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More "Joke" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had the run of his stables and many a reckless ride have we enjoyed together. I was fond of all sports which were spiced with danger, and particularly of hunting. But there was no sport I loved so well as a practical joke, no game that for me had so delicious a flavour as the teasing of my friends and especially the more serious and dignified—though such pranks have frequently cost me dear. From the multitude of which I have been guilty I recall one which had different consequences ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... stirred inwardly with her dearness and that she did look 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; and to conceive ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... caught his, a smile widened his mouth as if some one had made a joke; but I was beginning to sink, and indeed my head was almost under water just as he came and stood above me, but before it went quite under, I saw his spear gleam, then felt it in my shoulder, and for the present, felt ...
— The Hollow Land • William Morris
... portion be put into a separate vessel. I was really frightened for fear she would do as she proposed, as I knew her fondness for pleasantries of this sort, and also, that so far from being taken as a joke, it would bring down upon us a storm of wrath. We were surprised at the smallness of the saucers containing the fruit. Certainly the contents of as many as four or five could have been put into a pint. Then the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... poets, authors, and artists; and Moliere, both author and actor, was a great favorite with him, and appears to have been the only man of his profession who was ever admitted to the honor of dining with the king. Though Louis was not known to make a joke himself, he greatly enjoyed the witty conversation of Moliere, who is commemorated in Paris by a fountain ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... but last night that our curate rode over from Lyons (he made two days of it, as you may suppose) and supped with me. He told me that Jack had got his old friend hanged and burned. I could not join him in the joke, for I find none such in the New Testament, on which he would have founded it; and, if it is one, it is not in my manner or to ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... steamer was delighted with him; they pointed out the joke to one another, and roared with laughter, until he grew quite ashamed to sit up any more. Some teased him by pretending to give him something, and then eating it themselves; some seemed almost sorry ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... the village to have somebody come out and fix my car," he said shortly, "and then tell me if this telegram is a joke or not." ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... pleasant. She worshipped Marfa Timofeevna, who loved her dearly, although she teased her greatly about her susceptible heart. Nastasia Carpovna had a weakness for all young men, and never could help blushing like a girl at the most innocent joke. Her whole property consisted of twelve hundred paper roubles.[A] She lived at Marfa Timofeevna's expense, but on a footing of perfect equality with her. Marfa Timofeevna could not have ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... 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
... liberality, that is, the habit of disputing questions and judging persons on their merits, with due allowance for that never wholly negligible possibility that the other man is right. Among those who are united by this spirit, there is one joke that is an unfailing touchstone and bond of union—the institution of lese-majeste. It is a matter for unquenchable laughter, {166} that superiority should require to be protected against inferiority by the enforced signs of respect, or by a ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... in her life than most women, and ought to feel scourged and sad, she did cry out with such feeling sometimes,—but with a keen, natural relish for apple-butter parings, or fair-days, or a neighbor dropping in to tea, or anything that would give the children and herself a chance to joke and laugh, and be like other people again. Between the two feelings, her temper was odd and uncertain enough. But in this December air, now, her still rounded cheek grew red, her breast heaved, her eyes sparkled, glad as a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... something on his back, 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 off and ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... bruja f. witch. brutal adj. brutal. Bruto pr. n. m. Brutus. bueno, -a good, fine, pleasant. buja f. candle, taper. bulto m. dim form. bulla f. bustle, throng, noise. bullicio m. tumult, bustle. bullidor, -a restless, merry. burla f. joke. buscar seek, hunt, look for. buscarruidos m. quarrelsome fellow. caballeresco, -a gentlemanly. caballero m. knight, gentleman, nobleman, sir; mal ——! scoundrel! caballo m. horse, steed, figure on horseback in Spanish pack of cards, equivalent to the queen; ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... the doctor, as if to say, "You've been long enough about it." Then he conferred a moment with his assistant, who listened with great outward deference but was inwardly rejoicing at the grand joke he would have to tell his fellow students. He had actually seen a tear in "old ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... He can pity the stupidity which does not perceive that it is cheated and betrayed; but penetration allied to indifference awakens his wondering contempt. "If you think it amusing to be imposed on," an Englishwoman once said to me, "you need never be at a loss for a joke." ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... of the way. Consequently Morgan and Mrs. Spaulding were constantly together during the ensuing ten days, and so skilfully did I behave that the innocent pair regarded the flirtation which I was carrying on as a superb joke—a case of a banterer caught in the toils, and Mrs. Spinney's manners suggested that ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... with your blankets, men," to our gunners and the infantry behind, and in an instant the chosen sons of Cork were bounding out of their lines and down the hill, and belabouring the fire with blankets and ground-sheets and sacks. They seemed to think it a fine joke, and raised a paean of triumph when it was got under. "Wan more victory," I ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... A friend tells me that the idea of absolute Fate in The Nights makes her feel as if the world were a jail. [FN244] In the Book of Sindibad this is the Story of the Sandal-wood Merchant and the Advice of the Blind Old Man. Mr. Clouston (p. 163) quotes a Talmudic joke which is akin to the Shaykh's advice and a reply of Tyl Eulenspiegel, the arch-rogue, which has also a ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... used and abused, that they may in some measure be considered as the common stock of Comedy. Such is the scene in the Malade Imaginaire, where the wife's love is put to the test by the supposed death of the husband—an old joke, which our Hans Sachs has handled drolly enough. [Footnote: I know not whether it has been already remarked, that the idea on which the Mariage Forc is founded is borrowed from Rabelais; who makes Panurge enter upon the very same consultation ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... this, you may put on whate'er You like by way of doublet, cape, or cloak, Such as in Monmouth-street, or in Rag Fair, Would rig you out in seriousness or joke; And even in Italy such places are, With prettier name in softer accents spoke, For, bating Covent Garden, I can hit on No place that's called "Piazza" ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... years and reaches its deepest significance just at the time when you can hardly, if at all, regain your hold upon your child, once you have lost it. It does not matter much who disillusions your child about Santa Claus. The disappointment is brief, and soon the child can look upon the legend as a joke. But it does matter very much who tells your child that the stork story is all a lie, and how he ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... 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 by ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... coronation crown, and gossip adds that she fears to have it duplicated by some enterprising American. It is doubtful if the peculiar humor of the British populace would allow of a full appreciation of this joke. Years and etiquette combined have led her Majesty to the thraldom of the rouge and enamel pot. Like the sensible woman that she is she attempts no concealment of the fact that she protects herself ...
— The Onlooker, Volume 1, Part 2 • Various
... part, Captain Frere. A capital joke, I have no doubt; but permit me to say I do not like jesting on such matters. This poor fellow's letter to his aged father to be made the subject of heartless merriment, I confess I do not understand. It was confided to me in my sacred character as ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... article was probably intended as a harmless joke; and the persons indicated, had they been wise, might have joined in the laugh or treated the matter with indifference. On the contrary, however, they felt profoundly indignant, and some of them commenced actions in the Court of Session for ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... substance, it presented the Transvaalers with all territory north of the Vaal river; the Free Staters with the Cape Colony; and the British with—the sea! The Colonel read and appreciated the excellence of the joke, but thought it politic to give people who lacked a sense of humour a little illumination. He, accordingly, issued a counter-proclamation which made the "point" of the other clear: it was not to be taken seriously. The British element, ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... a stinging blow. A weak-eyed little scholar on the next bench ventures a modest titter, at which the assistant makes a significant motion with his ruler,—on the seat, as it were, of an imaginary pair of pantaloons,—which renders the weak-eyed boy on a sudden very insensible to the recent joke. ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... England, said they who scoff at our own laws, there wouldn't be any foolishness about the business: the woman would be buried in quick-lime before you could know what you were talking about. The law in this country is a joke, said they, with great irritability. Why can't we do the business up, sharp and quick, as they do in England? Get it over with, that's the ticket. What's the sense of dragging it out for a year? Send 'em to the chair or hang 'em while everybody's interested, ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... a maid whose accents mild, And words of sober sense, Declare her woman more than child, Yet mark her innocence. But I've heard her repeating the quip or the joke, While merriment shone in her eyes as she spoke, As, with skill that is seldom excelled on the stage, She worthily mimicked ...
— The Song of the Exile—A Canadian Epic • Wilfred S. Skeats
... through his mind like a silly chant since the first moment he had seen Nate Schirmer in the library. Poor Paul. Dan did all right for himself, he did—made quite a name down in Washington, you know, a fighter, a real fighter. The Boy with the Golden Touch (joke, son, laugh now). Everything he ever did worked out with him on top, somehow. Paul was different. Smart enough, plenty of the old gazoo, but he never had Dan's drive. Bad breaks, right down the line. Kinda tough on a guy, with a comet like Dan ...
— Martyr • Alan Edward Nourse
... truth, Major John Ross and the military men with whom Ned conferred at Manila treated the employment of the boy by the authorities at Washington as a good deal of a joke, as a whim. They were not discourteous to Ned, but they took no interest in his suggestions. For some hours after his departure, his employment on the case was the subject of many ...
— Boy Scouts in the Philippines - Or, The Key to the Treaty Box • G. Harvey Ralphson
... asked, that it was necessary to set up a Synod in her, to be "guided by the Holy Ghost sent in a cloak-bag from Scotland"? The author of this profanity, according to Prynne, was a pamphleteer named Henry Robinson. It was, in fact, an old joke, originally applied to one of the Councils of the Catholic Church; and Robinson had stolen it. [Footnote: Prynne's Fresh Discovery, p.27 and p.9; ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... "And, by the way, colonel, let him have on hour's sleep now and again,"—a little joke at which the group of officers, knowing the Englishman's ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... precipitous cliffs or impenetrable thickets. There were no barren hilltops after the first twenty miles. Occasionally we would stop, climb a tree, and try to get a view. But climbing a conifer whose boughs are heavily laden with ice and snow is no joke, and gave very meagre returns. At last, however, we struck a high divide, and from an island in the centre of a lake, occupied only by two lone fir trees, we got a view both ways, showing the Cloudy Hills which towered over the south side of the bay ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... her fast, Maurice advanced upon her, she struggled, and gave a scream of real terror. The matter was no joke to any one but Reginald, for Maurice was very angry and ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a Wells of Boston, and endured Lake George now and then during the summer for her husband's sake, although she regarded it all as rather a joke. This summer promised to be unusually lonesome for her, and she was meditating a retreat to the Massachusetts north shore when she chanced to meet Mary Taylor, at a miscellaneous dinner, and found her interesting. She discovered ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... down," Scaife said, "and during the first school the maids make them, and shut them up again. It is considered a joke to crawl into another fellow's room at night, and shut him up. You find yourself standing upon your head in the dark, choking. It is a joke—for the ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... shipwrights dropping mallet and tar-pot; the ferrymen resting on their oars; the makers of ship's biscuit rushing out, with aprons flying, to see the sight; the butcher, the baker, the candle-stick maker—each and all agog. Then imagine the Olympian mirth that ran along the waterside when Troy saw the joke, and, hand on hip, ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... was to frighten me; all of the girls told me not to leave it there. But I—I cannot make them give it back, and papa is so particular about this jewel that I'm afraid to go home. Won't you tell them it's no joke, and see that I get it again. I won't ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... Jack could joke under almost any serious conditions; but Tom felt relieved to know the worst. They were at the time back again in their ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach
... 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
... "'Joke? no; them Apaches was as hostile as Gila monsters! But beholdin' me, as they regyards it—for they don't in their ontaught simplicity make allowance for me bein' implanted in the snow, gunless an' he'pless—so brave, awaitin' deestruction without ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... have said, a great philosopher, and the heart and mystery of his philosophy was, to look upon the world as a gigantic practical joke; as something too absurd to be considered seriously, by any rational man. His system of belief had been, in the beginning, part and parcel of the battle-ground on which he lived, as ...
— The Battle of Life • Charles Dickens
... spoke materially, with argument and knowledge, but never pleased. Why? His diction was not only inelegant, but frequently ungrammatical, always vulgar; his cadences false, his voice unharmonious, and his action ungraceful. Nobody heard him with patience; and the young fellows used to joke upon him, and repeat his inaccuracies. The late Duke of Argyle, though the weakest reasoner, was the most pleasing speaker I ever knew in my life. He charmed, he warmed, he forcibly ravished the audience; not by his matter certainly, but by his manner of ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... Alas! they mingled the two—now as I write it down I wonder if perhaps they did it on purpose, on the principle that drug stores now put a dash of carbolic in our 95 per cent alcohol. In which case, of course, the joke is on me. ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... just the place for me; it suits me in all sorts of ways, and I have a mind to tell you of a most capital joke connected with it. It is too good a thing to keep to myself any longer, and now that I know you so well, I am perfectly willing to trust you. Would you believe it? I know the Rockmores of Germantown. I know them very well, and ...
— The Squirrel Inn • Frank R. Stockton
... 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
... so funny?" asked the Calico Clown. "I didn't tell a joke or ask a riddle, did I?" For that is what he sometimes did to make the toys in ...
— The Story of a Bold Tin Soldier • Laura Lee Hope
... easy to 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. ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... anticipations were realized. Poor innocent Mr. Engelman was dressed with extraordinary smartness, and was in the highest good spirits. Mr. Keller asked him jestingly if he was going to be married. In the intoxication of happiness that possessed him, he was quite reckless; he actually retorted by a joke on the sore subject of the employment of women! "Who knows what may happen," he cried gaily, "when we have young ladies in the office for clerks?" Mr. Keller was so angry that he kept silence through the whole of our meal. When Mr. ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... Durwent dreamily, 'he would. . . . So old Malcolm is dead. . . . Somehow, I always looked on his soldiering as a joke. I never thought that those fellows in the Regulars would ever really go to war. . . . Yet, when the time came, he was ready, and I was skulking off to China like a thief ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... see how you're going to satisfy him that it was all a joke. Joke? It WASN'T a joke! It was a real assault and a bona fide robbery, ...
— The Garotters • William D. Howells
... discovered a joke. I was salted on the 'See Saw' property. Our pipe dream is defunct. Have gone over to lay out remains. If you find any oldtimers who have just discovered some lost bonanza, take them into camp. Don't get drunk, get busy. Be back ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... were exceptionally favorable to the success of the Tedworth hoax. In all likelihood the children had nothing to do with the first alarm, the alarm that occurred during Mompesson's absence in London; and possibly the second was only a rude practical joke by some village lads who had heard of the first and wished to put the Squire's courage to a test. But once the little Mompessons learned, or suspected, that their father associated the noises with the vagrant drummer, a wide vista of enjoyment would open before their mischief-loving ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... in office buildings. And we never see children in New York because the janitors won't let the women who live in elevators have children! Don't talk to me! New York's a Little Nemo nightmare. It's a joke. ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... you out of the building by a private passage, take you through into the Rue de la Harpe, and let you escape. Your coachman will remain waiting for you at the door until you have traversed half Paris. That will be a capital point to the joke,—a splendid finale ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... existed through centuries gone by. It is traditionary, not actual. If decrepit and melancholy Rome smiles, and laughs broadly, indeed, at carnival time, it is not in the old simplicity of real mirth, but with a half-conscious effort, like our self-deceptive pretence of jollity at a threadbare joke. Whatever it may once have been, it is now but a narrow stream of merriment, noisy of set purpose, running along the middle of the Corso, through the solemn heart of the decayed city, without extending its shallow influence on either side. Nor, even within ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... received consideration, or perhaps, to put it more correctly, condemnation, at many councils, commencing at Constantinople, and coming down to the Provincial Council at Tours. The wig was not tolerated, even if worn as a joke. "There is no joke in the matter," said the enraged St Bernard: "the woman who wears a wig commits a mortal sin." St John Chrysostom pleaded powerfully against this enormity; and others might be mentioned who spoke with no uncertain ...
— At the Sign of the Barber's Pole - Studies In Hirsute History • William Andrews
... to live there. If you were married you might perhaps take it" This was of course said in joke, as old Mrs. Morton would have thought Bragton to be disgraced for ever, ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... shirks the world's right labour will rank with the unranked lowest. The music-hall and theatre and unjustified fiction will have had their day. The little man with a little gift, that should be no more than an evening's joke or pleasure after real work, will exist no more. But we live under the rule ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... I just passed the tin cups out through the window, and each time I called "one coffee" and slapped it down on the counter. I guess I'll be a waiter in Child's after I'm not a child any more—that's a joke. Anyway, it was lucky we had some Uneeda crackers; we needed them enough, ...
— Roy Blakeley's Camp on Wheels • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... well," he said, "to fight when you have some chance of hitting back, but to rush across ground swept by a couple of hundred guns is no joke; and to be potted at by thousands of fellows in shelter behind trenches. One knows what it was last time. The French send 12,000 men to attack a battery, we try to carry an equally strong place with 1000. If I were ordered, of course ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty
... he said eagerly, "I can hear Dan's whistlin' comin' back—nearer and nearer. Most like he was jest playin' a joke on ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... much annoyed at the tone Alice was giving to the conversation. She was treating him as a joke, and he felt how impossible it was going to be to get Mrs. Bethune to treat him seriously. Indeed, before he could restore the usual placid, tender tone of their tete-a-tete tea, two or three ladies joined the party, and the hour was ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... on and tell How all the joke at last leaked out, And how the youngsters raised the yell And rode the happy groom about Upon their shoulders; how the bride Was kissed a hunderd times beside The one I give her,—tel she cried And laughed untel she like to died! I might go on and tell you all About ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... with the grave mathematical look Made believe he had written a wonderful book, And the ROYAL SOCIETY thought it was true! So they chose him right in; a good joke it was, too! ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... of this country. I hear nothing now but mowing, browsing, and 'after-feed,' until at last I find myself using the latter word for 'dessert.' He says it prettily and acts it well, and although his wife has often listened to the same joke, she looks as if it would bear repetition, and her face expresses great pleasure. Poor Dechamps, if your place is worth nothing, she at least is a ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... prevalent in the sixteenth century, Sidney met with indifferent success. The wit depends on the ugliness, the perversity, and the clownish character of Dametas, his wife, and their daughter Mopsa. It partakes of the nature of the practical joke, and though it no doubt amused the courtiers of Elizabeth, is too clumsy for a more cultivated taste. But although Sidney's comic scenes may no longer amuse, it must be said that they are free from the low coarseness and ribaldry which have furnished merriment to times which pretended to a much ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... than yesterday's revolution. A mote in my eye is bigger to me than the biggest of Dr. Gould's private planets.—Every traveller is a self-taught entomologist.—Old jokes are dynamometers of mental tension; an old joke tells better among friends travelling than at home,—which shows that their minds are in a state of diminished, rather than increased vitality. There was a story about "strahps to your pahnts," which was vastly funny to us fellows—on the road from Milan to Venice.—Caelum, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... novel craft as the plans for the Monitor promised: "Well, Gentlemen, all I have to say is what the girl said when she put her foot into the stocking: 'It strikes me there's something in it.'" The army enjoyed the joke against the three-month captain whom Sherman threatened to shoot if he went home without leave. The same day Lincoln, visiting the camp, was harangued by this prospective deserter in presence of many another ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... marine mythology. Seal, sea-leopard, or sea-lion—whatever they may be—they cry with one voice night and day; and it is not a pleasant cry either, though a far one, they mouth so horribly. Long ago it inspired a wit to madness and he made a joke; the same old joke has been made by those who followed after him. It will continue to be made with impertinent impunity until the sea gives up its seals; for the temptation is there daily and hourly, and the humorist is but human—he can not long resist it; so he will buttonhole you ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... with sleeve-buttons to fasten them. These sleeve-buttons, which were a present from Cousin Helen, Clover liked best of all her things. Papa said that he was sure she took them to bed with her, but of course that was only a joke, though she certainly was never seen without them in the daytime. She glanced frequently at these beloved buttons as she sat sewing, and every now and then laid down her work to twist them into a better position, or give them an affectionate ...
— What Katy Did • Susan Coolidge
... "It was no joke, as you will find to your cost. You fool, you would have it and you have got it. Who asked you to cross my path? If you had left me alone I would not ...
— The Adventure of the Dying Detective • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Crown Point however he got guns. For many of the cannon taken at these forts were put on sledges and dragged over the snow to Boston. It was Colonel Henry Knox who carried out this feat. He was a stout young man with a lovely smile and jolly fat laugh, who greatly enjoyed a joke. He had been a bookseller before the war turned him into a soldier. And now as he felled trees, and made sledges, and encouraged his men over the long rough way he hugely enjoyed the joke of bringing British guns to bombard ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... 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 torn from ...
— Chancellorsville and Gettysburg - Campaigns of the Civil War - VI • Abner Doubleday
... to joke, Fred," said the doctor; "this place makes me feel solemn—the gentle calm of the oasis, the trickling of the water in this thirsty land, and the simple, patriarchal life of ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... so far as to propose seriously a new rendering of the Lord's Prayer. His famous proposal for a new version of the Bible, however, which Matthew Arnold solemnly held up to reprobation, was only a joke which Matthew Arnold did not see-the new version of Job being, in fact, a clever bit of political satire against party leadership in England. Even more brilliant examples of his skill in political satire are his imaginary "Edict of ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... from going in unto thee and the fatness of thy thighs hindereth him from coming at thy slit. What goodness is there in thy grossness, and what courtesy or pleasantness in thy coarseness? Fat flesh is fit for naught but the flasher, nor is there one point therein that pleadeth for praise. If one joke with thee, thou art angry; if one sport with thee, thou art sulky; if thou sleep, thou snorest if thou walk, thou lollest out thy tongue! if thou eat, thou art never filled. Thou art heavier than mountains and fouler than corruption ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... it's a great joke on me because I paid you five francs? Don't forget that it was raining and dark and you had that rubber cape pulled up over half your face, so it wasn't ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... hope so," Mark went on, not much encouraged, however, by Jack's philosophy. "It would be no joke to have to stay five hundred miles underground the rest of ...
— Five Thousand Miles Underground • Roy Rockwood
... of my smart friends trying to play a practical joke on my guest. I fooled him. Don't let it happen again, until you send ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... to see that any one of these so-called predictions was more than likely to be fulfilled under any circumstances, and that very probably the whole thing was written in the first place as a joke. Moreover, Marjory was not a Hunter by name, being the child of a daughter of the house and not of a son. Still, she took this saying to mean herself: she, Marjory Davidson, and no other, must be the dark-haired maiden ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... was too pointed to admit of a reply, but Mr. Plimpton was spared the attempt by the entrance of. Nelson Langmaid. The lawyer, as he greeted them, seemed to be preoccupied, nor did he seek to relieve the tension with his customary joke. A few moments of silence followed, when Eldon Parr was seen to be standing ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... of the territory with the strong hand. There was a British army-captain at the Mansion House; and an idea was thrown out that it would be as well to seize upon him as a hostage. I would, for the joke's sake, that it had been done. Personages at the tavern: the Governor, somewhat stared after as he walked through the bar-room; Councillors seated about, sitting on benches near the bar, or on the stoop along the front of the house; ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... "Dat is a good joke," said Van Graoul; "why, we thought you were de same. And I am not quite certain that he is not," he ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... thinking just then of the coins; or did he have some knowledge of the practical joke that had been ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... impending disaster. I cannot divide things easily; I am an indivisible man. But one night I went for a bicycle ride with my wife. She was a Bantam of delight, I can tell you, but she rode very badly. It was starlight, and I was attempting to explain the joke in the paper called, if I recollect aright, Punch. It was an extraordinarily sultry night, and I told her the names of all the stars she saw as she fell off her machine. She had a good bulk of falls. ...
— The War of the Wenuses • C. L. Graves and E. V. Lucas
... tempted to ask him as they walked through the woods. Why was it all over? Why shouldn't they go on being good friends and comrades? Couldn't he see that she had only tried to make a little joke to ease the strain? Didn't he know that she really had a wonderful admiration for his talents and a ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... know I'm speaking treason: For PETER, With many a joke, and queer conceit, doth season ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger
... "oh, heavens! do you speak the truth, monsieur? Are you not insulting me with some unworthy joke? You have accomplished this unheard-of act of ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... with their bundles under their arms, and the lord high-steward has a broom sweeping after them as they go. This charming individual in the corner with a hunting-whip, is myself. And here is the pith of the joke. 'Rooms to let here. Inquire of the proprietor on the first floor.' [Footnote: Hubner, i., p. 190.] What do you think ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... Their orders were not to fire, but to club the enemy with the butt if they stood. The orders were now repeated. Then some inspired genius (Major Carey-Davis [? Karri Davis], of the I.L.H., it is said) raised the cry: "Fix bayonets. Give 'em cold steel, my lads." All appreciated the joke, and the shout rang down the line, as the men rose up and rushed to the summit. Four bayonets were actually present, but I am not sure whether ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson
... the responsibility of feeding fourteen hungry people you wouldn't make a joke of it," said Norah. "It's very solemn, especially when ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... wits and authors innumerable have made themselves and the public more or less merry at the expense of the earlier efforts of the student of a strange tongue; but it has been reserved to our own time for a soi disant instructor to perpetrate—at his own expense—the monstrous joke of publishing a Guide to Conversation in a language of which it is only too evident that every word is utterly strange to him. The Teutonic sage who evolved the ideal portrait of an elephant from his "inner consciousness" was a commonplace, matter-of fact person compared ...
— English as she is spoke - or, A jest in sober earnest • Jose da Fonseca
... an Italian prince could furnish. His very name betokened good cheer, and was pronounced after the manner of the pert waiters who complacently enunciate a few words of English. Bif-steck was a privileged dog; and though occasionally made the subject of a practical joke, taught absurd tricks, sent on fools' errands, and his white coat painted like a zebra, these were but casual troubles; he was a sensible dog to despise them, when he could enjoy such quaint companionship, behold such experiments in color and drawing, serve as a model himself, and go on delicious ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... claret. As he sat eating he kept reading a letter over and over, and each time he read he grinned —he did not smile like a well-behaved man of the world, he did not giggle like a well-veneered Egyptian back from Paris, he chuckled like a cabman responding to a liberal fare and a good joke. A more unconventional little man never lived. Simplicity was his very life, and yet he had a gift for following the sinuosities of the Oriental mind; he had a quality almost clairvoyant, which came, perhaps, from his Irish forebears. The cross-strain of English blood had done him good ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... with pretty impudence. "You were bundled back to Scotland almost before daylight. Lord Coombe knew about it. We laughed immensely together. It was a great joke because Robin fainted and fell into the mud, or something of the sort, when you didn't turn up the next morning. She almost pined away and died of grief, tiresome little thing! I told you Eileen was preparing to assault. Here she is! Hordes of girls will now advance upon you. So glad ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... you are very witty; in fact to joke about such a thing as that is miserably stupid. I am sorry that you said that; for you did something that is bad for you if you realize it, and bad for you if you don't realize it. You talk about riding away, and think that I am to cry to amuse you. Do you imagine, perhaps, that because you have ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... his own town of Pogis, in the part of Gripe, when I was not full seventeen years of age; and he did not know me again, but he knew me afterwards; and then he laughed, and I laughed, and, what is better, the dry-salter laughed, and gave me up my articles for the joke's sake: so that I came into court afterwards with clean hands,—with clean hands; ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... steep that even the interpreter was forced to walk. As I toiled wearily upward, I looked back to find my dog riding comfortably in my chair. Tired and hot, he had barked to be taken up. The coolies thought it a fine joke, and when I whistled him down they at once put him back again, explaining that it was hard work for short legs. At one of the worst bits of the trail we met some finely dressed men on horseback, who stared in ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... after, six young people strolled up Chapel Hill in the moonlight, talking gayly of the happy days they had spent together with Mrs. Gray; for Richards, the burglar, seemed now a sort of joke to them, and even the terrible recollection of the wolves was softened by time, and they could only laugh at poor Hippy's plight when his breath gave out and his legs refused ...
— Grace Harlowe's Plebe Year at High School - The Merry Doings of the Oakdale Freshmen Girls • Jessie Graham Flower
... no harm! It was all a—a joke. I didn't dream she'd take it so seriously. I picked it up in her yard, and meant to ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... all laughed exceedingly, as though the most splendid joke had been made, and before we had done we were out of the village and in the open country beyond, and could see my house and garden far away behind, glittering in the sunshine; and in front of us lay the forest, with ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... work; but, unaccustomed to country usages, especially those pertaining to schools and teachers, he did not consider that it mattered which examined that young girl, himself or Dr. Holbrook. Viewing it somewhat in the light of a joke, he rather enjoyed it; and as the Framingham teacher had first asked her pupils their names and ages, so he, when the pencil was sharpened sufficiently, startled Madeline ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... going to church," 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 ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... (1) Cicero's joke on a senator who was the son of a tailor: "Thou hast touched the thing sharply" (or ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... or a good joke on nearly every page. The studies of character are carefully finished, and linger in ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... than her fellow-prisoners. A centurion, carrying his vinewood cudgel, trudges alongside the squad, on its right, in command of it. All are tired and dusty; but the soldiers are dogged and indifferent, the Christians light-hearted and determined to treat their hardships as a joke and ...
— Androcles and the Lion • George Bernard Shaw
... (says the Admiral) "that these people are without any religion, not idolaters, but very gentle, not knowing what is evil, nor the sins of murder and theft, being without arms, and so timid that a hundred would fly before one Spaniard, although they joke with them.[144-1] They, however, believe and know that there is a God in heaven and say that we have come from Heaven. At any prayer that we say, they repeat, and make the sign of the cross. Thus your Highnesses should resolve to make them Christians, for I believe that, if the ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... "A poor joke! No; the thief got alarmed, and took that way of returning it. I suggested to Jones that the handwriting on the envelope might furnish a clew to ...
— Five Hundred Dollars - or, Jacob Marlowe's Secret • Horatio Alger
... could but feel that she had been mistaken. It was only a foolish joke that had meant nothing, and her heart grew hot within her. How could she have been so weak and silly as to have imagined such a thing? She put the envelope and its contents away, and, saddened and subdued, fought bravely to return ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... existed a real distinct objective entity, "its soporific virtue," he would be open to ridicule indeed. But the constitution of our minds is such that we cannot but distinguish ideally a thing from its even essential attributes and qualities. The joke is sufficiently amusing, however, regarded as the solemn enunciation of ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... scouts and skirmishes that the four—Harry and Chad, and Caleb Hazel and Yankee Jake Dillon, whose dog-like devotion to Chad soon became a regimental joke—became known, not only among their own men, but among their enemies, as the shrewdest and most daring scouts in the Federal service. Every Morgan's man came to know the name of Chad Buford; but it was not until Shiloh that Chad got ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... mayest read in the third of Daniel," said Fox, "that the three children were cast into the fiery furnace, by Nebuchadnezzar's command, with their coats, their hose, and their hats on." Glynne, though he had lost his joke, and though Fox put him further out of temper by distributing among the jurymen a paper against swearing, did not behave badly on the whole, and the issue was the simple recommitment of Fox and ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... that it is to be played in the spirit of parody (parodistisch). Unfortunately the audience cannot see the printed direction, and there is no parody in music except extravagance and ineptitude in the utterance of simple things (like the faulty notes of the horns in Mozart's joke on the village musicians, the cadenza for violin solo in the same musical joke, or the twangling of Beckmesser's lute); so the introduction is an honest musical description of things which the composer is not ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... to reality, as shadow to substance. It is perhaps characteristic of our wryly humorous American temperament that we should have invested the unimportant danger with all the shuddering attributes of horror, and have made of the real peril a joke to be perennially hailed with laughter in a ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... though honesty compels me to say that I laughed quite as much, or even more, at Mallet's jests than he did at mine. Still for the rhyme's sake (I have always sympathised with the rhymer's difficulties), it was necessary to put the joke on ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... He wanted to be a lawyer. He went home, dreamed of courts, and got up mock trials, at which he would defend imaginary prisoners. Several of his companions at this period of his life, as well as those who knew him after he went to Illinois, declare that he was often heard to say, not in joke, but seriously, as if he were deeply impressed rather than elated with the idea: 'I shall some day be President of the United States.' It is stated by many of Lincoln's old friends that he often said while still an obscure man, 'Some day I shall be ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... interested in bonefish. I never failed to ask questions. But bonefishermen were scarce and as reticent as scarce. To sum up all of my inquiries, I learned or heard a lot that left me completely bewildered, so that I had no idea whether a bonefish was a joke or the grandest fish that swims. I deducted from the amazing information that if a fisherman sat all day in the blazing sun and had the genius to discover when he had a bite he was learning. No one ever caught ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... knew that!" exclaimed Bunny. Then he laughed, as Wopsie did. It was a little joke on her, when Bunny answered her ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue at Aunt Lu's City Home • Laura Lee Hope
... were astonished at the number of costers, but old John told them that that was nothing to what it was fifty years ago. The year that Andover won the block began seven or eight miles from Epsom. They were often half-an-hour without moving. Such chaffing and laughing, the coster cracked his joke with the duke, but all that was done away ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... being then in favour with James, they got no answer, and Buchanan was commanded to repeat the castigation. Having found out that the friars were not to be touched with impunity, he wrote, he says, a short and ambiguous poem. But the king, who loved a joke, demanded something sharp and stinging, and Buchanan obeyed by writing, but not publishing, "The Franciscans," a long satire, compared to which the "Somnium" was bland and merciful. The storm rose. Cardinal Beaten, Buchanan says, wanted to buy him of the king, and then, of course, ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... and of the pantomime, pleasantest Christmas sight of all, with the pit a sea of grinning delight, the boxes a tier of beaming juvenility, the galleries, piled up to the far-receding roof, a mass of happy laughter which a clown's joke brings down in mighty avalanches. In the pit, sober people relax themselves, and suck oranges, and quaff ginger-pop; in the boxes, Miss, gazing through her curls, thinks the Fairy Prince the prettiest creature she ever ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... friends, two or three years older than Mr. Vivian, and four or five years older by her looks, and as she was peculiarly unsuited to his taste, he heard the report without the slightest apprehension for his own constancy to Selina. He laughed at the idea, as an excellent joke, when it was first mentioned to him by Russell. Lord Glistonbury's manners, however, and the cordial familiarity with which he treated Vivian, gave every day increasing credit to the report. "If he were his son, my lord could not be more anxious about Mr. Vivian," said ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... peremptory order to withdraw to a convent, giving her the power of selection. At first Anne intended to send her to the convent of Repentant Girls (Filles Repenties), but the celebrated Bauton, one of the Oiseaux des Tournelles, who loved a good joke as well as he did Ninon, told her that such a course would excite ridicule because Ninon was neither a girl nor a repentant (ni fille, ni repentie), for which reason, the order was changed leaving Ninon to her own choice of ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... stand this. "Sir," said he, starting up, "if this is a joke you have carried it far enough; and if you really detain me here a prisoner, every feeling of honour ought to deter you from ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... abroad for prey in great numbers. Their footmarks frequently cover the length and breadth of the wadys. Barth himself saw (very fortunately, for it is a sight seen by very few persons indeed) as many as five together. Monkeys also abound in great numbers. I related to En-Noor the anecdote, as a joke, of the monkey shaving the cat in Paris; but this he took seriously, for he observed, "That is nothing; I have seen the monkeys crack lice just like men." It is always a difficult matter to translate a joke to these people. Overweg has been out these last two days ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... under the name of William Howard Iff. That helped him a lot in his particular line of business. But after a while he felt that it cramped his style, so he just faded noiselessly away—retaining his credentials. Then—while I was in Paris last week—he thought it would be a grand joke to send me that document with his compliments and the suggestion that it might be some help to me in my campaign for his scalp. That's how I happened ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... no, doctor!" rippled out Miss Langham's voice, in willing accompaniment of the joke; "I'm sure ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... teacher here. The red-headed, cross-looking, fat woman at the second table is Miss White, who has classes in music and drawing. She is lots better than she looks. Miss Summers is the next teacher. People often mistake her for a pupil here. Isn't that a joke? She does look awfully young, but this is her fourth year at Ivy Hall. She is ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown
... to us that over there was the entrance to the West India Dock. We knew that place in another life. But should Charon joke with us? We saw only chaos, in which the beams from a reputed ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... had been leaning back in his chair in an effort to overhear their conversation, and at this announcement he broke into a broad guffaw, which ran around the table after he had related the cause of it to his guests. Indeed, so much did Sol relish the joke that with it he entertained the occupants of about a dozen seats in the smoking car of the 8:04 express the next morning, and he was so full of it when he entered Hammersmith's Restaurant the following noon that he could not forego the pleasure of ...
— Elkan Lubliner, American • Montague Glass
... insistently till she ignored all of the others and came directly to him. It became a matter of pride with her to take him into the streets where people would still look askance at the erstwhile "man-eater," and comment on her courage in handling the "brute." While she and the "brute" had the little joke between them, which she later confided to Ben, that Jack McMillan's misdemeanors were merely the result of an undisciplined nature handled unsympathetically, and that at heart he was ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... a joke, Mr. Fairfax. I have heard of such practical jokes before. You are testing my courage. I am not in the least frightened. Jump in the chaise again, and ...
— Only An Irish Boy - Andy Burke's Fortunes • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... you might expect to get on well with women. Unless with very intimate friends, he was a trifle silent and reserved. Often he was inclined to be pragmatic and sententious, and had a habit of saying unpleasantly bitter things when some careless joke was being made. He was a little dingy in appearance; and a man who had a somewhat cold manner, who was sallow of face, who was obviously getting gray, and who was generally insignificant in appearance, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... hadn't he? But it let the Judge out, just the same, for he just gave the circle behind him the the high sign and set the crowd to laughing for a minute or two, until the tension was relieved. I didn't laugh myself. There didn't seem to be much of a joke about it after seeing that boy's eyes. It was Bolton—Young Denny, they called him—and I got his story, their side of it at least, after he shut the door ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... 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 this display ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... words (Bresl. Edit.) would be spoken in jest, a grim joke enough, but showing the elation ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... extra tax will come out of the people in increased premiums"—and so on. I refused the money and continued trying to push along the bill. In a few days he came back to me, with a grin. "Too bad you didn't take that money," he said. "There's lots of it going round. But the joke of it is, I got the whole thing fixed up for $250. Watch Cannon." I watched Cannon—Wilbur F. Cannon, a member of the House and a "floor leader" there. He had already voted in favour of the bill. But—to anticipate somewhat the sequence of events—I saw Wilbur F. Cannon, in the confusion ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... ahead; so she trotted up alongside, but she could not get ahead. The young people were giggling. Mrs. O'Shaughnessy doesn't like to be the joke all the time. Suddenly she leaned over toward them and said: "Will ye tell me something?" Oh, yes, they would. "Then," she said, "which of you ...
— Letters on an Elk Hunt • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... a laugh at the grave manner in which this good old woman entered her protest. Her idea of freedom was two or more old shifts every year. Northern readers may not fully recognize the pith of the joke. On the Southern plantation, the mistress, according to established custom, every year made a present of certain under-garments to her slaves, which articles were always anxiously looked forward to, ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley
... madness by this unceremonious treatment, have been guilty of the insanity of printing their plays; and, though the "Rejected Addresses" were a very good squib, the rejected Dramas are much too ponderous a joke for the public to take; so that, while in their manuscript form, they always produced speedy returns from the managers, they, in their printed shape, caused no returns to the publishers. It is true, that a personal acquaintance of some of the authors with Nokes of the North Eastern ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 28, 1841 • Various
... his rein-deer robe with such extraordinary carefulness, that it excited the involuntary laughter of Mr. Hood and myself. The old man smiled in his turn, and as he always seemed proud of the familiar way in which we were accustomed to joke with him, we thought no more upon the subject. But he unfortunately mentioned the circumstance to his wife, who imagined in consequence, that the drug was not productive of its usual good effects, and ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin
... was the Fagin of a band of young literary Dodgers. He "positively trained his whole family to trade in forgery," and as for Mr. W. H. Ireland, he was "the most accomplished liar that ever lived," which is certainly a distinction in its way. The point of the joke is that, after the whole conspiracy exploded, people were anxious to buy examples of the forgeries. Mr. W. H. Ireland was equal to the occasion. He actually forged his own, or (according to Dr. Ingleby) his father's ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... "tables" was crushed. Sometimes—after the fashion of Haroun al Raschid, though not in disguise—he would steal down quietly and unperceived, through the out-of-the-way holes and corners of the immense castle, to see with his own eyes what the inhabitants of the remoter regions were about. Some dry joke, or some act of benevolence, according to circumstances, was sure to be the result. As he was one day poking through the passages, he suddenly encountered an enormously big, fat servant-woman, engaged in cleaning a stair. She was ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... But you can kiss me on the forehead, Fred. That can't do any harm. (His face crimson, he does so. She laughs hysterically.) It seems so silly—being kissed that way—by you. (She gulps back a sob and continued to attempt to joke.) I'll have to get used ...
— The Straw • Eugene O'Neill
... do not have the advantages nor the good manners that other children have. If it is not one thing it is another; whenever we are alone there is something to complain of, and her last complaint was about her own selfishness." Then he laughed at what he considered a good joke, and in five minutes had ...
— Nerves and Common Sense • Annie Payson Call
... must n't get mad about that. It was all a joke. I was comin' right up after court adjourned to tell you about it—and—. It was the funniest thing! You 'd 'a' died laughing if you ...
— The Sheriffs Bluff - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page
... Madam, tell Lord and Lady Holland what I say: they have heard these idle tales; and they know so many of my follies, that I should be sorry they believed more of me than are true. If all arose from madame Geoffrin calling me in Joke le nouveau Richelieu, I give it under my hand that I resemble him in ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... girl"—she pointed to Ida May, but did not look at her—"was not the right Miss Bostwick. I said that I was the girl he wanted to see. I made him think so. I tricked him. Don't listen to her!" she added wildly, as the enraged Ida May would have interposed. "Tunis thought she had talked to him just for a joke. I made him believe that. I—I would have done anything then to get away from the city and to come down here. Perhaps he was at fault because he did not take more time to find out about me—to be sure I was the right girl. But he cannot be blamed for anything else. I tell ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... sea and half air—going much faster than was proper, because there was no deep water for it to work in. As it sank again, the engines—and they were triple expansion, three cylinders in a row—snorted through all their three pistons. "Was that a joke, you fellow outside? It's an uncommonly poor one. How are we to do our work if you fly off the handle ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... moon, and rosy almost to purple. The bridegroom never smiled, and spoke with his jaws rather than his lips; while the bride seldom uttered a syllable without grinning from ear to ear, and displaying a marvellous appointment of huge and brilliant teeth. Entering solemnly into the joke, Tom expressed himself willing to marry the girl, but represented, as an insurmountable difficulty, that he had no clothes for the occasion. Thereupon the earl, drawing from his pocket his bunch of keys, ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... themselves sadly—they strike one note, like a minor poet, and live on the reputation of their first success. It is amusing for a few minutes to hear a clever bird giving imitations of the cuckoo clock, but the joke palls. The Archdeacon's Daughter has a wider repertoire. And so? though the nightingales are still singing, conversation springs up in the copse as if it were a drawing-room and the singers human. My host discourses of the litter of pigs just arrived from the Great ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... please Mrs. Brown very much, for she called it a great joke, and put her hands on her hips and laughed. Then she looked savage again, and said, she would keep the doll herself on nights when Biddy could not pay extra. She went off to her fruit stand, with her hands on her hips, laughing and muttering by turns. Biddy sat down with her doll. Now and then ...
— Harper's Young People, February 24, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... that wer' a nipper, that wer'!" he cried, with a grin on his face, as if the wound were rather a joke than otherwise. "But I'm jiggered if I don't pay out the joker ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... healthy," Peace reluctantly admitted; then as if divining a joke somewhere, she smiled serenely and continued her recital. "We looked through the parlor and library and dining-room and where you put company when they come, and then we came to the kitchen. We got there ahead of Gail all right, for Gussie was just making some pies and reading ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... he made no answer, and he went on, more as if speaking to himself than to her:—"We needn't consider what the village people say. Timmy just tries to frighten them—like all boys he's fond of his practical joke, and of course it's a temptation to him to work on their fears. But the little lad certainly presents a curious natural phenomenon, if I may ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... 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 Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... assented, in a soft tone; for it was our joke to speak of Jasper abusively. "But I have tamed him a bit. He's quite a good ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... "What is up?" cried Boris. Then he impatiently opened the carriage door and jumped out. Billy heard him talking excitedly; a growling male voice answered him, then another voice interposed, high and strident, with the amused ring of social intercourse, as if a gentleman were laughing at his own joke in the midst of a quadrille. Billy, left alone, was frightened, afraid of the darkness, of the voices outside, of what would happen and what she had done—the simple, painful fear of the little girl with a bad conscience. Boris opened the carriage door again. "Come," said ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... the royal farm; a footman performed the duty of chamberlain, and, when necessary, that of herald; a groom was master of the horse; a gardener superintended the woods and forests. This, however, is only a traditionary account of the court of Yvetot; and, lest the reader should think it all a joke, we shall specify some of the documentary evidence still extant ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 458 - Volume 18, New Series, October 9, 1852 • Various
... reader will try this little joke on a score of people, by the time the twentieth is arrived at he will then discover why the happiest quartette of youngsters in the immediate vicinity of Primrose Hill ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 30, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... table wad visitors thrang, Wha laugh'd at my joke, and applauded my sang, Though the tane had nae point, and the tither nae glee; But, of coorse, they war' grand when comin' ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... he was examining first one bottle and then another; finally he betook himself, with indescribably grotesque grinnings and chatterings, to uncorking and sniffing at them, and then pouring their contents deliberately out on the (luckily carpetless) floor,—a joke which might have had serious results for himself, as well as the house, if he had not in the midst of it suffered ignoble capture and been led away to his own quarters; my mother that time, certainly, escaping ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... joke. I say it is very nice. These people are spending thousands upon thousands to gratify you and me and others, and all they want in return is ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... purity seemed always to enter into him, driving out of him all dross and bathing him in some ethereal effulgence that was as cool and soft and velvety as starshine. We know there are nasty things in the world! He cuddled to him the notion of her knowing, and chuckled over it as a love joke. The next moment, in a flashing vision of multitudinous detail, he sighted the whole sea of life's nastiness that he had known and voyaged over and through, and he forgave her for not understanding the story. It was through no fault of hers that ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... is a striking object in the western sky. Our Venus they call the Laughing Star, who is a man. He once said something very improper, and has been laughing at his joke ever since. As he scintillates you seem to see him grinning still at his Rabelais-like witticism, seeing which ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... "that's where the joke comes in. I make it a point that every ship of mine that carries a missionary to a foreign field shall also carry a cargo of rum. The combination is one that the Zulu ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... heard all this and told the Fool, who stopped short with his mouth open in the middle of a joke. ...
— Old Peter's Russian Tales • Arthur Ransome
... wars, signifies long knife or Yankee. You'd a laugh'd fit to split your sides I guess, to see the stupid stare of the devils, as startin' out of their sleep, they saw a pistol within three inches of each of'em. 'Ugh,' says they, as if they did'nt know well whether to take it as a joke or not. 'Yes, 'ugh' and be damn'd to you,' say's I: you may go and 'ugh' in hell next—and with that snap went the triggers, and into their curst carcasses went the balls. The one I killed outright but t'other the Delaweer chief, was by a ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... With Puck's first joke, they did the last Life feed, And there of Judge's Stories sowed the Seed: And the first jokelet that Joe Miller wrote The ...
— The Rubaiyat of Omar Cayenne • Gelett Burgess
... at an end. Maitland, in his History of London, gravely informs us, that one of the projects which received great encouragement, was for the establishment of a company "to make deal-boards out of saw-dust." This is, no doubt, intended as a joke; but there is abundance of evidence to show that dozens of schemes hardly a whir more reasonable, lived their little day, ruining hundreds ere they fell. One of them was for a wheel for perpetual motion — capital, one million; another was "for encouraging the ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... ground of the turbulence of the national character. Even in 1831 a Scottish member declared that Scots could never assemble without drawing blood; and one of their champions, Lord Cockburn, made the quaint admission: "The Scots are bad mobbers. They are too serious at it. They never joke, and they throw stones." It did not occur to that generation that the cure for this bloodthirsty seriousness was frequent public meetings, not no meetings at all. That a high-spirited people should so long have remained in political childhood seems incredible, until we remember that ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... ordered. Charles laughed at the idea of any serious resistance. "He asked some of his people whether they thought the citizens would wait for the assault. It was answered yes, considering their number even if they had nothing before them but a hedge."[28] He took this as a joke and said, "To-morrow you will not find a person." He thought that there would be a simple repetition of his experience at Dinant and Liege, and that the garrison would simply succumb in terror. When the Burgundians rushed at the walls their reception showed not only that every point had a defender, ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... 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
... this moral was a joke at their expense, and as they were a little sleepy they permitted themselves the luxury of feeling trifled with. But they woke, refreshed and encouraged, from slumbers that had evidently been unbroken, though they both protested ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... misjudging you, you are misjudging me. If I don't understand you nobody does. My offer to release you from the bargain is not to be understood as a reproach; it is a confession. I am a man utterly devoid of common sense, one to whom reason is a stranger and moderation an enemy. I am a funny joke. I should be obliged if you ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... accustomed to express whatever [served his turn].[335] * * *[336]Let it be understood, therefore, that I by no means express my own sentiments, but those of Carneades, in order that you may refute this philosopher, who was wont to turn the best causes into joke, through the ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... lying asleep at the mouth of his den when a Mouse ran over his back and tickled him so that he woke up with a start and began looking about everywhere to see what it was that had disturbed him. A Fox, who was looking on, thought he would have a joke at the expense of the Lion; so he said, "Well, this is the first time I've seen a Lion afraid of a Mouse." "Afraid of a Mouse?" said the Lion testily: "not I! It's his bad manners I ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... Friend; and its object is to shew, in no very courteous terms either to the Professor or his Spectators, that he may lecture, but that nobody will understand him. He accordingly makes his bow, and the curtain falls; but the worst of the joke is, that the Professor pockets the admittance-money,—for what reason, his outwitted audience are left, the best way they can, ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... Company. Never before had I so wished my engine to turn more slowly. It seemed a shame that we motor-cyclists should head the retreat of our little column. I could not understand how the men could laugh and joke. It was blasphemous. They ought to be cursing with angry faces,—at the least, to ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... telling me nothing," she declared, "and you are laughing, laughing, too, as if over some secret and mysterious joke." ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... reached the top! The slope had been so gradual that she had never found out that they were going uphill at all. Dr. Carr had told this story to the children, but had never been able to make them see the joke very clearly. In fact, when Clover went to Bolton, she was quite struck with the hill: it was so much higher than the sand-bank which ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge
... dat nigger got roun' his neck?' er, ef dey knowed 'im, 'Is yer stole any mo' hams lately?' er 'W'at yer take fer yo' neckliss, Dave?' er some joke er 'nuther ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... I could give you the details of that interview, which must have been curious; but no one was present, and nothing was known except what the lost sheep, who returned in tears, told of it. When the journalist tried to joke her on this conversion, Mademoiselle ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... appears on the stage, where one man hisses out of resentment to the author, a second out of dislike to the house, a third out of dislike to the actor, a fourth out of dislike to the play, a fifth for the joke sake, a sixth to keep all the rest in company. Enemies abuse him, friends give him up, the play is damned, and the author goes to the ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... night, but only stayed out long enough to get a rest and some food, and next night we were back again. The shelling was dreadful when we were going in and we had to keep on the run all the way up—and carrying guns, that was no joke. Every road we crossed had a heavy barrage put on it and we had a lively time. We had almost reached the front lines when one of our officers got hit in the face by a piece of "whiz-bang." Well, finally we got in and we spent all the next day sniping Germans as they tried to ...
— Into the Jaws of Death • Jack O'Brien
... Oglethorpe, therefore, keeping his eye upon the Prince, and smiling all the time, as if he took what his Highness had done in jest, said 'Man Prince,—'(I forget the French words he used, the purport however was.) 'That's a good joke; but we do it much better in England;' and threw a whole glass of wine in the Prince's face. An old General who sat by, said, 'Il a bien fait, mon Prince, vous l'avez commence:' and thus all ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... all still, went into the kitchen to light a candle, and, taking the glistening fiery eyes of the cat for live coals, he held a lucifer-match to them to light it. But the cat did not understand the joke, and flew in his face, spitting and scratching. He was dreadfully frightened, and ran to the back-door, but the dog, who lay there sprang up and bit his leg; and as he ran across the yard by the straw-heap, the donkey gave him a smart kick with its hind foot. ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... were on the matrimonial programme which she had laid out for him,—and Myrtle was the girl with whom he meant to win the bet. When a young fellow like him, cool and clever, makes up his mind to bring down his bird, it is no joke, but a very serious and a tolerably certain piece of business. Not being made a fool of by any boyish nonsense,—passion and all that,—he has a great advantage. Many a woman rejects a man because he is in love with her, and accepts another because he is not. The first is thinking too much of himself ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... home when her letter arrived, she would have been quite content with the excitement it caused. At first Frances and Donald were inclined to think it a huge joke, but having read to the end of Barbara's letter they felt rather differently. Aunt Anne had acted more wisely than she knew in allowing her niece to be the one to write and tell of ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... stories which contain too much allusion to matters of which the hearers are entirely ignorant. But judging from the written stories of today, supposed to be for children, it is still a matter of difficulty to realize that this form of allusion to "foreign" matters, or making a joke, the appreciation of which depends solely on a special and "inside" knowledge, is always bewildering and ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... smile, as if he did not precisely see the point of the jest. "Joke or no joke," said he, "I must look to you for some money to put off the infernal creditors, who have begun to flock into the house. There's the bell. Hang me, if it isn't another one! To come to the ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... be done, Terence. Everyone is too disgusted and out of temper to make it safe. Even the chief is dangerous. I would as soon think of playing a joke on a wandering tiger, as on him. The major is not a man to trifle with, at the best of times and, except O'Flaherty, there is not a man among them who has a good word to throw at a dog. Faith, when one thinks of the good time one used to have ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty
... 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 means he has taken; ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... "it's that darned cat again—Sing Pete goes and dabs butter in the bottoms of the cans and the fool cat sticks his head in trying to lick it out and gets fastened. It looks like the blamed idiot would learn sometime. It's what I call a rotten joke anyhow!" ...
— The Ramblin' Kid • Earl Wayland Bowman
... the first day. Somebody mentioned Maurice Maeterlinck, and I asked if she was a Freshman. That joke has gone all over college. But anyway, I'm just as bright in class as any of the others—and ...
— Daddy-Long-Legs • Jean Webster
... force surrendered themselves prisoners, except the Count; who said that he would never yield to any English traitor alive, and accordingly got killed. The end of this victory, which the English called, for a joke, the Fair of Lincoln, was the usual one in those times—the common men were slain without any mercy, and the knights and gentlemen ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... Asher closely, expecting to see the chief geologist and scientist of the 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
... hands behind his back, and moving round with a chuckle, exclaim, "Something to learn yet, Harry!" The father's delight and pride in his superior legal knowledge over his son, became at last a standing joke with the barristers of the Court. The death of Lord Erskine blighted Henry Cooper's hopes to a seat in Parliament, where his eloquence and sarcasm would have made him powerful as an ally, and feared as an antagonist; liberal in ...
— A Sketch of the Life of the late Henry Cooper - Barrister-at-Law, of the Norfolk Circuit; as also, of his Father • William Cooper
... Jack. We'll do that. Say, that'll be a great joke on Ed Willis and those other toughs he's got on his ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters - or Jack Danby's Bravest Deed • Robert Maitland
... 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 would not ...
— History of the Philippine Islands Vols 1 and 2 • Antonio de Morga
... really seems to have been preparing during millions of years a grim joke with which to baffle exploring humanity! It is easy enough to pass from Davis Straits into Hudson's Bay, but to get out of Hudson's Bay in the direction of the Arctic Ocean is like getting out of a very cleverly arranged maze. There are innumerable false exits, which ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston
... Rollin, Voltaire, and every other author of reputation, below." When Cooper complained of this, and of some severer language, to Warburton, through a friend, Warburton replied that Cooper had attacked him, and that he had only taken his revenge "with a slight joke." Cooper was weak and vain enough to print a pamphlet, to prove that this was a serious accusation, and no joke; and if it was a joke, he shows it was not a correct one. In fact, Cooper could never comprehend how his head was like a camera obscura! Cooper was of the Shaftesburian ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... to conjecture why Shakspeare should have introduced this ludicrous scroll, which answers no one purpose, either propulsive, or explicatory, unless as a joke on etymology. ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... figures, possessing the character and likeness of the things represented, but in no way trying to make us believe that they are real. The semblance of a bumble bee crawling upon the tea cloth gives a hardly pleasant sensation and much savours of the practical joke, which is seldom in good taste; the needle, however, adds convention to almost anything, and will usually manage the bee all right unless the worker goes out of the way to add a shadow and a high light. Such things as perspective, light and shade or ...
— Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving • Grace Christie
... don't joke, for there is no joy in that mad laughter. It is horrible, maddening, even to the hearer. Let us get to work. The father of the girl I love may even now be sinking to his death. We must determine the nature of this deadly stuff, and ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... an invitation to the R.S.'s soiree at Lord Northampton's. And then comes Monday—and to-night any unicorn I may see I will not find myself at liberty to catch. (N.B.—should you meditate really an addition to the 'Elegant Extracts'—mind this last joke is none of mine but my father's; when walking with me when a child, I remember, he bade a little urchin we found fishing with a stick and a string for sticklebacks in a ditch—'to mind that he brought any sturgeon ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... "It's only my joke, Jerome," laughed the Colonel, but there was no responsive smile on Jerome's face. Colonel Lamson eyed him narrowly. "The Squire had a letter from his wife yesterday," he said, with no preface. Then he started, for Jerome turned upon him a face as of ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... but that if Peter Finley Dunne could have been appointed on the President's Industrial Conference and could have got off some nice cosy relaxed human little joke just in the nick of time—just as Mr. Gompers and his Labor Children like so many dear little girls said they would not play any more, took their dollies and their dishes and went home—stuck their ...
— The Ghost in the White House • Gerald Stanley Lee
... the New York Observer I will state that a despatch sent round the world in a spiral direction westward 1,200 times, would not really arrive at its destination four years before it started. It is only a joke which suggests it.] ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... passion was the lust of praise: Born with whate'er could win it from the wise, Women and fools must like him or he dies; Though wondering senates hung on all he spoke, The club must hail him master of the joke. Shall parts so various aim at nothing new! He'll shine a Tully and a Wilmot too. Then turns repentant, and his God adores With the same spirit that he drinks and wh***s; Enough if all around him but admire, And now the punk applaud, and now the friar. Thus with each gift of nature ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... was its infantry, which was very steady under punishment, admirably disciplined, perfect in courage, and which had, I think, that supreme merit in infantry, that it always wanted to get to work with the bayonet. The Bulgarian soldiers had a joke among themselves. The order for "Bayonets forward!" was, as near as I could get it, "Nepret nanochi." Arguing by similarity of sound, the Bulgarian soldier affected to believe it meant "Spit five men on your bayonet." It was the common camp saying that it was the duty of the infantryman ...
— Bulgaria • Frank Fox
... lay down the law to me, sister, in your own way, because I know your way. Say what you please to me of myself and my affairs, and a joke is the worst that will come of it. But I tell you gravely, that I will not hear of traps—I will not hear imputations like those you have just spoken against these young ladies or their connections, without rebuke. ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... of that, senor," returned Sancho; "I own I went a little too far with the joke. But tell me, your worship, now that peace is made between us (and may God bring you out of all the adventures that may befall you as safe and sound as he has brought you out of this one), was it not a thing to laugh at, and is it not a good story, the great fear we were in?—at least that I ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... "Either it's a joke, or it's the black rabbit getting in his work," answered Bud. "It's from an unknown ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Camp - or The Water Fight at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker
... brother and sister had rested from their labors, and it was then related by Mr. N—himself, who was rather (sic) excentric in his character, and, like numbers of his ministerial brethren, fond of a good joke, and given ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... "Perseus and 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 ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... two hundred years ago, when Swift attacked it. Even now we do not know where it came from. There was a slang word used at the time but now forgotten—bam, which meant a trick or practical joke; and some scholars have thought that bamboozle (which, of course, means "to deceive") came from this. On the other hand, it may have been the other way about, and that the shorter word came from the longer. The word ...
— Stories That Words Tell Us • Elizabeth O'Neill
... ache, and holds out for a few pages more, she is comforted to find that her aspirations have a philosophic character. She is able to tell the heavy Guardsman who takes her down to dinner and parries her observations with a joke that they have the sanction of the ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... demon, a joke in which he indulged on this occasion detracted from the effect of the above proof of cleverness. Having been asked why he had refused to speak on the preceding Saturday, he said he had not been at Loudun on that day, as the ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... her—she was so hopelessly dense. One night she asked me, quite seriously, "If that was the same moon they had at Sydney?"! I am sure she does not know that the earth is round. By stretching a hair across the telescope glass, I made her look in and showed her the Line, but she did not see the joke. She gravely asked if we should not land at the Line: she understood there was land there! Her only humour is displayed at table, when anything is spilt by the rolling of the ship, when she exclaims, "Over goes the apple-cart!" But enough ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... he, he!" and the old Marquis chuckled and cackled in solitary amusement. "Let's offer him one," he went on, half to enjoy the joke a little longer, half to utilise the opportunity of bringing his Ministerial wisdom to bear ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... hunters it was otherwise. Familiar in varying degree with the sea, they took me as a sort of joke. In truth, it was a joke to me, that I, the veriest landsman, should be filling the office of mate; but to be taken as a joke by others was a different matter. I made no complaint, but Wolf Larsen demanded the most punctilious ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... 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 short ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... 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 ...
— The Shih King • James Legge
... altogether. On those retained for use additions had been built, verandas added, windows enlarged, and many conveniences planned within doors. Trees and vines had also been planted outside, and the inevitable grass-seed sown broadcast. The men had a joke among themselves that young Early had been obliged to take a seed-store on a debt, and was thus disposing of his stock. The "flat-iron," once watched with a wondering hope, had become a park in truth, the young trees growing healthily in the open space upon which the houses looked, ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... such a scandalous insinuation should be directed, and that she was singularly inaccessible to vulgar temptation. I added that notwithstanding her seeming lawlessness she was not only remarkably sensitive to any accusation of bad manners, but that upon certain matters she could not endure even a joke. The only quarrel I remember to have had with her was when I lapsed into some commonplace jest about her intimacy with a music-master who gave her lessons. The way in which she took that jest I shall ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... an extraordinarily good joke, and he threw back his head and laughed with measureless enjoyment. At the sight of him laughing in that absurd way, the dolls' dressmaker laughed very heartily indeed. So they both laughed till they ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... evenings on which he came to "The Gables" Mr. Lenox always looked in on her for a little gossip; and this was called his "runcible spoon"—the joke being that Mr. Lenox and Runcie ...
— The Slowcoach • E. V. Lucas
... when you said that the un-average man would love Mary Ballard. Porter Bigelow loves her, and he tops all the other men I've met. And he'd never love me. He will laugh with me and joke with me, and if he wasn't in love with Mary, he might flirt with me—but I'm not his kind—and he ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey
... have believed that now, would you?" said Cashel. "Don't look startled; you've no bones broken. You had your little joke with me in your own way; and I had mine in ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... westerners, so well-content with the earth upon which their feet fell. He had judged with perfect accuracy the place which he held in their thoughts and estimation. He was something of a curiosity, his title half a joke, the splendour of his long race a thing unrealisable by these scions of a more recent aristocracy. Yet supposing that this new wonder had not come into his life, that Immelan had been a shade more eloquent, had pleaded his cause upon a higher level, ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... on the outer walls. "Bullen, old man, forgive me." "It can't be!" "Incredible!" "Bullen, the Beau Brummel of the service, in leather!" "Why, Diogenes, what are you doing here?" "Is it a masquerade?" "Is it a joke?" "What means this unique headgear?" "And Diogenes, I say, ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... time of life!" said Mrs. Beverley; but the joke amused her, she wiped her eyes, and, as Irene had hoped and intended, stepped smiling into the waiting taxi, and left her old home with laughter ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... married her to get a house," said the old man. (This was the inexhaustible joke they shared against Mrs. Abby that in nearly twenty years had never failed to rouse her serious indignation.) "I saw her coming out of that ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... essence of the Comic be the contrast in the intellect between the idea and the false performance, there is good reason why we should be affected by the exposure. We have no deeper interest than our integrity, and that we should be made aware by joke and by stroke of any lie we entertain. Besides, a perception of the comic seems to be a balance-wheel in our metaphysical structure. It appears to be an essential element in a fine character.—A rogue alive to the ludicrous is still ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... had sought to make himself useful in a thousand ways. He was a very intelligent fellow—what one might call a "double right-hander"—that is to say, he could do everything, and could do everything well. As merry as Lina, always singing, and always ready with some good-natured joke, he was not long in ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne
... should have finished his coffee and cigarette and strolled out. Or, if he had deemed it imperative to participate in the political discussion, why in the mischief hadn't he just stepped across, proffered his cigarette-case and made a joke ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... make himself at home in the regiment. The men sometimes looked at him with surprise, he was so different from themselves. They bore their hardships well, but it was with stern faces and grim determination; while this young soldier made a joke of them. ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty
... and shake hands with me like I'd won the Medeye Militaire, and, before I could side-step, the widow had her arms round my neck and was kissin' me on both cheeks. Napoleon sez it was a 'Beau geste' which I thought meant a fine joke, and I was afraid the bird was wise, but Rathbone sez no, that it meant a swell action; and the widow sez, over and over again, 'Ces braves Americains—ces braves Americains!' The cordial entente was pretty cordial on the ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... where a carriage waited for them, with the captain of the Guard of the quarter, and a lady of the palace. The King was but little amused, spoke only to two or three persons, who knew him immediately, and found nothing to admire at the masquerade but Punches and Harlequins, which served as a joke against him for the royal family, who often amused themselves with ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan
... it, the bells stopped sudden in the middle of a change. The rain had come on again. It was very chill up there. My teeth was chattering, and so was William's, though he pretended he did it for the joke. ...
— In Homespun • Edith Nesbit
... upon the piety, the temperance, the honesty, or the purity of Roman Priests and Nuns, he would be laughed at outright, either as a natural or an ironical jester; while the priest himself would join in the merriment, as being a "capital joke." ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk
... Tim's invariable first halt; and now he stood waiting Tim's reappearance through the saloon door. Other volunteer assistants, in hordes, hordes, and laughing as if this awful calamity were a huge joke, had joined Raymond and the Other. Missy was flamingly aware of them, of their laughter, ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... Walter was the first blind soldier the President had met in France and knowing from experience the appeal the blind make to our emotions, I knew the President was so touched that he was overcome and couldn't joke further—he was scarcely able to manage the one remark and could not trust himself to venture another, 'Twas with tears in his eyes and a choking voice that he managed the one. Both he and Mrs. Wilson wept ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... convoy and transportation prison and having failed to obtain a reprieve, they had made up their mind to leave, despite a temperature of thirty degrees below zero. Fate, it would seem, wanted to play a practical joke on them. At the representations of the police commissioner-in-chief, the governor-general of Moscow had ordered to stop the expulsions until the great colds had passed, but ... the order was not published until the expulsion had been carried out. In this way some 20,000 ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... 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 at the ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... 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 ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... have a big preserve up in the Adirondacks," said Betty; "and Bertie ordered his private train, and he and Chappie de Peyster and some others started that night; they drove I don't know how many miles the next day, and caught a pile of trout—and we had them for breakfast the next morning! The best joke of all is that Chappie vows they were so full they couldn't fish, and that the trout were caught with nets! Poor Bertie—somebody'll have to separate ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... Feitel's blouse as a cat looks at butter. "Want more?" asked Feitel, looking at Fedoka through his sharp black eyes. What a question! "Then wait a while," said Feitel. "Next year you'll get more." They both laughed at the joke. And without a word, as if they had already arranged it, they threw themselves on the ground, and rolled down the hill ...
— Jewish Children • Sholem Naumovich Rabinovich
... tenderness. And thus they ruin their own tempers and natures, and consequently those of their offspring. Furthermore, if at any time a man is taken captive with ardent love for a certain woman, the two are allowed to converse and joke together and to give one another garlands of flowers or leaves, and to make verses. But if the race is endangered, by no means is further union between them permitted. Moreover, the love born of eager desire is not known among them; ...
— The City of the Sun • Tommaso Campanells
... it depends, monsieur, on what is thought horrible! A good many of my pensioners have been dangerous customers in their time—but now? Fortunately, monsieur, the dead cannot bite!" and he smiled at his own grim joke. ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... could do it myself. I had the popular desire to work my way through school when I entered Siwash, and I pictured myself at the end of my college career receiving my diploma in my toil-scarred fist, without having had a cent from home. But pshaw! I was a joke. I mowed one lawn in my Freshman year, after hunting for work for three weeks; and I lost that engagement because the family decided the hired girl could do it better. After that I gave up and took my checks from home like a little man. In Siwash it is all right to get sent through school, ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... Flinders, the first-mate, behind him, enjoying the joke amazingly; "guess ye had 'em thaar, cap. Them coons 'll catch a weasel asleep, I reckon, when they try working a traverse on a man of ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... building materials at night. This for the very reasonable price of $3.50 a week. It went like hot cakes. 'But,' said I, 'surely your one watchman can't look after thirty-seven different places.' 'No,' said Bobby, 'but they think he does.' I laughed and commended his ingenuity. 'But the best part of the joke,' said he, 'is that I haven't got any ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... and a joke which turned sour, 'my dear Watson'!" he exulted to the parrot. "A joke I was not intended to ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... fat person. And she was a great joker. The joke that she loved most was this: she loved to bump into people that were flying through the air—to bump into them and knock them, spinning, ...
— The Tale of Mrs. Ladybug • Arthur Scott Bailey
... may briefly be distributed into three categories. The first is the funny form, as the unseemly practical joke of masterful Queen Budur (vol. iii. 300-306) and the not less hardi jest of the slave-princess Zumurrud (vol. iv. 226). The second is in the grimmest and most earnest phase of the perversion, for instance where Abu Nowas[FN429] debauches the three youths (vol. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... laughter of the girls who were leading us such a merry chase, but we didn't. Soon we were out of the city and on the country road once more, and we were quite a bit puzzled not to find them waiting for us. We certainly thought the joke was to have ended here. But a man walking along the road had seen the car go by half an ...
— The Campfire Girls Go Motoring • Hildegard G. Frey
... poor heart now," said he, "a good deal of it; it has been wasted; it wants first-rate management to bring it in order, and make much of it for two or three years to come. I never see an Irishman's head yet that was worth more than a joke. Their hands are all of ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... grim mouth and sun-browned face; De la Rey, also, with the grizzled beard and the strong aquiline features. There, too, were the politicians, the grey-bearded, genial Reitz, a little graver than when he looked upon 'the whole matter as an immense joke,' and the unfortunate Steyn, stumbling and groping, a broken and ruined man. The burly Lucas Meyer, smart young Smuts fresh from the siege of Ookiep, Beyers from the north, Kemp the dashing cavalry leader, Muller the hero of many fights—all these with ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and all the rest of the beastly thing.' 'But you'll go and see your father?' I asked. 'Well, I don't think so, you know, Mr Westonley,' drawled the elder cub, 'it's a beastly long way, and takes such a devil of a time to get there—fourteen hundred miles by steamer is no joke, and we have to be back in England in five months. So the governor is coming down here to have a palaver with us.' It hurt me, Tom, to hear these two youngsters talking like that, for Arlington is over seventy years of age. And ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
... it, miracles can be performed with it, but 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
... 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 ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... fond of telling and hearing stories, and always appreciated a joke. I remember one that he liked to get off on us once in a while. Our lighting plant was in duplicate, and about 12.30 or 1 o'clock in the morning, at the close of the supper-hour, a change would be made ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... lack of culture displayed by the "bandits" and "assassins" of Serbia, and where a man of such scientific distinction as Werner Sombart can describe the heroic kingdom of Montenegro as "nothing but a bad joke in the history of the world!"[1] But even here the habit of condescension lingers, and amidst the threatened collapse of Western civilisation it is well to remember the essential distinction between primitive and savage. The Balkan nations have grown to manhood ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... captain laughed; "but I will answer for it that he will not joke with you, Colonel. The lad is really steady enough, and I am sure that if he were in the regiment he would not dream of playing tricks with his commanding officer, ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty
... beholden to women for its sprightliness. Third, the halfpenny organs of wit, represented by Comic Cuts, and twenty other sorts of Cuts. If a woman considers herself destined for the comic press, her wisest course is to collaborate with an artist. A joke may be the best and most original joke in the world, but it will not have a very safe chance of acceptance unless it is illustrated. The illustration per se may be without talent; no matter; mediocre pictures have certainly been instrumental in selling innumerable ...
— Journalism for Women - A Practical Guide • E.A. Bennett
... the people were 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 ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... She wished the moment to continue for ever precisely as it was that July morning. And moments don't. Now, for instance, Jacob was telling a story about some walking tour he'd taken, and the inn was called "The Foaming Pot," which, considering the landlady's name ... They shouted with laughter. The joke ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... disturbance at being watched. The curiosity of the two officers, who were new to this species of warfare, was greatly excited by this beginning of an affair which seemed to have an almost romantic interest, and they began to joke about it. But ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... firm reliance cannot be placed upon his freakish mental processes, exemplified in his writings about the war. He has played with effect the part of jester to the British public, but when, as now, his jests are empty of the kernel of good sense, the matter gets beyond a joke. ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... drink and 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 ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... the bar a few nights back, and one or two of the villagers, who all firmly believed in it, declared that they had heard her wandering about the previous night, moaning and shrieking, as is supposed to be her custom. I, more by way of a joke than anything else, told them I had seen something white on the rise the previous night, when I was shutting up the inn. But the whole village has got it into their heads that I saw the White Lady, and they think because I've seen her I'm a doomed man. The country folk round about here are ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... duly inserted, as expressive of the views of her majesty's government at home. "But what about the missionaries?" inquired the Boers. "YOU MAY DO AS YOU PLEASE WITH THEM," is said to have been the answer of the "Commissioner". This remark, if uttered at all, was probably made in joke: designing men, however, circulated it, and caused the general belief in its accuracy which now prevails all over the country, and doubtless led to the destruction of three mission stations immediately after. The Boers, four hundred in number, ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... "an ingenious sign-post" full advantage should be taken of the opportunity. In this connection Addison offered the following explanation of the name of the Ludgate Hill inn, which, it has been shrewdly conjectured by Henry B. Wheatley, was probably intended as a joke. "As for the bell-savage, which is the sign of a savage man standing by a bell, I was formerly very much puzzled upon the conceit of it, till I accidentally fell into the reading of an old romance translated out of the French; which gives an account of a very ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... him the confidant of his oath. Fred had given his blessing, he said, upon the enterprise, and advised Linski to use a brick. "He'll hit you on the head with it," said the light-hearted Fred, falling back upon this old joke. "Then you can catch it as it bounces off and ...
— Ramsey Milholland • Booth Tarkington
... putting an embargo on all my goods, ships, and palaces, and what they contain. The affair was conducted quite regularly by a decree of the Supreme Court. Young Hemerlingue had a hand in that, you can see. If I am made a deputy, it is only a joke. The court takes back its decree and they give me back my treasure with every sort of excuse. If I am not elected I lose everything, sixty, eighty millions, even the possibility of making another fortune. It is ruin, disgrace, dishonour. Are you going to abandon me in such a crisis? ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... he laughed. "Now try that joke on the next Florentine you meet.... There was a German here," he went on, "who loved Levanto. The hotel people have told me all about him. He began writing a book to prove that there was a different walk to be taken in this neighbourhood for every single day ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... 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, ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... and crammed his hands into his mouth and spat them out in another explosion, and gave Philip an aimless push, which toppled him on to the bed. He uttered a horrified Oh! and then gave up, and bolted away down the passage, shrieking like a child, to tell the joke to ...
— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster
... partic'lar; we young bucks used to say he slept in a bag of lavender and powdered his cheeks every mornin' to make him look fresh, while most of us were soakin' wet in the duck-blinds—but that was only our joke. That's long befo' you were born, child. But yo' mother didn't live long—they said her heart was broken 'bout the other fellow, but there wasn't a word of truth in that foolishness—couldn't be. I used to see her and yo' father together long after that, and she was mighty good to him, ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... joined in the general laugh, and Hal himself smiled. The joke was on him, and he was not the lad ...
— The Boy Allies with Haig in Flanders • Clair W. Hayes
... gentle, and there was about him all the shrinking aloofness of the naturally timid. The deputy looked him over with quiet amusement—slender fellow with the gentlest brown eyes—and then with a quick side glance invited the crowd to get in on the joke. ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... stared at this speech, and finally regarded it as a capital joke, or else, as he whispered to his fellow-grooms in the stable, he believed his young master had ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... 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 others use ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... which Janner had indulged became an accepted joke in the settlement. Bess had fallen a victim to the tender sentiment at last. She had found an adorer, and had apparently succumbed to his importunities. Seth spent less time in his shanty and more in her society. ...
— "Seth" • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Jack arose after a deep submersion, and floundered on shore blowing and spluttering. But in the meantime the keepers had walked away, carrying with them the rod and line, fish, and tin-can of bait, laughing loudly at the practical joke which ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Captain Frederick Marryat
... in the mother's voice had startled her hearers into the conviction that the invitation must be regarded seriously, and not tossed aside as a joke. A lacerating suspicion that the authorities were in favour of an acceptance ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... I said, "I have been unexpectedly called upon my legs—" Then I stammered an apology for using the word in that company, and the laughter was unbounded. Next morning all the sporting papers reported it as an excellent joke, although the last person who saw the joke ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... and sets them aside till they are required. On one occasion, while the crew of a boat landed to cook their dinner, a youngster carefully opened such a quid and substituted a piece of filth for the betel-nut. When the victim of the joke spat out the morsel, spluttering with disgust and anger, the crew was moved to loud laughter, which they tried in vain to suppress out of consideration for the feelings of the victim; for no one ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... Many of them left a long train, extending through twenty, thirty, or even forty degrees. I called at Bard's window and told him that the stars were falling, but he refused to get up, thinking it a joke. The butcher of the town, Abijah Whitney, came out to commence preparations for his morning rounds, but conceiving that the day of judgment had come, he returned into the house and gave up business for the day. In the year 1901, I know of one other person only, Mrs. Mary ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... asked for 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, ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis
... wiped his face, which had suddenly grown very hot, and remarking in a tremulous voice to his conductor that he had always been fond of his joke, followed him in silence until ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... motionless, till the angry pedagogue becoming infuriate, pushed the intruder out of the room with such force, that Crispin might have sustained an action at law against him for an assault. Thus, to Coleridge's mortification and regret, as he afterwards in joke would say, ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... guezel! In a moment she threw off her black ferigee, and tore the thick veil from her head. I could have yelled with rage, for I saw what a fool I had made of myself, and that the old hag had played a practical joke on me in revenge for the affair in the Valley of Roses. I cursed her in French, I cursed her in Russian, I cursed her in English, and stamped about the room, trying to get out. The horrible old witch screamed ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... seize them!" Then she ran out of the room, and in a couple of minutes returned with the necklace hanging loose in her hand. It was part of her little play to show by her speed that the close locking of the jewels was a joke, and that the ornament, precious as it was, received at her hands no other treatment than might any indifferent feminine bauble. Nevertheless within those two minutes she had contrived to unlock the ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... I don't see how you're going to satisfy him that it was all a joke. Joke? It WASN'T a joke! It was a real assault and a bona fide robbery, and Bemis ...
— The Garotters • William D. Howells
... have run away by now, if they stole the things," said wise Penelope, who could be very practical when she did come out of her dreamy state, "and they would laugh more if the baskets were only just hidden for a joke, and we went hungry because we ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... 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
... thought the Indian attack on them was a joke perpetrated by some of their friends. After all, modern Indians did not ...
— The Hohokam Dig • Theodore Pratt
... my most remorseless critics were not in earnest, but were obeying some sudden impulse started by the first attacking journal. The extravagance of the Red Dog "Jay Hawk" was emulated by others: it was a large, contagious joke, passed from journal to journal in a peculiar cyclonic Western fashion. And there still lingers, not unpleasantly, in my memory the conclusion of a cheerfully scathing review of the book which may make my meaning clearer: "If we have said anything ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... of the Commissioners, and generously bestowed our own great names on its crags and creeks. The rock was carefully measured by Mr. S. It will be a most desolate position for a Light-house—the Bell Rock and Eddystone a joke to it, for the nearest land is the wild island of Tyree, at fourteen miles distance. So much for ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous
... Carradyne. "I joke with her, rather than quarrel. But I don't give in. She pays me some left-handed compliments, telling me that I am no gentleman, that I'm a bear, and so on; to which I make ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various
... 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 mate went on board the ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... Merwell! I know his handwriting almost as well as I know my own," he declared. "He always makes those funny little crooks on his capital letters. I guess that shows what kind of a crook he is," and Phil grinned at his little joke. "What are you going ...
— Dave Porter At Bear Camp - The Wild Man of Mirror Lake • Edward Stratemeyer
... the speech, unless, of course, he has any very complicated gestures; and it won't take him any time at all to compose it, because the private secretary will do that; and the private secretary will be able to make sure that his joke about JEREBOAM is not turned into a joke about JEHOSHAPHAT at the last minute, or simply shelved in favour of a peroration on rainbows. After the speech the M.P. can be filmed opening a flowershow and, if ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, October 27, 1920 • Various
... immediately the room began to fill with tobacco smoke. Every one seemed to be talking and laughing at once, in the liveliest spirit of good fellowship. They joked from table to table, and sometimes the whole room would quiet down while some one told a joke, which invariably wound up ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... servant-girl whose family belonged to Throndhjem district. She worshipped King Olaf the Saint, and believed firmly in his sanctity. But the above mentioned count doubted all that was told of the holy man's miracles, insisted that it was nothing but nonsense and idle talk, and made a joke and scorn of the esteem and honour which all the country people showed the good king. Now when his holyday came, on which the mild monarch ended his life, and which all Northmen kept sacred, this unreasonable count would not observe ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... Oakhurst's admonishing foot saved Uncle Billy from bursting into a roar of laughter. As it was, he felt compelled to retire up the canon until he could recover his gravity. There he confided the joke to the tall pine-trees, with many slaps of his leg, contortions of his face, and the usual profanity. But when he returned to the party, he found them seated by a fire—for the air had grown strangely chill and the sky overcast—in ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... respectively Deborah and Amilly. The latter name had been intended for Amelie; but by some mistake of the parents or of the clergyman, none of them French scholars, Amilly, the child was christened and registered. It remained a joke against ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... tea-table; and the cloud lifts a little from Gerald's stern, set face; the three young people even laugh and joke ...
— The End of Her Honeymoon • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... although my sister instantly boxed my ears, it was highly gratifying to me to see that the answer spoilt his joke, and brought him to a ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... broke into a laugh; and it was some time before he could proceed with his business. I was not aware that I had said anything that was funny: if I had, I should have been highly complimented by the manner in which my joke was received. ...
— Down South - or, Yacht Adventure in Florida • Oliver Optic
... boy. Und you get very hot because I happen to make that liddle joke about somebody killing you. Was you thinking maybe old Max not care what ...
— The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories • Owen Wister
... Northampton's. And then comes Monday—and to-night any unicorn I may see I will not find myself at liberty to catch. (N.B.—should you meditate really an addition to the 'Elegant Extracts'—mind this last joke is none of mine but my father's; when walking with me when a child, I remember, he bade a little urchin we found fishing with a stick and a string for sticklebacks in a ditch—'to mind that he brought any sturgeon he might catch to the king'—he having a claim on such a prize, by courtesy ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... a sorry day whin I can't take a joke, as Jim Doolin said smiling whin his frinds pushed his cabin over on top of him as he lay sleeping behind it, but I was niver sarved ...
— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis
... 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 of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, October 31, 1917 • Various
... of, and showed me how I was to behave myself. After I had had some days' practice, he sent round to let it be known that he had picked up a bear at sea, which could talk and play all sorts of tricks; and in a short time people came to look at me. At first I thought it a good joke, but at last he treated me so like a real bear, for he chained me up at night and never let me get out of my skin, that I began to grow heartily tired of the fun; and it's my belief, if you hadn't found me out, he'd have been after making away with me, ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... dignity, his appearance in the bell-crown hats attracted the severe regard of Milburn, and set the little town on a grin. The joke went on till Jimmy Phoebus, Judge Custis, and some others prompted Jack Wonnell, with the promise of a gallon of whiskey, to ask Meshach to trade the steeple-top for the bell-crown. The intense look of outrage and hate, with the accompanying ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... mean," said he when I had finished, "but I believe you. Anyway, it's all a stupendous joke. In the first place, we shouldn't be here at all. And, secondly, why should they want ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... of the worthy man's harmless conceits. He never lost an opportunity of indulging in the joke to his own amusement; and I remarked that he laughed as heartily the last time he uttered it as ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... it difficult to stifle her laughter at the humour of the whole thing:—it was really such a very good joke! ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... write a dozen funny rhymes, Need a dozen "Cantabs" write about it to the Times? Need they write, at any rate, a generation after, Stating cause and date of joke and ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... 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
... He'll joke with you in sun or show'r, And keep you laughing by the hour. Some zanies are a trifle mad: Now we ...
— Little People: An Alphabet • T. W. H. Crosland
... squeezed the life out of them with one awful handshake, if his heart had been as big as his claws. But they had something to do with it. And they knew it. So did Cob, who laughed again, hoarsely and as one appreciating a joke, while he wheeled and wheeled over the following waves, seeing all things and never appearing to ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... things easily; I am an indivisible man. But one night I went for a bicycle ride with my wife. She was a Bantam of delight, I can tell you, but she rode very badly. It was starlight, and I was attempting to explain the joke in the paper called, if I recollect aright, Punch. It was an extraordinarily sultry night, and I told her the names of all the stars she saw as she fell off her machine. She had a good bulk of falls. There were lights in the upper ...
— The War of the Wenuses • C. L. Graves and E. V. Lucas
... family of my acquaintance occupied a whole floor there last winter, and lived very well at a fabulously cheap rate. The Wesendoncks are also staying there, and you might set up a splendid, half-common MENAGE, which would be a great joke. Well, the chief thing will be to have a good piano for our two selves, and of that I will take care, although I cannot provide so splendid an instrument as that which Erard sent me in London, and for which I forgot to thank you. I believe if I had such an instrument I should still learn ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... brings new faces, and Herst is still further enlivened by the arrival of two men from some distant barracks,—one so tall, and the other so diminutive, as to call for an immediate joke about "the long and ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... very advanced years, who contemplated life as an aged hermit, from the door of his cell. Conceive my surprise to find a genial young gentleman of about twenty-five, who looked as if he might enjoy a joke as ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... 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
... he and all the peasants around, even including my guide, laughed aloud as at an excellent joke, and said, 'Cinquante, Ho! ho!' and dug each other in the ribs. But the innkeeper of Tizzano Val Parmense said in Italian a number of things which meant that I could but be joking, and added (in passing) that a lira made it a kind of gift to me. A lira ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... well to joke," protested Uncle Chris, pained by this flippancy, "but let me tell you that I shall not require magic assistance to become a rich man. Do you realize that at houses like Mrs Waddesleigh Peagrim's I am meeting men all ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... making love to Priscilla; but the joke is, you have been persuaded to do it for somebody else, when all the time you would like to do it ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 2 • Susan Warner
... room, the stench from the pigs, and the still more dreadful odors wafted from the queer food cooking on the range, made the young traveler's unaccustomed senses revolt. He had a half notion that the two older men were putting up a joke ...
— The Black-Bearded Barbarian (George Leslie Mackay) • Mary Esther Miller MacGregor, AKA Marion Keith
... hostess, "I told you our sports were to be a huge joke. You must have a sense of humor, or you won't want to take part. You know we have horse show grounds here in Lenox. Well, the Gymkana race this year will take place over their meadow. Indeed, all the sports are to be held there. Father, you explain what ...
— The Automobile Girls in the Berkshires - The Ghost of Lost Man's Trail • Laura Dent Crane
... really go because she would not trust you without her?' said Mrs. Finch. 'Well, that is a good joke!' ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... too much for Mabel. "Now, Jane, you go too far. Robert likes his little joke, but he knows when to be serious. Why ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... music, that's all. It's too late, or I'd have taken you, for the joke of the thing. Confound it! she ought to have ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... From the home and the mother who loved me too well; But the shame and the pain I have borne since that day Not a pitying soul who now listens can tell! There was never a promise he made but he broke; The bruises he gave I have covered with shame; Not a tear, not a prayer, but he scorned as a joke! He cursed at my children, ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... be rather a joke for susceptibility, and was still a regular boy when we went out to Gibraltar. I thought ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... all the while. He never once smiled or laughed at the brilliant sallies of his brethren, and did his best to prevent his new patron, Mr. Flaw, from doing so—constantly putting his hand before his mouth, and whispering into Mr. Flaw's ear at the very point of the joke or story—and the smile would disappear from the countenance ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... village on the coast, and on this account he assumed the title of Cockletown; and when he built himself a mansion, as they term it, he would have it called by no other name than that of Cockle Hall. It is true he laughs at the thing himself, and considers it a good joke." ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... light evil eyes that looked at me and—smiled! Smiled with a smile that said more plainly than words, 'I am waiting!' and that is what the shapes, and the very atmosphere of the place at night always seem to say—'We are waiting! You are enjoying the joke now—we shall enjoy it later on!' If we knew exactly what was in store for us it wouldn't be so bad, but it is the vagueness of it, the vagueness of the horrors that the Unknown has hinted at, that makes ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... after a wild final romp that they left the room together. There was certainly no ceremony left between them. They came out as comrades, laughing at the same joke, ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... handiwork of some kind friend; the practical joke of some flippant youngster, who thinks it a delightful piece of humour to play upon the jealousy of a husband of fifty," mused the baronet, as he brooded over his folly. "I wish to heaven I could discover the writer of the epistle. He should find that it is rather a dangerous thing to ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... 29th, he was clutched by Cromwell, dragged to the table on which the Warrant lay, and compelled to sign it, Cromwell forcibly holding his hand and tracing the letters for him, with loud laughter at the joke! More by token, as Clarendon reports him, if his name on the Warrant "were compared with what he had ever writ himself," the difference would be seen! Unfortunately, Mr. Thoms, who has made this comparison, vouches that no difference can be detected, and that the name "Rich. Ingoldsby" ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... Guess so!" he added, making a joke on the name of the strange lad who had worked the steam organ of ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at the County Fair • Laura Lee Hope
... 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 ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... had been much amused by the sort of adoration she had no hesitation in showing that she felt for him. He used to call her Mademoiselle ma femme, and M. de Nailles would speak of him as "my daughter's future husband." This joke had been kept up till the little lady had reached her ninth year, when it ceased, probably by order of Madame de Nailles, who in matters of propriety was very punctilious. Jacqueline, too, became less ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... with things that another man will hang for. A Jean Valjean will steal a banana and go to the Island, while some rich fellow will put a bank in his pocket and everybody will treat it as a joke. A popular man may get drunk and not be criticized for it; but the sour chap who does the same thing is flung out of the club. There is little justice in the arbitrary decisions of society ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... errs greatly when he says that it will feed on mulberry. The last clause of the sentence, which says that cocoons of Pernyi are nearly as good as those of worms fed on mulberry leaves, must be a sort of entomological joke, of which the point is not discoverable by me, so ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXIV., No. 12, March 18, 1871 • Various
... Hazel Gray? I should say!" exclaimed Jennie, instantly falling in with Ruth's attempt to pass the incident off as a joke. ...
— Ruth Fielding At College - or The Missing Examination Papers • Alice B. Emerson
... "Now comes the joke!" continued Lestocq. "We have transferred Biron to another colony, and Herr Munnich will occupy the poetical pleasure-house of his friend Biron ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... stork met the fox and invited him to dinner. The stork brought out fine hot soup in a high narrow necked bottle, but the fox could not see the joke ...
— Nature Myths and Stories for Little Children • Flora J. Cooke
... to pick up a stone and throw it at the dog, as masters sometimes do when they do not want their dogs to follow them. This dog only wagged his tail, as though he thought it the best joke he had ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at School • Laura Lee Hope
... the Doctor. He had been but a few months in the place; but the old church-goers had found him out as a passionate, free-and-easy, honorable fellow, full of joke and anecdote,—shrewd, too. They "fellowshipped" with him heartily, and were glad when he got the post of surgeon with their sons. If there were anything more astringent below this, any more real self in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... a grave, solid people, who understand a joke even less than the Scotch, while such a thing as chaff is absolutely unintelligible to them. Life to the Finns seems a serious matter which can be only undertaken after long thought and much deliberation. They lose much pleasure by their seriousness. ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... yourself, in the wrong, and that obstinacy alone prevented you from owning it. Father Cullen's redeeming point was his earnestness,—his reality; he had no humbug about him; whatever was there, was real; he had no possible appreciation for a joke, and he understood no ridicule. You might gull him, and dupe him for ever, he would never find you out; his heart and mind were full of the Roman Catholic church and of his country's wrongs; he could neither think ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... did your sire provoke, By jest and jeer at better folk, A' solemn thought wad end in smoke, Sae wad his teachin', And fun wad fly in jibe an' joke At ...
— Verses and Rhymes by the way • Nora Pembroke
... responsibility and forestalled anxiety on any one's account by playing tunes, stampeding the whole cavalcade more than once because the horses were unused to his clanging concertina, but producing such high spirits that it became a joke to have to dismount in the mud and replace the load on some mule who had expressed enjoyment of the tune by rolling in slime, or by trying to kick ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... serenaders were invited in, and were in such numbers that the room would scarcely hold them all. More cigars, more punch, more giving of thanks. About three o'clock the crowd began to disperse, and at length, after those Spanish leave-takings, which are really no joke, had ended, Captain E——, C—-n, and I, all three excessively cold and shivering, having passed the night at the open windows, consoled ourselves with hot chocolate and punch, and went to dream of sweet-sounding harmonies. Altogether, it was a scene which I would ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... them if they came to look for them," observed Serko, shrugging his shoulders and laughing heartily as though he had perpetrated a huge joke. ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... "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
... my seclusion to visit my guru in Benares. He used to joke with me over my ceaseless ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... of life!" said Mrs. Beverley; but the joke amused her, she wiped her eyes, and, as Irene had hoped and intended, stepped smiling into the waiting taxi, and left her old home with laughter instead of ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... this if he reaffirms it. But I have a horrible feeling that you farmers think you have caught a city ignoramus and that it is your duty to stuff me with the tallest stories you can invent. Please set me right. If you are stuffing me the joke is certainly on me, for these incredible tales seem true: if they are true the joke is doubly on me. As I am the butt, either way, don't be too hard on ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... bare feet were from a pair of high boots such as the stranger at the camp-meeting had worn, though his ankles were richly shaded in three colors from the road, the field, and the barnyard. He liked the joke so well that the hurt of it could hardly keep him from laughing as he thumped his mare's ribs with his naked heels and bade her ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... a wire. That isn't the joke, though. You see he got into a hopeless muddle about which side of the veil he had come out on; and he went off with the other ones, and they wouldn't have him, and he got lost in the veil, running ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... thing be appalling. The natural remark, in the almost lurid light of such an indictment, would be that if these things are left out, everything is left out. The American knows that a good deal remains; what it is that remains—that is his secret, his joke, as one may say. It would be cruel, in this terrible denudation, to deny him the consolation of his national gift, that "American humour" of which of late years we have ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... Samaritan? She came ashore beneath here; right beneath our feet; by no fault or carelessness. A light-house on a coast like this—a coast without a harbour—is a joke set in a death-trap, to make game of ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... "that is a good joke! I'll pitch you into that raven's nest up there to teach you to make less ...
— The Magic Soap Bubble • David Cory
... a difference between love and making me a laughing-stock. Yet what else could be the meaning of your little sister's running out to you, and saying "He thought I did not see him!" when I had followed you into the other room? Is it a joke upon me that I make free with you? Or is not the joke against HER sister, unless you make my courtship of you a jest to the whole house? Indeed I do not well see how you can come and stay with me as you do, by the hour together, and day after ...
— Liber Amoris, or, The New Pygmalion • William Hazlitt
... "Devilish incomprehensible! They must know we're here. Been waiting fifteen minutes now, begad! Getting beyond a joke—deuced exasperating, Perry, y' know. Dammit, man, why can't you say something, do something, instead of sitting there so devilish calm and serene, staring before ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... needful is to come out here as early as he can get over the ground, to see if we want him. He had better fire a gun, or shout. If we are alive we shall answer him. If we don't answer, he had better see about it. I don't want to scare you, but this is not a joke, and I can't afford to be misunderstood. Now I'm going to tell him all ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... It is worthy of notice, as a stern Venetian joke, that when the Jesuits eventually returned to Rialto, they were bade walk in processions upon ceremonial occasions between the Fraternities of S. Marco and S. Teodoro—saints amid whose columns on the Molo ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... not try to explain," snapped Bickley. "I am perfectly aware that you deceived me somehow, which no doubt you think a good joke." ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... school on that Friday evening. She was still wearing the blue serge school dress that she and her aunt had made for her high-school debut, also some coarse, faded brown stockings, and stout cheap shoes, not to mention an unmentionable hat of no style at all. She had taken that unfortunate joke of the trust company's president literally: she must not waste her substance upon clothes. Even without this inhibition she had scarcely the skill and the courage necessary to spend her two hundred dollars to advantage in three days. So she had bought ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... to a girl," said Dicky. "We wouldn't do such a thing. We sent it for a—for a——" I think he tried to say for a joke, but he couldn't with the fiery way the old man looked at him—"for a sell, to pay a porter out for stopping me getting into a train when it was just starting, and I missed going to the Circus with the others." Oswald was glad Dicky was not too proud to explain to ...
— New Treasure Seekers - or, The Bastable Children in Search of a Fortune • E. (Edith) Nesbit
... at this sally, and all the company followed his example, in the midst of which M. de Lauzun turned on his heel and left the room. His joke soon spread all over the Court and the town, and in the evening was told to the King. This was all the thanks M. de Villeroy obtained from M. de Lauzun for the honours he had paid him; and this was M. de Lauzun's consolation for his ill-success at ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... mine and Looey's always made 'em turn around and look at us agin. I never wisht I had on them Injun duds so hard before in my life. But I couldn't think of nothing bright to say, so I jest reads the name of that book over to myself agin, kind o' grinning like I got a good joke I ain't going to ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... Bengal (Resort to Simla was the exception, not the rule, in these days!) to the cheerfulness and unconstraint of Burma, with its fine landscapes and merry-hearted population. "It was such a relief to find natives who would laugh at a joke," he once remarked in the writer's presence to the lamented E. C. Baber, who replied that he had experienced exactly the same sense of relief in ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... angulo; so that we listen to their little gossip with interest. They had been setting men, it seems, by the ears; and the drollest little atrocities they do certainly report. Not but we have seen better in the Nenagh paper, so far as Ireland is concerned. But the pet little joke was in La Vendee. Miss Famine, who is the girl for our money, raises the question—whether any of them can tell the name of the leader and prompter to these high jinks of hell—if so, ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... load, without ceremony placed it on my back, and, giving me a poke with his spear, made a sign to me to carry it to a canoe floating close to the beach. The rest laughed, and seemed to think it a good joke. I tried hard to keep up my temper and courage; so, as soon as I had deposited the load in the canoe, I came back, and assiduously began to collect another, which in like manner I carried to the canoe. When, however, I had collected a third, rather ...
— Mark Seaworth • William H.G. Kingston
... get this load for me,—you will have no responsibility about it. I have never had anything to do with moonshiners before," he went on, "but Raymond got in with 'em and thinks it would be a huge joke to send a lot of their whiskey to his friends in these 'dry towns,' and that prohibition business has riled me so that I promised I would help pass the stuff along. Raymond's going to hang around the saloon and the station to see that the coast is clear o' government ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins
... take it as a joke. His eyes flashed a moment and he replied: "You know very well, Senor Alferez, that, during these days, I am not the ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal
... would never do a thing like that," she pleaded. "You're just trying to scare me with a joke. Be a good fellow and untie my hands and take ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... Harry, and off he sped, thinking it a great joke on Leslie that he should keep his word, and because she was causing the delay, run off to the cottage ...
— Princess Polly At Play • Amy Brooks
... be kindness, lofty souls, Great Brains, and whatso ne'er grows older, Him the Material controls: He shrugs a sleek, good-natured shoulder. Time scatters dalliance, joy, and joke; Your choicest vintage passes; e'en your Supreme tobacco ends in smoke— And so will poor DON ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 14, 1891. • Various
... perhaps two seconds for the joke to dawn on the other officers at the long mess table. Then an explosion of laughter sounded, and every eye was ...
— Dave Darrin on Mediterranean Service - or, With Dan Dalzell on European Duty • H. Irving Hancock
... rushed from the room and taken the night-mail back to the Five Towns, and never any more have ventured into the perils of London, if Carlo Trent had not turned his head, and signified by a curt, reluctant laugh that he saw the joke. For Edward Henry could no longer depend on Mr. Seven Sachs. Mr. Seven Sachs had to take the greatest pains to keep the muscles of his face in strict order. The slightest laxity with them—and he would have been involved in another ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... foreign cities. On the contrary, she felt in herself yearnings for a fuller and freer life of beauty and grace. She wasn't sure that Peter ever felt such yearnings; he seemed quite contented with the ugly rooms in the ugly street, and the dingy lace curtains and impossible pictures; he could make a joke of it all; and things one could make a joke of couldn't really hurt, ...
— The Lee Shore • Rose Macaulay
... mother, reprovingly; but his father, who looked upon it as a good joke, remarked, good-humoredly, ...
— Timothy Crump's Ward - A Story of American Life • Horatio Alger
... "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 like ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... our hero, there had been a practice of long standing among the workmen of "testing" every new hand that came in, by playing what was believed to be a smart trick upon him. The joke consisted in sending the new hand in company with a fellow workman to bring from a distant part of the shop a pair of wheels, one of which was of iron and weighed over four hundred pounds, while its mate was made of wood and finished off to look exactly like its companion. ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood
... fact that when the blind shall lead the blind both shall fall into a ditch! But Chinese decorum forbade my falling behind. I had determined to walk across China, every inch of the way or not at all; and the chair coolies, unaware of my intentions presumably, thought it a great joke when at the western gate, through which I departed, I gave instructions that one hundred cash be doled out to each man for his graciousness in escorting me through ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... from the old board landing. His friend, Mr. Draper, was with him. It was below the Falls where the river had rapids and rocks. They tipped over and were so soaked that St. Paul had to get along that day without them. It was considered a great joke to ask the dominie if he was converted to immersion, ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... for us. To-morrow, at twelve o'clock, ten million of dollars is due to be paid to the agents of Prince Victor of Normandy, by the Credit Lyonnais of Paris. To-morrow morning, the New York Herald, in great type, exposes as a gigantic joke the whole affair! It will give the names of the American citizens, and the titles which their contribution to the Royalist cause in France is to secure. To-morrow, all New York will be convulsed with laughter—and ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... consider; "that's just what I can't do. Alice's ways are not my ways, and if I copied her it's kilt I'd be entirely. She never likes to see a smile on my face, and she can't abide to watch me if I dance a step, and she wouldn't take a joke out of me if it was to save her life. To please Alice I'd have to be the primmest of the prim, and always stooping over my horrid lessons, and the end of it there'd be no more of poor Kathleen O'Hara—- it's dead and in her grave she'd be, the creature. Indeed, I'm glad I'm not ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... murdering wretch only replied to my threat with another mocking laugh, which his companions echoed, as if enjoying a joke, while I noticed them dragging at a shapeless mass from the ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... and held her fast, Maurice advanced upon her, she struggled, and gave a scream of real terror. The matter was no joke to any one but Reginald, for Maurice was very angry and really meant to ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge
... with anybody who lets me and mine alone. He finds fault with Romany, forsooth! why, L—-d A'mighty, what's Scotch? He doesn't like our songs; what are his own? I understand them as little as he mine; I have heard one or two of them, and pretty rubbish they seemed. But the best of the joke is the fellow's finding fault with Piramus's fiddle—a chap from the land of bagpipes finding fault with Piramus's fiddle! Why, I'll back that fiddle against all the bagpipes in Scotland, and Piramus against all the bagpipers; for though ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... what folks mean when they talk about a howlin' wilderness. Always thought 'twas one o' them figgers o' speech, but I'll tell the world it ain't no joke! Gosh! Think of all the things that's layin' out there and bellerin' and waitin' for us pore li'l' fellers to come in amongst 'em and ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... every day, promenading the deck with her in the fresh salt air. I would slide back my window and hear their laughter as they passed, above the throb of the engines and the wash of the sea. Sometimes they would look in upon me and joke, and ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... admonishing foot saved Uncle Billy from bursting into a roar of laughter. As it was, he felt compelled to retire up the canyon until he could recover his gravity. There he confided the joke to the tall pine trees, with many slaps of his leg, contortions of his face, and the usual profanity. But when he returned to the party, he found them seated by a fire—for the air had grown strangely ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... dulled by Farr's radiant good nature and wholesome frankness, went away about his business, but he halted long enough beside Dodd's chair to repeat "the corn-grower's" joke regarding the young man who had ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... getting into the boat, and shoving her off into deep water, they did not seem pleased, but tried to persuade them to land again. Finding they could not succeed, one of them threw his piece of fire-wood at them; but it falling short, the matter was treated as a joke, and laughed at. On this, another ran into the water, and threw his also, but it likewise fell short: he then took the hooked stick, and slipping off the hook, which it seems was only lashed or tied on, produced a spear, with which he ran up to the middle ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... heart. You wouldn't have known he had one. He only left it to the physical laboratory at Waterbury for the benefit of science, since he considered it to be quite an extraordinary kind of heart. And the joke of the matter was that, when, at the age of eighty-four, just five days before poor Florence, he died of bronchitis there was found to be absolutely nothing the matter with that organ. It had certainly jumped or ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... for proof to the dead branches from which new leaves spring, that life is endless, and that the soul, leaving the worn-out shell, takes up its dwelling in another form. Another with scorn tells us that all life is a joke and we are the butts of the cruel will of an Omnipotent power. And still ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... I don't for a moment think you will stop with one good joke of this kind. Youth, with a heart like yours, ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... going to? Have you accepted?" he took up her joke as she held him pinioned; while Mrs. Spragg, behind them, stirred in her ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... Button—big Tom, fighting Tom so loud o' tongue and ready o' fist—Tom as have cowed so many—there is he fast by the neck and a-groaning, see ye, gossips, loud enough for six, wish I may die else! And the best o' the joke is—the key be gone, as I'm a sinner! So they needs must break the lock to get him out. Big Tom, as have thrashed every man for miles." But here merry voice and laughter ceased and a buxom woman thrust smiling face ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... himself back with a roaring laugh, and hereupon Gid added: "It takes the Major a long time to get over a joke. Told him one just now and it tickled him mighty nigh to death. Well, I must be going now, and, madam, if I should chance to see anything of your charming daughter, I will tell her that you desire a conference with her. William," he called, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various
... which the Boche had left behind him when he fled. Finally, when all our plans were complete, we were notified that the point of attack had been shifted to N——, a village about four miles away. This practical joke we thought in extremely bad taste, but there was nothing for it but to pack up and move as quickly as possible. We learned that our troops at N—— had tried twice to break through the German lines by bombing. A third attempt was to be made, and ...
— Life in a Tank • Richard Haigh
... the mountains, often eating only once a day, and occasionally going two or three days without food. I had a few friends who were concerned about me, and who were afraid I might some time starve to death. So, partly as a joke and partly in earnest, they would mail me a package of something to eat, whenever they knew at what post-office I was likely to turn up. At Alma, the morning I hired Midget, the prize package which I drew from the post-office contained salted peanuts. I did ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... Bo-peep fell fast asleep, And dreamed she heard them bleating; When she awoke she found it a joke, For they ...
— Pinafore Palace • Various
... Venetian craft lying in the harbour, and took possession of them, and shut us all up in prison. There we were till Messer Polani got news, and sent out another ship to pay the fine demanded. That was no joke, I can tell you, for the prison was so hot and crowded, and the food so bad, that we got fever, and pretty near half of us died before our ransom came. Then at Constantinople the Genoese stirred the people up against us once or twice, and all the sailors ashore had to fight for their lives. ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... he said, laughing, "you going to meeting? That's a good joke!" If she had heard him, she would have turned away. But her hand was on the latch; the door had swung upon its noiseless hinges; the pealing organ drowned his voice. She went in and sat down in an empty slip close by the door, looking about her ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... asleep, And dream'd she heard them bleating; But when she awoke she found it a joke,— Her ...
— Simple Simon - Silhouette Series • Anonymous
... for curiosity," said McElvina, continuing his mirth. The proprietor of the dog, a young Frenchman, dressed very much "en calicot," did not, however, seem quite so much amused with this practical joke; he cocked his hat fiercely on one side, raised his figure to the utmost of its height, and walking up, en grand militaire addressed McElvina, with "Comment, monsieur, vous avez fait une ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... 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 do that, ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... know of the West Coast of Africa, the more you realise its dangers. For example, on your first voyage out you hardly believe the stories of fever told by the old Coasters. That is because you do not then understand the type of man who is telling them, a man who goes to his death with a joke in his teeth. But a short experience of your own, particularly if you happen on a place having one of its periodic epidemics, soon demonstrates that the underlying horror of the thing is there, a rotting corpse which ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... it said (since in our modern days every hero must have his weak heel), that now he had gone this distance it was difficult to recede. It would be no laughing matter to tell his solemn Harriet that he had been playing her a little practical joke. His temptations to give it up were incessant and most agitating; but if to advance seemed terrific, there was, in stopping short, an awfulness so overwhelming that Andrew abandoned himself to the current, his real dismay adding to his ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... counted on easily tracking them and buying them back. He would force Mr. Harley to give him the very money that was to buy them. The thought lighted up his cruel face like a red ray from the pit; it would be such a joke—such a triumph over the pig American! Meanwhile he would bully Mr. Harley, who did not know but what the ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... Athol When the conductor noticed among the new passengers a young man of intelligent appearance. He asked for the young man's fare, and the latter handed him a ticket to Miller's Falls and with it a cent. For a moment the conductor suspected a joke, but a look at the passenger's face convinced him ...
— Toasts - and Forms of Public Address for Those Who Wish to Say - the Right Thing in the Right Way • William Pittenger
... Hans knew what he was about, he was thrown off, and lay on his back by the road-side. His horse would have ran off, if a shepherd who was coming by, driving a cow, had not stopped it. Hans soon came to himself, and got upon his legs again, sadly vexed, and said to the shepherd, 'This riding is no joke, when a man has the luck to get upon a beast like this that stumbles and flings him off as if it would break his neck. However, I'm off now once for all: I like your cow now a great deal better than this smart ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... upon the side of the cliff. Will had usually found it cold at such a height, but now the beams struck directly upon him and his face was soon covered with perspiration. He was assailed also by a fierce, burning thirst, and a great anger lay hold of him. It was a terrible joke that he should be held there in the hole of the cliff by an invisible warrior who used only arrows against him, perhaps because he feared a shot from a rifle would bring ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... 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, and will naturally ...
— The Renewal of Life; How and When to Tell the Story to the Young • Margaret Warner Morley
... 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
... soul cannot do, as the body cannot fly. Nobody could have explained to my husband. Nobody could do it now. If you said to him in so many words, 'Champion is stealing your wife,' he would think the joke a little vulgar: that it could be anything but a joke—that notion could find no crack in his great skull to get in by. Well, John was to come and see us act this evening, but just as we were starting he said he ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... cut off a thick round of melon as they arose from the table, and put it in the refrigerator for Emmy Lou. "It seems a joke," she remarked, "such a baby as Emmy Lou going to school anyhow; but then she has only a square ...
— Emmy Lou - Her Book and Heart • George Madden Martin
... 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
... integral part of his existence. His mother had a farm and cattle and money. She was in better circumstances than her neighbors. This had added to his feeling of superiority and independence. The accident of a slight tinge of color had hardly risen even to the dignity of a joke in the freedom of the settlement and the forest. Looking back, he believed that his mother had guarded his youthful mind against receiving any unfavorable impression upon the subject. In his remote, free, wilderness home he had heard but little of African slavery, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... you for your sympathy with my painting and drawing. Many a sketch is dedicated to you. I do look forward to your criticisms, which, to my shame and glory, are always grand appreciations. It is a lovely joke, that. ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... loud, joyful, and steeplechasing Lord, in the pursuit of pleasure and distant wars, dons the golden cords for a season, the world understands that this is masquerading, skittles, and a joke. One must not confound the ideal A.D.C. with ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... 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
... poor. But, in the first place, it is well written. Those people speak a language which is nearer to the language of real life than that used by Mr. Pinero, and when they make jokes there is generally some humour in the joke and some intelligence in the humour. They have ideas and they have feelings. The ideas and the feelings are not always combined with faultless logic into a perfectly clear and coherent presentment of character, ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... When satisfied of this, the young man found his way to the light again. But for the terror and evident recoil of the person who had evaded him, he would have considered the whole adventure a capital joke, in which he had been famously baffled; but there was something too earnest in that struggle and cry for trifling, and the remembrance left ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... hardly wanted, and clashes with the inferiorities. Industry is exacting. Honesty is unpractical. Truth is easily offended. Dignity will not bend. But the man who can be all things to all men, who has ever a kind word to speak, a pleasant joke to crack, who can forgive all sins, who is ever prepared for friend or foe but never very bitter to the latter, who forgets not men's names, and is always ready with little words,—he is the man who will be supported at a crisis such as this that was now in the course of passing. It ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... it dashed into them. The wind dropped, however, and Mr. Millard got safe to Tezcuco next morning; but, instead of receiving sympathy for his misfortunes when he got there, found that the idea of a tempest on the lake was reckoned a mere joke, and that the drawing-room of the Casa Grande had been decorated with a fancy portrait of himself, hanging to the half-way cross, with his legs in the water, and underneath, a poetical description of his sufferings ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... of to-day except it be to stifle them under the weight of good living." Colbert waited the effect which this coarse jest would produce upon the king; and Louis XIV., who was the vainest and the most fastidiously delicate man in his kingdom, forgave Colbert the joke. ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... unheard of prestige. All the smart people all over the world belong to it so as to appear as though they held death in scorn. Then, once they get here, they feel obliged to be cheerful that they may not appear to be afraid. So they joke and laugh and talk flippantly, they are witty and they become so. At present it is certainly the most frequented and the most entertaining place in Paris. The women are even thinking of building ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... a brief line or two in a work by Goethe, alleging that Hamlet was 'a fat man.' At first I was inclined to regard this as a joke of the majestic German. Later reflection induced me to examine this surmise in detail, and to conclude finally that the theory is true, and that the enigma of Hamlet's character can be solved ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... are, that they would not go to the House of Lords on Tuesday and support him against Brougham on the Bankruptcy Bill, and that the Duke of Wellington wrote to her and desired her to influence her husband in the matter of Reform. The first is a joke, the second there might be a little in, for vanity is always uppermost, but they have both some motive of interest, which they will pursue in whatever way they best can. The excuse they make is that they want to conceal their strength from the Government, and accordingly the Duke ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... dramatist in whose plays she had not a part: and of these dramas she only knew the part which concerned herself. A wag once told her that Dante was born at Algiers: and asked her,—which Dr. Johnson wrote first, 'Irene,' or 'Every Man in his Humour.' But she had the best of the joke, for she had never heard of Irene or Every Man in his Humour, or Dante, or perhaps Algiers. It was all one to her. She acted what little Bows told her—where he told her to sob, she sobbed—where he told her to laugh, she laughed. She ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... "Please don't joke, Doctor. I am troubled about these dear people. I talked to Mr. Rivers about it, and he is troubled and says it is the mills and money. I know that, but at the bottom of it all is the war. Now Aunt Ann is reading the papers again—I think it is ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... intuition which was his peculiar gift, steered an undeviating course. Some of the life-savers used to joke with him and declare that he could smell a drowning man a mile away, for his ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... and awkwardness of manner: and there are men whose stiffness and awkwardness of manner are such as would freeze the most genial and silence the frankest. Sometimes it arises from ignorance of social rules and proprieties; sometimes from incapacity to take, or even to comprehend, a joke. Sometimes it proceeds from a pettedness of nature, which keeps you ever in fear that offence may be taken at the most innocent word or act. Sometimes it comes of a preposterous sense of his own standing and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... 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 do ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... extraordinary power. Socrates, a man of humble stem, but honest enough; of the commonest history; of a personal homeliness so remarkable, as to be a cause of wit in others,—the rather that his broad good nature and exquisite taste for a joke invited the sally, which was sure to be paid. The players personated him on the stage; the potters copied his ugly face on their stone jugs. He was a cool fellow, adding to his humor a perfect temper, and a knowledge of his ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... of good words for setting to music, led Julie to try to write some, and eventually, in 1874, a book of "Songs for Music, by Four Friends,"[26] was published; the contents were written by my sister and two of her brothers, and the Rev. G.J. Chester. This book became a standing joke amongst them, because one of the reviewers said it contained "songs by four writers, one of whom was a poet," and he did not specify the ...
— Juliana Horatia Ewing And Her Books • Horatia K. F. Eden
... turned out to be a sorry joke on the part of Captain Pedro Nino. His ships were full of slaves which, he laughingly declared, he expected to turn into ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley
... of this humble dwelling, made such comical grimaces, and winked his little eyes so frequently and eruditely, in endeavouring to fathom their mirth, that I could not restrain myself, and took a conspicuous part in the joke. After arranging, through King, who had come with us, as forming one of the boat's crew, where and how we should sleep, we went into the open air, and R—— and P——, lighting their cigars, again entered into conversation with ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... "There is a little joke which is causing considerable merriment at the Harbor police station at the present time, and the key to it is contained in the words, 'Long Island hospitality.' A few days ago the police-boat 'Protector' was ordered to take to Long Island a party ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... faded ink, which showed how many generations of travellers must have been duped by its tempting list of savoury dishes. I never could ascertain whether these had ever really existed in the far distant past, or whether the notice was a poor joke on the part of the proprietor. In any case, the menu we found was always the same: hot water, sour black bread, and (very rarely) eggs of venerable exterior, for although the inmates of these stations presumably ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... 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
... taught you some sense," said old man McGee, as the donkey was once more on terra firma. As he rode off, Dick burst into shouts of laughter. His little joke had certainly turned out to be better than he expected and for many days after that he had only to slyly introduce some talk about a lion to cause the professor to look at him in a ...
— The Boy Inventors' Radio Telephone • Richard Bonner
... misfortune to be, as we used to say in my time in the House of Commons, when it was not the custom to allude to the Lords, and when the order of parliamentary proceedings was perhaps better observed than it is now—to be in—in point of fact,' says Cousin Feenix, cherishing his joke, with great slyness, and finally bringing it out with a jerk, ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... Holmes. Only a joke, as like as not. It was this letter, if you can call it a letter, which reached me ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... not share the general hilarity. The uproar caused by this simple joke did not even chase the frown from his brow. He was provoked at not being able to bring himself within the diapason of this somewhat vulgar gayety: he was aware that his melancholy countenance, his black clothes, his want ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... cried Groups. It was a family joke to call the chipmunk's burrow by that name, and though the puppies did not understand the pun they relished the ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... legitimate was Air Force Letter 200-5, Subject: Unidentified Flying Objects. The letter, which was duly signed and sealed by the Secretary of the Air Force, in essence stated that UFO's were not a joke, that the Air Force was making a serious study of the problem, and that Project Blue Book was responsible for the study. The letter stated that the commander of every Air Force installation was responsible for forwarding all UFO reports to ATIC by wire, with a copy ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... of this palace," he added, by way of a joke, meaning that he had not been called to do any work for a long time. "Perhaps you can tell me what ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... what you wish, my dear boy; but I am afraid, amongst these gossiping villagers, you will often hear the subject alluded to in joke ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... hall his mind was filled with many thoughts. All his plans for revolutionizing submarine travel, were, of course, forgotten, and he was only concerned with the charge that had been made against his son. It seemed incredible, yet the officers were not ones to perpetrate a joke. The chief and constable had driven from town in a carriage, and they now invited the inventor ...
— Tom Swift and his Airship • Victor Appleton
... consistency had the dear man meant by turning him upside down that night—by dosing him to that degree, at the most sensitive hour of his life, with the doctrine of renunciation? If Mrs. St. George was an irreparable loss, then her husband's inspired advice had been a bad joke and renunciation was a mistake. Overt was on the point of rushing back to London to show that, for his part, he was perfectly willing to consider it so, and he went so far as to take the manuscript of the first chapters of his new book out of his table-drawer, ...
— The Lesson of the Master • Henry James
... medicine, which suggested a vague analogy with the sleeping-potion in the tragedy, caused him to be called Juliet. Certainly Romeo's sweetheart hardly suffered more; she was not, at least, a standing joke in Verona. Remembering these things, I hastened to say to Pickering that I hoped he was still the same good fellow who used to do my Latin for me. "We were capital friends, you know," I went on, "then ...
— Eugene Pickering • Henry James
... suffered, but hardly the Corinthian women; and the Athenian dames and damsels were as particular about their shoes and their other cordwainer's wares as ever. The story that Socrates and his wife had but one upper garment between them is a stock joke, as I have shown elsewhere. "Who first started the notable jest it is impossible, at this distance of time, to discover, just as it is impossible to tell whose refined wit originated the conception of the ...
— The Creed of the Old South 1865-1915 • Basil L. Gildersleeve
... endure a joke; he pulled a face as if he had drunk vinegar, and made a gesture as if he were about to seize the tailor by the throat. But the little fellow began to laugh, reached him his bottle, and said, "No harm was meant, take a drink, and swallow your anger down." The shoemaker ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... the cabins of the Dean and the Nell, and Cap. was somewhat disturbed by having an addition to the bow compartment in the Nell. Each man had charge of a cabin and this was Cap.'s special pride. He daily packed it so methodically that it became a standing joke with us, and we often asked him whether he always placed that thermometer back of the fifth rib or in front of the third, or some such nonsensical question, which of course Cap. took in good part and only arranged his cabin ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... and holy. One of the canons used to laugh at her for her constant attendance at all the services, and for her devotion to good works, and call her always the reverend sister. Miss Monro was a little annoyed at this faint clerical joke; Ellinor smiled quietly. Miss Monro disapproved of Ellinor's grave ways and sober ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... soon return to the transparent cheek. Not noticing signs which might bear a twofold interpretation, Lumley, who seemed in high spirits, rattled away on a thousand matters,—praising the view, the weather, the journey, throwing out a joke here and a compliment there, and completing his conquest ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... objective entity, "its soporific virtue," he would be open to ridicule indeed. But the constitution of our minds is such that we cannot but distinguish ideally a thing from its even essential attributes and qualities. The joke is sufficiently amusing, however, regarded as the solemn enunciation of a ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... expected to concentrate in the fifteen-minutes' trip across the bay the interest of years of travel on land. There was nothing like blue water to this sailor's wife, whose heart had been upon it for so many anxious months; the extravagance of her partiality was the joke of husband and friends ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... upwards of sixty years of age, noble-looking, loving a good joke, an antiquarian, and a good astronomer. I picked up many an anecdote from him, and many curious ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... have his evenings; he would appear at his clubs as usual. If comments were made upon his absence at other hours he would quietly inform the observing ones that he had gone to work, but would refuse to say where. It certainly was a joke, his going to work; not that his grandfather had not often and strenuously recommended it, saying that the boy would never know happiness until he shook hands with labour; not that he himself had not fully intended some day ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... This world lasts, there will be people Who are fond of hobby-horses. Some are mystics and ascetics, Others love old wine or brandy. Some, antiquities are seeking, Others are for chafers craving; Many others make bad verses. 'Tis a curious joke that each one Much prefers to choose a calling Most unsuited to his nature. I thus also ride my hobby, And this hobby is the noble Muse of music who regales me. As King Saul's deep sorrow vanished At the sound of David's harp once, So with cheering ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel
... smile; and few words. As children, when we went to dancing parties at his house, he would come during the evening, with a few old friends (the fathers of the children assembled), and, standing in the door of the drawing-room, pat the children on the head and have a little joke with them as they passed him. He would stay for about half-an-hour or so, and then return with his friends down-stairs to smoke. I have heard papa, who, as you know, was no mean judge, say what a remarkably ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... and handy in doing joiner's work, and every one in the house applied to him for delicate repairs, and—when he had time—they were done to perfection; only, he seldom had time, and it was a standing joke that he must have a private museum somewhere to which the objects confided to him found their way. In reality, he had to do a good deal of manual labor of different kinds, on account of our country life, ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... ideas of humor prevalent in the sixteenth century, Sidney met with indifferent success. The wit depends on the ugliness, the perversity, and the clownish character of Dametas, his wife, and their daughter Mopsa. It partakes of the nature of the practical joke, and though it no doubt amused the courtiers of Elizabeth, is too clumsy for a more cultivated taste. But although Sidney's comic scenes may no longer amuse, it must be said that they are free from the low coarseness ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... Leschenaultia formosa with the sticky margin outside the indusium? Well, this is the stigma—at least, I find the pollen-tubes here penetrate and nowhere else. What a joke it would be if the stigma is always exterior, and this by far the greatest difficulty in my crossing notions should turn out a case eminently requiring insect aid, and consequently almost inevitably ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... superfluous, since their tie was avowedly a temporary one. Of the special understanding on which their marriage had been based not a trace remained in his thoughts of her; the idea that he or she might ever renounce each other for their mutual good had long since dwindled to the ghost of an old joke. ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... decided that we would get up a crowd and go bear hunting the next day. When we told our adventure, Green was very hilarious at my expense and kept reminding me of the brave things I had said coming across the plains. He was so everlastingly tickled with his joke that he sat up all that night to guy me about my running away from a bear. I told him I would show him all the bears he wanted to see the next day, and give him a chance to try ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly
... woods, but was easily 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 ...
— The Young Forester • Zane Grey
... fatidicarum sortium fidem, quaeve augurales portenderent alites scientissime callens aliquoties praedixisse futura. Ammianus, xv. 7. A prophecy, or rather a joke, is related by Sozomen, (l. iv c. 10,) which evidently proves (if the crows speak Latin) that Athanasius understood the language ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... cliff. Will had usually found it cold at such a height, but now the beams struck directly upon him and his face was soon covered with perspiration. He was assailed also by a fierce, burning thirst, and a great anger lay hold of him. It was a terrible joke that he should be held there in the hole of the cliff by an invisible warrior who used only arrows against him, perhaps because he feared a shot from a rifle would ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... laughed heartily at this joke. In spite of our advice, l'Encuerado would insist upon skinning the animal, whose pelt he wished to preserve. Fortunately, he was very quick at such an operation, and the beautiful fur was soon hanging ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... superstition. I told them that, on my return, I should have my family with me, and no one must come near us in that state. "What shall we put on? we have no clothing." It was considered a good joke when I told them that, if they had nothing else, they must put on a ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... the comic smile of one who knows you well, And is mighty glad to see you, and has got a joke to tell; He could laugh when all was gloomy, he could grin when all was blue, Sing a comic song and act it, and appreciate it, too. Only cynical in cases where his own self was the jest, And the humour of his good yarns made atonement for ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... Major Sandars, entering into the joke, "I'll give orders that every swollen serpent is to be bayonetted and opened if the doctor ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... I will go. If I do make her laugh then, O my brothers, the laugh will be on you for I shall become Tsar and you two will be known as my two poor brothers. Ho! Ho! Ho! What a joke that would be!" ...
— The Laughing Prince - Jugoslav Folk and Fairy Tales • Parker Fillmore
... of yours comes cropping out in every generation or so in my family and the similar coloring makes one fancy a likeness even if there is none; but Sally had your eyes and your chin. She took life much more lightly than my Molly does, saw a jest where none was intended and sometimes cracked a joke when seriousness would have been in better taste. I have not seen her for many years and she stopped corresponding with all of us; not that there was any disagreement, but letter-writing simply died a natural death, as time went on. I am greatly ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed
... 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 ...
— George at the Fort - Life Among the Soldiers • Harry Castlemon
... note (No. 15. p. 232.), I beg leave, with all possible respect and deference, to suggest that his joke is not quite ad rem.—What would do for a beefsteak does not help his mistake; for it is quite evident that sprote applies to fish-swimming and not to fish-catching; and I presume that "useful ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 16, February 16, 1850 • Various
... go on and tell How all the joke at last leaked out, And how the youngsters raised the yell And rode the happy groom about Upon their shoulders; how the bride Was kissed a hunderd times beside The one I give her,—tel she cried And laughed untel she like to died! I might go on and tell you all About the supper—and ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... Prudence had dropped, made it necessary for him to depend largely on his imagination to satisfy the demands of his auditors, which accounts for the slight discrepancy between the actual facts as known to the reader and the popular version. After everybody had haw hawed and cracked his joke over Obadiah's last repetition of the anecdote, ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... formulated the complete sentence and then edited it, and having a mind that moved with the frantic speed and wild agility of a tractor engine pulling a carload of coal, glared ponderously at the porter who took it as a joke. Gollop sometimes assumed that prodigious seriousness when about to pass out specimens ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... twisted, or lost my luggage, or caught childish ailments for the second time. Where there is but one gifted member in a large and commonplace family, an absurd idea of this kind is apt to grow from a joke into an idee fixe. ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... fond of a joke, especially where there was a chance of throwing ridicule upon any body superior to him in abilities, joined most heartily in Dashwood's mirth; repeating the story, as "an excellent thing," to every ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... ponderous witticism in which Janner had indulged became an accepted joke in the settlement. Bess had fallen a victim to the tender sentiment at last. She had found an adorer, and had apparently succumbed to his importunities. Seth spent less time in his shanty and more in her society. ...
— "Seth" • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... 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 in your eye ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... where the joke comes in there either!" I said, and I did not feel particularly pleased with him for saying such things. He laid his hand on my ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... meant that for a kind of small joke, but she had been worse hurt than he could know, for one 32-pounder shot had shattered her stern, barely missing her sternpost and rudder gearing, and she was no longer the trim and seaworthy vessel that she had been. One more heavy gun had sounded from ...
— Ahead of the Army • W. O. Stoddard
... January 27, 1815, they carried away with them 199 slaves, whom they had acquired by the very easy method of taking them willy-nilly. The matter of having these bondmen restored to their original owners, of convincing the British that the Americans did not see the joke of the abduction caused one of the most acrimonious discussions in the history of the State. The treaty between the two countries, England and America, was distorted by both sides to read anything they wished. The English took ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... comrades groaning near, 70 Whose mangled limbs, and bodies gored, Bore token of the mountain sword, Though, neighboring to the Court of Guard, Their prayers and feverish wails were heard; Sad burden to the ruffian joke, 75 And savage oath by fury spoke!— At length up-started John of Brent, A yeoman from the banks of Trent; A stranger to respect or fear, In peace a chaser of the deer, 80 In host a hardy mutineer, But still the ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... Egyptian language are discoverable among the present inhabitants, with whom, for instance, the word 'Bale' or 'Baal' is in continual use . . . ." [Evidently a joke.] ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... explained Bulchester, "if that man is really a parson, they have not much of a set of witnesses to prove that the ceremony was a joke. Harwin minus, though he has left his confession; Waldo interested in proving it a real marriage; Mistress Katie interested the other way, and the Eveleigh,—you have not seen ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1 • Various
... official, had not been at the gate when we arrived, but came running and smiling from his gossip with the door-keeper of the casino, and this was a good deal in itself; but the door-keeper, amiably obese, was better still in her acceptance of the joke with which the hand-mirror for the easier study of the roof frescos was accepted. "It is more convenient," she suggested, and at the counter-suggestion, "Yes, especially for people with short necks," she shook with gelatinous laughter, and burst into the generous cry, "Oh, how delightful!" Perhaps ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... '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
... is, a few of them—might joke, but were all glad to be getting in. There's no fun staying wet and getting wetter all night long. If it wasn't for the wetness of a fellow it would have been great, for it was the finest kind of excitement, our running to harbor—that ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly
... few other varieties. There is your man who is pre-eminently conscientious, whose face beams with sincerity as he opens on the negative, and who votes on the affirmative at the end, looking round the room with an air of chastened pride. There is also the irrelevant speaker, who rises, emits a joke or two, and then sits down again, without ever attempting to tackle the subject of debate. Again, we have men who ride pick-a-back on their family reputation, or, if their family have none, identify themselves with some well-known statesman, use his opinions, and lend him their patronage ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the stolid Prussians joke over their beer, as they learn of the wholesale murder finishing red Bellona's banquet. "The French ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... morning was fresh and the morning was cool When they stopped in an orchard two miles out of Toul, And the grey muzzles spat through the grey muzzles' smoke, And there was Jules Francois to make you a joke, To crack his ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 14, 1914 • Various
... vigor. "Nothing of the sort could happen!" His head was held high, now, and new life seemed surging through that spent and drug-wrecked body. "There's no way those curs could have turned on any gas, here. You're crazy, ha! ha! ha! Insane, eh? A good joke—capital joke, that! I must tell it at the Union League Club! 'Tiger' Waldron, suddenly insane, ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... one of these humble and human gateways there is a great gap in the wall, with a wide road running through it. There is something of unreason in the sight which affects the eye as well as the reason. It recalls some crazy tale about the great works of the Wise Men of Gotham. It suggests the old joke about the man who made a small hole for the kitten as well as a large hole for the cat. Everybody has read about it by this time; but the immediate impression of it is not merely an effect of reading or even of reasoning. It looks lop-sided; ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... "An' a poor joke tu, so 'tis. You'd turn any gal's 'ead wi' your stuff, Chirgwin. Wheer's the gude of a fuzz-pole o' yeller hair an' a pair o' blue eyes stuck 'pon top of a idle, good-for-nothin' body? Maidens caan't live by looks in these paarts, ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... day. Not an avowal, not a confidence, that shed light on his life work. Parsimonious of all he observed, he never related a typical anecdote, or offered a suggestive remark. Praise, even, did not move him, and if by chance he became animated it was to tell some practical joke, some atelier hoaxes, as if he had given himself up to the pleasure of ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... treachery of the faithless maid to whom it was intrusted—and he sent you the answer which so cruelly deceived you, my poor Leander! Some time after he showed me that letter, laughing heartily over what he was wicked enough to call a capital joke; that letter, in every line of which the purest, most impassioned love shone so brightly, and filled my heart with joy, despite his ridicule and coarse abuse. It did not produce the effect upon me that ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... out of the way, must expect to have their toes trodden on.' Everybody laughed at this, but Franz was obliged to spring inside, without taking any notice of the joke, as the coach was now really going on; and if he had began to talk, he would ...
— Aunt Judy's Tales • Mrs Alfred Gatty
... the groom of the chambers, who stood behind her; and in a gruff and angry voice shouted: 'Go to my Lord. Take away his wine, and tell him if he drinks any more you have my orders to wheel him into the next room.' If this was a joke it was certainly a practical one. And yet affection was behind it. There's a tender place in ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... 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. ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... that kind of joke. I don't like that kind of joke. It's blasphemous," exclaimed Jadwin. "Go, get it off on Crookes. He'd appreciate it, but I don't. But this new crop ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... ther dog ter tree so many coons at ther same place, an' wonders if thar is somethin' wrong with ther dog, if he's gone daffy, er whether it's jest an onusual smart coon what has gone out jest ter have a joke by runnin' them ter ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... however, my tutor began to show signs that his conscience was troubling him, and one night he delivered his ultimatum. The joke had gone far enough, he implied. My intentions, indeed, he found praiseworthy, but in his opinion it was high time that my father were informed of them; he was determined to ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... while we were sitting around the camp fire, smoking and cracking jokes—for an Indian enjoys a joke as well as any one—I got up and told them that we would, after leaving their country, have to travel over a small portion of the Ute country, and they being hostile towards the white people, we did not feel safe to try to cross their country alone, I told them ...
— Thirty-One Years on the Plains and In the Mountains • William F. Drannan
... talked, tried to convince him of the invalidity in his reasoning. There was a simple explanation for the voice; either he had forgotten part of his speech or maybe some amateur radio ham had somehow managed to pick up their signal and was playing a joke. He was too intelligent a man to be frightened by such coincidence. They spoke to him reassuringly all during the ride. At the stage door he thanked them, then went inside the auditorium to ...
— The Second Voice • Mann Rubin
... very hard for her; much harder than any one knew but herself. The joke was too striking to be passed by, even in the case of an ordinary person; but when it was Miss Kennedy,—heiress, beauty, and queen of favour,—all tongues took it up. She could go nowhere, wear nothing, do nothing, without meeting that one ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... ordinary sleep, and by no means unpleasant; but that the only disagreeable part was the being roused. Upon this, the gentleman declared that he knew nothing of mesmerism, and that, had he believed there was any thing in it, he would not have attempted the joke. Another lady present, married, and having a family, was now most anxious to have the experiment repeated upon her. She said she had before sat to an experienced mesmeriser, who had failed, and she was still incredulous, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... young people strolled up Chapel Hill in the moonlight, talking gayly of the happy days they had spent together with Mrs. Gray; for Richards, the burglar, seemed now a sort of joke to them, and even the terrible recollection of the wolves was softened by time, and they could only laugh at poor Hippy's plight when his breath gave out and ...
— Grace Harlowe's Plebe Year at High School - The Merry Doings of the Oakdale Freshmen Girls • Jessie Graham Flower
... burlesque, "Perseus and 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 ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... the Commendatore, briefly. "You must have your joke." And his hand instinctively made for his moustaches. "Well, I am sorry. I can never hope to find you a ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... in the kitchen, they arranged on a side table in the dining-room stacks of tin trays, knives, forks, spoons, and paper napkins. Over it they posted a bulletin board in good imitation of a real cafeteria. There were listed on it the five dishes which were being prepared and as a joke a number of others—quite impossible to cook at such a time, as roast beef, mince pie, frozen pudding—all of which were then heavily crossed off in ...
— Entertaining Made Easy • Emily Rose Burt
... day, but that the stronger varlets of the Seminary should take some exercise in the shafts of Moossy's coach. Howieson was a young gentleman far removed from sentiment, and he gave it carefully to be understood that he only did the thing for a joke; but there is no question that more than once Jock brought Moossy's carriage, with Moossy's wife in it, successfully along that lane and other lanes, and it is a fact that, on a certain Saturday, Speug came out with one of his father's traps, and Mistress ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... laugh—do you think that being threatened with the police is a joke? You are not likely to find it so.—Have you suddenly been bereft of the ...
— The Beetle - A Mystery • Richard Marsh
... Ferdinand, liked him from the start. A better figure of a man I shall never see; six feet to an inch, square set and wonderfully muscular. His hair was dark and ridiculously curly, so much so that talk of the "irons and brown paper" was the standing joke amongst the racing men in Paris, who knew no more of him than that he was an Italian by birth and had spent half his life in America. For the rest, he spoke English as well as I did, and I never knew ...
— The Man Who Drove the Car • Max Pemberton
... was the son of Dr Burton's godfather, and a man of mature years at the time the Highlander and Dr Burton describe him as having "run away." The writer can offer no explanation of this rather amusing passage in the letter: it might either be a mere joke or refer to some family quarrel of ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... impulse of the moment. He ordered his men to form on the edge of the water, fronting the ford, to unbuckle their cloaks, and throw them over their helmets, and not to move or speak a word. The men took the joke instantly. The crescent moon, already distanced by the sun, was sinking below the horizon; the bank of the river threw its shade over them, and they stood below, a ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... that she never talks to me but in general terms, as to one whom it is dangerous to trust. For discriminations of character she has no names: all whom she mentions are honest men and agreeable women. She smiles not by sensation, but by practice. Her laughter is never excited but by a joke, and her notion of a joke is not very delicate. The repetition of a good joke does not weaken its effect; if she has laughed once, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... Covenant. Had England come to such a pass, it was asked, that it was necessary to set up a Synod in her, to be "guided by the Holy Ghost sent in a cloak-bag from Scotland"? The author of this profanity, according to Prynne, was a pamphleteer named Henry Robinson. It was, in fact, an old joke, originally applied to one of the Councils of the Catholic Church; and Robinson had stolen it. [Footnote: Prynne's Fresh Discovery, p.27 and p.9; and ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... alcoholism with its characteristic psychoses, cerebral thrombosis with its aphasias, agnosias, and apraxias, thalmic syndromes due to vascular lesions with their unilateral pathological feeling-tone, frontal-lobe tumors with joke-making, uncus tumors with hallucinations of taste and smell, lethargic encephalitis with its disturbance of the general consciousness and its psychoneurotic sequelae (lesions in the globus pallidus and ...
— A Psychiatric Milestone - Bloomingdale Hospital Centenary, 1821-1921 • Various
... that even then, thoughtless as I was, I liked what Drake had said, because he had told a positive falsehood, and it was no excuse to declare that it was said in joke. Drake continued, his voice growing more and more tremulous every instant, as if with terror—"That's not all. As we crept away undiscovered, we heard the tramp of many feet coming up from the shore, and we shouldn't ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... once," he cried. "In this strenuous life a joke is too precious an event to be wasted. Who made ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... this Universe are out on the track of them, and oakum and the correction-house are infallible sooner or later! The clever Elliot, who knew a hawk from a hernshaw, never floundered into that platitude. This, however, is a joke of his, better or worse (I think, on his quitting Berlin in 1782, without visible resource or outlook): "I am far from having a Sans-Souci," writes he to the Edens; "and I think I am coming to be SANS SIX-SOUS."—Here still are two small Fractions, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... 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 turned ...
— Whistler Stories • Don C. Seitz
... know, unless it was to be married, and laughing at her own joke, she bade Grace good-bye, having learned by accident what she so ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... "It's a rich joke," said George, laughing. "It seems his uncle was mad with him and landed him there as a punishment. He's got to stay there ...
— Robert Coverdale's Struggle - Or, On The Wave Of Success • Horatio, Jr. Alger
... of going out with Dario, of having a pretext for a complete reconciliation with him, that enchanted her; he himself realised it, and, unable to escape, he tried to treat the matter as a joke. "Ah! cousin," he said, "it will be your fault; I shall have the nightmare for a week. An excursion like that spoils all the enjoyment of life for ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... "Carmina Sacra," and then our friend, Colonel, now Major-General, Connor, was never at a loss for a song, and Colonel French often displayed his genius with the violin, and our friend, the chaplain, could always tell a good story or perpetrate a joke. Chaplain Norman Fox was an accession to our staff, who joined us when we first encamped at White Oak Church. He was a gentleman of enterprise and talent, who, soon after his arrival in camp, instituted a series of religious meetings on week days, in addition to the regular ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... breadfruit and laid them at her feet; at 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 ship ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... he 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 to frighten ...
— The Little Clown • Thomas Cobb
... 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 this ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... fast asleep, And dreamt he heard them bleating When he awoke, he found it a joke, For ...
— The National Nursery Book - With 120 illustrations • Unknown
... Woman" is a gigantic farce of the most ingenious construction. The whole comedy hinges on a huge joke, played by a heartless nephew on his misanthropic uncle, who is induced to take to himself a wife, young, fair, and warranted silent, but who, in the end, turns out neither silent nor a woman at all. ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... and no one was to be admitted into the boxes without shoes and stockings; which leads one to conclude that the form of admission and style of attire were not uncommon, or there would have been no joke in ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... our gunners and the infantry behind, and in an instant the chosen sons of Cork were bounding out of their lines and down the hill, and belabouring the fire with blankets and ground-sheets and sacks. They seemed to think it a fine joke, and raised a paean of triumph when it was got under. "Wan more victory," I heard ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... 1515, and Duerer stood godfather to their little Hieronymus in 1518. It is easy to imagine that there was many a supper and dinner, when a thousand strange subjects were even more strangely discussed; when Pirkheimer now made them roar with a hazardous joke, or again dumbfounded them with Greek quotations pompously done into German, or made their flesh creep and the superstitions of their race stir in them by mysteriously enlarging on his astrological lore,—for to his many weaknesses he added ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... 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 Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... They sported together, they drank, they played bowls and tennis: my Lord Castlewood would go for three days to Sark, and bring back my Lord Mohun to Castlewood—where indeed his lordship made himself very welcome to all persons, having a joke or a new game at romps for the children, all the talk of the town for my lord, and music and gallantry and plenty of the beau langage for my lady, and for Harry Esmond, who was never tired of hearing his stories of his campaigns and his life at Vienna, ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... 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 another bottle ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... this huge joke of an animal, part body, part soul, all nerves keen to catch at suffering, only ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... peculiar manifestations with the Lombard's habits of eating and drinking, especially his carnivorousness. The Lombard of early times seems to have been exactly what a tiger would be, if you could give him love of a joke, vigorous imagination, strong sense of justice, fear of hell, knowledge of northern mythology, a stone den, and a mallet and chisel; fancy him pacing up and down in the said den to digest his dinner, and striking on the wall, with a new fancy in his head, at every turn, ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume I (of 3) • John Ruskin
... I told Ed Tootle to serve it on you at your orgy—you had no business to expect me to enter any free-for-all inebriates' competition—you know that, 'Gene! It may have been a little extreme as a joke; but if you'd laughed it off as you always do, nobody would have thought anything of it except to chaff you about it. But what do you do? You make as serious a thing of it as if you hadn't been trotting with our crowd for five years or so. ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... "The joke's on us this time, and no doubt about it," said the also chagrinned, but more philosophically inclined "Gibs." "The Bard means well, though, and no doubt he ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... comfortable in this joke of a house. But we had no pump; all the water we used I brought from a spring in the edge of the woods, the one found by the Gregg party on the night of Christmas, 1849. The first time I visited it and dipped ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... recent; because the tooth of time is plainly visible.' He could suggest nothing to clear up the mystery. Professor J. P. Lesley thought it might be an astrological amulet. He detected upon it the signs of Pisces and Leo. He read the date 1572. He said, 'The piece was placed there as a practical joke.' He thought it might be Hispano-American or French-American in origin. the suggestion of 'a practical joke' is itself something which must be taken as a joke. No person in possession of this interesting object ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... continental mess-mate stumbled almost into my arms. He fully intended to do so and I had no wish to avoid him but somehow we missed each other and both fell prostrate on the pavement. Far from feeling any ill-humour at this catastrophe, we both thought it a capital joke, and I can distinctly remember our sitting side by side in the gutter and swearing eternal friendship. After this things are vague, and the next I remember is going upstairs on all fours and then opening my bedroom door. A most remarkable sight presented itself. I ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... Albert-Amiens road; and one day during that period I accompanied our colonel and the colonel of our companion brigade on a motor trip to the coast, and we passed some thousands of them hard at work getting fit, and training with almost fervid enthusiasm. It used to be a joke of mine that on one occasion my horse shied because an Australian private saluted me. No one could make a friendly jest of like kind against the American soldiers. When first they arrived in France no troops were more punctilious ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... secret-service man discreetly, "I saw something pretty funny the first night out, Mr. Bayne. It was safe enough with me; I can tell a gentleman from a spy; but if an officer had seen it, the thing wouldn't have been a joke. Suppose we put it this way. There's a person on board I think I know. I haven't got the goods, I'll own, but I don't often make mistakes. My advice to you, sir, is to steer clear of strangers. And if I were ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... 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 such need of money as Kate had herself. She was ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... all very well to joke," protested Uncle Chris, pained by this flippancy, "but let me tell you that I shall not require magic assistance to become a rich man. Do you realize that at houses like Mrs Waddesleigh Peagrim's I am meeting men all the time who have only to say one little word to make me a millionaire? ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... "Well, you can joke about it," he returned, "but all I do is to give shelter to the people who come here. That's all the hotel there is to it. My neighbor Olaus can't do any more either, even if he builds a place that's ten times as big. Look over there—now he's building ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... make a scoff at religion, and have a joke to tell at the store for others to laugh at. Oh, I know your tricks well enough. I have striven to live peaceably with all men, but you have sorely tried me on various occasions. Whatever good I have done in this parish, you have endeavoured to undo it by ...
— Rod of the Lone Patrol • H. A. Cody
... 'n' he'd pet 'n' paw the moke; He'd tickle him, 'n' flatter him, 'n' try him with a joke; 'N' presently that neddy sobers up, 'n' sez "Ive course, Since you puts it that way, cobber, I will ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson
... I was studying their personal peculiarities for my own advantage and for the public amusement. Some thought the thing a good joke; some objected to it, and quarreled with me. Liberality in the matter of liquor and small loans, reconciled a large proportion of the objectors to their fate; the sulky minority I treated with contempt, and ...
— A Rogue's Life • Wilkie Collins
... listen to their little gossip with interest. They had been setting men, it seems, by the ears; and the drollest little atrocities they do certainly report. Not but we have seen better in the Nenagh paper, so far as Ireland is concerned. But the pet little joke was in La Vendee. Miss Famine, who is the girl for our money, raises the question—whether any of them can tell the name of the leader and prompter to these high jinks of hell—if so, let her ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... I ever was so happy," murmured young Mrs. Thompson. "Then he did leave it in his pocket just for a joke. And, oh, dear Miss Dale, if it's a girl I'm ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... argument, sarcasm, and eloquent denunciation. Strong sense is a leading feature of his character, and a practical wisdom which renders him eminently capable in the discharge of details. In private life, he is genial and always good-natured, ready for a joke at all times, and enjoys his leisure hours with a zest which is quickened by previous earnest toil. Although as bitter and unconciliatory as any of his colleagues in his treatment of the Southern statesmen on the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the photographs and bills, looking out into the street. They stand side by side, evidently quite oblivious and indifferent to the motley folk about them, chatting and laughing, taking the wet and windy wretchedness of the night as a joke. They are both plump and rosy-cheeked, dark eyes gleaming and red lips parted; both decidedly good-looking, much too rosy and full-faced, too well fed and comfortable to take a prize from Burne-Jones, ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... syllable and intonation of contemporary speech. "Mr. Cholmondeley is a clergyman," she writes, "nothing shining either in person or manners but rather somewhat grim in the first and glum in the last." And again: "Our confab was interrupted by the entrance of Mr. King," or yet again: "The joke is, the people speak as if they were afraid of me, instead of my being afraid of them.... Next morning, Mrs. Thrale asked me if I did not want to see Mrs. Montagu? I truly said I should be the most insensible of animals not to like to see our sex's glory." It is hard to realize that ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... could talk," admitted Dell, stroking his horse's neck, "he could tell a good joke on me. I may tell it myself some day—some time when I want to feel ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... market, to-day. I counted upwards of 700 passing my door. With market women it seems to be a pleasure of life to haggle and joke, and laugh and cheat: many come eagerly, and retire with careworn faces; many are beautiful, and many old; all carry very heavy loads of dried cassava and earthen pots, which they dispose of very cheaply for palm-oil, fish, salt, pepper, and ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... or distract his brain, Turning his thoughts to things profane. My master was not tempted so, But once—don't let it out, you know— He squandered all his precious wits Making a titmouse trap for Fritz— Right here, and talked and had a smoke; To me, I'll own, it seemed a joke. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... most—and stay the Sund'y out; And on Thanksgivin'-Day he 'peared to like to be about: But a change was workin' on him—he was stiller than before, And did n't joke, ner laugh, ner sing ...
— Green Fields and Running Brooks, and Other Poems • James Whitcomb Riley
... bed and stared down at the telegraph form. What on earth did this mean? But for the fact that she knew it to be out of the question, she would have suspected a foolish and vulgar practical joke. ...
— From Out the Vasty Deep • Mrs. Belloc Lowndes
... "is only a little joke of theirs, and they'll go a good deal further when they get their blood up. Still, I tried to warn you what ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... child? How could any one have the heart?" he cried. "I was angry, I own, but it was because I believed that some of the servants had played a cruel joke on you. But I have ordered a strict investigation, and if the plot is discovered, the guilty ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... even a twinkle of the eye accompanying the response, yet I was not certain that this big fellow from the bush had been wounded in that way. I suspected him of a quiet joke. ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... a bold speech to make, but I was determined to give him a quid pro quo, and, as a matter of fact, he took it in very good part, laughing heartily at the joke. ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... 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 curling-paper or ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII. No. 358, November 6, 1886. • Various
... fellow is the GOOD-NATURED MAN, a being generally without benevolence, or any other virtue, than such as indolence and insensibility confer. The characteristick of a good-natured man is to bear a joke; to sit unmoved and unaffected amidst noise and turbulence, profaneness and obscenity; to hear every tale without contradiction; to endure insult without reply; and to follow the stream of folly, whatever ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... a great deal to everybody whether they are alive or dead!" Mr. Morton, since he had been mayor, now and then had his joke. "But really—" ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 5 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... comfort come in, you see, in these ways. Nothing can be kinder than the people here, I mean in Auckland and its neighbourhood—real, simple, hearty kindness. Perhaps the work at Kohimarama is most irksome to me. It is no joke to keep sailors in good humour ashore, and I fear that our presence on board was much needed during ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Horace stood thunderstruck, looking in blank astonishment at Lady Janet. His first words, as soon as he had recovered himself, were addressed to Julian. "Is this a joke?" he asked, sternly. "If it is, I for one don't ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins
... he repeated to himself; "that is a joke indeed, and Esther, what a quick brain she has—a true daughter of Israel!" and Esther was murmuring within ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... have had the least chance of being all at once seen by two million of men, it could not have been less than fifty feet high—and if Sardanapalus waved the royal standard of Assyria round his head, Samson or O'Doherty must have been a joke to him. However, we shall suppose he did; and what was the result? Such shouts arose that the solid walls of Nineveh were shook, "and the firm ground made tremble." But ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... they laughed with counterfeited glee At all his jokes—for many a joke had he— Full well the busy whisper circling round Conveyed the dismal tidings ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • E. S. Lang Buckland
... sneered Jack. "Why last night, when we talked it over, you thought it would be a prime joke. It isn't as if it would hurt them. It'll just give them something to study up, that's all. They think they're such fine trailers and tracers that it would be a shame not to give them a chance to show what ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Eagle Patrol • Howard Payson
... thing I don't like about her. She is not a bit of a patriot; she makes a joke of her country's wrongs and sufferings. Should you like to meet her? Dine with us the day after to-morrow. ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... companions did not quite understand him. Was he perpetrating some grim joke, or had he received an injury on the ...
— The Khaki Boys Over the Top - Doing and Daring for Uncle Sam • Gordon Bates
... 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 ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... Duhobret, a disciple whom Durer had admitted into his school out of charity. He was employed in painting signs and the coarser tapestry then used in Germany. He was about forty years of age, little, ugly, and humpbacked; he was the butt of every ill joke among his fellow disciples, and was picked out as an object of especial dislike by Madame Durer. But he bore all with patience, and ate, without complaint, the scanty crusts given him every day for dinner, while his ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... with her, but the dead-set of his face remained. "It sounds like a joke," he admitted. "But I have made up my mind. Miriam is mine, and I am going to have her. We'll just go up into the mountains for a few months, and she will see that I ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... fact. This amounts to warning some thirty or forty thousand 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
... dangerous, however, to appear to he out done in learning in a public bar-room, and before so many of his clients; he therefore put the best face on the matter, and laughed knowingly as if there were a good joke concealed under it, that was understood only by the physician and himself. All this was attentively observed by the listeners, who exchanged looks of approbation; and the expressions of tonguey mati, and I guess Squire Lippet knows if anybody ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... and Susan would never have known the joke about the telephone if it had not been for Bunny Boy. Bunny Boy crept out from under the sofa, where he had been hiding, and climbed up in a chair and pulled the receiver hard. Then, bang! the top of the telephone came off, and showed that it ...
— Snubby Nose and Tippy Toes • Laura Rountree Smith
... rises above all persecutions and all injuries, and still is, and ever will be, master of that portion of the human race which travels and abounds in cities. He is given to humor, too, is the hackman. Nobody better understands how to give a joke, or to resent one. An adept in ridicule, he always enjoys it when not applied to himself. If he is deficient in any one quality, perhaps it is piety. Hack-drivers, as a class, are not pious men; they may be very good ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... yourself with equivoques, either in important or in mean matters. If you find good occasion for a joke, be careful not to bite, still less to tear, like a dog. Witticisms and repartee should be to the point, and should have elegance and appropriateness without exciting the indignation of any. Do not let your pleasantries degenerate ...
— George Washington's Rules of Civility - Traced to their Sources and Restored by Moncure D. Conway • Moncure D. Conway
... the flat by this time, and had hurt my feelings by treating the whole proposal as a ridiculous joke. She made no attempt to dissuade me—had we not agreed never to interfere in each other's doings?—but she laughed, and said, "Dear goose," and arched her fine brows expressively as she asked how long a lease I proposed to take, "Or, rather, I ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... here only to suffer ignominies?" I asked. "Why have you made me with pride that cannot be satisfied, with desires that turn and rend me? Is it a jest, this world—a joke you play on your guests? I—even I—have a better humor ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... the Snob. He studied him lovingly, he dissected him, he classified every variety of him. A thousand disciples, less gifted but equally remorseless, followed in the Master's footsteps. "Punch" took up the tale, and week by week repeated the joke. It was heard in drawing-room recitations to the accompaniment of pianos; it even went on the stage. Ladies rushed into print to expose foibles men never guessed, and to say of the sex at large what less gifted women say only of their personal friends. For years we have never ceased for ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... poor joke, Sam Palmer," commented Jack, and he ducked just in time to avoid a playful fist ...
— Jack Ranger's Western Trip - From Boarding School to Ranch and Range • Clarence Young
... come to be better understood, and was treated as a joke, and some of the more sober men entered into the fun, and would go out on parade, and take part in the ceremony. We paraded with a band composed of men beating tin buckets, frying pans, and canteens, with sticks, and whistling ...
— From the Rapidan to Richmond and the Spottsylvania Campaign - A Sketch in Personal Narration of the Scenes a Soldier Saw • William Meade Dame
... that was just a slip; but let it pass," remarked Eben, grinning in spite of the fact that the joke was on him. "What I meant to say was that because I don't go around boasting about the great things I'm going to do, please look back on my record, and see if I haven't ...
— Boy Scouts on a Long Hike - Or, To the Rescue in the Black Water Swamps • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... the return of a gentleman who would be a very leading member of our little society down here," said the Doctor, not noticing the Captain's joke. "I mean Sir Bale Mardykes. Mardykes Hall is a pretty object from the water, sir, and ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 3 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... other hand, it is no joke fighting these Prussians. The fights are not skirmishes, they are battles. It is not a question of a few hundred killed, it is a question of ding-dong fighting, and of fifteen or twenty thousand killed on each side—no joke, that. For my part, I am quite content to take it easy at Erfurt, and to ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... released Bourassa, after taking possession of his arms and supplies. Then they paddled down to the lake, where they were only too successful in finding the French and in making them the victims of the cruel joke ...
— Pathfinders of the Great Plains - A Chronicle of La Verendrye and his Sons • Lawrence J. Burpee
... to your horses," was shouted. "Out with your blankets, men," to our gunners and the infantry behind, and in an instant the chosen sons of Cork were bounding out of their lines and down the hill, and belabouring the fire with blankets and ground-sheets and sacks. They seemed to think it a fine joke, and raised a paean of triumph when it was got under. "Wan more victory," ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... gentle joke. "You have eyes like blue flowers," she said. Lady Agatha lifted the eyes like blue ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... as ever of its little joke, having written my C.O. a solemn letter to say they couldn't entertain the idea of my promotion seeing that under the Double Coy. system the establishment of Captains is reduced to seven and so on, and having thereby induced him to offer me ...
— Letters from Mesopotamia • Robert Palmer
... prayers, according to the simple rites of the Free American Reformed Episcopalian Church, they found it a bright emerald-green. These kaleidoscopic changes naturally amused the party very much, and bets on the subject were freely made every evening. The only person who did not enter into the joke was little Virginia, who, for some unexplained reason, was always a good deal distressed at the sight of the blood-stain, and very nearly cried ...
— The Canterville Ghost • Oscar Wilde
... say no more, and Mr. Egerton, happening to come into the room and hear her, turned the whole thing into a joke at once. ...
— 'Me and Nobbles' • Amy Le Feuvre
... possession, that's all 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
... clean white pillow, a white blanket covering its little body. The baby looked at the laughing faces above it, as if wondering why the sight of him should cause such merriment; then, as if seeing the joke, opened his little mouth, showing the tip of a red tongue and dazzling baby teeth. It was too much for Drusilla. She sat down heavily in the ...
— Drusilla with a Million • Elizabeth Cooper
... Trevarthen interrupted. "Why, come to think of it, he's never heard of your coming to look after us, but reckons you'm still at the school-mistressing. And you standing there and reading out his very words! I call that a proper joke." ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... he is staggering under the load of our paraphernalia; "rig's all ready and Molly's got the kettle on at home, waiting breakfast for you.... Just as fat as you were last year, ain't ye?" a time-proven joke, for I weigh one hundred and eight pounds. "Try to pull you out, though; try to." And his great laugh drowns the ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... self-protection," taunted the man who had been with them in the car. But Morgan noticed, as he stepped out of the car, that the chauffeur had left his seat and was also standing ready with an automatic. These men might have their little joke, but they were taking no chances. The three men escorted Morgan and Tierney up the steps and into the house. Wagner then directed them to precede him up the stairs. They passed down a long hall ...
— The Sheridan Road Mystery • Paul Thorne
... it no harm to be off. You need not send them word at Longbourn of my going, if you do not like it, for it will make the surprise the greater, when I write to them and sign my name 'Lydia Wickham.' What a good joke it will be! I can hardly write for laughing. Pray make my excuses to Pratt for not keeping my engagement, and dancing with him to-night. Tell him I hope he will excuse me when he knows all; and tell him I will dance with him at the next ball we meet, with great pleasure. ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... instructive, as able as the best literary efforts of our most popular writers. One of the Duke's most recent contributions, which appeared in the Contemporary Review for January last, on "Hibernicisms in Philosophy," shows that to Sidney Smith's stale joke about the obtuseness of Scotchmen there is at least one illustrious exception. It is one of the best things of its kind that has ever appeared in a magazine that can command the greatest ...
— Western Worthies - A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West - of Scotland Celebrities • J. Stephen Jeans
... the joke!" continued Lestocq. "We have transferred Biron to another colony, and Herr Munnich will occupy the poetical pleasure-house of his friend ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... for galloping on, even though there were no Zulus in the neighbourhood," exclaimed Rupert. "We shall ere long have a storm burst upon us, which it will be no joke to be caught in. We may, however, manage to distance it, ...
— Hendricks the Hunter - The Border Farm, a Tale of Zululand • W.H.G. Kingston
... 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
... a moment, and then laughed, deciding boldly that this was a new and elaborate game—a joke, perhaps—which she was too little to understand, but which politeness and good-fellowship alike required her at least to appear to appreciate. They were great friends already, these two. Children always recognised an ally in the man who made so few friends among his ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... own New Orleans we are beginning to talk of the Mafia, but with us it is a mysterious organization of Italian criminals. We treat it as somewhat of a joke." ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... tables within the bar, lounged in their chairs, or stalked about laughing and whispering to each other; the prosecuting attorney leaned upon the shoulder of a jolly-looking man, who lifted his face to joke up at him, as he tilted his chair back; a very stout, youngish person, who sat next him, kept his face ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... brutal laugh, as if it were all some excellent joke, the men threw themselves upon Paul, and proceeded to carry out the instructions of their leader, who seated himself with a smile of triumph where he could enjoy the spectacle of the suffering he intended to inflict. Paul's upper garments were quickly removed, and his hands and feet ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green
... in walls. Lately, after having supped with one of our farmers—you know how popular and kind monseigneur is—after supper as a joke, he struck the wall a blow. The wall crumbled away beneath his hand, the roof fell in, and three men and an old woman ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... girl had arisen and approached her father's chair. "You 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
... happened before. The Wolfan sense of humor is only half-human. The finest joke is to criticize and insult a stranger, preferably an Earthman, to his very face, in an unknown language, perfectly deadpan. In my civilian clothes I was obviously ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... home, from turret to poop Filled full with Spanish gold, There'll be many a country dance and joke, And many a tale to be told; Every old woman shall have a red cloak To fend her against the cold; And every old man shall have a big round stoup Of jolly good ale and old, My lads, ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... seconds for the joke to dawn on the other officers at the long mess table. Then an explosion of laughter sounded, and every eye was turned toward ...
— Dave Darrin on Mediterranean Service - or, With Dan Dalzell on European Duty • H. Irving Hancock
... Heyford, nothing daunted, for he belonged to one of the most powerful corporations of London,—"it was but a scurvy Pepperer [old name for Grocer] who made that joke; but a joke from a worshipful goldsmith, who has moneys and influence, and a fair wife of his own, whom the king himself has been pleased to commend, is another guess sort of matter. But here is my grave-visaged headman, who always contrives to pick up the last gossip astir, and has ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... be one of the best things ever said. Why? Just because it consists of two long words. The idea expressed is as commonplace as cold mutton. Then there's "terminological inexactitude". How we all roared, and are still roaring, at that! And the whole of the joke is that the words are long. It's just the same when we want to be very serious; we mark it by turning to long words. When a solicitor can begin a sentence with, "pursuant to the instructions communicated to our representative," or some such gibberish, ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... humor prevalent in the sixteenth century, Sidney met with indifferent success. The wit depends on the ugliness, the perversity, and the clownish character of Dametas, his wife, and their daughter Mopsa. It partakes of the nature of the practical joke, and though it no doubt amused the courtiers of Elizabeth, is too clumsy for a more cultivated taste. But although Sidney's comic scenes may no longer amuse, it must be said that they are free from the low coarseness and ribaldry which have furnished merriment to times which pretended to a much higher ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... an Afterwards!" he said. "Otherwise Creation would not only be a senseless joke, but a wicked one! Nay, it would almost be a crime. To cause creatures to be born into existence without their own consent, merely to destroy them utterly in a few years and make the fact of their having lived purposeless, would be worse than the dreams of madmen. For what is the use of bringing ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... in coitu deprehensorum, extincto a nobis 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... overspread the fat features of the usher. Even an usher likes his little joke. The sense of humor ...
— Personality Plus - Some Experiences of Emma McChesney and Her Son, Jock • Edna Ferber
... course of my life I have been shocked more than once, mostly, while living in North Carolina. For instance, in 1876, when it was supposed that Tilden had been elected, the young men of Odell's store thought it a good joke and decorated my fence with black calico. Our colored cook, thinking it would hurt our feelings, stripped it all off early in the morning before we got a sight of it, much to our regret. But Madam was equal to the emergency and had the girl gather up ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... to a School Board, and certainly the only one to whom J. W. Burgon (afterwards Dean of Chichester) devoted a whole sermon. "Miss Smith's Sermon," with its whimsical protest against feminine activities, was a standing joke in those distant days. The Rev. H. R. Bramley, Fellow of Magdalen, used to entertain us sumptuously in his most beautiful College. He was a connecting link between Dr. Routh (1755-1854) and modern Oxford, and in his rooms I was introduced ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... 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 of a ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy
... a good joke if Rosie were to rule in the 'Palatial Residence' after all, wouldn't ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... enliven a party of professors, who forwarded a number of privately printed manuals within the next few days for her instruction, had submerged her in a flood of Elizabethan literature; she had come half to believe in her joke, which was, she said, at least as good as other people's facts, and all her fancy for the time being centered upon Stratford-on-Avon. She had a plan, she told Katharine, when, rather later than usual, Katharine came into the room the morning after her walk by the river, for visiting ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... president, a simple joke, which has proved a miserable failure. I wanted to set them free on the lunar continent, without saying anything. Oh, what would have been your amazement on seeing these earthly-winged animals pecking in your ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... 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 seen the Duke ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... I?" said Van Bibber, and then his face beamed and clouded again instantly. "But, oh," he begged, "I'm afraid I'll have to tell Travers! Oh, please let me tell Travers! I'll make him promise not to mention it, but it's too good a joke on him, when you think what he missed. You see," he added, hastily, "we were to have gone out together, and he forgot, as usual, and missed the whole thing, and he wasn't in it, and it will just about break his heart. He's always getting ...
— Van Bibber and Others • Richard Harding Davis
... reading the newspapers, but by talking matters over with his neighbor, that the Portuguese farmer obtains his sound and intelligent views on the politics of his country. He is a great talker, taking a keen interest in all that goes on, enjoying a joke thoroughly and addressing his comrade with all the ceremonies and distinctions of a language which contains half a dozen different forms of address. The illiterate peasant is no whit behind the man of culture in the purity of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... quite dried up, and deeper in the bore, The drop of blood, I lured from him of yore— O'erjoyed to own such specimen unique Were he who objects rare is fain to seek—; Here on its hook hangs still the old fur cloak, Me it remindeth of that merry joke, When to the boy I precepts gave, for truth, Whereon, perchance, he's feeding now, as youth. The wish comes over me, with thee allied, Enveloped in thy worn and rugged folds, Once more to swell with the professor's ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... turn out to be a regular picture of domestic life, and the cat is only a joke, something like a jest, so to speak, a motive, if I ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... was a ghost, the way you crep' in. I had a customer once up in Forty-ninth Street—a lovely young woman with a thirty-six bust and a waist you could ha' put into her wedding ring—and her husband, he crep' up behind her that way jest for a joke, and frightened her into a fit, and when she come to she was a raving maniac, and had to be taken to Bloomingdale with two doctors and a nurse to hold her in the carriage, and a lovely baby on'y six weeks old—and there she is to ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... stranger came from Narromine and made his little joke — 'They say we folks in Narromine are narrow-minded folk. But all the smartest men down here are puzzled to define A kind of new phenomenon that came ...
— Rio Grande's Last Race and Other Verses • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... this arrangement so distasteful as to Quipsome Hal, who felt himself in some sort the occasion of the intrusion, and yet was quite unable to prevent it, while everything he said was treated as a joke by his unwelcome father-in-law. It was a coarse time, and Wolsey's was not a refined or spiritual establishment, but it was decorous, and Randall had such an affection and respect for the innocence of his sister's young son, that he could not bear ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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 ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, February 4, 1893 • Various
... upon his foot. Monckton Milnes was not a man to be easily disconcerted, and he speedily restored the party to a proper mood of geniality; but after dinner he took someone aside, and asked the meaning of the cold reception of his joke. He received the explanation which the reader will anticipate. It was because Mr. Tom Baines had become a Plymouth Brother that he had been compelled to retire from the editorship of the Mercury, to the great distress of his father. My name as his successor ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... us we got seven fine bass, and a pickerel. By the way, I caught that pickerel; Paul, he looked after the bass end of the string, and like the bully chap he is divided with me;" and the boy who limped chuckled as he said this, showing that he could appreciate a joke, even ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... suddenly around the bend in the arroyo—a big, weather-bitten joke astride of a powerful horse. Forbes uttered an exclamation as the joke whipped out a gun and told them to "Put 'em up!" in a tone which caused Forbes's hands to let go the reins and rise head-high without ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... to Aunt Myra's homilies. She had one day heard Cannie say, when asked by one of the Buell daughters if she had any jewelry, "Are napkin-rings jewelry? I've got a napkin-ring." Mrs. Buell had laughed at the droll little speech, and repeated it as a good joke; but the next time she went to Hartford she bought the silver pin for Cannie, who was delighted, and held it as ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge
... in poor heart now," said he, "a good deal of it; it has been wasted; it wants first-rate management to bring it in order and make much of it for two or three years to come. I never see an Irishman's head yet that was worth more than a joke. Their hands are all of ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... easily; I am an indivisible man. But one night I went for a bicycle ride with my wife. She was a Bantam of delight, I can tell you, but she rode very badly. It was starlight, and I was attempting to explain the joke in the paper called, if I recollect aright, Punch. It was an extraordinarily sultry night, and I told her the names of all the stars she saw as she fell off her machine. She had a good bulk of falls. There were lights in the upper windows of the houses as the people went to bed. ...
— The War of the Wenuses • C. L. Graves and E. V. Lucas
... you can, in mixed companies, argumentative, polemical conversations; which, though they should not, yet certainly do, indispose for a time the contending parties toward each other; and, if the controversy grows warm and noisy, endeavor to put an end to it by some genteel levity or joke. I quieted such a conversation-hubbub once, by representing to them that, though I was persuaded none there present would repeat, out of company, what passed in it, yet I could not answer for the discretion of the passengers in the street, who must necessarily ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... him to talk too much, and when he was silent, we were silent too. Sitting beside him, I made a pretence of working for my dear, as he had always been used to joke about my being busy. Ada leaned upon his pillow, holding his head upon her arm. He dozed often, and whenever he awoke without seeing him, said first of ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... you'd take it seriously. It's just a joke, you know. Go ahead and make your fortune, and they'll receive ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... of 'em. Bully lines. Not natty enough to be a joke, just straight and trim. Those fellows'll carry you into the presidency, General, if anyone can. A few of 'em'll have to choke first, but ...
— Makers of Madness - A Play in One Act and Three Scenes • Hermann Hagedorn
... could have crawled under a log and died. At the door of the Major's tent I paused to learn and joy of one to whom comes reprieve when the rope is on his neck, I overheard Harry Helm, the General's nephew and aide de-camp, who had been with us, telling what a howling good joke Smith had just got ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... you allow such an absurd thing to happen?' he said, in a stern, though trembling voice. 'You knew I might mistake. I had no idea you were in the house: I thought you were miles away, at Sandbourne or somewhere! But I see: it is just done for a joke, ha-ha!' ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... full of Portulak," said a little common duck, who was witty; and all the other common ducks considered the word Portulak quite a good joke, for it sounded like Portugal; and they nudged each other and said "Rapp!" It was too witty! And all the other ducks now began to notice the little ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... bravest girl on earth— For all she never was hale and strong She'd have her fun! With her voice clean lost She'd laugh and joke us that when she crossed To father, ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... cigarette in her face, your honour, for a joke, and she had the sense to snap at him. . . . He is a ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... best part of the joke. Well," clambering to his seat and picking up the reins, "I've got five mile of sand and moskeeters to navigate, so I've got to be joggin'. Oh, say! goin' to leave him in the box there, ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... flighty young counsel, who seemed to consider the whole thing somewhat in the light of a joke, or a species of amateur theatricals on a large scale, having presented the case for the prosecution, Mr. Hall was called upon ...
— The Queen Against Owen • Allen Upward
... came, and the entire village of Kilronan turned out to the rescue. There were at least one thousand spectators of the interesting proceedings, and each individual of the thousand had a remark to make, a suggestion to offer, or a joke to deliver at the unhappy prisoners. And all was done under an affectation of sympathy that was deeply touching. Two constables kept order, but appeared to enjoy the fun. Now, in any other country but ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... the 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, round a large field ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... and attending in the stable, barefooted, but in a pair of sky-blue nankeen pantaloons—just the color of my uniform trousers—with a strip of white cotton sheeting sewed down the outside seams in imitation of mine. The joke was a huge one in the mind of many of the people, and was much enjoyed by them; but I did not appreciate it ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... as a joke. But the bully leaned over Roosevelt, swinging his guns, and ordered him, in language suited to the surroundings, "to set up ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... realise it," he cried bitterly, "as any man would have realised it. I realised nothing else. I walked the streets, wondering whether it was a practical joke. You made a fool of me. You did n't tell me beforehand that you were going to play such a ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... from Ashbourne, used to joke about Taylor's cattle:—'July 23, 1770. I have seen the great bull, and very great he is. I have seen likewise his heir apparent, who promises to enherit all the bulk and all the virtues of his sire, I have seen the man who offered an hundred guineas ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... over, and then the letter. No, my eyes were not playing tricks. But still, could it be some practical joke? I put the envelope to my face. Ah, it was she, it was the perfume of that flower! She had really written; ...
— The Other Side of the Door • Lucia Chamberlain
... worn out that tasteless joke at my expense. The theme must be of love, and if you could improvise a stanza or two expressive of the idea you just uttered I shall listen ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... "Imprisonment is no joke for a foreigner," said he. "A Frenchman remains five years in prison and comes out, free of his debts to be sure, for he is thenceforth bound only by his conscience, and that never troubles him; but a foreigner never comes out.—Give ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... that place six nights a week for many years, but had never been observed to raise his eyes above his music-book.... The carpenters had a joke that he was dead without ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood
... Perhaps I will go. If I do make her laugh then, O my brothers, the laugh will be on you for I shall become Tsar and you two will be known as my two poor brothers. Ho! Ho! Ho! What a joke that would be!" ...
— The Laughing Prince - Jugoslav Folk and Fairy Tales • Parker Fillmore
... committed some supreme enormity—probably chewed up the baby or one of my father's Persian rugs, or something like that. And Tommy, knowing how I detested the beast, evidently thought it would be a good joke to telegraph, though wherein lies the point I ...
— When Patty Went to College • Jean Webster
... Strike's real name was 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
... hand I held over my nurses, I made a jest of my authority, pinned a bit of bandage on my shoulder, and played commander-in-chief. Officers and guards would salute when we passed, as an innocent joke, but the men came to regard me ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... about Annie. Look here, Maria: they may have gone a little too far, but if Annie can't take a joke"— ...
— Dab Kinzer - A Story of a Growing Boy • William O. Stoddard
... 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 ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... when the tears had dried, leaving their minute residue of salt, he would work the raw skin with his thumb and a bit of stick he had found. Then a nigger boy, one beast of a hot day, lowered him a gourd of sea-water as a joke, and Signor What-we-agreed-on, made salt of that while the sun shone, and finished his job ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... thought 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
... purpose for it. Another time he invited a number of guests, and they found themselves in a black marble hall, with funeral couches, each man's name graven on a column like a tomb, a feast laid as at a funeral, and black boys to wait on them! This time it was only a joke; but Domitian did put so many people to death that he grew frightened lest vengeance should fall on him, and he had his halls lined with polished marble, that he might see as in a glass if any one approached him from behind. But ...
— Young Folks' History of Rome • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... Besides, his father had been in humbler circumstances, and Peter John was to room in college in Leland Hall, one of the oldest of the dormitories, where the room rent was much less than in Perry Hall and more in accord with Peter John's pocket. In school he had been made the butt of many a joke, but his fund of good nature had never rebelled and his persistence was never broken. Tall, ungainly, his trousers seemed to be in a perpetual effort to withdraw as far as possible from his boots, ...
— Winning His "W" - A Story of Freshman Year at College • Everett Titsworth Tomlinson
... actually counted forty of these little reprobates, and more were doubtless added afterwards. At first, no doubt, they begged in earnest hope of getting some baiocchi; but, by and by, perceiving that we had determined not to give them anything, they made a joke of the matter, and began to laugh and to babble, and turn heels over head, still keeping about us, like a swarm of flies, and now and then begging again with all their might. There were as few pretty faces as I ever saw among the same number of children; and they were as ragged ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... bit of a joke to make off with his lantern and ropes,' said the policeman to himself; 'it might teach him not to be so bumptious about his ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... Mr. John Smauker, pulling forth the fox's head, and taking a gentlemanly pinch. 'There are some funny dogs among us, and they will have their joke, you know; but you mustn't mind ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... 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 apologized ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... say for a moment that Stanley Woodward was a natural born villain. I don't think people are born that way at all. At first the idea probably struck him as a sort of a joke. "If anything happens to young Josiah," I can imagine him thinking to himself with a grin, "I may own this place ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston
... "No work is any joke; but I just put it to you: Simply as work, without taking in the question of reward, would you dream for a minute of swapping your work with the work of one of your workmen? No. Well, neither would a Malloring with one of his Gaunts. So that, my boy, for work ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... is 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 speak ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... the honest good nature and humour of the fellow, sent for him next morning to court. You may imagine his surprise, to see and hear that his late guest was his sovereign: he was afraid his joke on his long nose would be punished with death. The emperor thanked him for his hospitality, and, as a reward for it, bid him ask for what he most desired, and to take the whole night to think of it. The next day he ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 492 - Vol. 17, No. 492. Saturday, June 4, 1831 • Various
... alarmed; "You wouldn't make a joke of it! you wouldn't be careless about such a thing! And there's Quarrier! I'm not on joking terms with him; I'm ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... British officer in Arnold's corps, while sitting idly by his fire one night, "just for a joke," as he afterwards explained, wrote two notes to General Gregory, which he intended to destroy, as they were simply the product of his own imagination, and were never intended to go out of ...
— In Ancient Albemarle • Catherine Albertson
... weeks before he had become at all proficient in the knife- grinding and umbrella-mending arts; and many a sly laugh and joke on the part of Deborah made him at times half-inclined to give up the work; but there was a determination and dogged resolution about his character which did not let him lightly abandon anything he had once undertaken. So he persevered, much to Old Crow's satisfaction, for he soon began to love ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... "The joke is on me!" he guffawed. "Just like me! Father told me particularly about his injunctions to Opstorius, and Pertinax himself reminded me about Almo after Father's death. But it all went out of my head and I never thought of ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... Scotch presbyterian pastor, filled with all the old-fashioned national prejudices, but sincere, kind-hearted, and pious. He is garrulous and loves his joke, but is quite ignorant of the world, being "in it but not of it."—Galt, Annals ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... he required eight days to establish a perfect understanding with your mistress; so that, take eight and eleven from thirty-one days, the time between the 28th of one month and the 29th of the next, there remains twelve, more or less!' This joke was followed by shouts ...
— Manon Lescaut • Abbe Prevost
... strange and eccentric places of London." When Arden burst out laughing one day Borrow said he would, perhaps, have joined if it were ever his wont to laugh, and his friends said that, though he enjoyed a joke, he did not seem to have the power of laughing. But in Borrow we expect contrarieties, so we find him saying that when he detected a man poking fun at him in Welsh he flung back his head, closed his eyes, and laughed aloud; and later on, walking in Wales with the rain at his back, ...
— Souvenir of the George Borrow Celebration - Norwich, July 5th, 1913 • James Hooper
... all this if he reaffirms it. But I have a horrible feeling that you farmers think you have caught a city ignoramus and that it is your duty to stuff me with the tallest stories you can invent. Please set me right. If you are stuffing me the joke is certainly on me, for these incredible tales seem true: if they are true the joke is doubly on me. As I am the butt, either way, don't be too hard on me: ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... the Premier to utter them. Only by an effort of will could he lift them to a plane of high interest. He could sketch great issues with the solemn hand of a great preacher pronouncing a benediction; but he never could utter an aside, or crack a joke, or tell a story, or forget that once upon a time Fate had picked him to be a leader and so help him he would go through the motions of shepherding while the other men were the real collie dogs of the ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... attendant offices were at one end, and over them reigned Ursula Drew, who, though supreme in her government of Maude, was in reality only a vice-queen. Over Ursula ruled a man-cook, by name Warine de la Misericorde, concerning whom his subordinate's standing joke was that "Misericorde was rarely [extremely] merciless." But this potentate in his turn owed submission to the master of the household, a very great gentleman with gold embroidery on his coat, concerning whom Maude's only definite notion was that he must be courtesied to ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... with a lady facing him, young, graceful, and pretty. A bottle of champagne stood open before him. He was helping himself plentifully to hot-house grapes, and full of good humour. It was clear he and the lady were occupied in the intense enjoyment of some capital joke; for they looked queerly at one another, and burst now and again ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... that the distinction of a name heated the minds of people; and one evening we resolved to wear hat-strings in the form of slings. A hatter, who might be trusted with the secret, made a great number as a new fashion, and which were worn by many who did not understand the joke; we ourselves were the last to adopt them, that the invention might not appear to have come from us. The effect of this trifle was immense; every fashionable article was now to assume the shape of a sling; bread, hats, gloves, handkerchiefs, fans, &c.; and we ourselves ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... condemns all the contributors.... You see ...!"—"Perfectly! Why, my dear fellow, you ought to have been off before. Of course you go to Versailles?"—"Why, yes."—"By the railway?" I cannot help having a joke at his expense.—"Yes, of course."—"Well, if I were you, I would not, really; the engine might blow up, or you might run into a luggage train. Such things do happen in the best of times, and I think the Commune capable ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... lay a grip upon the whole town. Many months of the winter had already gone by, and strength and spirits were beginning to flag; health and courage had worn thin, and men who had faced the bitterness of the cold with a joke when it had first set in felt it keenly now like the rest. In Good Luck Row matters were worse than anywhere else in the town; the occupants were mostly very poor, and the pressure of the high prices was sharpest upon them. In addition to all else they had to suffer, typhoid broke out amongst them, ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross
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