"Droll" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a laughing-stock. Felix was still child enough to mix at once among them, and came tolerably well out of the trial. Thereupon the first style of greeting was conceded to him; he forthwith folded his arms on his breast, looked upward, and with such a droll expression withal, that it was quite plain that no hidden meaning in it had as ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... farm—both young and old—were delighted with the pretty creature with the bushy tail, the wise, inquisitive eyes, and the natty little feet. They intended to amuse themselves all summer by watching its nimble movements; its ingenious way of shelling nuts; and its droll play. They immediately put in order an old squirrel cage with a little green house and a wire-cylinder wheel. The little house, which had both doors and windows, the lady squirrel was to use as a dining room and bedroom. For this reason they placed therein ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... must try and bear up. And at Lady Deyncourt's age it was quite to be expected. And Ruth must remember she still had a sister, and that there was a happy home above. And now, if she would get that green wool out of the red plush iron (which really was a work-box—such a droll idea, wasn't it?), Ruth should hold the wool, and they would have a cosey little chat ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... are uttered unintentionally than by premeditation. There is no such thing as being "droll to order." One evening a lady said to a small wit, "Come, Mr. ——, tell us a lively anecdote;" and the poor fellow was mute ...
— Books and Authors - Curious Facts and Characteristic Sketches • Anonymous
... satin, and her short gown, or jacket, was of purple velvet with wide lace in sleeves and at the neck, and gorgeously beaded moccasins on her feet. But it was her head-dress which struck me as the most remarkable part of her costume, and Pierre Chouteau whispered to us, with a droll grimace: ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... the stranger in spectacles, "prithee, tell us thy thoughts on the subject: dost thou know the author of this droll periodical?" ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... picked up about the motes in the clearest water! On the judges in Gallicia, who, like our former justices of peace, "for half a dozen chickens would dispense with a dozen of penal statutes," A juezes Gallicianos, con los pies en las manos: "To the judges of Gallicia go with feet in hand;" a droll allusion to a present of poultry, usually held by the legs. To describe persons who live high without visible means, Los que cabritos venden, y cabras no tienen, de donde los vienen? "They that sell kids, and have no goats, how came they by them?" El vino ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... assumed a droll form among the Albanians, in which no fewer than seven remarkably endowed youths play their parts in rescuing a king's daughter from the Devil, who had stolen her out of the palace. One of the heroes could ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... And droll it was to Colombo to think what might possibly happen were King Ferdinand to take his dream seriously or were the King perhaps to be informed as to the true meaning ...
— A Parody Outline of History • Donald Ogden Stewart
... had various other sources of public amusement; amongst these puppet-shows, exhibitions of strength and agility, bear-baiting, cock-fighting, and dancing obtained. Until the restoration, puppet-shows had not been seen for years; for these droll dolls, being regarded as direct agents of Satan, were discountenanced by the puritans. With the coming of his majesty they returned in vast numbers, and were hailed with great delight by the people. One of these exhibitions which found ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... won't bury its dead. It sits over their corpses like a persistent resurrectionist, in a fashion which is irresistibly disheartening. Did it never strike you, by the way, what a droll caricature might be made on that line? Time as a decrepit old ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... lady who was with her lifted her brilliant hazel eyes and half smiled. "Is it the droll young man we met once at Mrs. Lossing's? Pray see him, Aunt ...
— Stories of a Western Town • Octave Thanet
... of his droll playfulness; she laughed with him, and taking his arm, walked up and down the porch. They talked of many things—of Louise's persistent stubbornness, and of a growing change in the conduct of Tom—his abstraction and his gentleness. He had left uncut the leaves ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... the rough play irritated her nerves. Occasionally, as she sat for a moment with hind legs stretched out flat and fore paws planted between them, one of the cubs would approach and attempt some monkey play. A sound cuff on the ear invariably sent him whimpering back to his companion, who looked droll enough the while, sitting with his tongue out and his head wagging humorously as he watched the experiment. It was getting toward the time of year when she would mate again, and send them off into the world to shift for themselves. And this was ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... beyond, and the sky itself; beautiful rough landscapes and seascapes and skyscapes, winds and weathers, boisterous or sunny seas, rain and storm and cloud—all the poetry of nature, that he feels most acutely while his little people are being so unconsciously droll in the midst of it all. He is a king of impressionists, and his impression becomes ours on the spot—never to be forgotten! It is all so quick and fresh and strong, so simple, pat, and complete, so direct ...
— Social Pictorial Satire • George du Maurier
... Trustee he discovered them shifting into human shapes: here was the form of a child, here a youth, here a lover and his lass, here a little old dame, and scores more; while into the corners of the room drifted others that turned into the drollest of droll pipers—with kilt and brata and cap. It made him feel as if he had been dropped into the center of a giant kaleidoscope, with thousands of pieces of gray smoke turning, at the twist of a hand, into form and color, motion and ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... "You've been a droll imp," she said. "If I had money I'd take you with me and amuse myself seeing you in Italy. Your imp's eyes would be rounder than they are now, and you'd fall in love with some handsome scamp and find him out and grow up and leave ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... it; for he warn't like any as we ever see on these boards hereabouts; and yet he warn't exactly like a Lunnon actor, as I have seen 'em in Lunnon, either, but more like a clever fellow who acted for the spree of the thing. He had sich droll jests, and looked so comical, yet not commonlike, but always what I calls a gentleman,—just as if one o' ye two were doing a bit of sport to please your friends. Well, he drew hugely, and so he did, every time he came, so that the great ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... I see you are. O! all the servants will lead merry lives here, now; we shall have singing and dancing in the little hall, for the Signor cannot hear us there—and droll stories—Ludovico's come, ma'am; yes, there is Ludovico come with them! You remember Ludovico, ma'am—a tall, handsome young man—Signor Cavigni's lacquey—who always wears his cloak with such a grace, thrown round his left arm, and his hat set on so smartly, all ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... aged parent could scarcely push back the gate, she came forward and helped him. And the scene was quite droll. Genji's servant also approached them, and the gates were ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... think we started about one o'clock, and it was some three or four by the time we got to the cantine, for we kept stopping continually to drink wine. The two painter visitors had a fine comic vein, and enlivened us continually with bits of stage business which were sometimes uncommonly droll. We were laughing incessantly, but carried very little away with us except that the drier one of the two, who was also unfortunately deaf, threw himself into a rhapsodical attitude with his middle finger against his cheek, and his eyes upturned to heaven, but ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler
... "The husband is always droll!" I remarked, smiling coldly. "It is not a temptation to marry when one knows that as a husband one must always ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... humour which afterwards characterized him appears to have shewn itself, for his father writing to some friends in England speaks of little Edward keeping the whole family in good spirits by his unfailing fun and droll speeches. The dramatic circumstances of the assassination of M. Fualdes, a magistrate at Rodez, in 1817, and the remarkable trial which followed, fastened themselves on FitzGerald's memory, and he was familiar with all the details which he had ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... course the recital lacked everything of the scenery and dresses that give it so much vogue upon the stage; but it had at least the charmingly suggestive music, the wonderful linking of sound to sense, the droll and inimitable intermixture of the plausible and the impossible which everybody has admired and laughed at in the ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... kind of dirt-pie under the direction of the mason, they brought a little vase containing coins, the which the member for the Gentlemanly Interest jingled, as if he were going to conjure. Whereat they said how droll, how cheerful, what a flow of spirits! This put into its place, an ancient scholar read the inscription, which was in Latin; not in English; that would never do. It gave great satisfaction; especially every ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... vexation came when he had to "put English on" a word for me, and the obvious equivalent was not the right one. Sometimes I could help; sometimes he arrived by himself at what satisfied him, though once at least it was droll enough. We were at the lines where Connlaoch, dying, says to his father: "If I could give my secret to any under the sun, it is to your bright body I would tell it." The trouble was about the phrase "bright body," for the word "cneas" ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... foreignness. He put the card into his waistcoat pocket, keeping his own meanwhile in evidence; and as he leaned against the door-post he met with the smile of a straying thought what the expanse before the hotel offered to his view. It was positively droll to him that he should already have Maria Gostrey, whoever she was—of which he hadn't really the least idea—in a place of safe keeping. He had somehow an assurance that he should carefully preserve the little token he had just tucked ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... anybody heard a cause since the world began; Lord Newton just awakened from clandestine slumber on the bench; and the second President Dundas, with every feature so fat that he reminds you, in his wig, of some droll old court officer in an illustrated nursery story-book, and yet all these fat features instinct with meaning, the fat lips curved and compressed, the nose combining somehow the dignity of a beak with the good nature of a bottle, and the very double chin with an air of intelligence and insight. ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... went the pies, for Mrs. Smith had not much to give, and her spirit was generous, though her pastry was not of the best. It looked very droll to see pies sitting about on the thresholds of closed doors, but the cakes were quite elegant, and filled up the corners of the towel handsomely, for the apron lay in the middle, with the oranges right and left, like ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... forced laugh because Hugo appeared droll, and when he appeared droll it was the proper thing to laugh. Besides, in the best humor there is a grain of truth, whether you see it or not. This time a number saw ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... find that the Western wood-pewee led the matins! Now, this bird has a peculiar voice. It is loud, pervasive, and in quality of tone not unlike our Eastern phoebe, lacking entirely the sweet plaintiveness of our wood-pewee. A pewee chorus is a droll and dismal affair. The poor things do their best, no doubt, and they cannot prevent the pessimistic effect it has upon us. It is rhythmic, but not in the least musical, and it has a weird power over the listener. This morning hymn does not say, as ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... Madrid he had spoken ill of the religious orders, so as not to be out of harmony with his surroundings, considering them anachronisms, and had hurled curses against the Inquisition, while relating this or that lurid or droll story wherein the habits danced, or rather friars without habits, yet in speaking of the Philippines, which should be ruled by special laws, he would cough, look wise, and again extend his hand downwards to that ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... a poem in the style and stanza of Spenser, in which I propose to give full scope to my inclination, and be either droll or pathetic, descriptive or sentimental, tender or satirical, as the humour strikes me; for, if I mistake not, the measure which I have adopted admits equally of all these kinds of composition."[5] Strengthened in my opinion by such authority, and by the example of some in the highest ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... of some discourtesy. He has a genuine fondness for every woman who is not stupid or gloomy, or old or preternaturally ugly. I shared with the rest; shared the smiles and the gallantries and the droll little sermons. It was quite like a Sunday-school picnic; we wore our best clothes and a smile and took our turns. It was ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... unrivalled performer whose man-of-business he is, in attempting a populacity (we must coin a new word for a new thing) for which he was exquisitely unfitted. What more stiffly awkward than his essays at easy familiarity? What more painfully remote from drollery than his efforts to be droll? In the case of a man who descends so far as Mr. Seward, such feats can be characterized by no other word so aptly as by tumbling. The thing would be sad enough in any prominent man, but in him it becomes a public ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... like horror stories, crazy stories and stories written far into the future, as "Brigands of the Moon." These stories make light of the vast distances of space and are too weird, droll and fail to give a single shiver down my old backbone. They are strange and inhabited by strange people. No story can give the faintest idea of the space between those mighty suns of the universe. Most of them have more imagination than scientific ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... unique work. It reveals the whimsical discursiveness of the book; the restless hovering of that brilliant talk over every topic, fancy, feeling, fact; a humming-bird sipping the one honeyed drop from every flower; or a huma, to use its own droll and capital symbol of the lyceum lecturer, the bird that never lights. There are few books that leave more distinctly the impression of a mind teeming with riches of many kinds. It is, in the Yankee phrase, thoroughly wideawake. There is no languor, and it permits none in the reader, who must ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... watch is to the European schoolboy. For ten years Queen Vaekehu had dunned the fathers; at last, but the other day, they let her have her will, gave her her coffin, and the woman's soul is at rest. I was told a droll instance of the force of this preoccupation. The Polynesians are subject to a disease seemingly rather of the will than of the body. I was told the Tahitians have a word for it, erimatua, but cannot find it in my dictionary. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... then spent a pleasant evening at the Pension, chatting sociably with Madame Denise and another cheery little Frenchwoman, a day governess, who boarded there, and who had no end of droll experiences to relate, her enviable temperament being to always see the humorous side of life. I thoroughly enjoyed her sparkling chatter and her expressive gesticulations, and we all three made ourselves merry till bedtime. Acting on the advice of Heliobas, I retired early ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... reminiscent. "Faith, you looked droll enough, with your pale face and your shabby clothes. 'I want to be a soldier,' says you; 'I want to use ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... in a droll imitation of the mountain dialect. "Ain't you-uns guine to ask me to 'light a while, an' set a bit, ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... exchanged my brother John as a bedfellow for Walter Packard. Walter was a droll fellow, rather given to arguing, and had a way of enraging his adversary while he kept cool, and, when it suited, could put on great dignity. Immediately following our battery, as we worked our way along ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore
... happiness, my children," she said. "I know you both, and your droll characters, the time will come when you may know each other, and in any case, I feel that you will both remember that tenue, a recognition of correct behaviour, helps all situations in life, and the rest is in the hands of the ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn
... a little man is that little Fokare, my lor," Mademoiselle Coralie said, in her own language, and with the rich twang of that sunny Gascony in which her swarthy cheeks and bright black eyes had got their fire. "What a droll of a man! He does not look ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... humour—the humour of the average man, the average newspaper, the average play—are its utter irreverence, its droll extravagance, its dry suggestiveness, its naivete (real or apparent), its affectation of seriousness, its fondness for antithesis and anti-climax. Mark Twain may stand as the high priest of irreverence in American humour, as witnessed ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... "Wherefore droll?" asked Joliet, with a huge surprise, which lasted him all through his next sentence. "I come here to marry my daughter. Everything is ready; we count on your presence at the wedding; the lawyer has drawn up the contract; and the breakfast ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... Gelehrte Zeitungen, in the issue for August 10, 1767[24] reviews the same volumes with a much more decided acknowledgment of merit. It is claimed that the difference is not noticeable, and that the ninth part is almost more droll than all the others, an opinion which is noteworthy testimony to its originator's utter lack of comprehension of the whole work and of the inanity of this spurious last volume. The statement by both of these papers that the last three volumes,[25] parts VII, VIII and IX, of the Zckert ...
— Laurence Sterne in Germany • Harvey Waterman Thayer
... and Rarest Newspapers, with a Facsimile of a very Curious, Droll, and Interesting Newspaper ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 213, November 26, 1853 • Various
... famous English clown, son of an Italian dancing-master, born in London; was bred to the stage from his infancy, appearing on the boards when not yet two years old; his Memoirs were edited by Dickens, who describes him as "the genuine droll, the grimacing, ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... asked me if I would like to talk to a native who had a story. When I expressed assent he took me out to a shed nearby and there I saw a husky Baluba who was labouring under some excitement. The reason was droll. Four days before, his wife had given birth to twins and there was great excitement in the village. The natives, however, refused to have anything to do with him because, to use their phrase, "he was too strong." His wife did not come under this ban and was the center of jubilation ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... at all. But I know that I have, and that you wrote me with pleasure and like me still. You think I have form, and that, if I am not very serious, I am sincere, and that somehow I represent a phase of our droll American civilization truly enough. I know you were vexed when some people said I did not go far enough, and insisted that the coast of Bohemia ought to have been the whole kingdom. As if I should ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... Miss Langley, whom he sees in one of her walks accompanied by her maid, Susan. Through a misapprehension of personalities his lordship addresses a love missive to the maid. Susan accepts in perfect good faith, and an epistolary love-making goes on till they are disillusioned. It naturally makes a droll and delightful little comedy; and is a story that is particularly clever in ...
— The Devil - A Tragedy of the Heart and Conscience • Joseph O'Brien
... little country village miles and miles away, and (although one of Fritz's aeroplanes flew over the church as bold as brass just before we got in) the quiet and peace of the place is very refreshing. And, droll to relate, I'm writing this in bed, with a touch of flu—such a bed, too, all soft and billowy. In ordinary life it would be condemned as a "feather" bed, but now it ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson
... years younger, this might be serious,' meditated Ethel. 'Happily, it is only a droll adventure for me in my old age, and I have heard say that a little raving for a grown-up woman is a wholesome sort of delusion, at his time of life. So I need not worry about it, and it is pretty and touching while ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... incident of the naval activity, during the Maori wars, dwelt in Sir George's memory by reason of its droll comedy. An officer, thoroughly tired out, went to his bunk, leaving directions that he should be called at a particular hour. It happened that the awakening of him, fell to a blithesome midshipman ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... his head to his foot, And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot; A bundle of toys he had flung on his back, And he looked like a peddler just opening his pack. His eyes how they twinkled! his dimples how merry! His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry; His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow, And the beard on his chin was as white as the snow. The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth, And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath. He had a broad face and a little round belly That shook, when he laughed, like a bowl ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... laughed at the droll sight, he knew the wayfarer to be a certain rich corn engrosser of Worksop, who more than once had bought all the grain in the countryside and held it till it reached even famine prices, thus making much money from the needs of poor people, and ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... could be. He was a very merry fellow, full of jokes, and if any one told a story which was at all verging on the marvellous, he was sure to tell another which would be still more incredible. He played the fiddle and sang to his own accompaniments, which were very droll, as he extracted very strange noises from his instrument; sometimes his bow would be on the wrong side of the bridge, sometimes down at the keys; besides which, he produced sounds by thumping the fiddle as well as by touching its strings as a guitar; ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... Services and Performances to Men no way addicted to Liberal Arts: In these Cases, the Praise on one hand, and the Patronage on the other, are equally the Objects of Ridicule. Dedications to ignorant Men are as absurd as any of the Speeches of Bulfinch in the Droll: Such an Address one is apt to translate into other Words; and when the Different Parties are thoroughly considered, the Panegyrick generally implies no more than if the Author should say to the Patron; My very good Lord, You and I can never understand one another, therefore I humbly ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... an evident increase of comfort founded on their demonstrable advantage in being the real thing. I could fancy them shuddering over Miss Churm. She was very droll about them when I went back, for I told her what ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James
... which I lately left, and with whom I never again will intimately mix—from that port, Sir, I expect your Gazette: what Les beaux esprit are saying, what they are doing, and what they are singing. Any sober intelligence from my sequestered walks of life; any droll original; any passing reward, important forsooth, because it is mine; any little poetic effort, however embryoth; these, my dear Sir, are all you have to expect from me. When I talk of poetic efforts, I must have it always understood, that I appeal ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... chroniclers Barbour, Henry the Minstrel, and Wyntoun, are familiar names, as are likewise the poets Henryson, Dunbar, Gavin Douglas, and Sir David Lyndsay. But the authors of the songs of the people have been forgotten. In a droll poem entitled "Cockelby's Sow," ascribed to the reign of James I., is enumerated a considerable catalogue of contemporary lyrics. In the prologue to Gavin Douglas' translation of the AEneid of Virgil, written not later than 1513, and in the celebrated ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... even to the smallest minutiae, indicated the German; not only the large muscular frame, the broad feet, and vast though well-shaped hands, but the brooch—evidently purchased of a Jew in some great fair—stuck ostentatiously and superfluously into his stock; the quaint, droll-looking carpet-bag, which he refused to trust to the boots; and the great, massive, dingy ring which he wore on his forefinger. The other was a slender, remarkably upright and sinewy youth, in a blue frock, over which was thrown a large cloak, a ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... single-minded and too serious to find anything droll in the terms of the adhesion of Marcia's family to her plan, and Mrs. Halleck entered into its ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... sympathy with the weak and lowly. He read the paper most pathetically, and with a simplicity of tenderness that certainly moved one of his audience to tears. This was presently after his standing for Oxford, from which place he had dispatched his agent to me, with a droll note (to which he afterwards added a verbal postscript), urging me to "come down and make a speech, and tell them who he was, for he doubted whether more than two of the electors had ever heard of him, and he thought ...
— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens
... tune, for wee Dollie was never long unhappy. She had almost forgotten how vexed she had been, and she laughed as she saw small bubbles sailing, sailing away to the meadow. Softly she hummed, and then little words, describing what she saw, fitted quaintly into the droll melody— ...
— Princess Polly's Playmates • Amy Brooks
... at the Court of Louis Philippe, although she belonged to the Montmorency family (the elder branch), whose last descendant she was. She had always a number of black and white pet dogs, canaries, and parrots about her; and possessed also a very droll little monkey, which was permitted even to... ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... sulkily—for I was mightily hungry—there came out on to the doorstep a very queer-looking old person, short of figure, round as a ball, his head sunk between very high and rounded shoulders, and with short stumpy legs. He was curiously attired in a whole-coloured suit of gray; a droll-shaped jacket the great collar of which reached far up the back of his head, surmounted a pair of voluminous breeches which suddenly tightened at the knee. I imagined him to be the butler in morning dishabille; and when he accosted me good-naturedly, asking to whom the dogcart and ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... fancy may be wholly unfounded, while a conception always has, or is believed to have, some answering reality. (Compare REASON.) An intellectual fancy or conceit may be pleasing or amusing, but is never worth serious discussion; we speak of a mere fancy, a droll or odd conceit. An emotional or personal fancy is a capricious liking formed with slight reason and no exercise of judgment, and liable to fade as lightly as it was formed. In a broader sense, the fancy signifies ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... crowded, filled with small tables, filled with many human bodies. About the walls are paintings and banners in sharp colors; above our heads hang innumerable gaudy lanterns of wood and paper. We sit in furs, shivering with the cold. The food passes endlessly, droll combinations in brown gravies—roses, sugar, and lard—duck and bamboo—lotus, chestnuts, and fish-eggs—an "eight-precious pudding." They tempt curiosity; my chop-sticks are busy. The warm rice-wine ...
— Profiles from China • Eunice Tietjens
... was generally acknowledged to be a "comedian." No one ever saw him in a temper, or heard him speak a sharp word. He had a droll, woebegone face that never smiled, but a face everybody—from the mayor to the poorest mill hand—loved and respected. How often Benson had come in from school, ill-tempered and sour-visaged at something that had gone wrong in the ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... his writing table "Noctes Ambrosianae" or the London "Punch." His chair is wide, so that he can easily roll off on the floor when he wants a good time at laughing. His inkstand is a monkey, with the variations. His study-cap would upset a judge's risibilities. Scrap books with droll caricatures and facetiae. An odd stove, exciting your wonder as to where the coal is put in or the poker thrust for a shaking. All the works of Douglass Jerrold, and Sydney Smith, and Sterne, the scalawag ecclesiastic. India-rubber faces capable ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... moth-eaten earlaps turned up at the sides and looking exactly like small furry ears. These, with the round steel spectacles which he wore—the only distinctive feature of his countenance—gave him an indescribably droll appearance. ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... embody an element of surprise, that it should startle us out of that reasonable gravity which, after all, must be our habitual frame of mind. But the professional humourist cannot afford to be unexpected. The exigencies of his vocation compel him to be relentlessly droll from his first page to his last, and this accumulated drollery weighs like lead. Compared to it, sermons are as thistle-down, and political ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... made you want to laugh too. A cunning white throat supported this pretty head, as a stem supports a flower; and, altogether, she was like a flower, except that flowers don't talk, and she talked all the time. What she said seemed droll, for the girls about here were in fits of laughter; but Clover only caught a word now and then, the stage made ...
— What Katy Did At School • Susan Coolidge
... amused. It was droll; it showed a ready fancy. Oh, to be sure, they must get to work together on ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... then she said very slowly: 'He is staying with a friend at No. ... The Crescent, Bath. I can see him (it was then three o'clock in the afternoon) sitting by the bedside of his friend, who has his head tied up in bandages. Mr O'Donnell is telling him a very droll story about Lady B——, to whom he has been lately introduced.' She then stopped, made a futile effort to go on, and after a protracted pause exclaimed: 'I can see no more—something has happened.' That was all I found ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... of whom a droll saying has already been given in this book, was a girl blessed with as much cunning as if she had stolen that of six priests and three women at least. She did not want for sweethearts, and had so many ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... you will consider this information a lie. That will be quite droll. However, I am, most respected Herr Professor, ...
— The Leader • William Fitzgerald Jenkins (AKA Murray Leinster)
... him and how he probably for a long time wouldn't be suited otherwise. Between them and that time, however, what mightn't, for him, poor devil, on his new basis, have happened? She wasn't at any rate within any calculable period going to care so much for anything as for the so quaintly droll terms in which her rearrangement with her husband—thanks to that gentleman's inimitable fatuity—would have to be made. This was what it was to own, exactly, her special grace—the brightest gaiety in the finest sensibility; such a display of which combination, Mark ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... amusement of all the spectators, officers, soldiers, and servants [Footnote: Denshchiki ] who were watching us from their tents, we had twice carried the winning party on our backs from one end of the ground to the other. Especially droll was the situation of the huge fat Captain S., who, puffing and smiling good-naturedly, with legs dragging on the ground, rode pickaback on ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Russian • Various
... wither'd beldams, auld and droll, Rigwoodie hags wad spean a foal, Louping and flinging on a crummock, I wonder did ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... I laughed. At the moment it seemed to be a very droll saying. And at the sound of my laughter he grinned in sympathy. He was a wonderful man. When he was established in the train, he held out his ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... exquisite amusement, as fascinating to them as the theater is to more enlightened people. No sooner was it agreed upon that the entertainment should again be undertaken than all the younger men began to scurry around getting everything ready for it. Their faces glowed with a droll cruelty strange to see, and they further expressed their lively expectations by ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... need of them. His reading was wide, deep, and varied; he was a most accomplished classical scholar, and had a marvellous readiness and aptitude for classical allusion. He was a wit and a humorist; he could brighten the dullest topics and make them sparkle by odd and droll illustrations, as well as by picturesque allusions and eloquent phrases. He {254} could, when the subject called for it, break suddenly into thrilling invective. [Sidenote: 1725—Pulteney] But he had some of the defects of the extemporaneous orator. His eloquence, his ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... convincing illustration of the humorous possibilities inherent in fugal style. The way in which the voices chase each other about—compared by Berlioz[160] with the gambols of a delighted elephant—and their spasmodic attempts at assertion, produce an effect irresistibly droll. The humour is as broad as that of Aristophanes or Rabelais. Words are powerless to describe the thrill of the last fifty measures which launch us into the Finale. We may merely observe that this long passage, pp throughout until the last molto crescendo, and with ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... week—as soon as it is dry. I will take the card of monsieur." And she took it and read his name: "Christopher Newman." Then she tried to repeat it aloud, and laughed at her bad accent. "Your English names are so droll!" ...
— The American • Henry James
... Madame Ratignolle relating to old Monsieur Farival the harrowing story of one of her accouchements, withholding no intimate detail. She was growing accustomed to like shocks, but she could not keep the mounting color back from her cheeks. Oftener than once her coming had interrupted the droll story with which Robert was entertaining some amused group ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... music! And once mamma took me to the theatre. Oh, Phil, you ought to see a play, and the actors, all be-a-u-ti-fully dressed, and talking just like a party in a house, and dancing, and being funny, and some of it so sad as to make you cry, and some of it so droll that you had to laugh—just such a world as you read of in books and in poetry. I was so excited that I saw the stage all night and could hardly sleep." The girl paused and looked away to the river as if she saw it all again, and then added ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... conversation Frank found the girl to be natural and unaffected, without a trace of conceit, gifted with a keen sense of humour and evidently as full of the joy of living as a school-boy. He thought her laugh delightfully musical, and it was frequently and readily evoked by Burke's droll remarks or the quaint oracular sayings from the self-possessed elf on Wargrave's knee. Her admiration of and genuine affection for Mrs. Dermot was very evident ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... is to chew over again what has been already swallowed; and, however droll this may seem to you, it is the business which all ruminants are born to. You remember the monkey's pouch, which serves him as a larder, whence he takes out his provisions as he wants to eat. The ruminant has an immense pouch of the same kind, into which, while he is grazing, he hastily conveys ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... that her friends exchanged glances while Mrs. Morris entertained them in so droll a way? Still, as time passed and she not only brightened in the light of her delusion, but proceeded to meet the conditions of her own life by opening a small shop in her home, and when she exhibited a wholesome sense of profit and loss, her neighbors were quite ready to accept her ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... was surely beyond post-time, and must have been a runaway knock, when our host, who had hitherto been paralysed with wonder, sank into a chair in a perfect ecstasy of laughter, and offered to lay twenty pounds that it was that droll dog Griggins. He had no sooner said this, than the majority of the company and all the children of the house burst into a roar of laughter too, as if some inimitable joke flashed upon them simultaneously, and gave vent ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... keep him dangling about the town from one old book-shop to another, and scraping romantic acquaintance with every dog that passed. His talk, compounded of so much sterling sense and so much freakish humour, and clothed in language so apt, droll, and emphatic, was a perpetual delight to all who knew him before the clouds began to settle on his mind. His use of language was both just and picturesque; and when at the beginning of his illness he began to feel the ebbing ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was not only fitted to play a prominent part, but in which he exhibited a talent quite peculiar to himself. Never was there so great a master of what is called persiflage—of that boisterous, droll and pungent banter which, if not the most elevated species of wit, is certainly that which is most exhilarating and provocative of laughter. In this he was unrivalled, and it was heightened by the adjuncts of a voice, face, and manner irresistibly comical. As the most opposite characters owned the ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... slow exit to discuss the play and with entire sophistication, expressing astonishment that Allen was lukewarm in his praise of it. He could not agree with her that the leading woman was beautiful, but she laughed when he remarked, with his droll intonation, that the star reminded him of a dressed-up mannikin in ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... confess to having been even a worse fiend than you were shown up for; to having made it impossible mother should not take proceedings." There!—she had brought it out, and with the sense of their situation turning to high excitement for her in the teeth of his droll stare, his strange grin, his characteristic "Lordy, lordy! What good will that do you?" She was prepared with her clear statement of reasons for her appeal, and feared so he might have better ones for his own that ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... distinctly—ushering in Titmouse; on whom the door was the next instant closed. He felt amazingly flustered—and he would have been still more so, if he could have been made aware of the titter which pervaded the fourteen or twenty people assembled in the room, occasioned by the droll misnomer of the servant, and the exquisitely ridiculous appearance of poor Titmouse. Mr. Quirk, dressed in black, with knee breeches and silk stockings, immediately bustled up to him, shook him cordially by the hand, and led him up to the assembled guests. "My daughter—Miss Quirk; Mrs. Alderman ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... probe of inquiry a little deeper. How did M. Pouillard happen to remember? Mais, it was because the young man was very droll; he was of the cold blood. When Victor, le garcon, would have brought news of the emeute, he had said, breakfast first, and the ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... soldiers that ever served in the British army. General Sir Charles Napier, in his own eccentric way, said of him that he was "as brave as ten lions, each with two tails and two sets of teeth." Sir Charles rivalled Mr. Roebuck, the radical English commoner, in the scantiness of his commendations; his droll eulogy of Sir Hugh Gough will therefore be appreciated. On the 8th of February, Sir Harry Smith made his junction with the army of his chief, and was received in terms not more flattering than just from a general who never refused to ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... increasing burdens and poor health he was always in good spirits. "At breakfast and at luncheon, and also at our family dinners, he sat at the top of the table, and kept us all enlivened by his interesting conversation, by his charming anecdotes, and droll stories without end of his childhood, of people at Coburg, of our good people in Scotland, which he would repeat with a wonderful power of mimicry, and at which he would himself laugh most heartily. Then he would at other times entertain us with his talk about ...
— Queen Victoria • E. Gordon Browne
... of assimilation; we are to observe, however, still other interrelations that will be encountered later. A series of mythological parallels may be cited. I shall rest satisfied with referring to the droll story, "Der Dumme Hans." Stupid Jack loads manure (faeces, sewage) into a cart and goes with it to a manor; there he tells them he comes from the Moorish land (from the country of the blacks) and carries in his barrel the Water of Life. When any one opens ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... might be the refrain of this giant's litany. The other types are as plainly stamped. The shepherd's are from the life, and contrast well with the stilted and rather tiresome prophets. The scenes at the babe's crib when the offerings are made of the shepherds' pipe, old hat, and mittens, are both droll and tender. ...
— Everyman and Other Old Religious Plays, with an Introduction • Anonymous
... melancholy conviction of the vanity of all things human. Vanitas vanitatum, as he wrote on the pages of the French lady's album, and again in one of the earlier numbers of The Cornhill Magazine. With much that is picturesque, much that is droll, much that is valuable as being a correct picture of the period selected, the gist of the book is melancholy throughout. It ends with the promise of happiness to come, but that is contained merely in a concluding paragraph. The one woman, during the course of the story, ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... school and in every house, the child must not only learn to read and write, he must learn to draw. We cannot afford to let our young folks grow up without this power. A new French book is just now much talked about, with this droll title, "The Life of a Wise Man, by an Ignoramus." It is the story of the great Pasteur, whose discoveries in respect to life have made him world renowned. I turned to the book, eager to find out the key to such success, and I found the old story—"the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 497, July 11, 1885 • Various
... my saying you and I. She was vexed that mother had left me—a baby, in her opinion—to look after the house, and rather resented my assuming to be the mistress. By my happy form of speech I pleased the droll old woman, who was much like a child herself. Then, too, she was as well aware as I was that grandmamma's pain would grow worse and worse every hour ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various
... though poor, they are industrious, temperate, charitable, and always assist each other; but touch them on their religion, and they are almost idiots. They never go to mass nor confession—in fact, they are not christians, though the most worthy people in the world; and so droll: imagine those poor people, after working all the week, instead of enjoying the Sunday, and going to a fete or a ball to amuse themselves, meeting in each other's houses, and sometimes in the mountains, to read some book, and pray, and sing hymns. ...
— The Village in the Mountains; Conversion of Peter Bayssiere; and History of a Bible • Anonymous
... Kuno carried him home; and they were the best of friends from that day forth. I don't say it's a discreditable story, you observe,' continued Mr. Gottesheim; 'but it's droll, and that's the fact. A man should think before he strikes; for, as my nephew says, man to man was ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Douglas bore true witness to Lincoln's powers when he said, on hearing of his nomination, "I shall have my hands full. He is the strong man of his party—full of wit, facts, dates—and the best stump speaker, with his droll ways and dry jokes, in the West. He is as honest as he is shrewd; and if I beat him, my ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... other, the precieux seeking wit and believing that all literary art consisted in saying it did not matter what in a dainty and unexpected fashion; the burlesques also sought wit but on a lower plane, desiring to be "droll," buffoons, prone to cock-and-bull stories or crude pranks in thought, style, and parody. Voiture is the most brilliant representative of the preieux and Scarron the most ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... for inventing the Normal Schoolmaster, and by-and-by we shall be called on to do the same ill-turn for Elihu Mulciber for getting uselessly learned (as if any man had ideas enough for twenty languages!) without any schoolmaster at all. We are the victims of a droll antithesis. Daniel would not give in to Nebuchadnezzar's taste in statuary, and we are called on to fall down and worship an image of Daniel which the Assyrian monarch would have gone to grass again sooner than have it in his ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... rightly with two such different sets of people; but though Charles II. was a very clever man, he was neither wise nor good. He could not bear to vex himself, nor anybody else; and, rather than be teased, would grant almost anything that was asked of him. He was so bright and lively, and made such droll, good-natured answers, that everyone liked him who came near him; but he had no steady principle, only to stand easy with everybody, and keep as much power for himself as he could without giving offence. He loved pleasure much better than duty, and kept about him a set ...
— Young Folks' History of England • Charlotte M. Yonge
... "How droll!" said the widow. "Let me see, what will the relationship be? You will be my son-in-law's brother, and consequently I shall be your mother-in-law once removed. You will have a mother younger than yourself, Mr. Tom. I hope you will not presume upon her youth ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 1, January 5, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... entertainment in the richly-seasoned feast prepared for it. There is plenty of humor and whim in this volume, in which many old apologues appear in new shapes; wit, too, is to be found, and a sprinkling of wisdom. Effective designs, droll, fantastic, and invariably ingenious, set off the least of the poems and stories, and make it as striking and attractive a quarto as will be found among the young ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... determined I became that I would not appear in a domino! So Monday morning I started out for an idea, and this I found almost immediately in a little shop window. It was only a common pasteboard mask, but nevertheless it was a work of art. The face was fat and silly, and droll beyond description, and to look at the thing and not laugh was impossible. It had a heavy bang of fiery red hair. I bought it without delay, and was wondering where I could find something to go with it in that little ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... of the Cauldron seems only a natural outgrowth from such a character. It consisted of twelve members, all artists, goldsmiths, or musicians, each of whom was allowed to bring four friends to the supper, and bound to provide a dish. Any two members bringing similar dishes were fined, but the droll part of it was that the suppers were eaten in a huge cauldron large enough to put table and chairs into; the handle served as an arched chandelier, the table was on a lift, and when one course was finished it disappeared from their midst, and descended to be replenished. ...
— Fra Bartolommeo • Leader Scott (Re-Edited By Horace Shipp And Flora Kendrick)
... very genteel business; public service,—in fact, diplomatic. I carried dispatches (weegadigunn, Micmac; wighiggin, Pass.)—books, letters, papers, and so I got in the way of moving nimbly. Now it comes naturally to me. One of my old aristocratic habits." [Footnote: This droll dialogue occurs in the middle of the Micmac story of Lox, or Badger, and the Ducks and Bear, where it evidently does not belong, or has been interpolated to make length. In the original, Marten carries his inquiries much further into certain ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... am beloved by no one in all the world; and you ask pity of me! Parbleu! Moliere forgot that. If that is the way you jest at the courthouse, Messieurs the lawyers, I sincerely compliment you. You are droll." ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... Swift, and Sterne: on the Nature and Constituents of genuine Humour, and on the Distinctions of the Humorous from the Witty, the Fanciful, the Droll, the Odd, &c. ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... see them as they really are. You are welcome to come and see me in my night-cap, when the spirit moves me. When I'm not out walking, I'm always at home. Busy at work, too?" she continued, putting a tiny cap upon her fist. "That looks droll, and tells tales." ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... cannot but think that we live in a bad age, O tempora, O mores! as 'tis in the adage. My foot was but just set out from my cathedral, When into my hands comes a letter from the droll. I can't pray in quiet for you and your verses; But now let us hear what the Muse from your car says. Hum—excellent good—your anger was stirr'd; Well, punners and rhymers must have the last word. But let me advise you, when next I hear from you, To leave off this passion which does not become you; ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... young couple, however, a little lighter headed, or a little deeper hearted than the most of us, whichever it may have been, and angry at the mocking laughter with which the air around them seemed filled, went down one stormy night together to the lake, and sobered droll Fate for an instant by turning her grim comedy into a ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... nothing but paper. Lockets and love-letters; and D'Herouville and I for cutting each other's throats! That is droll. . . . My faith, I will do it! It will be a tolerably good stroke. 'I kiss your handsome grey eyes a thousand times'! Chevalier, Chevalier! Dip steel into blood, and little comes of it; but dip steel into that black liquid ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... ridiculous and idle discourses that are uttered out of pulpits. For when the Gallants of the world do observe how the Ministers themselves do jingle, quibble, and play the fool with the Texts: no wonder, if they, who are so inclinable to Atheism, do not only deride and despise the Priests; but droll upon the Bible! and make a mock of all that is sober ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... of Elia are, Lamb did not spend all the "riches of his wit" in their production. His letters—so full are they of "the salt and fineness of wit,"—so richly humorous and so deliciously droll,—so rammed and crammed with the oddest conceits and the wildest fancies, and the quaintest, queerest thoughts, ideas, and speculations—are scarcely inferior to his essays. Indeed, some of the best and most admired of the essays are but extended ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... holding on to Nannie's hand, Alan threw a defiant glance at Nora as he passed her, and Judge quoted in his slow, droll way: "'My dear dolly's dead! She died of a hole ...
— We Ten - Or, The Story of the Roses • Lyda Farrington Kraus
... English Channel, between himself and London, and there was much passing to and fro; and though the French Court had stories enough of its own, new ones were always welcome, English gossip being thought to have a special heavy quaintness, droll indeed. The Court of Louis found much entertainment in the Court of Anne, and the frivolities or romances of beauties who ate beef and drank beer and wore, 'twas said, the coquettish commode founded on lovely Fontange's lace handkerchief, as ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... She had a coaxing way, which his stately old-school courtesy never could resist. She used when we were children to beg for holidays, and get treats for us; and even now, many a request which we should never have dared to utter, she could, with her droll arch way, make him think the most sensible thing ...
— Lady Hester, or Ursula's Narrative • Charlotte M. Yonge
... bundle on branches. Neither Angelique nor his men had turned a glance through the eastern gap, or thought of the stream sweeping to the dam. The spot where he sank, the broken floor, the inclosing walls, were their absorbing boundaries as to his fate. As the slaves saw him, a droll and sheepish look came on their faces at having wailed his death in his living ears. They shot through the door vigorously, and brought the boat with care alongside ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... Oh, it was too droll—that plucky horse, dashing along with the rest, shooting over the fences, up to time, and acting like a soldier charging under command. I could just have gone down and kissed the splendid creature, and the whole crowd—thousands and thousands—set up shout after ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... customary levee. The Governor of the place asked my permission to enter my luxuriously furnished apartments, to show me an amusing set of irons that had been discovered in one of the cells used during the last two hundred years for the storage of fire-wood. The droll things were called the "Little Ease," and seemingly, were intended to create merriment. One of the officers was complacent enough to assume them, and caused great diversion by his eccentric gestures. My levee was not quite so successful, as is generally ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, Sept. 27, 1890 • Various
... is. And, come now, what do you turn away for? Dost think, if, as I believe, though there are envious persons in the world, as there always are when a man's handsome or clever or brave,—though, by the way, which is a very droll thing in my eyes, they don't envy, at least not ill-naturedly, a man for being a lord or rich, but, quite on the contrary, rank and money seem to make them think one has all the cardinal virtues. Humph! If, I say, this Mr. Clifford ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... varied the idea by placing on her stamps a tiger's head surrounded by a broad circle of inscriptions. Owing to the short comings of native art the tiger is more often droll than ferocious. ...
— What Philately Teaches • John N. Luff
... characteristic of Uncle Terry was his unfailing good humor, tinged with a mild sarcasm. He loved his fellow-men, and yet enjoyed puncturing their small conceits, but so droll was his way of doing it that no one felt the sting. To Bascom, who kept the only store, and also post-office, at the Cape, and dearly loved to hear himself talk, Uncle Terry once said: "You've got the greatest gift o' gab I ever heerd, Bascom, and you could 'a' made your fortin in the ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... not," wrote the baron to his noble father the marquis, that night, "yet understand their joke; why should it be droll to wish that the man whose coat is of the best should also wear boots of the best? but as for what they call une promenade de gateau, I find it very enjoyable. I have met a Mlle. Bines to whom I shall at once pay my addresses. Unlike Mlle. Higbee, she has not the father from Chicago ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... fine white boys, apprentices, and a couple of stout slaves: we had, in addition, taken on board an old apprentice of the pilot's, who as we started had volunteered to accompany his once master. This was a droll subject, a regular long-sided dare-devil of a South Carolinian: he was full three sheets in the wind when we sailed, and managed to keep the steam up by the contributions liberally proffered during our short ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... withered leaf in them, he has plucked it off, and by a formal affidavit sworn before an Edinburgh bailie, the Glasgow bailie has put it on record that he is really by birth "one of the same class whom King Jamie denominated a real Edinburgh Gutter-Bluid." If there is something droll in the notion of such an affidavit, there is, assuredly, something to move our respect in the earnestness and love of truth which led the bailie to make it, and to prove him a good honest man, as we have no doubt, "his father, the deacon, was ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 56, November 23, 1850 • Various
... through it; large dark eyes, full of love. What he said was never perfunctory, never dull. He was called "John, the Beloved Disciple." Still he was thoroughly human and brimming over with fun, puns, and exquisitely droll humour, and quick in seeing a ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... versatile colleague, Dr. Wolcot, subsequently known as Peter Pindar, who inspired him with a taste for literature, to which he devoted himself with a real passion after his retirement from the army. Though not a writer himself, he brought out several books, among them a very droll one, made up of quotations of the most curious kind, and entitled, 'The Canister of the Blue Devils, by Democritus, junior.' Dr. Bell possessed a very large library, and spent a good part of his time in extracting, both from his books and the newspapers and ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... bit of a poet, rather undecided in his opinions but obstinate when his mind is once made up; the other is a fat, jovial peasant, a cunning fellow, given to repeating himself in a waggish way and quoting droll proverbs—translated in the music by short-winded phrases that always return to the point they started from. The adventures begin. Here are the windmills (trills from the violins and wood wind), and the bleating ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... after having been a poet, after having demonstrated an entire social system, I shall revert to science in an Essay on the Human Powers. And around the base of my palatial structure, with boyish glee I shall trace the immense arabesque of my Hundred Droll Tales." ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... without its compensations for a new writer. The 'equal popularity' of Jane Eyre and Vanity Fair is referred to. 'A very remarkable book,' the reviewer continues; 'we have no remembrance of another containing such undoubted power with such horrid taste.' There is droll irony, when Charlotte Bronte's strong conservative sentiments and church environment ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... earliest series I have seen among the thousands I have examined. The York Cries, Tom Hickethrift, Jack the Giant Killer, and many kindred cuts, are evidently from the collection of John White, the early printer, and are as quaint, as funny and droll in crudity of execution, as any of Thomas Gent's, the unique York engraver ...
— Banbury Chap Books - And Nursery Toy Book Literature • Edwin Pearson
... took their seats to-night and looked around the room they saw a droll sight. The old lady, who had been knitting on the veranda, was seated at a small table in one corner; and on each side of her in a chair sat a cat! One cat was a gray "coon," the other an Angora; and both of them sat up as grave as judges, nibbling ...
— Jimmy, Lucy, and All • Sophie May
... private letters sparkled like his books and articles. Original expressions, just similitudes, striking phrases, quaint or droll ideas welled in his mind without the slightest effort. He was always at his best. I have never met a man who talked so well, so easily. His wit was the genuine ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... but he always said he was lookin' forward to the day when he could afford to get as drunk as he sometimes thought he'd like to be. He was a droll sort of a cuss, Jake was. He claimed he'd been savin' up his appetite and his money for nearly three years so's he could see which would last the longest in ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... fiction) and was just twenty-eight himself, was a critic of formidable severity and the author of at least five claques. The intense concentration of writing routed his sense of humor, but he had as many droll stories in his repertoire as Todd. His wife, the famous "Alberta Jones," fierce Lucy Stoner, was the editor, at a phenomenal salary, of one of the "Woman's Magazines," and wrote short stories of impeccable style and indifferent content for the Century ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... She brought out this droll explanation with a little nervous rush, as if she were speaking words she had got by heart. They gave me an impression of subtlety and at first I failed to follow. But after a moment her face helped ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... to drive one of Joos's carriages; but he had a misfortune. He nearly killed a lady whom he was bringing to the hotel, and was dismissed in consequence. Now he is guide to an American gentleman. My God! but they are droll, the Americans!" ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... the most droll vein of true rural humor. The performers seem to be made for the dances, and the dances for the performers; so well assorted are the figures to the representation. Several eminent painters in the grotesque stile, Teniers especially, have formed many diverting ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... 'The Abbey! that is droll,' said Cadurcis. 'I owe some duties to the poor Abbey. I should not like to quit England, and leave anybody in trouble at the Abbey. I wish I had seen the lad. Some son of a tenant who has written to me, and I have never opened ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... horns of Canary, would smile and chat in his own dry manner with his friends and domestics, asking minute questions about their neighbours and acquaintance; or when scholars or clergymen shared his simple repast, affecting a droll anxiety—rich and pleasant in the conqueror of Tromp—to prove, by the aptness and abundance of his quotations, that, in becoming an admiral, he had not forfeited his claim to be ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 439 - Volume 17, New Series, May 29, 1852 • Various |
