"Droll" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Carriage and take him a long Drive into the Country where it is greenest. He is a very good fellow, and has lately lost his Mother, to whom he was a very pious Son; a man who can reverence, although a Droll in Punch. ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... looked up in her face as if to say, Are you being punished too? and then, while still looking at her, made little springs and barked, as if to encourage her to rise in rebellion and escape from her persecutors. He was really so droll that Caroline could not help laughing very heartily at him, and Herbert and her cousins were so glad when they heard it, that they left off their game at once, and came over ...
— Carry's Rose - or, the Magic of Kindness. A Tale for the Young • Mrs. George Cupples
... 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 ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... of the captains were more accomplished than the stolid persons concerning whom so many droll legends still linger; but the fact remains, that valuable property and valuable lives were entrusted to men who wrought solely by rule of thumb, and that the trust was, on the whole, very wisely bestowed. With clumsy old craft that sailed in heavy weather as though they ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... fired and drums and fifes to play in their honor, regaled them with rum, and gave them a bullock for a feast; whereupon, being much pleased, they danced a war-dance, described by one spectator as "droll and odd, showing how they scalp and fight;" after which, says another, "they set up the most horrid song or cry that ever I heard."[211] These warriors, with a few others, promised the General to join him on the march; but he apparently grew tired of them, for a famous chief, called ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... thrilled in the child's marrow; and when one day the mob hooted and hissed them all in my lord's travelling carriage, and cried, "Down with the persecutor! down with Hanging Hermiston!" and mamma covered her eyes and wept, and papa let down the glass and looked out upon the rabble with his droll formidable face, bitter and smiling, as they said he sometimes looked when he gave sentence, Archie was for the moment too much amazed to be alarmed, but he had scarce got his mother by herself before his shrill voice was raised demanding an explanation: why had ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the most delightfully droll story-books that it is possible to conceive of. Brimful of quaint and wonderful notions, and teeming with ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... splendid, a 'grand combination,' as you used to call your droll mixtures of tragedy, comedy, melodrama and farce," answered his sister, with her head ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... the Secretary of the Treasury is a man possessing in an uncommon degree that rare and most attractive of human qualities, companionableness. He is a quiet man of middle age, an old white-headed bachelor with a droll twinkling expression, speaking seldom, and then in a curious silent fashion, as though the drowsy heat of the tropics had soaked him through and through. With his white hair, his white clothes, his white moustachios, his white eyelashes, over eyes that seem to hide away among quiet mirthful ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... in surprise as the droll little figure crept by. Grandpa frowned through his spectacles, and aunt Louise shook her head; but Horace hid his face in a hymn-book and Dotty Dimple ...
— Dotty Dimple's Flyaway • Sophie May
... no lack of impudence in the perpetration of these outrages. The police agents made merry. Some of these droll fellows jested. At Mazas the under-jailors jeered at Thiers, Nadaud reprimanded them severely. The Sieur Hubaut (the younger) awoke General Bedeau. "General, you are a prisoner."—"My person is inviolable."—"Unless ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... Manicamp asked me to get the situation of maid of honor for Montalais in Madame's household, and a situation for Malicorne as an officer in Monsieur's household. Well, I asked for the appointments, for you know very well that I have a weakness for that droll ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the world, while he himself had the pleasure of the anticipation only, not perhaps unmixed with a malicious sense of all the confusions and exhibitions of the weakness of humanity it would produce. Sir Tom himself had humour enough to appreciate the philosophy of the old humorist, and the droll spectator position which he had evidently chosen for himself, as though he could somehow see and enjoy all the struggles of self-interest raised by his will, with one of those curious self-delusions which so often seem to ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... 3 To drink and droll be Rowe allow'd Till the third watchman's toll; Let Jervas gratis paint, and Frowde Save threepence ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... exclaimed Louise. "How droll you are! I will give you many kisses with all the good will. Yes, and I do grieve to see you ...
— Honey-Sweet • Edna Turpin
... stirred a muscle except Wheatfield, who was apparently wiping away a tear. Was the song too deep for them, or perhaps he did not sing the words distinctly, or perhaps they had laughed and he had not noticed? At any rate he would try the next verse, which was certain to amuse them. He looked as droll as he could, and by way of heightening the effect, stuck his two thumbs into the armholes of his waistcoat and wagged his hands in time ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... And the dancing ponies and the trained seals and the dog that wound in and out among the spokes of a buggy wheel and all the other acts thrilled Jerry and made him almost dizzy, they came so fast; but best of all he liked the clowns with their funny faces and droll antics. He did not pick out Whiteface the first time the clowns came out, there were so many of them and they looked so much alike with their ...
— The Circus Comes to Town • Lebbeus Mitchell
... you! Sir John—God bless you!" Noah blew his nose till it rung like a French horn. I thought his little coals of eyes were glittering, too, more than common, most probably with moisture. "You're a droll navigator, and make no more of the ice than a colt makes of a rail. But though the man at the wheel is not always awake ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... A droll little comedy of misunderstandings, told with a light touch, a venturesome spirit and ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... 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 ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... 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 me to see further, and then a light came into my mind. ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... Gammon and Spinach Mr. Stewart Orr has produced a picture-book unique of its kind. Nothing could be more droll than the situations in which he represents the frog, the pig, the mouse, the elephant, and the other well-known characters who appear in his pages. Little folk will find in these pictures a source of endless delight, and the artistic skill which they display ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... everybody's. He gave a new spring, a new interest, to everything; added so much to the life of life; his sense and his nonsense were each of them good in their kind; and they were of various kinds, from the high sublime of metaphysics to the droll realities of life. But everybody blaming, praising, scolding, laughing at, or with him, he was necessary to all and with all, for some ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... observed that her 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 ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... floor as he answered, "My dear sister, I don't know, but boys have played truant before, and survived it; and I have strong hopes of our dear boy." Carroll's voice, though droll, was exceedingly soft and soothing. He put an arm again around his wife, drew her close to him, and pressed her head against his shoulder. "Dear, you will be ill," he said. "The ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... graceful as May. Villebecque himself was a celebrity in characters of airy insolence and careless frolic. Their old man, indeed, was rather hard, but handy; could take anything either in the high serious, or the low droll. Their sentimental lover was rather too much bewigged, and spoke too much to the audience, a fault rare with the French; but this hero had a vague idea that he was ultimately destined to run off with ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli
... of love played the poet more than one droll trick. Having approached her with musical flattery, he fled from her with fear and abhorrence. For a time the highest and holiest of human affections was to his darkened mind no more than a carnal appetite; and he strove to conquer ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... Thoris—I know. And Thuvia, and Phaidor, daughter of Matai Shang. They each love John Carter. Ha-ah! but it is droll. Together for a year they will meditate within the Temple of the Sun, but ere the year is quite gone there will be no more food for them. Ho-oh! what divine entertainment," and she licked the froth from her cruel lips. "There will be no ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... out splendidly," said Grace warmly. "She stands high in every one of her classes, and she is so ridiculously funny that we would feel lost without her. She says things in the same droll way that a young man we know in Oakdale does. But I mustn't stay another minute. Good-bye, Mabel, I'll see you ...
— Grace Harlowe's Second Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... burst of pride turning for an instant to the little figure on the couch, "baby's got awful cunnin' little ways. An' he's got a little way o' lookin' up sideways, kind o' droll, an' when he does that an' Mr. Tenney sees it"—here Raven glanced at her quickly, wondering what accounted for her being so scrupulous with her "Mr. Tenney"—"he can't help noticin' it an' he can't ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... father had noticed he was like Mr. Cray, except in the beard, and so he had his beard clippit the same, and he got hand o' some weel-kent claethes o' the gauger's that had been presented to a poor body, and he learned up a' the gauger's tricks of speech and walking, especially a droll w'y he had o' taking snuff and syne flinging back his head. They were as like as buckies after that, and soon there was a town about it, for one day ladies would find that they had been bowing to the son thinking he was the father, and the next they ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... the corner of 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 of being ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... 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 ...
— What Philately Teaches • John N. Luff
... things they had expected, and were by no means consoled when their father told them that it would be three or four years before they gained their beautiful colour. However they became great pets, and were very droll, with their long legs, and slender necks, and great curved bills. They became extremely tame, and would, after a time, follow the girls about, and stalk up to the house of their own accord to be fed, their food always being ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty
... Dec. 19.-Interministerium. Droll cause in Westminster Hall. The Duke of Cumberland and Edward Bright. Sir Ralph Gore. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... 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 ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore
... rushing helter-skelter over the dry moss, leaping up to strike at the flying game with their paws like a kitten, or snapping wildly to catch it in their mouths and coming down with a back-breaking wriggle to keep themselves from tumbling over on their heads. Then on again, with a droll expression and noses sharpened like exclamation points, to ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long
... about this time and during his first vacation at College are rather conventional, and give few indications of his future deft handling of verse. His "Mathematical Problem" sent to his brother George, is a piece of droll nonsense, but the letter accompanying it is much better than the verse. ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull
... have?" said Martin; "these people are made thus. Imagine all contradictions, all possible incompatibilities—you will find them in the government, in the law-courts, in the churches, in the public shows of this droll nation." ...
— Candide • Voltaire
... wouldn't 'pray her' any more. It makes us laugh to see such a droll sight, and nobody wishes to laugh when you are talking to your ...
— Little Folks Astray • Sophia May (Rebecca Sophia Clarke)
... 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 ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... 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 ...
— Jimmy, Lucy, and All • Sophie May
... 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 two sentinels ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... some day, that was all; but she had no idea of any deeply-laid plan against their happiness. She felt as though some one had struck her hard; she had received a blow that set all her nerves tingling. It was very funny, what he said; it was so droll that it almost made her laugh; and yet her eyes smarted, and her ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... walks up and down with it FOR HOURS, singing a kind of song (dear fellow, he has no more voice than a tea-kettle), and bobbing his head backwards and forwards, and looking, in his nightcap and dressing-gown, SO DROLL. Oh, Eliza! how you ...
— The Fatal Boots • William Makepeace Thackeray
... "That was droll." Hazel chuckled at the recollection, and she recalled the weary look that had once or twice flitted over Bill's face during that ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... own verses. But Thackeray's Novels by Eminent Hands are superior even to the Rejected Addresses. Codlingsby, the parody of Disraeli's Coningsby, may be taken as the most effective parody in our language: intensely droll in itself, it reproduces the absurdities, the affectations, the oriental imagination of Disraeli with inimitable wit. Those ten pages of irrepressible fooling are enough to destroy Disraeli's reputation as a ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... meals with me, and one cat on each side of me, on stools, and we had Poll to talk to us. Now for a word or two as to the dress in which I made a tour round the isle. I could but think how droll it would look in the streets of the town in which I was born. I wore a high cap of goat's skin, with a flap that hung, down, to keep the sun and rain from my neck, a coat made from the skin of a goat too, the skirts of which came down to my hips, and the same on my legs, with no shoes, ...
— Robinson Crusoe - In Words of One Syllable • Mary Godolphin
... 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 him and we'd take an apartment and sit there ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... Clerke, Physicians, Mr. Daray, and Mr. Fox (both very fine gentlemen), the King's servants, where we have brave discourse. Walking upon the decks, were persons of honor all the afternoon, among others, Thomas Killigrew (a merry droll, but a gentleman of great esteem with the King), who told us many ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... friends persuaded him to cover his lecture circuit of two years before, telling the story of his travels. This he did with considerable profit, being everywhere received with great honors. He ended this tour with a second lecture in San Francisco, announced in a droll and characteristic fashion which delighted his Pacific admirers, and insured him a crowded house.—[See Mark Twain: A Biography, chap xlvi, and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... for illuminations are regularly preserved, but by what accident or design they were not filled up remains to be conjectured. The third part, or book, is fully illuminated like the first. There is a very droll illumination on folio vij.^{xx}. xij. At the end of the volume, on folio ccxxxiij., recto, is the following date: "Aujourduy iiij. Jour du Jullet lan mil ccc. soixante dix a este escript ce livre darmes par Micheaugatelet prestre ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... that time was a Dutchman who had joined the Belgian Army in 1914. He was a very droll fellow, and told me he was the clown at one of the Antwerp Theatres and kept the people amused while the scenes were being changed. I can quite believe this, for shouts of laughter could always be heard in his vicinity. He was ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... conversations dull and dry, Embellished with, he said, and so said I. At ev'ry interview their route the same, The repetition makes attention lame, We bustle up with unsuccessful speed, And in the saddest part cry—droll indeed! The path of narrative with care pursue, Still making probability your clue, On all the vestiges of truth attend, And let them guide you to a decent end. Of all ambitions man may entertain, The worst that can invade a sickly brain, ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... said, "We could tell fine secrets if we chose," and the mullein outside the gate made haste to reach the keyhole, that it might peep in and see what was going on. If it had suddenly grown up like a magic bean-stalk, and looked in on a certain June day, it would have seen a droll but pleasant sight, for somebody evidently was going to have ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... vastly recovered from his sickness, thanks to the nursing of Mistress Fennel and her maids. He welcomed the friar in his own droll way, begging to be forgiven by Master Tuck for not giving him reason to perform prayers for an outlaw's soul, and offering to be shrived, notwithstanding, if the ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... jester, merry-andrew, zany, harlequin, droll, punch, mime, farceur, scaramouch, grimacier jackpudding; boor, lout, gawk, gawky, lubber, put, bumpkin, churl, carl, tike; rustic, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... in the neighbourhood of the theatre; you call it the Garrick Club. You allow actors and patrons to mix themselves and their negus there after the play; and this you call a design for exalting the drama. Certainly you English are a droll set; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 529, January 14, 1832 • Various
... seq. For a good discussion of Cosmas's ideas, see Santarem, Hist. de la Cosmographie, vol. ii, pp. 8 et seq., and for a very thorough discussion of its details, Kretschmer, as above. For still another theory, very droll, and thought out on similar principles, see Mungo Park, cited in De Morgan, Paradoxes, p. 309. For Cosmas's joyful summing up, see Montfaucon, Collectio Nova Patrum, vol. ii, p. 255. For the curious survival in the thirteenth ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... This last is one of the chief useful reasons for expletives. However, even then they are a vicious habit, for stronger and stronger expressions are required to win the same subjective effects. Old expressions lose force. Slang is the new coinage. The mintage is often graphic and droll; it is also often stupid and vulgar. A selection goes on. Some of it is rejected and some enters into the language. Expletives also go out of fashion. The strain for effect can be satisfied only by constantly greater and greater excess. ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... of "aye, aye." It is used as an expression of triumph and its employment in this connection is both droll and picturesque. ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... observed William Marion Reedy, "1601 is to Twain's whole works what the 'Droll Stories' are to Balzac's. It is better than the privately circulated ribaldry and vulgarity of Eugene Field; is, indeed, an essay in a sort of primordial humor such as we find in Rabelais, or in the plays of some of the lesser stars that drew their light from Shakespeare's urn. It ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... think we free-born Yankees—descendants of the Puritan Fathers—were going to claim relationship with any of those effete European aristocracies, did you?" with a droll look at Sara. ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... you all seem so dissatisfied," said Mr. Payton, with so droll an attempt to look gloomy that Lucile then and there threw her arms about his neck and gave him an ecstatic kiss, crying joyfully, "Oh, you are the most wonderful ...
— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield
... you will consider this information a lie. That will be quite droll. However, I am, most ...
— The Leader • William Fitzgerald Jenkins (AKA Murray Leinster)
... the gods and goddesses of Olympus is introduced. The divinities, instead of appearing in genuine Grecian attire, present themselves in the mongrel costume visual on such occasions in the time of Queen Elizabeth. This is droll enough, but more whimsical still is the style of their dancing. This, too, is meant as an imitation of the limited choregraphic savoir faire of the age. It is as if Mons. Deshayes had triumphantly intended to portray the first dawn of an art which he considers to have now reached the summit of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 488, May 7, 1831 • Various
... that she will soon receive one of those letters from me which she likes, but not about "Indian poetry" (droll idea!), but about that of which my heart is full, and which I can call by no other name, than "Orpheus." But I must wait for a favourable mood. You may tell the Child, however, that the "white rose" is now red and in ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... determined to be happy than Mrs. Palmer. The studied indifference, insolence, and discontent of her husband gave her no pain, and when he scolded or abused her, she was highly diverted. "Mr. Palmer is so droll," she used to say in a whisper to Elinor; "he is always out of humour." One day, at dinner, his wife said to him, with her usual laugh, "My love, you contradict everybody. Do you know that you are quite rude?" ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... had hitherto come in contact. He had long black hair, wicked black eyes, and a mouth which laughed even when his face was at rest. Add a capital tenor voice, a lithe, active frame, and something irresistibly odd and droll in his motions, and you have his principal points. We walked across the birch-wooded isthmus behind Vik to the Eyfjordsvand, a lake about three miles long, which completely cuts off the further valley, the mountains ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... the matter, I was laughing at the droll effect the line of frieze coats presented as they rode side by side over the stone-walls, when an observation near me ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... of a droll incident that occurred in connection with a Russian delegate quite early in the war. We had no clear understanding with our Allies at that date with regard to the allocation of material between us, nor as to the ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... unnecessary to see or hear more. I had already descried what a peaceful family life—upright, pure, and devoted—my friend Meurtrier hid under his chimerical gasconades. But the spectacle with which chance had favored me was at once so droll and so touching that I could not resist the temptation to watch for some moments longer. That indiscretion sufficed to ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... not really see what republican has to do with the question. In the first place, it is a droll word for you to use in this sense at least; for, taking your own meaning of the term, you are as anti-republican as any woman I know. But a republic does not necessarily infer equality of condition, or even equality of rights,—it meaning merely the substitution of the right ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... 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
... elect. He delighted his children with romances. "Like Dr. Hopkins, he believed that the class-room should be a jolly place, and used to say that no recitation was complete without at least one good laugh. 'Laughter makes sport of work,' he said." His teaching sometimes came in a droll story. "Once there was a woodchuck.... Now, woodchucks can't climb trees. Well, this woodchuck was chased by a dog and came to a tree. He knew that if he could get up this tree the dog could not catch him. Now, ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... make this as effective as may be, enormous compensations attract the best German stars to St. Petersburg. And yet all this is useless, and the Russian theater is not raised above the dignity of a workshop. Only the comic side of the national character, a burlesque and droll simplicity, is admirably represented by actors whose skill and the scope of whose talents may he reckoned equal to the Germans in the same line. But in the higher walks of the drama they are worthless. The people have neither cultivation nor sentiment for ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 8 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 19, 1850 • Various
... A merry droll acted as host and dipped freely for all with the long spoon, commenting the while he dispensed the mess according to the wants of the miscellaneous gathering: "Pot-luck! 'Tis luck, and they're no field mice in it! There's everything else!" or "A bit of rabbit, my masters! I'll ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... carts; "Babul the thief," the natives called this acacia. Higher up a torch-wood tree gleamed as if sprayed with gold, its limbs, lean and bare of foliage, holding at their extremities in wisp-like fingers bright, yellow, solitary blooms. From a tendu tree a pair of droll little brown monkeys chattered and grimaced at ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... agent had almost reached one of the four gates before he was intercepted. For the hapless collector—having nothing in the world to do—haunted those portals all day long, flying from one to the other in hope to see "somebody coming." Very droll, but Burmah is a warm country for jests of the kind. Thus it happened occasionally that he beheld his own discomfiture, and rows ensued at the Mission-house. At length Mr. Sander addressed a formal petition to the Austrian Archbishop, to whom the ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... altogether new to the three types of men-of-the-world before him; that he seemed to them quite original, wildly eccentric, astonishingly gifted, and convulsingly droll, Adams could see; but what more he was, even Milnes hardly dared say. They could not believe his incredible memory and knowledge of literature, classic, mediaeval, and modern; his faculty of reciting ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... were dull or sad, Their captain danced to them like mad, Or told, to make the time pass by, Droll legends of his infancy. ...
— Bab Ballads and Savoy Songs • W. S. Gilbert
... to see an Italian comedy represented at the Teatro Re. The piece was l'Ajo nell' imbarazzo—a very droll and humorous piece—but it was not well acted, from the simple circumstance of the actors not having their parts by heart, and the illusion of the stage is destroyed by hearing the prompter's voice full as loud as that of the actors, who follow his promptings something ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... talked about death—and about funerals, and places of burial. Nobody could be of a more melancholy temperament. Madame de Pompadour once told me that he experienced a painful sensation whenever he was forced to laugh, and that he had often begged her to break off a droll story. He smiled, and that was all. In general, he had the most gloomy ideas concerning almost all events. When there was a new Minister, he used to say, "He displays his wares like all the rest, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... the petty press, that he really believed for true everything he heard, and appeared awkward in his movements. His students, his grisettes, and his young artists were all on their good behavior, but were not more droll. Marivaux had come down one more flight of stairs. Alfred de Musset had steeped the powder and the patches in a glass of Champagne wine. Henry Murger soaked them in a bottle of brandy or in a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... what matter! Supposing that the news of his presence on the Rigi should reach down there, no one would know what he had come to do in Switzerland. And besides, it would be so droll to see, to-morrow morning, the stupor of those "Inglichemans" when they should learn the truth... For that Swiss girl, of course, would not hold her tongue... What surprise, what excitement ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... memoirs Gibbon reveals himself as a man with little dignity or heroism. There is a droll story that is apt to suggest itself when one thinks of Gibbon. At one time, when asking a dignified lady for her hand in marriage, he fell upon his knees in proper lover-like manner. Unfortunately Gibbon was so stout that upon her refusal he found himself ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... the Game of Chess, moralized, called Der Schachzabel. This is an extraordinary, and highly illuminated MS. upon paper; written in a sort of secretary gothic hand, in short rhyming verse, as I conceive about the year 1400, or 1450. The embellishments are large and droll, and in several of them we distinguish that thick, and shining, but cracked coat of paint which is upon the old print of St. Bridget, in Lord Spencer's collection.[14] Among the more striking illuminations is the Knight on horseback, in silver armour, about nine inches ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... it was presuming in me, ma'am, to be making little Miss Betty a present. Indeed," he added, with a droll little twinkle of his eyes, "it's trouble enough I've had keeping it. Biddy caught me making a little drawing of the fine chest, and would have it out of me what I was hiding; and once, when I was just using my two eyes at the window, she asked me was I planning to steal the silver. And ...
— Harper's Young People, September 28, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... for your 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 ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn
... "A droll scene, a council of war in Boston, Admiral Tombstone, Elbow Room, Mr. Caper, General Clinton ...
— The Fall of British Tyranny - American Liberty Triumphant • John Leacock
... Mrs. D.'s mentioning that she had sent the Rejected Addresses to Mr. H., I began talking to her a little about them, and expressed my hope of their having amused her. Her answer was 'Oh dear, yes, very much, very droll indeed—the opening of the House and the striking up of the fiddles!' What she meant, poor woman, who shall say? I sought no farther. The P.'s have now got the book, and like it very much; their niece Eleanor has recommended it most warmly to them—She ...
— Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters - A Family Record • William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh
... the affair pass unnoticed in our pages. We do so from a wish to preserve certain traits and anecdotes which the occasion drew forth,—to give the pleasant rather than the "untoward" events of the day: though we must own the whole appears to have been a very droll business, always excepting ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XIX. No. 532. Saturday, February 4, 1832 • Various
... 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
... which are so rife in Germany. But oh, sorry wit, that is driven to the poor resource of pointed ear-caps, and a green and yellow body. True wit, methinks, is of the mind. We met in Burgundy an honest wench, though over free for my palate, a chambermaid, had made havoc of all these zanies, droll by brute force. Oh, Digressor! Well then, I to be rid of roaring rusticalls, and mindless jests, put my finger in a glass and drew on the table a great watery circle; whereat the rusticalls did look askant, like venison at a cat; and in that circle a smaller ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... that paper of an assemblage of Teetotalers in "Sadler's Wells Theatre," and we straightway recognized the old Roman hand—the old Roman's of the time of Plancus—George Cruikshank's. There were the old bonnets and droll faces and shoes, and short trousers, and figures of 1820 sure enough. And there was George (who has taken to the water-doctrine, as all the world knows) handing some teetotal cresses over a plank to the ...
— John Leech's Pictures of Life and Character • William Makepeace Thackeray
... ritual. She would break an ideal like an egg for the winged thing at the core. Her mind is hard and brilliant and cutting like an acetylene torch. If any impurities drift there, they must be burnt up as in a clear flame. It is droll that she should work in a pants factory. —Yet where else... tousled and collar awry at her olive throat. Besides her hands are unkempt. With English... and everything... there is so little time. She reads without bias— Doubting clamorously— Psychology, plays, science, philosophies— ...
— The Ghetto and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... plants and flowers were growing. The highest were the white tufts of yarrow and butterfly-weed—the flaming milkweed that drew you like a magnet. She took a sip of nectar from some clover and was about to fly off again when she saw a perfect droll of a beast perched on a blade of grass curving above her flower. She was thoroughly scared—he was such a lean green monster—but then her interest was tremendously aroused, and she remained sitting still, as though rooted to the spot, ...
— The Adventures of Maya the Bee • Waldemar Bonsels
... 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 having the sombre surname D'Eth. The sleeper turned himself lazily, ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... to someone) did actually go through a civil ceremony (the French were polite even in the days before Waterloo) with the Count, which, however, failed to count (as an old wag, with a taste for ancient jests, observed to a brother droll), because the Gallic nobleman got killed immediately after the ceremony? Need I hint that Mr. GLENNEY was falsely accused of murder, to be rescued at the right moment by the ever-useful and forgiving ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. Sep. 12, 1891 • Various
... gave frequent readings, evincing remarkable natural and acquired talents. For Dickens he had a love amounting to jealousy. He never quite relished anybody else whom the great novelist had a fondness for, and I have heard droll stories touching this weakness. For Professor Felton he had unbounded regard, which had grown up by correspondence and through report from Dickens. He had never met Felton, and when the professor ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... droll philosophy, the Sheriff dropped his head on his breast, while the hand which held the glass unconsciously ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... elephant, and the camel behind him!" Mamma thought he did not know what a camel was, so when they came around again mamma said, "There is the elephant, Charlie; and what is behind him now?" Charlie did not answer, so mamma asked him again. Then he looked up at her, and said, in a very droll tone, ...
— Harper's Young People, July 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... that true Transatlantic type, to which no nation beyond the limits of the States can offer any parallel. These jokes he lets fall with an air of profound unconsciousness—we may almost say melancholy— which is irresistibly droll, aided as it is by the effect of a figure singularly gaunt and lean and a face to match. And he has found an audience by whom his caustic humor is thoroughly appreciated. Not one of the odd pleasantries slipped out with such ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 6 • Charles Farrar Browne
... see Grace about this," said Aunt Mary; "you must excuse my laughing, but Sally is often very droll." ...
— Spring Days • George Moore
... recent debate on the bill in the Swedish Parliament a university professor said in a tone of eloquent finality: "The woman suffrage movement has reached and passed its climax; the suffrage wave is now rapidly receding." With patronizing air, more droll than he could know, the gentleman added: "We have permitted this movement to come thus far but we shall allow it to go no farther." Thus another fly resting upon the proverbial wheel of progress commanded it to turn no more. This man engages our attention because he is a representative ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... had given birth to two. They were hers of course, as much as one would have been. Only, her soul, which had been waiting so ecstatically for its miracle—for the child which, by making her a mother, should supply what her life needed—her soul wouldn't—couldn't accept the substitution. Those two droll, thin voiced, squirming little mites that were exhibited to her every morning, were as foreign to her, as detached from her, as if they had been brought into the house in ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... the best recipe that was ever given for a married couple to live in peace. Though John and his wife frequently attempted to quarrel afterwards, they never could get their passions to a considerable height; for there was something so droll in thus carrying on the dispute, that, before they got to the end of the argument, they saw the absurdity of it, laughed, ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... "And is it not droll you should have changed him?" she inquired, and yet I thought she looked around uneasily. "You have, Monsieur. He was cautious before this. He foresaw everything. He was willing to risk nothing. He even warned the Marquis ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... to eat, my appetite was kindly tempted by dainties sent to me by friends, and which were placed under tin covers, on the top of a chest of drawers. The endeavours of my rodent companions to get at these were excessively droll; but as fast as they clambered an inch or two up the sides, the slippery metal caused them to slide down again; then they thought if they could but get to the top of the cover, they should succeed; ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... indifferently provided for by a small annuity from his elder brother, extorted by an arbitral decree. He has infinite wit and a great turn for antiquarian lore, as the publications of Kirkton,[3] etc., bear witness. His drawings are the most fanciful and droll imaginable—a mixture between Hogarth and some of those foreign masters who painted temptations of St. Anthony, and such grotesque subjects. As a poet he has not a very strong touch. Strange that his finger-ends ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... being placed over the head reaches to the thighs behind. It is made of platted bamboo, enclosing broad leaves of Phrynium. A group of Lepchas with these on, running along in the pelting rain, are very droll figures; they look like snails with their shells on their backs. All the Lepchas are fond of ornaments, wearing silver hoops in their ears, necklaces made of cornelian, amber, and turquoise, brought from Tibet, and pearls and corals ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... to be done with this droll fellow? The alcalde felt no inclination to question him farther, but left him to go to sleep again and sleep as long as ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... renewed his acquaintance with Snoilsky, and was treated everywhere with the highest distinction. Ibsen and Bjoernson were how beginning to be recognized as the two great writers of Norway, and their droll balance as the Mr. and Mrs. Jack Sprat of letters was already becoming defined. It was doubtless Bjoernson's emphatic attacks on Sweden that at this moment made Ibsen so loving to the Swedes and so beloved. He was in such clover at Stockholm that he might have lingered on there indefinitely, if ...
— Henrik Ibsen • Edmund Gosse
... The sterling good sense and simple naturalness of Randy, and the total absence of slang and viciousness, make these books in the highest degree commendable, while abundant life is supplied by the doings of merry friends, and there is rich humor in the droll rural characters. ...
— Dorothy Dainty at Glenmore • Amy Brooks
... resembled each 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 ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... we have had sufficient proofs, but I am of opinion, all the washing in the world would not render them two degrees less black than an African negro. At some of our first interviews, we had several droll instances of their mistaking the Africans we brought with ...
— A Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay • Watkin Tench
... haste Moan had gone to rig up in his best attire, while the good old lady, to make him laugh, of course, made a most inimitably droll face and a mock curtsey at ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... as to bring up all my journal with you. My Papa has promised me, he will bring up my baby house with him. I shall send you a droll figure of a young lady,[64] in or under, which you please, a tasty head Dress. It was taken from a print that came over in one of the last ships from London. After you have sufficiently amused yourself with it I am willing ...
— Diary of Anna Green Winslow - A Boston School Girl of 1771 • Anna Green Winslow
... whimsical resentment 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 ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... "Isn't it droll that this poor, fallen human nature, despised and reviled, 'conceived in sin and born in iniquity,' should at last call the Christian God and Saviour to account, weigh them by its own standard, ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... instantly says I cry halves, and if the first refuse he is instantly threatened with an information. The manner in which they cheat each other has, with all its infamy, occasionally something extremely droll and ludicrous. I was one day in the shop of a Swiri, or Jew of Mogadore, when a Jew from Gibraltar entered, with a Portuguese female, who held in her hand a mantle, richly embroidered ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... very droll-like: they have no jambs nor lintell as we have, but a flat grate, and there projects over it a lum in the form of the cat-and-clay lum, and commonly a muslin or ruffled ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... 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
... 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 in his "Innocents Abroad" and ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... somewhat after the immortal Brown, Jones, and Robinson pattern, the Americans would be in a better temper with their brothers in Old England than after reading some long spun-out book of travels by brainless Cockneys or cynical dyspeptics. The laugh awakened by a droll picture hurts nobody. It is that ugly letter-press which smarts and rankles, and festers at last into a gangrene of hatred. The Patriarch of Uz wished that his enemy had written a book. He could have ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... droll humour, quite unforced, Mr. Leacock reviews his little community for the sport of the thing, and the result is a natural and delightful ...
— Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... conversation at the breakfast table which resulted in his remaining at the lights, but then he was not entirely serious. He was, of course, grateful for the kindness shown him by the odd longshoreman and enjoyed the latter's society and droll remarks as he would have enjoyed anything out of the ordinary and quaintly amusing. But now he really liked the man. Seth Atkins was a countryman, and a marked contrast to any individual Brown had ever met, but he was far from being a fool. He possessed a fund of dry common sense, and ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... "'Thou art a droll knave,' replies Guttorm, for he was ever fond of a joke; 'but thou art wise also, therefore I advise thee to make a pattern pair of wings for the men; ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne
... and droll, Rigwoodie hags wad spean a foal, Louping and flinging on a crummock, I wonder did na ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt |
