as a skilled writer of polemics against myself!—as well as against the Secretary of State. This, so far as I personally am concerned, has been the humorous side of my little drama of disguise!—for sometimes I have had serious thoughts of appearing as a rival to our friend, Paul Zouche, in the ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... of them, and rising, without altogether dropping his broadly humorous expression, extended an invitation to take ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... wrote some humorous verses. The dinner was given in the same native shed as before. As the table-boy passed the soup, one of the men made as if to begin. "Ma," who was sitting beside him, put her hand on his and said, "No, you don't, my boy, until ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... at the table of contents in the third volume will show the general nature of the selections. Fairy stories or tales with a highly imaginative basis predominate. There are some that are humorous, as for instance the selections from the writings of Lewis Carroll, and one ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... Shoop waddled from the office with Bondsman at his heels. There was something humorous, almost pathetic, in the gaunt and grizzled Airedale's affection for his rotund master. And Shoop's broad back, with the shoulders stooped slightly and the set stride as he plodded here and there, often made the clerk smile. Yet ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... for all the letters of the alphabet, and many others more or less alliterative, while the humorous papers contain many exaggerated examples of this sort of thing. Of the last, the following on "Hottentottentaten" will serve as ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... close, you know what happened. I expect the first bids was made just as a josh. I hear that Gopher Development started at ten cents. Then someone sold a block at fifteen. By noon they'd gone to twenty. Durin' luncheon time a sporty bunch in a rathskeller cooked up the bright idea that it would be humorous to sell Gopher short and hammer the price down to five cents. Before three P.M. the gross transactions had run ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... attitude of surprise, feigns astonishment at the apparent absurdity of the request. Maintaining this position for a moment, the strange emotions depicted on his countenance soften down into one of humorous resignation to my will, and then looking wistfully up to the tufted top of the tree, he stands on tip-toe, straining his neck and elevating his arm, as though endeavouring to reach the fruit from the ground where he stands. As if defeated in ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... dull background. Their walks and drives and confidences, the night they watched the rabbit in the moonlight,—why were these things stirring to remember? Whenever he thought of them, they were distinctly different from the other memories of his life; always seemed humorous, gay, with a little thrill of anticipation and mystery about them. They came nearer to being tender secrets than any others he possessed. Nearer than anything else they corresponded to what he had hoped to find in the world, and had not found. It came over him now that the unexpected favors ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... us. Accordingly I set myself to recall some of the latest anecdotes of this kind which I had heard, and selected the one which follows, not because it was more interesting as a daw story than the others, but mainly on account of the shrewd and humorous and dramatic way in which it was related to me by a little ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... the bottom of the 'Bit,' a depth of twenty-six feet, and brought up the brush. He hastily put on his clothes, and when the Master returned, John held up the brush, and with that comical twinkle of the eye and humorous expression of the countenance, so common with sailors, said, 'Here's your brush. Sir.' 'What brush?' asked the Master. 'The brush I lost overboard an hour ago,' said John. 'That's a lie.' replied the Master, 'how could you ...
— The Hero of the Humber - or the History of the Late Mr. John Ellerthorpe • Henry Woodcock
... the poetry of life need not always be solemn, any more than life itself need not always be sober. It may be gay, witty, humorous, satirical, disbelieving, farcical, even broad and reckless, since life is all these; but it must never be insincere. Insincerity, which is not always one of the greatest sins of the moral universe, becomes in the world of art an offence of the first magnitude. ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various
... "bulls" and charters and proclamations and manuscripts, mostly eloquent now of the ill-faith of Serbia's neighbours. They were, however, humorous and vivacious and well-fed monks who bore no ill-will against Turk or Austrian or anyone; they were good fellows happily lodged by the Church, and without much care or sorrow of any kind; such a contrast to those ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... might be from such of the trunks as had been knocked out of the cabin by the barge and had been picked up. They were all dazed. Even Burlingham could not realize just what had occurred. They called to one another more or less humorous remarks while they were dressing behind piles of boxes, crates, barrels and sacks in the wharf-boat. And they laughed gayly when they assembled. Susan made the best appearance, for her blue serge suit had been taken out dry when she herself was lifted from the sinking wreck; the nightgown ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... had a fund of information regarding the history of the country, the legends of the gods, and the fabulous deeds of the ancient kings. He had a most interesting way of interspersing history with mythical tales and humorous incidents, and so kept the party in high spirits. Mahmoud was noted, too, for his ability to answer intelligently all reasonable inquiries and for his great patience in replying to many questions, that must have appeared to him very silly. Each day on the boat while ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... turned his head. Five hundred faces had regarded the act, without a consciousness that it was an interpolation; and four hundred and fifty mouths in those faces were smiling. About one half of them were tender smiles; these came from the women. The other half were at best humorous, and mainly satirical; these came from the men. It was a profanation without parallel, and his face blazed ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... second officer of a ship just like any other second officer, to that constable. I was moved by this solid evidence of my new dignity. Only his tone offended me. Nevertheless I gave him the tip he was looking for. Thereupon he lost all interest in me, humorous or otherwise, and walked away driving sternly before him the honest Ted, who went off grumbling to himself like a hungry ogre, and his horrible dumb little pal in the soldier's coat, who, from first to last, ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... here and there in the night. Laughter! What on earth was there to laugh at? The wretched improvised shelters on and into which rain crept, lashed earthwards by a howling wind? The cold, chilly feet, clinging clothes and wet skin? Or is there anything refreshingly humorous in the knowledge that Death groped about in the night for his own ... found them? Is there a mirth-provoking element in the ten to one chance that YOU may not ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... Joe recited a humorous piece he had learned recently for delivery in the elocution class, and he recited it very well, too. When he had finished Mr. Allard called for more, and Joe obliged with the only ...
— The Radio Boys at the Sending Station - Making Good in the Wireless Room • Allen Chapman
... this time. How little I thought of meeting you! How very different the circumstances would have been if, instead of parting again as we must in half-an-hour or so, possibly for ever, you had been now just going off with me, as my wife, on our honeymoon trip. Ha—ha—well—so humorous is life!' ...
— Victorian Short Stories, - Stories Of Successful Marriages • Elizabeth Gaskell, et al.
... Yorkshire, and the gentleman, whatever was his name, was a Colonel. Stay! I recollect one more particular, which it is lucky I do remember. Your father in giving me, as I said before, in his own humorous strain, the history of his adventures, his hair-breadth escapes from his duns, the various disguises, and the numerous aliases he had assumed, mentioned that the name he had borne in India, and by which, he assured me, he had made quite a good character—was Clarke: ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Captain Lascelles. Here's your coat, which you were so good as to spare me; I am afraid it is not a valuable acquisition in its present spongy state;" and "Good-bye, old man," from the two friends as Lascelles ran off; shooting a momentary humorous glance ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... Colonel invariably got his humorous effects by a good-natured but sometimes sharp ridicule, the process of which was to exaggerate the argument or travesty the cause he was attacking ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... benevolence of aspect which somewhat misrepresented him. As a matter of fact, although good-humored and not without a still surviving capacity for generous impulse, he was only less "near" than his wife. Childishly vain, he bore himself with an air of self-satisfaction not without its charm for humorous neighbors. They said that they guessed he ...
— The Calico Cat • Charles Miner Thompson
... called "The Naughty Boy," that, it is true, is an old story. The poet Anacreon wrote it long, long ago; but Andersen has here re-told it in so humorous a manner, that it will no doubt amuse you as much as though it had been written originally by him. He has given the whole, too, quite another dress; and "the naughty boy" himself he has tricked out so drolly, and related such amusing ...
