"Jocularity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in Paris in those days of early August, on a visit to her uncle's cousin and dearest friend, Mme. de Plougastel. And although nothing could now be plainer than the seething unrest that heralded the explosion to come, yet the air of gaiety, indeed of jocularity, prevailing at Court—whither madame and mademoiselle went almost daily—reassured them. M. de Plougastel had come and gone again, back to Coblenz on that secret business that kept him now almost constantly absent from his wife. But whilst with her he had positively assured her ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... no heed to this jocularity, or even to Mrs. Jasher, to whom he had been so lately engaged. All his soul was in the mummy case, and as soon as he recovered his breath, he loudly proclaimed his joy at this miraculous recovery of ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... Francis Heathcote's condition in the days which followed was, so the doctor and nurses declared, phenomenal. Robert Gale ceased to tug at his beard in angry perplexity, and melted into something which might almost have been called jocularity, as he watched the man gaining in health and strength. "Splendid! Splendid!" he would say, rubbing his hands together in satisfaction. "Go on as you are going, and you'll see the last of ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... . It's well to be in good time when you're dealin' with John Peter," said Mr Philp with dreadful jocularity. "As I came along the head o' the town," he explained, "I heard that Snell's wife had passed away in the night. A happy release. I dropped in to see if they'd ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... he replied, with a heroic attempt at jocularity, "you will understand now that it was not altogether a cold hard heart that prompted me to decline your request for a renewal of the mortgage this morning. I couldn't afford to. I had agreed to gamble one million dollars that you were thoroughly and effectually dead—I couldn't see one chance ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... were just lifted out of themselves at the thought. After the sermon the Commissioner complimented me on my apostolic earnestness, and Mrs. M'Vicar said I had surprised everybody; but I was fearful there was something of jocularity at the bottom ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... been deeply concerned in the sale of Charles the First to the English Parliament, and was therefore, in the estimation of good Cavaliers, a traitor, if possible, of a worse description than those who had sate in the High Court of Justice. He often talked with a noisy jocularity of the days when he was a canter and a rebel. He was now the chief instrument employed by the court in the work of forcing episcopacy on his reluctant countrymen; nor did he in that cause shrink from the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... lately, Sparks," he observed, applying a steady match flame to the oval butt. He spoke in his usual tones, with a gruffness that balanced on a razor edge between rough jocularity and official harshness. "What's new? ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... on hand. I'm used to rising early for a canter. I'll take it with a cab horse this time. That will be all the difference." And with this attempt at jocularity, Mr. Evringham shook hands once more and departed, swallowing his ill-humor as best he could. Any instincts of the family man which might once have reigned in him had long since been inhibited. This episode was a cruel invasion upon ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... elimination and the theatrical entry of Beverly Plank upon the stage. He laughed when he thought of Major Belwether, too, confounded under the loss of such a nephew-in-law, humiliated, crushed, all his misleading jocularity, all his sleek pink-and-white suavity, all his humbugging bonhomie knocked out of him, leaving only a rumpled, startled old gentleman, who bore an amusing resemblance to a very much ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... smile; he did not betray the smallest symptom of power either to appreciate or to indulge in jocularity at that moment. But feeling that it was useless to appeal to the former experience of the boatswain, he changed his plan ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne
... ended, Hildegunde bound up the wounds of all three of the combatants, who then sat down to share a meal together, indulged in much jocularity about their wounds, and, parting amicably, sought their respective homes. Walther and Hildegunde were next joyously welcomed by their relatives, duly married, and reigned together over Aquitaine for many ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... to smile at her forced jocularity; but the hunted expression saddened his eyes again. To these children, brought up animal-like in the midst of misery and hate, their world revolved round their stomachs, too often empty. But this new trouble—the terror of Flea's going with Lem—had made a man of Flukey, and ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... in his own state-room that George Wentworth's jocularity came out at its best. He would grasp John Kenyon by the shoulder and shake that solemn man, over whose face a grim smile generally appeared when he noticed the exuberant jollity of ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... with brusque, half-savage, energetic Doctor Rogerson, Tom was laconic, decisive, and insupportably ill-bred, till, as we have said, the mirage melted away, and he gradually acquiesced in his identity. Then, little by little, the irrepressible gossip, jocularity, and ballad minstrelsy were heard again, his little eyes danced, and his waggish smiles glowed once more, ruddy as a setting sun, through the nectarian vapours of the punch-bowl. The ghosts of Pell and Rogerson fled to their cold ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... rubbish. I respect only good behaviour, and shall award full marks to those who conduct themselves properly, even if they fail to learn a single letter of their alphabet: whereas to those in whom I may perceive a tendency to jocularity I shall award nothing, even though they should outdo Solon himself." For the same reason he had no great love of the author Krylov, in that the latter says in one of his Fables: "In my opinion, the more one sings, the better one works;" and often the pedagogue would ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... Neal the subject of the Certina factory admitted of no jocularity. She took him under advisement with a grave ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... Pippin made a motion of the head. "We think we have a good superintendent; I go further, an excellent superintendent. What I say is: Let's be pleasant! I am not making an unreasonable request!" He ended on a fitting note of jocularity; and, as if by consent, all three withdrew, each to his own ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... complexion, with his full grey eyes and regular teeth giving him an air of genial cordiality at first sight which was fully confirmed by further acquaintance. So long as the world went well with him, Mathew seemed to enjoy life thoroughly, and even its rubs he bore with an easy jocularity that showed what a stout heart he could