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More "Joke" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... know what gormandizers they were," replied Quicksilver; and, rogue that he was, he could not help laughing at the joke. "So you will not be surprised to hear that they have all taken the shapes of swine! If Circe had never done anything worse, I really should not think her ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... who witnessed it say that there was no joke in his voice or his eye as he said it. Proceeding then with more circumspection he walked out his dog in another form, and said that it was very well to punish the little dogs as he had punished them, but ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... stretched forth his arm and then doubled it back, and they both laughed. "That's a joke—my getting rested up. Why I feel like ...
— The Glory Of The Conquered • Susan Glaspell
... the English house of commons, in the early part of the year, which damaged the prestige of Smith O'Brien, and although O'Connell exerted himself in parliament on his behalf, the event gave the arch-agitator satisfaction. He had many a private joke at the expense of O'Brien, and few men could wound with a brighter point than O'Connell in his best moods of satire. Mr. O'Brien was nominated on a committee, and refused to serve, alleging that the affairs ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... jest that refuses to die Bobs up again as the seasons appear; Deathless it hits us again in the eye— Changeless and dull as the calendar year. Musty and mouldy and yellow and sere, Stronger, withal, than the sturdiest oak; Ancient and solemn and deadly and drear— Down with the grandmother-funeral joke! ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams
... least, Miss Rhys," the little doctor said in his cheeriest tones, "only Alexia and I had a little joke all by ourselves." And as he waited coolly for the maiden lady to return to her seat, she soon found herself back there. Then he went over to Mamsie, and said ...
— Five Little Peppers at School • Margaret Sidney
... mine, although she knew it was only a joke on my part. Smith could not leave Paris without danger of losing his position and replied that he regretted being obliged to deny himself the pleasure of accompanying us. Nevertheless, I continued to press him, and, ordering ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... any extra premium, but setting forth the plain state of the case. (I did not say that the Lord Chief Justice, the Chief Baron, and half the Bench were coming; though I felt a temptation to make a joke ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... little joke Walker goes off to agitate Appleby and Mason with the news of their early morning duties, and to put the servants' hall in a flutter by announcing for the fiftieth time that summer that either he or the young master would ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... not love Reddy Fox, and the more Reddy begged and scolded and called him names, the more Prickly Porky chuckled. It was such a good joke to think that he had trapped Reddy Fox, and he made up his mind that he would keep Reddy in there a long time just to tease him and make him uncomfortable. You see Prickly Porky remembered how often Reddy Fox played mean tricks on little ...
— Old Granny Fox • Thornton W. Burgess
... Tapley would have subsided into melancholy gloom, before the slow versicles were half dragged through. But the parson was not the only musical culprit, nor the worse, by many degrees. It would be absurd to expect much cheerfulness here; a hoarse roar breaks out now and then at some coarse practical joke; but a frank, honest laugh—never. Yet I do wish that imprisoned discontent would vent itself otherwise than in discordant, dismal howling. At this minute a cracked voice is ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... subjected to this species of discipline at one time or another of his career. Thus the late Emperor Frederick, prior to his accession to the throne, but long after his marriage, was sentenced to several weeks' detention in his palace under strict arrest, as a punishment for a little joke which he had played during the course ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... just that-wise that I knew not whether I to need to kiss her, or to shake her; and truly, how should I know; for my heart did ache that I have her to mine arms; but my brain to say that she did go over-far in the joke; and truly you to see that I did not be unreasonable, neither to be lacking of grace; for indeed I do think that I was swayed all-ways, because that I saw all the dear way that her pretty nature did work; ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... saying that he was not at home on the day when his temple was visited by the accused boy and his relatives, and that one of the little demons employed by him in carrying off dead people's spirits out of sheer mischief perpetrated a practical joke on the poor boy. ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... disastrous an attempt at the correct tune that Mrs Saville shook with laughter, despite the pain in her head, and Hector Darcy, entering the room, demanded to know the nature of the joke. ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... had been a captain of volunteers in a Minnesota regiment. He was a thoroughly interesting talker, and an inimitable story-teller, a man who did not lose his sense of humor when the joke turned on himself. I heard him tell one or ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... want to get angry, he at least got red, and the joke seemed to him in bad taste. But when Fougas announced that he had loved the grandmother in her youth, grandfather Langevin no longer hesitated to fling a bottle at his head. The Colonel's son, his splendid grandchildren, and even the bride ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... like hornet-swarms. Bones are smashed and buried quick. Yet, through stunning battle storms, All the while I watch the spark Lit to guide me; for I know Dreams will triumph, though the dark Scowls above me where I go. You can hear me; you can mingle Radiant folly with my jingle. War's a joke for me and you While we know ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... by his looks; and, being a close observer, she soon noted that, though he talked about laboratory matters with Morton, and was ready to joke or sing with Molly and the two older young ladies present, yet every time Sara addressed him, he turned to answer with an eagerly respectful air, different from the rather careless ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... said Fuller, still mystified, "when you half-witted physicists recover, please let me in on the joke!" He knew it had something to do with the mysterious ships, so he looked closely at them in hopes that he would get the point, too. When he saw it, he blinked in amazement. "Hey! What is this? Those ships are exact duplicates of ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell
... triumph of idiocy. If bad women could be shut up and made to say prayers most of the time, no harm at least would be done,—the good, problematical; but to immure a woman of sweet, natural, God-bestowed impulses is the devil's worst practical joke in this world. Come, little girl, it's late. Think over the scheme; try it as you have a chance; use your power to incite men to make the most and best of themselves. This is better than levying your ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... CHARLEY.—Have you no feeling of self-respect and maidenly reserve? or is your letter a feeble attempt at a dull joke? The first question you ask is very silly indeed. What makes anyone's hair curl? Either nature in flattened formation of each tube, or the use of ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII. No. 358, November 6, 1886. • Various
... many times their business took them each Right to the other. Then at last he spoke, But she would only nod, he got no speech From her. Next time he treated it in joke, And that so lightly that her vow she broke And answered. So they drifted into seeing Each other as before. There ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... Croaker, the elder and richer of the two, "I must not let that young scapegrace Jumper get the better of me. A pretty joke indeed that he should think of the beautiful Miss Leapfrog, he who is not worth a rap, and is ...
— The Comical Creatures from Wurtemberg - Second Edition • Unknown
... not one of the weapons used by the Turks, and the gas-masks seemed a joke to the groups of Australians trying on the headgear in the fields, and changing themselves into obscene specters ... But one man watching them gave a shudder and said, "It's a pity such splendid boys should have to risk this foul way of ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... Nekhludoff to recall all that; it was pleasant to recall how he came near quarreling with the army officer who attempted to make a bad joke of it; how another comrade sided with him, which drew them more closely together; how merry and successful was the hunt, and how happy he felt that night returning to the railroad station. A long file of sleighs moved noiselessly in pairs at a gentle trot along the ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... would state The pith of all his works to me. What boots it to enumerate? As well attempt to drain the sea!— Your chart and compass let them be; All other books put under ban; Burn ARNAULD and his rigid clan— They're blockheads if we but compare;— It is no joke,—I tell you, man, ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... interrupted with a laugh. Gresham looked at her inquiringly, but he did not ask her the joke. She ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... lords in waiting could hardly think him serious, and vowed that his Majesty always loved a joke. However, mortal or not, the sight of that sharp spire wounded his Majesty's eyes; and is said, by the legend, to have caused the building of the ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... According to Augustine [*QQ. in Genes., qu. cxlv], when Joseph said that there was no one like him in the science of divining, he spoke in joke and not seriously, referring perhaps to the common opinion about him: in this sense also spoke ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... to the top; the joke will be spoiled if we let them help us," she cried, springing to her feet. "Come! The way will be easier ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... should there drink the glass of wine which had been poured out for him. It brought good luck, and prevented quarrels in the household. In Monsieur Coffin's time, it had always been a very merry ceremony, for the old priest loved a joke. He had even gained a reputation for the skilful way in which he could drain his glass, without leaving a single drop at the bottom of it; and the Artaud women pretended that every drop undrunk meant a year's less love for the newly married ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... friend, we're not the folks to shrink From the duty of giving you something for drink, And a matter of money to put in your poke; But as for the guilders, what we spoke Of them, as you very well know, was in joke. Besides, our losses have made us thrifty; A ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... playful intercourse of society, there is room for the virtue of Wit, a balance or mean between buffoonish excess, and the clownish dulness that can neither make nor enjoy a joke. Here the man of refinement must be a law to ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... carried on half in joke and half in all seriousness, wound up in debates and disputes, and as a result two groups were formed in the house; that of the Sensible folk, comprised by the three criminals and the landlady, and that of the Foolish, in which were ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... soul, no conscience—that's the trouble," he commented inwardly—little dreaming that he exactly voiced the criticism universally passed upon himself. Then his thoughts took a new tack. "Wonder what the daughter is like? I'll have to hunt her up. It's a joke—if it is on me! Must see my debutante. After all, if I'm paying, I ought to look her over. She's going to ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... a good joke of which he was the victim. He was followed to the provision tent by two natives, whom he ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... master, and proves that when it is finished, this hall will beat the record, and be the finest thing done in painting since the ancients. Then he asked if I had read your letter. I said, No. He laughed loudly, as though at a good joke, and I quitted him with compliments. Bandinelli, who is copying the Laocoon, tells me that the Cardinal showed him your letter, and also showed it to the Pope; in fact, nothing is talked about at ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... big saw-mills were idle and rotting. Its original architect had sunk to a blue-faced and lachrymose bar-loafer, and the roll of plans which he carried about with him—with their unrealised boulevards, churches, municipal buildings, and band-kiosks—had passed into a dismal standing joke. Hewson was even now deliberating whether to throw up the game or toss good money after bad by buying up a saw-mill and running it as his predecessor ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... rag of a daughter are in the drawing room," explained Miss Montressor—the young lady with fluffy hair who dressed in blue and could dance. "Such a joke, General! They don't approve of us! Mamma says that she shall have to take her Julie away if we remain. We are not fit associates for her. Rich, isn't it! The old chap's screwing up his courage now with brandy and soda to ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to be much impressed by the author's knowledge of metaphysics as exemplified in such a sentence as: 'The idea of cause is a consequence of our consciousness of the force we exert in subjecting externals to the changes dictated by our volition.' Unable to keep up the laudatory strain, even in joke, the reviewer (his style points to Christopher North) calls a literary friend to his assistance, who takes the opposite view, and declares that the book is 'a tawdry tissue of tedious trumpery; a tessellated texture ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... self-sacrifice has been proved in these last six months; it is to other qualities that one must look for final victory in a war of exhaustion. The Englishman does not look into himself; he does not brood; he sees no further forward than is necessary, and he must have his joke. These are fearful and wonderful advantages. Examine the letters and diaries of the various combatants and you will see how far less imaginative and reflecting, (though shrewd, practical, and humorous,) the English are ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... but they managed to make it open itself by holding it over the kitchen fire on the shovel. When it began to lift its lid, Beth sent Bernadine for a fork, and while she was getting it Beth ate the oyster. But Bernadine could not see the joke, and her rage was not to be appeased even by the oyster-shell, which Beth said she might ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... at the great pile of sticks and mud which Paddy had built for a house, but in which he had forgotten to make a room. At least they supposed that he had forgotten this very important thing. He must have, for there wasn't any room. It was a great joke. They laughed a lot about it, and they lost a great deal of the respect for Paddy which they had had since he ...
— The Adventures of Paddy the Beaver • Thornton W. Burgess
... errands, and to preach; Well hast thou judged, that heads like mine Cannot want help from heads like thine; Well hast thou judged thyself unmeet Of such high argument to treat; Twas but to try thee that I spoke, And all I said was but a joke. 1370 Nor think a joke, Crape, a disgrace, Or to my person, or my place; The wisest of the sons of men Have deign'd to use them now and then. The only caution, do you see, Demanded by our dignity, From common use and men exempt, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... a villain!" muttered Horatio. "Ask Miss Kellerton; she knows him. But, villainy aside, what a stupendous joke it is to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... and we all droop over our books and tremble. A moment afterwards we are again eyeing him. An unhappy culprit, found guilty of imperfect exercise, approaches at his command. The culprit falters excuses, and professes a determination to do better tomorrow. Mr. Creakle cuts a joke before he beats him, and we laugh at it,—miserable little dogs, we laugh, with our visages as white as ashes, and our hearts sinking ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... the cheek," confessed d'Alcacer, equably. "And, besides, it's too momentous for daily use. And he is so simple that he might mistake it for a joke and nothing could be further from my thoughts. Mrs. Travers, I will confess to you that I don't feel jocular in the least. But what can he know about people of our sort? And when I reflect how little people of our sort can know of such a man I am quite ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... dear," she said; "I would not feel that the other world was the good place I think it if I did not believe I could laugh there too." She once said to me, in the midst of a storm of acute suffering, that pain seemed to her a strange sort of a joke. I hardly knew what she meant, but it shows the reigning mood of one who used to better ends a life half pain than most of us use the untroubled health of existence. Very irritable in youth, her clear brain and strong sense of duty overcame it in proportion to the ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell
... sake, don't give me any more!' cried Lord Findon. 'It's no joke, Eugenie, this sipping business—Where were we? Oh, well, of course I knew we should have to take it—and I don't say I'm not pleased with it. But ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... should marry you, Say nothin' about the joke; That iver ye slep' in a sinthry-box, Wrapped up ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling
... you talking about?" said Stella impatiently. "I never saw such provoking boys. You say such strange things, then cackle over it as though there was a joke in it, which nobody seems ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... that you?" He tried to laugh. "I'm only looking up some old papers; no joke, in all this rubbish." ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... tour in Scotland with your uncle. Brougham gave them a letter to Jeffrey, who hospitably entertained them; but your uncle said that Jeffrey was not at all at his ease, and was apparently so terrified at my father's religious reputation that he seemed afraid to utter a joke. Your uncle complained grievously that they travelled from manse to manse, and always came in for very long prayers and expositions. [Macaulay writes in his journal of August 8, 1859: "We passed my old acquaintance, Dumbarton ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... if you be indeed serious; but I cannot think you are; you are certainly making a joke of me for my boldness in asking you ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... stare. "What is there that interests you so about me?" he asked in a tone that was an attempt at a joke. ...
— The Case of the Golden Bullet • Grace Isabel Colbron, and Augusta Groner
... prepositions that govern the dative. He could not bear to have the other pupils think, for a moment, that he took these people seriously; he must convey to them that he considered it all trivial, and was there only by way of a joke, anyway. He had autograph pictures of all the members of the stock company which he showed his classmates, telling them the most incredible stories of his familiarity with these people, of his acquaintance with the soloists who came ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... reputation—to impeach the stork as a humbug. It is easy to achieve a reputation for profound and ponderous wisdom, so long as one looks very solemn and says nothing. This is the stork's recipe. Go up to Billy here, or one of the marabous, as he stands with his shoulders humped up about his head, and make a joke. He won't see it. He will lift his eyebrows with a certain look of contempt, and continue to cogitate—about nothing. If the joke is a very bad pun—such a frightful pun that even a stork will see and resent it—perhaps ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... might have known, father dear, that both Aunt Helen and I lay awake nights wondering whether he would bring a boat-hook or a sou'wester to the dinner, and do—oh, all sorts of outlandish things, making us the joke of the season. And to think—a football captain in Percy's class at ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... in triumph. 'We've won our point, Davies. And now, gentlemen, I don't mind saying that as far as I am concerned the joke's at an end; and, in spite of your kind offer, I must start for England to-morrow' under the good Herr Bhme's wing. And in case my elastic conscience troubles you (for I see you think me a weather-cock) here are ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... Some of the lads has been telling you that I am fat. That's a joke they have got up among them, just because I'm a little thicker than some of the others. But as I was a-saying, sir, they ast ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... caught—a fact which lightened my worry, for I knew how dependent I was upon my mustangs. When I had tried for I do not know how long to get my pack to stay on the pony's back I saw where Mr. Cless had played a joke on me. All memory of the diamond-hitch had faded into utter confusion. First the pack fell over the off-side; next, on top of me; then the saddle slipped awry, and when I did get the pack to remain stationary upon the patient pony, how on earth to tie it there ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey
... I dare say, but I can't do it, Ethel. Either he shuts me up at first, with some joke, or—' and Tom stopped; but Ethel knew what he meant. There was on her father's side an involuntary absence of perfect trust in this son, and on Tom's there was a character so sensitive that her father's playfulness grated, and so reserved ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sharp chin. Nature has not been as bountiful to Marcia in the matter of charms as to the others; she has stinted here and there, and it shows clearly as she grows older. But as she gives her head an airy toss and shakes the Skye fluff out of her eyes, he smiles. It would be an immense joke to marry Marcia Grandon; an immense mortification as well! To be Floyd Grandon's brother-in-law, to have the entree of the great house, to come very near Violet Grandon and perhaps drop a bitter flavor in ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... nobody, indeed! Could she make that sacrifice? She would visit and receive company. She would be guilty of a thousand follies. She would be saying things which she may consider as very good jokes, but which I should take seriously. My government is no joke: I wish this to be well known by everybody."— "Sire, will your Majesty permit me to repeat that my mother has no wish whatever to mingle in society? She would confine herself to the circle of a few friends, a ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... cried my lady; "you cannot possibly mean it. There must be some mistake—the boy has been playing a practical joke on you." ...
— A Mad Love • Bertha M. Clay
... of womankind, he tries to work out the problem of love without regard to the distinctions of nature. And full of the evils which he recognized as flowing from the spurious form of love, he proceeds with a deep meaning, though partly in joke, to show that the 'non-lover's' love ...
— Phaedrus • Plato
... that he should be required to give this, that, and t'other bit selected from his public recitations. They are good certainly—excellent; but then you must laugh, and that is always severe to me. When I do laugh in sincerity, the joke must be or seem unpremeditated. I could not help thinking, in the midst of the glee, what gloom had lately been over the minds of three of the company, Cadell, J.B., and the Journalist. What a strange scene if the surge of ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... heroically upon that monument of human inanity, Bouvard et Pecuchet; Maupassant, his disciple, had just published a volume of verse; Manet was regarded as a dangerous charlatan, Monet looked on as a madman; while poor Cezanne was only a bad joke. The indurated critical judgment of the academic forces pronounced Bonnat a greater portraitist than Velasquez, and Gerome and his mock antiques and mock orientalism far superior to Fromentin and Chasseriau. It was a glorious epoch for mediocrity. And Daumier, ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... the window on one side just as her father passed on the other, and directed Michael, with a very elegant nonchalance, to "set this little girl down" as aforesaid. Mr. Argenter had been half amused and half angry. The anger passed off, but he had kept up the joke. ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... forgetting persons, or pretending to do so, for nobody ever knew when the lapses of recognition were due to intention or absent-mindedness, often tempted other artists to play pranks upon him. He was a man who resented a joke at his own expense, except on a few occasions, and this trait was often ...
— Whistler Stories • Don C. Seitz
... last they found out the cheat; but continued all delighted with it, except the old lady who felt herself mortified and took back her presents for which she was laughed at exceedingly. Tinah and all the chiefs enjoyed the joke and, after making many enquiries about the British women, they strictly enjoined me when I came again to bring ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... like to press upon his notice. Such ideas as those of God, immortality, and marriage are as unknown to him as the commonest distinction between mine and thine. He is a well-looking artistic vagabond, to whom a half-time book and a penalty will in all probability be no better than a standing joke to be cracked with impunity at the expense of the ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... would never be guilty of such cowardice, which would only serve to make the mob more insolent, who would be ready to come to my house if they thought I was afraid of them here." And when I begged him not to expose himself till I had pacified the people he passed it off with a joke, by which I found he took me for the author of the disturbance, though very unjustly. However, I did not resent it, but went into the Great Hall, and, mounting the solicitors' bench, waved my hands to the people, who thereupon cried, "Silence!" I said all I could think of ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... At last the joke began to die out, and I was getting on very well, but for one boy, a heavy-looking fellow with a pasty face, who was always creeping after me, and asking me to tell him about my father. "Johnson Minor," we called him. He was a younger brother of Thomas Johnson, the champion of ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... impossibility of telling whether he was serious. There was a mockery in that queer glance, a sardonic smile upon the mouth, which made you hesitate how to take his outrageous utterances. It was irritating to be uncertain whether, while you were laughing at him, he was not really enjoying an elaborate joke at your expense. ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... their muddy boots on the scraper. Reggie had apparently achieved something new. His ignorance of everything pertaining to farming furnished the material for most of the amusement that was going. Fortunately, he was always good-natured. Gertie, with unusual good spirits, entered into the joke of the thing at once and even bantered Reggie playfully ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett
... was so unusual and unlooked for, that it took him a moment or two to realize the words; then, fearing it might be some practical joke, he recalled the driver, and heard with amazement that the Jew's granddaughter had herself given him the message. Assured of this fact, he answered the summons for his father promptly. Miriam was waiting just within the door; and, scarcely heeding his explanation, she proceeded at ...
— The Bow of Orange Ribbon - A Romance of New York • Amelia E. Barr
... use of fire by rank? By command? It is impracticable against the enemy, except in extraordinary cases. Any attempt at supervision of it is a joke! File firing? The first rank can shoot horizontally, the only thing required; the second rank can fire only into the air. It is useless to fire with our bulky knapsacks interfering so that our men raise the elbow higher than the shoulder. Learn what the field pack can be from the English, ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq
... to school. For really such an experience as we are about to go through at her hands is enough to endanger health, to say nothing of peace and domestic quiet. The fact is, I really am a much worried man. It's no joke bringing up seven motherless girls, each of them with characters; the boys are a simple matter—they have school before them, and a career of some sort, but the girls—it really is an awful responsibility. Even the baby has a ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... Popanilla's powers of digestion are improved. He now returns to Vraibleusia, where all are panic-struck, and his friend, the banker, unlike his "perpetual ticket," has stopped payment, and all our traveller's resources. Popanilla consoles him with the joke that "things were not quite so bad as they appeared," till they get worse, by two gentlemen in blue, with red waistcoats, arresting the ambassador for high treason. This completes his "amusements." He fears "confined cells, overwhelming fetters, black bread, and green water, in the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 322, July 12, 1828 • Various
... a joke, I've sent out P.P.C. cards to all our formal friends in the county. Bart frowns, saying that they may be taken ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... of these Jesuits!" the host murmured, breathing a long sigh, such as one does from whose shoulders a weight has been suddenly lifted. "Ah, Messieurs, but your joke frightened me cruelly. And they call him the Black Kettle? But perhaps they will stay at the episcopal palace, that is, if the host from Dieppe arrives to-night. And ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... that the miserable policy of these people was to starve the troops into the supposed necessity of evacuating the position, and returning to Khartoum. I represented to Allorron the danger of trifling with a hungry lion, at which he grinned, as a good joke, and immediately replied: "If you want cattle, I will give you some of my people as guides, and you can attack a neighbour of mine, and capture his herds, which will last you for a long time." I replied, that I could not injure any one who had not committed an ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... disposed to be amused by them, as they are by the wit of the clown in the circus, or the performances of Punch and Judy on fair days, or the minstrelsy of gentlemen with blackened faces, on banjos, the tambourine, and bones. But the joke is becoming stale. People are getting cloyed with these performances, and are looking for some healthier and more intellectual amusement. The ludicrous is wearing away, and disgust is taking the place of pleasurable sensations, arising from the novelty of this new phase of hypocrisy and infidel ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... briskly along the pleasant road alone, thinking over a case that interested her, and Tom was pegging on behind to overtake her, as if by accident, when the suburbs of the city were past—a little way of his, which was part of the joke. ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... the truth, we began to hope for his sake, that he had given up a game which, however much longer it might be contested, had evidently begun to be a losing one on his part. But we were mistaken. We found him one morning in high spirits, and evidently in possession of some joke which ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... that yesterday," He tried to make a joke of it. "Upon my word, you're very anxious to ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... not in such a way make a mock of things. An old man, (I speak) with entire sincerity; But you, my juniors, are full of pride. It is not that my words are those of age, But you make a joke of what is sad. But the troubles will multiply like flames, Till they ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... was engaged to be married to Adolphus Crosbie,—to Apollo Crosbie, as she still called him, confiding her little joke to his own ears. And to her he was an Apollo, as a man who is loved should be to the girl who loves him. He was handsome, graceful, clever, self-confident, and always cheerful when she asked him to be cheerful. But he had also his ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... public for some time, except on Sunday, for fear of arrest. This disreputable and most unclerical affair did not operate against him in the minds of the contemporaneous public, for ten years later he received the degree of Doctor of Divinity from Princeton College; and he did not hesitate to joke about his liquor manufacturing, saying to two of his brother-clergymen, "Oh, we are all three in the same boat together,—Brother Prime raises the grain, I distil it, and Brother Flint ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... additional reason. Say the whole affair was a mere joke. M. de Malicorne will have no occasion to get out of temper; M. de Saint-Aignan will be completely put out of countenance; he will be laughed at instead of you; and lastly, the king will be punished for a curiosity unworthy ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... asleep. And dreamt she heard them bleating; But when she awoke, she found it a joke, For still they ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... eloquent sermon on the 116th Psalm. Afterwards there was a dinner at the house of the States-General, in honour of the stadholder, to which the Admiral of Arragon was likewise bidden. That arrogant but discomfited personage was obliged to listen to many a rough martial joke at his disaster as they sat at table, but he bore the brunt of the encounter with ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... said reflectively. "Lor lumme! I can hear yer speaking now—just in the same tone—the night what yer run away with me. Yer hadn't a seat to yer breeches then, and now you've a seat in Parliament." He chuckled again at his joke. "But"—he gripped the young man's knee in his bony clasp—"you're just the same Paul, sonny, God bless yer—and you'll come out straight all right. Here ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... her as the badly sharpened axes that had hacked, without destroying, Messieurs de Chalais and De Thou upon the scaffold. She recovered herself, however, and said, "I was perfectly right in saying you were a witty woman, for you are making the time pass away most agreeably. This joke is a most amusing one, for I have never ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... come to America; but America was a long way off, and she very likely reckoned on his laziness and dislike to foreign traveling. It is so easy for a young woman writing from Boston to say to a young man residing in Scotland, "Do come over for a few days"—Surbiton thought it would be a good joke to take her at her word and go. The idea of seeing her again so much sooner than he had expected was certainly uppermost in his mind as he began to make his resolution; but it was sustained and strengthened by a couple of allusions Joe had made to ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... heavens, child!" he said. "Can't you take a joke? I didn't mean anything by what I said about the house—except that—well, it is a precious, soulful, sacred—High Church sort of house, and we're not the sort of people, thank God—I'll say it again—who'd have built it and furnished it for ourselves. You aren't right, Rose. You're run down ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... which often led him far afield in the finding of it. Vanquished when he met the women; invincible when he met the men; in truth, a most human hero, and so we all love Jack—the we, in this instant, as the old joke has it, ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... see it if it were so. But Lydia, she thought, was building on a dream. The hideous old woman with the ostrich feathers had played a satiric joke on her, and here was Lydia in good faith assuming the joke ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... Treasury during the Civil War, the arch briber and corruptionist, virtuously invoking the aid of the law on the ground that he had been swindled! Drew, Gould and Fisk sardonically jested over it. But joke as they well might over their having outwitted a man whose own specialty was fraud, they knew that their position was perilous. Barnard's order had declared their sales of stock to be fraudulent, and hence outlawed; and, moreover, if they dared venture back to New York, they were certain, as matters ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... have been the result had he overtaken him. Probably it was only a kind of brag on his part—a bold dash where no risk was run. He simulated the hawk, the squirrel's real enemy, and no doubt enjoyed the joke. ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs
... father. We'll get along somehow. But where is mother? I would like to get my breakfast and hurry over to New Strike. All the best jobs may be taken, and I'll only get a chance to be superintendent, or something like that," and he laughed at his joke, for Fred ...
— The Young Treasure Hunter - or, Fred Stanley's Trip to Alaska • Frank V. Webster
... said Charles. "But what you mean is you don't want to fork out! If the chap's told to go to Davos, he's got to go to Davos, and it's his own look-out whether he takes his wife with him or not. Consumption isn't a joke, and I tell you plainly that if you don't help him when he's got a chance, you needn't expect me to come to the funeral. No flowers and coffins and beloved sons on tombstones, are going to make me move an inch. It'll be just the same to me as if you'd shoved him under ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... he protects his—his wife." He paused and repeated the glowing word ... "his wife!" For a moment he could not go on with their careless talk; then he was practical again. That word "protect" was too robust for sentimentality. "As for being jealous, that, about me, is a joke! And if you were, it would only mean that you loved me—so I would be flattered. I hope you'll be jealous! Eleanor, promise me you'll be jealous?" They both laughed; then he said: "I've made up my mind to one thing. I won't ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... that ain't a joke! I ain't the ferry. Here you, Phil, jump into the Fairy and go and see what ...
— Littlebourne Lock • F. Bayford Harrison
... I took my annual day's fishing, which has come to be rather a joke in the house, because, in spite of my elaborate preparations the night before, and the unheard-of hour at which I rise in the morning, I have never been known to ...
— The Making of Mary • Jean Forsyth
... take leave, did not omit to call him to account for his behavior to Granvella, and alluded particularly to the livery invented in derision of the cardinal. Egmont protested that the whole affair had originated in a convivial joke, and nothing was further from their meaning than to derogate in the least from the respect that was due to royalty. "If he knew," he said, "that any individual among them had entertained such disloyal ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... intercepted by some of the men attending the carriage. Unfortunately, they were serious-minded men, and they failed to see the joke. Sancho Panza gave them his views on etiquette pertaining to such matters as these; but it would have been much better for him had he not, for the men set upon him with great fury, beating and kicking him until he was insensible. They left him lying on the ground and then helped the pale ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... whatever one surrenders or gives up for it, intentionally or unintentionally, or even unconsciously; expense is what is laid out by calculation or intention. We say, "he won his fame at the cost of his life;" "I know it to my cost;" we speak of a joke at another's expense; at another's cost would seem to make it a more serious matter. There is a tendency to use cost of what we pay for a possession, expense of what we pay for a service; we ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... remarkable, that whoever made a sly attack upon that worthy, with a view to a joke, was sure to have the tables turned upon him, by the matter-of-fact way in which his joke was received, refuted, and cut ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... is a letter that Morny might have written, and that it is quite impossible for Normanby to bear. The curious thing is that it is a letter or rather letters that would completely ruin Palmerston with his Party. He treats all the acts of the wholesale cruelties of the troops as a joke—in short, it is the letter of a man half mad, I think, for to quarrel with Normanby on this subject is cutting his own throat.... He has written also to Lord John. Louis Napoleon knows perfectly well that Normanby cannot approve ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... color had risen to Frank's cheeks, and he looked strikingly handsome. The boys knew it would not do to carry the joke about Winnie Lee too ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish
... principal officers of his army, at the Abbey of Ferrieres, and witnessed a fight between a lion and a bull. The bull was of enormous size and extraordinary strength, but nevertheless the lion overcame him; whereupon Pepin, who was surnamed the Short, turned to his officers, who used to joke him about his short stature, and said to them, "Make the lion loose his hold of the bull, or kill him." No one dared to undertake so perilous a task, and some said aloud that the man who would measure his strength with a lion must be mad. Upon this, Pepin sprang into the arena sword in ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... "It is no joke, but downright earnest," said the bailiff. "Harkye, Mr. Robin Ogg, or whatever is your name, it's right we should tell you that we are all of one opinion, and that is, that you, Mr. Robin Ogg, have behaved to our friend, Mr. Harry Wakefield ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume X, No. 280, Saturday, October 27, 1827. • Various
... of the native language. There were no interpreters, and there was nothing for it but to grub along, patiently picking up words as they went. The Betchuanas were willing to teach them as far as they could, occasionally relieving the monotony of the lesson by a little joke at the pupils' expense. Once, Dr. Moffat told his hearers, a sentence was written down on a piece of paper, and he was instructed to take it to an aged lady, who was to give him something he was in need of. He found the old lady, who was scarcely handsome, ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... up from all that was held influential, respectable and stable when these resolutions were printed, was echoed far and wide. They were looked upon first as a joke, and then, when the Workingmen's Party began to reveal its earnestness and strength, as an insolent challenge to constituted authority, to wealth and superiority, and as ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... who have had the talk now," said Lionel, in his softest tone. He was bent on coaxing three pounds out of his richer friend, and that might require some management. For amongst the wild youngsters in Mr. Vance's profession, there ran many a joke at the skill with which he parried irregular assaults on his purse; and that gentleman, with his nose more than usually in the air, having once observed to such scoffers "that they were quite welcome to any joke at his expense," a wag had exclaimed, "At your ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... countenance, though the name was the cream of the joke. He paused, watching the faces of those who had been ashore a week and were due to ship again when he should give the word. "Oh, you don't want to be scared of her name; her name's ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... not in their line, but in other ways. They enjoy our mistakes hugely—that's only human—but they don't do it in an ill-natured way. Last spring when we sowed clover-seed for millet and didn't recognize it till the crop appeared, it was worth it to see them laugh at the joke, particularly as we didn't mind laughing with them. But I can tell you where we're scoring the biggest success after all, and the one that would pay if half our crops turned out failures. You haven't been out here for a year, ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... that you observed Protagoras bidding us be serious, as the text, 'Man is the measure of all things,' was a solemn one; and he reproached us with making a boy the medium of discourse, and said that the boy's timidity was made to tell against his argument; he also declared that we made a joke of him. ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... of his bed at one o'clock in the morning, to admit them into the house, muttering as he did so, something about "unlucky folks, and the deal of trouble they gave; that they had better give up going to Canada altogether, and hire their old lodgings again; that it was no joke, having his rest broken at his time of life; that he could not afford to keep open house at all hours, for people who were in no ways related ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... at the stores for everything they wanted. Having had some horses stolen, he sternly called on the city authorities to pay him their full value. They did so without a murmur—in Confederate money. He pocketed it with a grim smile, evidently appreciating the joke. He boasted greatly of his humanity and his respect for private property, but if the local papers are to be believed, it must be chronicled to his everlasting disgrace that he seized a great many negroes, who were tied and sent South as slaves. Black children were ...
— Chancellorsville and Gettysburg - Campaigns of the Civil War - VI • Abner Doubleday
... was a libel on any variety of independence and a joke on hope, but I waited for the ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... adjunction to the world of the Maremma (cf. Elijer Goff, "The Irish Question has for some centuries been enjoyed by the universe and other parts") produces a risible effect and gives the reader to understand that Scalza broaches the question only by way of a joke. The same may be said of the jesting inversion of the word philosophers (phisopholers, Fisofoli) in ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... The latter joke was pure epithet, with no meaning behind it; when Senator James Cannon spoke, either in person or over the TV networks, even his opponents ...
— Hail to the Chief • Gordon Randall Garrett
... then of the coins; or did he have some knowledge of the practical joke that had been played on old ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... in vain to discover any where, in this great valley, a little church, which, if it only offered me a hard bench for a couch, would at any rate afford me a shelter from the sharp night-wind; for it is really no joke to ride for fifteen hours, with nothing to eat but bread and cheese, and then not even to have the pleasant prospect of a hotel a la villa de Londres or de Paris. Alas, my wishes were far more modest. I expected no porter at the gate to give the signal ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... only think of him, poor fellow! How very odd! I believe he was not in joke. He told me a distant connection of his, of another name, whom he never knew till after he heard that the thing happened, who had been transported to New South Wales a matter of sixteen years ago, is to be hanged to-morrow, by way of a secondary punishment, for ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, No. 577 - Volume 20, Number 577, Saturday, November 24, 1832 • Various
... had lain there, and all the rest of it cankered with rust. Whether this sciencer was some obscure Roger Bacon, and had discovered the use of a volatile anaesthetic centuries ago, or whether he was enjoying a solitary practical joke at the expense of two simpletons, is impossible to say. "It is at your choice to believe either or neither," as Westcote says of the two foregoing stories. "I have offered them to the shrine of your judgment, and what truth soever there is in them, they are not unfit tales for winter ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... much like a joke, that the poor housekeeper of the Rue St. Gilles could not help smiling whilst answering that she had no dressmaker, and that, having no diamonds, she had no possible use for ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... laughed audibly, but he had a quick sense of the comic, and his eye would laugh when his lips were silent. He would say queer, droll, unexpected things which passed for humour; but, save for that gleam in the eye, he could not have said them with more seeming innocence of intentional joke if he had been a monk of La Trappe looking up from the grave he was digging in order to utter ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... be merry, dance, joke, and rejoice, With claret and sherry, theorbo and voice! The changeable world to our joy is unjust, All treasure 's uncertain, Then down with your dust! In frolics dispose your pounds, shillings, and pence, For we shall be nothing a hundred ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... indignation—but on this occasion he would only say in public that he "regretted the necessity" of such action. Evidently he thought it his duty to support a well-intentioned general against a dangerous agitator. The course which after some consideration he took was of the nature of a practical joke, perhaps justified by its success. Vallandigham was indeed released; he was taken to the front and handed over to the Confederates as if he had been an exchanged prisoner of war. In reply to demands from the Democratic organisation in Ohio that Vallandigham might be allowed ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... it's no sich talk ye'll git out uv him, an' niver a laugh nor a joke, nor the bit bowld ways he used to have wid him. An' och, honey! if ye've lost yer purty darlint, it's I've lost me b'y that wor as mooch to me; an' it's I'm the heavy-hearted woman, ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... retorted. "What a marvel you are, Grace dear." Now and then she called her mother "Grace." It was by way of being a small joke between them, but limited to their moments alone. Once old Anthony, her grandfather, had overheard her, and there had been rather a row ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... it always makes a change. I've known her, after being very quiet, and hardly having any thing to say, though in the midst of young company, grow all at once as merry as a cricket, and laugh and joke in a wild sort of way. And again, when she has been in one of her old, pleasant states of mind I have noticed that she all at once drew back into herself; I could trace the cause to only this—the presence of Henry Wallingford. But ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur
... serious. I wonder how you can joke on such a subject, with all your debts. I'm sure I feel them heavy enough, if you don't. You see Lord Ballindine was refused—I may say he was refused—before we heard about that poor boy's unfortunate death. It was the very morning ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... he composed his chapter upon the Great, and Moliere criticised the courtiers in the very pieces which were acted before the court. But the ruling power in the United States is not to be made game of; the smallest reproach irritates its sensibility, and the slightest joke which has any foundation in truth, renders it indignant; from the style of its language to the more solid virtues of its character, everything must be made the subject of encomium. No writer, whatever be his eminence, can escape from this tribute of adulation to his fellow-citizens. ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... no, child; it's only powder to make a noise and scare 'em. I wouldn't like to be in his place, though; father says you can never trust tigers as you can lions, no matter how tame they are. Sly fellers, like cats, and when they scratch it's no joke, I tell you," answered Ben, with a knowing wag of the head, as the sides of the cage rattled down, and the poor, fierce creatures were seen leaping and snarling as if they resented ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... organorum sexus vinculo sibi adstrictum, amicae suae corpus sursum et deorsum trahentem, mirantes vidimus!—Spanish flies, you exclaim!—as if he had not taken a dose of his own powder; but after the joke is over, we think this is another poser for the advocates of insect intelligence. We found that if either of two insects was destroyed in coition, that state was not interrupted for two or three days. The insects on which are observed this remarkable ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... actuated him when he wrote it. In that paper breathes the sentiment of a patriot, and it stands out in bold contrast with the miserable slang by which he was pursued this morning. It may serve the purposes of a man who little regards the Union to perpetrate a joke on the hazard of its dissolution. It may serve the purpose of a man who never looks to his own heart to find there any impulses of honor, to arraign everybody, the President and the Supreme Court, and to have them impeached and vilified on his mere ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... said the man, forgetting said professional sorrow in his love of a joke, "but for robbery on the highway; and we must search the house for five pounds in British ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... cowardly. He ordered the boy roughly, teased him for his ignorance of manly exercises, tried to cure his helplessness by increasing his difficulties, and viewed his fatigue as affectation or effeminacy. Berenger interfered now and then to guard the poor boy from a horse-jest or practical joke, but he too felt that Aime was a great incumbrance, hopelessly cowardly, fanciful, and petulant; and he was sometimes driven to speak to him with severity, verging on contempt, in hopes of rousing a ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... were presented who were presented of the Oxford deputation. The King went beyond his written speech to the men of Cambridge, and put us in a fright. However, it was good-humoured, and of no great harm—a sort of joke. ...
— A Political Diary 1828-1830, Volume II • Edward Law (Lord Ellenborough)
... over this essay of the old Professor; though it hit us pretty hard. The best part of the joke is that the old man himself published a thin volume of poems when he was young, which there is good reason to think he is not very proud of, as they say he buys up all the copies he can find in the shops. No matter what they say, I can't help ...
— A Mortal Antipathy • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... had been speared, was the butt of all his messmates, and the requests to him to show his wound were constant and all taken in good part; in fact, he seemed to revel in the joke. ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... Mr. Quatermain. That silly old fool was part of my inheritance, so to speak; and the joke of it is that he is himself the worst and most dangerous shot I ever saw. However, on the other hand, he is the best rearer of pheasants in the county, so I put up with him. Come in, now, won't you? Charles will look after ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... Lady Maud imagined this extraordinary document to be a stupid practical joke, invented by some half-fledged cousin to tease her. She had a good many cousins, among whom were several beardless undergraduates and callow subalterns in smart regiments, who would think it no end of fun to scare 'Cousin ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... to make medicine of!128 What if we could turn the trick just as briskly and smartly now, and here in Lithuania give the Muscovites just such another sweating? Hey? What think you, Maciej? If Moscow picks a bone with Bonaparte, then he will make a war that will be no joke: he is the foremost hero in the world, and has armies unnumbered! Hey, what think you, Maciej, our ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... it, I never imagined that this would ever happen. When she said she was coming to live with me, I thought it was a charming joke on her part." ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... could not face. Let Capponi sound the tocsin, and each house would become a fortress, the streets would be barricaded with iron chains, every quarter would pour forth men by hundreds well versed in the arts of civic warfare. Charles gave way, covering with a bad joke the discomfiture he felt: Ah, Ciappon, Ciappon, voi siete un mal Ciappon! The secretaries beat down his terms. All he cared for was to get money.[1] He agreed to content himself with 120,000 florins. A treaty was signed, and in two ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... by, the joke of the 'glass windows' is lost in the translation. The German for illustrious is 'durchlauchtig', that is, ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... whether there is any more reason for refraining from the stork fiction than from the Santa Claus one. When Santa Claus is found out, the whole thing is generally understood as a joke, a pleasant sort of fairy tale. There was nothing hidden behind the fiction. In the other case, if the child chances somewhere to hear the facts stated in a coarse manner, he will be likely to feel instinctively that the new tale is the true one, ...
— The Renewal of Life; How and When to Tell the Story to the Young • Margaret Warner Morley
... to joke. But he was as anxious as we were, without knowing why. Babet had had bad dreams. We listened to the account of her nightmare, laughing with our ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... have the character of being somewhat inconsiderate at times, and, as I am clothed in a sober, solemn character, a jest or practical joke might ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... provinces, uncontaminated with railroads or unbelief. There they last several days The stage is the town, the Temple scene takes place in the church, the Judgment at the city hall, and the procession of the Via Crucis moves through all the principal streets. The leading roles are no joke,—carrying fifty kilos of wood over the mud and cobble-stones for half a day. The Judas or Gestas must be paid double for the kicks and cuffs he gets from tender-hearted spectators,—the curses he accepts willingly as a tribute to his dramatic ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... just wait a minute," begged Dozia at the first landing. "This looks a little like a joke but who is the joker? Who got up in that place and rattled these nightly? Also, who let out that wild scream we heard on that first night?" She was talking quickly and in a subdued voice. "We may be breaking the spell by raiding the secret chamber, but suppose ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... know that I want to quarrel with Ottawa's joke, for I am awed by the way it brought it off. Perhaps it brought it off on the Prince also. If so he must have had a shock, and a delightful one. For the taciturnity of Ottawa is a myth. When the Prince ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... was a joke against Lord Cottington that whenever he was seriously ill he declared himself a Roman Catholic, when he was well again he ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... this joke, Laramie?" sang out Van Horn, his humor oozing. "Can't you frisk a few cowboys in less ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... upon the European fighting man's psychology if he found that an army transport had conveyed him to a land where one man's privilege is every man's right! Learning this, it is not a joke to say, but is a statement of the probable fact, that the invading soldiery would not want to fire its first volleys, but would want to file its first papers. They would not ask ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... the big idea?" Barry Houston had lost his reserve now. "I want to be a good fellow—but for the love of Mike let me in on the joke. I can't get it. I don't see anything funny in lying here with a broken arm and having my feet tickled. Of course, I'm grateful to you for picking me up and all that sort of ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... life. Surely he must have known that he looked well in his wig and gown, as with low voice and bent neck, with only half-suppressed laughter, he whispered into the ears of the gentleman who sat next to him some pleasant joke that had just occurred to him. He could do that, though the eyes of all the court were upon him; so great was the man! And then he began with a sweet low voice, almost modest in its tones. For a few moments it might have been thought that some young woman was addressing ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... certainly the biggest joke in the way of an officer that either of the young soldiers had ever seen, it was impossible not to like ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... make myself believe that it was a joke; but, alas! he succeeded in convincing me he meant it seriously. So clearly and completely did he convince me of it, that, instead of being furious with him for such naive cynicism, I was filled with deep pity for him and incidentally for ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... you have so much esprit, you laugh at me," said the Frenchman, who took Mrs. Hilson's protestation as a joke. ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... the new boat. Variety of their work. The regular hunting day. The joke on the Professor. Old age. How old age becomes a habit. The discussion on hunting. Deciding where to go. Conclude to visit the forests to the west. Provisioning for the journey. Reaching the edge of the main forest, accompanied ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... occurred to his memory, and each one brought on a fresh explosion. Even his own proposal to Zillah was remembered. He wondered whether Windham had proposed also, and been rejected. This only was needed to his mind to complete the joke. ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... most horrible beasts have something piquant and engaging about them, and so I suppose it is in the way of things that the land ironclad which opens a new and more dreadful and destructive phase in the human folly of warfare, should appear first as if it were a joke. Never has any such thing so completely masked its wickedness under an appearance of genial silliness. The Tank is a creature to which one naturally flings a pet name; the five or six I was shown wandering, rooting and climbing over obstacles, ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... with you, the next day, for this?"—he was entirely reminiscent. "What I recall is that even if I had condoned—that evening—her deception of me in my folly, I still loathed, for my friend's sake, her practical joke on poor John." ...
— The Outcry • Henry James
... him and his friend time to catch up. This, in Morse's time, would have been thought an achievement. Edison seems to regard it as a joke. There was no time for prolonged experiment. It was an emergency, and the idea must necessarily have been supplemented ...
— Steam Steel and Electricity • James W. Steele
... Joe wouldn't. The fact is, he was afraid to. He snarled at Buster Bear and called him a thief and everything bad he could think of. Buster didn't seem to mind. He chuckled as if he thought it all a great joke and repeated his invitation to Little Joe to come and get his fish. But Little Joe just turned his back and went off down the Laughing Brook in ...
— The Adventures of Buster Bear • Thornton W. Burgess
... reasonable explanation of the matter, but try as she would, she was unable to think of anyone with whom she had ever come in contact, capable of threatening her in this terrible way. She had about decided that the whole thing must be some stupidly conceived practical joke, when she saw her mother cross the hall ...
— The Film of Fear • Arnold Fredericks
... and editor, A.J. McKelway, who on this occasion and others wrote articles in the Independent and the Outlook justifying the proceedings. Said he: "It is difficult to speak of the Red Shirts without a smile. They victimized the Negroes with a huge practical joke.... A dozen men would meet at a crossroad, on horseback, clad in red shirts or calico, flannel or silk, according to the taste of the owner and the enthusiasm of his womankind. They would gallop through the country, and the Negro would quietly make up his ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... swaggering, half servile; begins by a string of apologies for not having called before,—"Mrs. Trebooze so afraid of infection, you see, my lord,"—which is a lie: then blunders out a few fulsome compliments to Scoutbush's courage in staying; then takes heart at a little joke of Scoutbush's, and tries the free and easy style; fingers his lordship's high-priced Hudsons, and gives a broad hint that he would like to smoke one on the spot; which hint is not taken, any more than the bet of ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... are very literal. They are slaves of habit, doing what they have been taught without variation; dry, prosaic, and matter-of-fact in their remarks; devoid of humor, except of the coarse physical kind which rejoices in a practical joke; taking the world for granted; and possessing in their faithfulness and honesty the single gift by which they are sometimes able to warm us into admiration. But {248} even this faithfulness seems to have a sort of inorganic ring, and to remind us more of the immutable properties of a piece of inanimate ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... replied the other. "Hitherto it was the ruin of a joke that people did not see it. Now it is the sublime victory of a joke that people do not see it. Humour, my friends, is the one sanctity remaining to mankind. It is the one thing you are thoroughly afraid ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... rogue or a fugitive. As he spoke he advanced until he faced Claiborne in the center of the room. Shirley still stood by the window, holding the soiled paper in her hand. She had witnessed the change of men at the end of the room; it had touched her humor; it had been a joke on her brother; but she felt that the night had brought a crisis: she could not continue to shield a man of whom she knew nothing save that he was the object of a curious enmity. Her idle prayer that her own land's commonplace sordidness ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... shout as was set up from one end of the train to the other was never heard before or since of the "Lone Pine Tree State." All of us thought at first, and very naturally, too, that it was only a practical joke being played upon the Captain, and that all would be right in the end. But not so. What became of that uniform forever remained a mystery. If the party who committed the theft had seen or knew the anguish ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... and much good may it do 'em. The old neighbours have been in, making a deal o' fuss over me, but I tells 'em to keep their pity for them that wants it more, and I've one less leg for the rheumaticks to get hold of,' and the old sailor laughed at his own joke like a storm of ...
— Two Maiden Aunts • Mary H. Debenham
... unfortunate "sea-rovers" in constant activity. It is enervating work being always at one's post, and sleeping with one eye open. They had a hard time to contend with, our ten comrades, and the calm way in which they took everything was extraordinary. They were always in a good humour, and always had a joke ready. It was the duty of the sea party to bring up all the provisions and outfit for the wintering party from the hold, and put them on the ice. Then the land party removed them. This work proceeded very smoothly, and it was rare that one party had to wait for the other. During the first few days ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... is John, but they call him Demi-John, because his father is John too. That's a joke, don't you see?" said Tommy, kindly explaining. Nat did not see, but politely smiled, and ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... my friend, let Mr. Gaston buy him; he can afford it. Do it, Mr. Gaston; it will be both a capital joke and a good action, do it ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... a tutor and a man who danced at real, grown-up balls was too great to allow of their exchanging mutual ideas. Katenka, too, seemed grown-up now, and read innumerable novels; so that the idea that she would some day be getting married no longer seemed to me a joke. Yet, though she and Woloda were thus grown-up, they never made friends with one another, but, on the contrary, seemed to cherish a mutual contempt. In general, when Katenka was at home alone, nothing but novels amused her, and they but slightly; but as soon as ever a visitor ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... "even you could not make it rise to-night. Heigho, Ned! coming to kiss good-night? I say, Ned, tell us what mamma has for Amy's stocking. What a good joke it is, to be sure I We all had the impression you were a little girl, you know, and selected our gifts accordingly. Burt actually bought you a doll. Ha! ha! ha! Maggie had planned to have you hang up your stocking with the children, and such a lot ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... our frail raft, now tossed high up on a foaming sea, now sent gliding down into the bottom of the trough with darkness around us, almost starved, and our throats parched by thirst, Brady's love of a joke would still break forth. "Arrah, but it's illegant dancing we're learning out here!" he exclaimed, "though, faith, I would rather it were on the green turf than footing it on the top of the green waves, but we will be safe on shore ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston
... me of a man I know who was made a G.B.E.; but that's another story, and Joan wouldn't see the joke of it anyhow, though I know she ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 1, 1920 • Various
... any young man should marry you, Say nothin' about the joke; That iver ye slep' in a sinthry-box, Wrapped ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... which is reviewed in the Allgemeine Litteratur-Zeitung (1794, I, p.416) as a free revision of an old popular tale, "Das lustige und lcherliche Lalenburg." The book is evidently without sentimental tinge, is a merry combination of wit and joke combined with caricature and half-serious tilting against unimportant ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... on his hat and went out, and Miss Rose, watching him from the window, was not without fears that the joke might prove too much for a man of his habit. She regarded him thoughtfully, and when he returned at one o'clock to dinner, and encountered instead a violent dust-storm which was raging in the ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... as he shakes himself free of her). Put a bullet into the poor beast! It is too good for that crew. It shan't be put up for auction, either in joke or in earnest! (Goes to the farther window.) I shall get a ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... way before the heat of the day was at its fullest. Accordingly by six all were in movement. The long night's rest had done them good, still more so the thought that by the end of the day they would be among friends, and they were disposed to laugh and joke over their present situation. All the men had cut themselves heavy cudgels from the stock of firewood, and the fact that they were not as before wholly defenceless was no slight gratification to them. ...
— With Buller in Natal - A Born Leader • G. A. Henty
... you want to, old thing, but believe me, if it hadn't been for you and an occasional evening playing the violin to Terrill O'Farrell's 'cello, and three or four darling girls that let me forget this beastly joke they call 'respectable life,' I'd 've ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... been considered a joke, but you are a joke no longer. Instead of being looked upon with friendly tolerance and amusement, you are now viewed with distrust, suspicion, and even aversion! How dare you hoard fat when our nation needs it? You don't dare to any longer. ...
— Diet and Health - With Key to the Calories • Lulu Hunt Peters
... delicate. One can talk lightly, but nicely; while buffoonery is just what the lexicographers define it to be: "Amusing others by clownish tricks and by commonplace pleasantries." Gentle dulness ever loved a joke; and the fact that very often humorists, paid so highly in literature to perform, will not play a single conversational trick, is the best proof that they have the good sense to vote their hosts and companions capable of being ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin
... pig! This is not a joke! The idea! The most religious ceremony of the coast, and as old as the Cabanal itself! You're no gentleman! You must come from Valencia. But I'll teach you manners, if ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... easy, for instance, for Mademoiselle than to return to the life of the circus, whilst her lover—granted that he wished to remain in her company—will obtain some suitable employment in the same circle. There is a suspicion of a joke in the statement, but I am quite serious. The mere consciousness that they have in their possession a vast fortune, which time alone will enable them to realize, will serve as an inducement to undergo the period of hard work which means safety. You remember that the lady's father, Gros ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... devoted surgeon, whom I had left behind as an invalid, but who had mounted his horse and ridden out alone to attend to our wounded, his green sash looking quite in harmony with the early spring verdure of those lovely woods. So came we back in triumph, enjoying the joke all the more because some one else was responsible. We mystified the little community at first, but soon let out the secret, and witticisms abounded for a day or two, the mildest of which was the assertion that the author of the alarm must have been "three ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... "That's a joke," laughed the banker, "in which we'd all like to share, Bob, but it won't do him any harm to ride the rest of the distance home wondering how you managed to ...
— Hidden Treasure • John Thomas Simpson
... married to her papa's curate? I scarcely need say that never was rumour more unfounded. A cold faraway sort of civility are the only terms on which I have ever been with Mr. Nicholls. I could by no means think of mentioning such a rumour to him even as a joke. It would make me the laughing-stock of himself and his fellow curates for half a year to come. They regard me as an old maid, and I regard them, one and all, as highly uninteresting, narrow, and unattractive specimens ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... only case that Gordon had in his own army. More than once his officers were rebellious and troublesome. General Ching, a Chinese general, was jealous of him. Ching one day made his men fire on 150 of Gordon's soldiers, and treated it as a joke when Gordon was angry. At the beginning of the campaign Gordon had promised his men that they should have their pay regularly instead of plundering the places they took. His own pay, and more, had gone to do this and to help ...
— The Story of General Gordon • Jeanie Lang
... and the unreality thereof has been cleared up by Vollmer, as will be duly shown. The squabble of the medieval savants has also given rise to the story that Apicius is but a joke perpetrated upon the world by a medieval savant. This will be refuted also later on. Our book is a genuine Roman. Medieval savants have made plenty of Roman "fakes," for sundry reasons. A most ingenious hoax was the "completion" of the Petronius fragment by a scholar able to hoodwink his learned ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... him that Lord Lyttelton had died the previous night at the very time that he (Mr Andrews) was searching for his midnight visitant, and abusing him roundly for what he considered his ill-timed practical joke. On hearing the news, we are told, Mr Andrews swooned away, and such was its effect on him that, to use his own words, "he was not himself or a ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... failing to find anyone watching him, he took up a pencil lying near-by and scrawled hastily across the top of the packet the word "Suspicious." This he calculated would act as a warning to Mr. Gifford in case there was anything wrong about the package, and pass as a joke with him, and even the sender, if there was not. And satisfied that he had both earned his money and done justice to his own apprehensions, he turned to retrace his steps. As before, the corridors were alive with ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... something like this may be the result: "A boy," "very dark complexion," "long yellow hair," "wearing a black velvet jacket," "with a dark green dress," "five feet high," "about six years old," etc. When the player guessing gives the game up, the joke ...
— My Book of Indoor Games • Clarence Squareman
... at once entered the village. The men had already fled; the women were turned out of the houses, and these were immediately set on fire. The tars regarded the whole affair as a glorious joke, and raced from house to house, making a hasty search in each for concealed valuables before setting it on fire. In a short time the whole village was in ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... laughed, as did the young men who followed in their wake, and urged him to go and see this peerless beauty, if it were only for a joke. Accordingly, he told the woman to lead the way. But she said he must mount his mule, for they had to go some distance into the country. He mounted, and, with a single servant, went forth from the gates—the woman preceding—and rode until ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... to leave our poles behind us," Ronald said, "and that will be a comfort. Although my load of fish was not nearly as heavy as yours, still carrying it on one shoulder was no joke, and I shall be heartily glad ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... a moment, as though over some private joke of his own, then at last laid down his pipe and crossed his legs. Oliver leaned back against the wall and Polly curled up on the bench ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... Dalrymple, impressively, to the man, "if you imagine that I would make even a bad joke to amuse you. Bring ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... if I had the chance. I took French leave the other day, and went to the French Gallery, expecting to see sketches in French chalk, or studies in French grey. Nothing of the kind! Mr. WALLIS will have his little joke. The main part of the exhibition is essentially English, and so I found my Parisian accent was entirely thrown away. If it had only been Scotch, I could have said something about the "Scots wha hae wi' WALLIS," but I didn't have even that chance. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Nov. 22, 1890 • Various
... of good-natured laughter at Reddy's expense. His red hair was as common a subject of joke as was Hippy's behavior. ...
— Grace Harlowe's Senior Year at High School - or The Parting of the Ways • Jessie Graham Flower
... taking his seat, the Dean desired the guests to arrange themselves according to their own ideas of precedence, and fall to. The company were astonished to find the table without a dish or any provisions. The Lord Chancellor, who was present, said, "Mr. Dean, we do not see the joke." "Then I will show it you," answered the Dean, turning up his plate, under which was half-a-crown and a bill of fare from a neighboring tavern. "Here, sir," said he, to his servant, "bring me a plate of goose." The company caught the idea, and each man sent his plate and half-a-crown. ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... Wouldest thou not suffer as an evil-doer, addict not thyself to play with evil, 25 to joke and jest, and mock at men in place and power. Gaal mocked at Abimelech, and said, Who is Abimelech that we should serve him? But he paid for his disdainful language at last (Judg 9). I have heard of an innkeeper here in England, whose sign was ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... no idea of ever being able to do it again, or to perpetrate a similar joke on him, even though I were ever so anxious ...
— Twenty Years of Hus'ling • J. P. Johnston
... have your fair chance with the lady, along with the rest of us; and I'll undertake to qualify you on the spot for civilized courtship," continued Zack, pitilessly carrying on his joke. "In the first place, always remember that you mustn't go beyond admiration at a respectful distance, to begin with. At the second interview, you may make amorous faces at close quarters—what you call looking unutterable ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... Tim Ryan, that ain't no joke, neither. Lookit all the girls givin' us the laff. Who are them tall ones that's been rushin' the ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... have formed a favourable opinion of me, Master Quacko," he said, looking at the ape, for even in the dangerous predicament in which he was placed he could not resist a joke. ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... joke wore off Mamise grew as uncomfortable as he. She was beginning to love him more and her job less. But she was determined not to throw away her independence. Pride was her duenna, and a ruthless one. She tried to feed her pride on her ambition ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... Morris, the reader may be informed, had had the tact not to tell her that he sat in her father's study. He had known her but for a few months, and her aunt had known her for fifteen years; and yet he would not have made the mistake of thinking that Catherine would see the joke of the thing. "I am sorry you made him go into father's room," she said, after ...
— Washington Square • Henry James
... General Wayne was offered him," continued Brolatsky, "he never haggled over it. He paid the price asked and seemed quite delighted to get it. It was a standing joke in the trade that if you wanted to get even with Mr. Hume for driving a hard bargain with you, all you had to do was to offer him a portrait of General Wayne. I never saw him refuse one. Even if he had dozens of duplicates, which ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... perfectly true. If it had got about that any one was going to invest thirty thousand pounds—or pence—in Wildcat Reefs, the market would certainly have been convulsed. The House would have rocked with laughter. Wildcat Reefs were a standing joke—except to the unfortunate few who still held any of ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... when once you are in the joke of his capricious genius, is very simple, and in his poetry it is simple from the first, so that he was, perhaps, the best author I could have fallen in with if I wanted to go fast rather than far. I found this out later, when I attempted other German authors without the glitter of his ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... and are not, after this style. I have known many good and worthy men among them, as well as capital fellows, fond of a joke. Moreover, the Roman Catholic Church did not always take the side ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... coming in, unacquainted with the lecturer's topics, might easily have supposed him to be an actor entertaining his audience with a monologue, after the manner of Matthews or Yates. This disposition, indeed, gave rise to a joke among his pupils of "Abernethy at Home," whenever he lectured upon any special subject. In relating a case, he was seen at times to be quite fatigued with the contortions into which he threw his body and limbs; and the stories he would ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 530, January 21, 1832 • Various
... shut up within himself, like an oyster, and rarely spoke, except in monosyllables; but then it was allowed he seldom said a foolish thing. So invincible was his gravity that he was never known to laugh or even to smile through the whole course of a long and prosperous life. Nay, if a joke were uttered in his presence that set light-minded hearers in a roar, it was observed to throw him into a state of perplexity. Sometimes he would deign to inquire into the matter, and when, after ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... living and weeping child,—that was myself, Hans Christian Andersen. During the first day of my existence my father is said to have sate by the bed and read aloud in Holberg, but I cried all the time. "Wilt thou go to sleep, or listen quietly?" it is reported that my father asked in joke; but I still cried on; and even in the church, when I was taken to be baptized, I cried so loudly that the preacher, who was a passionate man, said, "The young one screams like a cat!" which words my mother never forgot. A ...
— The True Story of My Life • Hans Christian Andersen
... was, Tom, and yet a jeweler has to be always on the watch, and that isn't a joke, either, Tom Swift. Swindlers and thieves are always on the alert for a chance to rob a jewelry store, and they ...
— Tom Swift Among The Diamond Makers - or The Secret of Phantom Mountain • Victor Appleton
... and of having just emerged successfully from an agitating ordeal. As they stood together they went over the speech to which they had been listening, and the scene which had followed it, in a running stream of talk, laughter, and gossip. Wharton took little part, except to make a joke occasionally at his own expense, but the pleasure on his smiling lip, and in his roving, contented eye was not to be mistaken. The speech he had just delivered had been first thought out as he paced the moonlit ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... cropper down Multiflores Canyon where it is so steep that it leans the other way. I pretty well pulverized myself for a pulverulent, Katy, which is a poor joke." ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... give them the appearance of hazing. However that may be, there seems to be no way to impress upon a plebe the necessity of carrying his "palms to the front," or his "head up." To report him and give him demerits merely causes him to laugh and joke over the number of them that have been recorded ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... in to supper. Here is the money for your chickens—grandpa was only joking; you know he loves to joke. Take the chickens to the hen-house and get something hot to eat in the kitchen before you ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... asks, curiosity getting the better of my good manners. 'Not to pry into private matters any,' says I, 'but this thing is getting personal. I can feel malicious animal magnetism coursin' through every vein and leapin' from crag to crag,' says I. 'A joke's a joke, and I can take a joke as well as any man; but when I'm sick in my bed, and the undertaker comes to my house and looks into my window and says, "Darlin'! I am waitin' for thee!"—that's no joke. And if Stanley ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... "The joke is on me, Mr. Onderdonk," said Dalton. "But we're here on a serious errand. Where is ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler
... third child and second son. He was a seven months' child, and I have heard that he was so extremely small an infant, that he could not be dressed like other children for some time after his birth, but was obliged to be wrapped in cotton. My father used to say in a joke, that he was wrapped in cotton, and put into a quart mug." The bishop's father had four children, one daughter and three sons. These four had a hundred children between them, thirty-six of whom fell to the lot of the ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 236, May 6, 1854 • Various
... doubt of it," says Tedcastle, with such flattering warmth that they both break into a merry laugh. Not that there is anything at all in the joke worthy of such a joyous outburst, but because they are both so young ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... north side of the river. I suppose that is a scouting party and they found out our little joke," and George again burst into laughter ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay
... the words right out'n my mouth! I seed the answeh to it fum the fus; I made a wrong espunction the fus time on'y jess faw a joke! Now, ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... The view here taken is maintained with great ability by the writer of the Review named above. One joke, which he cites as not uncommon in these epics, is the representation of St. Peter streaming with perspiration with the labour of opening and shutting the gates of Paradise (Morg. Mag. 26. 91); and, as a more allowable one, the frequent citation ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... knife back into his shirt, and laughed: "Oh, come, now, Watts, a joke's a joke. I played a joke on Miss Sinclair to ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... and irate Doctor and a baited Spanish bull, goaded by the stab of the gaudy paper-flagged dart in his thick neck, and bewildered by the subsequent explosion of the cracker. He only wanted a tail to lash, she mentally said, and had pigeon-holed the joke for Bingo when ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... drive him nearly mad. All these, and a thousand other pranks, the fast fellows play upon their slow brethren, not in the hackneyed fashion which low people call "gagging," and genteel people "quizzing," but with a seriousness and gravity that heightens all the joke, and makes the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... very shy freshman of the name of Pilkington, and, despite his struggles, made him go down on his knees and apologise in set phrase to Mr. Frampton for his late unjustifiable conduct; whereupon that gentleman, who enjoyed the joke, and entered into it with as much zest as the veriest pickle among them, sternly, and with many grunts, rebuked ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... is that he who dearly loved a joke may joke still, and he who thought he was collecting fine old pictures may still indulge his taste. Delusions! Not impossible or even unlikely. Kant demonstrated once for all our complete enslavement by phenomena and our inability to approach ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... had acted sensibly in the matter he would have spared Jimmy a good deal of unpleasantness, and Jimmy's father and mother much anxiety. But Coote was fond of what he called a 'joke,' and instead of telling the boy that he was going to take him home and give him a bed and some supper, he opened the office-door, put his great red face into the room, and stared hard at Jimmy. Jimmy was already so much upset that very little was required ...
— The Little Clown • Thomas Cobb
... to accustom ourselves. And he who can suggest any thing laughable is a great benefactor to his comrades; for then the monotony is broken, and we enjoy a little sprinkling of variety, which is truly said to be "the spice of life." A good joke, that runs through the command like a bubbling brook along the flowering meadows, is worth more to us than a corps of nurses with cart-loads ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... he swept the field, and now at last the crowd murmurously compared certainties, one woman darkly prophesying he never'd pay for them, because he hadn't a cent—not a cent—laid up, and a man returning that nobody need worry. 'Twas only a joke of Tim's; but Miss Letty'd be the one to suffer. Timothy's eyes and ears were closed to comment. His commercial onslaught continued, and when, in the early dusk, horses were unhitched and there was time for comment at ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... HIRST. Only for the joke. Look here, I've got some things that'll do very well. We're going to have some amateur theatricals at my house. We're doing a couple of scenes from "The Rivals," Somers, (pointing to SOMERS) and I have been up to town to get the costumes, wigs, etc., to-day. I've got ...
— The Ghost of Jerry Bundler • W. W. Jacobs and Charles Rock
... need of a guide but I was glad to have Wolf Voice riding with me, for I had grown to like him and welcomed any opportunity for conversing with him. He was one of the few full-bloods who could speak English well enough to enjoy a joke. ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... heavily. He aspired to prove himself a true bohemian, but his heart quailed at the thought of such expense. Two suppers, two beds, and two little breakfasts as a supplement to his bill would be no joke. It was with a very poor grace that he stammered at last, "I hope you will allow me to suggest a way out, monsieur Pitou? A room at my hotel seems ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... to get it; the wine-steward naterally sayin as he never before herd of sich a order on sich a ocasion, and he had only one bottel with him, and when I took it to the himpashent Gent, and told him so, he fairly roared with larfter, and told it all round as a capital joke! I ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, November 19, 1892 • Various
... consistency, and courage on the part of the luckless Louis XVI., the convocation of the States-General in 1789, instead of leading France, as it actually led her, through a quagmire of blood and rapine, into what George Sand felicitously called the 'merciless practical joke of the Consulate,' and the stern reality of the despotic First Empire, might easily have resulted in converting the absolute monarchy of Louis XIV. into such a limited and constitutional monarchy as France really enjoyed under Louis XVIII. The pathway to the Inferno of the Terror ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... break open the whole outfit, and see what this game is," he thought. "Never knew father to do a thing like this before. If it's a joke,"—his fingers felt the seal of envelope No. 4,—"I might as well find it out at once. Still, father never would joke with a fellow's promise the way he asked it of me. 'My word of honor'—that's putting it pretty strong. I'll see it through, of course. My, but I'm getting ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... in his old manner. "I will give you something to joke about other than a little setback like this! Get up there with ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... has a wholesome dread of laughter, as he is the only animal capable of that phenomenon—for the laugh of the hyena is pronounced by those who have heard it to be no joke, and to be classed with those [Greek: gelasmata agelasta] which are said to come from the other side of the mouth. Whether, as Shaftesbury will have it, ridicule be absolutely the test of truth or no, we may admit it to be relatively ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... take my breakfast in my bed, I'll rise at half-past ten, When all the world is nicely groomed and full of golden song; I'll smoke a bit and joke a bit, and read the news, and then I'll potter round my peach-trees till I hear the luncheon gong. And after that I think I'll doze an hour, well, maybe two, And then I'll show some kindred soul how well my roses ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... here, Bill, I'm in a little bit of a hurry—but I suppose you must have your little joke before we part. Now, what is ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... impassable one of intellect. Physically, he should be compared with the other mammals, otherwise we should lose our first standpoint of comparison. There is no degradation in this, nor is it an acceptance of the development theory. To argue that man evolved from the monkey is an ingenious joke which will not bear the test of examination, and the Scriptural account may still be accepted. I firmly believe in man as an original creation just as much as I disbelieve in any development of the Flying Lemur (Galeopithecus) ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... picture comes to mind of Father up in a peach tree, on a high step-ladder, picking peaches, and of some girls with cameras taking his picture and all laughing and the girls exclaiming; "At the mercy of the Kodakers"— and Father enjoying the joke and picking out soft peaches for them. He liked to pick peaches. The big handsome fruit in its setting of glistening green leaves appealed to him, and as he said, "When I come to one too soft to ship I can eat it." I so ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... Mollie, her French temper flaring forth. "That's a nice thing to do—come up behind us and scare us all to death. And it's not nice to joke about such a serious ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Army Service - Doing Their Bit for the Soldier Boys • Laura Lee Hope
... said I, 'you are less at loss for a joke than an argument; and that you prefer bush-fighting. For my own part, I love the fair and ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... week he had become infinitely the most important person at Shafter's. There were ten or a dozen boarders there; but they were honest foremen or commonplace clerks from the stores, of a very different calibre from the young Irishman. Of an evening when they gathered together his joke was always the readiest, his conversation the brightest, and his song the best. He was a born boon companion, with a magnetism which drew good humour from ...
— The Valley of Fear • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... table, passing them off as servants. Nothing disturbed Steele's equanimity; and when driven from London by debt, he carried his generosity into the country, giving prizes to the lads and lasses assembled at rural games and country dances. Sheridan also made very light of his debts, and had many a good joke over them. Some one asked him how it was that the O' was not prefixed to his name, when he replied that he was sure no family had a better right to it, "for in truth, we owe everybody." And when a creditor once ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... who was showing the way, "this young fellow is to help at unloading and later, the boss says, he is to watch you fellows sort skins. He is a green lad and," added the messenger with a grin of enjoyment at some joke that Peter did not at all ...
— The Story of Leather • Sara Ware Bassett
... as a joke, and sportingly; for he was, and has always been, a courteous and pleasant gentleman, and liked not to hear his sister's name bandied about, even amongst his ...
— One Hundred Merrie And Delightsome Stories - Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles • Various
... Harbor 'til dawn; an' we'll all have a watch below, says he, with a cup o' tea, says he, if the cook can bile the water 'ithout burnin' it. Now, look you! Saucy Bill North is wonderful fond of his little joke; an' 'twas this here habit o' burnin' the water he'd pitched on t' plague the poor cook with, since we put out o' Twist Tickle on ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan
... however, when he is under treatment as a madman, our delight in his exposure passes over into commiseration of his distress, and we feel a degree of resentment towards his ingenious persecutors. The Poet, no doubt, meant to push the joke upon him so far as to throw our sympathies over on his side, and make us take his part. For his character is such that perhaps nothing but excessive reprisals on his vanity and conceit could make us do justice to his ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... speech, the charm of his rich full voice, and above all the earnest aim which I thought was manifest in all he uttered. Mr. Kingsley said he was glad to hear this, for he had been told of occasional irreverences of Spurgeon's, and of his giving way now and then to a disposition to make a joke of things. Not that he objected altogether to humor in sermons: he had his own temptations in this way. "One must either weep at the follies of men or laugh at them," he added. I told him Mr. Maurice had spoken to me ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... this; the difficulty was with Gascoigne, who would not hear of going away without his lovely Azar. At last Jack planned a scheme which he thought would succeed, and which would be a good joke to tell the Governor. He therefore appeared to consent to Gascoigne's carrying off his little Moor, and they canvassed how it was to be managed. Jack then told Gascoigne that he had hit upon a plan ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... engaged to be married to Adolphus Crosbie,—to Apollo Crosbie, as she still called him, confiding her little joke to his own ears. And to her he was an Apollo, as a man who is loved should be to the girl who loves him. He was handsome, graceful, clever, self-confident, and always cheerful when she asked him to be cheerful. But ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... seriously about the joke now, and show you another side to the question. Is it not in the highest degree foolish of a young man without position, to set against him men who carry the sign of recognition from their king, and the esteem of their fellow-citizens? Cannot ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... scratched his head. "Go on, Colonel, you're always havin' yer joke. I'm sure I don't know what ye mean by Indypendence, or Westport. But if you want to get uptown, the street cars is four blocks yan. Er maybe ye'd ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... be my having broken my leg again,' said her brother, with a not very successful attempt at a joke; 'it was horrid, but I wouldn't mind breaking the other any day if it would save father's ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... occasion: "As often happens, the game was carelessly played; all watched the cards only with their eyes, and gave their attention to what was going forward about the table, to which the Emperor came every few minutes to say a few pleasant words to the Empress or to joke with the Prince of Neufchtel and me. I was too busy, both during the dinner and while we were playing, to make any study of the Empress's tastes or to form from them a judgment about her character. The journey had been long; she seemed tired and out of ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... purposely arrived too early, gathered around his kiosk to enjoy the dirty jokes and cheerful comments of Mr. Mechenmal. The bank officer Leopold Lehmann, who always arrived punctually at eight o'clock, to buy illustrated joke books and theological tracts, sometimes became impatient, because the cheerful saleswomen disturbed him as he tried to make his selection. And the school-teacher Theo Tontod, who tirelessly, and, as a rule, uselessly ...
— The Prose of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... quite as often hides his face without sufficient warning. The Fairport Guard had hardly made the circuit of the town, before the late smiling sky was overcast by dark hurrying clouds, and the weatherwise began to predict a coming storm, which was to be "no joke ...
— The Boy Patriot • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... me. Since the last lesson I had given play to my imagination in a little practical joke. I had drawn an ideal portrait of the man whom I should wish for my lover in a letter which I designed giving to him to translate. So far, I had only put Spanish into French, not French into Spanish; I pointed this out to him, and begged Griffith ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... roared with delight at these witticisms, and looked from Young Matt to Sammy to see if they also appreciated the joke. ...
— The Shepherd of the Hills • Harold Bell Wright
... a modern master. He published a pretended collection, or a set of prints, from the designs of the great painters; in which he imitated the etchings and engravings of the various masters, and much were these prints admired as the works of Guido, Rembrandt, and others. Having had his joke, they were published under the title of Imposteurs Innocentes. The connoisseurs, however, are strangely divided in their opinion of the merit of this collection. Gilpin classes these "Innocent Impostors" among the most entertaining of his works, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... replied the chevalier, enjoying the joke, "and I am in turn thy prisoner, by the result of ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... the moonlight Chat, joke, or gaze apart. They talk of days and comrades, But each ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... order; the wines and food intrinsically good; but my appetite was not increased by the exhibition of a deformed, bloated negro child, about ten years old, which Mr Fyall planted at his elbow, and, by way of practical joke, stuffed to repletion with all kinds of food and strong drink, until the little dingy ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... Duffy!" said Joel. "Let's go over and find out if he's much hurt. It was a dirty sort of a joke to play, though I suppose whoever did it didn't think it would hurt ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... reclines, and deny it who can, Though he 'merrily' liv'd, he is now a 'grave' man; Rare compound of oddity, frolic, and fun! Who relish'd a joke, and rejoic'd in a pun; 150 Whose temper was generous, open, sincere; A stranger to flatt'ry, a stranger to fear; Who scatter'd around wit and humour at will; Whose daily 'bons mots' half a column might fill; A Scotchman, from pride and from ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... the Pooka, a-throwin' back his head laughin' wid great plazin'ness an' nudgin' the king wid his leg on the arrum, beways that it was a joke it was bekase the king said it was to relave a widdy he was goin'. 'Oho,' says the Pooka, ''tis mesilf that's glad to be in the comp'ny av an iligint jintleman that's on so plazin' an arriant av marcy,' says he. 'An' ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.
... But the joke isn't always on me. Not infrequently I gain much amusement observing these cocky youngsters who strut in the blue-and-silver uniforms of the Service in which, until more or less recently, I bore ...
— Vampires of Space • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... himself wished to make his administration milder and cleaner and to broaden its basis—he was even credited with the one joke of his life in this connexion: "I will yet head anti-Venizelism." But the thing was beyond his power: he had not a sufficient following in the country to replace armed force; and he dared not trust the Royalists with a share in the government for fear ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... would be a degradation, in a sense, to play for them under the circumstances, and refused. The Prince, with the amiable desire of pleasing his guests, urged the matter, but Beethoven continued obdurate; upon which he told him, probably by way of a joke, that he must either comply or that he would be confined in the castle as a prisoner of war for disobeying orders. This persistence so enraged him that, although it was night, he left the castle without the Prince's knowledge, and walked three miles to Trappau, the nearest post-town. ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... business took them each Right to the other. Then at last he spoke, But she would only nod, he got no speech From her. Next time he treated it in joke, And that so lightly that her vow she broke And answered. So they drifted into seeing Each other as before. There ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... not help joining in with the old gentleman's laugh at his little joke, the Captain's "Ha, ha, ha!" was so ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... as a foundation for the "Blithedale Romance," and caused no further injury than the loss of his money. It would have required a Thackeray to have realized and described the humorous side of it—the highly practical joke of so many well-educated and cultivated people making ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... Burma say that death originated in a practical joke played by an old man who pretended to be dead in the ancient days when nobody really died. But the Lord of the Sun, who held the threads of all human lives in his hand, detected the fraud and in anger cut short the thread of life of the practical joker. Since then everybody else has ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... towards the laws of the Commonwealth, and towards the occupants of high political positions. Mayor, Judge, Governor, Senator, or even President, may be the butt of such indecorous ridicule as shocks or disgusts the foreigner; but nevertheless the personal joke stops short of certain topics which Puritan tradition disapproves. The United States is properly called a Christian nation, not merely because the Supreme Court has so affirmed it, but because the phrase "a ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... heard the name of Castle Frank, and most have some general idea of its whereabouts. It is presumable that the Governor found his canvas house an insufficient protection against the cold during the winter of 1793-4. Perhaps, too, (observe please, this is a joke), the idea may have intruded itself upon his mind that there was a sort of vagabondism in having no fixed place of abode. At any rate, during the early spring of 1794 he erected a rustic, nondescript sort of log chateau on the steep acclivity overlooking the valley of the Don, ...
— Canadian Notabilities, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... well-pleased, his sceptre swingeth, While his four sons strike the gong; Till the sparkling water ringeth Joy and laughter, joke and song. ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... cordial manner, and indeed he felt very kindly towards this gentle, simple-minded creature. "I am ready for any amount of conversation on any subject from 'cabbages to kings.'" Then she smiled well pleased at his little joke. ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... the stupor reaction. Modification of the statement will later be mentioned. The patient is indifferent so far as his basic condition is concerned, and it is only by certain stimuli that at times emotional reactions can be elicitated, some tears at a visit of a relative, an appropriate smile at a joke or a comical situation when the stupor is not too deep or an angry ...
— Benign Stupors - A Study of a New Manic-Depressive Reaction Type • August Hoch
... guests who visited that coast. By the end of the year 1803 more than 10,000 Kentishmen had enrolled as Volunteers, and 1,040 in the Army of Reserve, exclusive of Sea Fencibles serving on gunboats. For the whole of Great Britain the totals were 379,000 and 31,000 respectively.[659] Pitt's joke at the expense of a battalion which laid more stress on privileges than drills, has become historic. Its organizers sent up a plan containing several stipulations as to their duties, with exceptions "in case of actual invasion." Pitt lost patience at this Falstaff-like conduct, and ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... began anew the task of living down his name. Always, when introduced or introducing himself, he saw in the eyes opposite his own that maddening glimmer of amusement. Then he gritted his teeth and waited for the joke. There were fourteen possible forms that it might take. Tempted often to return to that rocky Connecticut hillside, he nevertheless stuck it out, and, as time passed, found he didn't mind so much. He even reached the point where ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... there was therefore nothing illegal in what he was doing. But he resigned his secretaryship, which he felt might hamper future transactions of the same kind. The advertisement was no doubt half bravado and half practical joke; he wanted to see whether it would attract notice, and if anything would come of it. But it had also an element ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... in the English house of commons, in the early part of the year, which damaged the prestige of Smith O'Brien, and although O'Connell exerted himself in parliament on his behalf, the event gave the arch-agitator satisfaction. He had many a private joke at the expense of O'Brien, and few men could wound with a brighter point than O'Connell in his best moods of satire. Mr. O'Brien was nominated on a committee, and refused to serve, alleging that the affairs of his country were so neglected that he would not attend to any other business than such ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... side, Her Majesty's late Ministers in state of almost boisterous hilarity. Evidently inclined to regard deposition as a joke. Prince ARTHUR beaming with delight. Something curiously like a smile wreathes stolid countenance of Sir ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, February 4, 1893 • Various
... that," said Bob. "I fancied from your letters that life with the she-dragon was one huge joke, and that Papa was nice and companionable, and the kids, sweet little darlings who ate from your hand. And all the time you were just the poor old toad ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... over him; but at its wildest he signed to his visitor not to go, and when at last it lulled he went on calmly: "Donizetti ended mad in a gala dress, but I end at least sane enough to appreciate the joke—a little long-drawn out, and not entirely original, yet replete with ingenious irony. Little Lucy looks shocked, but I sometimes think, little Lucy, the disrespect is with the goody-goody folks, who, while lauding their ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... the matter. Then there's an awful rumpus. In a minute or two she'll wave her hand and—presto! It will stop raining. But," with a distressed look out into the thick of it, "it would be a beastly joke if lightning should happen to strike that nag of mine. I'd not only have to walk to town, but I'd have to pay three prices for ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... difficulty at first. They insisted on regarding us as a joke, and used to repeat the absurd witticism of the street boys. I heard Janet say "Methusaleers" one day. She denied it, but I am perfectly certain she did not say "Fusiliers," My wife fussed about dry socks and wanted ...
— Our Casualty And Other Stories - 1918 • James Owen Hannay, AKA George A. Birmingham
... drink ... a glass of wine?" he asked mockingly. The glass that he was about to put to his lips he offered in a joke to the donkey. Palikare, taking the offer seriously, came a step nearer and pushing out his lips to make them as thin and as long as possible, drank a good half of the glass which had been ...
— Nobody's Girl - (En Famille) • Hector Malot
... looks quite sad, quite disappointed," said Bunting jokingly. "Come to think of it, it's high time The Avenger was at work again." He laughed as he made his grim joke. Then turned to young Chandler: "Well, you'll be glad when its all ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... room," replied Mr. Pendergast, who loved a joke almost as well as did Tom. "They may come out now," added the president, opening the door, and sending Ned Newton in to summon Tom, Mr. Swift and Mr. Damon, who filed out before ...
— Tom Swift and his Airship • Victor Appleton
... It would be a joke on Paul—so I thought—if he or his friends should sneak out to the sloop where she was moored, intending to do her some harm, and find me there all ready for such a visitation. I chuckled to myself while I wended my way to the shore, carrying a single oar with ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster
... nations life is a serious enough problem, the Japs alone seem to be merely "playing at making a livelihood." They always impress me as happy-go-lucky harlequins, to whom this whole business of coming into the world and getting a living for a few years is nothing more nor less than a huge joke. ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... insurrection, issued orders to Wm. T. Sherman to enroll as militia, companies of 150 men of the highest standard and to have them report to him, Sherman, for duty. The response was light and the order looked upon as a joke and little or no stock taken in it. So on the 7th Sherman tendered his resignation as Major General, claiming that no plan of action could be determined upon between himself and the Governor. The action taken ...
— California 1849-1913 - or the Rambling Sketches and Experiences of Sixty-four - Years' Residence in that State. • L. H. Woolley
... or bad possession depends entirely on what kind of things a person is sensitive to. If he is quick to take in a situation, easily impressed with the needs of others, open-doored to beauty and to the appeal of the spiritual, keenly alive to the humorous, even when the joke is on himself and the situation uncomfortable, then surely he has a right to be glad of his sensitiveness. But too often the word means something else. It means feeling, intensely, physical sensations of which most people ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... and Colonel Taylor, my former chief of artillery, a Minie-ball passed through Logan's coat-sleeve, scratching the skin, and struck Colonel Taylor square in the breast; luckily he had in his pocket a famous memorandum-book, in which he kept a sort of diary, about which we used to joke him a good deal; its thickness and size saved his life, breaking the force of the ball, so that after traversing the book it only penetrated the breast to the ribs, but it knocked him down and disabled him for the rest of the campaign. He was a most competent and worthy officer, and now lives in ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... wanted to give it to her when his mother died, but father, who was a trustee, refused; and Uncle Roger, as I call him, who is another, thought the trustees had no power to allow Rupert to throw away his matrimony, as I called it, making a joke to father when he called it patrimony. Old Sir Colin MacSkelpie, who is the third, said he couldn't take any part in such a permission, as the MacSkelpie was his niece. He is a rude old man, that. I remember when, not remembering his relationship, I spoke of the ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... laughed when she told it," he answered. "She said it was a joke; so I think it was true. I know I would have killed the man who tried to crop my ears ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... napping, and without a book, and while playing her own part, she detects and corrects a mistake of a semitone in the accompaniment. There is no self-assertion or parade, but only an arch smile and a merry shake of the head, as if it was a good joke to catch them thus. A hearty laugh from orchestra and audience, and then the work is resumed. As the piece returns, she nods and smiles her approval, and the music goes on again. At the end of the movement comes a long cadenza of great difficulty. ...
— Camilla: A Tale of a Violin - Being the Artist Life of Camilla Urso • Charles Barnard
... being strongly built, well found, and well officered, with sufficient crews, they made successful voyages. Mr Ferris himself was a dignified, good-looking, and somewhat portly gentleman, frank and hearty in his manners, fond of a good joke and a good story, and highly respected for his upright and ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... that he is in prison he thinks maybe Prescott didn't. But he kept going down into the vault and bringing up more bonds, and, getting reckless, bought more cotton—quantities of it. In a month sixty bonds were gone from the pile of two hundred. John, a nervous wreck, almost laughed, grimly, at the joke of his being ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... Muincine [Lough Gur?] where he and his party were overtaken by night. They found here before them by the roadside revolving wheels, which an artisan, who was erecting a mill on the stream from the lake, had set up for a joke. As the wheels revolved they made a terrific noise which was heard by the whole neighbourhood. Many of the inhabitants of the neighbouring villages aroused by the noise rushed out, with appeals for help and loud cries, to investigate the matter. Mochuda's ...
— Lives of SS. Declan and Mochuda • Anonymous
... different world, and I made new discoveries every day. Being with Bunsen I was invited to all the official dinners during the meeting of the British Association, and here, too, the Vice-Chancellor acted his part with becoming dignity. He never unbent; he never indulged in a joke or joined in the laughter of his neighbours. When I remarked on his immovable features, I was told that he slept in starched sheets—and I believed it. At one of these dinners, Prince Louis Lucien Bonaparte caused a titter during a speech about the freedom which people enjoyed in England. ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller
... "that is a very good joke when you come to know all about it. What did the clerk of the hotel say to ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... cost nor value), it was really worth its weight in gold. And, as it happened, he had bestowed upon it the hard labor of his poor life, and the time that was necessary for the support of his family, without return; for the customers, after playing off this cruel joke upon the old man, had never come back; and now, for seven years, the bottle had stood in a corner of the cupboard. To be sure, the silver-cased bottle was worth a trifle for its silver, and still more, perhaps, as an antiquarian knick- knack. ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Kettle. He came into the riding hall this morning, and Sergeant Gully and Sergeant Halligan said he enlisted. Of course, I know, sir, they couldn't enlist him, but I'm afraid I helped 'em on with the joke. Anyhow, I made him get on a horse, and it would have broke your heart, sir, to see such riding! Then he got sassy, and I told him, just to get rid of him, to report himself under arrest, but nobody hasn't seen ...
— Betty at Fort Blizzard • Molly Elliot Seawell
... don't mean one of those godlike chromos in the frontispiece of popular novels. He hasn't got to be handsome. But he must be able to laugh when he's happy, when he's hurt. I must be his business in life. He must know a lot about things I know. I want a comrade who will come to me when he has a joke or an ache. A gay man and whimsical. The law can make any man a husband, but only God can ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... The courage of the men who grappled in the slime with the horrors was the one thing that kept one from despair. And the fact that they could laugh. You know about the dying man who told his nurse some joke and finished, 'This is the War ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... to talk frankly of the matter to little Lucy Dunbar, and was relieved to find her ready to joke and laugh at it. "No bruise in that tender heart!" thought Clara, who was anxious as ...
— Frances Waldeaux • Rebecca Harding Davis
... seed, in my experience o' life, that there are some constitootions as don't agree with jokin'; an' yours is one on 'em. Now, if you'd take the advice of a plain man, you'd never try it on. You're a grave man by natur', and you're so bad at a joke that a feller can't quite tell w'en you're a-doin' of it. See, now, I do declare I wos as near drivin' you right over the stern o' your own boat as could be, only by good luck I seed the twinkle ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... there fifteen minutes and was beginning to grow drowsy after his full day in the open air. If it were not for the joke of the thing he couldn't ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... amusement that I stared up at him, and even Fleetfoot turned his head around to see what the joke was. We were going very slowly up a long, steep hill, and in the clear, still air, we could hear every word spoken in ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... captain having honoured Mr. Hazeldean with many poetical and figurative appellations,—such as "Prize Ox," "Tony Lumpkin," "Blood-sucking Vampire," and "Brotherly Warming-Pan,"—the squire had retorted by a joke about "Saltwater Jack;" and the captain, who like all satirists was extremely susceptible and thin-skinned, could not consent to be called "Salt-water Jack" by a "Prize Ox" ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Dr Phinuit is good-hearted, he is also occasionally deplorably trivial. His language is rarely elevated, and his expressions are almost always vulgar. On occasion he does not dislike a joke or a touch of humour. Thus we have seen that he mischievously persisted in addressing Professor Lodge as "Captain." On another occasion he is a long time in finding a person's name—Theodora. Then he adds, mockingly, "Hum! it is a fine name once one has got hold of it." This ...
— Mrs. Piper & the Society for Psychical Research • Michael Sage
... more keenly appreciated the company of Terry, who, in spite of a Celtic pedigree, was not enjoying this prolonged practical joke. ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... believe it is the spring," said Mollie thoughtfully, still staring about her. "There is something about the way that paper is written; it doesn't look like the writing of the sort of person who plays that kind of joke—and of course it would be meant for a joke. Let's all stand quite still in a circle back to back, and each stare hard all over the bit of cave that comes in front of us, and see if there isn't ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... faith or fortune did seem to befriend Mrs. Beauchamp at last. It was just after they had knocked at the second closed door, and had received a very short negative to their inquiry, which the maidservant evidently considered to be an ill-timed joke, that a door on the opposite side of the road opened suddenly, and a great stream of light ...
— Troublesome Comforts - A Story for Children • Geraldine Glasgow
... Boisterous their mirth may be, for they have all the excitement of feeling that fresh air and green fields can impart to the dwellers in crowded cities, but it is innocent and harmless. The glass is circulated, and the joke goes round; but the one is free from excess, and the other from offence; and nothing but good humour and ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... on an old bachelor, for such a speech, by some allusion to his own example; but I well knew that my uncle Ro had once been engaged, and that he lost the object of his passion by death, and too much respected his constancy and true sentiments ever to joke on such subjects. I believe he felt the delicacy of my forbearance rather more than common, for he immediately manifested a disposition to relent, and to prove ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... never dropped soon, for everybody had much to say about him.[75] But that was probably due to his oddities as much as anything else. Wilkie used to plough his own glebe with his own hands in the ordinary ploughman's dress, and it was he who was the occasion of the joke played on Dr. Roebuck, the chemist, by a Scotch friend, who said to him as they were passing Ratho glebe that the parish schools of Scotland had given almost every peasant a knowledge of the classics, and added, "Here, for example, is a man working in the field who is a good illustration ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... or else the Place de la Concorde (who can say why?)—which, I am told, is to run bad wine during certain hours to-morrow, and there WOULD have been a review of the National Guards and the Line—only, since the Fieschi business, reviews are no joke, and so this latter part of ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... anything like the doctor. Our voices were nothing alike either; his had been pitched rather high, falsetto. My own, as nearly as I could judge, was a full octave deeper, and more resonant. Yet they issued from the same vocal chords, unless Forth was having a reasonless, macabre joke. ...
— The Planet Savers • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... spendin' as if he couldn't abide the feelin' o' money, and as nice a gentleman about the house as any one could wish fer. He was a handsome chap, too, and lively with his tongue. The pick o' the whole countryside was his, and it was the joke o' the tavern, who'd be his next love. I was terrible busy at the time, but I heard the men talkin' at the bar and at their meals, an' I knew there was scarcely two girls on speakin' terms with each other over him. Finally he settled down to courtin' ...
— Nancy McVeigh of the Monk Road • R. Henry Mainer
... what impudence he hath carried out his trial; but that last night, when he brought him newes of his death, he began to be sober and shed some tears, and he hopes will die a penitent; he having already confessed all the thing, but says it was partly done for a joke, and partly to get an occasion of obliging the old man by his care in getting him his things again, he having some hopes of being the better by him in his estate at his death. Home to dinner, and after dinner ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... rejoined Tom, and then he was so much astonished to find that he had made a sort of joke, that the idea covered ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... off by the ponderous gravity which the parson habitually wore, that men like Elderkin loved occasionally to launch a quiet joke at him, for the pleasure ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... others smiled, for Bluff's weakness regarding Frank's pretty sister was something of a joke among them. ...
— The Outdoor Chums - The First Tour of the Rod, Gun and Camera Club • Captain Quincy Allen
... Germans are a queer people. I don't think they ever suspect any body to be joking. They take the most outrageous proposition literally, and never seem to understand that there can be two meanings to any thing. As Sydney Smith says of the Scotch, it would take a surgical operation to get a joke well into their understanding. When I propounded this question to my young fellow-passenger—a very amiable and intelligent young man—he looked distressed and horror-stricken, and replied with great earnestness, "Oh no, he is a very respectable ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... the bracelet and brooch to Jane, and smiled at her as if amethysts were a lovely purple joke between her and himself, uniting them by a peculiar bond of fine understanding. "Exquisite, Miss Carew," he said. Then he looked at Viola. "Those corals suit you wonderfully, Mrs. Longstreet," he observed, "but amethysts would ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... and Welsh—appear to be quiet, respectable men. This is fortunate, as an incursion of fifteen rough lawless spirits on board our little vessel would have been rather a serious matter. In their hurry and fright, however, they left all their provisions behind them, and it is no joke to have to provide food for fifteen extra hungry mouths for a week or ten days, with no shops at hand from which to replenish our stores. The sufficiency of the water supply, too, is a matter for serious consideration. We have all been put on half-allowance, ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... importance," from sundry experiments witnessed by his grace, at Hounslow Barracks; and the coach is announced "really to start next month (the 1st) in working—not experimental journeys—for travellers between London and Bath."[1] Crack upon crack will follow joke upon joke; the Omnibus, with its phaeton-like coursers will be eclipsed; and a journey to Bath and the Hot Wells by steam will soon be ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction, No. 391 - Vol. 14, No. 391, Saturday, September 26, 1829 • Various
... boyhood he was the most extraordinarily gifted creature I have ever known, or even heard of; a kind of spontaneous humorous Crichton, to whom all things came easily—and life itself as an uncommonly good joke. During that summer term of 1847 I did not see very much of him. He was in the class below mine, and took up with Laferte and little Bussy-Rabutin, who were first-rate boys, and laughed at everything he said, and worshipped him. So did everybody else, sooner ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... on, smoking, to make the round of the place, stopping to say a word or two to the other armed men in his easy good-tempered way, seasoning his remarks with a joke or two, while the lightning flickered in a bank of ...
— The Rajah of Dah • George Manville Fenn
... joint-keeper. He and his son, Frank, were both bad drinking characters, and would sell it every chance they got. Mart had a dive and I was in several times to talk to him, and he would try to flatter me and turn things into a joke. When he saw I did not listen to such talk, treated me very rude. One Saturday I saw quite a number of men into his place, and I went in also. Saloons in Kansas generally have a front room to enter as a precaution, then a back room where the bar is. I didn't get farther than the front, ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... claimed. The submarine boys had paid him back in most laughable fashion. Lieutenant McCrea, at one time, had felt himself much aggrieved over the wholesome teasing of his brother officers in consequence; but he had long since learned to accept the whole incident as a good and deserved joke. ...
— The Submarine Boys for the Flag - Deeding Their Lives to Uncle Sam • Victor G. Durham
... was no sight of any spree in prospect. A glimpse of the kitchen showed only the preparations for an ordinary meal, and Hartigan wondered whether or not there had been a mistake. Could it be that he was the butt of a practical joke? ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... never intended to hurt your feelings; it is only a mistake on your part to think so for a moment. Why, it is quite a joke, one that the audience will not be slow in appreciating, I'll warrant. Come, dry your eyes, and never ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... old woman grew uncomfortable too! Only to think of it! It was no joke to throw things into the moon! So no more was heard of the club, and the next day they had all ...
— The Violet Fairy Book • Various
... think I can call you so. You are too old. It would not be respectful." She meant it half in joke, and had no idea he would take the allusion to his age so seriously as he did. He rose up, and coldly, as a matter of form, in a changed voice, wished her "Good-bye." Her heart sank; yet the old pride was there. But as he was at the very door, some ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... the joke of the 'glass windows' is lost in the translation. The German for illustrious is 'durchlauchtig', that is, ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... played with him in this manner: he would overturn him on the ground with his trunk, and Saba would pretend that he was biting. At times, however, he would unexpectedly souse the dog with water, which act was regarded by the latter as a joke of ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... of the man was the utter and wonderful gravity I have before spoken of. You could no more have coaxed a smile out of his countenance, than you could out of the poker, and yet Monsieur Margot was by no means a melancholy man. He loved his joke, and his wine, and his dinner, just as much as if he had been of a fatter frame; and it was a fine specimen of the practical antithesis, to hear a good story, or a jovial expression, leap friskily out of that long, curved mouth; ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Sweden, rulers in fact as well as in name; to say nothing of the long line of women regents in whose hands the state intrusted its affairs, during the minority of its kings. In the United States a woman candidate for mayor of a small town would be considered a joke. ...
— What eight million women want • Rheta Childe Dorr
... the men laughing, and then shook hands with them one by one. Next day he knew each man by name, used the familiar "thee" and "thou" to them, and won their hearts by his devil-may-care manners and the smile which came from a heart amused by life. Everything was a joke to him. He baptized his four guns by absurd nicknames, and had a particular affection for old "Bumps," which had been scarred by several shells. The captain called this young gentleman Lieutenant Mascot, because he had a lucky way with him. He directed the aim of his guns with astounding skill. ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... nonsense. What other language can be used when we find that they called the sun l'aimable clairant le plus beau du monde, l'epoux de la nature, and that when speaking of an old gentleman with grey hair, they said, not as a joke, but seriously, il a des quittances d'amour. A few of their expressions, however, are employed even at the present time, such as, chtier son style; to correct one's style; dpenser une heure, to spend an hour; revtir ses penses d'expressions nobles, to clothe one's thoughts in noble ...
— The Pretentious Young Ladies • Moliere
... the effeminate feebleness of the "Keepsake" style, treat their subjects under the influence of traditions and prepossessions rather than of direct observation. The notion that peasants are joyous, that the typical moment to represent a man in a smock-frock is when he is cracking a joke and showing a row of sound teeth, that cottage matrons are usually buxom, and village children necessarily rosy and merry, are prejudices difficult to dislodge from the artistic mind, which looks for its subjects into literature instead of life. The painter is still under ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... adopt a boy—a strange thing, they thought, for a bachelor to do—did not choose one of a sturdier make than poor little Humphrey Bold. They even joked about my name, averring that names assuredly must go by contraries, for I was Bold by name, and timid by nature. The joke seemed to me, even then, a very poor one, for a boy must have the name he is born with, and I have known very delicate and white-handed folk ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... are concerned in it, too, are you, mademoiselle?" cried Violette, who came out of the park at top speed on his pony, and pulled up to meet Laurence. "But, of course, it is only a carnival joke? They surely ...
— An Historical Mystery • Honore de Balzac
... wholly wanting. The appearance of the vines was that of sapless black stumps, about thirty inches high, and pruned so as to leave only four or five eyes; and though the subject of poverty is too serious to joke on, the withered and stunted appearance of the country people exactly corresponded to that of these dry pollards. I trust that we were in some degree deceived by their natural ugliness, and that hard labour and ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... must have left it at the bank; and b'George I've left my check-book, too—Polly says I ought to have a nurse—well, no matter. Let me have a dime, Washington, if you've got—ah, thanks. Now clear out, Jerry, your complexion has brought on the twilight half an hour ahead of time. Pretty fair joke—pretty fair. Here he is, Polly! Washington's come, children! come now, don't eat him up—finish him in the house. Welcome, my boy, to a mansion that is proud to shelter the son of the best man that walks on the ground. Si ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 1. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... the ghost became, And 'twas his fate to thrive; And long he liv'd, and spread his fame, And kept the joke alive. ...
— Apparitions; or, The Mystery of Ghosts, Hobgoblins, and Haunted Houses Developed • Joseph Taylor
... Mr. Mifflin. "You remember Abe Lincoln's joke about the dog? If you call a tail a leg, said Abe, how many legs has a dog? Five, you answer. No, says Abe; because calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg. Well, there are lots of us in the same case as that dog's tail. Calling ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... quickly, and he warned the Spaniards not to show that they understood or were suspicious of anything other than what the mandarins had said. The mandarins had another interview with the governor, and he told them more clearly, making some joke of their coming, that he was astonished that their king should have believed what that Chinaman whom they had with them had said, and even if it were true that there was so much gold in the Filipinas, that the Spaniards ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga
... were you to come across any one from the house, or to meet master; or were, in the streets, people to press against you, or horses to collide with you, as to make (his horse) shy, and he were to fall, would that too be a joke? The gall of both of you is larger than a peck measure; but it's all you, Ming Yen, who has incited him, and when I go back, I'll surely tell the ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... rose up a monk named Amador. This name had been given him by way of a joke, since his person offered a perfect portrait of the false god Aegipan. He was like him, strong in the stomach; like him, had crooked legs; arms hairy as those of a saddler, a back made to carry a wallet, a face as red as the phiz of a drunkard, ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... a gallant action, Drummond, if you don't. It is no joke for one man to tackle six, and those not ordinary marauders but Pomeranian soldiers. Of course, it was somewhat lucky that you had rid yourself of three of them, before the other three entered the room; and had it not been, as you say, for that girl, things might have turned out ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... dangerous things they are to move, for if the men do not all heave or 'give' at the same moment the stone may slip, and the edge will take off a row of fingers as clean as the guillotine. Tibbald, of course, had his joke about that part of the machinery which is called the 'damsel.' He was a righteous man enough as millers go, but your miller was always a bit of a knave; nor could he forbear from boasting to me how he had been half an hour too soon for Hilary ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... "Go on, Colonel, you're always havin' yer joke. I'm sure I don't know what ye mean by Indypendence, or Westport. But if you want to get uptown, the street cars is four blocks yan. Er maybe ye'd ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... rather a good joke. I shall merely shove him into the street, if I do anything. What business has he to make a beast ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... rollicking mariner, laughing at the joke that had been played upon him, "we sailors express ourselves that way, but we ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... Florrie," said Denman, dubiously; "all this quarreling among themselves. Whatever job they have on hand they must hold together, or we'll get the worst of it. I don't like to see Jenkins and Sampson at it, though the two cooks are only a joke." ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... is a standing joke with Australian rabbits—about the only joke they have out there, except the memory of Pasteur and poison and inoculation. It is amusing to go a little way out of town, about sunset, and watch them crack Noah's Ark rabbit jokes about that fence, and burrow under and play leap-frog over it till they ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... is a busy afternoon, and in a field of ripening grain reapers are busy wielding their sickles, but they are not the strong men who talk with loud, rough voices and bind the sheaves with joke and laughter; they are gentle spirits moving like clouds, and their sickles seem like little strokes of lightning as they slide musically through the golden grain. Their shining hands keep time to a beautiful song, and often ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... information, and offered Nevis a tow, but he replied with a joke and declined the proffered assistance. Then it developed that, in going in to anchor, he had observed two other small Spanish boats near the wreck of the Santo Domingo, and had resolved to capture them, too. He knew it was hazardous work, but ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis
... that trick a good deal; then when the belated audience presently caught the joke he would look up with innocent surprise, as if wondering what they had found to laugh at. Dan Setchell used it before him, Nye and Riley and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... have played on me one of your tricks this morning, for the purpose of getting a thousand crowns; but the whole incident has been made public on the Exchange, and they think it a huge joke! ...
— Mercadet - A Comedy In Three Acts • Honore De Balzac
... so serious as all that, senora," said the Penitentiary. "I think the matter should not be again referred to, and when the one who was stoned says that, the rest may surely be satisfied. And the blow was no joke, Senor Don Jose. I thought they had split my head open and that my brains were ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos
... ferried the trail wagon over, everybody was ready for supper. No one seemed to mind the wetting he had gotten. Professor Zepplin made a joke of his own bedraggled condition, and the boys gave ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Texas - Or, The Veiled Riddle of the Plains • Frank Gee Patchin
... occasionally asked for enlightenment on a point he did not understand; also he would sometimes be puzzled over the meanings of words. He would use one without thinking, and then hesitate, in doubt as to whether it was the right one to convey his meaning. He would treat the matter lightly, making a joke of it, but would be obviously relieved when Philippa assured him that it was correct. And it was almost invariably correct, for it seemed that although his memory failed him, he drew unknowingly upon a subconscious power which worked independently—a store ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... know she had a brother?" grumbled Mark under his breath. "And what has he to do with the joke of ...
— Hetty Gray - Nobody's Bairn • Rosa Mulholland
... is, if you take it seriously. And how serious, if you take it as a joke! You wanted to lead me by the hand towards the light; your easier fate was to make mine easier too. I wanted to raise you above the bogs and quicksands; but you longed for the lower regions, and wanted to ...
— The Road to Damascus - A Trilogy • August Strindberg
... had it pretty rough, and a part of the time kinder smooth," but never had had matters to his satisfaction. Just before deciding to make an adventure on the Underground Rail Road his owner had been talking of selling him. Under the apprehension that this threat would prove no joke, Henry began to study what he had better do to be saved from the jaws of hungry negro traders. It was not long before he came to the conclusion that he had best strike out upon a venture in a Northern direction, and do the best he could to get as far away as ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... Taylor, my former chief of artillery, a Minie-ball passed through Logan's coat-sleeve, scratching the skin, and struck Colonel Taylor square in the breast; luckily he had in his pocket a famous memorandum-book, in which he kept a sort of diary, about which we used to joke him a good deal; its thickness and size saved his life, breaking the force of the ball, so that after traversing the book it only penetrated the breast to the ribs, but it knocked him down and disabled him for the rest of the campaign. He was a most competent and worthy officer, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... what I thought myself, when I saw her. But you are not to make a joke of my young-lady clerks. I am positively determined to carry out that useful reform in the office here. However, as Mr. Keller has been so lately ill, and as we are sure to have a fight about it, I will act considerately ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... then undertook to escape. Simultaneously with the explosion of the first shot, a howl had burst from the audience, which boded no good for any prospects of comfort and profit I might entertain. Escaping on my part became no joke; and I beg the reader to believe that my chagrin was quite overwhelmed in the all-impressive desire to protect myself from total annihilation. In my subsequent gratitude at having accomplished this feat, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... any mistake which might put Carette to confusion, I did my clumsy best to make a joke of ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... Cyril laughed as he made this little speech, there was no expression of mirth in his eyes. But Audrey chose to consider it a joke. ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... the waggon. Old Ike fixes a new flint in his rifle, and Redwood, of a more mirthful disposition, is occasionally cracking a joke ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... fellow stalked majestically from the eating-room munching at the remains of his Boehmische Dalken and entered the carriage, still clinging to the cotton umbrella, and quite oblivious of the powdered sugar with which he was liberally besmeared. Secret agent! The man was a joke—a rectangular comedy in monosyllables. ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... who could always recognize Hawthorne's style, the readers of the Atlantic supposed that these foot-notes were written by either James T. Fields or James Russell Lowell, who had been until recently the editor of the Magazine,—a practical joke which Hawthorne enjoyed immensely when it was discovered ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... scowled back; the officers looked straight before them. Yet it was a valuable lesson. Only a few days before I had read in the newspapers of how the Kaffirs had jeered at the Boer prisoners when they were marched into Pietermaritzburg, saying, 'Where are your passes?' It had seemed a very harmless joke then, but now I understood how ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... exclaimed Jimmy, shocked at such an extravagant assertion. Phil laughed, for there was something ludicrous in the idea of Jimmy, who was a slight boy of seven, making away with such a large quantity, and the little boy began to see that it was a joke at his expense. ...
— Phil the Fiddler • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... mockery in that queer glance, a sardonic smile upon the mouth, which made you hesitate how to take his outrageous utterances. It was irritating to be uncertain whether, while you were laughing at him, he was not really enjoying an elaborate joke at your expense. ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... the Doctor left the room, leaving Paul in a state of abject horror and dread which need not be described. Never, never again would he joke, as he had been wont to do with Dick in lighter moods, on the subject of corporal punishment under any circumstances—it was no fit theme for levity; if this—this outrage were really done to him, he could never ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... who would by this time be my hostess if I weren't otherwise engaged, knows everything and everybody. Not only that, she has done both for a considerable term of years. You remember the joke about her being torn between the desire not to exceed the age of forty-five and yet to boast a friendship with Lord Beaconsfield? Well, she can have known Frederic Lethbridge, and all about him, without being a day over forty, as that is Sir Lionel's age, ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... performance; Sir Curry Baughton and one or two of the Colonel's professional and military guests, silent and puzzled. Honest Mr. Binnie, with his shrewd good-humoured face, sipping his claret as usual, and delivering a sly joke now and again to the gentlemen at his end of the table. Mrs. Newcome had sat by him in sulky dignity; was it that Lady Baughton's diamonds offended her?—her ladyship and her daughters being attired in great ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... humor is excellently illustrated in Greek literature, where is to be found many a joke at which we are laughing to-day, as others have laughed through the centuries. Half a thousand years before the Christian era, a platonic philosopher at Alexandria, by name Hierocles, grouped twenty-one ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... though he knew the man could probably not understand him. "I'd do the same if the tables were turned. It'll be a mighty good joke to tell your cronies at mess tomorrow how the Yankee schweinhund thought he had you and then got nabbed himself. But they haven't got me yet. Those laugh best who laugh last, and perhaps I've got a laugh coming ...
— Army Boys on the Firing Line - or, Holding Back the German Drive • Homer Randall
... heels, and springing high into the air jumped over the cow-tub, wherein shone the moon's reflection as round and bright as the moon itself. The little Dog nearly split his sides with laughing. "Ha! ha! ha! that's a good joke," he said. "You had me there nicely," and he and the Cow started jumping about together all over ...
— More Tales in the Land of Nursery Rhyme • Ada M. Marzials
... something that jogged about and hit him on the side of the head, that gripped him round the chest! What was it? He felt gingerly, and laughed again. His carbine! What was the use of a carbine there? No good, of course. What a joke to throw it down and hear the splash, or, better, to fire it ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... Ecuadorianos laugh at it. It is our law. We make it for ourselves. I am Manuel de Jesus Patino. Remember that name. It will be written some day in history. There are revolutions in Ecuador. We call them elections. It is a good joke is it ...
— The Night-Born • Jack London
... Wayne was offered him," continued Brolatsky, "he never haggled over it. He paid the price asked and seemed quite delighted to get it. It was a standing joke in the trade that if you wanted to get even with Mr. Hume for driving a hard bargain with you, all you had to do was to offer him a portrait of General Wayne. I never saw him refuse one. Even if he had dozens of duplicates, which often ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... what you call a joke,' replied the lady calmly. 'As a matter of fact, he is my lawyer's clerk, and has been here to-night charged with disastrous news. I am in sore straits, Senor Harry. Will you ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... Faith's visit to the fort proved rather a difficult one for her at school. Caroline and Catherine seemed to think they had played a fine joke, and accused her of running home when they were waiting for her. Faith had resolved not to quarrel with them, but apparently the sisters meant to force her into trouble, if sneering words and ridicule ...
— A Little Maid of Ticonderoga • Alice Turner Curtis
... and he felt himself at that moment on the point of being consigned to certain death without a chance of safety. But he did not know the noble heart of the animal he had offended. Job let him feel for a few dreadful seconds the danger to which he had been so thoughtlessly and in joke about to consign himself, and then placed him in safety on the bank, with the admonition to reflect for the future on the probable result of his diversions before he indulged in them, and to consider whether, ...
— The Adventures of a Dog, and a Good Dog Too • Alfred Elwes
... While Obanjo, now in a boisterous state of mind, and flushed with victory, said things to them about the way they had collapsed when those two women in a canoe came round that corner, that must have blistered their feelings, but they never winced. They laughed at the joke against themselves merrily. The other boy's family we never saw and so took him safely to Gaboon, where Obanjo got ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... finger and a thumb if he could have got hold of him; but getting a good hold was the trouble. An Indian makes up in suppleness and activity what he lacks in strength, and it takes a good man to handle one. Of course the troopers were sorry for their wounded comrade, but they had "got a joke" on him, and it was a long time before he heard the ...
— George at the Fort - Life Among the Soldiers • Harry Castlemon
... muttered Horatio. "Ask Miss Kellerton; she knows him. But, villainy aside, what a stupendous joke it is to see ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... Disarmament is not a joke. Vishinsky's laughter met with shock and anger from the people all over the world. And, as a result, Mr. Stalin's representative received orders to stop ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... completely bewildered as to be unable to say a word, and just as he was beginning to think it some joke, Ben said: ...
— Mr. Stubbs's Brother - A Sequel to 'Toby Tyler' • James Otis
... upon our unworthy brows, but as we were tolerably good boys and used our power of embarrassment and annoyance with commendable moderation, we escaped the iron. My father was, in fact, a singularly good-natured man, and I think quietly enjoyed nature's practical joke. ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... CUSTER'S COMMAND. Buffalo Bill's Adventures continued—Hunting at Fort McPherson—Indians steal his Favourite Pony—The Chase—Scouting under General Duncan—Pawnee Sentries—A Deserted Squaw—A Joke on McCarthy—Scouting for Captain Meinhold—Texas Jack—Buckskin Joe—Sitting Bull and the Indian War of 1876—Massacre of Custer and his Command—Buffalo Bill takes the First Scalp for Custer—Yellow Hand, Son of ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... roared at the recital of the story, as told by the boys. "I think his description is a pretty good one. Perhaps he was thinking of the family circle?" and John continued to laugh as the boys tried to grasp the full meaning of his little joke. ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Treasures of the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... Andromeda," I played Dictys; it was in this piece that Arthur Wood used to make people laugh by punning on the line: "Such a mystery (Miss Terry) here!" It was an absurd little joke, but the people used ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... new boarder here whose face looks like a chapel and every time she opens her mouth you're afraid it's going to be the Lord's Prayer. She wears a wide ruching which makes her look excited; distributes tracts, and can't see a joke. She says she's Miss and leaves envelopes around with "Mrs." written on them in red ink—modest writing fluid I've always ...
— Letters of a Dakota Divorcee • Jane Burr
... how he had in a certain 'gay' house met this officer of the guards, a very nice chap and of good family, only without a hap'orth of brains; how they had made friends, how he, the officer that is, had suggested as a joke a game of 'fools' with Viktor with some old cards, for next to nothing, and with the condition that the officer's winnings should go to the benefit of Wilhelmina, but Viktor's to his own benefit; how afterwards they had got on to betting ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... Puck and his brothers wrote To the wise wood-people a little note. It said, 'If you'll meet us by Ripply Pond, Wonders we'll show with our magic wand.' 'What shall we do?' said the forest-folk. 'Maybe it's merely a practical joke.' But they went, good souls, and they only found A bare, bare bush and the green, green ground. 'But watch,' said the fairies, 'and you shall see Animals grow ...
— Zodiac Town - The Rhymes of Amos and Ann • Nancy Byrd Turner
... accustomed to that; Henry Leek had always thought him queer. As for Alice's incredulous attitude towards the revelation of his identity, he did not mentally accuse her of treating him as either a liar or a madman. On reflection he persuaded himself that she regarded the story as a bad joke, as one of his impulsive, capricious essays ...
— Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days • Arnold Bennett
... paper was handed to Antonio-Pericles from Captain Weisspriess, saying briefly that he had found Irma in the carriage instead of the little 'v,' thanked him for the joke, and had brought her back. Pericles was therefore not surprised when Irma, as Michiella, came on, breathless, and looking in an excitement of anger; he knew ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Full-bosomed, fine of face and figure, she was something more than a nurse; she was a companion. She had bright, sparkling black eyes and an expression about her well-cut mouth which made one want to laugh with her. It seemed to say that the world was a huge joke and she invited you to enjoy the joke ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... effort and rare good sense Ruth controlled herself sufficiently to laugh, and the embarrassment vanished. There were splendid points about this girl's character, not the least among them being the ability to laugh at a joke that had been turned toward herself. At least the effect was splendid. The reasons, therefore, might have been better. It was because her sharp brain saw the better effect that her ability to do this thing immediately produced on the people around her. ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... several times before we heard him; for, to tell the truth, we were a very merry crowd, and as light of heart as if there was not a worry or care in all the world,—at least for us,—and the smallest spark of a joke exploded us like a battery. Indeed, so rollicking was our mood that our laughter was nearly continuous, and it is quite possible that the stranger may have hailed us more than once without our hearing him. And this was the more likely because the ...
— The Busted Ex-Texan and Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... Geisenheimer's, you aren't supposed to advertise the fact. The management thinks that if you did it might send the public away thinking too hard when they saw you win the Great Contest for the Love-r-ly Silver Cup which they offer later in the evening. Say, that Love-r-ly Cup's a joke. I win it on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and Mabel Francis wins it on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. It's all perfectly fair and square, of course. It's purely a matter of merit who wins the ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... Paper, as an essential retainer to its establishment, kept an author, who was bound to furnish daily a quantum of witty paragraphs. Sixpence a joke—and it was thought pretty high too—was Dan Stuart's settled remuneration in these cases. The chat of the day, scandle, but, above all, dress, furnished the material. The length of no ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... is going the rounds to the effect that a music-hall comedian has confessed that he has never made a joke about the Mess in Mesopotamia. It is feared that the recent hot weather has affected ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, July 25, 1917 • Various
... gentlemen, chiefly in the higher ranks of society, against an individual, who, in one circumstance or another, is almost certain to be brought into contact with some of them. Such an institution cannot be laughed at, and its censure is no joke. ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... modern, had already become stale in style, without having reached the dignity of being old-fashioned. Trees about the harbour-road had increased in circumference or disappeared under the saw; while the church had had such a tremendous practical joke played upon it by some facetious restorer or other as to be scarce recognizable by its dearest ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... treating the Empress's expressions of affection as a huge joke, filled their glasses with champagne and drank heavily again, while Rasputin began to regale his "saintly" companions with stories of the intimate life ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux
... the best joke I have heard in ten years," said Lord Donal; and here, breakfast arriving, Jennie gave him ...
— Jennie Baxter, Journalist • Robert Barr
... ten years than his predecessors had done in three hundred; and one of his manoeuvres in the peacemaking art was to make the quarrellers laugh at the cause of quarrel. So did he undermine the demon of discord. But independently of that, he really loved a harmless joke. He was a wonderful tamer of animals, squirrels, bares, fawns, etc. So half in jest a parishioner who had a mule supposed to be possessed with a devil gave it him and said, "Tame this vagabone, parson, if ye can." Well, in about six months, Heaven knows how, he not only tamed Jack, but won ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... eyes in vain to discover any where, in this great valley, a little church, which, if it only offered me a hard bench for a couch, would at any rate afford me a shelter from the sharp night-wind; for it is really no joke to ride for fifteen hours, with nothing to eat but bread and cheese, and then not even to have the pleasant prospect of a hotel a la villa de Londres or de Paris. Alas, my wishes were far more modest. I expected no porter at the gate to give ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... seen him palpably take water. A moment of silence followed, while Sandy stared whitefaced down at the table, avoiding all eyes; but all the elements of good breeding exist under all the roughness of the West. It was Jacqueline who began with a joke which was rather old, but everyone appreciated it—at that moment—and the laughter lasted long enough to restore some of the colour to Sandy's face. A general rapid fire of ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... the same old ninth platoon; New faces most, and keen becos They 'ope the thing is ending soon; I ain't complaining, mind, but still, When later on some newish bloke Stops one and laughs, "A blighty, Bill," I'll wonder, "Where's the joke?" ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 152, March 21, 1917 • Various
... mail?" This was asked uneasily, but with a half-concealed laugh in his voice as if the joke would appear in ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... rough, but we have enough; Our drink is better than wine: For cool creeks flow wherever we go, Shut in from the hot sunshine. Though rude our roof, it is weather-proof, And at the end of the days We sit and smoke over yarn and joke, By the bush-fire's sturdy blaze. For away from din and sorrow and sin, Where troubles but rarely come, We jog along, like a merry ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... nothing was making them unfit for the conduct of serious affairs, appealed to the Delphic oracle for some means of cure. The god prescribed a peculiar form of sacrifice, which would be effective if they could carry it through without laughing. They did their best; but the flimsy joke of a boy upset their unaccustomed gravity, and in this way the oracle taught them that even the gods could not prescribe a quick cure for a long vitiation, or give power and dignity to a people who in a crisis of the public wellbeing were ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... in easy familiarity with the learned men of Alexandria; and at another of these literary dinners, when Diodorus, the rhetorician, who was thought to have been the inventor of the Dilemma, was puzzled by a question put to him by Stilpo, the king in joke said that his name should be Cronus, a god who had been laughed at in the comedies. Indeed, he was so teased by Ptolemy for not being able to answer it, that he got up and left the room. He afterwards wrote a book upon the subject; but the ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... but Raymond's presence helped her to rein in her temper; and she thought of Julius, and refrained from more than a "Very well. It was meant as a harmless joke, and—and if you—you did not take it ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... white comfits from the spectators on the seats of the scaffolding, or from the balconies and windows on each side of the street. These comfits break into a white powder and bespatter the clothes of the person on whom they fall as if hair-powder had been thrown on them. This seems to be the grand joke of this part of the Carnival. After the carriages have paraded about an hour, a signal is given by the firing of a gun that the horse race is about to begin. The carriages, on the gun being fired, must immediately evacuate the Corso in order to leave it clear ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... It's nothing but 'the short and simple annals of the poor,' but when she gets done there won't be 'a dry eye in the house.' That's the highest praise that the Riverville Herald can give, and it gives it to her so often that it has become a household joke at the Blythes." ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... of the mighty king which they could find in Finn's dwelling, the jewels and carved gems; they over the sea carried the lordly lady to the Danes—led her to their people. The lay was sung, the song of the glee-man, the joke rose again, the noise from the benches grew loud, cupbearers gave the wine ...
— The Ethnology of the British Islands • Robert Gordon Latham
... took courage, and asked him if he did not want to ship a boy. My dress and appearance were both against me, as I had never done any work, and was in the ordinary attire of a better class lad on shore. The mate began to laugh at me, and to joke me on my desire to go to sea, questioning me about my knowledge. I was willing to do anything; but, perceiving that I made little impression, I resorted to bribery. Prince Edward had made me a present, before he left Halifax, of a beautiful little fowling-piece, ...
— Ned Myers • James Fenimore Cooper
... for a short distance; and then squatting down with it on the ground close before him, will wait until his master comes quite close to take it away. The dog will then seize it and rush away in triumph, repeating the same manoeuvre, and evidently enjoying the practical joke. ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... "and he believed that he knew everything and of every sort; this was the more pitiable in that it had got into his head with his promotions, and was less presumption than stupidity, and still less vanity, of which he had none. The joke is, that the mainspring of the king's great affection for him was this very incapacity. He confessed it to the king at every step, and the king was delighted to direct and instruct him; in such sort that he grew jealous for his success as if it were ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... you as I do, I wouldn't marry you now for all the wealth in the world. I forget why, but all the world is a stage, you know, and they don't use stages now, but only railroads. Is that why you rail at me so, Peggy? That is a joke. You ought to laugh at my jokes, because I love you, but I can't ever, ever tell you so because you are rich. A rich man cannot pass through a needle's eye. Oh, Peggy, Peggy, I love your eyes, ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... on the gun, Clasping the clammy breech and slippery shells; If 'tis a joke they do not see the fun And damn you to the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 5, 1917 • Various
... professionally of my knowledge of them. I HAD no knowledge—nobody had any. It was humiliating, but I could bear it—they only annoyed me now. At last they even bored me, and I accounted for my confusion—perversely, I allow—by the idea that Vereker had made a fool of me. The buried treasure was a bad joke, the general ...
— The Figure in the Carpet • Henry James
... sleeping girl. It is asserted that when the red light falls on the latter's face and it is suggested to her softly to go along, she does so. Then a pointed stone is placed in the girl's way, she steps on it, it wakes her up, and the crude practical joke is finished. It would be interesting, at least, to get some scientific information concerning these cited effects of red light ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... enjoyed it," said Jessie, icily, though there was a twinkle in her eye. "Not having a mirror, I'm afraid I can't join in the joke." ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... believed it to be artificial. A plot was accordingly hatched to solve the problem, and during a set of Kitchen Lancers a syphon of soda-water was cleverly squirted full in her face, but the colour remained fast. Mrs. Mangold, I am sorry to say, failed to see the point of the joke, and fled to her room, pursued as far as the staircase by a score or more ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, October 31, 1917 • Various
... jays, too, like to stir up their neighbors. A friend told me of a small party of blue jays that she saw playing this kind of a joke on a flock of birds of several kinds, robins, catbirds, thrashers, and others. These birds were gathering the cherries on the top branches of a big cherry tree. The jays sat quietly on another tree till the cherry eaters were very busy eating. Then suddenly ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... edict drawn up perhaps by Marcus Flavius (Macrob. Sat. i. 14, 2) and the alleged treatise of Caesar, De Stellis, is shown by the joke of Cicero (Plutarch, Caes. 59) that now the Lyre rises ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... power of the Pope, the state of England—all were discussed; and the possibilities of the future, as each party painted it in the colours of his hopes. The brethren, we find, spoke their minds in plain language, sometimes condescending to a joke. ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... feature of the evening was the president's address of Dr. Shaw, of whom the report in the Buffalo Express said: "The Rev. Anna Howard Shaw has set a new standard for womanhood. She is one of the most wonderful women of her time, alert, watchful, magnetic, earnest, with a mind as quick for a joke as for the truth. She points her arguments with epigrams and tips the arrows of her persuasion with a jest.... Even the unbelievers are carried away with her brilliancy, eloquence and mental grasp." There was no adequate report of her address ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... strangely matched with perpetuity. But, indeed, he is not worthy to die; for there is something graver than to be immortal, and that is to be mortal. I protest I do not laugh at man or woman in the world. I thank my fellow-mortals for their wit, and also for the kind of joke that the French so pleasantly call une joyeusete; these are to smile at. But the gay injustice of laughter is between me ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... bakers' apprentices going their rounds, shop boys on their way to kindle fires in stores—all stopped to look at the figure. The news quickly spread. People left their breakfast-tables to see the joke played on Mr. Lillie. Ebenezer Richardson, however, could not see the fun of the thing. The schoolboys called him "Poke Nose" because he was ever ready to poke into other people's affairs.[39] The officers of the Custom House employed him to ferret out goods smuggled ashore ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... of the Dean; and to say the truth, we began to hope for his sake, that he had given up a game which, however much longer it might be contested, had evidently begun to be a losing one on his part. But we were mistaken. We found him one morning in high spirits, and evidently in possession of some joke which he was anxious ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... Dick fully realised when he pulled up alongside his friend and they exchanged hand-grips. Lightly as he spoke of the incident, Phil knew right well that he was on the very edge of disaster at the moment that Dick pulled trigger, and though he would fain have treated the whole adventure as a joke he was none the less grateful to Dick for his timely intervention, and the pressure of his hand was quite as eloquent as much outpouring ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... adored, and be agreeable to her friends. Her amusements were most original—concerts, mythological representations, suppers, fireworks, comedies, readings, always something new, often in the form of a surprise or a joke. Of the latter, the best known is the one played on the Count of Guise whose fondness for mushrooms had become proverbial; on one occasion when he had consumed an immense number of them at table, his valet, who had been bribed, ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... child would catch his death of cold, Bernard was borne upstairs again by Felix, who found Clement in the nursery comforting the little girls, and preventing them from following the example of their valiant pioneer. Felix, now thoroughly entering into the spirit of the joke, entertained for a moment the hope of entrapping Clement; but of course Bernard could not be silenced from his bold and rather doubtful proclamation, that 'The funny boy made Felix black his own face, and I ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... exercising oppression;—Do not in such a way make a mock of things. An old man, (I speak) with entire sincerity; But you, my juniors, are full of pride. It is not that my words are those of age, But you make a joke of what is sad. But the troubles will multiply like flames, Till they are beyond help ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... nagging at talent whenever you find it in others! " cried the young prince with a pun, which would have delighted Padmavati. "Surely you are jealous of her!" he resumed, anything but pleased with the dead silence that had received his joke; "jealous of her cleverness, and of her love for me. She is the very best creature in the world. Even you, woman-hater as you are, would own it if you only knew all the kind messages she sent, and the little pleasant surprise that she has prepared for ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... "Crop ye as close as marginal P—'s ears." As Milton had already, in his Colasterion, said enough about Prynne and the heavy margins of his many pamphlets, and as the circumstances in which Prynne had lost his ears made the subject hardly a proper one for a public joke, it was but good taste in Milton to ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... those lustrous blue eyes of his appealingly and tearfully upon Mr. Blinker, and tell him he would make the pecuniary matter all right in the fall, and that he merely shattered a chair over his head by way of a joke. The stony-hearted man was remorseless, and that night Clarence Stanly became a wanderer in the wide, wide world. As he went forth he uttered these words: "H. Blinker, beware! A RED HAND is around, my ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 3 • Charles Farrar Browne
... place in the schoolroom, in the opinion of his teachers and his schoolmates. In Mr. Burrows' school, ten was the perfect mark, and x was the very lowest grade a boy could reach. It had once been an everyday joke with Tip, that, being x, he must be perfect, because it said in the spelling-book ...
— Tip Lewis and His Lamp • Pansy (aka Isabella Alden)
... exhausted voice. "I see you don't believe me! Not for a moment! It's my fault, not yours. I ought not to have been so ready. Why, why did I degrade myself by confessing my secret to you? It's a joke to you. I see that from your eyes. You led me on to it, prosecutor? Sing a hymn of triumph if you can.... ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... away, feeling, with a certain glow of satisfaction not unmixed with self-righteousness, that I had done something to raise the post-office standard and to ensure better attention. But the joke is that, if I had myself received better attention, I should have lost thirty pounds, for St. Vitus was unplaced. This story must therefore remain without ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 22, 1920 • Various
... with the powers that be in Berlin has long been a standing joke among his American colleagues. Shortly after the fall of Warsaw in August, 1915, when the stage in Poland was set for exhibition to the neutral world, he was roused from his slumbers in his suite at the Adlon by a midnight telephone message, apprising him that ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... the stately volume from its place. "Look!" she cried. "A keyhole. Hugh, isn't this exactly like the 'Mysteries of Udolpho?' 'Inigo Jones' is his joke, you see, or somebody's joke. Do you mind if ...
— Fernley House • Laura E. Richards
... the matter; you will listen to reason; you will reverse your decision," pleaded the count, his nervous incoherence and confusion increasing as he grew more and more agitated. "It's for the honor of the family to say 'yes,' and therefore 'yes' is the proper answer,—eh, Madeleine? Don't joke any more, my dear; it troubles me; it gives me such a throbbing and heavy weight in my ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... I ask. But I hope," added he, "before we've lived a year, or whatever time it is till you arrive at years of discretion, you'll know me well enough, and love me well enough, not to be so stiff about a trifle, that's nothing between friend and friend—let alone the joke of ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... it cannot be expressed in words and taught. This was what I, even as a young man, sometimes suspected, what has driven me away from the teachers. I have found a thought, Govinda, which you'll again regard as a joke or foolishness, but which is my best thought. It says: The opposite of every truth is just as true! That's like this: any truth can only be expressed and put into words when it is one-sided. Everything is one-sided which can be thought with thoughts and ...
— Siddhartha • Herman Hesse
... into Cray's Folly, then, a fact which was not reported to me, a suspicious loiterer was seen in the grounds, again not reported, and someone played a silly practical joke by nailing the wing of a bat, you say, to the door. Might I ask, Mr. Harley, why you mention this matter? The other things are serious, but why you should mention the trick of some mischievous boy at a time ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... tear was in the eye. Petit Andre, slapping the other shoulder, called out, "Courage, my fair son! since you must begin the dance, let the ball open gaily, for all the rebecs are in tune," twitching the halter at the same time, to give point to his joke. As the youth turned his dismayed looks, first on one and then on the other, they made their meaning plainer by gently urging him forward to the fatal tree, and bidding him be of good courage, for it would be over ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... enlisted a great number of men. Among his recruits was Frank Lilly, a boy about sixteen years old, who was so weak and small that he would not have passed muster if the array had not been greatly in want of men. The soldiers made this boy the butt of their ridicule, and many a joke was perpetrated at his expense. Yet there was a spirit in the boy beyond his years. Riley was greatly attached to him; and it was reported, on good authority, that he was the fruit of one of Riley's love affairs with a ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson
... "Ha! You will have your joke, eh? But the Lulu is no joke. Come, we will go to the bank; I want them to tell you how much she has yielded. You'll blame me for leasing her, but how was I to know what ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... enough is the origin of the name of Picards, and from thence of Picardie, which does not date later than A.D. 1200. It was an academical joke, an epithet first applied to the quarrelsome humor of those students, in the University of Paris, who came from the frontier of France and Flanders, (Valesii Notitia Galliarum, p. 447, Longuerue. Description de ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... what gormandizers they were," replied Quicksilver; and, rogue that he was, he could not help laughing at the joke. "So you will not be surprised to hear that they have all taken the shapes of swine! If Circe had never done anything worse, I really should not think her so very much ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... should take to find a railway station where we might take a train for Versailles, but finally succeeded. We did not understand more from those who directed us, than the direction we should take, never knowing the distance. It is more than a joke, for a party to be obliged to walk several miles for a station, when they had expected to reach it in a quarter or half a mile at most! When we arrived at the station at Sevres, our difficulties only commenced. ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... it mean? I've been out since morning, and I return to find the gate locked, and a man playing at being a sentry. Why, Roy, my dear boy, surely this is not some bad joke of yours?" ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn
... Neither Johnson nor Burke wrote anything, and when I perceived that Oliver was rather sore, and seemed to watch me with that kind of attention which indicated his expectation of something in the same kind of burlesque with theirs; I thought it time to press the joke no further, and wrote a few couplets at a side-table, which, when I had finished, and was called upon by the company to exhibit, Goldsmith, with much agitation, besought me to spare him; and I was about to tear them, when Johnson wrested them out of my hand, and in a loud voice read them at ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... great caution; certainly in one case of recent years, which at first appeared to be well authenticated, it was afterwards found that a small trout had been pushed down a salmon's throat after capture by way of a joke. A consideration of the question, however, which may perhaps make some appeal to both sides, is put forward by Dr.J. Kingston Barton in the first of the two volumes on Fishing (Country Life Series). He maintains that salmon do not habitually feed ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various
... think this is some maniac's idea of a joke, you'll have proof very soon that it isn't, because one of the people at your Center is due to leave for ...
— Warning from the Stars • Ron Cocking
... constitute the specialty. There is always a crowd about the window. They form a very pleasing ornament for the mantel-shelf of a gay young bachelor, for the boudoir of a pretty woman. You couldn't make a prettier present to a person with whom you wished to exchange a harmless joke. It is not classic art, signore, of course; but, between ourselves, isn't classic art sometimes rather a bore? Caricature, burlesque, la charge, as the French say, has hitherto been confined to paper, to the pen and pencil. Now, it ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James
... within the vulgar reach, To run of errands, and to preach; Well hast thou judged, that heads like mine Cannot want help from heads like thine; Well hast thou judged thyself unmeet Of such high argument to treat; Twas but to try thee that I spoke, And all I said was but a joke. 1370 Nor think a joke, Crape, a disgrace, Or to my person, or my place; The wisest of the sons of men Have deign'd to use them now and then. The only caution, do you see, Demanded by our dignity, From common use and men exempt, Is that they may not breed contempt. Great ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... that chap would never go! Your Majesty!... Sire ... the King ... pleasant names to be called when you're not accustomed to them. I've already had twenty-four hours of it, and if it goes on much longer I shall begin to think it's not a joke. ...
— A Royal Prisoner • Pierre Souvestre
... time that Duvall had read the instructions. He had not had an opportunity to do so before. As he concluded his examination of them, his face hardened, his brow contracted in a frown, and he crushed the piece of paper in his hand. Was this some absurd joke that Monsieur Lefevre was playing upon him? The idea of separating him from Grace upon their wedding day, to send him on an expedition, the object of which was to recover a lost snuff box! It seemed preposterous. ...
— The Ivory Snuff Box • Arnold Fredericks
... company laugh. But Blaine Asher did not laugh. Serious, his rather thin face grave at he leaned his tall, muscular body above a torsion machine he was adjusting, there was nothing to indicate he had the faintest idea of a joke. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... world of alarm As the arm Most gracefully bow'd to the stream, As if a respect it would show it, Tho' so much below it! No presence of mind he dissembled, But as the branch shook so he trembled, And the case was no longer a riddle Or joke; For the branch snapp'd and broke; And altho' The angler cried "Its no go!" ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... with courage and self-sacrifice has been proved in these last six months; it is to other qualities that one must look for final victory in a war of exhaustion. The Englishman does not look into himself; he does not brood; he sees no further forward than is necessary, and he must have his joke. These are fearful and wonderful advantages. Examine the letters and diaries of the various combatants and you will see how far less imaginative and reflecting, (though shrewd, practical, and humorous,) the English ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... doubtless had for its germ a joke regarding the slowness of an errand boy in a friend's household, but which at the same time shows us how rapidly Rembrandt worked. The artist had been carried off to the country to lunch with his friend Jan ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... was prettier than Kate ever had seen her, but there was a line of discontent around her mouth, and she spoke pettishly on slight provocation, or none at all. Now she was openly, brazenly, brutally, frank in her rejoicing. She thought it was the best "JOKE" that ever happened to the boys; and she said so repeatedly. Kate found her lips closing more tightly and a slight feeling of revulsion growing in her heart. Surely in Nancy Ellen's lovely home, cared for and shielded in every way, she had no ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... such fun as we do have! A little matter like that never inconveniences mother. Once during court week, our only hotel burned. There was a big case on before father, and he brought all the witnesses and lawyers home. They were there three days. Mother seemed to think it was a joke." Then with a look at Elizabeth, she added with conviction, "A little bit of a girl like ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird
... that he lay down again rather abruptly and began to wonder. What was he doing in a woman's room, and who was the woman and how had he got there? This would be a great joke for Dalton and St. Clair ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... tried their skill on the subject of sea-sickness," said his companion; "but it's no joke to those who ...
— Story of Chester Lawrence • Nephi Anderson
... Sydney Smith used to be much amused when he observed the utter want of perception of a joke in some minds. One instance we may cite from his "Memoirs:"[98] "Miss ——, the other day, walking round the grounds at Combe Florey, exclaimed, 'Oh, why do you chain up that fine Newfoundland dog, Mr Smith?'—'Because it has a passion for breakfasting ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... you try them games, mate, for you was never cut out for the work. He thinks that's a joke, Mr Lane, sir. But do you want your jyntes rubbed ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... with a flash of anger in the dark eyes, "if you were half a dozen years older I would thrash the life out of you. Do you think that is a pretty sort of joke to make about a woman? Don't you know the mischief your gabbling tongue might make? for how is every one to know that you are talking merely ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... laughing, "what it has withdrawn in elegance, it has made up in spirit. The joke seems to ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... of the old, mirthful mischief in his eye, as she glanced up unexpectedly. He did remember her, she was sure, yet was trying her, perhaps, as she tried him. Well, she would stand the test and enjoy the joke by-and-by. With this fancy in her head she assumed a gracious air and chatted away in her most charming style, feeling both gay and excited, so anxious was she to please, and so glad to recover her early friend. A naughty ...
— The Mysterious Key And What It Opened • Louisa May Alcott
... mean, this order that I've just received to prepare to leave the boat within a few hours?... It must be some kind of a joke of Toni's; he's an excellent fellow but an enemy to holy things and likes to tease me because of ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... too, she looked after the finances and this in itself was enough for one woman to do. Then as though this wasn't plenty she kept light-hearted for our sakes. You'd find her singing about her work whenever you came in and always ready with a smile and a joke. And if she herself had a headache you had to be a doctor and a lawyer rolled in one to ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... Archie. "Well, at Bridgeport they take me as a joke, see? That's all right; I'll show them, some day. They voted me a nuisance at the shops and shut me out. Wouldn't let me come near their engines. I had to find out some things necessary to my inventions, so I came on to Stanley Junction. Rode in a coach like any other civilized being until I got ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman
... organ," answered Philip Holt scornfully. "I am afraid Cape May people will hardly understand it. It looks as though the young women on the 'Merry Maid' were in need of money." The young man laughed as though his last remark had been intended for a joke. ...
— Madge Morton's Victory • Amy D.V. Chalmers
... a practical joke!" I thought, and a bitter feeling of disappointment assailed me, as I asked myself why I had not gone in the second boat to help save ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... some allusion to his own example; but I well knew that my uncle Ro had once been engaged, and that he lost the object of his passion by death, and too much respected his constancy and true sentiments ever to joke on such subjects. I believe he felt the delicacy of my forbearance rather more than common, for he immediately manifested a disposition to relent, and to prove ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... grips ye, ye cant move hand nor foot—and had my lady into the land of Nod in half a minute; thin off t' her husband; so here's th' Healer between two stools—spare the whipcord, spoil the knacker!—it would be a good joke if I was to lose both pashints for want of a little unbeequity, wouldn't it—Lash the lazy vagabin!—Not that I care: what interest have I in their lives? they never pay: but ye see custom's second nature; an d'Ive formed a vile habit; I've got to be a Healer among ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... of England," criticism and comment broke out. The old pioneers of Rough and Ready felt that they had been imposed upon, and that in some vague way the unfortunate woman had made them the victims of a huge practical joke during all these years. That she had grimly enjoyed their ignorance of her position they did not doubt. "Why, I remember onct when I was sorter bullyraggin' her about mixin' up my duds with Doc Simmons's, and sendin' me Whiskey Dick's old rags, ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... we return, we'll sit down to feast, Our friends shall behold us with pleasure; She'll sip with my lord—I'll drink with the priest, We'll laugh and we'll quaff without measure. The toast and the joke shall go joyfully round, With love and good humour the room shall resound. The slipper be hid—the stocking let fall, And rare blindman's-buff shall keep up the ball; Whilst the merry spinette, and the sweet tambourine, Shall heighten and ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... next afternoon they both drove to the station to meet their new relative. In spite of herself, as the time came nearer, Theodora was inclined to treat the whole affair as an immense joke; but her husband had misgivings. Theodora was fitted to cope with any girl he had ever known; but he feared she might find the process ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... we were going to look over temples in a deluge. But our heroism was rewarded, for just as the train crossed the brigand's marsh the rain stopped and the sun shone out, and the effect of blue sky and clouds was simply glorious. We had a great joke at Paestum. A mosquito had stung me badly on one lid so that I looked as if I had a black eye. It was most uncomfortable and painful, I remember. Well, a party of French tourists were going round the ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... he had been cheekin' some one or playin' a far-fetched joke, I might be able to forgive him, but there must be reason in everythink, an' to go an' meddle with other's property is carryin' things too far. 'Heed the spark or you may dread the fire,' is a piece of wisdom I've always took to heart in rarin' ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... insulted her by walking into her bedroom with his muddy feet and then pretending that he hadn't known that it was her bedroom, regarding her through his hair with an ironical and malicious glance, barking suddenly when she made some statement as though he enjoyed immensely an excellent joke, but, above all, despising her, she felt, so that the wall of illusion that she had built around herself had been pulled down by at least one creature, more human, she knew, in spite of herself, than many human beings. Therefore, she hated ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... and sunk snow-barrows The bells are ringing loud and strangely near, The shout of children dins upon mine ear Shrilly, and like a flight of silvery arrows Showers the sweet gossip of the British sparrows, Gathered in noisy knots of one or two, To joke and chatter just as mortals do Over the days long ...
— Among the Millet and Other Poems • Archibald Lampman
... sternly. "His world is no joke. He has a strong clutch—but I have a stronger... Maskull was his, ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... were the six red cabbages on the purple satin lap, a very white hand, with some gold rings on the fingers, slightly holding them together, and streaming ringlets, half hiding a laughing face, drooped over them. Only half hiding! Peter saw the laugh; it was unmistakable. He was made a joke of; his gallantry, his chivalry, were the subject of a jest for a petticoat—for two petticoats: Miss Helstone too was smiling. Moreover, he felt he was seen through, and Peter grew black as a thunder-cloud. When Shirley looked ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... your books, you should set your mind on your books; and that you should think of home when not engaged in reading. Whatever you do, don't romp together with them, for were you to meet our master, your father, it will be no joke! Although it's asserted that a scholar must strain every nerve to excel, yet it's preferable that the tasks should be somewhat fewer, as, in the first place, when one eats too much, one cannot digest it; and, in the second place, good health must also be carefully attended to. ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... achieve a reputation for profound and ponderous wisdom, so long as one looks very solemn and says nothing. This is the stork's recipe. Go up to Billy here, or one of the marabous, as he stands with his shoulders humped up about his head, and make a joke. He won't see it. He will lift his eyebrows with a certain look of contempt, and continue to cogitate—about nothing. If the joke is a very bad pun—such a frightful pun that even a stork will see and resent it—perhaps he will chatter ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... obituary appeared Cibber crawled out of the house, sick-faced but convalescent, and read the notice with keen interest. Whether he was amused thereat, or dubbed the joke a poor one, is a matter which he does not record, but he tells us that he "saw no use in being thought to be thoroughly dead before his time," and "therefore had a mind to see whether the town cared to have him ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... though he has never indulged in intoxicants to excess he has never abstained entirely from either the use of tobacco or strong drink. Grandfather Whipple is one of the authorities in the place where he lives, and his memory is remarkable. His eye has a merry twinkle, and he can enjoy a joke and tell a good story with any of the ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... he said. 'Well, I will be a guest, too. I have my dress-suit in some of those trunks. Frank is going to Congress, is he? That's a good joke! Drive on. What are you ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... going to be a terrible snow storm, dear," she said. "I think we should get down fairly early and suggest to Gritzko that we start back to Moscow before lunch. It is no joke to be caught in this wild country. I will send you ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... a gay people, but they are fond of a joke. Lincoln's "little stories" were characteristically Western, and it is doubtful whether he was more endeared to the masses by his solid virtues than by the humorous perception which made him one of them. The humor of which we are speaking now is a strictly popular ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... wag would push forward the pockmarked brave and demand of Dud that he baptize him again, and always the puncher made motions of going through the performance a second time. The joke never staled. It always got a hand, no matter how often it was repeated. At each encore the Utes stamped their flatfooted way round the room in a kind of impromptu and mirthful dance. The baptismal jest never ceased to be ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... there is no ground for supposing that it was due to such a very narrow-minded prejudice as "that he would take nothing from a heathen." If he ever used these words, they must have been intended as a joke, and are not to be accepted seriously. A sufficient explanation of his decision is, that he had a supreme disdain for money, and the sum offered seemed far in excess of the post and work he had to perform. To have received L10,000 ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... way, cut off one skirt of his long coat. This excited peals of laughter. When the poor Londoner saw that this was done by a roguish American, at the instigation of his own countrymen, the tear stood in his eye. Even our jolly, big bellied captain, enjoyed the joke, and ordered the boatswain's mate to cut off the other skirt, who, after viewing him amidst shouts of laughter, damned him for a land lubber, and said, now he had lost his ring-tail, he looked ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... The joke of their eccentric general seemed but a poor one to the footsore and almost shoeless men, but they were astonished when Jack rode forward and presented to each of the officers a commission, which he had drawn out in the earl's name, as cavalry officers. Their astonishment was ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... the handglass, gave one look at myself, and I was inclined to let it slide off the bed to the floor, a la Camille, only Amelie would not have seen the joke. I did look old and seedy. But what of that? Of course Amelie does not know yet that I am like the "Deacon's One Hoss Shay"—I may look dilapidated, but so long as I do not absolutely ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... larf, and I never smile, And I never lark nor play; But I sit and croak, and a single joke I ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... do," they all shouted with much laughing, as if it were a great joke to ask them ...
— Dickey Downy - The Autobiography of a Bird • Virginia Sharpe Patterson
... their first absorbing interest, was busily engaged in braiding a watch-chain from her splendid, Titian-red hair. These chains were the fashion of the hour, and the old family doctor, friend as well as physician, paused after a visit to the boy's mother, to joke her about it: "You're making a keepsake for ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... as Richards had said. We had little occasion to fear that the portmanteaus would be lost or injured; but we knew very well that the only way to get them out of the claws of these rough backwoodsmen would be by some well-contrived joke. And those jokes were exactly what I feared; for one had often to risk breaking an arm or a leg by them. There was a crowd of men in the kitchen. One young fellow, upwards of six feet high, held a lighted candle; and they were all busily engaged examining something which ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... An amusing joke, which tickled all Paris was perpetrated shortly afterward. The editor of the Bonsoir imported six hundred copies of the forbidden Treaty from Switzerland, and sent them as a present to the Deputies of the Chamber, ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... to show that it was not either an accident, or had not been fired by some passing cowboy who, from a distance, seeing the bottle on a stick, could not resist a chance to "take a crack" at it. And yet this last theory would seem to be a poor one. For if the shot had been a joke the one who had fired it would, in all reason, it appeared, ...
— The Boy Ranchers on the Trail • Willard F. Baker
... were the two great forts impregnable but the shores were lined with batteries. What could wooden ships do with such forts and guns? It was a joke that they should pretend to attack them. Their only possible danger was from the new iron-clad gunboats in the upper waters of the river. They were building two of their own kind which would be ready long before the enemy could break through the ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... squat little man—Bannon could not see until near by that he was not a boy—big-headed, big-handed, big-footed. He stood there in his shirt-sleeves, his back to Bannon, swearing good-humoredly at the men. When he turned toward him Bannon saw that he had that morning played an unconscious joke upon his bright red hair by ...
— Calumet 'K' • Samuel Merwin
... grew pharisaical. I ventured to pity my less fortunate neighbors, bound hand and foot to the slavery of mothers-in-law. I attempted to joke them, and poke them severely in the ribs with my knuckles, when the magic name was mentioned. So often did I congratulate myself on the shrewd stroke of genius displayed, that I fear even her respectability became sadly impaired in my mind, and depreciated to ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... thought this light treatment of the matter an unjust attempt at diminishing his glory, answered respectfully, that it was not for the like of him to judge about that; but he rather thought it was no joke to ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... to fill the gap that Henri had left—tried to joke with the men in her queer bits of French; was more smiling than ever, for fear she might be less. But now and then in cautious whispers she heard Henri's name, and her heart ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... for a long time. The rests were frequent, the course not of the straightest. For many years their recollection of that hill was as of a mountain. Finally the top sprang at them abruptly, as though in joke. ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... pet joke of Gabriel's did not dissipate the constraint and disappointment left upon the company by Uncle Sylvester's unsatisfying performance and early withdrawal, and they separated soon after, Kitty and Marie being ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... national importance," from sundry experiments witnessed by his grace, at Hounslow Barracks; and the coach is announced "really to start next month (the 1st) in working—not experimental journeys—for travellers between London and Bath."[1] Crack upon crack will follow joke upon joke; the Omnibus, with its phaeton-like coursers will be eclipsed; and a journey to Bath and the Hot Wells by steam will soon be ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction, No. 391 - Vol. 14, No. 391, Saturday, September 26, 1829 • Various
... that name at him. He threw me into the greatest confusion by laughing heartily and replying in a very sprightly manner, "No, to be sure; you're right." And to this hour I have not the faintest notion what he meant, or what joke he ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... who came back from the Ypres neighborhood a few days ago, told me a delightful story of a practical joke played upon the Germans, who were entrenched only about thirty or forty yards away from his platoon. One bright spirit was lecturing the enemy and making dialectical rings ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... near the Country Club so as to get the Automobile Trade, coming and going. Some of the Best People would drop in and show the Ice-Box how to take a Joke. ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... gifts from the king, but made a motion, that instead of nine archons, they should yearly choose nine poor citizens to be sent ambassadors to the king, and enriched by his presents, and the people only laughed at the joke. But they were vexed that the Thebans obtained their desires, never considering that Pelopidas's fame was more powerful than all their rhetorical discourse, with a man who still inclined to the ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... and already Coley's vision was, 'When I am vicar of Feniton, which I look forward to, but with a very distant hope, I should of all things like Fanny to keep house for me till I am married;' and again, when relating some joke with his cousins about the law-papers, of the Squire of Feniton, he adds: 'But the Squire of Feniton will be ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... awful foreknowledge of the dying deceived them. Wrenching himself forward, Orde looked through the curtains and saw how near was the sail. 'That's Polly,' he said simply, though his mouth was wried with agony. 'Polly and—the grimmest practical joke ever ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... superciliously. Apparently he thought that another assault had been committed upon the divine right of kings. But the Czar Nicholas appeared to be amused, and the Emperor of China, who had been studying English, laughed in his sleeve, as if he suspected that a joke had ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss
... were wild. He laughed softly, however, saying in Russian: "Very good, Peter—you'd joke at ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort
... up to Mr. Excell just as the marshal stepped out of the crowd and accosted him. For the first time in his life Mose was moved to joke his father. ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... real and living than the wonder of the sweet-smelling chairs, the birds, and the elegant dogs. Richest of treats, a monkey was introduced to me. 'It 's your papa's whim,' Mrs. Waddy said, resignedly; 'he says he must have his jester. Indeed it is no joke to me.' ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... It's a dead, airless pip-squeak planetoid, just a big mile-thick rock, probably. No life, no vegetation, no people, no nothing. Guess you might call me the Man in the Second Moon—and the joke's on me! Well, one and three-quarter hours of oxygen left, by the gauge, or 105 minutes—sounds like more that way.... What's that, sir? Your voice is getting faint. Any last requests from me? ...
— Shipwreck in the Sky • Eando Binder
... looked utterly blank at this, and, suddenly realising that they were not very familiar with American coins, Patty explained the joke. They saw it, of course, but seemed to think it not very good, and Sinclair whimsically insisted on calling it, "a shilling to Bob," which he said ...
— Patty's Friends • Carolyn Wells
... delivering this charge to Tinkler, Mr Dorrit looked severely at him, and also kept a jealous eye upon him until he went out at the door, mistrusting that he might have something in his mind prejudicial to the family dignity; that he might have even got wind of some Collegiate joke before he came into the service, and might be derisively reviving its remembrance at the present moment. If Tinkler had happened to smile, however faintly and innocently, nothing would have persuaded Mr Dorrit, to the hour of his death, but that this ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... The Act of Supremacy, the spread of Protestantism, the power of the Pope, the state of England—all were discussed; and the possibilities of the future, as each party painted it in the colours of his hopes. The brethren, we find, spoke their minds in plain language, sometimes condescending to a joke. ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... brother. English Clay is not ostentatious of that which is his own, but he is disdainful of all that belongs to another. The slightest deficiency in the appointments of his companions he sees, and marks by a wink to some bystander, or with a dry joke laughs the wretch to scorn. In company he delights to sit by silent and snug, sneering inwardly at those who are entertaining the company, and committing themselves. He never entertains, and is seldom ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... house's this! Something may come of that deed yet. Give it to Draxy; I'm sure she's earned it, if there's anything to it. Put it away for your dowry, dear," and he snatched the paper from Reuben's hands and tossed it into Draxy's lap. He did not believe what he said, and the attempt at a joke brought but a faint smile to any face. The paper fell on the floor, and Draxy let it lie there till she thought her father was looking another way, when she picked it up and put ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... A story was told how a couple of young, dashing French flying officers met the Queen on the beach one day but, not recognising her, started a conversation. She, seeing the possibility of a good joke, invited them to her home, and they gleefully accepted. Picture their consternation when they were presented to the King! Altogether we spent an extremely pleasant fortnight in this place, and it was by way of a study in contrasts that October 20th found us installed ...
— The Seventh Manchesters - July 1916 to March 1919 • S. J. Wilson
... always makes a change. I've known her, after being very quiet, and hardly having any thing to say, though in the midst of young company, grow all at once as merry as a cricket, and laugh and joke in a wild sort of way. And again, when she has been in one of her old, pleasant states of mind I have noticed that she all at once drew back into herself; I could trace the cause to only this—the presence of Henry Wallingford. But this doesn't often happen, ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur
... the real thing (with a woman). It may also mean "by his incitement of me." All this scene is written in the worst form of Persian-Egyptian blackguardism, and forms a curious anthropological study. The "black joke" of the true and modest wife ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... head of the table, could be so cheerfully absorbed in the day's news and the Maryland biscuit, and that Mrs. Saunders, pottering over her begonias, could show so radiant a face over the blossoming of the double white, that Emily, at the telephone could laugh and joke. ...
— Saturday's Child • Kathleen Norris
... Genesis gives an explanation of the diversity of languages on the earth. It does this in the truest spirit of romance. Philologists like Max Mueller and Whitney must regard the story of the Tower of Babel, and the confusion of tongues, as a capital joke. A great many parsons may still believe it, but they are ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote
... courses were parallel, she being bound for London, while we were from thence, we gradually neared, when an amusing conversation by signals took place. Our captain, by mistake of the signaller, invited the Yankee captain to dinner, and the reply from the American, who good-naturedly took it as a joke, was "Bad roadstead here." Our captain thought they were chaffing him, and had not the mistake been discovered in time, the rencontre might not have ended as pleasantly as it did. Our captain and second ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... was fond of a joke, laughed, and desired to be shown the proposed site. On inspecting it, he highly approved of ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... on to make mention of divers interviews between the crew and the natives in the voyage up the river; but as they would be impertinent to my history, I shall pass over them in silence, except the following dry joke, played off by the old commodore and his schoolfellow Robert Juet, which does such vast credit to their experimental philosophy that I cannot refrain from inserting it. "Our master and his mate determined to try some of the chiefe men of the countrey whether they had ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... the Colonel, looking severely at his nephew, 'am I to understand that you married this girl without undeceiving her as to the children's, or rather Miss Rylance's, most ill-judged practical joke—that you stood before the altar in God's House, the temple of truth and holiness, and won her by ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... said, 'nobody cares; don't you look for that. Why should they? Why, you look as if you were sorry for me! What a joke!' he murmured to himself,—'what a joke! Sorry for some one else! What a fool ...
— The Little Pilgrim: Further Experiences. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... uno, alterum per dies plures, nullo alio quam organorum sexus vinculo sibi adstrictum, amicae suae corpus sursum et deorsum trahentem, mirantes vidimus!—Spanish flies, you exclaim!—as if he had not taken a dose of his own powder; but after the joke is over, we think this is another poser for the advocates of insect intelligence. We found that if either of two insects was destroyed in coition, that state was not interrupted for two or three days. The insects on which are observed this remarkable circumstance, were the Cantharis ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... saw-mill, who had all the industry, saving propensities, and superstitions of his ancestry. He was a firm believer in spells, second-sights, and ghosts. Taking advantage of these superstitions, my brother and myself made him the sufferer in many a practical joke. Upon one occasion, we put into circulation, in the neighborhood, a story full of wonder. A remarkable spectre had been seen near the mill on dark nights, and especially on those misty nights of murky gloom, common ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... Signor Mask, are pleased to joke with the unhappy child of a luckless race. That I might have been above want—nay, that I am not downright needy, may be true; but when they speak of a thousand ducats, they speak of affairs too weighty for my burdened shoulders. Were it your pleasure to purchase an amethyst or a ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... about it,' he said. 'It was rather a close shave, with only one man to do it all. But, there, I managed somehow, and perhaps it was just as well you weren't there. The first rush was no joke, ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... rumour puts the number at 2000. I heard at dinner that eighty had come in. Mention was laughingly made of "the lost regiment". I could not imagine at the time that we had lost a regiment and thought it was a joke of the General's, but to-day I find that a whole battalion of K.O.S.B.'s are amissing. Those must be prisoners in the hands of the Turks. They had lost so heavily before that they could not have been at anything like full strength. The curious thing is the officers ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... "What a capital joke!" shouted his listeners, and amid roars of laughter, claimed the bet of fish, and wine. It was duly paid; but Tokutaro never allowed his hair to grow again, and renounced the world, and became a priest ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... for if he had referred to it, Peter would have been obliged to turn it into a joke. As it was, they smoked on in understanding silence. Finally ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... pleading a case, Claudius grew vexed and ordered that he be cast into the Tiber, near the banks of which he chanced to be holding court. Domitius Afer, who as an advocate had the greatest ability of his contemporaries, made a very neat joke on this. A man whom Gallicus had disappointed came to Domitius for assistance, whereupon the latter said to him: "And who told you I could ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... very simple," replied the other. "Hitherto it was the ruin of a joke that people did not see it. Now it is the sublime victory of a joke that people do not see it. Humour, my friends, is the one sanctity remaining to mankind. It is the one thing you are thoroughly afraid of. Look ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... window, and went back to find the doctor and Helen all smiles, and ready to joke instead of scold. Then he went to the piano, and turned over the music, the airs and songs making him feel more and more sad, and again and again he ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... self-expression. She laughed from her heart. But her laughter was a little different. It sat by itself, an elfish thing, with a touch of seriousness about it, its arms hugging its knees, and looked beyond them all and saw how much bigger and finer the joke was than they thought it. She was the spirit of their good humour. They could ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... a living for forty years and has sent two sons through college from the Democrat, and the effort has taken the fight out of him. I never saw him resent a joke but once. That was when Pelty Amthorne told him that his wife considered the Democrat to be the best paper she had ever seen. He let Ayers burst a couple of buttons from his vest in his swelling pride before he explained that the Democrat, when cut in two, exactly ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... glass of wine?" he asked mockingly. The glass that he was about to put to his lips he offered in a joke to the donkey. Palikare, taking the offer seriously, came a step nearer and pushing out his lips to make them as thin and as long as possible, drank a good half of the glass which had been ...
— Nobody's Girl - (En Famille) • Hector Malot
... "You must not joke, my children," said the Father; "this is a very sad business. I am thankful it has taken place in the absence of your dear Mother, and I forbid you writing her anything about it. This must concern me, and ...
— Fanny, the Flower-Girl • Selina Bunbury
... proceed," without any reference to the sea. (The exx. are from Forc.) This passage I believe and this alone is referred to in Ad Att. XIII. 21, 3. If my conjecture is correct, Cic. tried at first to manage a joke by using the word inhibendum, which had also a nautical signification, but finding that he had mistaken the meaning of the word, ...
— Academica • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... final adjustment. He sniffed a firebug from afar, and knew without asking how much salvage there was in a bale of cotton after being twenty-four hours in the fire. He is dead, poor fellow. In life he was fond of a joke, and in death the joke clung to him in a way wholly unforeseen. The firemen in the next block, with whom he made his headquarters when off duty, so that he might always be within hearing of the gong, wished to give some tangible evidence of their regard for the ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... dinner tables, clubs, etc.—"little jokes" of which every point in his discourse continually reminded him, though his hearers could not always perceive the association of ideas. This gentleman was very facetious over family jars, which reminded him of a "little joke," which he told; he was also very witty upon the subject of matrimonial disputes in particular, which reminded him of another "little joke," which he also told; but most of all, he was amused at ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... and brooding away in the city." The lad's bright, clear eyes looked frankly into the captain's as he continued. "I have been making a fool of myself, Captain. Got into some mischief with a crowd of fellows at school. Of course, I got caught and had to bear the whole blame for the silly joke we had played. The faculty has suspended me for a term. I would have got off with only a reprimand if I would have told the names of the other fellows, but I couldn't ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... comment, to his jeweler, who gave 9,600 francs for the stone, but the King returned the money, and kept the gem as a curiosity. Probably it was not the original stone, but another cut in the same fashion, Saint- Germain sacrificing 3,000 or 4,000 francs to his practical joke. He also said that he could increase the size of pearls, which he could have proved very easily—in the same manner. He would not oblige Madame de Pompadour by giving the King an elixir of life: "I should be mad if I gave the King a drug." There seems to be a reference ...
— The Lock and Key Library/Real Life #2 • Julian Hawthorne
... pluck of those who are endeavoring to work out for themselves a new revolution. They sympathize with the South from strong dislike to the aggression, the braggadocio, and the insolence they have felt upon their own borders. They dislike Mr. Seward's weak and vulgar joke with the Duke of Newcastle. They dislike Mr. Everett's flattering hints to his countrymen as to the one nation that is to occupy the whole continent. They dislike the Monroe doctrine. They wonder at the meekness with which ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... near, fell back of a sudden, awestruck, as she herself here tells us, by her words and bearing. The danger was averted, and Catherine had met one of the disappointments of her life. [Footnote: As she herself expresses it, "The Eternal Bridegroom played a great joke on me."] There is an almost childlike simplicity in her account of the inner side of the experience. Nothing could be more genuine than her grief that the crown of martyrdom was not granted her—few things more lovely than her confiding account of the fine joys which the mere ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... coon in the tree, when he saw Colonel Crockett taking aim at him," added Frank: "says the coon, 'Don't shoot! If it's you, colonel, I'll come down!' And I tell ye," cried the boy, enthusiastically, "there's something besides a joke in it. Jeff'll be glad to come down out of his tree, before we hang him ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... you girls!" Will commanded, good-naturedly. "The man in there says we have just exactly five minutes to catch that joke steamer for the island, and if he is right, we've got to hustle. Sling over that bag, ...
— The Outdoor Girls on Pine Island - Or, A Cave and What It Contained • Laura Lee Hope
... forward to the trip for several years. My cousin Kate and I had always corresponded since they had "gone west" ten years before; and Kate, who revelled in the western life, had sung the praises of her adopted land rapturously and constantly. It was quite a joke on her that, when I did finally come to visit her, I should have struck the wettest autumn ever recorded in the history of the west. A wet September in Saskatchewan is no joke, however. The country was almost "flooded out." The trails soon became nearly impassable. All ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1909 to 1922 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Gobang; but we called him Strike, because he was always asking for more pay. Hare Ware was a poacher and used to catch Welsh rabbits in a trap; we called him 'Hardware' because he had so much steal about him. Good joke, wasn't it?" ...
— Davy and The Goblin - What Followed Reading 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' • Charles E. Carryl
... 'tis a joke, that cry— Foolish and dull and small: He so bores them for votes that they mean to imply He's a ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... are hardly any signs in his Book. His almost solitary joke (I know but one more, and it pertains to the [Greek: ouk anaekonta]) occurs in speaking of the Kaan's paper-money when he observes that Kublai might be said to have the true Philosopher's Stone, for he made his money at pleasure ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... the rounds to the effect that a music-hall comedian has confessed that he has never made a joke about the Mess in Mesopotamia. It is feared that the recent hot weather has affected the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, July 25, 1917 • Various
... jokes her joke, an' cracks her crack, As spunkie as a growin' flea; An' there she sits upon my back A livin' perpetuity. She hurkles by her ingle side, An' toasts an' tans her wrinkled hide; Lord kens how lang she yet may bide To ca' ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
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