— A Christmas Greeting • Hans Christian Andersen
... was too large-minded and honest to be mean or overreaching. His large head was thatched with thick, bristling iron-gray hair, his face was swarthy and clean-shaven, his black eyes were deep-set and keen, his nose prominent, yet well-shaped, and his mouth firm and resolute, having a humorous curve; he was plainly dressed in a black broadcloth suit which hung loosely over his bony frame. He threw down the ribbons upon the floor with an impatient gesture, and watched the news of the world, as it coiled ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... the Party, by Irvin S. Cobb (George H. Doran Company). I shall claim no special literary quality for this short story which Mr. Cobb has reprinted from The Saturday Evening Post, but America usually shows such poverty in producing humorous stories that the infectious quality of this wildly improbable adventure makes the story seem better than it really is. It cannot be regarded as more than a diversion from Mr. Cobb's rich ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... he visited the south of Russia and stayed at the Holy Mountains, which gave him the subjects of two of his stories, "Easter Eve" and "Uprooted." In the autumn of that year he was asked by Korsh, a theatrical manager who knew him as a humorous writer, to write something for his theatre. Chekhov sat down and wrote "Ivanov" in a fortnight, sending off every act for rehearsal as ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... The Sun for the association of the names of several worthy gentlemen with the ownership of the only first-class Illustrated Humorous and Satirical paper published in America: (Subscription price, for one year, $4.00. Single copies 10 cents. Office, 83 Nassau St., ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 24, September 10, 1870 • Various
... expectation as to what might be coming next, Thomas rose deliberately from his arm-chair, which he had drawn to the head of the table, and looking round on the young people with a half-serious, half-humorous expression, said: "Well, I suppose, girls, it may be as well if I tell you what I've asked you here ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... company I more delight in than that of artists. Their innate and highly-cultivated power of observation, not only as regards the ever-varying aspects of nature, but also as regards the quaint, droll, and humorous varieties of character, concur in rendering their conversation most delightful. I look back on these walks as among the brightest points in my existence. I have been led to digress on this subject. Although more correctly belonging to my father's life, yet it is so amalgamated with my own that it ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... strong, ugly creature bulging with knotty and unshapely muscles, an ogre of composition. He has little delicacy, little finesse of spirit. In listening to these works with their clumsy blocks of tone, their eternal sunless complaining, their lack of humor where they would be humorous, their lack of passion where they would be profound, their sardonic and monotonous bourdon, one is perforce reminded of the photograph of Reger which his publishers place on the cover of their catalogue of his works, the photograph that ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... could see Kara smiling up at her in the old humorous fashion. She could hear her voice with the gentle drawl that had attracted her so strongly at ...
— The Girl Scouts in Beechwood Forest • Margaret Vandercook
... a boy's heart, full of the lovable, humorous, tragic things which are locked secrets to most older folks. It is a finished, ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... treated this remarkable event in humorous style. The proceedings at Charleston were likened to a cricket match or a regatta in England. The ladies turned out to view the contest. A good shot from Fort Sumter was as much applauded as a good shot from Fort Moultrie. When the American flag was shot away, General Beauregard sent ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... had arrived, and he and George were sitting together on the opposite side of the lawn. Edgar was a handsome, dark-haired lad, with a mischievous expression, and he sometimes owned that his capacity for seeing the humorous side of things was a gift that threatened to be his ruin. Nevertheless, there was a vein of sound common sense in him, and he had a strong ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... tone was quite composed and equable. "Well, she's safe, and she'll keep him in order if anybody can." Again that grimly humorous smile played about his mouth. "Why did she bring ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... of Darby Grimshaw's great anvil. This hut was a general resort to all the idlers in the vicinity; Grim, as he was generally styled for the sake of abbreviation, discharging the office of "preses," or chief moderator, in all debates held therein. He was a shrewd fellow and a bold one. A humorous and inquisitive cunning lurked in the corner of his grey and restless eye. His curiosity was insatiable; and as a cross-questioner, when fairly at work, for worming out a secret he had not his fellow. His brain was ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... that silly grin of hers, as usual. No matter what I say, it gets open-faced motions out of Helma. But I really wasn't feelin' so humorous. Whoever he was, this Creighton guy had come the wrong evenin'. Course, I judged it must be Vee he's callin' on, and I wasn't strong for a three-handed session just then. There was something special I wanted to talk over with Vee this particular ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... known copies of the ballad are as early in date as The Knight of the Burning Pestle (a play by Beaumont and Fletcher, first produced, it is said, in 1611), in which the humorous old Merrythought sings two fragments of this ballad; stanza 5 in Act II. Sc. 8, and the first two lines of stanza 2 in Act III. Sc. 5. As there given, the lines are ...
— Ballads of Romance and Chivalry - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - First Series • Frank Sidgwick
... miraculously, resembled the girlish portraits of his mother—or he imagined so—until he noticed that her hair was yellow and her eyes blue. And he laughed crazily to himself, inwardly convulsed; and then his own voice sounded again, low, humorous, caressingly modulated; and he listened to it, amused that he was ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... to extravagance in his kindly demonstrations toward genius. However, Mr. Dickens went home rather more impressed by our faults, which he had had every opportunity of inspecting, than by our virtues, which possessed fewer salient features to his humorous eye. Two books—American Notes and Martin Chuzzlewit—were the product of his tour through America. Thereupon, the American people grew very indignant. Their Dickens-love, in proportion to its intensity, turned to Dickens-hate, and ingratitude was considered to be ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... squalor of the passage, the poverty stricken aspect of the stairs,—items which had prepared her on other occasions for the starvation rate of pay offered for her work,—now passed unheeded. This affectation of scanty means was humorous. Obviously, some millionaire had secured what the newspapers called "a ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... as that proceeding from any liquid confined in a cask, when shaken, if the cask be not full;" and to guggle, as a "straight-necked bottle, when it is emptying;" and yet I am inclined to believe that the word also signifies to swallow, as in England. In the humorous ballad of "Rise up and bar the door," clunk seems to be used in the sense ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 227, March 4, 1854 • Various
... less than 'two hundred.' Of all my little affairs of that nature, his was the most preposterous and absurd. That one human being should expect and seek from another what is so impossible to give produces a certain half-humorous irritation that ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... their contact with the Celts, both in Scotland and in Ireland. Both peoples had valour, intellect, imagination: but the Celt had that which the burly angular Norse character, however deep and stately, and however humorous, wanted; namely, music of nature, tenderness, grace, rapidity, playfulness; just the qualities, combining with the Scandinavian (and in Scotland with the Angle) elements of character which have produced, in Ireland and in ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... such braggadocio. But this is a digression. Public libraries can never satisfy the longings of book-collectors any more than can the private libraries of other people. Whoever really cared a snap of his fingers for the contents of another man's library, unless he is known to be dying? It is a humorous spectacle to watch one book-collector exhibiting his stores to another. If the owner is a gentleman, as he usually is, he affects indifference—'A poor thing,' he seems to say, 'yet mine own'; whilst the visitor, if human, as he always is, exhibits disgust. If the volume proffered ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell
... out between them, till the undefeated brute Made a humorous obeisance at the General Salute! Then his owner kicked him wildly in the stomach for his pranks, Said he'd stand the beast no longer, and returned him ...
— Rhymes of the East and Re-collected Verses • John Kendall (AKA Dum-Dum)
... great paleness and painful sensation of coldness in those, who had been some time confined in an atmosphere of only 86 or 90 degrees. Analogous to this, an observing friend of mine assured me, that once having sat up to a very late hour with three or four very ingenious and humorous companions, and drank a considerable quantity of wine; both contrary to his usual habits of life; and being obliged to rise early, and to ride a long journey on the next day; he expected to have found himself weak and soon fatigued; but on the contrary he performed his journey ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... was young in a keen, hard fashion; the mouth and eyes were those of a Spanish-American mother, golden eyes and a mouth originally beautiful, soft, and cruel, which had been tightened and straightened by a man's will and experience. It had been used so often for careless, humorous smiling that the cruelty had been almost worked out of it. Almost, not altogether. His mother's blood kept its talons on him. He was Latin and dangerous to look at, for all the big white Anglo-Saxon teeth, the slow, slack, Western American carriage, the guarded and amused expression ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... we could get wood in abundance, and perhaps," he added, looking slyly over to the stove where some bread-soup was in preparation for their very temperate repast, "some better fare for dinner. But," he continued in a tone of humorous banter, which he frequently adopted, and pushing back his chair a few paces as he spoke, "while you superintend the household concerns, and give the necessary orders to the cook, I will withdraw into my study. Now, what would I not write if only pen, paper, and ink, were to be ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... as where the narrator, wishing to describe the terror produced by Grendel's midnight visits to Heorot, says (ll.138-139), "Then was it easy to find one who elsewhere, more commodiously, sought rest for himself." It is hard to believe that the poet saw nothing humorous in this ...
— Anglo-Saxon Grammar and Exercise Book - with Inflections, Syntax, Selections for Reading, and Glossary • C. Alphonso Smith
... pardon—I press it very hard!" And Lord John, as taking from his face and manner a cue for further humorous license, went so far as to emulate, though sympathetically enough, their companion's native form. "You don't mean to say you don't feel the ...
— The Outcry • Henry James
... a lay-brother swung open the door, and two other lay-brothers entered leading between them a young novice of the order. He was a man of huge stature, dark-eyed and red-headed, with a peculiar half-humorous, half-defiant expression upon his bold, well-marked features. His cowl was thrown back upon his shoulders, and his gown, unfastened at the top, disclosed a round, sinewy neck, ruddy and corded like the bark of the fir. Thick, muscular ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a woman ought to be able to do this in the vast majority of cases. Her own intuition is seldom at fault. Even at the eleventh hour she may save the situation by a timely jest, a kindly bit of inconsequence, a sudden humorous inspiration—not at his expense, of course—and the man who is not a fool will see that it is not the psychological moment. Above all she must avoid being alone with him. Let her keep a child at her side, pay attention to the greatest bore, listen with grateful patience to the most prosy person ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux
... courted the society of actors and actresses. It was in this way that he gained that correct and valuable knowledge of the texts and characters of the drama, which enabled him in after years to burlesque them so successfully. The humorous writings of Seba Smith were his models, and the oddities of "John Phoenix" were his ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... Mrs. L.S. are seated in the back seat, supported on one side by the Humorous 'ARRY and his Fiancee, and on the other by a pale, bloated youth, with a particularly rank cigar, and the Sturdy Democrat, whose two small boys occupy the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 30, 1892 • Various
... engineer." He writhed as was his habit over his jokes, and then fell to work at the drawing again. "A book," he said, "and an axe, and a gibbet or gallows. B-a-g—that makes 'bag.' Doesn't go far, does it? Humorous duck, isn't he? Any one who can write 'ha! ha!' under a gallows ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... first great literary success. He had proved himself master of a fluent humorous style which might have been applied indefinitely to the treatment of similar themes. He was twenty-seven years old, and there was no reason why the next ten years should not be a most fruitful period. Unfortunately, during ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton
... fellow-men that their weakness is his pain; and the warmest corner in all Russia for the very men Gogol satirizes would doubtless have been found in his own heart. It is this spirit in which "Dead Souls" is writ which makes "Dead Souls" a model for all humorous writing. ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... the insipid regularity which, where all shaved, passed for masculine beauty; the nose ended largely, the cheek-bones were high, and the chin projected. But from the risk and even the edge of ugliness it was saved by a pair of grey eyes, keen, humorous, and kindly, and a smile that showed the eyes at their best. Of late those eyes had been known to express weariness and satiety; the man was tiring of the round of costly follies and aimless amusements in which he passed his life. But at twenty-six pepper is ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... nothing humorous or grotesque in her measure of a gentleman, for he realized that she was strung to a pitch of unreason and unnatural excitement, and that she was ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... you more.' Then, after expressing a wish that the Lord might send his friend refreshing sleep, and free his heart from care, he told him about his residence at the castle, in the 'empire of the birds.' In his letters to Jonas and Spalatin he indulged in humorous descriptions of the cries of the ravens and jackdaws which he had heard since four o'clock in the morning. A whole troop, he said, of sophists and schoolmen were gathered around him. Here he had also his Diet, composed ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... two sisters-in-law, had, along with a number of maids, waiting-girls, and other servants, come as far as the ceremonial gate to receive them, and Mrs. Yu, upon meeting lady Feng, for a while indulged, as was her wont, in humorous remarks, after which, leading Pao-y by the hand, they entered the drawing room and took their seats, Mrs. Ch'in handed ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... Ferret, "you set up for a modern Don Quixote? The scheme is rather too stale and extravagant. What was a humorous romance and well-timed satire in Spain near two hundred years ago, will make but a sorry jest, and appear equally insipid and absurd when really acted from affectation, at this time of day, in a country ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... Company)—"I shall be delighted if you'll place an order for a dozen of real, live, snappy, humorous anecdotes as told ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... was in facetious mood. He chaffed Dunstable genially about his prospectus, and admitted that it had amused him. Dunstable smiled without enjoyment. It was a good thing, perhaps, that Mr. Appleby saw the humorous rather than the lawless side of the Trust; but all the quips in the world could not save that ...
— The Politeness of Princes - and Other School Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... was his humorous complaint. "The smell of eats makes my mouth water so fast I have to gasp for air. Must tickle your nose, ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... this—Miriam loves you . . . If she should ever know, or even guess it,— What would she do?—Listen!—I'm not absurd . . . I'm sure of it. If you had eyes, for women— To understand them—which you've never had— You'd know it too . . . ' So went this colloquy, Half humorous, with undertones of pathos, Half grave, half flippant . . . while her fingers, softly, Felt for this tune, played it and let it fall, Now note by singing note, now chord by chord, Repeating phrases with a kind of pleasure ...
— The House of Dust - A Symphony • Conrad Aiken
... this letter of Mrs Ashburnham's to Mrs Powys that had caused the letter from Colonel Powys to Colonel Ashburnham—a letter that was half-humorous, half longing. Mrs Ashburnham caused her husband to reply, with a letter a little more jocular—something to the effect that Colonel Powys ought to give them some idea of the goods that he was marketing. That was the cause of the ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... been connected with an inn at Mauchline, and had seen the poet often. "Rabbie was a funny fellow," she said; "I ken'd him weel; and he stoppit at our hoose on his way up to Edinburgh to see the lairds." I asked her if he was not always humorous. "Nae, nae," she replied, "he used to come in and sit doun wi' his hands in his lap like a bashful country lad; very glum, till he got a drap o' whuskey, or heard a gude story, and then he was aff! He was very poorly in his latter days." Those closing days in Dumfries, steeped in poverty to ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... prominent. Laughing, he recalled the amusement of the college boys at Fiske's comical efforts to discover a piece of chalk dropped during his lecture on "Immortality." Standing on the hearth, a merry twinkle in his eyes, he recited some humorous lines which he had written concerning ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... front steps, explaining in a sort of humorous panic that he, Commissar of Commerce, knew nothing whatever of business. In the upstairs cafe sat a man all by himself in the corner, in a goat-skin cape and clothes which had been-I was going to say "slept in," but of course he hadn't slept-and a three days' growth of beard. He was ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... when I know it, is but this, A deep alloy whereby man tougher is To bear the hammer; and the deeper still, We still arise more image of His will; Sickness, an humorous cloud 'twixt us and light; And death, at longest, but ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... which had never heard a word ending in a consonant, this was apparently intensely humorous. They burst into loud guffaws, supplemented with resounding slaps of their cupped hands on their stomachs, at the same time raising an imitative ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... the king and shortly afterward was given, not the great sea monster he had been led to expect, but an insignificant looking craft called Le Duras. In compliment to Dr. Franklin's magazine of the name and in humorous comment of the ship's appearance, he renamed it the Bon Homme Richard, meaning the Poor Richard. But with the Poor Richard, as with the human form, the spirit which animated it was the controlling power; and the valor of Paul ...
— How the Flag Became Old Glory • Emma Look Scott
... answers her companion with commendable gravity, but with humorous twinkle about his eyes. "Is it worth all the long journey, and all the excitement in which your mother tells me you've been plunged for the ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... He answers, "Yes, everybody may help something."—Don't you see how curiously he contrives to vex me; for the dog knows that with half a word I could do more than all of them together. But he only does it from the pride and envy of his own heart, and not out of a humorous design of teasing. He is one of those that would rather a service should not be done, than done by a private man, and of his own country. You take all this, don't you? Nite dee sollahs, ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... and encouraged soldiers in the Queen's army to rear such pets as monkeys and parrots by regulations for their transport on route and transfer marches, which afforded material for many humorous sketches and paragraphs in the pages of The Delhi Punch. Wise and considerate regulations which are continued in the existing concessions as to the carriage of "soldiers' pets" by troop trains ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... general history of quadrupeds appeared with its vivid animals and its humorous and mordant tailpiece vignettes, he was hailed in terms that have hardly been matched for adulation. Certainly no mere book illustrator ever received equal acclaim. He was pronounced a great artist, a great man, an outstanding moralist and reformer, ...
— Why Bewick Succeeded - A Note in the History of Wood Engraving • Jacob Kainen
... completed a costume singularly suggestive of his occupation in life. His face was round and broad, like that of a cat, and a complexion stained, by constant exposure to the sun and wind, to a color of newly polished mahogany. But a countenance which otherwise might have been humorous, in this case was rendered singularly repulsive by the fact that his nose had been broken so flat to his face that all that remained to distinguish that feature were two circular orifices where the nostrils ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... roar had seemed to be almost at his side. What he saw drew an exclamation from Phil that, at other times, might have been humorous. There was no humor ...
— The Circus Boys In Dixie Land • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... never forget your loving kindness and protection," continued the young girl, tenderly. "You will let me come to you always when you want me; but you will let me also shape my life anew, and work for my living." The duchess turned her grave, half humorous face towards her. "That means you have determined to seek HIM. Well! Perhaps if you give up your other absurd idea of independence, I may assist you. And now I really believe, dear, that there is that dreadful South American," pointing to a figure that ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... the first man to shake his hand and greet him with affection. The boys who had gathered in the canyon to see the shooting were naturally indignant. Their indignation might have found vent in sarcasm but for a certain look in Tennessee's Partner's eye that indicated a lack of humorous appreciation. In fact, he was a grave man, with a steady application to practical detail which was unpleasant in ...
— Tennessee's Partner • Bret Harte
... neatness in language and ease and suavity of manner, with archness and sagacity of thought, his sarcasms assumed a garb at once so courtly and so careless, that they often diverted almost as much as they could mortify even their immediate objects. His humorous reproof to a gentleman vaunting with self-complacency the extreme beauty of his mother, and apparently implying that it might account for advantages in person in her descendants, is well known: 'Cetait donc,' ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... council had not yet begun; but it was characteristic of Togo that he saw me the instant I entered the cabin, and rose to shake hands with me, exclaiming, "Ah! here comes our young British giant." Then, pointing to a chair near himself, he motioned me to be seated, saying as he did so with a humorous smile: ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... divided the iliac artery; he was bleeding to death—nothing could save him. The cold perspiration on his forehead, and the glassy appearance of his eye, too plainly indicated that he had but a few minutes to live. Courtenay, shocked at the condition of the poor fellow, who was not only the most humorous, but one of the ablest seamen in the ship, knelt down on one knee beside him, and took ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
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