"Jesting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "I'm not jesting, I'm quite serious, I assure you. Only don't do it to- day; we have only eight available bridge players, and it would break up one of our tables. To-morrow we shall be a larger party. ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... and one that would have passed unnoted an hour before, the sharp snapping of a twig somewhere in the darkness behind her. Only when he saw her start, and the widening of her dark eyes, did he realise how much truth had been contained in her jesting confessions of a few moments since. He could see that she was more than startled, that her emotion ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... over the town as "the pretty cigar girl," and it was quite the thing for young sprigs of family to lounge against her counter, tell her how charming she was, make her light their cigarettes and sometimes take the first puff from their cigars. All this she took with jesting good-nature, chaffing all of her customers, commiserating with them in mocking tones on their fractured hearts, and lamenting the poverty that confined their purchases to the cheaper brands of her wares. She knew how far to allow a compliment to go. ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... I am in no humor for jesting. Damas. I see you understand something of the grammar; you decline the non-substantive "small-swords" with great ease; but that won't do—you must take a ...
— The Lady of Lyons - or Love and Pride • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... censor whose sympathies were too purely literary, literary in too narrow a sense, would not scruples of some other kind begin to intrude themselves, scruples of the student who cannot tolerate an innocent jesting with "serious" things, scruples of the moralist who must choose between Maeterlinck and d'Annunzio, between Tolstoi and Ibsen? I cannot so much as think of a man in all England who would be capable of justifying the existence of the censorship. Is it, then, merely Mr. ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... elsewhere mere gliding shades clad in the pallor of a misty memory, but present, as in their daily lives, shading their dreamful eyes against the noonday sun or setting their brave brows against the mountain wind, laughing and jesting in their manful mirth and speaking as brother to brother of great gifts to give the world. All this while, though the past is thus close about you the present is beautiful also, and does not shock you by discord and unseemliness as it will ever do ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... is the best cordial against the consumption of the spirit; wherefore jesting is not unlawful, if it trespasseth not in ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... taken to the forest by a relative and there tied to a tree, to which she is considered to be married. She is not taken back to her father's house but to that of some relative, such as her brother-in-law or grandfather, who is permitted to talk to her in an obscene and jesting manner, and is subsequently disposed of as a widow. Or in Sambalpur she may be nominally married to an old man and then again married as a widow. The Savars follow generally the local Hindu form of the marriage ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... such extravagance? I knew the size of Vantine's fortune; it was large, but a hundred thousand dollars represented more than a year's income. And then I smiled to myself. Of course Vantine had been merely jesting when he named that limit. The cabinet could be bought for a tenth of it, at the most. And, still smiling, I left the cab, paid the driver, and ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... stay at Camalodunum, carried messages to him there from his mother, and had sorrowfully shaken his head on his way back through the forest as he thought of his young chief's surroundings. Beric had partially adopted the Roman costume, and to hear him talking and jesting in their own language to the occupants of the mansion, whose grandeur and appointments filled Boduoc with an almost superstitious fear, was terrible to him. However, his loyalty to Beric prevented him from breathing a word in the tribe as to his fears, and he was delighted to ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... loyalty—if not to Gustave of Maasau, at least to Maasau the Free. Any dimmest doubt of Selpdorf's patriotism had never during all that period entered into the soddened brain of his master. But to-night, as the Duke recalled the half-jesting proposal to disband the Guard, made by the Chancellor on the day of the review, and added to that hint the pregnant significance of Valerie's speech, he realised that evil days were overtaking him, that his most trusted ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... of 1866 while sitting next to her at table I was obliged to conclude that she had subsequently allowed herself to be influenced in her judgment of my character by further-reaching calumnies. I was ambitious, she said, in a half-jesting tone, to be a king or at least president of a republic. I replied in the same semi-jocular tone that I was personally spoilt for a republican; that I had grown up in the royalist traditions of the family and had need of a monarchical institution for ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... upon me, Lazarus," he ordered. "I heard thy face is like that of Medusa and turns into stone whomsoever thou lookest at. Now, I wish to see thee and to have a talk with thee, before I turn into stone,"—added he in a tone of kingly jesting, not devoid ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... was alight, but the enclosing hills, where bonfires laughed in flame. Jewelled coronets twinkled on bastions of the Tiger Fort. Threads of fire traced every curve and line of Jai Singh's tomb. And on either side of the carriage, the crowd swayed and hummed; laughing, jesting, boasting; intoxicated with the spirit of festival, that found an echo in Aruna's heart and rioted in her veins. To-night she felt merged in India, Eastern to the core; capable, almost, of wondering—could she put it away from her, even at the ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... for all the servants knew him plainly; and they brought him in haste to the room of their mistress, in the semblance of whom the maid rose up from supper and welcomed him gladly. And afterwards she sat down to supper again the second time, and Rhun with her. Then Rhun began jesting with the maid, who still kept the semblance of her mistress. And verily this story shows that the maiden became so intoxicated, that she fell asleep; and the story relates that it was a powder that Rhun put into ...
— The Mabinogion Vol. 3 (of 3) • Owen M. Edwards
... they all in turn had thought that she would doubtless soon marry, and this had offended her—she wanted no husband. And recalling these half-jesting conversations with Musya, and the fact that now Musya was actually condemned to death, she choked with tears in her maternal pity. And each time the clock struck she raised her tear-stained face and listened—how ...
— The Seven who were Hanged • Leonid Andreyev
... accompanied and followed by her ladies and the three young men and guided by the song of some score nightingales and other birds, took her way westward, by a little-used footpath, full of green herbs and flowers, which latter now all began to open for the coming sun, and chatting, jesting and laughing with her company, brought them a while before half tierce,[149] without having gone over two thousand paces, to a very fair and rich palace, somewhat upraised above the plain upon a little knoll. Here they entered and having gone all about and viewed the great saloons ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... trouble (which I did many a year back) to examine it. A jest book it certainly is, and the most prosperous of jest books, but undoubtedly never meant for such by the author. A man whose lips are livid with anger does not jest, and does not understand jesting. Still, the Edinburgh Reviewer is right about the proper functions of the book, though wrong about the intentions of the author. The fact is, the man was maniacally in error, and always in error, as ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... beautiful features were divided, if we may so say, between smiles and tears, "papa, Dunroe is only jesting; I am sure he is only jesting, and does not mean any serious ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... remembrance of the late YORICK, assumes a friendly and patronising air towards YORICK's successor, a Court Fool, apparently so youthful that he may still be supposed to be learning his business. So when His Royal Highness Hamlet has what he considers "a good thing" to say, Mr. TREE places the novice in jesting near himself, and pointedly speaks at him; as e.g., when, in reply to the King's inquiry after his health, he tells him that he "eats air promise-crammed," adding, with a sly look at the Court Fool, "you cannot feed capons so." Whereat the Fool, put into a difficult position, through ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, April 16, 1892 • Various
... the exuberance of his rich vigorous nature, surrounded by friends for whom he kept open house, in high contentment with life, eager to respond to all the claims upon his energy. Here came artists and poets, in the pleasant summer days, jesting, dreaming, discussing, indulging in bouts of single-stick or game of bowls in the garden, walking through the country-side, quoting poets old and new, and scheming to cover the walls and cupboards of the rooms with the legends of mediaeval romance. Visitors of the conventional aesthetic type ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... just contempt and ridicule. It will soon be well known that the surest way to inflict pain upon you is to extol the excellences or to dwell on the happiness of others, and your failings will be considered an amusing subject for jesting observation to experimentalize upon. I have often watched the downward progress I have just described; and, unless the grace of God, working with your own vigorous self-control, should alter your present frame of mind, I can see no reason why ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... engaged earnestly, eager every ear, France fought furiously, forsaking foolish fear, Great German garrisons grappled Gallic guard, Hohenzollern Hussars hammered, heavy, hard. Infantry, Imperial, Indian, Irish, intermingling, Jackets jaunty, joking, jesting, jostling, jingling. Kinetic, Kruppised Kaiser, kingdom's killing knight, Laid Louvain lamenting, London lacking light, Mobilising millions, marvellous mobility, Numberless nonentities, numerous nobility. Oligarchies olden opposed olive offering, ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... philosophers, when they are first uttered, have found the world unprepared for them. A further misunderstanding arises out of the wildness of his humour; he is supposed not only by Callicles, but by the rest of mankind, to be jesting when he is profoundly serious. At length he makes even Polus in earnest. Finally, he drops the argument, and heedless any longer of the forms of dialectic, he loses himself in a sort of triumph, while at the same ...
— Gorgias • Plato
... meeting of the pair signified good fortune to mortals. Even to-day, in many parts of the country, children sing a little song on the evening of the Tanabata festival,—Tenki ni nari! ("O weather, be clear!") In the province of Iga the young folks also sing a jesting song at the supposed hour of the ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... certain fox had a Grecian nose And a beautiful tail. His friends Were wont to say in a jesting way A divinity shaped his ends. The fact is sad, but his foxship had A fault we should all eschew: He was so deceived that he quite believed What he heard from ...
— Fables for the Frivolous • Guy Whitmore Carryl
... terrible king 'struck down the noblest of the Humanists, Thomas More, who died the death of a saint, gloriously jesting.' The question of the monasteries is one that is solved by the simple statement that the King wanted money and the monasteries supplied it. Is there any justification for the crimes of Henry? For Chesterton 'it is unpractical to discuss whether Froude finds any justification for ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... other side, man on pleasure bent. And, standing on the borderland of those two incongruous pictures, which repeated thousands of times in diverse ways, make Paris the most entertaining and most philosophical city in the world, I played a mental macedoine[*], half jesting, half funereal. With my left foot I kept time to the music, and the other felt as if it were in a tomb. My leg was, in fact, frozen by one of those draughts which congeal one half of the body while the other suffers ...
— Sarrasine • Honore de Balzac
... father, and for long I thought he was my father. Only just before we were going into action did he tell me that I should find all the particulars about myself in a box, in a house where we lived when we were on shore, near Brest. I thought at first that he was jesting, and asked no questions, and it was only after he was killed that I believed he spoke the truth. Poor dear Pierre Gerardin! you were always kind and good to me, and I shall never see ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... I am jesting you must have it as you please. But tell me all the same how you live, and how ...
— Father Sergius • Leo Tolstoy
... had been much jesting about the land- lubbers of Peloponnesus, and in the first flush of their victory they had been ready to face any odds on the sea. But now, seeing themselves confronted by such overwhelming numbers, they had lost heart for the moment, and were seen standing about in little ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... and the Nibelungenlied. There is sometimes faintly mingled with this (as in the gabz of the Voyage a Constantinoble, and the exploits of Rainoart with the tinel) the spirit, half rough, half sly, of jesting, which by-and-by takes shape in the fabliaux. There is the immense and restless spirit of curiosity, which explores and refashions, to its own guise and fancy, the relics of the old world, the treasures of ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... jesting only. To think of me undervaluing the military! Why often and often, as a single man with no ties, I have fancied myself enlisting. But now ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... sped like levelled shaft from bent bow; after her rang a jesting, gibing laugh. "Look well there is no mistake!" was the ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... him in utter perplexity. The words could only have been said in jest, and yet they seemed to savour of a tone the furthest remove from jesting. There was his face plain to her eyes, but no information of any kind was ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... not engaged," said Mrs. Deane, and Eugenia replied, "But expect to be, which is the same thing;" then after a pause, she continued, "but, jesting aside, Mr. Hastings did not buy the piano. I bought it myself and expect to pay for it, too, that is, if you will indorse this draft. Look!" and she held to view the draft, of which Mrs. Deane was, until ...
— Dora Deane • Mary J. Holmes
... in a gardener's cottage, and as a child he was the bell-ringer. When still a young man he exchanged his smock-frock for a surplice, but was of a merry and jesting disposition. The Duke of Parma heard him laugh one day so gayly, that the poor duke, who did not laugh every day, asked who it was that was so merry, and had him called. Alberoni related to him some grotesque adventure. His highness laughed heartily; ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... it. It is the fashion in the States to speak of "poor old Punch," and to affect astonishment at seeing in its "senile pages" anything that they have to admit to be funny. Doubtless a great deal of very laborious and vapid jesting goes on in the pages of the doyen of English comic weeklies; but at its best Punch is hard to beat, and its humours have often a literary quality such as is seldom met with in an American journal of the same kind. No American paper can even remotely claim to have added ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... delf. Thus for a week the farce went on; When, all her country savings gone, She fell into her former scene, Small beer, a herring, and the Dean. Thus far in jest: though now, I fear, You think my jesting too severe; But poets, when a hint is new, Regard not whether false or true: Yet raillery gives no offence, Where truth has not the least pretence; Nor can be more securely placed Than on a nymph of ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... sculptors Girardon, Puget, Desjardins, and Coysevox, whose works had done so much to beautify the new palace of the king. Close to the door, Racine, with his handsome face wreathed in smiles, was chatting with the poet Boileau and the architect Mansard, the three laughing and jesting with the freedom which was natural to the favourite servants of the king, the only subjects who might walk unannounced and without ceremony into and out of ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... orchard run wild and a clump of chestnut-trees. He fed himself, his wife and his twelve children on big green chestnuts, and we were all strong and sturdy. I was the youngest and the most turbulent; my father used to declare, by way of jesting, he would have to send me to America to be a filibuster.... Ah! sir, how fragrant your chestnut soup smells! It takes me back to the table where my mother sat smiling, surrounded by her ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... their approaching death. Some have been killed on the occasion they expected, while others who appeared equally certain of being summoned away have come out of action without scratch. Others, again, whom I have seen laughing and jesting as if they had a long lease of life before them, have, within a few hours perhaps, been stretched lifeless on the deck. I have come to the conclusion, therefore, that no one can tell when his last moment is to come, and that consequently ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... I am wrong; My quibbles are not worth a song, And I sophistically tease My fancy sad to tricks like these. 120 I could not cheat you if I would; You know me and my jesting mood, Mere surface-foam, for pride concealing The purpose of my deeper feeling. I have not spilt one drop of joy Poured in the senses of the boy, Nor Nature fails my walks to bless With all her golden inwardness; And as ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... quality of a possibility alone. This is only true for those who believe, for those who have faith, whose lives have been unified, who have found Salvation. For those whose lives are chaotic, personal loves must also be chaotic; this or that passion, malice, a jesting humour, some physical lust, gratified vanity, egotistical pride, will rule and limit the relationship and colour its ultimate futility. But the Believer uses personal love and sustains himself by personal love. It is his provender, the meat and ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... our views on this subject. Human nature does not change, but it changes its modes of expression. In the eighteenth century very grave people, even bishops, allowed themselves, in their relaxed moments, great licence in jesting. Yet they would have been scandalised by the tragic treatment of sex by our more audacious novelists of to-day. We are still interested in these matters, but we have agreed not to joke about them. I read the other day a dictum of one of those young gentlemen who act as our moral policemen: ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... now lately being imbayed in a deepe Bay, which the Master had desire to see, for some reasons to himselfe knowne, his word tended altogether to put the Companie into a fray [fear] of extremitie, by wintering in cold: Jesting at our Master's hope ...
— Henry Hudson - A Brief Statement Of His Aims And His Achievements • Thomas A. Janvier
... of Guise quite realistic, we were first taken to the great council chamber, before one of whose beautiful chimney places Le Balfre stood warming himself, for the night was cold, eating plums and jesting with his courtiers, when he was summoned to attend the King. Henry, with his cut-throats at hand, was awaiting his cousin in his cabinet de travail, at the end of his apartments. As the Duke entered the ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... Prosopopeia of Political Economy! I know exactly what you are going to say; but, if you please, we will leave Turgot and Galileo to Mr. Canning and the House of Commons, or your Cousin Hargrave and his Debating Society. However, jesting apart, get your hat, and walk with me as far as Evans's, where I have promised to look in, to see the Mazarin Bible, and we will talk this affair ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... life was over. Aholibah watched like a cat every night; he was not on for day duty. She never came to the Rasta before dark. The story of her infatuation for the well-bred, melancholy garcon was noised about; but it did not endanger his position, as at La Source. He paid little attention to the jesting, and was scrupulously exact in his work. But the sense of his double personality began to worry him again. He did not see scarlet as of old; he noticed when his eyes were closed that the apparition of a second Ambroise swam into the field of his vision. And he ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... wedding, his face was stiff and expressionless. He wanted to drink, to get rid of his forethought and afterthought, to set the moment free. But he could not. The suspense only tightened at his heart. The jesting and joviality and jolly, broad insinuation of the guests only coiled him more. He could not hear. That which was impending obsessed him, he could not ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... didst not shoot the deer instead of hallooing him away, thou great idiot?" demanded Standish in jesting anger, while, with such a rush as the animal sore athirst makes when he scents the water springs, all the men but three of the party burst through the undergrowth and found themselves in a lovely little dale so sheltered by hills and trees as to offer only a southern exposure to the ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... indulgently at my jesting. "It is not exactly a story for boys," he said. "I go on then. The sign, as you call it, was not very plentiful but very much to the purpose, and when Mr. Powell heard (at a certain moment I felt ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... he might be safe if he withdrew completely from the world, and so, listening to imprudent counsellors, he entered the monastery from which he was to come forth again later in disgrace. In after years he would sometimes allude to his order, when jesting covertly with his friends, and say "When I was in the regiment!" but he did not repeat that now. As a boy he had loved flowers, but, after entering the seminary, he had thought no more about them—thought no more about them for forty years. The night before Benedetto's ...
— The Saint • Antonio Fogazzaro
... crowded. Billy understood it to mean that he might lose his companion and took a grip. That little hot hand clinging tight to his, the sore feet recklessly scouring the walk, the hungry child panting for breath as he tried to keep even, the brave soul jesting in the face of hard luck, caught Sinton in a ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... to the comfort of their al-fresco lodging. Large fires had been lighted, composed in great part of odoriferous shrubs and bushes abounding in the neighbourhood, which scented the air as they burned; and around these the soldiers were assembled cooking and eating their rations, smoking, jesting, discussing some previous fight, or anticipating the result of the one expected for the morrow, and which according to their sanguine calculations, could only be favourable to them. Here was a seemingly interminable row of muskets piled ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... bower is sent, And ribbald rhyme and jesting spent; The lover's whisper'd words and few Have bade the bashful maid adieu; The dancing-floor is silent quite— No foot bounds there, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... glasses of champagne," of which he talked so airily, that had all the honor of crowning him king of fate and poet of the world. Long after midnight, upon such and many other occasions, would he and his companions sit laughing and jesting and drinking, some saying witty things, and all of them foolish things and worse; inventing stories apropos of the foibles of friends, and relating anecdotes which grew more and more irreverent to God and women as the night advanced, and the wine gained power, and the shame-faced angels ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... ennobled her? Was this the man whose sermon had drawn tears from women about her whom she knew to be shameless and hardened in crime? Yes! The eyes that now rested on her humorously were the beautiful eyes which had once looked into her soul. The voice that had just addressed a jesting question to her was the deep and mellow voice which had once thrilled her to the heart. In the pulpit he was an angel of mercy; out of the pulpit he was a boy let ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins
... easel to easel, scolding, flattering, jesting, and making, as usual, his jests more dreaded than his reprimands. Ginevra had not obeyed the professor's order, but remained at her post, firmly resolved not to quit it. She took a sheet of paper and began to sketch in sepia the head of the hidden man. ...
— Vendetta • Honore de Balzac
... comedy of the early Romans made little progress beyond personal satire, burlesque extravagance and licentious jesting, but upon this was ingrafted the new Greek comedy, and hence arose that phase of the drama, of which the representatives were Plautus, Statius, and Terence. The Roman comedy was calculated to produce a moral result, although ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... and Monsieur Profond "poinded" with a yellow-gloved finger; "small car, with a small lunch"; he moved on, groomed, sleepy, and remote, George Forsyte following, neat, huge, and with his jesting air. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... droll, laughable, farcical, witty, jocular, jocose, ludicrous, burlesque, facetious, risible, absurd, waggish, humorous, jesting. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... ominous word struck on the ears of Cargrim, who was passing at the moment, and he smiled cruelly as he heard the half-joking tone in which it was spoken. Captain George Pendle little thought that the chaplain took his jesting speech in earnest, and was more convinced than ever that the bishop had killed Jentham, and had just been warned by Mother Jael that she knew the truth. This then, as Cargrim considered, was her reason for haunting the bishop in his incomings ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... till at my door I see you enter, each and every one Tumultuous, eager all, with clamorous speech, To hide my stammering welcome and my tears. I am no host carousing long and late, Enticing guests with epicurean hints; Nor am I Timon, sick of this sad world, Who, jesting, cries, "The sky is overhead, And underneath that famous rest, the earth: Show me the man who can have more ...
— Poems • Elizabeth Stoddard
... and did not seem to care for ornaments of any kind. Peterkin said "it was in memory of the girl he left behind him!" But as he never spoke of this girl to either of us, I am inclined to think that Peterkin was either jesting or mistaken. In addition to these articles we had a little bit of tinder, and the clothes on our backs. ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... morning at an early hour they were off: Dan, the old Doctor, some six or eight of the active women leaders of the congregation, Charity, and Judge Strong. The Ally went also. There was no little surprise expressed, in a half-jesting manner, by the company, at the presence of Dr. Oldham, and there was much putting together of heads in whispered consultation as to what it might mean. The Judge and his competent associates, with the Ally, kept very much together and left Dan and ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright
... pedagogue about them but the gown and cap. "Austere in face, and rustic in his looks," says David Buchanan, "but most polished in style and speech; and continually, even in serious conversation, jesting most wittily." "Roughhewn, slovenly, and rude," says Peacham, in his 'Compleat Gentleman,' speaking of him, probably, as he appeared in old age, "in his person, behaviour, and fashion; seldom caring for a better outside than ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... astonishment. The instinct of paternity was strong in him. Once married to Jane her genius had become of secondary importance. The important thing was that she was his wife; and even that was not so important as it had been. Only last year he had told her, jesting, that he never knew whether she was his wife or not. He hardly knew now (they saw so little of each other); but he did know that she was ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... all; he never for a moment thought there was anything like jesting on the subject of his own high merits; his face beamed with delight on ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman
... walking and jesting, in which last accomplishment he proved singularly expert, judging from the peals of laughter to which her mistress occasionally gave vent. Then it had become riding, hawking and, worst of all, reading. Lately Louise, learned, ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... yes!" he hastened to say; "with my wife so near at hand I could not let a day go by without inflicting my presence upon her for some small part of it," he concluded in a half jesting tone, and with a fond look down into the sweet, troubled face; for he was standing close at ...
— Elsie's Vacation and After Events • Martha Finley
... long strides towards the police station, which is situated at the extremity of the square, dragging the wretched woman after him. She yielded mechanically. Neither he nor she uttered a word. The cloud of spectators followed, jesting, in a paroxysm of delight. Supreme misery ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... for it is a part of his story. Jack wrote seldom, having a sense that I didn't want to hear. When he did write, however, he was liable at any time to break away from the light, half-jesting, half-defiant tone which he had purposely chosen to cover our disagreement, and to give me a sentence or two, or even a page, of cold-blooded confession. It may have been that his purpose, at that point, suddenly ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... emotions written words are a bad medium. The light jesting tone that saves a quip from offense can not be expressed; and remarks that if spoken would amuse, can but pique and even insult their subject. Without the interpretation of the voice, gaiety becomes levity, raillery becomes accusation. Moreover, ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... these hands ... a new and better life ... Glorious vision! Titan, it is just. Just was the punishment; but equally just is the glorious remission of my sin. Shall I live? I myself? A new and better life? No, you are jesting ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... the davit blocks, and a moment later the splash of a boat taking water close to the nearest gun-port. Jeremy stretched as far as his chain would allow, and through a crevice saw four men start to row toward shore. There was some coarse jesting and laughter on deck, then one of the crew sent a "Fare ye well, Bill!" after the departing gig. The hail was answered by the voice of the Jamaican, Curley. Half an hour later the boat returned, carrying only three. Jeremy, ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... saw it wrecked this afternoon. There was no excitement, no hurry, no shouting. A crowd collected, apparently without concerted action, but as if by common impulse. There was no prearrangement or system about it and no "French" excitement. Most of the raiders were women. There was some jesting, and some dry wit, but mostly it was ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... I exclaimed, and, as Job seemed in a jesting mood, I decided to humour him. "I fancy it must have been the other place you got to. To think of you not being able to tell heaven ...
— Tales of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... General Dayton (a senator), after some jesting conversation, asked me to converse with him in private. We retired. He said that he, with some other gentlemen, wished to have a termination put to the pending election; but be wished to know what were the opinions ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... green again for the second spring; the flashing creek, the seas of still hemp and yellow corn, and Chad saw a wistful shadow cross Miss Lucy's pale face, and a darker one anxiously sweep over the Major's jesting lips. ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... quite in earnest, but he was not jesting, and his face was more serious than his voice. Maria Consuelo's hand was lying on the table beside the silver paper-cutter. The white, pointed fingers were very tempting and he would willingly have touched them. He put out his hand. If she did not draw hers away he would ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... be; thou art jesting;—not, at least, the Wilfred of Aescendune I once knew, and by whom I fear I dealt somewhat hardly; he died, and was buried at Oxenford thirty years agone. I saw his dead body; I beheld his burial; I have joined in masses for his soul; I have prayed ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... threatened Rawlins as if he would certainly kill him. This made Rawlins suspect that the renegade gunner had betrayed him; and he stepped back and drew out his knife, also taking the gunner's out of its sheath; so that the Turk, seeing him with two knives, threw down his sword, saying he was only jesting. But the gunner, seeing that Rawlins suspected him, whispered something in his ear, calling Heaven to witness that he had never breathed a word of the enterprise, and never would. Nevertheless, Rawlins kept the knives in his sleeve all night, and was somewhat ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... since the time of the last of the Georges, to effect an improvement in the general aspect of our churchyards, which was certainly very much needed. Culpable neglect, it may be added, was sometimes shown in the admission of jesting or profane epitaphs. The inscription on Gay's monument in Westminster Abbey is a well-known example. One other instance, in illustration, will be abundantly sufficient. Imagine the carelessness of supervision which could allow the ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... to be told, a friendship of which I am no doubt unworthy, madame. But you cannot have any but noble secrets; do you think me capable of jesting on noble things?" ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... Then, as if the jesting allusion to his office reminded him of his professional duties, he added: "I plumb forgot, Auntie Sue, this gentleman is Mr. Ross. He is one of William J. Burns's crack detectives. Don't be scared, though, he ain't ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... for as high as eighty-nine dollars and ninety-nine cents, but not a penny dearer, or back the thing must come to me. Now, about this there are two bothers. First, when you offer a bottle so singular for eighty odd dollars, people suppose you to be jesting. And second—but there is no hurry about that—and I need not go into it. Only remember it must be coined money that you sell ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 17 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... electrical principles, and then proceeded to demonstrate mathematically the IMPOSSIBILITY of doing WHAT EDISON HAD ACTUALLY DONE. This critic concludes with a gentle rebuke to the inventor for ill-timed jesting, and a suggestion ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... directly in front of the lens of the camera. Maid Marian looked up and made a light, jesting remark, gazing straight into the midshipman's eyes. Dave, smiling, bent forward to hear ...
— Dave Darrin's Second Year at Annapolis - Or, Two Midshipmen as Naval Academy "Youngsters" • H. Irving Hancock
... Cleopatra herself, so he proposed that she should send Charmian—not alone, but with her clever hunch-backed maid, to whom the Imperator himself had given the name "Aisopion." He liked Charmian, and could never see the dusky maid without jesting with her. If his master could once be induced to show a cheerful face to others besides himself, Eros, and perceived how much better it was to laugh than to lapse into sullen reverie and anger, much would be gained, and Charmian would do the rest, if she brought a loving message from ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... expression that he did not fully understand the meaning of his young friend, or, if he did, he believed he was jesting. The idea of him ever figuring on the printed page could not be credited. He smiled and shook his head, as though he wished ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... upon his bed, and closed his eyes. They had not been jesting altogether. So long a life in the open made summer skies at night welcome, and roofs and walls almost took from them the ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... situation appealed forcefully to Miss Stanton's sense of humour, and she thoroughly enjoyed the old man's jesting. "If he can rise above a condition like that," she thought, "he must be a splendid man." She longed to comfort, to ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... unspeakable sorrow. Everard wakes; Cyril suddenly becomes gay in response to his friend's high spirits. They chaff each other. Cyril preaches to Everard, when Henry scolds him for fasting, and his laxity of faith and practice. They pass Belminster, when Cyril betrays unconscious ambition at Everard's jesting prophecy that he would preach as bishop in the cathedral. Asceticism is defended by Cyril and condemned by Everard. Cyril speaks of the discipline of sorrow, and presses a spiked cross under his clothes into his side. Everard exalts the discipline of ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... alone from the mists which often enveloped the rest of the range. It is called Machacha, and is a conspicuous object from Ladybrand and the Free State uplands nearly as far as Thaba 'Ntshu. Our route lay up a grassy hollow so steep that we had thought our friend, the Commissioner, must be jesting when he pointed up it and told us that was the way we had to ride. For a pedestrian it was a piece of hand and foot climbing, and seemed quite impracticable for horses. But up the horses went. They are a wonderful breed, these little Basuto nags. ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... your letter, and I really don't know what to say to you. I should not even have answered you at all, if it had not been that I fancied that under your jesting remarks there really lies hid a feeling of some friendliness. Your letter made an unpleasant impression on me. In answer to your rigmarole, as you call it, let me too put to you one question: What for? What have I to do with you, or you with me? I do not ascribe to you any bad motives ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... but only these representations of Satyrs who carried canisters and cornucopias full of several fruits in their hands, and danced with them at their public feasts, and afterwards reading Horace, who makes mention of his homely Romans jesting at one another in the same kind of solemnities, might suppose those wanton Satyrs did the same; and especially because Horace possibly might seem to him to have shown the original of all poetry in general (including the Grecians as well as Romans), though it is plainly otherwise that he only ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... this opinion to the prisoner, but he treated the subject in a jesting manner, and told him that if he heard any more of such nonsense he would inform the prison authorities and his liberty would ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... matter of some concern, and my friends, I hope, won't take it ill if I inquire a little into the means by which they intend to deliver me. A rope and a noose are no jesting matters! ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... Northwest; golden China dragons of San Francisco; old orchards of New England; the oily Gulf of Mexico where tramp steamers puff down to Rio; a snow-piled cabin among somber pines of northern mountains. Elsewhere, elsewhere, elsewhere, beyond the sky-line, under larger stars, where men ride jesting and women smile. Names alluring to the American he repeated—Shenandoah, Santa Ynez, the Little Big Horn, Baton Rouge, the Great Smokies, Rappahannock, Arizona, Cheyenne, Monongahela, Androscoggin; canyon and bayou; sycamore and mesquite; Broadway ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... carefully watched, had been used by her to meet any unforeseen expense, any urgent charity, or to buy Christmas and birthday presents for her husband and for Philip. In the course of years it had diminished sadly, but it was still with the Vicar a subject for jesting. He talked of his wife as a rich woman and he constantly spoke ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... Lord North's government came to an end, and the king "was pleased," as Lord North quoted with jesting irony from the Gazette, to send for Lord Rockingham, Charles Fox, and Lord Shelburne. Members could hardly believe their own eyes, as they saw Lord North and the members of a government which had been in place for twelve years, now lounging on the opposition benches ...
— Burke • John Morley
... death, my masters, you will find it ill jesting in this presence! What in the fiend's name! Think ye, Elizabeth of England may be tricked and cozened—made game of by a scurvy Italian bookworm and ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... In this half-jesting, half-earnest manner she was accustomed to maintain a sort of friendly authority over Mr. Vanstone's daughters, after her proper functions as governess had necessarily come to an end. Norah, it is needless to say, had long since ceased to be her pupil; ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... not jesting, mother dear, but am very much in earnest. I really want to earn money of my own, and shall be so much happier if I have a regular occupation. And you want me to be happy, ...
— The Alchemist's Secret • Isabel Cecilia Williams
... choking with rage. He hardly knew why he did not seize the seducer by the throat. But the culprits would have a complete defence ready. Was it not all mere harmless jesting? Whatever anguish of jealousy he might feel, he must ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... "Ha' done with thy jesting, good sir; thou art a traveller from afar, and lookest the part to perfection. I am at mine ease at home going to pay a call to a pretty neighbour. Let us be jogging; 'tis a long walk to Newnham, and the afternoon is ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... Klopen was jesting," went on the young girl. "But he had never been more in earnest; and, to prove it, he commenced explaining to me what he wanted. He proposed to get up for me some of those costumes which are sure to attract attention; and two ...
— Other People's Money • Emile Gaboriau
... tale-telling, jesting talk, ribaldry, buffoonery, P; harlatrye, jesting Lat. scurrilitas ...
— A Concise Dictionary of Middle English - From A.D. 1150 To 1580 • A. L. Mayhew and Walter W. Skeat
... mere jesting; but the words, though uttered in jest, fell upon the ears of Edwin Florence with all the force ...
— Heart-Histories and Life-Pictures • T. S. Arthur
... of soldiers rode away, shouting and jesting, leaving Jean Paulet with a heart full ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various |