oppose to Fortune. A long minority had provided him with a considerable sum on his coming of age, but he spent it freely, and when it was exhausted, continued ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... sedulous. A cloud on her face dimmed instantly his beaming looks; on an early visit to their maniap' my wife saw he had cause to be wary. Nan Tok' had a friend with him, a giddy young thing, of his own age and sex; and they had worked themselves into that stage of jocularity when consequences are too often disregarded. Nei Takauti mentioned her own name. Instantly Nan Tok' held up two fingers, his friend did likewise, both in an ecstasy of slyness. It was plain the lady had ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... said Caspar, interrupting the interrogation of his brother, who spoke in a hesitating and doubtful manner. "Not us, Karl?" continued he, with a slight touch of jocularity in his manner—"you don't ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... people, who looked upon him as a patriot, and there he made it his chief study to secure their affections, often going unlooked for to spend the day and night with his tenants there, and banishing reserve, he indulged in a peculiar strain of jocularity perfectly suited to his audience. His conversation, composed of ludicrous fancies and blandishments, was often intermingled with sound practical advice and displays of good sense. The following curious account of his table deportment, and ordinary mode of living, is ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... disciples contemplated each other with visages of sevenfold blankness. They next unanimously directed their gaze towards their preceptor, hoping to detect some symptom of jocularity upon his venerable features. Nothing could be descried thereon but the most imperturbable solemnity, or, if perchance anything like an expression of irony lurked beneath this, it was not such irony as they wished to see. Lastly, they scanned ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... midst, stood the long, lank, half-dressed figure of the lieutenant in command. Neither he nor his men were absolutely uncourteous, when they once recognized that I was not a Confederate spy, or a professional blockade-runner; but they were exultant, of course, and disposed to indulge in a rough jocularity, during the necessary inspection ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... as though they had just effected their escape from some terrible doom, and they were irresistibly impelled to shake hands with each other, to exchange congratulations, and to talk all together, laughing uproariously at even the feeblest attempt at jocularity. ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... attempted blandishment, reproof, jocularity, and the style of the Lord High Warden, and I had almost to pinch the Hawley Boy to make him keep quiet. She grunted at the end of each sentence and, in the end he went away swearing to himself, quite like a man in a novel. He looked more objectionable than ever. I laughed. ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... eminence[1321] being mentioned, Johnson said, 'Why, Sir, he is a man of good parts, but being originally poor, he has got a love of mean company and low jocularity; a very bad thing, Sir. To laugh is good, as to talk is good. But you ought no more to think it enough if you laugh, than you are to think it enough if you talk. You may laugh in as many ways as you talk; and surely every way of talking that is ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... did not, so far as I remember, make any approach to the subject of literature at all, but reduced both Jowett and myself to something like complete silence by a constant flow of anecdotes and social allusions, which, though not deficient in point, had more in them of jocularity than wit. He was not, perhaps, my ideal of the author of "Men and Women," or the singer of "Lyric Love" as "a wonder and a wild desire"; but there the great man was, and when I quitted his presence and found myself once ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... upon his face a slight air of triumph, regarding him with a self-satisfied smile and a cunning leer which puzzled him greatly. This strange and unexpected change in Russell, from terror and despair to peace of mind and jocularity, was a puzzle over which Harry racked his brains for some ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... Little Ironies the part played by the "President of the Immortals" is no sublimer—save in the amount of force exerted—than that of a lout who pulls a chair suddenly from under an old woman. Now, by wedding Necessity with uncouth Jocularity, Mr. Hardy may have found an hypothesis that solves for him all the difficulties of life. I am not concerned in this place to deny that it may be the true explanation. I have merely to point out that art and criticism must take ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... story of a choleric old gentleman who challenged him once for poaching on his grounds, but who was gradually talked over till he asked him to dinner. If our friend has been a wit in his youth, the propensity to jocularity still survives; but the jests are generally such as you meet with in the very earliest editions of Mr Joseph Miller, though, for the sake of variety, they are often ascribed to the late facetious Mr Joseph Jekyll, or Mr Henry Erskine, or to some other ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... with horns, no doubt," ejaculated Cowdray, sitting down in triumphant jocularity. "It was the ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... Tom, with an assumed jocularity which he was very far from feeling, "what are you doing ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... two sisters assumed an air of indifference. It was Malignon who made his appearance, dressed with greater care than ever, and having a somewhat serious look. He shook hands; but eschewed his customary jocularity, thus returning, in a ceremonious manner, to this house where for some time he had ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... Craven came in he would give the student advice about his work, or ask Amelia when she was going to call in his assistance to get married—which was his idea of jocularity, and, I must admit, also, that of Amelia. Indeed, we were wonderfully glad to see him, and he brightened many a dull ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... known by the term jocular and comick, is nothing but a turn of expression, an airy phantom, that must be caught at a particular point. As we lose this point, we lose the jocularity, and find nothing but dulness in its place. A lucky sally, which has filled a company with laughter, will have no effect in print, because it is shown single, and separate from the circumstance which gave it force. Many ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... music; no juggler, with his tricks of mimic witchcraft; no Merry Andrew, to stir up the multitude with jests, perhaps a hundred years old, but still effective, by their appeals to the very broadest sources of mirthful sympathy. All such professors of the several branches of jocularity would have been sternly repressed, not only by the rigid discipline of law, but by the general sentiment which give law its vitality. Not the less, however, the great, honest face of the people smiled—grimly, perhaps, ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Lord;" and the counsel on the other side having interposed with equal vehemence, "We lie on this side, my Lord,"—the Lord Chancellor leaned backwards, and dryly observed, "If you lie on both sides, whom am I to believe?" In Elizabethan England the pun was as great a power in the jocularity of the law-courts as it is at present; the few surviving witticisms that are supposed to exemplify Egerton's lighter mood on the bench, being for the most part feeble attempts at punning. For instance, when he was asked, during his tenure ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... petulance, till at last none can bear any longer the presence of the rest. They retire to vent their indignation in safer places, where they are heard with attention; their importance is restored, they recover their good humour, and gladden the night with wit and jocularity. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... to the occasion, and was by no means inclined to throw up the sponge. He went down to the City, and delivered not merely a vigorous, but vivacious speech, and in the course of it he said, with a jocularity which was worthy of Lord Palmerston himself: 'If a gentleman were disposed to part with his butler, his coachman, or his gamekeeper, or if a merchant were disposed to part with an old servant, a warehouseman, a clerk, or even a porter, he would say ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... as I look. If you like, I will cut my hair. There is more innocent fun within me than a casual spectator would imagine. You have never seen me frolicsome. Be a good girl — a very good girl — and one day you shall. If you are fond of touch-and-go jocularity — this is the shop ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... claims to have discarded the coarse farce of his predecessors for something more worthy of the refined intelligence of his clever audience. Yet it must be acknowledged that much even of his wit is the mere filth-throwing of a naughty boy; or at best the underbred jocularity of the "funny column," the topical song, or the minstrel show. There are puns on the names of notable personages; a grotesque, fantastic, punning fauna, flora, and geography of Greece; a constant succession of surprises effected by the sudden substitution of low ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... next morning hurt and repelled her almost as much as his maudlin jocularity of the night before. She would have preferred a brazen levity to this humble confession. "'Twas me boast," he sadly asserted, "that no man ever caught me with me eyes full of sand and me tongue twisted—and now look at me! 'Tis ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... 1608; in 1610, occurs as Gentleman in Ordinary of the Bedchamber to Prince Henry; and now accompanied the king to Scotland as Lieutenant of his Gentlemen Pensioners. He was recommended to James equally by his sagacity and a peculiar jocularity of humour, and became the king's familiar companion."—Nichols's Royal Progresses, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... shook down together, became less afraid of Ethel, and did not think it so needful to snub her either by his dignity or jocularity; though she still knew that she was only on terms of sufferance, and had been, more than once, made to repent of unguarded observations. He was admirable; and the school was so rapidly improving ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... ruinous precincts? Would not the owl have shrieked and the cricket cried in my very title-page? and could it have been possible for me, with a moderate attention to decorum, to introduce any scene more lively than might be produced by the jocularity of a clownish but faithful valet, or the garrulous narrative of the heroine's fille-de-chambre, when rehearsing the stories of blood and horror which she had heard in the servants' hall? Again, had my title borne, 'Waverley, ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... on the delayed transcontinental express. He was seeing the West through a car window. The East will not see the jocularity of that fact. The West will, though it may smile with a twist. Bat's floater was working for a Chicago boomster, who had issued a magazine to boom Western real estate, suburban lots seven miles from a flat car, which was all there was of the city. For exactly fifteen dollars (when the floater's ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... children. By a singular reaction in his vigorous temperament, it was about this time that his somber melancholy gave way to a bitter and sarcastic gayety, more in harmony with his nature. From his early youth he had had a taste for jocularity, a mocking turn of spirit, seasoned by that ironical grace of manner peculiar to the great Moscovite nobleman, and resulting from the constant habit of trifling with men and events. His recovery did not, however, restore the agreeable manners ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... her cabin at last—and now for a graceful exit!" he told himself, with an enforced jocularity. But this was no easy task. He spent a full half-hour, working and prying with the shears against the lock which imprisoned him with indomitable force from the outside ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... a "dress-suit" as a fitting recognition of his seventeenth birthday anniversary, but he had been denied by his father with a jocularity more crushing than rigor. Since then—in particular since the arrival of Miss Pratt—Mr. Baxter's temper had been growing steadily more and more even. That is, as affected by William's social activities, it was uniformly bad. Nevertheless, after heavy brooding, William decided to make one ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... level of his audience; eloquent, but with no trace of the empty rhetoric which so often does duty for that quality; full of a high seriousness, but with no suspicion of pedantry; lightened by an occasional epigram or flashes of caustic humour, but with none of the small jocularity in which it is such a temptation to a lecturer to indulge. As one listened to him one felt that comparative anatomy was worthy of the devotion of a life, and that to solve a morphological problem was as fine ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... hangers-on of the criminal courts would have described him as a highbrow and as a holier-than-thou; perhaps he might in a moment of jocularity have even so described himself—for he had his human—perhaps I should have said, his weaker—side. Surely he seemed human enough when he kissed Eleanor good-by at the door of their country place on the Sound the morning he had been subpoenaed to serve as a ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... Sir Henry, without an embarrassment of manner; and even in his intercourse with Thompson, his former jocularity ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... have to say that it was a mass of the most frightful incendiarism, delivered with an occasional air of jocularity and dry humour that made my flesh creep. Amidst the persistent attacks on property he did not spare other sacred things. He even made an attack on my position, stating (wrongly) the amount of my moderate stipend. Indeed, I think he recognised me, although ...
— The Tables Turned - or, Nupkins Awakened. A Socialist Interlude • William Morris
... heart; sunshine of the mind, sunshine of the breast; gaiete de coeur[Fr], bon naturel[Fr]. liveliness &c. adj.; life, alacrity, vivacity, animation, allegresse[obs3]; jocundity, joviality, jollity; levity; jocularity &c. (wit) 842. mirth, merriment, hilarity, exhilaration; laughter &c. 838; merrymaking &c. (amusement) 840; heyday, rejoicing &c. 838; marriage bell. nepenthe, Euphrosyne[obs3], sweet forgetfulness. optimism &c. (hopefulness) 858; self complacency; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... loves of a husband and a father seem to have absorbed by far the greater part of his nature and his thoughts: his letters to friends are steeped and drenched In "Jane," "Fanny," and "Tom junior." These letters are mostly divided between perpetual family details and perennial jocularity: a succession of witticisms, or at lowest of puns and whimsicalities, mounts up like so many squibs and crackers, fizzing through, sparkling amid, or ultimately extinguished by, the inevitable shower—the ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... thou art pil'd, for a French velvet?] The jest about the pile of a French velvet alludes to the loss of hair in the French disease, a very frequent topick of our authour's jocularity. Lucio finding that the gentleman understands the distemper so well, and mentions it so feelingly, promises to remember to drink his health, but to forget to drink after him. It was the opinion of Shakespeare's time, that the cup of an ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... the Governor, affecting a jocularity he did not feel, for he knew how true were the words of the Bishop, "we must all do our duty, nevertheless: if France requires impossibilities of us, we must perform them! That is the old spirit! If the skies fall upon our heads, we must, like true Gauls, hold them up on the points of our ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... to any Countess of Urach—or even Duchess of Wirtemberg, save from courtesy or worldly wisdom. Stafforth, the adventurer, had an ugly sneer on his countenance, and was evidently embarrassed, so took refuge in the frequent attitude of the vulgar when ill at ease—a noisy jocularity. ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... His jocularity did not shake my faith in the seriousness of journalism. I had not done laughing when I opened another letter written in a fine, crabbed hand like the scratching of a diamond on a window-pane, and as I slowly deciphered its contents I could hardly believe ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... achieved this by the intensity of his devotion. Modern literary anarchists are so inclined to fall into jocularity, and irony, and "human, too human" humour. Their Hamlet-like consciousness of the "many mansions" of truth tends to paralyse the impetus of their challenge. They are so often, too, dramatists and novelists rather ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... later. In the disappointment that overcame her, she did not at first notice that Hoskins was gazing at her with a singular expression, which was really one of undisguised admiration. Never having seen this before in the eyes of any man who looked at her, she referred it to some vague "larking" or jocularity, for which ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... ended by banning so fiercely Puritanical a play as "Mrs. Warren's Profession" because it admitted the existence of brothel-keeping as a business and by shutting up such innocent merriment as "The Mikado" because its jocularity might offend the (at the ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... that a September day would be so long? Or that the old clock in the hall would go so ridiculously slow? There was a quiet jocularity in the motion of its long pendulum, as if it were laughing bitterly that anyone could be in a hurry. "Ha! ha! ...
— Connor Magan's Luck and Other Stories • M. T. W.
... unaccountable depression that possessed Philpot deprived him of all his usual jocularity and filled him with melancholy thoughts. He had travelled up and down this hill a great many times before under similar circumstances and he said to himself that if he had half a quid now for every time he had pushed a cart up this road, ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... with cheerful seriousness, but Madame de Bellegarde's tone made him go on, after a meditative pause, with a certain light grimness of jocularity. "No, I lost money on wash-tubs, but I came ...
— The American • Henry James
... jocularity a sudden thought seemed to strike Mr. Shackford; his features underwent a swift transformation, and as he grasped the rail in front of him with both hands a malicious cunning writhed and squirmed in every ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... pleasantries, called Lazzi, are certain actions by which the performer breaks into the scene, to paint to the eye his emotions of panic or jocularity; but as such gestures are foreign to the business going on, the nicety of the art consists in not interrupting the scene, and connecting the Lazzi with it; thus to tie the ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... the door-ways were block'd up with the collectors and imparters of information. Prognostications as to how and where it began, how it would end, and the property that would be consumed, were to be met at every corner—Snuffy Tabbies, and Boosy Kids, some giving way to jocularity, and ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... madam, I am quite serious," said Jeffreys, on whom the apparent jocularity of his last remark had suddenly dawned; "I had no intention of being rude, or treating your question ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... and Wycherly followed the vice-admiral into the after-cabin, where the latter seated himself on a small sofa, while the others took chairs, in respectful attitudes near him, no familiarity or jocularity on the part of a naval superior ever lessening the distance between him and those who hold subordinate commissions—a fact that legislators would do well to remember, when graduating rank in a service. As soon as all were placed, ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... great enjoyment in the kitchen. It was a time of high festival, what with me and the egg supper. Merriment and jocularity, a little tide-wave of social excitement, swelled and broke on all sides of me; making a soft ripply play of fun and repartee, difficult to describe, and which touched me as much as it amused. It was very ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... smashing my furniture"—Anstice's jocularity was savage—"perhaps you'll be good enough to clear out. I won't pretend I'm anxious for more ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... which it is recorded, that he refused to give it to a conjurer to play the egg trick in, "not from respect for his own hat, but for the conjurer's eggs." The future President did not fail to signalize his first appearance as an administrator by a sally of the jocularity which was always struggling with melancholy in his mind. A gentleman of the place, whose education had been defective, was in the habit of calling two or three times a day at the post-office, and ostentatiously inquiring for letters. At last he received a letter, which, being unable to read ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... and when it was apparent to all well-ordered minds that the Kingdom was Coming, accompanied by the Day of Jubilee. Philander left his spool-thread and tape, rushed into the street, and by his Long-Tail Blue, sed, "Let me kiss him for his Mother." Then, with patriotic jocularity, he inquired, "How is your High Daddy in the Morning?" to which Pomp of Cudjo's Cave replied, "That poor Old Slave has gone to rest, we ne'er shall see him more! But U.S.G. is the man for me, or Any other ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 3 • Charles Farrar Browne
... his genius for observation, and the spontaneity of the drama of his stories. But when his story was thin, and he was wandering in an excursion with his childish philosophy, he was usually facetious. As an obvious and easily imitable trick for dull evenings, this elaborate jocularity seems to have been more enjoyed by his disciples than his genius for narrative when he was happy, and his material was full and sound. Yet his false and vulgar fun has spoiled many of these volumes pollinated from India. They have another defect, too, ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... George Canning may laugh and joke at the idea of Protestant bailiffs ravishing Catholic ladies, under the 9th clause of the Sunset Bill; but if some better remedy be not applied to the distractions of Ireland than the jocularity of Mr. Canning, they will soon put an end to his pension, and to the pension of those "near and dear relatives," for whose eating, drinking, washing, and clothing, every man in the United Kingdoms now pays his two-pence or three-pence a year. You may call these observations coarse, if you please; ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... effectual check upon her plans of escape than in her ordinary condition. Spite of the seriousness of the issue, there was something inconceivably absurd in this distress. The woman was noisy, familiar, and sometimes indulged in a vein of menacing jocularity, the principal material of which was supplied from scraps of old Norman ditties. There was one in particular which had a specially grisly sound in the ears of the friendless and frightened young wife. It ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... greatest part of the time, in narrow, squalid rooms, unwholesome workshops, and every sort of disagreeable places and employments? Very true, we answer; and why should not numbers of them be collected in groups by the road-side, in readiness to find in whatever passes there occasions for gross jocularity; practising some impertinence, or uttering some jeering scurrility, at the expense of persons going by; shouting with laughter at the success of the annoyance, or to make it successful; and all this blended with language of ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... zeal on these questions was by far the most conspicuous, as will appear by some of his Sonnets, and particularly by his Poem of "Fire, Famine, and Slaughter;" though written some considerable time after. When he read this Poem to me, it was with so much jocularity as to convince me that, without bitterness, it was ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... ever. They climb into those tightly packed carriages, loaded down with parcels and endless recommendations. Some of the groups are cheerful over their farewells, though the English note of deliberate jocularity is absent. The older people are resigned; in the features of the middle generation, the parents, you may read a certain grimness and hostility to fate; they are the potential mourners. The weeping note predominates among the sisters and children, who give themselves ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... the court will allow you a handsome income. So you must cheer up, in spite of the infliction of a large fortune," added Mr. Newton, with unwonted jocularity. ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... was of philosophical non- combativeness. The New York phrase was that "He jollied a man along." Immense schemes had been carried through in that way. Men in London, in England, were not sufficiently light of touch in their jocularity. He wondered if perhaps this young fellow, with his ready laugh and rather loose-jointed, casual way of carrying himself, was ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... to better things than the old Trovatore at any rate, Aunt Georgie?" I queried, with a well meant effort at jocularity. ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... language signifies salt, as it does in ours; but the vowel has a soft pronunciation. The rein-deer are very fond of salt, and the wildest of them will follow a person, who holds some salt in his hand, for miles together. To put salt on a bird's tail, and catch it, may be an English piece of jocularity; but the Norwegian would be puzzled to think why we should attach a joke to such an act; and to prove to an Englishman the inaptitude of the proverb, the Norseman will go forth with his handful of salt, and take, not his covey of ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... his lip and was silent. Helm was exasperatingly good tempered, and his jocularity was irresistible. While he was yet speaking a guard came up followed by Jean, the hunchback, and ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... pale face, a minois chiffonne, with slightly turned-up nose, large laughing brown eyes, a dazzling set of teeth, and a tempestuously frizzled mop of powdered hair. When I managed to get a side-look at her quietly, without being giggled at or driven half mad by unintelligible incitements to a jocularity I could not feel, it struck me that, if we once found a common term of communication we should become good friends. But for the moment that modus vivendi seemed unattainable. She had not recovered from the first excitement of her capture of me. She ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... civilization and the engineers welcomed Jim, although they treated him with the jocularity that his youth and inexperience demanded. The novelty of his environment, the romance of the great gray dam, built with such frightful risk and difficulty, absorbed Jim for the first week or so. He had no thought of homesickness ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... case of pregnancy. The Chancellor made a speech, not long, admitting the law to be as stated, that is, that the sovereign immediately on accession possessed all Royal power. Eldon spoke against us, and treated the question of a King en venire sa mere with jocularity. I followed, and observed gravely upon his jocularity on such a subject; then stated my view of the question, and expressed my regret and surprise at Lord Grey's declaration, added I was happy to know at last where we were, who were our friends and ...
— A Political Diary 1828-1830, Volume II • Edward Law (Lord Ellenborough)
... when squeezing all the human traits and humour out of a given situation, which was subsidiary to the plot, yet in atmosphere complete in itself. The Hunter's drawing-room just after the funeral, in "The Climbers;" the church scene in "The Moth and the Flame," which for jocularity and small points is the equal of Langdon Mitchell's wedding scene in "The New York Idea," though not so sharply incisive in its satire; the deck on board ship in "The Stubbornness of Geraldine" (so beautifully burlesqued by Weber and Fields as "The Stickiness ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: The Moth and the Flame • Clyde Fitch
... idea, too!" said Tag-rag, with good-humored jocularity. "If I felt a true friendship for you as plain Titmouse, it's so likely I should have cut you just when—ahem! My dear sir! It was I that thought you wouldn't have come into my house! A ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... parts of genteel comedy; such as lord Townly, Young Belville, &c. &c. The Bastard in King John, was another fine character of his, which Garrick attempted in vain—having neither sufficiency of figure, or heroic jocularity. To that may be added Sir Callaghan O'Brallaghan, in Macklin's farce of Love-a-la-Mode; a part in which he gave such specimens of the gallant simplicity and integrity of the Irish gentleman, as were sufficient to ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 4, April 1810 • Various
... to get, I suppose?' said Serjeant Buzfuz, with jocularity. 'Oh, quite enough to get, Sir, as the soldier said ven they ordered him three hundred ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... it? double-dealing about visitors, goes on every where, Madam Beaumont. But how do I know, that when I go away, you may not be as glad to get rid of me as you were to get away from these Duttons?" added he, in a tone of forced jocularity. "How do I know, but that the minute my back is turned, you may not begin to take me to pieces in my turn, and say, 'That old Palmer! he was the most tiresome, humoursome, strange, old-fashioned fellow; I thought we should never have got ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... at jocularity most ill-timed, but I said nothing. It seemed to me an immense time that he was gone, but he declares that it was not more than a minute and a quarter. Then I heard him ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... cases—thus establishing a kind of equine martyrdom, in which the poor brute suffered indeed, but without any advantage to the faith of his more brutal persecutors. These various punishments were prescribed with the utmost coolness, often with jocularity, as if the horse under the worst tortures were only getting his deserts, and as if the amount and importance of his laborious services by no means entitled him to any forbearance. Human ingenuity is capable of absolute development in the direction of cruelty; it seems to be the most ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... desperate essay at jocularity, at which Ada laughed with some perseverance, until even she could no longer resist the influence of ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... and you'll find, gentlemen, he's just the article for big planters. I am happy to see the calm and serene faces of three of my friends of the clergy present; will they not take an interest for a fellow-worker in a righteous cause?" The vender smiles, seems inclined to jocularity, to which the gentlemen in black are unwilling to submit. They have not been moving among dealers, and examining a piece of property here and there, with any sinecure motive. They view the vender's remarks as exceedingly offensive, return a look of indignation, and ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... the genius of criticism to seem to have been sitting under his frown, Dr. Middleton rejoined with sober jocularity: "No, sir, it will not pass; and your uncertainty in regard to the run of the line would only be extended were the line centipedal. Our recommendation is, that you erase it before the arrival of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the feast King Sidney, who had long since disposed of his crown underneath his chair, considered that the occasion demanded a speech. His effort might have been a greater success if he had abstained from jocularity, which was not by any means his forte. It is possible that a far happier sample of British humour would have failed to set Maerchenland tables in a roar, but his hearers were either unaware that he ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... to his jocularity. Gaston Isbel's eyes narrowed to a slit in his furrowed face and he kept them fastened upon Greaves's store. Blue, likewise, had a somber cast of countenance, not, perhaps, any darker nor grimmer than those of his comrades, but more representative of intense preoccupation of mind. The ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... and rubbed his hands together with that forced jocularity which had made his companion turn grave ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... join him. It did not occur to me. I am not much of a diplomatist. It would probably have been wise, for, indeed, I believe he had said more than he meant to say, and was trying to take it back by this affected jocularity. Yet when one thinks of it, diplomacy without force in the background is but a rotten reed to lean upon. And I don't know whether I could have done it if I had thought of it. I don't know. It would have been against the grain. Could I have done it? I have lived too long within ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... most extreme stage of intimate jocularity is reached when the last sorry pretense of drama is discarded and the dramatic machinery itself becomes the subject of jest. So in the Cas. 1006 the cast is warned: Hanc ex longa longiorem ne faciamus fabulam. In Per. 159-60 Saturio ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke
... bent his head under the shower of reproach, chaff, and gibing; he did not try to excuse himself; he simply opened his book at the old place, and we all shouted the old ode, substituting "Betsa" for "Pyrrha" wherever we could. Still, in spite of our jocularity, we all felt an under-current of ...
— Frivolous Cupid • Anthony Hope
... time and occasion) somewhat ill-chosen words of familiarity, the Bailie claimed kindred with Rob Roy's wife. But in this he did himself more harm than good, for his ill-timed jocularity grated on Helen Mac-Gregor's ear, in her present mood of exaltation, and she promptly commanded that the Sassenachs should one and all be bound and thrown into the deeps ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... littleness might be carried; and it would have been too vapid for the toleration of any palate, had it not been so sour. As I sat regardless before this repast, in abstracted grief, I underwent the first of the thousand practical jokes that were hereafter to familiarise me with manual jocularity. My right-hand neighbour, jerking me by the elbow, exclaimed, "Hollo, you sir, there's Jenkins, on the other side of you, cribbing your bread." I turned towards the supposed culprit, and discovered that my informant ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... much neglected part of our history, and when referred to in reminiscences are generally referred to as matters for jocularity. They exercised, however, a serious influence on the minds and feelings of the people, as well as their manners; more so than a hundred subjects with which the historian or the novelist ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... cheek blushed under the oppressive jocularity. Everybody spoke Yiddish habitually at No. 1 Royal Street, except the younger generation, and that spoke it to ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... who are anxious to get acquainted with the manners and customs of the ladies and gentlemen of the corps dramatique "at the wing." Otherwise than as a sign of dramatic destitution, the piece called "Behind the Scenes" is highly amusing. Mr. Wild's acting displays that happy medium between jocularity and earnest, which is the perfection of burlesque. Mrs. Selby plays the "leading lady" without the smallest effort, and invites the first tragedian to her treat of oysters and beer with considerable empressement, though supposed to be labouring at the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... Senator said that he thought it would be as well to drop the matter and accept the Committee's report. He said with some jocularity that the more one agitated this thing, the worse it was for the agitator. He was not able to deny that he believed Senator Dilworthy to be guilty—but what then? Was it such an extraordinary case? For his part, even ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... I pressed Tanno into a chair and resumed mine. We gazed at each other some time before either mastered himself enough for words. Tanno spoke first, veiling his feelings beneath his habitual jocularity. ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... the page that follows him, was prepared by some introductory dialogue, in which the audience was informed that they were the fool and page of Phrynia, Timandra, or some other courtesan, upon the knowledge of which depends the greater part of the ensuing jocularity. ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... did not by any means relish this jocularity upon a matter of which pars magna fuit[766], and seemed impatient till he got rid of us. Johnson could not stop his merriment, but continued it all the way till we got without the Temple-gate. He then burst into such a fit ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... with additional vigor. Among all the inquisitors, the name of Peter Titelmann was now pre-eminent. He executed his infamous functions throughout Flanders, Douay, and Tournay, the most thriving and populous portions of the Netherlands, with a swiftness, precision, and even with a jocularity which hardly seemed human. There was a kind of grim humor about the man. The woman who, according to Lear's fool, was wont to thrust her live eels into the hot paste, "rapping them o' the coxcombs with a stick and crying reproachfully, Wantons, lie down!" had the spirit ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... settlement. There was not a man or woman, especially the men, who did not do all in his or her power to make her forget her troubles. No one ever alluded to Mosquito Bend in her presence, and, instead, assumed a rough, cheerful jocularity, which sat as awkwardly on the majority as it well could. For most of them were illiterate, hard-living folk, rendered desperately serious in ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... was filled in, the troop regained their former jocularity, and they began dividing among themselves the property which they had found upon the persons of ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... poor sinner, Dona Maria," he addressed her feebly, with valiant jocularity. "The days are ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... the passengers plucked up courage, and one morning at breakfast Luke perceived a tall, heavy-shouldered man nodding vigorously, and wiping his mouth with a napkin, which he subsequently waved with friendly jocularity. ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... is at least sufficient evidence that he was much given to making jokes, and some of them which have come down to us would imply that a Roman audience was not very critical on this point. There is an air of gravity about all courts of justice which probably makes a very faint amount of jocularity hailed as a relief. Even in an English law-court, a joke from the bar, much more from the bench, does not need to be of any remarkable brilliancy in order to be secure of raising a laugh; and we may fairly ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... such lachrymose sentimentality in vending his fagots. But quite different is the Paris marchand. With a physiognomy of voice—if the expression be pardoned—quite as marked as the cockney's, what he says is yet perfectly clear, often shrewd, gay, cynical, sometimes even spiced with jocularity, as if it were pure fun to get a living, and the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... the change in him, a new wisdom, a sweet jocularity, and, withal, the return of much of his old nature—its rough camaraderie, its boyish liveliness and homely simplicity. For her this was a marvelous relief, and she could only watch him and wonder at the change. He seemed very busy again, and she did not disturb him in these sensitive days ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... an enemy on that side of the globe. There is something rather revolting, but very indicative of the temper of the age, in the constant reference to the guidance and protection of God, mixed with a quiet jocularity with which "Master Francis Fletcher, preacher in this employment," from whose notes the "World Encompassed," which is a narrative of this voyage, was compiled, speaks of acts very little different from highway robbery, such as would now be held disgraceful ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... foot upon her brother's unseemly jocularity. "Unfortunately," said Miss Sapphira, speaking with cold civility, "Mr. Jefferson had to come clear to town before he could recapture the horse. We were giving him a lift, and had no idea—no idea that we should find—should come upon—We are sorry to intrude." Had her life depended ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... Queen of Sheba?" I exclaimed testily to cover my annoyance that my aunt had effected her descent in my absence. "Well, she was expected; the house is hers; what do you want me to do about it?" I ended with affected jocularity. ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson
... a grace—and, as lunch in the mean time was brought in, and the Holford family, and one or two of the neighbours who had been present at the ceremony, had now arrived, the eloquence of Sir Hugh was not altogether thrown away. There were several speeches and toasts, and sundry attempts at jocularity; and Sir Hugh began the story of the French countess and the waterfall at Fountainbleau; and Reginald availed himself of the somnolency of the rest of the party to slip out with his bride without being observed, just as ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... A sort of sinister jocularity had crept into the tones of the burly feminist. He seized Razumov's arm above the elbow, and ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... road" (to use his own expression), with a few green-room phrases superadded. Now, artists in the theatrical profession are wont to express themselves with some vigor; Gaudissart borrowed sufficient racy green-room talk to blend with his commercial traveler's lively jocularity, and passed for a wit. He was thinking at that moment of selling his license and "going into another line," as he said. He thought of being chairman of a railway company, of becoming a responsible person and an administrator, and finally of marrying Mlle. Minard, daughter of the richest mayor in ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... occupied with their own jocularity that I had very great hopes of escaping observation altogether, and remained quietly seated in a corner of the chimney, leaning back upon my seat ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume III. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... apartment, constantly fidgetting at her elbow, and scrutinizing, suspiciously, every look that passed between her and her guests. His fears served us for a jest, however, and produced a vein of jocularity, that reconciled us to our earthen flooring, upon which some of our party were doomed to seek ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... connection to recall the story which has been told regarding the origin of the word "sirloin." It is said that this steak found such favor with some epicurean king of olden times that he, in a spirit of jocularity and good humor, bestowed upon it the honor of knighthood, to the great delight of his assembled court, and as "Sir Loin" it was thereafter known. It is a pity to spoil so good a story, but the fact is that the word is derived ...
— The Community Cook Book • Anonymous
... America—he exercised a baronial hospitality, blending the usual profusion of plantation life with the elegance of a traveled scholar and "picked man of countries." Colonel Byrd was rather an amateur in literature. His History of the Dividing Line is written with a jocularity which rises occasionally into real humor, and which gives to the painful journey through the wilderness the air of a holiday expedition. Similar in tone were his diaries of A Progress to the Mines and A Journey to the Land ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... Chancellor visited the Crown Prince. Waiting and watching had made inroads on him, too, but he assumed a sort of heavy jocularity for ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... cigarette-case and said with hearty jocularity: "Thank you, Error—thank you. But why didn't you bring it to me, Terebus? Then you'd have earned that kiss I'm ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... spirits; high spirits, animal spirits, flow of spirits; glee, high glee, light heart; sunshine of the mind, sunshine of the breast; gaiete de coeur [Fr.], bon naturel [Fr.]. liveliness &c adj.; life, alacrity, vivacity, animation, allegresse^; jocundity, joviality, jollity; levity; jocularity &c (wit) 842. mirth, merriment, hilarity, exhilaration; laughter &c 838; merrymaking &c (amusement) 840; heyday, rejoicing &c 838; marriage bell. nepenthe, Euphrosyne^, sweet forgetfulness. optimism &c ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... you." This was towards the end of the twelfth century, but it does not seem clear that John Spang was a court jester. We may fairly consider that the institution of the domestic fools, the employment of men, who professed jocularity as a branch of art distinct from music and legerdemain increased mental activity, and a growing desire for humour. But the men who made jesting their profession were generally regarded with contempt, and an Act of Parliament in the reign of Edward III. ordered strollers of this kind to be whipped ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... was implacable. De Comines was born a subject of the Duke of Burgundy, and for seven years had been a favourite; but one day returning from hunting with the Duke, then Count de Charolois, in familiar jocularity he sat himself down before the prince, ordering the prince to pull off his boots. The count laughed, and did this; but in return for Comines's princely amusement, dashed the boot in his face, and gave Comines a bloody nose, From that time he was mortified in the court of ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... artist had drawn various representations of animals, ships, &c. After complimenting him on his skill, one of the gentlemen asked him if he could draw an inference. "No," said the artist, "I never saw one." Logic then gave way to jocularity, and a man coming by with a fine team of horses, they stopped him, spoke highly of the condition of his horses, particularly admiring the first. "That horse, carter," said another of the gentlemen, "seems to be a very strong one, I suppose he could draw a butt," The man assented. "Do you ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 574 - Vol. XX, No. 574. Saturday, November 3, 1832 • Various
... take up the trade of a confectioner in Glasgow, and that the map of the Clyde was nothing but a plan for the outset of a fashionable table—the bailie's island of Arran being the roast beef, and the craig of Ailsa the plum-pudding, and Plada a butter- boat. Nobody enjoyed the jocularity of the business more than myself; but I trembled when I thought of the escape that my honour and character had with the lord advocate. I trow, Bailie Booble never set himself so forward from ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... feeling by the extreme care with which they scrutinised and personally superintended the several preparations for the expedition, and the latter by the grim and silent earnestness with which they performed their share of the work. True, there was some faint attempt at jocularity among a few of the occupants of the midshipmen's berth as we sought our hammocks, but it was manifestly braggadocio, utterly lacking the true ring of heartiness that usually characterised such attempts, and it was speedily nipped in the bud by Gowland, ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... I have in Coroll. I. stated to be bad) and laughter I recognize a great difference. For laughter, as also jocularity, is merely pleasure; therefore, so long as it be not excessive, it is in itself good (IV:xli.). Assuredly nothing forbids man to enjoy himself, save grim and gloomy superstition. For why is it more lawful to satiate ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... Mr. Weatherley remarked, with an unwieldy attempt at jocularity, "that I might be asked out ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... do him very much harm, you know," said the captain with affected jocularity. "He has confessed ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... Powhatan professed great content with Smith, but desired to see his father, Captain Newport. He inquired also with a merry countenance after the piece of ordnance that Smith had promised to send him, and Smith, with equal jocularity, replied that he had offered the men four demi-culverins, which they found too heavy to carry. This night they quartered with Powhatan, and were liberally feasted, and entertained with singing, dancing, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the lieutenant, dropping his unwonted jocularity and relapsing into his matter-of-fact official manner. "I'd better go on the fo'c's'le and join Mr Morgan, the mate of the watch, ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... parliament lord high admiral during the civil war. He was much courted by the independent clergy, was shrewd, penetrating and active, and exhibited a singular mixture of pious demeanour with a vein of facetiousness and jocularity. With him was sent Dr. Calamy, the most eminent divine of the period of the Commonwealth, to see (says Baxter [224]) that no fraud was committed, or wrong done to the parties accused. It may well be doubted however whether the presence of this clergyman did not operate unfavourably ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... considerable approach will be gained to an idea of this plant, which, if Pythagoras had but known of it, would have rendered all arguments about the transmigration of souls superfluous." But, apart from the vein of jocularity running through these remarks, such striking vegetable phenomena are scientifically as great a puzzle to the botanist as their movements are to the savage, the latter regarding them as the outward visible expression of ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... chap—I think the best of the lot," he began, with assumed jocularity; then, seeing Cecily's eyes suddenly fixed on him, he added, somewhat lamely, "the padre! There were also two ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... some feeling not altogether in favour of Mr Toogood, Mr Crawley thus strove to correct her views. "He is a man, my dear, who conceals a warm heart, and an active spirit, and healthy sympathies, under an affected jocularity of manner, and almost with a touch of vulgarity. But when the jewel itself is good, any fault in the casket ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... said, assuming an affected jocularity which deceived no one, "I'll own you've played it on me mighty fine. But you can't stand there all night with your Winchester p'inted at me, and bime-by I'll git tired; can't we fix the matter up ...
— Cowmen and Rustlers • Edward S. Ellis
... see Jack, then?" he asked, with a dreadful feigning of jocularity. "But you are not a painter. You require no model, living or dead." He burst again into ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens |
