"Jest" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Adam he cured my hawgs with nothing but a sack full of green cabbage heads in January, he did," said Rufus, as he rolled his big black eyes and mysteriously shook his old head with its white kinks. "No physic a-tall, jest cabbage and a few turnips mixed in the mash. Yes, m'm, dey does go to the devil of a ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... forget its dignity; should so far descend from argument, from discussion of law to unseemly banter on the question of sex; that it should so far stoop from a canvass of the most important trial that ever took place, to a senile jest on woman, must be matter of astonishment to every candid mind in the legal fraternity, and certainly has a tendency to convince the female portion of the country that the male man is fast losing his right to the definition ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... slept upon the rug. He knew his friends, and valued them; but perhaps his most remarkable quality was his impartiality. He dispensed his favors with an even hand. He had few favorites, and called no man master. He never outstayed his welcome "and told the jest without the smile," never remaining with one person for more than two or three days at most. A calmer character, a more balanced judgment, a better temper, a more admirable self-respect,—in a word, a profounder sense of what ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... as big as you," he said, "but if I was the same shape, I'd go to a bush carpenter, and get him to trim me down with an adze." Then after this jest, he resumed seriously. "Well, Ted, it is just this. Lizzie says that she likes Sydney but you do not, and that you will never stay there for more than a week at a time. Now, that isn't doing the square thing by her. You ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
... child, this has been no matter for jesting; it has been serious, and we who have watched this dawning love have realized that the great drama of life, so full of tragic possibilities, is being here enacted. We do not laugh, nor jest, but with the tenderest prayers we welcome you into the possibilities of God's divinest gift of ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... The long speeches give importance to the decisions, and compel a belief that momentous events are about to happen or have happened. In harmony with this effect is the absence of all comic relief—although Shakespeare was to prove later that this has a useful place in tragedy. A smile, a jest would be sacrilege in the prevailing gloom. Two effects alone are aimed at; an impression of loftiness in the theme, and a profound melancholy. Not warm gushing tears. Those are the outcome of a personal sorrow, small and ignoble beside ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... was seen to do it on the battle-field while planning a retreat. "Distrust the admiral's toothpick, the No of the Connetable, and Catherine's Yes," was a court proverb of that day. After the Saint-Bartholomew the populace made a horrible jest on the body of Coligny, which hung for three days at Montfaucon, by putting a grotesque toothpick into his mouth. History has recorded this atrocious levity. So petty an act done in the midst of that great catastrophe pictures the Parisian ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac
... notorious 'Ghost's Walk.' As he approached the spot, there, to be sure, was the object of terror, taking his usual exercise. 'Now,' as Dobbin told the story, 'thinks I to myself, I'll play you a trick, mister, and find out who you are, if I can. So, jest slyly unfastening the door of the lantern, as I met him, I flung the door wide open and held it up to his face, and I says, says I, "A stormy night, friend." I thought I should know him, and guess I should if ever I do see him again, which I don't ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... out "Speech," "Speech," as they used often to do, half in jest and half in earnest, when we met in concert tents and estaminets ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... donneroit le royaulme de France au premier occupant selon sa Tyrannique coustume," etc. Baum, ii., App., 102, 103. Nemours, after his conspiracy was discovered, fled from court. He wrote, however, disclaiming any ulterior object in his invitations to the young Prince of Orleans, to whom he had in jest proposed to ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... their clarity and greatness that he is forced into irresistible laughter when he beholds how raw, awkward, and clumsy these ideas may appear when interpreted by a narrow circle of contemporary spirits. Then perforce must he jest about their thick temporal hides—bear hides. There are mirrors which are ground in so irregular a way that even an Apollo would behold himself as a caricature in them, and invite laughter. But we do not laugh at the god but merely at ...
— Atta Troll • Heinrich Heine
... as the time of the first Punic war, a consul was bold enough to jest at the auspices in public. Superstitions and impostures flourished, the astrology of ancient Chaldea spread, the Oriental ceremonies were introduced with the pomps that accompanied the reception of the unformed boulder which the special embassy ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... must, in general, deduct a considerable quantum of verbiage; short have often a meagre and skeleton air. The reading of long sentences is more painful at first, less so afterward; a volume composed entirely of short sentences becomes soon as wearisome as a jest-book. The mind which employs long sentences has often a broad, but dim vision—that which delights in short, sees a great number of small points clearly, but seldom a rounded whole. De Quincey is a good specimen of the first class. The late Dr. Hamilton, of ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... their voyage. The men in a clean whale ship are never happy. When everything is filthy, and dirty, and greasy, and smoky, and black—decks, rigging, clothes, and person—it is then that the hearty laugh and jest and song are heard as the crew work busily, night and day, at ...
— Fighting the Whales • R. M. Ballantyne
... to be a fortune," said Bone. "Couldn't you hold on jest a week or two and see if he won't get over ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels
... the cold earth's breast! The sages chuckle o'er their jest; Must they, to give a people rest, ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... how I hate you!" growled Drysdale, half in jest and half in earnest, as they sped along under ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... So's my pretty. I hate to see it, but ye can't fool Natur'—no, sir! Natur' says to these young things: 'Advance!' an' they've jest got to march, I reckon," and Aunt Alvirah sighed, too. Then her little, bird-like eyes twinkled suddenly and she chuckled. "Jest the same," she added, in a whisper, "Ruth got out all her doll-babies the other day and played with 'em jest like ...
— Ruth Fielding in Moving Pictures - Or Helping The Dormitory Fund • Alice Emerson
... with quip and jest when Grace, hearing a crackling of under brush, looked back along the path they had come. She started ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Rainbow Lake • Laura Lee Hope
... are entitled to an equal voice. Then the influences which arise from the relations of the sexes, when left to be exerted in our halls of justice, would at least cause decency and propriety of conduct to be maintained there; but now low-minded men are encouraged to jest openly in court over the most sacred and most delicate subjects. From the nature of things, the guilty woman can not now have justice done her before the professed tribunals of justice; and the innocent but ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... "Meanin' shows?" he asked, after a pause of reflection. "No, we've never shew none, as I know of. We've been asked, father 'n' I, to allow guessin' on our weight at fairs and sech, but we jedged it warn't jest what we cared about doin'. Sim'lar ...
— Rosin the Beau • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... to get the sum awarded, with the object of putting it into Wall Street "for shaving purposes." The insinuation was uncalled for and unjustifiable; and as the editor subsequently admitted that it was only made in jest, it may be imputed to his credit that he had the grace to be ashamed of it. A libel suit, however, followed. It was at first decided in Cooper's favor. It was then carried up to the Court of Errors, and in December, 1845, more than ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... attracted by Esperance's beauty and talent, and it was also known that he was a sceptic, a railer, not easy for anyone to "take in." The attache, not knowing how to back out of his awkward position, apologized for having spoken in jest. He had heard ... but the world is so unjust ... etc., etc. No ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... I let all these lower rooms; and the folks is jest as well off up three pair of stairs as up one," he replied, almost out of breath, for the stairs told more heavily on him than on me. "Besides, I like to have the old woman as far as I can from the business; she don't interfere so ...
— Down South - or, Yacht Adventure in Florida • Oliver Optic
... appear to the reader, it struck me forcibly that more falsehood, or more absolute falsehood, or more direct inversion of the truth, could not, by any artifice of ingenuity, have been crowded into one short sentence. Paley, as a philosopher, is a jest, the disgrace of the age; and, as regards the two universities, and the enormous responsibility they undertake for the books which they sanction by their official examinations for degrees, the name of Paley is their great opprobrium. But, on the other hand, for style, Paley is a master. Homely, ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... treated as anything but vassals. When we show you a kindness, see how you abuse it. We extend to you our little finger and you instantly lay claim to the whole arm. Because last night I permitted myself to exchange a jest with you, because I chance to be kind to you again to-day, you repay me ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... a very poor jest. Change from body to body as travellers used to change horses at post houses. I've heard of this ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... with a laugh that rang unnatural and hoarse. "Jest! when for a day and a night my soul hath been on the rack and mocking demons have jeered at ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... man might do worse than win so much beauty and wealth. But the creature is arrogant, and calls me 'child;' and half the peerage is after her. But we'll have our jest with the city scrub, Ralph; not because I bear him malice, but because I hate his wife. And we'll have our masquerading some time after midnight; if you ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... heard of this mysterious swan, and, although his father's wedding bells were ringing merrily, he himself returned to the castle a sorrowful man, for he felt convinced that some evil was hanging over him. Despite his father's jest at what he considered groundless superstition on his part, the young man could not shake off his fears, replying to his father, "Perhaps before long you also may be sorrowful." On the night of that very day the son died, and here ends the strange ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... in the friendly ring, O restless Pilgrim? Haply now thou ridest O'er the long tropic-wave; or now abidest 'Mid seas with ice eternal glimmering! Thrice happy voyage!... With a jest thou leapedst From the Lyceum's threshold to thy bark, Thenceforth thy path aye on the main thou keepedst, O child beloved ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... could paint Alike the student and the saint; Alas! whose speech too oft I broke With gambol rude and timeless joke; For I was wayward, bold, and wild, A self-will'd imp, a grandame's child; But, half a plague and half a jest, Was ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... workin' every day and likes to keep up my sewin'. Plenty of it to do all de time—jest like I'm doin' today. My health is purty good ceptin' I has a sort of misery ...
— Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives - Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 • Works Projects Administration
... you," remarked Uncle Larry calmly; "but I'm willing to back a merry jest called forth by my sunrise against any two merry jests called forth ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... a day or two she was well again; As who should say, "You labor in vain! This is all a jest against God, who meant {170} I should ever be, as I am, content And glad in his sight; therefore, glad I will be." So, smiling as at ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... Aesop. "The fable," says Professor K. O. Mueller, "originated in Greece in an intentional travestie of human affairs. The 'ainos,' as its name denotes, is an admonition, or rather a reproof veiled, either from fear of an excess of frankness, or from a love of fun and jest, beneath the fiction of an occurrence happening among beasts; and wherever we have any ancient and authentic account of the Aesopian fables, we find it to be ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... than a beast, Wha has mair honour in his breast Than mony scores as guid's the priest Wha sae abus'd him: And may a bard no crack his jest What way ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... to jest with the hardships I experienced while battling the watch with opposition in the Montreal department, and the privations I afterwards endured in New Caledonia. Surely, Sir, you ought to have considered it sufficient ...
— Notes of a Twenty-Five Years' Service in the Hudson's Bay Territory - Volume II. (of 2) • John M'lean
... you can't come no sailor yarns on this fellar. Wal, now, we've got ther Englishman's gold. One or t'other of us might jest ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... shatter the fast of a Pope; and without, a brown-edged white layer, so firm that the lieutenant's deft carving knife, passing through, gave no hint to the eye that it was delicious fat. There had been merry jest and laughter and banter and gallant compliment before, but it was Richard Hunt's turn now, and story after story he told, as the rose-flakes dropped under his knife in such thin slices that their edges coiled. It was full half an hour before the carver and story-teller ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... all in her power to console him in his disappointment. There was plenty of jealous people always that wanted to keep young folks from rising in the world. Never mind, she did n't believe but what Gifted could make jest as good verses as any of them that they kept such a talk about. She had a fear that he might pine away in consequence of the mental excitement he had gone through, and solicited his appetite with her choicest appliances,—of which he partook ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... ready at a trigger's pull should life show itself! When daylight comes the British sing out their "Good-morning, Germans!" and the Germans answer, "Good-morning, British!" without adding, "We hope to kill some of you to-day!" Ragging banter and jest and worse than jest and grim defiance are exchanged between the trenches when they are within such easy hearing distance of each other; but always from a safe position behind the parapet which the adversaries squint across through their periscopes. At the gibe business the German ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... love me? do you not, indeed, Well, do not then; for since you love me not, I will not love myself. Do you not love me? Nay, tell me, if you speak in jest or no? Hot. Come, wilt thou see me ride? And when I am o' horseback, I will ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... is it to read a play in a rainy day? Though you should be now and then interrupted in a witty scene, and she perhaps preserve her laughter, till the jest were over; even that may be borne with, considering the reward ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... but it was a jest which made an unintended wound. Hylda became conscious of a sudden sharp inquiry going on in her mind. There flashed into it the question, Does Eglington's heart ever really throb for love of any object or any cause? Even in moments of greatest intimacy, soon after marriage, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... thought good to demonstrate here, Because I saw how much they grieved were; That any way, the least part of offence, Should make them seem offensive to their Prince. Thus three nights was I staid and lodged in Preston, And saw nothing ridiculous to jest on, Much cost and charge the Mayor upon me spent, And on my way two miles, with me he went, There (by good chance) I did more friendship get, The under Sheriff of Lancashire we met, A gentleman that loved, ...
— The Pennyles Pilgrimage - Or The Money-lesse Perambulation of John Taylor • John Taylor
... with reddish hair. He had sech shifty eyes I couldn't help but think that maybe he had stolen them things jest to raise some ...
— The Rover Boys in the Jungle • Arthur M. Winfield
... in jest about those cups in order to induce them to laugh," old goody Liu at these words, mused within herself, "but, who would have thought that she actually has some of the kind. I've often been to the ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... thing of religion and of God, but of self-respect, of care for the coming generation, and, especially, of that great love which one day will come into their lives. It should not be called a "sin"; at the same time it should not be laughed at and made the subject of a whispered jest. Sexual laxity should be treated in the same way as dishonesty and untruthfulness—a sin against oneself, against the beauty of one's own soul, and against those who believe in us and love us and are our world. Children should be taught to respect ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... supposed the aerial visitor to be, might not have done as well, we are unable to conceive. Sir Thomas tells Mr. Southey nothing about future events, and indeed absolutely disclaims the gifts of prescience. He has learned to talk modern English. He has read all the new publications, and loves a jest as well as when he jested with the executioner, though we cannot say that the quality of his wit has materially improved in Paradise. His powers of reasoning, too, are by no means in as great vigour as when he sate on the woolsack; and though he ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... that house. It's a nasty old yaller shell anyhow, not to say nothin' o' it's bein' haunted, 's like 's not. But there ain't no other place so handy to the mill for us, an' I guess our money's good ez any lawyer's money, o' the hull on 'em any day. Mill people, indeed! I'll jest give Steve White a piece o' my mind, the first time I see him ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... This was Saturday night: Father John was fond of holding vigorous discourses on Saturday nights. Sue stopped to make her purchases. She was well-known in the neighborhood, and as she stepped in and out of one shop and then of another, she was the subject of a rough jest or a pleasant laugh, just as the mood of the person she addressed prompted one or other. She spent a few pence out of her meager purse, her purchases were put into a little basket, and she found her way home. The season was winter. She turned into a street back of Westminster; it went by the name ...
— Sue, A Little Heroine • L. T. Meade
... After the actor had become famous and his prosperity had turned his head, he was wont to "put the table in a roar" by mimicking the doctor's grimaces. There is a story that on the occasion of a certain dinner party where both were guests, Garrick indulged in a coarse jest on the great man's table manners. After the merriment had subsided, Doctor Johnson arose solemnly ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... Jest not but pay me as is meet, For I come from beyond the moor, Return I cannot to ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... scarabs), announced that Hatasu was the "first suffragette." But even those who thought her downtrodden nephew, Thothmes III, justified in erasing every trace of her existence wherever possible, did not smile at this jest. In fact, having Antoun and me to refer to, the Set as a whole sat upon the unfortunate dragoman, trying to talk him down in tombs and temples, or ostentatiously reading Weigall, Maspero, Petrie, Sladen, and Lorimer when he attempted to give them information. A few with kinder intentions, ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... orders to them to keep silence. In his familiar conversations with the chiefs he plainly told them that he would one day crucify them all. Doubtless they laughed heartily at this pleasantry, as they deemed it, but they were to find it a grim sort of jest. ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... moment beyond the happy hunting-grounds of the ball-room or the Opera, the last Academy or the next Horticultural. Beautiful beings are made, they feel, not to amuse, but to be amused. The one object of their enthusiasm is the "funny Bishop" who turns a great debate into a jest for the entertainment of his fair friends in the Ladies' Gallery. The object of their social preference is the young wit who lounges up to tell his last little story, and then, without boring them for ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... his jest-word; but its sound their labour slew at last, And swift his father caught it up, as from his mouth it passed, And stayed him, by the might of God bewildered utterly. 119 Then forthwith: "Hail," he cried, "O land that Fate hath owed to me! And ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... blood," is one recorded favourite among them; the songs, far other than hymns, which Dennis Hanks and his other mates would pick up or compose; and the practice in rhetoric and the art of exposition, which he unblushingly afforded himself before audiences of fellow labourers who welcomed the jest and the excuse for stopping work. The achievement of the self-taught man remains wonderful, but, if he surmounts his difficulties at all, some of his limitations may turn to sheer advantage. There is some advantage merely in being driven to make the most ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... fight I've seed in my time, by God," he said, coolly, "'n', Rome, y'u air the biggest fool this side o' the settlements, I reckon. I had dead aim on him, 'n' I was jest a-thinkin' hit was a purty good thing fer you that old long-nosed Jim Stover chased me up hyeh, when, damn me, ef that boy up thar didn't let his ole gun loose. I'd a-got Jas myself ef he hadn't been so ...
— A Cumberland Vendetta • John Fox, Jr.
... the tales that passed among us to-day, he told us of one Damford, that, being a black man, did scald his beard with mince-pie, and it came up again all white in that place, and continued to his dying day. Sir W. Pen told us a good jest about some gentlemen blinding of the drawer, and who he catched was to pay the reckoning, and so they got away, and the master of the house coming up to see what his man did, his man got hold of him, thinking it to be one of the gentlemen, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... shall not join the party-cry which insults their fall—I certainly shall not exult in that melancholy pageant of mixed mirth and scorn, in which, like the old Roman triumph, the soldier with his ruthless jest and song goes before the chariot, and the captive monarch follows behind; wearing the royal robe and the diadem only till he has gratified a barbarous curiosity or a cruel pride, and then exchanging them for the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... Constable's History ha. The Thief's Tale i. Ninth Constable's History j. Tenth Constable's History k. Eleventh Constable's History l. Twelfth Constable's History m. Thirteenth Constable's History n. Fourteenth Constable's History na. A Merry Jest of a Clever Thief nb. Tale of the Old Sharper o. Fifteenth Constable's History p. Sixteenth Constable's History 14. Tale of Harun Al-Rashid and Abdullah Bin Nafi' a. Tale of the Damsel Torfat Al-Kulub and the Caliph Harun Al-Rashid 15. Women's ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... dizzily, head downward, frightening Banjo half out of his senses. What he had started as a grim jest, he now continued in deadly earnest; what was this uncanny semblance of a cow-puncher which he could not unseat, yet which clung so precariously to the saddle? He had no thought now of bucking in pure devilment—he was galloping madly, his ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower
... laying her hand on the arm of her irate friend. "I said that only in jest. I shan't continue if you ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... he believed in signs, Charlie replied: "I sho does for dis reason. Once jest befo my baby brother died, ole screech owl, he done come and set up in the big oak tree right at the doah by de bed and fo' the next twelve hours passed, my brother was dead. Screech owls allus holler 'round ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... Christopherus, and he spoke with anger. "You jest in Spain! But in France it shall ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... friends to a social reunion. He chats and laughs at the passing jest, or takes part in the music—the glee, or the comic song. A servant whispers in his ear. Ten minutes elapse, and he is standing by the bed of death. He watches the flickering flame; he endeavours to relieve ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... and the power to understand them, worth no more than a street serenade, or the breath of a cigar? One remembers again the trumpet-text in the Koran,—"The heavens and the earth and all that is between them, think ye we have created them in jest?" As long as the question is of talent and mental power, the world of men has not his equal to show. But when the question is, to life and its materials and its auxiliaries, how does it profit me? What does ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... before the expedition of Lopez de Aguirre; the denomination of the river is therefore erroneously attributed to the nickname of maranos (hogs), which this adventurer gave his companions in going down the river Amazon. Was not this vulgar jest rather an allusion to the Indian name of the river?) He called this river Rio Dolce—a name which, since Ribeyro, was long preserved on our maps, and which has sometimes been given erroneously to the ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... poets: wut they've airly read Gits kind o' worked into their heart an' head, So's 't they can't seem to write but jest on sheers With furrin countries or played-out ideers, Nor hev a feelin', ef it doosn't smack O' wut some critter chose to feel 'way back: This makes 'em talk o' daisies, larks, an' things, Ez though we 'd nothin' here ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... and Mediaeval Dancing to the 14th Century. Dancing in Churches and Religious Dancing. The Gleemen's Dance. Military Dances. The Hornpipe. Tumbling and Jest Dances. Illustrations of Gleemen's Dance, Hornpipe, Sword Dances, Tumbling ...
— The Dance (by An Antiquary) - Historic Illustrations of Dancing from 3300 B.C. to 1911 A.D. • Anonymous
... paraded by hundreds, the trained cavalry of a ghostly army organized into companies, battalions, divisions, departments, having at their head the "Grand Wizard of the Empire." It was all in sport—a great jest, or at the worst designed only to induce the colored man to work somewhat more industriously from apprehension of ghostly displeasure. It was a funny thing—the gravest, most saturnine, and self-conscious people on the globe making themselves ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... long mirror in his bedroom, that gave on Horridge's Hotel, and surveyed himself thoughtfully. He was looking at the only man he trusted, for it was not vanity, but a love of agreeable company that explained the passion for mirrors which was the jest of ...
— The Book of All-Power • Edgar Wallace
... or fourteen he was a mere bag of bones, with upper arms about as thick as the wrists of other boys of his age; his little chest was pigeon-breasted; he appeared to have no strength or stamina whatever, and finding he always went to the wall in physical encounters, whether undertaken in jest or earnest, even with boys shorter than himself, the timidity natural to childhood increased upon him to an extent that I am afraid amounted to cowardice. This rendered him even less capable than ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... well-recognized "competing points." The larger the area controlled by one management, the fewer are the competing points; the larger, therefore, is the power over the rate and the more completely the monopoly principle applies. It is a grim jest to say that consolidation does not change the railroad situation as ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... they passed along Cornhill in their coaches, with a guard of horse, the Earl of Lauderdale was addressed by a by-stander—"Oh, my lord, you are welcome to London! I protest, off goes your head as round as a hoop!"(1061) The ill-timed jest, which the earl passed off with a laugh, was wanting in fulfilment, for he lived to witness the Restoration and to earn the universal ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe
... Battersea has been won and held by the speeches of its member. It is not the mighty voice alone, silencing interruption often enough by sheer volume of sound, but the plainly pointed epigram, the ready jest and the quick repartee that endear Mr. John Burns' speeches to the multitude. His sayings and phrases are quoted. His wit is the wit of the Londoner—the wit that Dickens knew and studied, the wit of the older cabmen and 'bus drivers, the ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... Peacocks,' answered the King angrily, 'you had better take care what you are about. I am as good a King as yourself, and have a splendid kingdom and robes and crowns, and plenty of good red gold to do what I like with. You are pleased to jest about having our heads cut off; perhaps you think we have stolen something ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... he said. "Jest set down and take it right easy. Lay off your wraps, and I'll put 'em on the bunk. You mustn't worry about nothing. We're ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough
... cross my inclinations, do you, father?" asked Julie, half in earnest, half in jest. "Am I to marry to please you and not ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... a line fer? Are ye a-going with us to the Pacific, or are ye jest naturally short of ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains
... though I hardly think Mr. Thurston would agree with you. For instance?" asked Millicent, finding his humor infectious, for English Jim could gather all the men in camp about him, when half in jest and half in earnest he began one ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... understand whether she was in jest or in earnest. She went on without waiting for ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... vehicle that ever came out of Long Acre; whilst more four-horse coaches, with fast teams and still faster loads, are thundering in the rear. Slang reigns supreme; and John Gilpin's friend, who had a "ready wit," would here meet with his match. Nor are jest and repartee (what John calls "chaff") the only missiles bandied about. Toys, knocked off "the sticks" for the purpose, darken the air as they fly from one vehicle to another, and the broadside from a well-supplied coach is like that of a seventy-four. Fun and good-humour abound, but ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville
... painfully, horribly true," she said. She looked from him to the canvas, from the canvas to him, and then made a little pathetic gesture with her hands. "What a jest life is!" ...
— An Unpardonable Liar • Gilbert Parker
... Paul met the sarcastic jest with deep earnestness, which must have hushed the audience of sycophants ready to laugh with the king, and evidently touched him and Festus. His whole soul ran over in yearning desire for the salvation of them all. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... eyes that gleamed with a lustre like that of insanity, an utterance of astonishing rapidity, a nose and chin that almost met together, and a ghastly expression of cunning, gave her the effect of Hecate. Such was Bessie Millie, to whom the mariners paid a sort of tribute with a feeling between jest and earnest.' ...
— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson
... make us all free, sometime,' he said, 'that's enough. Don't look like it, jest yet, I knows; but I lives in faith; it'll come byumby' When the fellow said that, I declare to you, Surrey, I felt like hiding my face. At last I began to comprehend what your indignation meant against the order forbidding ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... easy enough without words to understand the indications of coarse and disagreeable natures in whose neighbourhood she disliked to find herself of whose neighbourhood she exceedingly disliked to be reminded. The muttered oath, the more than muttered jest, the various laughs that tell so much of head or heart emptiness the shadowy but sure tokens of that in human nature which one would not realize, and which one strives to forget; Fleda shrank within herself, and would gladly have stopped her ears; ...
— Queechy, Volume II • Elizabeth Wetherell
... quite certain whether all this was meant in jest or earnest; and perhaps the truth was, that though grandpapa had little liking for new plans, he was too wise not to adopt those which possessed manifest advantage, and only indulged himself in a good deal of playful grumbling, which greatly teased ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Pike, "if that ain't goldenrod! I do b'lieve it comes earlier every year, or else the seasons are changin'. See them elderberries! Ain't they purple! You jest remember that bush, an' when we go back, we'll fill some pails. I dunno when I've made ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... myself the jest; he gave it no attention, but seated himself in the chair that he had left and resumed the interrupted monologue as if ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... indications are no proof of it. I don't pretend to be satisfied, and made no pretense at the time of being satisfied with my share in Maga's treachery. But I claim that it was more than human nature could have done, to endure the open disapproval of my friends, begun by Fred's half-earnest jest, and continued by my own indignation; and at the same time to induce them to take my ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... complacently to the appearance of boys and men in women's parts. He makes Rosalind say, laughingly and saucily, to the men of the audience in the epilogue to As You Like It: "If I were a woman I would kiss as many of you as had beards that pleased me." "If I were a woman," she says. The jest lies in the fact that the speaker was not a woman but a boy. Similarly, Cleopatra on her downfall in Antony and Cleopatra, (V. ii. ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... must not be told; and perhaps with more than one with whom she had no business to flirt. Little Scoutbush had remonstrated with her on some such affair, but she had silenced him with an Irish jest,—"You're a fisherman, Freddy; and when you can't catch salmon, you catch trout; and when you can't catch trout, you'll whip on the shallow for poor little gubbahawns, and say that it is all to keep your hand in—and so ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... have to send Ben up with the cart this afternoon for your box, so you may as well come alonger him. And mind this, Lilac. Don't you go bringin' any litter and rubbish with you. Jest your clothes and no more, and your Bible and Prayer Book. And now I'll ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... haphazard affair, like the rearing of children by a mother who is forced to go out and scrub from early morning till late at night and has to leave little Johnnie tied in his high chair to be fed by an older sister on crusts dabbled in the pot of cold coffee. No wonder that so much of our verse "jest growed," like Topsy. And the resulting state of things has but served to reinforce our belief that to make the race of poets spend their days in correcting encyclopaedia proof, or clerking, or running, notebook in hand, to fires—inheres in the ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... own word is true, Not earth or hell with all their crew Against us shall prevail. A jest and by-word are they grown; God is with us, we are his own, ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... during which time we never saw land, for we had lost all reckoning, and no one cared to steer—the same dreadful visitation took place. Habit had, to a degree, hardened the men; they now swore and got drunk as before, and even made a jest of the boatswain of the middle watch, as they called him, but at the same time they were worn out with constant fatigue; and one night they declared that they would pump no longer. The water remained in the vessel all that ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... was thinking. Was it possible that Nikky, of every one, should have been chosen to carry to Karl the marriage arrangements? What an irony! What a jest! It was true there was a change in him. He looked subdued, ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... jest. She had found that no real attachment was to be formed between her brother and friend. There had arisen instead a tender familiarity, a friendship that is rare to be seen. Maude Bereford had grown to treat Guy Trevelyan with brotherly kindness. It pleased him to witness this feeling arising ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour
... growing redder of face. "She wasn't no lady if she treated that grand hoss that way.... See heah, kid, I'll stake you to a good night hoss. Turn Ol' Cal loose, an' whenever you need to do some real fancy separatin' jest set your frusky on ol' Cal. Better tie to your stirrups if you're perticler aboot keepin' your seat, 'cause 'at ol' pony can sure git from under ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... drama). "Sir," says Quin, "you mistake me. I am in your debt. I owe you a hundred pounds, and I am come to pay you." Thomson, with a disconsolate air, replied, that, as he was a gentleman whom he had never offended, he wondered he should seek an opportunity to jest with his misfortunes. "No," said Quin, raising his voice, "I say I owe you a hundred pounds, and there it is," (laying a bank note of that value before him). Thomson, astonished, begged he would explain himself. "Why," says Quin, "I'll tell you; soon after I had read your Seasons, ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... hide of a Getulian lion, still retaining the claws, which had been gilt. Upon this, Nisus also merrily asked for some consolation, since but for an accident the first prize would have been his, and he showed his face and limbs all besmeared with mud. His chief entered into the jest, and gave him a buckler, finely carved, which had once hung on the walls of Neptune's temple ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... serving that writ on Bassett, Bassett went to Wheeler and treated it as a jest. But Wheeler looked puzzled, and Bassett himself, on second thoughts, said he should like advice of counsel. Accordingly they both went up to London to a solicitor, and obtained an interview with a counsel learned in the law. He heard their story, and said, "The question is, ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... comes to see you," he used to throw out in obvious jest. "That's the only way I can ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... likely there may be people who can read this, even the "all in black," without laughing, and among them I should suppose must be the somebody or other, whose name we too have forgotten, who is said to have imagined that he had more than parried Sydney's unforgiven jest about the joke and the surgical operation, by retorting, "Yes! an English joke." I have always wept to think that Sydney did not live to hear this retort. The classical places for this kind of summary work are the article just named on Ceylon, and that on Waterton. ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... off with jewels, though now fantastically masquerading in a garb of tatters, wholly unfit for her to handle. I recognized her, over and over again, in the groups round a door-step or in the descent of a cellar, chatting with prodigious earnestness about intangible trifles, laughing for a little jest, sympathizing at almost the same instant with one neighbor's sunshine and another's shadow, wise, simple, sly, and patient, yet easily perturbed, and breaking into small feminine ebullitions of spite, wrath, and jealousy, tornadoes of a moment, such as vary the social atmosphere ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... The Marble Rocks are often resorted to by pic-nic parties in the moonlit evenings; and one can easily fancy that to have a dusky dead body float against one's boat and sway slowly round alongside in the midst of a gay jest or of a light song of serenade, as is said to have happened not unfrequently here, is not an occurrence likely to heighten the spirits of revelers. Occasionally, also, the black, ugly double snout of the magar (or Nerbada crocodile) may pop up from the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... Space-Wanderer had left unquestionable proof of his visit by rendering a tribute to "innate intelligence" and playing a Jovian Jest upon an educated fool—a ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... Chris, who was plucky enough when he understood the nature of the threatened danger. "Golly, I jest reckon dis nigger got to stay and ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... was," declared Nancy, indignantly. "There's no pleasin' her, nohow, no matter how you try! I wouldn't stay if 'twa'n't for the wages and the folks at home what's needin' 'em. But some day—some day I shall jest b'ile over; and when I do, of course it'll be good-by Nancy for me. It will, ...
— Pollyanna • Eleanor H. Porter
... experience by no expansion or indulgence, but by the confinement of the castle; the terrible loneliness of an imprisoned child, broken after a while by the sudden appearance of his mother, and that merry but alarming jest of his conveyance in the great chest, half stifled in the folds of her embroideries and cloth of gold. Then another flight, and renewed stately confinement among his old surroundings, monotony broken by sudden excitements ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... the great art of forecasting, of keeping anticipation on the alert, which is half the secret of dramatic construction. To forecast, without discounting, your effects—that is all the Law and the Prophets. In the first act of Children of the Ghetto, for instance, we see the marriage in jest of Hannah to Sam Levine, followed by the instant divorce with all its curious ceremonies. This is amusing so far as it goes; but when the divorce is completed, the whole thing seems to be over and done with. We have seen ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... and often two and three, for they rarely lived an ordinary lifetime. Adonis thought of that sometimes, when he was alone, or when he looked down at the crowd of delicately scented and richly dressed men and women, every one called by some noble name, who would doubtless laugh at some jest of his before the night was over. To their eyes the fool was a necessary servant, because there had always been a fool at court; he was as indispensable as a chief butler, a chief cook, or a state coachman, and much more amusing. But he was not a man, he had no name, he had ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford |
