"Joke" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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
... joke at all, and got down from his chair and walked away without permission. We all followed him, going into the hall, and from thence to the piazza, as the night was fine. The tutor walked silently through the group in the hall to a seat where lay his book and hat, then passed ...
— Richard Vandermarck • Miriam Coles Harris
... 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 |
