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More "Jest" Quotes from Famous Books



... he met her once a-Maying— There, on beds of violets blue And fresh-blown roses wash'd in dew Fill'd her with thee, a daughter fair, So buxom, blithe, and debonair. Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with thee Jest, and youthful jollity, Quips, and cranks, and wanton wiles, Nods, and becks, and wreathed smiles Such as hang on Hebe's cheek, And love to live in dimple sleek; Sport that wrinkled Care derides, And Laughter ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... but if you will do me a favour in return, or obtain one for me, I will give it to you. I want to be a police officer, and you have it in your power to get me a place." I told him I did not understand the purport of his jest. "I will tell you," said he; "Tartuffe is going to be acted in the cabinets, and there is the part of a police officer, which only consists of a few lines. Prevail upon Madame de Pompadour to assign me that part, ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various

... wine from the tables of the rich of his acquaintance; and persuaded most of the gentry in his own and the neighbouring counties to become water-drinkers." Here, I doubt, Miss Edgeworth has a little over-rated the extent of his influence. "Partly in jest, and partly in earnest, he expressed his suspicions, and carried his inferences on this subject, to a preposterous excess. When he heard that my father was bilious, he suspected that this must be the consequence of his having, since ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary

... not jesting, Lieutenant Mathers. I never jest. Obviously, I am not of the military. It would be quite impossible for me to gain such an award. But you are the pilot of ...
— Medal of Honor • Dallas McCord Reynolds

... 't were to live, to pass long dolorous hours Before his father's effigy in church; Of one who then used often come to hall, Ever at Yule-tide, when the great log flamed In chimney-place, and laugh and jest went round, And maidens strayed beneath the mistletoe, Making believe not see it, so got kissed— Of one that joined not in the morrice-dance, But in her sea-green kirtle stood at gaze, A timid little creature that was scared By dead men's armor. Nought there suffered ...
— Wyndham Towers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... be talking chiefly of things from which great troubles might arise, in case they should be carried out. [Sidenote: Snorri's advice] He (Snorri) spoke to them: "This I misdoubt me now, that it be neither a vain thing nor a matter of jest you are talking about for such long hours together, and I hold you quite excused, even if such should be the case. Now, be so good as to tell it me and not to hide it away from me. We shall not, when gathered all together, ...
— Laxdaela Saga - Translated from the Icelandic • Anonymous

... hardly gave her a welcome. I won't say what suspicions they had regarding her and me. The poor wretch fell to drinking whenever she could find means. I ordered that she should have food and shelter, and she became the jest of our negroes, and formed the subject of the scandal and tittle-tattle of the old fools in our little town. Our Governor was, luckily, a man of sense, and I made interest with him, and procured a pass to send her back to her people. Her very grief at parting ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray

... argument with great Spirit and resolution. Taking them as an index, there could be little question that the country was ripe for the new policy. At the close of the interview Lincoln allowed himself to jest. One of the clergymen dramatically charged him to give heed to their message as to a direct commission from the Almighty. "Is it not odd," said Lincoln, "that the only channel he could send it was that roundabout route by the ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson

... to shew his judgment, in extremes; So over violent, or over civil, That every man with him was God, or devil. In squandering wealth was his peculiar art; Nothing went unrewarded but desert. Beggar'd by fools, whom still he found too late, He had his jest, and they had his estate. He laught himself from court, then sought relief, By forming parties, but could ne'er be chief. Thus wicked, but in will, of means bereft, He left not faction, but of ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Volume II • Theophilus Cibber

... had gone too far, for to jest at the expense of the family pride was an unpardonable offence, so ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... the tremendous efforts of my actress friends to fascinate him—luring him into corners, gazing at him with languishing eyes, trotting out all their little tricks for his exclusive benefit, quarrelling about him among themselves—my conscience would prick me, lest our jest should end in a contretemps. Fortunately, Jarman himself, was a gentleman of uncommon sense, or my fears might have been realised. I should have been sorry myself to have been asked to remain stone under the blandishments of girls young and old, of women handsome and once, no doubt, good looking, ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome

... in terror, crossing himself). Oh, no, no, no. It is not safe to jest about such things. I cannot have it in ...
— The Man of Destiny • George Bernard Shaw

... landed on the coast, when, having collected some ships [16], he lost no time in putting to sea in pursuit of the pirates, and having captured them, inflicted upon them the punishment with which he had often threatened them in jest. At that time Mithridates was ravaging the neighbouring districts, and on Caesar's arrival at Rhodes, that he might not appear to lie idle while danger threatened the allies of Rome, he passed over into Asia, and having collected some auxiliary forces, and driven the king's governor ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus

... made a descent upon old Schmidt, and borrowed and read all the books there were upon the beach. Such a dearth was there of these latter articles, that anything, even a little child's story-book, or the half of a shipping calendar, seemed a treasure. I actually read a jest-book through, from beginning to end, in one day, as I should a novel, and enjoyed it much. At last, when I thought that there were no more to be had, I found at the bottom of old Schmidt's chest, "Mandeville, a Romance, by Godwin, in five volumes.'' This I had never read, but Godwin's ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... of something else, which was, that though he had been in jest when he spoke of having given up the chance of meeting fresh experiences, he had nevertheless described a condition, and a painfully true one. His real life seemed to have stopped, and he saw himself in the future looking back and referring to ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis

... or two she was well again; As who should say, "You labour 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 first ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning

... wind and tide that fiercely jar. As when a sort[3] of lusty shepherds try Their force at football, care of victory Makes them salute so rudely breast to breast, 47 That their encounter seems too rough for jest; They ply their feet, and still the restless ball, Toss'd to and fro, is urged by them all: So fares the doubtful barge 'twixt tide and winds, And like effect of their contention finds. Yet the bold Britons still securely row'd; Charles and his virtue was their sacred ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham

... had invited Teen Balfour to your estate; is she there yet?' he asked; and Gladys did not know whether he asked in scorn or in jest. ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan

... incapable of perceiving that which is commonplace or ridiculous, but fuses all down into its white-hot fire; and, on the other hand, I suppose the chief bar to the action of imagination, and stop to all greatness in this present age of ours, is its mean and shallow love of jest and jeer, so that if there be in any good and lofty work a flaw or failing, or undipped vulnerable part where sarcasm may stick or stay, it is caught at, and pointed at, and buzzed about, and fixed upon, and stung into, as a recent wound is by flies, and nothing is ever taken ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin

... JEST."—Is it not an extraordinary plea on behalf of a person under sentence of death for murder, that, like IBSEN's heroine, "she had never been able to take life in earnest?" Surely it should be added that "when she took somebody else's life ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, May 14, 1892 • Various

... customer, of course, and after saying "Howdy" to Thorn, opened right up: "I reckon Thorn hev toted you up to see thet blessid infunt as I'm mother, father and wet-nuss to. Thar never was sich a kid. She's jest the cutest little cuss ever ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer

... with a cloudy brow, and the day-book under his arm; tackling decimals, coming with cases of conscience—how would an English chief behave in such a case? etc.; and, I am bound to say, on any glimmer of a jest, lapsing into native hilarity as a tree straightens itself after the wind is by. The other night I remembered my old friend—I believe yours also—Scholastikos, and administered the crow and the anchor—they were quite ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... probably ever will be—I must reply that I could just as soon bow down and worship the generalised conception of a "wilderness of apes." Surely we are not going back to the days of Paganism, when individual men were deified, and the hard good sense of a dying Vepasian could prompt the bitter jest, "Ut puto Deus fio." No divinity doth hedge a modern man, be he even a sovereign ruler. Nor is there any one, except a municipal magistrate, who is officially declared worshipful. But if there is no spark of worship-worthy ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley

... publicans. "Look at poor old Mrs. ——, what kept the house down Which Street—always a most well-conducted house. Nobody couldn't find no fault with it, and 'twas her livin'! Why should she have her livin' took away like that, poor old gal?... They sims to think nobody en't right 'xcep' jest theirselves—as if we poor people could live an' go on same as they do. They can 'ave their drink at 'ome, and their music, but where be we to go to if they shuts up the 'ouses?" Such were the remarks I heard over ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt

... their hats they held, None to answer him made haste, Save bold Vidrik Verlandson, Of them all he made a jest. ...
— Ulf Van Yern - and Other Ballads • Thomas J. Wise

... robbery. The would-be murderer was so described as to make it quite certain that it was he whom I had fed, clothed, and sent away rejoicing, only a few days previous. I was inclined to treat the matter as a jest; but she awed me into belief and humility at once by the majesty with which she reproved my unbelief: 'A woman does not trifle with subjects like this; nor go out of her way to tell travelers tales. I warn you. ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor

... sweet, So large and lovely—and so cheap! They lay in one delicious heap, And added to the sumptuous feast For each and all in taste expert The acme of all fine dessert; So, singling out the very least As in itself an ample treat, While sparkling repartee and jest Exhilarated host and guest, Of rarity so delicate In dreamy reverie I ate, By magic pinions as it were Transported from this realm of snows To be a happy sojourner Away down where the orange grows; Amid the ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard

... typify and impress upon us the 'divinity that doth hedge a king,' though it has lost the very meaning which the Church of Rome gave it? Or are you of the number of those, who, according to the witticism, think majesty, when deprived of its externals, a jest?" ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman

... said to him, "Now go freely, and I thank you for what you have left behind; if you wish to play for it again let me know, and you shall either have something back in its stead, or leave what you bring to be added to it." The Count answered, "Cid, you jest safely now, for I have paid you and all your company for this twelve—months, and shall not be coming to see ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... for a while, and without scandal. What are your terms? Remember that there are two to which I will not consent. I will not stop here with you, and you shall not accompany me. Remember also, that, although you hold the dagger at present, it is not wise of you to try to push this jest too far." ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard

... him in this way: "Good-morning, Pete! Feel sober after your last night's high, eh?" But a respectful "Good-morning, Mr. Graffam," now met his ear. "Can it be," thought the fallen man, "that I am still Mr., or are they mocking me?" He looked up, but saw neither jest nor scorn upon the fair face looking ...
— Be Courteous • Mrs. M. H. Maxwell

... gander, I suppose!" says poor Dick, with tears in his eyes, being both moved and cheered by his own jest. ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross

... "self-made man," are not complimentary. "Cranch, I fear," says Professor Smith, "by his absurd conduct, will diminish the liberality of the captain towards us: he is like a pointed arrow to the company." And, again, "Poor Cranch is almost too much the object of jest; Galway is the principal banterer."In the Professor's remarks on the" fat purser,"we can detect the foreigner, who, on such occasions, should never be ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton

... Friedlin indignantly, for he thought Peter did but jest with him, 'it is ill done to mock at an unhappy man; you had better find someone else who will let himself be taken in with your fine promises.' And up he sprang, and was going off hastily, when Master Peter caught him by ...
— The Crimson Fairy Book • Various

... git settled somewhere. Take care of that horse you've been ridin'—he don't belong to us; was left here by a man some time ago, feller that had to go away off somewhere to see his folks. So, you jest keep him till he's called for; and I've left you plenty of corn out there to feed him on. You can study your books here about as well as you can in town, and I wish you'd sorter look after the things. Parker will drive us ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read

... me, O auspicious King, that the Caliph came upon Khalifah the Fisherman and gave him his own gown in jest wherewith the man fared home. Such was his case; but as regards Harun al-Rashid, he had gone out a-hunting and a-fishing only to divert his thoughts from the damsel, Kut al-Kulub. But when Zubaydah heard of her and of the Caliph's devotion to her, the Lady was fired with the jealousy ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton

... Diccon diced with them, and taught them all the oaths of a free company. So much wine, and no more, should they have; when they frowned, I let them see that their frowning and their half-drawn knives mattered no doit to me. It was their whim—a huge jest of which they could never have enough—still to make believe that they sailed under Kirby. Lest it should spoil the jest, and while the jest outranked all other entertainment, they obeyed as though I had been indeed that ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston

... all this was submitted to in silence. A coarse jest from Vizcarra at length provoked reply. The reply alluded to the changed features of the latter, which so exasperated the brute, that he dashed, dagger in hand, upon the bound victim, and would have taken his life, but that Roblado and others ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid

... post-humous garments. Clarissa, too, jogged along without her bridle, and Markham found little use for the goad he had whittled to save the use of the halter. The people on the road looked at them curiously, passed a rough jest, and sent them on the merrier. Markham had destroyed his road map and now they followed the patteran, leaving their destiny to fortune. In the late afternoon, on their way through a forest, Clarissa suddenly halted and, in spite of much ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs

... birth of her son had rendered it valid. In vain did the King insist upon the absurdity of her pretensions; she only replied by sneering at the extraction of the Queen, and asserting her own equality with a petty Tuscan princess, whose gestures and language were, as she declared, the jest of the whole Court. The King, outraged by so gross an impertinence, imperatively commanded her silence upon all that regarded the dignity or pleasure of his royal consort, a display of firmness which more and more ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe

... The implied jest on her native State did not do away with her displeasure. She nodded gravely and, turning, put the lines about her ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates

... Barbicane would not have hesitated a moment. He would have held his tongue about it, both as a measure of prudence, and in order not to have to reconsider his plans. This telegram might be a cover for some jest, especially as it came from a Frenchman. What human being would ever have conceived the idea of such a journey? and, if such a person really existed, he must be an idiot, whom one would shut up in a lunatic ward, rather than within ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne

... got round yet, hes she? Dew tell! She's dre'ful delicate. I do'no' as ever I see a woman so sickly's she looks ter be sence that 'ere fever. She's real spry when she's so's to be crawlin',—I'xpect too spry to be 'hulsome. Well, he tells me you've ben 'crost the water. 'Ta'n't jest like this over there, I guess. Pretty sightly places they be though, a'n't they? I've seen picturs in Melindy's jography, looks as ef 'twa'n't so woodsy over there as 'tis in these parts, 'specially out ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various

... head in the least about all this gossip. It was noticed, indeed, that his face was somewhat paler than it used to be, but if anyone ventured to jest with him on the subject, face to face, he was very speedily convinced that Halil's arms, at any rate, were no ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai

... Lord, 'This night thy soul shall be required of thee!' Fellows, I want to pray for you; and I want you both to promise me that you will take up seriously the consideration of your souls' welfare. It's too grave a subject for jest," addressing himself ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... no answer, and the absolute repose of all the lines of the young gentleman's face bordered too nearly on contempt to encourage the lady to pursue her jest any further. ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner

... saw him, remembered his blushing Comstockery in time and haled the poor lad off to a cell. The next morning the magistrate in tones of grimmest virtue sent the boy to the reformatory, remarking with appropriate jest that the young scoundrel might have seven years in which to learn to keep ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various

... "That's jest what they are, flabby, bony, white-livered, or'nary suckers. Niggers and Injuns won't touch 'em, ony in the spring; they'd ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell

... or other of his friends to his room, and 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 belongs to a gentleman, was never ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... life, nor explain either that secret power he possessed or the fascination he exerted. "It is not always the most brilliant actions which best expose the virtues or vices of men. Some trifle, some insignificant word or jest, often displays the character better than bloody combats, pitched battles, or the taking of cities. Also, as portrait painters try to reproduce the features and expression of their subjects, as the most obvious presentment of their characters, and without troubling about ...
— Georges Guynemer - Knight of the Air • Henry Bordeaux

... sacrifices when success was denied. Gallant and devoted soldiers they have been, and well they have earned the love and admiration of their men. Always cheerful whatever was on foot, readiest of all to turn a danger passed into a jest. There could not be a better spirit in which to face the long delays and the bitter disappointments of the war. Two outstanding features in their character are, to my mind, practically universal, whatever form they happen to take. An inherent pugnacity, and a whole-hearted belief in ...
— Q.6.a and Other places - Recollections of 1916, 1917 and 1918 • Francis Buckley

... which have no actual existence than on cooking, and, incredible as it may appear, to be exceptionally round-bodied confers no public honour upon the individual. Should a favourable occasion present itself, there are many who do not scruple to jest upon the subject of food, or, what is incalculably more depraved, upon the ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah

... to purchase silence by groveling humility. The dealers she had not been able to repay had her in their clutches. If she said that anything was too dear, she was reminded in a bantering way that they were her masters, and that she must pay the price unless she chose to be denounced. A jest or an allusion drove the color from her cheeks. She was bound to them, compelled to trade with them and to allow them to empty her pockets as if they were accomplices. The successor of Madame Jupillon, who had gone into the grocery business at Bar-sur Aube,—the new cremiere,—gave her bad ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt

... take things coolly, Mister Thorwald," said Montague, half in jest, yet with a touch ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne

... Any one who refuses to accept the explanation must be very hard to please. I am one of these difficult persons. If it were a dinner-table jest, made over the walnuts and the wine, I would willingly sing ditto; but alas and alack, it is uttered without a smile, in a solemn and magisterial manner, as the last word in science! Toussenel, in his day, asked the naturalists ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre

... the Traitors, Who lye and swear in jest, To cheat unguarded Creatures Of Virtue, Fame, and Rest! Whoever steals a Shilling, Through Shame the Guilt conceals: In Love the perjur'd Villain With Boasts the ...
— The Beggar's Opera - to which is prefixed the Musick to each Song • John Gay

... cruel jest, considering the quality of Adelle's one poor little serge dress which she had on, and she took it quite literally. While absorbing the idea that she must make her clothes go as far as possible, she ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick

... the road to Kotzebue, optimistic through and through, We'll hit the trail together, boy, once more, jest me an' you.' ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine

... think on. It'll cost seventy dollars, and if it cost seventy cents 'twould be jest exactly seventy cents more'n I could afford to pay. For the money my ole woman gits fer washin' don't go noways at all towards feedin' the four children, let alone ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston

... ringin' as if the world wouldn't stand another minnit? Next time you want to get in, Haneran, you jest come down the aree! And ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas

... visits which I paid in the night-time to the Hotel de Chevreuse, I conversed with none but canons and cures. I was the object of raillery both at Court and at the Palace of Conde; and because I had set up a bird-cage at a window, it became a common jest that "the Coadjutor whistled to the linnets." The disposition of Paris, however, made amends for the raillery of the Court. I found myself very secure, while other people were very uneasy. The cures, parish priests, and even the mendicants, informed themselves with diligence of the negotiations ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... between the two classes; there is no reason why what pleases the one should not please the other, or why a translator who makes it his aim to treat "Don Quixote" with the respect due to a great classic, should not be as acceptable even to the careless reader as the one who treats it as a famous old jest-book. It is not a question of caviare to the general, or, if it is, the fault rests with him who makes so. The method by which Cervantes won the ear of the Spanish people ought, mutatis mutandis, to be equally effective ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... Rory. "Now, here's a sleigh. I fancy it was wance Dumont's, or some other gint's, but I'm thinkin' it's ours now. It's bruk the heart av me thet I couldn't bring them dogs along. If we have luck we'll be back at the ranche before noon to-morrer. Jest ketch hould av ...
— The Rising of the Red Man - A Romance of the Louis Riel Rebellion • John Mackie

... upon occasion, being never so well pleased as when employed in the due chastisement of his master's lieges. He was, moreover, a man of infinite humour, generally consoling his dear unfortunates under their visitations by some coarse and galling jest. ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... the uncertainty of friendship, says: 'A dispute begun in jest upon a subject which, a moment before, was on both sides regarded with careless indifference, is continued by the desire of conquest, till vanity kindles into rage, and opposition rankles into enmity. Against this hasty mischief ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell

... "Jest like the old critter to make a bee-line track like that. But what in thunder did he want to go that way across the clearing for? I'm much obleeged to him for his trail, but it ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner

... ladies—Jumping Jove! we know Them nearly all!—who gamble at a low And very shocking game of cards called "draw"! O cracky, how they'll squirm! ha-ha! haw-haw! Let's see what else (wife snores). Well, I'll be blest! A woman doesn't understand a jest. Hello! What, what? the scurvy wretch proceeds To take a fling at me, condemn him! (reads): Tom Jonesmith—my name's Thomas, vulgar cad!—Of the new Shavings Bank—the man's gone mad! That's libelous; I'll have him up for that—Has had his corns cut. Devil take the ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce

... framed strange fellows in her time; Some that will ever more peep through their eyes, And laugh like parrots at a bagpiper; And others of such vinegar aspect, That they'll not show their teeth in way of smile, Though Nestor swear the jest be laughable." SHAKESPEARE. ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat

... a band of hunters ride up from a long excursion. They have heard nothing of the trouble. With them is a young Bannock who is visiting the tribe. He rides up with his Cayuse comrades, laughing, gesticulating in a lively way. The jest dies on his lips when he recognizes the Bannock who is tied to the stake. Before he can even think of flight, he is dragged from his horse and bound,—his whilom comrades, as soon as they understand the situation, ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch

... good Cleena's "love names." For it's ever the tone and not the words that makes a sweet sound in one's ears, and the woman's heart thrilled, and her weary shoulders lifted because of the love which sang through Amy's innocent jest. ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond

... without killing both. We are unable to rudely tear away the veil of phantasy in which the truth is shrouded, so we present the reader with a draped figure, and his own judgment must discriminate between the clothes and the body. A truth's prosperity is like a jest's, it lies in the ear of him that hears it. Some may see our lucubration as we saw it, and others may see nothing but a drunken dream or the nightmare of a distempered imagination. To ourselves it is the speaking with ...
— Samuel Butler's Canterbury Pieces • Samuel Butler

... 't ain't another book!" cried the good woman, as Prissy, quick to divine the meaning of the parcel, the like of which she had been made accustomed to before, sprang to her aunt's side within hearing of her exclamation. "If she ain't jest the feelingest and thoughtfullest—Well! open it yourself, child; there's no good of ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney

... to have carried off the poor man's hat, or whether he was, as he said, merely in jest, we leave it to those who know his ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth

... window. "We're use' ter bein' treated like dogs by men like you. If you w'ite people will go 'long an' ten' ter yo' own business an' let us alone, we'll ten' ter ou'n. You've got guns, an' we've got jest as much right ter carry 'em as you have. Lay down yo'n, an' we'll lay down ou'n,—we didn' take 'em up fust; but we ain' gwine ter let you bu'n down ou' chu'ches an' school'ouses, er dis hospittle, an' we ain' comin' out er dis house, where we ain' disturbin' nobody, fer you ter shoot us down er ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt

... in the state Than the couple of which I'm about to relate;— Jinin' each other—belongin' to Brown, And jest at the edge of a flourishin' town. Brown was a man, as I understand, That allus had handled a good 'eal o' land, And was sharp as a tack in drivin' a trade— For that's the way most of his money was made. And all the grounds and the orchards about ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley

... The jest was untimely, and the three walked on in silence. Once at the house the dinner was soon over, and not even Mrs. Branthwaite's homely, if hesitating, importunity could prevail with Robbie ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine

... course, the details, and chances of the present. I brought up cigars and we settled ourselves facing him, our backs to the wind and spray. And so we made the rest of the passage, von Brning cuddled against me and the cabin-hatch, alternately shouting a jest to Davies and talking to me in a light and charming vein, with just that shade of patronage that the disparity in our ages warranted, about my time in Germany, places, people, and books I knew, and about life, especially young men's ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers

... silently in their frail hut, listening to the howling blast without. A feeling of awe crept over the whole party, and the most careless and the lightest of heart among the crew of the Red Eric ceased to utter his passing jest, and became deeply solemnised as the roar of the breakers filled his ear, and reminded him that a thin ledge of rock alone preserved ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne

... interesting to women, or whether those steady blue eyes of his were the attraction, Ellerey found it easy to make friends. He studied to catch the trick of pleasing with a light compliment or pleasant jest, and before many days had gone had earned a reputation as an irresponsible cavalier; one whom it would be dangerous to take too seriously or believe in too thoroughly. Such a man was, for the most part, after the heart of the feminine ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner

... I never could read or write, but I can count, and I can remember—Lawdy! how I can remember. Well, there I was on the block, just scairt and shivering—I was just cold all over—and them there nigger traders was jest a talkin', when down that long lane came Massa Sid, and I'm tellin' you, it was the Dear Lawd that sent him. He was a ridin' on his hoss, and he stopped right in front of me, standing there on the block. He looked at his boys, then he turned to them nigger traders and yelled out, "What you all ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Kansas Narratives • Works Projects Administration

... the sweats of bodily tortures to stay reflectiveness, he, also, in the strangeness of his prostration, might have cast a thought on the irony of the fates felling a man like him by a youngster's hand and for a shallow girl! He might have fathered some jest at life, with rueful relish of the flavour: for such is our manner of commenting on ourselves when we come to shipwreck through unseaworthy pretensions. There was no interval on his passage from ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... of the week ain't run ter her mind. If it's Monday she's bound ter say she wished 'twas Sunday; and if you take her jelly you're pretty sure ter hear she wanted chicken—but if you DID bring her chicken, she'd be jest ...
— Pollyanna • Eleanor H. Porter

... jest, laugh, and be as merry as health, freedom from care, youthful spirits, and pleasing anticipations for the morrow inclined them ...
— Elsie's New Relations • Martha Finley

... his hand to bring him to the Queen's great favour, for he was abundantly facetious, which took much with the Queen, when it suited with the season, as he was well able to judge of the times; he had a very quaint saying, and he used it often to good purpose, "that he loved the jest well, but not the loss of his friend;" and that, though he knew that "VERUS QUISQUE SUAE FORTUNAE FABER," was a true and good principle, yet the most in number were those that numbered themselves, but I will ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton

... opened out to starboard, and evil miasma arose from the rotting tree trunks across its mouth; the entire scene was one of dreary, soul-searing repulsiveness and made a sorry jest of the strongly stockaded trading post whose defensive armament could be plainly seen peeping ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle

... quite distinctly. I remember how my head swayed with the seas, and the horizon with the sail above it danced up and down; but I also remember as distinctly that I had a persuasion that I was dead, and that I thought what a jest it was that they should come too late by such a little to catch ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells

... sent me for my Love and Service offered to your sweet Person; which was your base Respects to my ill Conditions; when alas! there is no ill Conditions in me, but quite contrary; all Love and Purity, especially to your sweet Person; but all this I take as a Jest. ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... of those who are playing games, the merry laughter, the jest, the shouting, place this type of activity on a ...
— School, Church, and Home Games • George O. Draper

... tobacco-box from his pocket and passed it into the carriage. Clementina made sandwiches and passed them out to the horsemen. The chickens turned out to be old cocks, impervious to the soundest tooth. No one minded except Misset, who had brought them. The jolts of the carriage became matter for a jest. They picnicked with the merriment of children, and finally O'Toole, to show his contempt for the Emperor, fired off both his loaded pistols ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason

... people on board no longer made a secret of it. On the contrary, they appeared to glory in the occupation, regarding it in the light of achievement and enterprise. Over their cups they sang songs in which the "bold slaver" and his "jolly crew" were made to play the heroic, and many a coarse jest was uttered relating to ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid

... a purty good world, this is, old man, It's a purty good world this is; For all its follies and shows and lies, Its rainy weather, and cheeks likewise, And age, hard hearing, and rheumatiz; We're not a faultin' the Lord's own plan; All things jest At their best, It's a puny good ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung

... in rural communities and their proper care and education has been neglected because they have been commonly regarded as merely "simple minded" or "foolish"; to be pitied, and the subject of many a jest, but entirely harmless. A large number of the feeble-minded are so nearly normal that they are considered merely shiftless or stupid. Nearly every rural community has one or more families, and not infrequently a small slum neighborhood, who are ne'er-do-wells, more or less delinquent ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson

... though spoken half in jest, put the king into a violent passion, and he almost shrieked: "So the Persians say, that the wine has taken away my senses, do they? on the contrary, I'll show them that they've lost their own." ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... the shingles. You was lookin' at the lighthouses; you jest said so. Emeline, was you lookin' for me? Was you ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln

... a relative term, like anything else connected with morality. What would be stealing in the immediate neighborhood of a city is not even what the old South County oyster fisherman once described as "jest pilferin' 'round," out here on the edges of the wilderness. I go out with the trailer hitched to the back of my Ford, half a mile in any direction, and I pass roadsides where, if there are any farmer owners of the fields on the other side of ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer

... suffers from a constant and pressing need of reenforcements, on account not only of its unhealthful climate, but of the many emergencies which continually arise when I must send aid. These occasions now are not so much a matter of jest as they have been hitherto; for the Chinese and Japanese are not Indians, but people as valiant as many of the inhabitants of Berberia [Barbary], and even more so. I entreat your Majesty to give careful attention to this, and ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume V., 1582-1583 • Various

... see now," said Simon. "It's a railway station, and I see that 'ere willain there, jest as cunnin' as ever. He's a gettin' in the ...
— Weapons of Mystery • Joseph Hocking

... are impertinent! Do you mean to go any further? We are a fighting race, we Brodies. O, you may laugh, sir! But 'tis no child's play to jest us on our Deacon, or, for that matter, on our Deacon's chamber either. It was his father's before him: he works in it by day and sleeps in it by night; and scarce anything it contains but is the labour of his hands. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XV • Robert Louis Stevenson

... They wore the prescribed dress: black coats, knee breeches, low shoes and silver buckles. As the countenances of these gentlemen offered nothing very interesting to the multitude, whisperings arose, little by little, among the spectators, then some bold spirits ventured a jest or two upon the fattest or the baldest of the townsmen, and at last the boldest of the lazzaroni slipped between the soldiers' legs to collect the wax that was running down from ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... whom he brought up under the belief that he himself was young, handsome, and well off, and that the house they lived in was sumptuously furnished and quite magnificent. Every calamity he smoothed over, every unkind remark of their snarling employer he called a merry jest; so that the poor blind girl lived in a castle of the air, "a bright little world of her own." When merry or puzzled, Caleb used to sing something about "a ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... curious fact? There sometimes is a sadly humorous curving of the lips and glimmering in the eyes after he has uttered something especially profound, which almost warrants the suspicion. The lack of accord between the old gentleman and the world has become to him, at last, a dreary sort of jest. ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne

... then, without a jest or slur, I tell you, once for all, such speed With the fair creature won't succeed. Nothing will here by storm be taken; We must ...
— Faust • Goethe

... upon him almost fiercely—"It wasn't jest. I meant what I said. I hate all these earlier people you used to know—and now, after our being so happy all this time, you're going to take them up again and ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole

... especially, never—never to go back. My gloves, my hat, my coat, I'd leave, sooner than lose my friends. Once I heard it said, by one who knew the world and human nature better than any of us—once I heard it said in jest, but in sober earnest I say, that I would not for more than I am worth be placed, without his knowing it, within earshot of my ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth

... ancient bard her glee repressed: 'Ill hast thou chosen theme for jest! For who, through all this western wild, Named Black Sir Roderick e'er, and smiled? In Holy-Rood a knight he slew; I saw, when back the dirk he drew, Courtiers give place before the stride Of the undaunted homicide; And since, though outlawed, ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... the other side of the street, his nightstick twirling in a very prepared sort of way. For an instant Oliver sees himself going over and asking that policeman for his helmet to play with. That would be the cream of the jest—the very cream—to end the evening in combat with a large blue policeman after having all you wanted in life break under you suddenly like ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet

... particular edict, he exempted them from the general penalties of the law; [4] allowed them to build a church at Constantinople, respected the miracles of their saints, invited their bishop Acesius to the council of Nice; and gently ridiculed the narrow tenets of his sect by a familiar jest; which, from the mouth of a sovereign, must have been received with applause and ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... shrinking away, laid a hand on her lips and stared with distended eyes. "RUINED?" she gasped, unable to believe him—incredulously, as if at some barbaric jest. "Ruined?" She had turned quite white. "Oh," she cried, wetting her lips, "does it mean there is nothing left? How did it happen? Oh, it can't ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine

... 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 slaves coming into our lines, and commanding ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson

... virtue of my Jane. Farewell, then, my daughter! We both, now, know our roles, and will take care to play them with success. You are the friend and confidante of the queen, and I the harmless courtier, who tries, now and then, to gain a smile from the king by some kind and merry jest. That is all. Good-morning, then, Jane, and good-night. For you must sleep, my child, so that your cheeks may remain fresh and your eyes bright. The king hates pining pale-faces. Sleep, then, ...
— Henry VIII And His Court • Louise Muhlbach

... Jerry. "I jest somehow knew one thing Danny didn't about el'funts' tails. Danny knows lots more'n ...
— The Circus Comes to Town • Lebbeus Mitchell

... spoken in jest. He had good call to know him, as well as the rest of us, for a most expensive animal, before all was said and done. What he cost us all round it would be hard ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood

... there, and you, and you, Happiness crowned the night; I too, Laughing and looking, one of all, I watched the quivering lamplight fall On plate and flowers and pouring tea And cup and cloth; and they and we Flung all the dancing moments by With jest and glitter. Lip and eye Flashed on the glory, shone and cried, Improvident, unmemoried; And fitfully and like a flame The light of laughter went and came. Proud in their careless transience moved The changing faces ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various

... Ball, how high he goes,' The Bat exclaimed with glee, 'But yet he never says he owes His rise in life to me. No, no, that's not his way at all; And though I do my best, His graceless growls at every fall Are something past a jest.' ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various

... sleep he sent 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

... haven't told me anything that the department could make use of," returned Blount, carrying the jest the one ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde

... up there jest yet," the woman whispered. "He did get away from us yesterdy and had a terrible time over there." She hitched her shoulders in the direction of Stoney Island Avenue. "We ain't found out till he'd been gone ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... between him and all the rest of our Polite and Gallant Authors: The latter have endeavour'd to please the Age by falling in with them, and incouraging them in their fashionable Vices, and false notions of things. It would have been a jest, sometime since, for a Man to have asserted, that any thing Witty could be said in praise of a Marry'd State, or that Devotion and Virtue were any way necessary to the Character of a fine Gentleman. Bickerstaff ventur'd to tell the Town, that they were ...
— The Present State of Wit (1711) - In A Letter To A Friend In The Country • John Gay

... The bewtifool Countess of BELGRAVIER sat at the hopen winder of her Boodwar gazing on the full moon witch was jest a rising up above the hopposite chimbleys. Why was that evenly face, that princes had loved and Poets sillybrated, bathed in tears? How offen had she, wile setting at that hopen winder, washed it with Oder Colone, to remove the stanes of them tell tail tears? ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. Sep. 12, 1891 • Various

... there," said Andy, "you can jest see the tops of the chimneys, that's called Cobhurst; that's where old Matthias Butterwood used to live. It was an awful big house for one man, but he was queer. There's nobody livin' there now but two young people, sort of temporary, I guess, though the place belongs to 'em. I don't think they ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton

... waiters with new dishes caused the Major to be slyer yet, but in a more serious vein. 'For though among ourselves, Joe Bagstock mingles jest and earnest on this subject, Sir,' said the Major, laying his finger on his lips, and speaking half apart to Carker, 'he holds that name too sacred to be made the property of these fellows, or of any fellows. Not a word!, Sir' ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... up if Shalah had not cried on us to keep on. I do not think the arrow was meant to strike us. 'Twas a warning, a grim jest of ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan

... have seen him when he stood up to sing at our concerts—his tight little figure stepping to and fro, and his feet shuffling to the air, his eyes seeking and bestowing encouragement- -and to have enjoyed the bow, so nicely calculated between jest and earnest, between grace and clumsiness, with which he brought each song to a conclusion. He was not only a great favourite among ourselves, but his songs attracted the lords of the saloon, who often leaned to hear him over the rails of the hurricane-deck. ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson

... transporting fire, The animated scene throughout inspire; If in the piercing wit of Vanbrugh drest, Each sees his darling folly made a jest; If Garth's and Dryden's genius, through each line, In artful praise and well-turn'd satire shine,— To us ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse

... few exceptions, who ought to be rewarded with the Montyon prize, the cook, male or female, is a domestic robber, a thief taking wages, and perfectly barefaced, with the Government for a fence, developing the tendency to dishonesty, which is almost authorized in the cook by the time-honored jest as to the "handle of the basket." The women who formerly picked up their forty sous to buy a lottery ticket now take fifty francs to put into the savings bank. And the smug Puritans who amuse themselves in France with philanthropic ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac

... his father, and then looked inquiringly at his wife as though to ask if it were not all a jest. When he was assured that the facts were true he looked grave and slowly stroked his pointed black beard, a gesture which was very unusual with him, and always accompanied ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford

... life. Sydney Smith, in a very lively portrait, says that Horner was the best, kindest, simplest, and most incorruptible of mankind; but intimates sufficiently that his impenetrability to the facetious was something almost unexampled. A jest upon an important subject was, it seems, the only affliction which his strength of principle would not enable him to bear with patience. His contributions gave some solid economical speculation to the 'Review,' ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen

... surrendered, had expressed the sentiment of the whole plantation when he declared, as he sat in the back yard surrounded by an admiring throng and surveyed the two glittering sabres which he had no one but himself to polish, that "Ef them Britishers jest sees dese swodes dee'll run!" The boys tried to explain to him that these were not British, but Yankees,—but he was hard to convince. Even Lucy Ann, who was incurably afraid of everything like a gun or fire-arm, partook of the general fervor, ...
— Two Little Confederates • Thomas Nelson Page

... entitle me to serious consideration. If I can get the editors to take more stories, why I suppose there'll be more books. But please don't perform any more serious consideration stuff over 'em. Because me'n Georgie Cohan, we jest aims ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various

... that was full of light, harmless jest, and an hour passed so quickly that Andrew ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... improve and beautify the towns as well as to fortify them, and to make an excursion to survey the country while his cousin was away in Finland. Presently the Kalevide felt in his pocket, and pulled out the boy, with whom he began to jest; but soon their conversation became more serious, and the Kalevide ordered him to wait for the expected messengers, while he himself should proceed to Lake Peipus, where he ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby

... 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 manacle and the dungeon. I ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various

... themselves. With their wares on their backs, they climbed merrily up the sides of the ship, and the deck was soon transformed into a busy market, where all was frolic and fun; the goods were offered with a jest, and the bargains concluded with laughter. In a short time each Tahaitian had selected a Russian associate, to whom, with a fraternal embrace, he tendered his wish to exchange names,—a ceremony which implied a pledge to surrender to the new friend whatever ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue

... Ha, ha, that were a jest! You know a virgin may continue there A twelve month and a day only on trial. There shall my daughter sojourn some three months, And in mean time I'll compass a fair match Twixt youthful Jerningham, the lusty heir Of Sir Raph Jerningham, ...
— The Merry Devil • William Shakespeare

... masque dull grief in joy! A sad heart's jest—what bitter mockery! With vain deceit my laughing lips employ Loud ...
— The Elegies of Tibullus • Tibullus

... the dewdrops were still glistening on the grass and shining on the tree-tops. It seemed as if some occult influences were at work, and that the men were conscious of the fact that the atmosphere was laden with tragedy, for instead of laughter and merry jest, a strange ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking

... then,' said Lady Blanche, now more in earnest than in jest. 'I am much interested, for I have heard sister Henriette, and sister Sophie, in the convent, tell of such strange appearances, ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe

... and his apprehension was so good, that in skimming thus it was, with him, precisely as though he had read very laboriously. He excelled in unpremeditated discourse, which, whether in the shape of repartee or jest, was always appropriate and vivacious. He often reproached me, and others more than he, with "not spoiling him;" but I often gave him praise merited by few, and which belonged to nobody so justly as to him; it was, that besides having infinite ability and of various kinds, the singular ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon

... the jest and chuckled. "As you say, 'to the dogs' hein? Messieurs, I beg you to observe and take warning that your sister and I are ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... wasn't it?" said the farmer, sarcastically. "Jest come deown and ye can sample this ...
— Four Boy Hunters • Captain Ralph Bonehill

... you'd gone the other day, 'e said to me: 'Looks reflexive-like does the little lady nowadays; as if she'd got something on 'er mind.' And I to him: 'Pooh! Isn't it enough that she's got to put up with the cranks and crotchets of one o' YOUR sect?'—Oh Mary, my dear, there's many a true word said in jest. Though little did I think what the crotchet would be." And slowly the rims of Tilly's eyes and the tip of her nose reddened ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson

... sarcasms, and the consequent reprimands and even imprisonments be incurred. "L'Empereur n'aime que Josephine et la chasse!" was his exclamation when Napoleon's project of divorce was first bruited about; and for days Paris rang with the sharp jest. "Le char l'attend!" he cried, pausing before the triumphal arch on which stood the horses and empty chariot, the spoils of Venice. But the license of Monsieur Brunet's tongue was little relished by the imperial ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various

... comical, ridiculous, and inconceivable in its absurdity. It was to her what the remark of some despairing beauty would be among us who, when pressed by two lovers should express a confused willingness to marry both. It was evident that Layelah accepted it as a ludicrous jest. ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille

... Sydney" gives a dozen of Sidney's sonnets with appreciatory comment. "Newspapers Thirty Years Ago" is particularly interesting for its reminiscences of the days when Lamb wrote half a dozen daily jests for "The Morning Post" at sixpence per jest, and for its sketches of Daniel Stuart and Fenwick, two diversely typical journalists of a century since. "Barrenness of the Imaginative Faculty in the Productions of Modern Art" is a criticism of the prevailing taste in ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold

... not fair to charge the Utopian notions upon his morality; but their subjects and suggestions mark what (for want of a better word) we can only call his modernism. Thus the immortality of animals is the sort of transcendentalism which savours of evolution; and the grosser jest about the preliminaries of marriage might be taken quite seriously by the students of Eugenics. He suggested a sort of pacifism—though the Utopians had a quaint way of achieving it. In short, while he was, with ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton

... were spoken half in jest, but there is no doubt that the artist, now in the fulness of his powers, in perfect health, in love with life, sees before him work to do of such vast worth that all that lies behind seems but a preparation for that ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard

... pause. If my husband had only said something in jest, or laughed in her face, all would have been over. But he stammered and hesitated, and said at last in a nervous, stupid way: "Do you really think so? Really, Aunt, you shouldn't ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore

... she could have throttled or poisoned the little sly devil she would have done it! Only—there would have been Bough to reckon with afterwards. For of God she made a jest, and the devil was an old friend of hers, but she was horribly afraid of the man with the brown bushy whiskers and the light, steely eyes. Yet she threw herself upon him to kiss him, blubbering freely, when at ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... up his serving-men, and made them harness horses and light torches, and set off through the pathless darkness with twelve heydukes, taking with him everything necessary for eating and drinking, in order to have a banquet in honour of the jest as soon as it was accomplished, not forgetting to carry along with him the three personages who chiefly ministered to his amusement, and whom he sent on before him in a separate waggon, to wit, his favourite greyhound, his gipsy jester, and his parasitical poet, all three of whom ...
— A Hungarian Nabob • Maurus Jokai

... that you figure I might have missed my aim?" said Kiddie. "Not very complimentary to my shootin'. Why did I let it go loose? Well, I jest notioned it would be some cowardly ter shoot while I held the brute that way. Beside, I didn't want ter shatter the skull too much. Biggest rattler I've seen—seven feet long if it's an inch, and worth preservin'. Say, those bees look like givin' us trouble. ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton

... Etna, overspreading a hoard of volcanic elements of which the burst and blaze will some day be terrific. Such seem imbued with the spirit of indifference, because they are abstracted and silent when the laugh and merry jest go round among their companions; whereas this abstraction, from outward things results not from deadness of feeling, but from the intensity with which the mind is brooding over some phantom known only ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth

... Backhouse, interrupting the flood of her reproaches, with the comparative sang-froid of one who knew that, after all, he was the only carrier on the road, and that the vicarage was five miles from the necessaries of life; 'it's a bad job, and I's not goin' to say it isn't. But ya jest look 'ere, mum, what's a man to du wi' a daft thingamy like that, as caan't teak a plain order, and spiles a poor man's business as caan't ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... coolly and distinctly assert that such a man has a right to the produce, and that neither for God's sake nor in the name of justice need he leave to the worker more than a bare subsistence, I am compelled to ask myself whether you, an authority in Freeland, are pleased to jest, or whether what we have hitherto seen and heard here rests upon ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka

... self-centring line. A kindly adviser suggested a gymnasium to keep him in condition for professional purposes. He took the advice, and in the course of time became a splendid young animal, a being so physically perfect as to be what the good vicar of Bludston had called him in tired jest—a lusus naturae. But though proud of his body as any finely formed human may honorably be, a far higher arrogance saved him from Narcissus vanity. It was the inner and essential Paul and not the outer investiture that was ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke

... at the Bellairs' Fancy Ball (I went as Louis the Nineteenth) last week, you know, and had an explanation, and sort of made it up, but I'm afraid, like that uncomfortable old king, though he smiled at the jest, he ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson

... you, and you, Happiness crowned the night; I too, Laughing and looking, one of all, I watched the quivering lamplight fall On plate and flowers and pouring tea And cup and cloth; and they and we Flung all the dancing moments by With jest and glitter. Lip and eye Flashed on the glory, shone and cried, Improvident, unmemoried; And fitfully and like a flame The light of laughter went and came. Proud in their careless transience moved The changing faces that ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various

... dignity in her aspect, that composure in her motion, that complacency in her manner, that if her form makes you hope, her merit makes you fear. But then again she is such a desperate scholar, that no country-gentleman can approach her without being a jest. As I was going to tell you, when I came to her house I was admitted to her presence with great civility; at the same time she placed herself to be first seen by me in such an attitude, as I think you call the posture of ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various

... shutting out a world which clamored to participate in their pleasures, and looked on themselves as being not forgotten, but too selfish in keeping to themselves. It kept little streams of mirth purling through Kate's soul, and at each jest or supposed brilliancy she laughed twice—once with them and once at them. But they were unsuspicious—her friends. They were secretly sorry for ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie

... "Well, general," replied Mirabeau, "since you will have it so, let her live! A humbled queen may be fit for something, but a queen with her throat cut is only good as the subject of a bad tragedy!" This atrocious remark, which treated the bloodshed of a woman as a jest, was subsequently known by the queen, who however forgave Mirabeau, and did not allow it to interfere with her liaisons with the great orator. But the cold-blooded infamy must have found its way to her heart as an ominous warning of ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine

... mean time, an overgrown youth, apparently belonging to the house, who sat in one corner, tilting his chair, said, addressing all of us at once, 'Wal, you've got the wust half the road before yer now. Thur's a hill a mile an' a half long, jest out here a little ways. You'll have to break yer own roads, I reckon; there's nothin' else goin' along to-day. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... a-shooting against us in the grove, And their long lances toward the pious Federates move: Hei! the jest it was not sweet, With branches from the lofty pines down rattling ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... my part, I see no good and sufficient reason for discriminating against the only woman one has sworn to love and cherish and honor. It is true that several hundred people witnessed the promise, with a perfect understanding of the jest, and that the keeping of this oath involves a certain breach of faith with society. Eh bien! let us, then, deceive the world—and the flesh—and the devil! Let us snap our fingers at this unholy trinity, and ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell

... him to jest, or his father before him, went out in a muddled frame of mind, leaving Doggie to struggle into his dress trousers as best ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke

... last, "I'm goin' to make a move. You jest sit here, and hold on to the trunks. I'll go an hunt up one of them one-hoss shays. There ain't nothin' else that I can do. Hold on now, hard and ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille

... sleepin' sound, Es only a cowboy knows how to sleep; An' Tommy's snores would hev made a old Buffalo bull feel kind o' cheap. Wal, pard, I reckin' thar's no sech time For dwind'lin' a chap in his own conceit, Es when them mountains an' awful stars, Jest hark to the tramp of ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford

... Hannah would sniff back. "His way! Keepin' you all on rye meal one spell, an' not lettin' you eat a mite of Injun, an' then keepin' you on Injun without a mite of rye! Makin' you eat nothin' but greens an' garden stuff, an' jest turnin' you out to graze an' chew your cuds like horned animals one spell, an' then makin' you live on meat! Lettin' you go abroad when he takes a notion, an' then keepin' you an' Charlotte in the house ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... to awe you by this thought; I do not mean that because you will have so many witnesses and watchers, you are never to jest, or do anything gaily or lightly; on the contrary, I have pleaded, from the beginning, for this art of yours, especially because it has room for the whole of your character—if jest is in you, let the jest be jested; ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin

... day of public fasting and humiliation for the tyranny of his father and the idolatry of his mother. And while he was acquiescing to each fresh demand with a shrug of his shoulders and a whispered jest to Buckingham, and in his heart as much hatred for his humiliators as he was capable of feeling for anybody, he was all the while urging on Montrose to strike that wild blow for his crown which was to lead the brave marquis to the scaffold. The deaths of Hamilton and Huntly had preceded the ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris

... Sometimes I tell them I will not marry, and then they laugh at me; sometimes I say, "Not yet," and they laugh more, and would make me believe I shall be old within this twelvemonth. I tell them I shall be wiser then. They say 'twill be to no purpose. Sometimes we are in earnest and sometimes in jest, but always saying something since my brother Henry found his tongue again. If you were with me I could make sport of all this; but "patience is my penance" is somebody's motto, and I ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry

... of jest, the serious makes its entry. Impulses depend on the first chance word. The spirit of each is sovereign, jest suffices to open the field to the unexpected. These are conversations with abrupt turns, in which the perspective ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... Scogan's Jest. Scogan and some companions, being in lack of money, agreed to the following trick: A peasant, driving sheep, was accosted by one of the accomplices, who laid a wager that his sheep were hogs, and agreed to abide by the decision of the first ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... replied Menteith, "you have repeatedly urged this jest, for so I trust it is meant, somewhat beyond bounds. Annot Lyle is of unknown birth,—a captive,—the daughter, probably, of some obscure outlaw; a dependant on the hospitality of ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott

... these insults except the Prince, who laughed and said that he thought the jest coarse but clever. But worse was to happen. It seems that a soldier with wine in him had done insult to a Hebrew maiden who came alone to draw water at a canal. The news spread among the people and some thousands of them rushed to the camp, shouting ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard

... himself, repeating to him the stories in circulation, with the air of one who believed them "What treason is this," said the general, "that you have meditated against me,—me, who have ever treated you with honor, confiding in your words, as in those of a brother?" "You jest," replied the Inca, who, perhaps, did not feel the weight of this confidence; "you are always jesting with me. How could I or my people think of conspiring against men so valiant as the Spaniards? Do not jest with me thus, I beseech you."19 "This," continues Pizarro's secretary, ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott

... surprised at the statement I will point out that this life secured for the mind of him who embraced it the inestimable advantages of solitude and silence. Marlow had the habit of pursuing general ideas in a peculiar manner, between jest and earnest. ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad

... late Sir William D'Avenant. It being forbidden him in the rebellious times to act tragedies and comedies, because they contained some matter of scandal to those good people, who could more easily dispossess their lawful sovereign, than endure a wanton jest, he was forced to turn his thoughts another way, and to introduce the examples of moral virtue, writ in verse, and performed in recitative music. The original of this music, and of the scenes which adorned his work, he had from the Italian operas; ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden

... which was the same as falling into the hands and mouths of a legion of devils; and thus braying spread far and wide, insomuch that the natives of the town of Bray are as well known and distinguished as the negroes are from white men. And this unhappy jest has been carried so far that our people have often sallied out in arms against their scoffers, and given them battle: neither king nor rook, nor fear nor shame, being able to restrain them. Tomorrow, I believe, or next day, those of our town ...
— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... the baker jogged along, All alone, with ne'er a song, Or a jest; and nothing tempted him to stay. But he went from bad to worse, For he never found the purse, And for all I know he is wandering to ...
— Pepper & Salt - or, Seasoning for Young Folk • Howard Pyle

... as the great author often called her, half in jest, half in earnest, lived to be very old, surviving many members of her family, and the brilliant circle over which she had long reigned as a queen. But she was not too lonely; the young girls whom she guided as an older sister, the orphan children who found in her a second mother, ...
— The New Land - Stories of Jews Who Had a Part in the Making of Our Country • Elma Ehrlich Levinger

... my mind," said Josiah Bean, with a sigh. "Ye see, the money is comin' to my wife. She writ to 'em that I was comin' to collect an' they writ back it would be all right, only I would have to be identified. Jest as if everybody in Haydown Center don't know I'm Josiah Bean an' a piller in the Union Church down there, an' a cousin ...
— Joe The Hotel Boy • Horatio Alger Jr.

... Jest contrariness that's all. Hit my shack once, and 'cause 'twas raining, bored holes in the roof so the place ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in New Mexico • Frank Gee Patchin

... that you had invited Teen Balfour to your estate; is she there yet?' he asked; and Gladys did not know whether he asked in scorn or in jest. ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan

... done the yellin'," she said. "She was scart crazy from the start. He jest come in, and set in the chair and he's been ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter

... her up to attention, with many a sniggering jest; They had bound a musket beside her, with the barrel beneath her breast! "Now keep good watch!" and they kissed her. She heard the dead man say— Look for me by moonlight; Watch for me by moonlight; I'll come to thee by moonlight, though ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... get seasick in one o' my boats any more'n you could on land," averred the runner. "We jest go out around by the Sugarloaf—we're ...
— Owen Clancy's Happy Trail - or, The Motor Wizard in California • Burt L. Standish

... Alcohol tightens his grasp on the merry company, the toasters and speakers lose more and more their control over speech and actions. What was at first mischievous abandon and merry jest, gradually degenerates into loquaciousness, coarseness and querulous brawls. Here and there one of the maudlin crowd drops off in the stupor ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr

... this! but oh! that all the rest Of his dire reign had thus been spent in jest! And all that time such trifles had employ'd In which so many nobles he destroy'd! He safe, they unrevenged, to the disgrace Of the surviving, tame, patrician race! But when he dreadful to the rabble grew, Him, who so many lords had ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus

... who would bother a good woman like Aunt Hannah deserves to be kicked. She's made up her mind to give me a chance jest 'cause she thinks it's something that ought'er be done; but I ain't goin' to play mean with her. It's lucky I happened to hear what was said, else I'd have jumped at the chance of stayin' when ...
— Aunt Hannah and Seth • James Otis

... minds. Blondet would share his purse with a comrade he had affronted the day before; he would dine, drink, and sleep with one whom he would demolish on the morrow. His amusing paradoxes excused everything. Accepting the whole world as a jest, he did not want to be taken seriously; young, beloved, almost famous and contented, he did not devote himself, like Finot, to acquiring the ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac

... only playing," he said suavely. "A little discussion—a mere jest. Our friend Stefanone ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford

... discussed all things in heaven or earth with a baffling lightness, turned philosophy into a witty jest and made a sort of slang of classical terminology. Amongst a clever set in London she reigned supreme when she chose; but a false note or a pose offended her immediately, and the poseur or the insincere person would generally receive one of her exquisite snubs which cut like acid ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan

... similar story to this in one of our old English jest-books, Tales and Quicke Answeres, 1535, as follows (I have modernised the spelling): As an astronomer [i.e. an astrologer] sat upon a time in the market place, and took upon him to divine and to show what their fortunes and chances ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston

... He could not explain in any way the change in the Prince's demeanour. And he would have been inclined to take his strange answers for a not too delicate jest, had not the frigid, impenetrable expression of his face at once excluded ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann

... seems that when they began to set to work about noon yesterday, the Duchess of Milan could not contain her amazement at seeing my wife sewing with as much vigour and energy as any old woman. And my wife told her that, whatever she did, whether it were jest or earnest, she liked to throw her whole heart into it and try and do it as well as possible. Certainly in this case she succeeded perfectly, and the skill and grace with which she carried out her idea gave ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright

... thee, Nym, and send thee a wise council!" said she, half in earnest and half in jest. "The whole realm ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt

... I jest heard where you are and how you are. You are alone and I'm alone. We are both two old ships that have sailed the seas alone and now we're nearing port. Why can't we make the rest of the voyage together? I have a home ...
— Drusilla with a Million • Elizabeth Cooper

... frequently remarked when for purposes of business he wished to air his Biblical knowledge, "I jest takes the Scripter fur my motter an' foller that ol' passage where it says, 'Make hay while the sun shines, fur the night cometh when no man ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... the jubilant patentee told me that it was the quickest scheme for extinguishing life ever invented—patented Anno Christi Eighteen Hundred Ninety-five. Verily we live in the age of the Push-Button! And as I sat there I heard a laugh that was a quaver, and the sound of a stout cane emphasizing a jest struck against the ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard

... Wittenberg, enjoying a harmless jest at Jena by the way. There his disguise of red mantle and doublet so deceived fellow-travellers that they told him their intention of going to see Martin Luther return, without realizing that they were speaking to ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead

... this as a jest; for over the shoulders of the Indian fell immense masses of jet black hair, which seemed to give contradiction to the statement of his being ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid

... each other. This seemed a heartless jest indeed! And it wasn't a bit like their father to tease them when they were in trouble. And real trouble ...
— Marjorie's Busy Days • Carolyn Wells

... custom, he went into her room that evening, he soon became aware that Miss Burgoyne did not at all treat this matter as a jest. ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black

... and brisk discourse as by the air of Campanian wines; and our faces and our heads may as well be anointed and look pleasant with wit and friendly intercourse as with the fat of the balsam tree; and such a conversation no wise man ever did or ought to reprove. But when the jest hath teeth and nails, biting or scratching our brother,—when it is loose and wanton,—when it is unseasonable, and much, or many,—when it serves ill-purposes, or spends better time,—then it is the drunkenness ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate

... o' me, Mr. Johns, for droppin' a word about this matter?" says the Deacon, rising to leave. "And while I think on 't, Parson, I see the sill under the no'theast corner o' the meetin'-house has a little settle to it. I've jest been cuttin' a few sticks o' good smart chestnut timber; and if the Committee thinks best, I could haul down one or two on 'em for repairs. It won't cost nigh as much as pine lumber, and it's every ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various

... follow them, and comply with their humor as far as decency will permit; knowing very well that men cannot exercise their rhetoric unless they speak, but may their philosophy even whilst they are silent or jest merrily, nay, whilst they are piqued upon or repartee. For it is not only (as Plato says) the highest degree of injustice not to be just and yet seem so; but it is the top of wisdom to philosophize, yet not appear to do it; ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... faults, your intoxication, your passion for gambling; I have not dismissed you, although you have deserved it a hundred times; and now, when for the first time you can be useful to me, you have not the courage. I wished to try you. What I said was only a jest. To-morrow, Julio, you will leave my service. You are a liar ...
— The Amulet • Hendrik Conscience

... she wanted the matter treated confidential," explained Judge Priest. "So I respected whut I took to be her wishes in the matter. But wasn't it fur all the world jest ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb

... have a man drubbed if you want to laugh, and do your rogueries with a pleasant grin if you are inclined to heroism. Ridolfo, reading Selvaggia's sheaf of rhymes that night, was for running Master Cino through the body, jurist or no jurist; but Ugolino saw his way to a jest of the most excellent quality, and prevailed. He was much struck by the poet's preoccupation with his ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett

... opinions, always in the wrong, Was everything by starts and nothing long; But in the course of one revolving moon, Was chymist, fiddler, statesman and buffoon.... Beggar'd by fools, whom still he found too late, He had his jest, but they ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... laughable occurrence took place while we were on shore. The cutter was at anchor about ten yards from the beach. Two of the crew having an argument, one of them drew his bayonet, and made a lunge at the other in jest. Observing the natives looking on with amazement, and fancying that the men were engaged in deadly fray, it drew our attention to the scene. They no doubt came to the conclusion that we must be a desperate set of fellows, and killed one another upon the slightest provocation. At all ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat

... wonder-land of Perrault and d'Aulnoy; Murat, the veritable Prince Fanfarinet. She was presented to him in a fancy court-dress, devised for the occasion by her mother, an exact imitation of her father's uniform in miniature, with spurs, sword, and boots, all complete. The Prince was amused by the jest, and took a fancy to the child, calling her his little aide-de-camp. After a residence of several weeks in this abode, whose splendor was alloyed by not a little discomfort and squalor, the return-journey had to be accomplished in the height of summer, amid every sort of risk; ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas

... agricultural labors the Igorot is industrious, yet his humor, ever present with him, brings relief from continued toil. The harvest field is no exception, since there is much quiet gossip and jest during ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks

... that night in Schwarzburg. Occasionally, a roar of laughter arose in the distance, where some unlucky burgher had found his way into a group of students and was being made the butt of a good-humoured jest. And beneath the high, laughing tones, the perpetual hum of a thousand talking voices neither rose nor fell, but droned unceasingly like the long pedal in a fugue, whose full deep note stands still amidst the strife of moving sounds, as the sun stood while the battle was fought ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford

... "They stood around me in a ring. Norman Leofwinesson said he would carry me before a priest and marry me, so that Avalcomb might be his lawfully, whichever king got the victory. I said by no means would I wed him; sooner would I slay him. All thought that a great jest and laughed. While they were shouting I slipped between them and got up the stairs into a chamber, where I bolted the door and would not open to them, though they pounded their fists sore and cursed at me. After a while the pounding became an exertion to them, and one began ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz

... zed one neyam ez jest zo vittun vor'n as tother; and he lowz a ben caal'd straddlebob ever zunce the Island was ...
— English Dialects From the Eighth Century to the Present Day • Walter W. Skeat

... room, and 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 belongs to a gentleman, was never known in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various

... desiring to be King of Poland, at others a bishop or a monk. Of him we read that "he put out an eye to free it from a blemish which diminished his beauty. Banished by his rival, he ran to meet death in battle, and returned with glory." Another pleasant little jest was that perpetrated by Suwarrow, who, after the bloody battle of Tourtourskaya, announced the result to his mistress in an epigram of two doggerel lines. This was the terrible warrior who used to sleep almost naked in a ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne

... Origins of Religion in the style which might suit a study of the life of ballet dancers; the two MM. Halevy, the learned and the popular, would make a blunder if they exchanged styles. Yet Gibbon never denies himself a jest, and Montesquieu's Esprit des Lois was called L'Esprit sur les Lois. M. Renan's Histoire d'Israel may almost be called skittish. The French are more tolerant of those excesses than the English. It is a digression, but he who would fail can reach his end by not taking himself ...
— How to Fail in Literature • Andrew Lang

... Clarence, "I thought yesterday that you were in jest; but you must be aware that I cannot accept presents from any gentleman so much,—so much a stranger ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... then there is truth in a jest. Even yesterday, O king, as I have told thee, the beggar which thou now hearest crying aloud in the street was slain by thy soldiers with ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various

... that's a merry jest," says I, "call up Aunty. Why, say, before we get through with this tea stunt of hers that Djickyns party will be runnin' his studio works day and night shifts and rebuildin' Belgium! We're a great team, me and dear old Aunty. We've ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford

... Wellesly disregarded Haney's jest and looking him squarely in the eyes said: "I suppose, Mr. Mullford, if we keep on in this direction a matter of some twenty-five thousand miles we might reach Muletown. But don't you think we would save time if we were to turn around and travel ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly

... walked with such monotonous and terrible fidelity. He would stand off in the shadows and see her go by, sometimes alone, but more often in obscene company. And in those moments he tasted the concentrated bitterness of life. Was this really a malicious jest or a test of his endurance? To what black purpose had belated love sprung up in his heart for this woman of the streets? And to think that once he had fancied that so withering a passion was as much a matter of good form as of cosmic urging! There had been conventions in love—and styles and ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie

... "I've jest whispered to Billy Wriggs to go round t'other side, sir, along o' Mr Panton, and if you and me and Master Drew was to do the same here, I dessay ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn

... much mixed up wi' 'em. He's another cut. Oh, they ain't a-foolin' me this season of the year," he continued, as Teague Poteet shook his head doubtfully; "he ain't mustered out'n my mind yit, not by a dad-blamed sight. I'm jest a-tellin' of you; he looks spry, an' he ain't no sneak—I'll swar to that on ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris

... glass—sir, here's to your tragedy. Now, pray, no more interruption; for this scene is one continual joke, and if you open your lips in it you will break the thread of the jest. ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding

... that they must be talking chiefly of things from which great troubles might arise, in case they should be carried out. [Sidenote: Snorri's advice] He (Snorri) spoke to them: "This I misdoubt me now, that it be neither a vain thing nor a matter of jest you are talking about for such long hours together, and I hold you quite excused, even if such should be the case. Now, be so good as to tell it me and not to hide it away from me. We shall not, when gathered all together, be worse ...
— Laxdaela Saga - Translated from the Icelandic • Anonymous

... the hands of the King, he must make known to us the guarantees, by which we are to be secured. If they be agreeable to us, then we may deliberate but if we open our gates without conditions, and previous to the arrival of Alexander, Wellington and the Bourbons will make a jest of their promises, and oblige us to submit to the will of the conqueror without pity. Besides, why should we despair of the safety of France? Is the loss of a single battle, then, to decide the fate of a great nation? Have we ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon

... many times, for a lark, disguised yourself as an ordinary country proprietor or small farmer and mingled with the crowd at a fair without being recognized. What you have done for an evening in jest now attempt in earnest and for as long a period as is necessary. And to begin with, vanish from here at once ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White

... acquired the homely trick of hanging up their hats on the floor. "Flamby!" he said reproachfully, "I know you are joking, but I don't like you to say such a thing even in jest." ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer

... really a Westerner an' that's why I'm so different from most of 'em. Take your regular bonie fide Westerner an' when he dies he don't turn to dust, he turns to alkali; but when it comes my turn to settle, I'll jest natchely become the good rich soil o' ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason

... jesting, thought Elizabeth; but then Percival was in the habit, when he was in a good humour, of turning his deepest feelings into jest. The submission with which she listened to him, roused him after a time to a perception that his words were somewhat painful to her; and he relapsed into a silence which he broke by saying in an entirely different ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... us all a very merry jest, and we laughed with the same inextinguishable laughter which a practical joke, according to Homer, always used to raise in Olympus. It is one of the charms of life in the woods that it brings back the high spirits of boyhood and renews the youth of the world. Plain fun, ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke

... 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

... him to see if he was in jest or earnest. Her look staggered him a little, but he repeated his question. She cast ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner

... him. Not improbably a little of it was coquetry, as natural as a laugh to any pretty woman. But that was not what hurt him. It was to see Ruth or Rebecca, as the case might be, full of life and fun, thoroughly enjoying some jest or play, all of a sudden be strangely recalled from the wholesome pleasure of a girl to become a deep and somber woman. The crimes in the name of religion! How he thought of the blood and the ruin laid at the door of religion! ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey

... and to lie with the king's concubines. But at the end of the five days he was stripped of his royal robes, scourged, and hanged or impaled. During his brief term of office he bore the title of Zoganes. This custom might perhaps have been explained as merely a grim jest perpetrated in a season of jollity at the expense of an unhappy criminal. But one circumstance—the leave given to the mock king to enjoy the king's concubines—is decisive against this interpretation. Considering the jealous seclusion of an oriental despot's harem we may be quite ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... declared the ferryman with a chuckle. "Scairt, were you? Why didn't you git them young Winsted fellers, that jest started up, to rescue yer? Might a ben quite ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton

... dropped the jewel-case? Was it because I was startled by the jocular remark which identified the mysterious man with the person who had disturbed the steersman? That remark was made in mere jest. Yet I could not help thinking that it contained the truth. Nay, I knew that it was true; I knew by instinct. And being true, what facts were logically to be deduced from it? What aim had this mysterious man in compelling, by ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett

... man born within the sound of Bow bells. That is, he was a man born within the immediate appeal of high civilisation and of eternal religion. Shakespeare, in the heart of his fantastic forest, turns with a splendid suddenness to the Cockney ideal as being the true one after all. For a jest, for a reaction, for an idle summer love or still idler summer hatred, it is well to wander away into the bewildering forest of Arden. It is well that those who are sick with love or sick with the absence of love, those who weary of the folly of courts or weary yet more of their wisdom, ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton

... my telegram they, knowing the difficulties of my mission, deemed it incredible that I had succeeded within a day, so when my telegram came they thought I was attempting some jest. Upon my arrival in London, walking into Mac's room—he being still in bed—I announced that I had in my pocket Rothschild's bill for L6,000, drawn on the London house. He flatly refused to believe me, but when he, ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell

... done more than it had seemed possible for anyone to do? From the first she had overflowed with silent gratitude to him. There was wonder yet in the apparent ease with which he had sauntered into the prison of her life and, with a laugh and jest, set her free. He had shown her, for the first time in her life, the blessedness of receiving. Those whose nature it is to give greatly are not ungenerous to the giving of others. It is a small and selfish mind which fears to take, and Desire was neither ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay

... serious or in jest, might have caused Philemon to conceive a very great awe of the elder stranger, if, on venturing to gaze at him, he had not beheld so much beneficence in his visage. But, undoubtedly, here was the grandest figure that ever sat so humbly beside a cottage door. When the stranger ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various

... never was such a man before! She actually said to Caroline Lee, who was trying to jest with her a little, that Fisher was one of the most pure-minded, honourable ...
— Lessons in Life, For All Who Will Read Them • T. S. Arthur

... now you know for truth at least, One thing more than groan of witless beast, One thing more than jest at mumming feast, Pain is still increased, increased, increased Marking life like ...
— Perpetual Light • William Rose Benet

... might be expected to set the Thames on fire. This said with a sneer, should go splendidly at a second-rate Radical luncheon-party. On the 14th, if you receive an uncomplimentary missive, say it is less suggestive of Valentine than Orson. This capital jest should make you a welcome guest in places where they laugh until the end ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., January 3, 1891. • Various

... and he treats me none the better fer it. A week come Tuesday he stalks into the bar here, and, before my customers, he threatens to put me into the road if I fail to have the amount fer him on the due date. I jest talked back to him with no fear in me eye, and he cooled off wonderfully. I have since got the money together, and a hundred dollars to pay on the principal, and to-morrow I'm goin' to give it to him ...
— Nancy McVeigh of the Monk Road • R. Henry Mainer

... shrugged expressively, an angry light in his dark, bold eyes. "It pleases my lord to jest," he complained; "but am I a ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance

... out that way," he says. "I'd jest spied it when you spoke o' giein out. Whar thar's hills, thar's a likelihood o' streams. Sposin', Frank, you stay hyar, whiles I make tracks torst them. They look like they wa'n't mor'n ten miles off anyhow. ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid

... who is afraid to laugh and jest with her husband, lest she should appear bold and wanton, resembles one that will not anoint herself with oil lest she should be thought to use cosmetics, and will not wash her face lest she should be ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch

... tiger, carrion to the kite, And rags and bones to wicked wolves without the wall at night. Naught he found too lofty, none he saw too low— Parbati beside him watched them come and go; Thought to cheat her husband, turning Shiv to jest— Stole the little grasshopper and hid it in her breast. So she tricked him, Shiva the Preserver. Mahadeo! Mahadeo! turn and see! Tall are the camels, heavy are the kine, But this was Least of Little Things, ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling

... 'Oh Adam!' sez she, 'Oh Adam! 'aven't I got enough to bear but you must make it 'arder for me?' An' I see the tears in her eyes while she said it. Me make it 'arder for her! Jest as if I wouldn't make things lighter for 'er if I could,—which I can't; jest as if, to help Miss Anthea, I wouldn't let 'em take me an'—well, ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol

... boys never growl at me, because I love them; and he does not look as if he really had a leg to stand on," she replied smilingly. But the boy nervously persisted. "Please let him go—his legs is all right. He looks kind o' run down jest now 'cause he"—the boy felt a tightening at his throat, and winked hard to keep the tears from starting again—"'cause he ain't got much appetite. But when he's eatin' good his legs is jest great. Why, there ain't no other dog in Golconda that's got as strong legs as Baldy when ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling

... Jest about the time when Fall Gits to rattlin' in the trees, An' the man thet knows it all, 'Spicions frost in every breeze, When a person tells hisse'f Thet the leaves look mighty thin, Then thar blows a meller breaf! Ingin ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various

... most of the animals were very thirsty, and in a great hurry to drink, they did not care to dispute the matter, but gabbled off the words without a second thought. Even the royal tiger, treating it as a jest, repeated the jackal's rhyme, in consequence of which the latter became quite cock-a-hoop, and really began to believe he was ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel

... creature," she replied, "do not think me such a simpleton as to be always wanting to confine him to my elbow. It would be hideous to be always together; we should be the jest of the place. And so you are going to Northanger! I am amazingly glad of it. It is one of the finest old places in England, I understand. I shall depend upon a ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... faltering accents, "jest not with my feelings. Be not cruel in your pity. Tell me ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown

... kept near the poor, timid girl, aiding her to bind up the full-eared corn, and carrying it himself for her to the mows, into which they were hastily forming the sheaves for fear of rain. He could not resist occasionally alluding to Mr David Jones, but receiving no encouragement to carry out the jest, and finding her as silent and shy as a frightened child, he gave up the subject, and with it all attempt at conversation. He declared afterwards that she worked like a slave, and knew all about harvesting as ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale

... front door, crocheting a lamp-mat when I saw her last," said "Bill." "She's older'n she was, Miss Posie. But everything in the house looked jest the same. Your ma asked me to set down. 'Don't touch that willow rocker, William,' says she. 'It ain't been moved since Posie left; and that's the apron she was hemmin', layin' over the arm of it, jist as she flung it. I'm in hopes,' she goes on, 'that Posie'll ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry

... sword, and a command is to thee, if thy heart cannot acquiesce with all things, with meekness and patience to suffer. Discontent in the mind sometimes puts discontent into the mouth; and discontent in the mouth doth sometimes also put a halter about thy neck. For as a man speaking a word in jest may for that be hanged in earnest, so he that speaks in discontent may die for it in sober sadness. Above all, get thy conscience possessed more and more with this, that the magistrate is God's ordinance, and is ordered of God as such; ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude

... frolic wind that breathes the spring Zephyr, with Aurora playing, As he met her once a-Maying— There, on beds of violets blue And fresh-blown roses wash'd in dew Fill'd her with thee, a daughter fair, So buxom, blithe, and debonair. Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with thee Jest, and youthful jollity, Quips, and cranks, and wanton wiles, Nods, and becks, and wreathed smiles Such as hang on Hebe's cheek, And love to live in dimple sleek; Sport that wrinkled Care derides, And Laughter ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... much of a man without a wife as with one, is just as reasonable as to expect a half-finished house to be as beautiful as a finished one. It is impossible for an unmarried man, other things being equal, to be as agreeable a companion as a married man; and lest I be suspected of a jest in this statement, I wish to assure my reader that I am entirely in earnest. Intimate contact with the nature of a good woman, in the relation of marriage, is just as necessary to the completeness of manhood, as the details of an architectural design are to the homely ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb

... the reveries of boating-parties on the Nerbada. 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 ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various

... "I weep over his recreancy? It is a far-fetched jest, my Blanche; can you invent no better? The ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle

... spoke in jest, laddie,' said Archie, gravely; 'when we get to the Deil's Lead we may find ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume

... companions. Even these latter were at length sensible that they had gone too far, and, as their better feelings returned, they sought to assure the offended object of their pleasantry that what they had uttered was merely in jest; but finding he received these disclaimers in moody silence, they renewed their attack, nor discontinued it until they separated for their mutual quarters ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson

... "you may think I'm young to be a'visin' o' you, Sir. But jest mark my words—you cawn' be too keerful what comp'ny yer gits familyer with. I gits off 'ere. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 26, 1891 • Various

... do! You have arrived at such a pitch of folly or madness or—I know not what to call it: I am tempted often to think that some evil genius is driving you to ruin—that for the sake of scandal or envy or jest or any other cause, you command hirelings to speak (some of whom would not deny themselves to be hirelings), and laugh when they abuse people. And this, bad as it is, is not the worst; you have allowed these persons more liberty for their political ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... dejected. It happened even (very rarely however) that Fyodor Pavlovitch went at night to the lodge to wake Grigory and fetch him for a moment. When the old man came, Fyodor Pavlovitch would begin talking about the most trivial matters, and would soon let him go again, sometimes even with a jest. And after he had gone, Fyodor Pavlovitch would get into bed with a curse and sleep the sleep of the just. Something of the same sort had happened to Fyodor Pavlovitch on Alyosha's arrival. Alyosha "pierced his heart" by "living with him, seeing everything and blaming nothing." Moreover, ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... glee, for, if all went well, his little jest would be a brilliant success, and by daybreak his would be the foremost vessel of the squadron, and therefore the first to come up with the ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood

... deserve to be 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

... upon little gallantries. Presented to Mme. Tallien, he was frequently seen at her receptions. He was at first shy and reserved, but time and custom put him more at his ease. One evening, as little groups were gradually formed for the interchange of jest and repartee, he seemed to lose his timidity altogether, and, assuming the mien of a fortune-teller, caught his hostess's hand, and poured out a long rigmarole of nonsense which much amused ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... been equally imprudent in his utterances on some of the certainties of Calvinistic divinity. It was easy to collect any amount of evidence under both these heads. The system of kirk discipline offered a ready-made machinery of espionage and delation. The standing jest of the fifteenth century on the "governante" of the cure was replaced, in Calvinistic countries, by the anxiety of every minister to detect his brother minister in any intimacy upon which a scandalous construction could ...
— Milton • Mark Pattison

... is that the Negro has such a contagious brand of humor that many people never realize that this plays only on the surface. The real background of the race is one of tragedy. It is not in current jest but in the wail of the old melodies that the soul of this people is found. There is something elemental about the heart of the race, something that finds its origin in the forest and in the falling of the stars. There is something grim about it too, something that speaks of the lash, of ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley

... 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 of ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss

... "Buff, you're jest what old Jim said you was," thundered Rea, as he surveyed the gray pile. "Here's winter meat, an' I'd not have given a biscuit for all the meat ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey

... was, too, my lads, to run through a gap that way. And now look here, you, jest recklect all this; you've both got your necks in nooses, and Mr Brymer here's got hold o' the other ends of the ropes, so as he can pull 'em any time he likes, and he will too if you don't stick pretty close to your dooty. That's ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn

... man, so don't say anything more about it. If you was the only feller in this city what had passed a lead nickel, perhaps this thing would look different to me; but the way I reckon it is, that the man what put the advertisement in the paper jest 'cause he'd been done out'er five cents is a mighty poor citizen, an' I stand ready to do all I can towards keepin' ...
— Aunt Hannah and Seth • James Otis

... glory and the imperishable hope of man. He looked up into the vast countenance of the crouching Sphinx and vainly tried to read the meaning of her calm eyes and smiling mouth. Was it, indeed, the mockery of all effort and all aspiration, as Tigranes had said—the cruel jest of a riddle that has no answer, a search that never can succeed? Or was there a touch of pity and encouragement in that inscrutable smile—a promise that even the defeated should attain a victory, and the disappointed should discover a prize, and the ignorant should be made wise, ...
— The Story of the Other Wise Man • Henry Van Dyke

... wrinkelder, older and grayer Right now than my parents was then, You strike up that song "Do They Miss Me," And I'm jest a youngster again!— I'm a-standin' back thare in the furries A-wishin' fer evening to come, And a-whisperin' over and over Them words "Do They Miss Me ...
— Riley Love-Lyrics • James Whitcomb Riley

... a jest. "Let us talk seriously," he said to Prince della Mirandola. "Tell me what merit one can have in telling God that one is persuaded of things of which in fact one cannot be persuaded? What pleasure can that give God? Between ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire

... the universe. Almost with a fierce haste it lays its empire on the man. In the language of the Koran, "God said, the heaven and the earth, and all that is between them, think ye that we created them in jest, and that ye shall not return to us?" It is the kingdom of the will, and by inspiring the will, which is the seat of personality, seems to convert the ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... ther ghost come out yere jest ez easy ez he kin' go inter ther house—that is, if he's a ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor

... spoken by me before, O blessed lady, even in jest. What need then be said of (such a solemn occasion as) preparing sanctified food with the aid of Vedic formulae after igniting the fire? It was ordained of yore by Destiny, O amiable one! I have ascertained it all by my penances. All the descendants of thy father ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... see anythin', old man, but I 'll scout 'round thar a bit, jest ter ease yer mind, an' see ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish

... thither and invited them all, in jest, to some ladies' punch, hot, strong and sweet. As they said they never took anything strong, he opened three bottles of lemonade for them. Then he asked one of the young men to move aside, and, taking hold of the decanter, filled out for himself a goodly measure of whisky. The young men ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce

... we'se dun surrounded. I was jest a-gittin' de grapes when I seed a'most a thousand Injuns a-comin,' an' I dun run my life a'most out a-gittin' here. Dey did not see me, but I seed dem, an' I tell you dey's de biggest Injuns you ever did see. I 'clar dey's mos' ...
— The Big Brother - A Story of Indian War • George Cary Eggleston

... Chambers Street, expecting him every moment to join them. Perhaps he was detained, he might come yet at twelve, they said, trying to comfort Katy, who, with a sad foreboding, went back into the parlor, and tried to join in the laugh and jest which seemed almost like mockery. Something had happened to Wilford she was sure when the night train did not bring him; and all the next day, while the Sunday bells pealed their music in her ears, and the sounds of thoughtless mirth came up from the room below, where the elaborate dinner was ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes

... cried the man, half in jest and half in earnest. "This kind of thing will never do. You mustn't joke about that, old girl, else I'll have you up for breach ...
— Life in the Red Brigade - London Fire Brigade • R.M. Ballantyne

... contemporary with them, and unto those who came after them, and a warning to the pious. And when Moses said unto his people, Verily God commandeth you to sacrifice a cow;[28] they answered, Dost thou make a jest of us? Moses said, God forbid that I should be one of the foolish. They said, Pray for us unto thy Lord, that he would show us what cow it is. Moses answered, He saith, She is neither an old cow, nor a young heifer, but of a middle-age between both: do ye therefore ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various

... thou'rt the favored guest Of every fair and brilliant throng; No wit like thine to wake the jest, No voice like thine to breathe the song; And none could guess, so gay thou art, That thou and ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... social entertainment, (especially by music, play, and jest): nom. sg. r ws gidd ...
— Beowulf • James A. Harrison and Robert Sharp, eds.

... stifled this cry of returning anguish, and found strength enough to affect a brutish gaiety: "The devil!" said he, "they have plenty of impudence. I hope we shall see them married and bedded at once!" Then regretting this coarse jest which had been prompted by the revolt of passion, he sought to appear indifferent: "She looks very nice this evening," he said; "she has the finest shoulders in the world, you know, and its a real success for her to hide them and yet ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... expression and action. It is the first time, too, that we meet with the dramatic power which not only creates each character but combines it with its fellows, which not only adjusts each tale or jest to the temper of the person who utters it but fuses all into a poetic unity. It is life in its largeness, its variety, its complexity, which surrounds us in the "Canterbury Tales." In some of the stories indeed, which were composed no doubt at an earlier time, there is the tedium ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green

... "Only a jest," I said hurriedly; "your escape is the one to be thankful for. You might have married him, like the young woman in The Sybarites. You remember, do you not, that the hero of that book sacrifices himself for the lady who adores him, but whom he ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... uncomfortably. "That would please the American," he said, trying to jest, but his hand trembled as he touched the stem of his cigar-holder to shake ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers

... average about four inches long, its height being just half that distance. When you look closer at those which are least worn away you will find them clearly enough carved to represent unmistakably in one instance the peculiar reverted eye of a dog gnawing something in jest, and ready to run away with it; in another, the wrinkled skin that is pressed over a cheekbone by an angry fist; in a third, the growth of wing ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook

... betray even their own countrymen for a bribe. In general, the morality of these peaceful allies of ours is completely corrupted; they have lost the courage of an independent people, and have acquired all the vices of half-civilization. Among them an oath is a jest; treachery, their glory; even hospitality, a trade. Each of them is ready to engage himself to the Russians in the morning, as a kounak (friend), and at night to guide a brigand ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various

... problems air jest ornery like the weeds. They grow in soil that oughta nourish only decent deeds, An' they waste our time an' fret us when, if we were thinkin' straight An' livin' right, they wouldn't be so terrible and great. A good horse needs no snaffle, an' a good man, I opine, Doesn't need ...
— All That Matters • Edgar A. Guest

... prepared by chewing, supposing him to have had the sense to chew it, of course. It was not from a comparison with man, therefore, that Menenius ought to have got his boasted apologue, which was but a poor jest on the subject. ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace

... sincere in her voice that Jimmy saw that she was speaking the truth, that it was only the jest of a flapper used to ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne

... her hands towards the doctor. "What am I to do now with the rest of my life? Who is there to laugh with me now and jest? ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells

... if so be you should feel it comin' on, jest tip me the office—I've a lemon in my pocket. There's some, being groggy, as nat'rally turns to a sup o' rum or brandy, but the best thing as I knows on to pull a man together is a squeeze o' lemon and—here comes the rest ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol

... you were not at all annoyed at my pleasantries to Mr. Pinion. I am not exactly one of those men who would rather lose a friend than a joke, but I find it hard to resist a joke when a good opportunity presents itself. I am bound to say that I would be sorry to annoy you, by a jest or in any other way." His temper was lively but though quickly roused soon subsided, and he never harboured resentment. At the conclusion of the very first Board meeting I attended as general manager at the County Down, he ...
— Fifty Years of Railway Life in England, Scotland and Ireland • Joseph Tatlow

... goods Is but one thing in all its moods." He took a shagreen letter case From his pocket, and with charming grace Offered me a printed card. I read the legend, "Ephraim Bard. Dealer in Words." And that was all. I stared at the letters, whimsical Indeed, or was it merely a jest. He answered my unasked request: "All books are either dreams or swords, You can cut, or you can drug, with words. My firm is a very ancient house, The entries on my books would rouse Your wonder, perhaps incredulity. I inherited from an ancestry Stretching remotely back and far, This business, ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell

... there was something strange in his manner that morning. She did not know what it was, but had she held any clew to his thoughts she would have perceived that Bertie was astonished and bewildered. He looked as if a dream had suddenly become a reality, as if a jest had turned into marvellous earnest. He smoked his pipe, leaning by the open window, with a serious and almost awestruck expression in his eyes. One might have fancied that he was transformed visibly to himself, and was perplexed to find that the change was invisible to others. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various

... buzzum 'nd the water to my eyes; 'Nd seems like cookin' nowadays ain't what it used to be In camp on Red Hoss Mountain in that year of '63; But, maybe, it is better, 'nd, maybe, I'm to blame— I'd like to be a-livin' in the mountains jest the same— I'd like to live that life again when skies wuz fair 'nd blue, When things wuz run wide open 'nd men wuz brave 'nd true; When brawny arms the flinty ribs of Red Hoss Mountain smote For wherewithal to pay the price of Casey's ...
— A Little Book of Western Verse • Eugene Field

... you go on the last plan. If you are ordered to land first, why land first it must be. If you don't get orders to land first, just let them as is in a hurry land afore you. I ain't been teaching all these lads to know something about the woods, for the last six months, jest to see them killed off like flies, because a blundering wrong-headed colonel sends them out with two hundred and fifty ploughmen, for the redskins to see and attack jest when ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty

... to with growing perplexity. Was D'Arcy in jest or earnest? He seemed to be in earnest, and the serious faces of his listeners looked like it too. Had the captain really made that remark to Denton? Suppose there was something in it! Suppose, without his knowing, he was really a little queer ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed

... you ever know a county detective to arrest a prominent woman at a race-track as a little jest between friends? There's no joke, Aunt Tish. You've financed a phony race. The permit is taken in your name—L.L. Carberry. Whatever car wins, you and Ellis take the prize money, half the gate receipts, and what you have made out of ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... anger, is what we make matter of reproach against him. But then, do we admit into our state the comic writers who are so fond of making mankind ridiculous, if they attempt in a good-natured manner to turn the laugh against our citizens? or do we draw the distinction of jest and earnest, and allow a man to make use of ridicule in jest and without anger about any thing or person; though as we were saying, not if he be angry and have a set purpose? We forbid earnest—that is unalterably ...
— Laws • Plato

... which she at first believed to be a jest on her brother's part, Isabelle started, trembled violently, and then glanced up timidly at ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier

... of one of the oldest families in Poitou, had served the Bourbon cause with intelligence and bravery during the war in La Vendee against the Republic. After having escaped all the dangers which threatened the royalist leaders during this stormy period of modern history, he was wont to say in jest, "I am one of the men who gave themselves to be killed on the steps of the throne." And the pleasantry had some truth in it, as spoken by a man left for dead at the bloody battle of Les Quatre Chemins. Though ruined by confiscation, the staunch Vendeen steadily ...
— The Ball at Sceaux • Honore de Balzac

... Paul, trying to pass over the matter as a jest, though in reality he was boiling over with rage at the manner and tone of the painter, and considered his ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau

... Beedle, so it must be trew, that ever so many of what's called Comishunners of Suers had cum a tearing down stairs from their place up above, a cussin and a swearin like mad, becoz the Kumpany as was a jest beginnin for to lite up our streets with Lectrissity. had writtin for to say as they coodn't get it dun for more nor another year. Well that was bad enutf for them as likes that tell-tail lite, "but wuss ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 19, 1891 • Various

... think I am in the mood for joking?' he said, at last. 'Have you ever heard me jest on such subjects, Miss Garston? I thought we agreed on ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... to show them to their room, but Aggie said, "We'll nae sleep in your bed. We'll jest bide in the kitchen." I could not persuade her to change her mind. Tam slept at the barn in order to see after the "beasties," should they need attention during the night. As I was preparing for bed, Aggie thrust her head into my room and announced that she would be up at ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart

... both of which Jenner was a member, he so frequently enlarged upon his favorite theme, and so repeatedly insisted upon the value of cow-pox as a prophylactic, that he was denounced as a nuisance, and in a jest it was even proposed that if the orator further sinned, he should then and there be expelled. Nowhere could the prophet find a disciple and enforce the lesson upon the ignorant; like most benefactors of mankind he had to do his work unaided. Patiently and perseveringly ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... well-brought up young woman," he said,—half in earnest and half in jest. "Do you think it's correct to telephone to strange young men? I'm shocked! that's ...
— Patty's Suitors • Carolyn Wells

... representation on the flat by the water-side. One of the actors suddenly stopped in the middle of his role, and gazing up the river, screamed out the now familiar by-word, 'Shui lai-la!' This repetition of the stock jest, with well-simulated terror, as it seemed to the merry-makers, drew shouts of laughter; but the echoes of the laugh were drowned in the roar of a deluge. I was told how the gleeful faces turned to horror as the flood swept on ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall

... time, though all his sensations were more or less new to him. And his mother's sudden and rather eccentric opposition unexpectedly strengthened his determination. He might laugh at what he called her originality, but he could not afford to jest at the prospect of her giving Clare an account of his life. She was quite capable of it, ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford

... Yussuf, I did but jest; five years, as you observe, have passed away without a day's intermission of your enjoyment, nor is it probable that the caliph will ever issue such a ridiculous and unheard-of decree. I only observed, that supposing ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat

... were they with these incessant alarms. But Rigby, on whom devolved the plan and conduct of the siege, seeing that their affairs were in no thriving condition, but that rather they were the scoff and jest of the garrison, who daily taunted them from the walls, determined at all hazards to raise his cannon. For this purpose a considerable number of the peasantry and poorer sort in the neighbourhood, and for miles round, were driven like beasts to their daily work, labouring unremittingly at ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... turned by becoming, for the first time, the actual and uncontrolled owner of a watch, or a fowling-piece, than of a stern warrior, or savage chief. He could not, with all his efforts, maintain sufficient gravity and self-possession, to carry out the jest, poor as it was, which he had undertaken; but kept glancing towards our hiding-place, and finally, burst into a boisterous explosion of laughter; when Olla, peeping into the thicket, caught sight of us, and instantly darted away with a pretty half-scream, and rejoined ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer

... difference in droppin' a egg on the kitchen floor and breakin' it calm-like, in a saucer, ain't only the muss on the floor. You save the egg. Just recent I come nigh to losin' my whole basket. You all know who saved 'em. Not namin' any names, the same person, by jest bein' herself, and kind to everybody, put me wise to the fact that money and clothes ain't all that goes to make a man. And, at the same time, speakin' kind of orthodoxical, money and clothes has a whole lot to do with makin' a man. I just got hep ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs

... the old face there came again that curious smile as if she carried in her heart some jest fit for the ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various

... beach with some of the slaves, and we saw a sloop come in loaded with slaves to work in the salt water. We got a boat and went aboard. When I came upon the deck I asked the black people, "Is there any one here for me?" "Yes," they said, "your mother." I thought they said this in jest—I could scarcely believe them for joy; but when I saw my poor mammy my joy was turned to sorrow, for she had gone from her senses. "Mammy," I said, "is this you?" She did not know me. "Mammy," I said, "what's the matter?" She began to talk foolishly, and said that she had been ...
— The History of Mary Prince - A West Indian Slave • Mary Prince

... sight of what is going on. The fact is, I did not know how I was to live when I came into this house. Any negligence in being much more ceremonious with people than they deserve is not taken as a jest; on the contrary, they look upon it as an insult deliberately offered; so that it becomes necessary for you to satisfy them of your good intentions, if there happens, as I have said, to have been any negligence; and even then, God grant they ...
— The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus • Teresa of Avila

... I follered last year, when I went into the mountains, or I'm the worst sold man you ever saw. It led me jest to where we all want to go, 'zackly as I ...
— Two Arrows - A Story of Red and White • William O. Stoddard

... ends in my obeying her—seldom in her obeying me. But we'll see how I feel when the last act's over. We'll talk of it when you come here—after my death." I tried to laugh, as I made that wretched jest, but I was sorry when I made it, and my laugh didn't ring true. There was a shadow on Raoul's face—that dear, sensitive face of his which shows too much feeling for a man in this work-a-day, strenuous world—but I had little ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson

... been snatched from the jaws of death was absolutely appalling. The moment they escaped, they found their way to the bar and the stove, and there they were smoking, drinking, and passing the ribald jest, even before the wreck had gone to pieces, or the fate of one-half of their companions been ascertained. Yet there was a scene before their eyes sufficient, one would have imagined, to have softened the hardest heart and made the most thoughtless think. There, among ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray

... splendid and extensive town, and that Sridama is in great affliction at the disappearance of his wife, when he is seen and solicited by a Kanchuli or chamberlain, who calls himself his servant, to enter a stately palace. Sridama, thinking this is a jest upon his poverty, threatens to beat him if he does not depart, but the chamberlain perseveres, and tells him that while he was absent, Krishna had converted his cottage into a town, named after him Sridamapur, and supplied it with every article of use or luxury. With ...
— Tales from the Hindu Dramatists • R. N. Dutta

... her blowzy bonnet into his: a young face, deadly pale, on which some awful passion had cut the lines; lips dyed scarlet with rank blood, lips, you would think, that in hell itself would utter a coarse jest. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... limbs and brains, reduced the spirits and strength of the men. They became gaunt, hollow-eyed, tattered, unshorn, uncombed, unkempt, yet they toiled on, silent—save when they cursed and railed at fate—dogged, fiercely purposeful, resolved to die rather than turn back. Song and jest were rarely heard in any boat; haggard fellows tugged at the oars, or lay dreamily watching the sail as it filled with the welcome breeze. Their patience being sapped by disappointment and privation, they were no longer the kindly "white ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan

... at a dinner-table talk is one thing; a report of it in the morning papers is another. One needs the lamplight and the scenery. These failing, what was meant in jest assumes a ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... shrugged his shoulders and looked dubiously ahead, but gave no other sign. Gaily they drank the skipper's health and pledged the Idaho in her best champagne. Long they lingered over the table and laughter, jest and song and story enlivened the hours that came to an end at last, and Pancha stole her little hand within Loring's arm for the last starlight walk along the now familiar decks, and lo, when they issued from the brightly-lighted saloon ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King

... misery, degradation, and premature death. They will indulge In the most degrading of all vices with prostitutes on the street. They will defile the atmosphere of social life with filthy talk and ribald jest. Even a clean and ennobling passion can do little to redeem them. The pure stream of human love is made turbid with lust. After a temporary uplifting in marriage the soul is again dragged down, marriage ...
— Youth and Sex • Mary Scharlieb and F. Arthur Sibly

... he had been at Fellside the difference of opinion might have given rise to their first quarrel. But as she had a few hours' leisure for reflection before the post went out, she had time to get over her anger, and to remember that promise of obedience given, half in jest, half in earnest, at the little inn beyond Dunmail Raise. So she wrote submissively enough, only with just a touch of reproach at Jack's want of compassion for a poor old man who had such ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... Brighton is still the Pavilion, which is indeed the town's symbol. On passing through its very numerous and fantastic rooms one is struck by their incredible smallness. Sidney Smith's jest (if it were his; I find Wilberforce, the Abolitionist, saying something similar) is still unimproved: "One would think that St. Paul's Cathedral had come to Brighton and pupped." Cobbett in his rough and homely way also said something to the point ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas

... fine day it is, and how they missed you yesterday, and they hope nothing was the matter at home. Among them are brazen jades who chatter saucily with the guards, and these are the best treated of all. They are asked no gruff, surly questions, but with a wink and a jest in they go. ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg

... not deserve to sleep. You have done nothing to tire you. And you are empty, dry and thirsty. Serves you right!" Of course you recognize the allusion to the story of Tithonus, so beautifully told by Tennyson. The girl's jest has a double meaning. The word "importunate" has the signification of a wearisome repetition of a request, a constant asking, impossible to satisfy. Tithonus was supposed to complain because he was obliged to live although he wanted to die. ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn

... a looking glass held before me, and every wrinkle must be made as conspicuous as a furrow—And what, pray, is to succeed to this reformation?—I can neither fast nor pray, I doubt.—And besides, if my stomach and my jest depart from ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson

... was falsehood spoken by me before, O blessed lady, even in jest. What need then be said of (such a solemn occasion as) preparing sanctified food with the aid of Vedic formulae after igniting the fire? It was ordained of yore by Destiny, O amiable one! I have ascertained it all by my penances. All the descendants of thy father will be possessed ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown

... upon us all. She pushed at Anita. "I want him." She saw me; this whimsical Venus girl! Even here as we gathered, all of us blurred by shock, confused in the dim, wrecked ship with the chill of death coming—even here she could jest. Her ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings

... - t and write, and mend honest Bog's Trade, For when you sh - - t Rhymes, you help him to Bread: He'el feed on a Jest, that is broke with your Wind, And fatten on what you ...
— The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany - Parts 2, 3 and 4 • Hurlo Thrumbo (pseudonym)

... been a mark for mockery:—a standing butt for wit to level at. Jest after jest hath been huddled upon her close cap, and stuck, like burrs, upon her weeds. Her sables are ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... an amusing jest, saying that the chiefs must be in a desperate state to send him such a proposition. "Go, and tell these fools," he said, "that all whom I shall find in full possession of all the powers of the manly age shall have their lives, ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris

... in camp here! Who'd a suspected sich a thing, away up in this kentry, too. Lots o' pluck to come so fur, fellers; how's the huntin' now, and I hopes as how ye ain't settin' up in business as rivals ter me, ha! ha! In course I seen yer blaze jest a ways back, an' thinks I, what's the use in bunkin' alone ternight, Stackpole, yer old timber-cruiser, when thar's companionable chaps near by who won't object p'raps ter sharin' ther fire with ye? So I tolddled along a little further, an' here I be. Jest say as I'm welcome, ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne

... she have said, during that moment, whether she most desired that he should have utterly forgotten her, or that he should remember her and claim her as his wife? Probably she would not have hesitated to say that worse than either would be that he should recognise her only to slight her, and make a jest, maybe, of the memories that were his and ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... "You jest put your hand on me, you big, overgrown sawney! That's all I'm a-waitin' for. You 'tack me and I'll have you in the caboose, sure's my name's ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr

... ruling it in a kingly way and crowning all its loveliness. In the Middle Ages hardly anything but vice could be caricatured, because virtue was always visibly and personally noble: now virtue itself is apt to inhabit such poor human bodies, that no aspect of it is invulnerable to jest; and for all fairness we have to seek to the flowers, for all ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin

... knowin' it—an' no one knowin' it—nor gettin' the good of it. Sime as if—" pondering hard in search of simile, "sime as if no one 'ad never knowed about 'lectricity, an' there wasn't no 'lectric lights nor no 'lectric nothin'. Onct nobody knowed, an' all the sime it was there—jest waitin'." ...
— The Dawn of a To-morrow • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... was dying of thirst; no pool or stream or well anywhere along the road. A wave of dust rose from the white, wild sides of a small canyon, swayed mistily on the hoary crest of huizache trees and the greenish stumps of cactus. Like a jest, the flowers in the cactus opened out, fresh, solid, aflame, ...
— The Underdogs • Mariano Azuela

... plays, together with the 1594 and 1655 editions of Lucrece, the 1594 and 1596 editions of Venus and Adonis, and the first editions of the Sonnets and Poems. The library also contained a large number of early Jest-Books, Drolleries, Garlands and Penny-Histories; and among the rare editions of English writers were works by John Skelton, Edmund Spenser, Anthony Chute, Robert Chester, Anthony Munday, Ben Jonson, Patrick Hannay, George Herbert, Robert Herrick, ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher

... place. I divined on the instant that this was his habit, to stand by the door before supper and say just those words to the last arrivals. I had a vision of him standing by his mission door aforetime, repeating one jest, or more likely one stale euphuism night ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy

... "Don't jest," said Clemence, shuddering. "You can't think, Ulrica, how all this pains me. I never dreamed of such a result of my efforts, but rather supposed, if we tried to do 'what their hand found to do,' patiently, they would be borne out in their undertakings. I am innocent ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock

... can afford to stop at hotels like the Savoy in the height of the season,' I replied, thinking that the jest would end there, and that he would now reveal his identity and speak of the tiara. To my surprise, however, he did nothing ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs

... banter him; at the fame time our numerous throng of Parnassians may see Reasons for the variety of the Negative and Positive Blessings they enjoy; some for having Wit and no Verse, some Verse and no Wit, some Mirth without Jest, some Jest without Fore-cast, some Rhyme and no Jingle, some all Jingle and no Rhyme, some Language without measure; some all Quantity and no Cudence, some all Wit and no Sence, some all Sence and no Flame, some Preach in ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe

... PIKE. Oh, I'm jest crossing the Rubicon. Your father used to have a saying: "If you're going to cross the Rubicon, cross it. Don't wade out to the middle and stand there; you only get ...
— The Man from Home • Booth Tarkington and Harry Leon Wilson

... graves, then travelling on. Once she heard that he was a coureur des bois on the prairies, again that he was a voyageur in the Louisiana lowlands; but those of his people who kept near her inclined to jest at her faith and urged her to marry Leblanc, the notary's son, who truly loved her. To these ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner

... was speaking with such grim irony, and Pennington by his side was hugging the tree. Shells and shot shrieked over their heads and countless bullets hummed about them. The soldiers also had taken shelter behind the trees, and Warner's jest about the officers was a jest only. Nevertheless the Southern fire was great in volume and accuracy. Bowen was an able commander with excellent men, and from his position that covered the meeting of the roads he swept both Union columns with a ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler

... month's holiday with a merely mellifluous man. If an author's style has pleased you, but done nothing except make you giggle, then reflect upon the ultimate tediousness of the man who can do nothing but jest. On the other hand, if you are impressed by what an author has said to you, but are aware of verbal clumsinesses in his work, you need worry about his "bad style" exactly as much and exactly as little as you would worry about the manners of a kindhearted, keen-brained ...
— Literary Taste: How to Form It • Arnold Bennett

... left us, we used to hold long and frequent conversations about them, and I noticed that Peterkin's manner was now much altered. He did not, indeed, jest less heartily than before, but he did so less frequently, and often there was a tone of deep seriousness in his manner, if not in his words, which made him seem to Jack and me as if he had grown two years older within a few days. But indeed I was ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne

... considered unlucky to have the holly brought into the house before Christmas Eve, so throughout the week merry parties of young people were out in the woods gathering green boughs, and on Christmas Eve, with jest and song, they came in laden with branches ...
— Yule-Tide in Many Lands • Mary P. Pringle and Clara A. Urann

... camp stool in one hand and a rosary in the other, he follows Sada San like the shadow on a sun dial. Wherever she is seated, there is the stool and the royal youth, his mournful eyes feasting on the curves and dimples of her face, her lightest jest far sweeter than any prayer, the beads in his ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little

... that the Queen of the Hellenes had arrived at Cannes, or that the Princesse de Leon had given a fancy dress ball. In that way we should arrive at the right proportion between 'information' and 'publicity.'" But at once regretting that he had allowed himself to speak, even in jest, of serious matters, he added ironically: "We are having a most entertaining conversation; I cannot think why we climb to these lofty summits," and then, turning to my grandfather: "Well, Saint-Simon tells how Maulevrier had had the audacity to offer ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... down at her with the same radiant, beseeching, worshipping smile. In Helen's ears Latimer's commands to the sailorman rang as clearly as though Latimer stood before her and had just spoken. Only now they were no longer a jest; they were a vow, a promise, an oath of allegiance that brought to her peace, and ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis

... in S—— in a dawg's age," ventured the guide, with the irrelevancy of an excited boy. "Rice's was there once, I can't remember jest when, an' they was some talk of Barnum las' yeah, they say, but he done pass us by. He's got a Holy Beheemoth that sweats blood this yeah, they say. Doggone, I'd like to see one." The guide had not ventured so much as this, all told, in the ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon

... took offence at some remark of Chapron's about Poles, one of those innocent remarks made daily on any nation—the Italians, the French, the English, the Germans, the Jews—and which mean nothing.... I repeated the remark in jest to Gorka!.... I leave you to judge.... Is it my fault if, instead of laughing at it, he insulted poor Florent, and if the absurd encounter resulted from it? And Maud, who writes me that she will never ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... own. Such is the charge; and now let us examine the particular counts. He says that I am a doer of evil, and corrupt the youth; but I say, O men of Athens, that Meletus is a doer of evil, in that he pretends to be in earnest when he is only in jest, and is so eager to bring men to trial from a pretended zeal and interest about matters in which he really never had the smallest interest. And the truth of this I will ...
— Apology - Also known as "The Death of Socrates" • Plato

... "And I'm jest a-thinkin'," was his peroration, "ef this yere reegement don't stop a-fightin' together, being shot by the Georgians and beat by their officers—not to mention a jammin' up on railroads—they're gwine to do darned ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon

... men, an' what did that pesky Injun do but git up on a rock a quarter o' a mile off an' jestickerlate in an outrigerous manner, like a sarcy boy, an' yer grand'ther, he took aim and fired, an' that impident Injun jest tumbel over with a yell; his last, mind ye, and ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various

... courtly knight better than a country thane,—and do not laugh neither, Rowena, for grave-clothes and a thin visage are, God knows, no matter of merriment. Nay, as thou wilt needs laugh, I will find thee a better jest—Give me thy hand, or, rather, lend it me, for I but ask it in the way of friendship. Here, cousin Wilfred of Ivanhoe, in thy favour I renounce and abjure—Hey! our cousin Wilfred ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various

... these devils have eyes everywhere. Since they shot up Allan Mowbray I'm scared. Scared to death. I've taken a big chance coming around. I ain't makin' it bigger stoppin' to feed. An' if you'll take white advice you won't neither. Jest get to it an' set all the darnation territory you ken find between you an' Bell River before to-morrow. I quit. So long. I've handed you warning. It's ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum

... is still an emptier sound, The modern fair one's jest: On earth unseen, or only found To warm ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith

... at their meal, the company in the adjoining room and on the verandah broke up and left the hotel by the side entrance, without any one having set foot in the dining-room. They could be heard climbing into the wagons outside amid jest and laughter, and one conveyance after the other crunchingly got under way and rolled off ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various

... My!" Then she turned to stare down at the pile of bills. "Now I wonder," said she, right hand caressing left elbow-point, "I jest wonder who he's been a-choking of to get all that money? But I like his eyes! And his smile! And he looks a man—and ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol

... abundantly facetious, which took much with the Queen, when it suited with the season, as he was well able to judge of the times; he had a very quaint saying, and he used it often to good purpose, "that he loved the jest well, but not the loss of his friend;" and that, though he knew that "VERUS QUISQUE SUAE FORTUNAE FABER," was a true and good principle, yet the most in number were those that numbered themselves, but I ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton

... laughing when he spoke the jest, but his voice trembled, and all at once he broke down. Quickly withdrawing both hands, he put them over his face and cried like a heartbroken child. He had stood it like a hero to this point, but now, with the crowd outside peering into the windows, he sobbed ...
— The Telegraph Messenger Boy - The Straight Road to Success • Edward S. Ellis

... infinite All-in-all, may flow from the departed to mortals; but evil is neither com- municable nor scientific. A sinning, earthly mortal is 72:27 not the reality of Life nor the medium through which truth passes to earth. The joy of intercourse becomes the jest of sin, when evil and suffering are communicable. 72:30 Not personal intercommunion but divine law is the com- municator of truth, health, and harmony to earth and humanity. As readily can you mingle ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy

... shall the stream rise above its fountain? Where shall our church organizations or parties get strength to attack their great parent and moulder, the slave power? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus? The old jest of one who tried to lift himself in his own basket, is but a tame picture of the man who imagines that, by working solely through existing sects and parties, he can destroy slavery. Mechanics say nothing, ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton

... "Riled, mister? Jest a little bit, eh? All right. You'll cool down by the time I've got the custom-house chap here, and then we ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn

... customary in my country to give ocular demonstration in such cases before so many beautiful women; but that if all of them would retire, except the young lady to whom I pointed, (selecting the youngest and handsomest,) I would satisfy her curiosity. The ladies enjoyed the jest, and went away laughing heartily; and the young damsel herself, to whom I had given the preference, (though she did not avail herself of the privilege of inspection,) seemed no way displeased at the compliment; ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park

... beginning to lose my sight, so far am I advancing into the night; you are in love, that is a matter of course, I am beloved by no one in all the world; and you ask pity of me! Parbleu! Moliere forgot that. If that is the way you jest at the courthouse, Messieurs the lawyers, I sincerely compliment you. You ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... Cinderella was a little too good, mebbe, and the sisters was most too thunderin' bad to live on the face o' the earth, and that fayry old lady that kep' the punkin' coach up her sleeve—well, anyhow, you jest believe that punkin' coach, rats, mice, and all, when you're hearin' bout it, fore ever you stop to think it ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... no more about "Jupiter" and "Venus"—what do you mean by such heathen trash? The fact is, no fallacy can be wilder, and I won't have it hinted at even in jest, because my common sense laughs it to scorn. The idea of the "little man" shocks me less—it would be a more likely match if "matches" were at all in question, which they are not. He still sends his little newspaper; and the other day there came a letter of a bulk, ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter

... "that we ought to foller that style of doin' things jest because they do it that way in the city. We are pretty independent in the country, like to do thing's ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin

... understood nothing. Oftener he sought refuge in complete silence. But hope had been stimulated in Miss Willis's breast, and she relaxed neither scrutiny nor tenderness. One day matters were brought to a head by the thoughtless jest of a classmate, a flaxen-haired fairy, who, in the recess following one of Jimmy's least successful gurgles, crept up behind him and planted upon his curls a brown-paper cap, across which the little witch had painted "DUNCE" ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant

... been wrong. You could not have said so cruel a thing. It must have been some one who imitated your voice in malice or in jest." ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... antiquity were forgotten, or sought to be buried in oblivion. The tomb of Du Gueselin shared the same fate as that of Louis XIV. The skulls of monarchs and heroes were tossed about like foot balls by the profane multitude; like the grave-diggers in Hamlet, they made a jest of the lips before which ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith

... fitting out in that port this blessed minit. She's bound to Pensacola in ballast, or with just a few notions of hardware sent out as a venture, for a load of pine lumber to fill out a contract I've taken in New York. She can run into the St. Mark's and drop you jest as well as not. But you'll have to pick up and raft your fixin's down to Bangor in a terrible hurry, for she's going to sail next week, Wednesday, and ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe

... most conspicuous assistants of the Attorney and Solicitor were Serjeant Trinder, a Roman Catholic, and Sir Bartholomew Shower, Recorder of London, who had some legal learning, but whose fulsome apologies and endless repetitions were the jest of Westminster Hall. The government had wished to secure the services of Maynard: but he had plainly declared that he could not in conscience do what was asked of ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... marvelous jest, and bravely carried out. They gave you a heavy sleeping-draught before you went to bed, and in the night they bore you to a ruined chamber where all had fallen to decay, and placed these rags of clothing ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... to the dreadful state of the literati in London, as it respects religion, and of their having laughed at him, and believed him to be in jest, when he professed his belief ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle

... of your ancestors! That is a good jest. The faith of your grandfather at the outside: the faith of your ancestors was the faith of mine ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various

... civilization, the relation between husband and wife, and more especially the downfall of the autocrat of the home, is a favorite subject for jest. From the northeastern corner of the ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson

... it, in spite of you, and I know to whom to apply. Do you think you can play fast and loose with me and my love? No, no! I used to believe in you; I turned, a deaf ear to your traducers. My mad passion for you became known; I was the jest and the butt of the town. But you have opened my eyes, and at last I see clearly on whom my vengeance ought to fall. He was formerly my friend, and I would believe nothing against him; although I was often warned, I took no notice. ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - LA CONSTANTIN—1660 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... get out of this, and quick, too," said the Rev. Saul Tozer. "They're all off now, but they'll be back here in less than no time. I jest thought I'd look in to see if any of ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille

... fierce, yea, stronger and fiercer than black jaguars, while Insipa is old and weak; nevertheless—here, take them and bind them for me." She turned suddenly and held out two tough, raw-hide ropes to the armed guard who still surrounded the prisoners; and they, with a coarse jest or two at the old woman's expense, at once proceeded to bind Dick's and Phil's hands behind them, after which they placed the two free ends of the ropes in the beldame's hands and left the way free for her to lead her ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood

... might do it without Design at first, but might be brought in to ridicule and make a Jest of the old Patriarch afterward, as is too frequent since in the Practice of our Days; but I rather believe he did it really with a wicked Design, and on Purpose to expose and insult his Reverend old Parent; and ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe

... appeared renunciation of all "jest and youthful jollity," and religion seemed tedious endurance of what might be important, but, like everything important, was to him very wearisome and uninteresting. To him all zest and pleasure in ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge

... your kiver thet you're some dearer than wut you wuz, I enclose the diffrence) I dunno ez I know jest how to interdroce this las' perduction of my mews, ez Parson Willber allus called 'em, which is goin' to be the last an' stay the last onless sunthin' pertikler sh'd interfear which I don't expec' ner I wun't yield tu ef it wuz ez pressin' ez a deppity Shiriff. Sence M^r Wilbur's disease ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various

... him in silence, stupefied, not supposing that any one could say such things except in jest, and not comprehending how any one could pass a jest at such ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various

... in vast industries, transportation and banking systems—men such as Senator Elkins, of West Virginia; Clark, of Montana; Platt and Depew, of New York; Guggenheim, of Colorado; Knox, of Pennsylvania; Foraker, of Ohio, and a quota of others. The popular jest as to the United States Senate being a "millionaires' club" has become antiquated; much more appropriately it could be termed a "multimillionaires' club." While in both houses of Congress are legislators who represent the almost extinguished middle class, ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers

... witticisms with an explanation, to render them more obvious to the capacity of the audience, so that his wisdom became a sort of commentary on the buffoon's folly. And sometimes, in requital, the HOFF-NARR, with a pithy jest, wound up the conclusion of the orator's ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott

... brilliant but unprincipled friend. While Alcibiades was seeking to dazzle and control, Socrates was seeking to convince and improve mankind. A striking picture is given us of the physical qualities of this great moral philosopher. His ugliness of face was matter of jest in Athens. He had the flat nose, thick lips, and prominent eyes of a satyr. Yet he was as strong as he was ugly. Few Athenians could equal him in endurance. While serving as a soldier, he was able to endure heat and cold, hunger and fatigue, in a manner that ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... so cheap! They lay in one delicious heap, And added to the sumptuous feast For each and all in taste expert The acme of all fine dessert; So, singling out the very least As in itself an ample treat, While sparkling repartee and jest Exhilarated host and guest, Of rarity so delicate In dreamy reverie I ate, By magic pinions as it were Transported from this realm of snows To be a happy sojourner Away down where the orange grows; Amid the bloom, the verdure, and The beauty of that tropic ...
— Poems - Vol. IV • Hattie Howard

... was not meant to be the cruel jest which it must have seemed to those about the Mexican Emperor who were better informed with regard to Napoleon's negotiations with the government of the United States. By those whose all was at stake it must have been taken for a ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson

... East and from the West, That's subject to no academic rule; You may find it in the jeering of a jest, Or distil it from the folly of a fool. I can teach you with a quip, if I've a mind; I can trick you into learning with a laugh; Oh, winnow all my folly, and you'll find A grain or two of truth among ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert

... appearing boldly at the window. "We're use' ter bein' treated like dogs by men like you. If you w'ite people will go 'long an' ten' ter yo' own business an' let us alone, we'll ten' ter ou'n. You've got guns, an' we've got jest as much right ter carry 'em as you have. Lay down yo'n, an' we'll lay down ou'n,—we didn' take 'em up fust; but we ain' gwine ter let you bu'n down ou' chu'ches an' school'ouses, er dis hospittle, ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt

... empire; England audacious and overbearing as of yore, and France joining to fill our waters with mighty naval armaments. We, having witnessed the dismemberment of our country, and possessing no longer a nationality, but broken into fragments, to become the jest and laughingstock of the world, which would point to us and say, 'These people began to build, and were not able ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... dat don't beat de lan'! Dey was two ba'els—one had dat wild turkey an' de pair o' geese you see hangin' on de fence dar, an' de udder ba'el I jest ca'aed down de cellar full er oishters. De tar'pins was in dis box—seben ob 'em. Spec' dat rapscallion crawled ober de fence?" And Chad picked up the basket with the remaining half dozen, and descended the ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith

... out to starboard, and evil miasma arose from the rotting tree trunks across its mouth; the entire scene was one of dreary, soul-searing repulsiveness and made a sorry jest of the strongly stockaded trading post whose defensive armament could be plainly seen peeping over a woven ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle

... cloud of dust and grew till it walled the view, and there appeared under of it riders an hundred, like lions an-hungered. Upon this Sabbah took flight, and fled to the hill's topmost height, leaving the assailable site, and enjoyed sight of the fight, saying, "I am no warrior; but in sport and jest I delight."[FN99] Then the hundred cavaliers made towards Kanmakan and surrounded him on all sides, and one of them accosted him, saying, "Whither goest thou with this loot?" Quoth he, "I have made it my prize ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... with all his natural and reasonable interest in aristocratic society, could not shut his eyes to the fact that a jest in his mouth became twice a jest in a lord's. But still he failed to perceive what I am here contending for, that if the jest happened to miss fire, through the misfortune of bursting its barrel, the consequences would be far worse for the ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey

... Schulze reappeared and busied himself writing, he looked from the stone face to the face of flesh with fascinated repulsion—the man and the "familiar" were so ghastly alike. Then he suddenly understood that this was a quaint double jest of the eccentric physician's—his grim fling at his lack of physical charm, his ironic jeer at the ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips

... morality is not a 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 ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King

... like a doxology, and some crossed themselves, amid the dubious laughter of others, who suspected Father de Berey of a clerical jest. ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... don't mean to deny that the people who live in Brooklyn are themselves largely responsible for the perpetuation of the silly jest. They subscribe to it in a spirit of meekness that is characteristically local. Ask a man from Cherry Springs or Binghamton where is his home and he will quietly say, Cherry Springs or Binghamton, as the case may be. But the resident of ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky

... stealing is a relative term, like anything else connected with morality. What would be stealing in the immediate neighborhood of a city is not even what the old South County oyster fisherman once described as "jest pilferin' 'round," out here on the edges of the wilderness. I go out with the trailer hitched to the back of my Ford, half a mile in any direction, and I pass roadsides where, if there are any farmer owners of the fields on the other side of the fence, these owners are only too glad to have a ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer

... come out some place across the frontier in Chihuahua; I don't jest rightly recollect where," said Pete carelessly, as if the subject did not interest him much, ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering

... hoax, or imagine the affair to be only the mischievous trick of some idler. Indeed, such was not likely; the times were superstitious, nor were there any persons connected or at variance with the family who were liable to be suspected of having played off such a foolish and wicked jest at the expense of the minister, even if any motive for doing so had existed. The minister, therefore, hastened up stairs to change his coat, leaving the Bible containing the document from the dead on the table; while his sister, finding her niece better, left her to see that her ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various

... and you give them the victory at the beginning of the battle. If you pull a long face over their nonsense, the spectators, after all your arguments, will say, "There must be something in it, though, for see how serious he is." Whereas a light jest and a merry smile will show you are heart-free, and beyond ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote

... clerk retired, after 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 ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade

... thank thee for that jest; here's a garment for't: wit shall not go unrewarded while I am king of this country. 240 'Steal by line and level' is an excellent pass of pate; there's another ...
— The Tempest - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare

... shay to beat the taown 'n' the keounty 'n' all the kentry raoun'; It should be so built that it COULDN' break daown - - "Fur," said the Deacon, "'t's mighty plain Thut the weakes' place mus' stan the strain; 'n' the way t' fix it, uz I maintain, Is only jest T' make that place uz ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... serious. He was, at all events, free from that deadly earnestness which blinds the eye to all save one side of a question. The very soil that he tapped could have risen up to speak in favour of such as he; for William the Silent, it is said, loved a jest, and never seemed to be quite serious during the long years of the greatest struggle ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman

... when he gave himself up to the worst elements of his party, I have not seen President Grant; but his career suggests some curious reflections to one who has known him for thirty-odd years. What the waiting-woman promised in jest, Dame Fortune has seriously bestowed on this Malvolio, and his political cross-garterings not only find favor with the Radical Olivia, but are admired by the Sir Tobys of the European world. Indeed, Fortune has conceits as quaint as those of Haroun al-Raschid. The beggar, from profound ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor

... and completely. You have many times, for a lark, disguised yourself as an ordinary country proprietor or small farmer and mingled with the crowd at a fair without being recognized. What you have done for an evening in jest now attempt in earnest and for as long a period as is necessary. And to begin with, vanish from here ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White

... Thompson asked. It seemed to him scarcely credible. He suspected his guides, as he had before suspected them, of some rude jest at ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... on, laughing thunderously at his own poor jest. Particularly from the back, as he retreated, he seemed a harmless fat man, very simple, very naive. But Ronicky Doone regarded him with an interest both cold and keen. And, with much the same regard, after Fernand had passed out of view, ...
— Ronicky Doone • Max Brand

... Oh Lord—seed em by fifties and hundreds. Used to pint the gun at me jest to hear me holler and cry. I was scared of em. They come in and went in Dr. Jenkins' dairy and got what they wanted. And every morning they'd blow that bugle, bugle as long as a broom handle. Heard em blow 'Glory, Glory Hallelujah'. I liked to ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Arkansas Narratives Part 3 • Works Projects Administration

... baked brown, spiced deeply, rosy pink within, and of a flavor and fragrance to 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. ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox

... different persons, that very affair she was in such a hurry to inform me of last night: you must needs have heard of the amour between madam la Boissy and the chevalier de Mourenbeau? frequently, replied Charlotta; her ridiculous jealousies of him have long been the jest of the whole court; and I never go to Marli or Versailles, but I am told of some new instance of it. And yet to relate a long story of her passion, and his ingratitude, said mademoiselle de Coigney, was I last night dragged into a dark corner, and deprived for an hour together of all ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood

... staggered, notwithstanding, when I stumped towards him, as already described, and he shifted back and back as I advanced, with a most laughable cast of countenance, between jest and earnest, while Fyall kept shouting to him—"If it be his ghost, try him in Latin, Mr Bang—speak Latin to him, Aaron Bang—nothing for a ghost like Latin, it is ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott

... pilgrimages to Lundy, and prayers to that white granite tower, with its unglazed lantern and rusting machinery, to light itself up again, and help poor human beings! Really, my dear brothers, I am not in jest: you seem but too likely now-a-days to arrive at some such catastrophe—sentimental philosophy for the 'enlightened' few, and fetish-worship (of which nominally Christian forms are as possible as heathen ones) for the masses.—At that you may only too probably arrive—unless ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley

... events nobody could mistake him for anything but a fool, in his 'Touchstone' costume, and so he was jest-er going to be contented. ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... air saturated with fog and grease and soot, vileness for soul and body. What do you make of a case like that, amateur psychologist? You call it an altogether serious thing to be alive: to these men it is a drunken jest, a joke,—horrible to angels perhaps, to them commonplace enough. My fancy about the river was an idle one: it is no type of such a life. What if it be stagnant and slimy here? It knows that beyond there waits for it odorous sunlight, ...
— Life in the Iron-Mills • Rebecca Harding Davis

... throne. They seemed to almost compel a answer from divine justice as to what wuz the cause of her murder. To appeal dumbly to the God of Justice and Mercy to wipe out this curse from our land—the curse that wuz causin' jest such murders, and jest such agonies, all over our land—sendin' out to the gallows and down to perdition ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley

... now dull and heavy, "jest filled with snow," as Jack Wumble expressed it. The soft flakes were still coming down, but no thicker than they had fallen during the night. The ground was covered with white to a depth of two inches. There was a gentle ...
— The Rover Boys in Alaska - or Lost in the Fields of Ice • Arthur M. Winfield

... Massa," grinned Chris, who was plucky enough when he understood the nature of the threatened danger. "Golly, I jest reckon dis nigger got to stay and look out ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... he might have clawed 'em a bit," admitted the man with the gun. "And perhaps it's jest as well I come along when I did. You folks live around here? Don't seem like I've ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Under the Palms - Or Lost in the Wilds of Florida • Laura Lee Hope

... should be there. It was empty! They looked into each other's faces with blank astonishment. Everything had been so strangely true, and so strangely false, up to this moment, that they could not comprehend this failure at the last moment. It was the strangest, saddest jest! It brought Middleton up with such a sudden revulsion that he grew dizzy, and the room swam round him and the cabinet dazzled before his eyes. It had been magnified to a palace; it had dwindled down to Liliputian size; and yet, up till ...
— The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... merry jest, a merry laugh, each strolled upon his way; One was my page, a lad I reared and bore with day by day; One was my youngest maid, as sweet and white ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti

... surrounded her father, these things made a great impression on the young girl. Jenkins became immediately her friend, confidant, a vigilant and kind guardian. Occasionally, when, in the studio, somebody—her father most likely of all—uttered a risky jest, the Irishman would contract his eyebrows, give a little click of the tongue, or ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet

... endeavored to make their escape by digging a passage under the walls. A report of their proceedings reached the jailer, but, secure in the strength of the walls he did not believe it. This jailor would frequently jest with Bickford on the subject, asking him when he intended to make his escape. His answers were so truthful and accurate that they served to blind the jailor still further. One morning as this official entered ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge

... it upon the breast and knees. "I am thy sister, O great one! forsake me not! Is it indeed thy will that I should leave thee? If I go away, thou shalt be here alone, and is there any one who will be with thee to follow thee? O thou who lovedst to jest with me, thou art now silent, thou speakest not!" Whereupon the mourners again broke out in chorus: "Lamentation, lamentation! Make, make, make, make lamentation without ceasing as loud as can be made. O good traveller, who takest thy way towards the land of Eternity, thou hast ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... obeisance; and so, with much awe, laid their hands on the goddess. It was the custom among the Etrurians that none should touch that image save the priests only. This having been done, one of the youths, whether speaking by inspiration from heaven, or in boisterous jest, cried, "Wilt thou away to Rome, Juno?" and the others cried that the image nodded her head. In after time it was said that the image even spake the words, "I will." Certainly it is related that it was moved from its ...
— Stories From Livy • Alfred Church

... or when tete-a-tete, was there a jest, a word, or a look which the most sensitive ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet

... cried, his heart beating loud and fast. "Was it not a cruel jest to frighten him on his wedding-eve? Daisy alive! Oh, just Heaven, if it could only be true!" He drew his breath, with a long, quivering sigh, at the bare possibility. "Little Daisy was as pure in ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey

... traitress, where's the jest Of wearing orange on thy breast, When underneath that bosom shows The whiteness of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various

... And one of the old men in the company said [Greek omitted] signified one that was too late for supper; because, when he found himself tardy, he mended his pace, and made more than common haste. And he told us a jest of Battus, Caesar's jester, who called those that came late supper-lovers, because out of their love to entertainments, though they had business, they would not ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch

... there: I knew his father well, and have some skill In character—but it would not be fair From sire to son to augur good or ill: He and his wife were an ill-sorted pair— But scandal's my aversion—I protest Against all evil speaking, even in jest. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... a joke?" said Handyside sadly. "That's very generous of you, Alan, if I may say so,—to quote Caw—but the Green Box is too hard and cold a fact to jest about." ...
— Till the Clock Stops • John Joy Bell

... nothing which contributes so much to ease social intercourse as the jest. In comparison with it, the proverb is only a humble subordinate, and song itself, with all its power, but a weak influence. Yet the song and the proverb boast a critical literature, while the brief compendiums ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... men in the outfit, six-footers and an inch each, to sit one on each side of his cot until he went to sleep. He knew better than any of us how near he was to crossing. But it seemed he felt safe between these two giants. We kept up a running conversation in jest with one another, though it was empty mockery. But he never pretended to notice. It was plain to us all that the fear was on him. We kept near the shack the next day, some of the boys always with him. The third evening he seemed to rally, talked ...
— Cattle Brands - A Collection of Western Camp-fire Stories • Andy Adams

... more a 'man of the common people' than Beasley, he said Beasley was 'too much of a society man' to suit him! The idea of Dave as a 'society man' was too much for me, and I laughed in Sim Peck's face, but that didn't stop Sim Peck! 'Jest look at the style he lives in,' he yelped. 'Ain't he fairly LAPPED in luxury? Look at that big house he lives in! Look at the way he goes around in that phaeton of his—and a nigger to drive him half the time!' I had to holler again, and, of ...
— Beasley's Christmas Party • Booth Tarkington

... in heart was found; Who list the plaints, the reasonings that abound Throughout my song, by hopes, and vain griefs bred; If e'er true love its influence o'er ye shed, Oh! let your pity be with pardon crown'd. But now full well I see how to the crowd For length of time I proved a public jest: E'en by myself my folly is allow'd: And of my vanity the fruit is shame, Repentance, and a knowledge strong imprest, That worldly pleasure is a ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch

... the contest, and shutting it, 'I perceive,' cried I, 'that none of you have a mind to be married.'" We should like to have seen the dinner-party, and the two Miss Flamboroughs ready to die with laughing. "One jest I particularly remember: old Mr Wilmot drinking to Moses, whose head was turned another way, my son replied, 'Madam, I thank you.' Upon which the old gentleman, winking upon the rest of the company, observed that he was thinking of his mistress; at which jest I thought the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXII. - June, 1843.,Vol. LIII. • Various

... mile from Crawfordsville to Lafayette. Looks like more rain, too. I think she'll be on us in about two minutes. I guess mebby we c'n find a place fer you to sleep to-night, and we c'n give you somethin' fer man an' beast. If you'll jest ride around here to the barn, we'll put the hosses up an' feed 'em, and—Eliza, set out a couple more plates, an' double the rations all around." His left arm and hand came into view. "Set this here gun back in the ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon

... him by the hand and set him upon his feet. "No talk shall be of dogs," said he, "when wolf and gray wolf meet. May I eat dirt if thou hast hurt of me in deed or breath; What dam of lances brought thee forth to jest at the ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell

... one told to me—for a jest belike. But I will seek the Bull about Umballa, and thou canst look for thy River and rest from the ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling

... intention to be mildly jocular, but Mrs. Porter's reply showed him that in jest he had ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse

... for Mr. Lincoln and General Grant, who were expected to visit the theater, and contribute to the benefit of Miss Laura Keene, and satisfy the curiosity of a large audience. Mr. Booth went away with a jest, and a lightly-spoken "Good afternoon." Strolling down to Pumphreys' stable, on C street, in the rear of the National Hotel, he engaged a saddle horse, a high-strung, fast, beautiful bay mare, telling Mr. Pumphreys that he should ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend

... apparently at the same moment, urging on and encouraging his men in fluent Spanish, while he defended himself from the simultaneous attack of three of our people with consummate ease. He fought cheerfully, joyously, like a man who enjoys fighting, with a reckless jest on his lips, but with a ferocity that was terrible to behold. Twice I crossed swords with him. On the first occasion I had hardly engaged when I was so severely jostled that I suddenly found myself completely at his mercy, and gave myself up as lost, for his sword was descending straight ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood

... be as well to carry it off as a jest? So his hat came off with a flourish, and he said jocosely as he took the next heap, 'Keeping-apples, Mr. James. I'll ...
— Gone to Earth • Mary Webb

... sagely and pithily remarked, many centuries before modern civilization was invented: Jest not with a rude man lest thy ancestors be disgraced. To this day the oriental methods of insult have survived in the Ghetto. The dead past is never allowed to bury its dead; the genealogical dust-heap is always liable to be raked ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... sy so! It gives me a turn to 'ear anybody talk so presumptuous. Don't you do it, m'm. If 'e is a little better, it's enuff to make the Almighty tyke 'im, jest to 'ear you, miss." ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair

... you know all about 'um, then along will come a bar that will teach you difrunt. There ain't no use in makin' rules about bar ettyket, cuz ef you do, some miserable pig-headed bar will break 'um all ter smash, jest like this 'ere one did. But I think there is a good deal surer way uv accountin' for the critter's action than what you say. It's my idee that he mistook the ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes

... overturned boat, built a fire and prepared their first cooked meal out of doors. In the failing light, Sue got out her rifle and gave Sam his first lesson in marksmanship, his awkwardness making the lesson half a jest. And then, in the soft stillness of the young night, with the first stars coming into the sky and the clean cold wind blowing into their faces, they went arm in arm up the hill under the trees to where the tops of the trees rolled and pitched like the stormy waters of a great sea before ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson

... longer than his appetite could endure abstinence. Finding the abomination of his tribe opposed to his very nose, while the Jester, at the same time, flourished his wooden sword above his head, the Jew recoiled, missed his footing, and rolled down the steps,—an excellent jest to the spectators, who set up a loud laughter, in which Prince John and his ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott

... yet it does not always so; and one who should make use of any expression, of which he knows not the meaning, and which he uses without any sense of the consequences, would not certainly be bound by it. Nay, though he know its meaning, yet if he use it in jest only, and with such signs as evidently show, that he has no serious intention of binding himself, he would not lie under any obligation of performance; but it is necessary, that the words be a perfect expression of the will, without any contrary signs. Nay, even this we must not carry ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume

... individually worthy of serious attention, but which are yet troublesome to the community, when frequently repeated. These relate chiefly to order in the school rooms. These misdemeanors are tried, half in jest, and half in earnest, by a sort of court, whose forms of process might make a legal gentleman smile. They however fully answer our purpose. I can best give you an idea of the court, by describing an actual trial. I ought however first to say, that any young ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott

... as to fortify them, and to make an excursion to survey the country while his cousin was away in Finland. Presently the Kalevide felt in his pocket, and pulled out the boy, with whom he began to jest; but soon their conversation became more serious, and the Kalevide ordered him to wait for the expected messengers, while he himself should proceed to Lake Peipus, where ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby

... this new weakness? At your own request We come to hear your self-imposed vows— And now you shrink: where are the high-flown fancies Which but last week, beside your husband's bier, You vapoured forth? Will you become a jest? You might have counted this tower's cost, before You blazoned ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley

... corsets well pulled in would improve her crude figure; but she dealt out compliments without ceasing as she exchanged the red bow for the blue, and laboriously pinned the headgear upon the bronze-brown coils, admonishing gravely, "Far over to one side, honey—jest the way they're a-wearin' them in ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan

... Yes—good heavens, how had he deserved it?—the second time! He remembered, after the disaster off Boulogne—many days after— awaking to consciousness in his prison bed in the fortress of Givet. Then, as now, he had lain staring, his whole soul sickened by the cruel jar of the jest. Hand of fate, was it? Nay, a jocose and blundering finger, rather, that had flipped him, as a man might flip a beetle, into the night. Then, as now, his soul had welled up in sullen indignation. ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... rarely be quite sure when Kenelm Chillingly was in jest or in earnest, the parlour-maid paused a moment and attempted a pale smile. Kenelm lifted his dark eyes, unspeakably sad and profound, and said mournfully, "I should be so sorry for the baby. Bring the chops!" The parlour-maid vanished. ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... same power would have made the same use of it. That emperor erected a temple to himself, where he was his own high priest, preferred his horse to the highest honours in the state, professed enmity to [the] human race, and at last lost his life by a nasty jest on one of his inferiors, which I dare swear Swift would have made in his place. There can be no worse picture made of the Doctor's morals than he has given us himself in the letters printed by Pope. We see him vain, trifling, ungrateful ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville

... if she could have throttled or poisoned the little sly devil she would have done it! Only—there would have been Bough to reckon with afterwards. For of God she made a jest, and the devil was an old friend of hers, but she was horribly afraid of the man with the brown bushy whiskers and the light, steely eyes. Yet she threw herself upon him to kiss him, blubbering freely, when at the week's end the Johannesburg transport-rider's waggons returning from ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... to do so, and that after the wedding day was set it was necessary to postpone the ceremony thirty days in order to permit him to attend to some trifling business affairs. We call him "Thirty" Marshall, and it takes him thirty seconds to smile in appreciation of the jest. But he plays a good game of golf, with at least four deliberate practise swings before each stroke ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams

... The wife who is afraid to laugh and jest with her husband, lest she should appear bold and wanton, resembles one that will not anoint herself with oil lest she should be thought to use cosmetics, and will not wash her face lest she should be thought to paint. We see also in the ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch

... around the country on the dead run, seems like. I always told Mary 't you'n Weary always rode like the sheriff wa'nt more'n a mile b'hind yuh. An' I s'pose you feel it all the more, seein' the round-up's jest startin' out. Weary said yuh was playin' big luck, if yuh only knew enough t' cash in yer chips at the right time, but he's afraid yuh wouldn't be watching the game close enough an' ud lose yer pile. I don't know what he was drivin' at, an' I guess he didn't neither. It's too ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower

... a-blowin' an' ef he do come a-singin', den look out! I allus did notice dat ef Cunnel Blount 'gins to sing 'ligious hymns, somethin's wrong, and somethin' gwine ter drap. He hain't right easy ter git 'long wif when he's a-singin'. But if you'll 'scuse me, suh, I got ter take care o' Hec. Jest make yourself to home, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various

... were wont to make each other presents of birds. The cock and the goose are mentioned, of course, in jest. ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al

... make us grieve With oft and tedious taking-leave, 45 Like some poor nigh-related guest, That may not rudely be dismist; Yet hath outstay'd his welcome while, And tells the jest without the smile. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... easier on 'em just out of feller feelin'. Them cut-worms now—if they'd only take a plant and satisfy their nateral appetites on it, it would go a good ways, and the rest o' the plants would have a chance to grow out of harm's way; but the nasty little things will jest eat 'em off above the ground, as if they was cut in two by a knife, and then go on to anuther. That's what I call a mean way of gettin' a livin'; but there's lots of people like 'em in town, who spile more than they eat. Then there's the squash-bug. If it's his nater ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe

... reduced the spirits and strength of the men. They became gaunt, hollow-eyed, tattered, unshorn, uncombed, unkempt, yet they toiled on, silent—save when they cursed and railed at fate—dogged, fiercely purposeful, resolved to die rather than turn back. Song and jest were rarely heard in any boat; haggard fellows tugged at the oars, or lay dreamily watching the sail as it filled with the welcome breeze. Their patience being sapped by disappointment and privation, they were no longer the kindly "white brother" to the Indians; they ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan

... but the poor gal had long, golden hair, and the skunk wanted it for an ornament, and he took it, too, and thinks more of it than any out of his hundred and more. Arter getting yer home among his people, and arter he'd found out thar's a good show fur a big ransom from yer father, jest as like as not he'd make up his mind that the best thing he could do would be to knock ye on ther head and raise yer ha'r, and he'd do ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne

... was he in joke? What man in his senses would think of lending six or seven hundred pounds to Val Scott! 'I suppose you are in jest,' said he, ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope

... not demanded the countersign agreed on between herself and brother. With the gun still in her hand, she looked the company sternly in the face, and remarking that they wore a suspicious look, called for the countersign. Thereupon one of them, in jest, told her she was too tardy in her requirements; that both the gun and its holder were in their possession. "Do you think so," she boldly asked, as she cocked the disputed weapon and aimed it at the speaker. ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler

... 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 ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood

... of the road," and these rules contribute greatly to our convenience and safety. Such rules are the result of the common sense of man working upon his everyday problems. To violate one of these practical rules is to be a blunderer, and blundering is a subject for jest rather than bitter denouncement. Hence the humorous and satirical ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry

... trim their evening fire; Blest that abode, where want and pain repair, And every stranger finds a ready chair: Blest be those feasts with simple plenty crown'd, Where all the ruddy family around Laugh at the jest or pranks, that never fail, Or sigh with pity at some mournful tale, Or press the bashful stranger to his food, And learn the luxury of ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various

... man's life to try a jest like that," said Meriwether Lewis. "It is no counterfeit. I know it too well. This letter was written before we left St. Louis. How it came here I know not, but ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough

... do no sech thing. We-all's got plenty uv pertaties,—I growed 'em myself,—this yere meat haint hurt a mite, an' water's cheap," she responded. "Yo' jest take a cheer, mister, an' yo' kin hev supper along with us as soon as grandpap comes, which'll be right soon, I reckon. We-all don't see stranger folks much up yere, an' he'll be plumb glad thet ye drapped in." She tossed ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson

... extravagances and frivolities of the age, wound up an indignant tirade by an eloquent peroration to the effect that things had come to a sad pass when persons were found to talk of "living up—to a Tea-pot." At this juncture the jest seemed ripe for treatment, and du Maurier thereupon produced his famous drawing of the aesthetic bride and bridegroom comparing notes over the precious piece of crockery in question: "Oh! Algernon! Let us live up ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood

... they extended into the night, and, it being too late to return to camp, he was sumptuously lodged in an apartment of the Alhambra. In the morning one of the courtiers about the palace, somewhat given to jest and raillery, invited Don Juan to a ceremony which some of the alfaquis were about to celebrate in the mosque of the palace. The religious punctilio of this most discreet cavalier immediately took umbrage at what he conceived a banter. "The servants of Queen Isabella of Castile," replied ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving

... certain things very differently from you. While I would not for a moment have you think that religion brings into my life gloom and restraint—quite the reverse—still it gives me great pain when anything connected with my faith is made a matter of jest. These things are sacred to us, and I know my father would feel deeply grieved if he understood you this evening. Do you not see? It appears to us differently from what it does to you and perhaps to the world at large. These things are to us what your mother's memory is to you. I would sooner ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe

... fully roused—because of the indestructibility of those few voiceless hopes we cherish that seem as fugitive as the glint in the crystal ball, hopes without which our existence would have no meaning, for if we lost them we should know the universe was a witless jest, with ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson

... sudden war Between the wind and tide that fiercely jar. As when a sort[3] of lusty shepherds try Their force at football, care of victory Makes them salute so rudely breast to breast, 47 That their encounter seems too rough for jest; They ply their feet, and still the restless ball, Toss'd to and fro, is urged by them all: So fares the doubtful barge 'twixt tide and winds, And like effect of their contention finds. Yet the bold Britons still securely row'd; Charles and ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham

... iras. Sed li ne kuragxis gxin and nobody troubled about where transplanti apud sian dometon, he was going.[2] But he did not timante ke oni difektu gxin aux dare to transplant it to his own sxerce aux malice, kaj sekve cottage, fearing that they would restis por li la granda laborado damage it in jest or malice, and iri, kiam li estis jam laca, so the hard work remained for him malproksimen por flegi gxin. of going a long way to look after it, when ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark

... make every thing delightful so far as another could do for you, what kind of feelings ought you to entertain toward the good spirit? If you should forget him in your enjoyments, should abuse his gifts, should make him the subject of jest and sport, and blaspheme his name, would you not, in your thoughtful moments, despise yourself for your ingratitude? And yet this good spirit, in the supposed case, would not do for you a tithe your heavenly Father is doing for you every ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver

... only elevated and peculiar minds discover, in addition to all this, the full moral beauty of the love and truth which are the constant associates of all that is even most weak and erring in the character of its hero, and pass over the rude adventure and scurrile jest in haste—perhaps in pain, to penetrate beneath the rusty corselet, and catch from the wandering glance the evidence and expression of fortitude, self-devotion, and universal love. So, again, with the works of Scott and Byron; popularity was as instant ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin

... whom he had run, a sun-browned, sinewy, country-looking man, with grizzled hair and a rough chin, stared at him for a moment, as if he suspected him to be in jest. But, satisfied of his ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various

... Fielding to write stinging satires upon the Pretender and his party, and hint at the sufferings which were likely to fall upon London when the Highlanders imported their national complaint into the capital. A statesman is reported to have said that this disagreeable jest about the itch was worth two regiments of horse to the cause of ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy

... a good heart and were able to jest at their misfortunes with the grim humour that belongs to their race. Neither empty larder nor other misfortune disheartened them. The recurrence of New Year's Day and the Feast of St. Andrew were made ever occasions for rejoicing. Up on the Pelly Forks under date of November 30th, 1848, ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron

... be agreeable, and hand round cups and sarcers and things to eat, if they can't deu nothin' else; so now you must all come and bring your thimbles and scissors and big needles, and, ef you've no objections, I'll jest take the tea-kittle now, as ...
— Who Spoke Next • Eliza Lee Follen

... sourly wail'd he, sputtering dirt and gore; A burst of laughter echoed through the shore. Antilochus, more humorous than the rest, Takes the last prize, and takes it with a jest: ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer

... you,' said Mrs. Ashton Portway, apparently overcome by the merry jest. 'Now remember, I shall hold you to your promise. I shall write and remind you. I know ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett

... out there. Money talks. 'Course it ain't makin' any distressin' sounds around here jest now, ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs

... were asleep that I could hope to discover what had affected Virginia. She then told me that, as she had been at work that afternoon, kneeling on the boards by the river with the other women, the Cavaliere Aquamorta with a party of gentlemen had come by the meadows and stopped to jest and bandy familiarities with the laundresses. Although he had pretended not to recognise her, Virginia was not deceived. Finding his opportunity, he drew near to her side, and whispered in her ear, ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett

... me as his deeds attest; * Which make noble origin manifest: Backbite not, lest other men bit thy back; * Who saith aught, the same shall to him be addrest: Shun immodest words and indecent speech * When thou speakest in earnest or e'en in jest.[FN229] We bear with the dog which behaves itself * But the lion is chained lest he prove a pest: And the desert carcases swim the main * While union-pearls on the sandbank rest[FN230]: No sparrow would hustle the sparrow-hawk, * Were it not by folly and weakness prest: A-sky is ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton

... Conors, and he treats me none the better fer it. A week come Tuesday he stalks into the bar here, and, before my customers, he threatens to put me into the road if I fail to have the amount fer him on the due date. I jest talked back to him with no fear in me eye, and he cooled off wonderfully. I have since got the money together, and a hundred dollars to pay on the principal, and to-morrow I'm goin' to give it to him ...
— Nancy McVeigh of the Monk Road • R. Henry Mainer

... professing some admiration of my poor person, and methinks that good taste would have demanded that you would have feigned, at least, some interest in the boy who championed my cause. I was wrong, even in merry jest, to touch on such a subject, but I thought that as French gentlemen you would understand that I was half serious, half jesting at myself for this girlish love of mine. He is not here to defend himself against your uncourteous remarks; but, Monsieur ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty

... his deft hand would paint Strife of Sathanas and Saint, Or in secret coign entwist Jest ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson

... 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 ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning

... through an opening near the ground, scratched vigorously to increase its size, and in numerous ways testified great joy at again hearing my voice. I put my hand under the gate to caress him; and while he was licking it, I said in jest, but in a distinct, loud voice, 'Dear Medor, I am shut out—go, bring me the keys.' It so happened that the stable where they usually hung was not closed. Medor ran off, and in a few seconds returned and placed them in my hands. I will not attempt to describe my gratification at such ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse

... whole world, the whole of life, seemed to Ryabovitch an unintelligible, aimless jest. . . . And turning his eyes from the water and looking at the sky, he remembered again how fate in the person of an unknown woman had by chance caressed him, he remembered his summer dreams and fancies, and ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... me, your Highness, my thoughts will appear to you but as idle fancies; and though you always seem well satisfied with my services, you have seldom felt inclined to follow my advice. How often have you said in jest: "You see too far, Machiavel! You should be an historian; he who acts, must provide for the exigence of the hour." And yet have I not predicted this terrible history? Have I not ...
— Egmont - A Tragedy In Five Acts • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

... stoupe his bonet in his honde His maysters backe he must oft shrape and clawe His breste anoyntynge, his mynde to vnderstonde But be it gode or bad therafter must he drawe Without he can Jest he is nat worth a strawe. But in the meane tyme beware that he none checke For than layth malyce ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt

... platter of mashed potatoes with gravy an' green stuff—all kinds of green stuff—an' a whole big apple pie. Give me everythin' an' anythin' to eat but meat. Shore I never, never want to taste meat again, an' sight of a piece of sheep meat would jest about finish me.... Jim, you used to be a human bein' that stood up for ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey

... invasion of Canada; William Gwin, editor of the "Federal Gazette"; Paul Allen, editor of the "Federal Republican," and of Lewis and Clarke's "Tour," and author of "Noah"; Dr. Readel, "a fellow of infinite jest"; Brackenridge, author of "Views in Louisiana," and "History of the War"; Dennison, an Englishman, who wrote clever doggerel; and, at different times, two or three more, not worth mentioning, even if I remembered their names—we passed every ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various

... old Simon," answered James Starr. "Far be it from me even in jest to depreciate the New Aberfoyle mine by an unjust comparison! I only meant to say one thing, and that is that we don't know ...
— The Underground City • Jules Verne

... almost over when Dan, still looking hungry, grinned and asked Dave if he was n't going to have some BREAD? Whereupon Dad jumped up in a tearing passion. "D—n your insolence!" he said to Dan, "make a jest of ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd

... stopped and chatted awhile; and, after what appeared a reasonable interval, long enough for it not to seem that she was too much elated over it, she remarked, "An', by-de-way, Mr. Peters, I must tell you what a lovely Christmas gif' I have just received by de hand of Mr. Pier. He has jest presented me with his yaller-wheeled buggy, an' I sho' is proud of it." Then, turning to Pierre, she added, "You sho' is a mighty generous gen'leman, Mr. Pier—you ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various

... acquit you completely! We drifted—that was all. Jest sometimes turns to earnest. Well, go—go with those tears in your eyes. There is nothing worth crying ...
— The Black Cat - A Play in Three Acts • John Todhunter

... shall, O king, in consequence of my compact, once more come back to thee and place myself under thy power. I assure thee truly of this. There is no falsehood in this. Never before have I spoken anything untrue, no, not even in jest. What shall I ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... order with man,—hope, surprise, bewilderment, disgust, facetiousness. The people in New England finally become facetious about spring. This is the last stage: it is the most dangerous. When a man has come to make a jest of misfortune, he is lost. "It bores me to die," said the journalist Carra to the headsman at the foot of the guillotine: "I would like to have seen the continuation." One is also interested to see how spring is going ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... abusing them for their deceit, treachery, and cruelty. The old traveller Nicolo Conti, writing in 1430, says: "The inhabitants of Java and Sumatra exceed every other people in cruelty. They regard killing a man as a mere jest; nor is any punishment allotted for such a deed. If any one purchase a new sword, and wish to try it, he will thrust it into the breast of the first person he meets. The passers-by examine the wound, and praise the skill of the person who inflicted ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... he in earnest? Look upon his face; His eyes do drop no tears, his prayers are in jest; His words come from his mouth, ours from our breast; He prays but faintly and would be denied; We pray with heart and soul, and all beside: His weary joints would gladly rise, I know; Our knees still kneel till to the ground they grow: His ...
— The Tragedy of King Richard II • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]

... to tell her they would sight land in the morning; then, with one of the blundering impulses to which husbands fall victim at such moments, he decided to wait and surprise her. So, instead of telling her, he chuckled as though at some secret jest, and tried to quiet her ...
— All the Brothers Were Valiant • Ben Ames Williams

... fly, An' why can't I? Must we give in," Says he with a grin, "'T the bluebird an' phoebe Are smarter'n we be? Jest fold our hands an' see the swaller An' blackbird an' catbird beat us holler? Does the leetle, chatterin', sassy wren, No bigger'n my thumb, know more than men Jest show me that! Er prove't the bat Has got more brains than's ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck

... cuttings he has followed the edition of the British Empire Shakespeare Society. But the performance in Kristiania has demanded more, "and my adaptation could not be so wonderfully ideal. As You Like It is, probably more than any other of Shakespeare's plays, a jest and only in part a play. Through the title he has given his work, he has given me the right to make my own arrangement which is accordingly, yours truly As You ...
— An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway • Martin Brown Ruud

... you, Faith, Hope & Charity, otherwise called the 3 graces," said I, pintin to my darters, who looked as sheepish as if they was jest let loose from a femail convenshun, or some other ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 36, December 3, 1870 • Various

... career, and he runs wildly over hill and dale, till the clock stop him. The labour of it is chiefly in his lungs; and the only thing he has made[7] in it himself, is the faces. He takes on against the pope without mercy, and has a jest still in lavender for Bellarmine: yet he preaches heresy, if it comes in his way, though with a mind, I must needs say, very orthodox. His action is all passion, and his speech interjections. He has an excellent faculty in bemoaning the people, and spits ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle

... loath the hated name, Famine's metropolis, the sink of shame, A nauseous sepulchre, whose craving womb Hourly inters poor mortals in its tomb; By ev'ry plague and ev'ry ill possessed, Ev'n purgatory itself to thee's a jest; Emblem of hell, nursery of vice, Thou crawling university of lice; When wretches numberless to ease their pains, With smoke and all delude their pensive chains. How shall I avoid thee? or with what spell Dissolve the enchantment of thy magic cell? Ev'n Fox himself ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert

... His jest did not win any smiles. The men grimly watched him saddle and ride away. A quarter of an hour later they too were in ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine

... the charges with counter-charges against Ord, whom he accused of purloining Father Pandoza's shoes, when the soldiers in their fury about the ammunition destroyed the Mission. At the time of its destruction a rumor of this nature was circulated through camp, started by some wag, no doubt in jest; for Ord, who was somewhat eccentric in his habits, and had started on the expedition rather indifferently shod in carpet-slippers, here came out in a brand-new pair of shoes. Of course there was no real ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... already widowed; and his wife had come to life and snatched it from her head. She could hear the laughter—the half amused, half contemptuous pity for her "rotten bad luck." She would be their standing jest, till she was forgotten. ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome

... 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

... betray themselves in unjustified likes and dislikes felt for casual persons and things, in the je ne sais quoi that makes instinctive sympathy. Voice, manner, aspect, hints of congenial tastes and judgments, a jest in the right key, a gesture marking the right aversions, all these trifles leave behind a pervasive impression. We reject a vision we find indigestible and without congruity to our inner dream; we accept and incorporate another ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... likewise his Green Brother, In their best close cums with a modest ring, And having got their orders, one and tother, Smilingly asks for jest one other thing. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari Volume 98, January 4, 1890 • Various

... with the great parchment roll, "You little scamp, who begin to trim the trees from the top!" All of the gentlemen who formed her escort now drew nigh in turn, each having something to remark or jest over, either a freshly worked-up miniature system, or a miserable little hypothesis, or some similar abortion of their own insignificant brains. Through the open door of the hall many strange gentlemen now entered, who announced themselves as the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... and her mamma. The former had his reasons for overlooking the attentions of the little music-master; and as for the latter, had she not been on the stage, and had not many hundreds of persons, in jest or earnest, made love to her? What else can a pretty woman expect who is much before the public? And so the worthy mother counselled her daughter to bear these attentions with good humour, rather than to make them a subject of ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Mr. Cobb cautiously, after a moment's reflection. "I don't seem to think I ever did read jest those partic'lar ones. Where'd you get a ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... that by any means, and made a kind of a jest of my intending to buy the goods, that being no shop for the selling of anything, and as to carrying them to the door to look at them, the maids made their impudent mocks upon that, and spent their wit upon it very much; told the Court ...
— The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. • Daniel Defoe

... his companion's face for the space of a moment, in silence. There was nothing in its expression that looked like a jest. It still retained the same hard, cold look, that, except when Hugh had alluded to his home and family, it had worn through ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... to have eluded the rock, was a victory for the shipwrecked men; but it was a victory which left them in stupor. They had raised no cheer: at sea such an imprudence is not repeated twice. To throw down a challenge where they could not cast the lead, would have been too serious a jest. ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... above six millions sterling, had been unloaded and carried back to Panama, in pursuance of an order sent by an advice-boat which had the start of Hosier. This admiral lay inactive on that station, until he became the jest of the Spaniards. He returned to Jamaica, where he found means to reinforce his crews; then he stood over to Carthagena. The Spaniards had by this time seized the English South-Sea ship at La Vera Cruz, together with all the vessels and effects belonging to that company. Hosier ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett

... to mistake him egregiously. Joker as he is, he himself is no joke. The fool's-cap he wears does not prove him to be a fool; and even when he touches the tip of his nasal organ with his fore-finger and winks so irresistibly, meaning lurks in his facetious features, to assure you he does not jest without a purpose, or play the buffoon only to coin sixpences. The fact, then, we propose to illustrate is this:—that Punch is a teacher and philanthropist, a lover of truth, a despiser of cant, an advocate of right, a hater of shams,—a hale, hearty old gentleman, whose notions ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various

... hoarse, to suit That hole of sorrow, o'er which ev'ry rock His firm abutment rears, then might the vein Of fancy rise full springing: but not mine Such measures, and with falt'ring awe I touch The mighty theme; for to describe the depth Of all the universe, is no emprize To jest with, and demands a tongue not us'd To infant babbling. But let them assist My song, the tuneful maidens, by whose aid Amphion wall'd in Thebes, so with the truth My speech shall best accord. Oh ill-starr'd folk, Beyond all others wretched! who abide In such a mansion, as scarce thought ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante

... an' that's a fact, Trimm," sneered the tramp, resuming his malicious, mocking air. "But set down an' make yourself at home, an' after a while, when this is done, we'll have a bite together—you an' me. It'll be a reg'lar tea party fur jest us two." ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb

... introduced at these public tables, as so many schools of sobriety. There they heard discourses concerning government, and were instructed in the most liberal breeding. There they were allowed to jest without scurrility, and were not to take it ill when the raillery was returned. For it was reckoned worthy of a Lacedaemonian to bear a jest: but if any one's patience failed, he had only to desire them to be quiet, and they left off immediately. ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various

... any plan O' levyin' the taxes, Ez long ez, like a lumberman, I git jest wut I axes; I go free-trade thru thick an' thin, Because it kind o' rouses The folks to vote—an' keeps us ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers

... for his party, or rather for his immediate coterie, he was perpetually recurring to the traditions and tendencies of the old system, and endeavouring to carry his listeners with him by shallow subtleties and weak arguments, which were sometimes retorted upon himself. One day, partly in jest, and partly in earnest, he proposed to M. Royer-Collard to obtain for him from the King the title of Count. "Count?" replied M. Royer-Collard, in the same tone, "make yourself a Count?" The Abbe de Montesquieu smiled, with a slight expression of disappointment, at this ...
— Memoirs To Illustrate The History Of My Time - Volume 1 • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... was something wonderfully human in this ridiculous shape bedizened with its tattered finery, and, as for the countenance, it appeared to shrivel its yellow surface into a grin—a funny kind of expression betwixt scorn and merriment, as if it understood itself to be a jest at mankind. The more Mother Rigby looked, the better ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various

... deceptive appearance of religion, which, under favouring circumstances, grew for a time in the life of an unrenewed man. In point of fact, a sneer from some leading spirit in a literary society, or a laugh raised by a gay circle of pleasure-seekers in a fashionable drawing-room, or the rude jest of scoffing artisans in a work-shop, may do as much as the fagot and the stake to make a fair but false disciple ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... very desirable and necessary are often overshadowed by the skilful juxtaposition that shifts them where they are but dimly seen, while other things stand forth in a strong light and are thus looked upon as all important. So the merry quip and jest at the Latin and Greek studied by the Negro bring far more than a passing laugh—they really bring discredit upon the whole higher training where none is actually intended. It causes the old friends of higher learning to pause, and take it far too literally, ...
— The Educated Negro and His Mission - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 8 • W. S. Scarborough

... solo speaking Members still feel an avidity; If they burn to make orations of most uncommon zest, Let them just take our precaution against intense stupidity! Let them study PUNCHINELLO and learn how to make a jest; But away with dreams chimerical and projects vain, though clever! The power of tongue's proportionate to wondrous length of ear; The beast that carried BALAAM is as garrulous as ever, And still the lobby listener must be content to hear Rap! rap! rap! To quell the rising clamor; Order! ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 8, May 21, 1870 • Various

... to your commands, Mrs. Shelley's book—but when books accumulate and when besides, I want to let you have the American edition of my poems ... famous for all manner of blunders, you know; what is to be done but have recourse to the parcel-medium? You were in jest about being at Pisa before or as soon as we were?—oh no—that must not be indeed—we must wait a little!—even if you determine to go at all, which is a question of doubtful expediency. Do take more exercise, this week, and make war against those dreadful ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett

... I thought, she would be sure to disguise her feelings by some mocking jest. How often the heart protests against a ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac

... that class are represented by a colored man of whom I heard a Methodist bishop tell. He said to a friend: "Dat wife of mine is got money on de brain; it's money, money all the time. I can't go whar she is, but she's axing me for money. She's jest sho'ly gwine to run me to the lunatic 'sylum ef she don't quit her beggin' me ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain

... idea, and tried, at first in jest, then earnestly, to make him understand I had no such plans in connection with my discovery; that I only wanted to extend the amount of knowledge in the world,—not the number of ice-cream pavilions. I offered to let him take the whole ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various

... Understanding so little of life's responsibilities the man's dependence upon his wife was pitiful, if not criminal. With tears streaming down his lean, hungry face he had begged, "Do somethin', Doc! My God Almighty, you jest got to ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright

... blackest doom. It was absolutely necessary that Mrs. Basil should obtain the confidence of Solomon, and perhaps of Charley also, and yet this unlooked-for and swift success of hers was far from welcome to poor Harry. It really almost seemed that there was truth in what her son had spoken in jest—that there was witchcraft ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn

... this discovery was to dispel his anger, or rather to restore his calmness, and, addressing M. de Coralth, he exclaimed: "Don't be angry at what I've said, m'sieur; it was only a jest—I know that there's a wide difference between a poor devil like me and a viscount like you—I haven't a sou, you see, and that maddens me. But I'm not so very bad-looking, fortunately, and I'm ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau

... ex-missionary owner of the place. I divined on the instant that this was his habit, to stand by the door before supper and say just those words to the last arrivals. I had a vision of him standing by his mission door aforetime, repeating one jest, or more likely one stale euphuism night ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy

... 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

... has passed out through the dock gates, or Jack has done a hand's turn of work on board her. Dick listened with a good- tempered grin to the chorus of grumbling that was proceeding around him, interjected a merry jest or two which caused the growlers to stop in mid-career in amazement at his audacity, and then, having slipped nimbly into his clothes, he sprang up through the hatchway and presented himself ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood

... residence, and finding the prince still there, he told him first, what had happened. Happily there were some courtiers who had seen the shield-bearer go without any arms. One of them had even shouted after him, half in jest, to take some old iron, because otherwise the Germans would get the best of him; but he, fearing that the knights would pass the frontier, jumped on horseback as he stood, in a sheepskin overcoat only and hurried after them. These testimonies ...
— The Knights of the Cross • Henryk Sienkiewicz

... voice and manner this morning, therefore, when he shook his finger at the town beyond the windows, and exclaimed, with a bitter laugh, "Look at it!" was no surprise to his companions. "Jest look at it! I tell you the devil is mighty smart. Ha, ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington

... so able and so false? It would be incorrect to call him a liar, because he is wanting in that sense of truth by violating which a man makes himself a liar. We cannot call him a traitor, for his heart knows no country; nor an infidel, for all the serious and high concerns of man are to him a jest. Defective is the word to apply to such as he. As far as he goes, he is good; and if the commodity in which he deals were cotton or sugar, we could commend his enterprise and tact. He is like the steeple of a church ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton

... letter to Manning belonging to the same period, Lamb returns to the subject of poverty:—"You dropt a word whether in jest or earnest, as if you would join me in some work, such as a review or series of papers, essays, or anything.—Were you serious? I want home occupation, & I more want money. Had you any scheme, or was it, as G. Dyer says, en passant? If I don't have a Legacy left me shortly I must get into ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas

... hominy. "A friend of mine on one of the newspapers is preparing an article on the 'Antiquity of Modern Humor.' With your kind permission, Mrs. Smithers, I'll take down your remark and hand it over to Mr. Scribuler as a specimen of the modern antique joke. You may not be aware of the fact, but that jest is to be found in the rare first edition of the Tales of Bobbo, an Italian humorist, who stole everything he wrote from ...
— Coffee and Repartee • John Kendrick Bangs

... Ballad of East and West The Last Suttee The Ballad of the King's Mercy The Ballad of the King's Jest The Ballad of Boh Da Thone The Lament of the Border Cattle Thief The Rhyme of the Three Captains The Ballad of the "Clampherdown" The Ballad of the "Bolivar" The English Flag Cleared An Imperial Rescript Tomlinson Danny Deever ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... asked what this meant, and was answered, "'Tis something very like dealing with the devil, my dear." Those who give a child a witty instead of a rational answer, do not know how dearly they often make the poor child pay for their jest. My father added, "It is certain, that when a man once goes to the Jews, he soon goes to the devil. So Harrington, my boy, I charge you at your peril, whatever else you do, keep out of the hands of the Jews—never go near the Jews: if once they ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth

... runs from Denver, over Crestline. Look up there—jest to the right of Mount Taluchen. See that there little ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper

... four weeks in New Salem, after which she returned to Kentucky. Three years later, and perhaps a year after Miss Rutledge's death, Mrs. Able, before starting for Kentucky, told Mr. Lincoln probably more in jest than earnest, that she would bring her sister back with her on condition that he would become her—Mrs. Able's—brother-in-law. Lincoln, also probably more in jest than earnest, promptly agreed to ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay

... back. "His way! Keepin' you all on rye meal one spell, an' not lettin' you eat a mite of Injun, an' then keepin' you on Injun without a mite of rye! Makin' you eat nothin' but greens an' garden stuff, an' jest turnin' you out to graze an' chew your cuds like horned animals one spell, an' then makin' you live on meat! Lettin' you go abroad when he takes a notion, an' then keepin' you an' Charlotte in the house ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... round? He say, too, maybe so I tell you something you not know before. One time my grandfather he make long journey that way (pointing to the west). When he get on big mountain, he seen heap water on t'other side, jest so flat he can be, and he seen the sun go right straight down on t'other side. I then tell him all these rivers he seen, all e'time the water he run; s'pose the world flat the water he stand still. Maybe so he not ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy

... boundaries obliterated by the French inundation, news was brought to them that Napoleon had escaped from Elba and was in France. At first the members of the Congress were incredulous, regarding the thing as a jest, and were with difficulty convinced of ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers

... procession that the guard became impatient. Here comes a foreigner! A Jew of Cyrene! Harmless and inoffensive, gladly would he make way for the crowd. Why should he not bear this burden under which Jesus of Nazareth is falling to the ground? The insolent soldiers, with oath and jest, constrain him, and he dares not resist. Probably Simon had no previous knowledge of Him for whom he bore this load, and loathed the service he was compelled to render; but that compulsory companionship with Jesus carried him to Calvary. He beheld the wondrous tragedy, ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer

... first be imagined that such a strange token of regard as this could be intended only as a jest and an insult; but there is no doubt that Darius meant it seriously as a compliment and an honor. He supposed that Democedes, of course, considered his condition of captivity as a fixed and permanent one; and that his fetters were not, in ...
— Darius the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... have we seen Done at the Mermaid! Heard words that have been So nimble and so full of subtle flame, As if that every one from whence they came Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest. ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker

... sort of chorus, in general; and affected to be convulsed with mirth at the comic parts, and to be overcome with fear when there was any passage of an alarming character in the narrative. This rather put me out, very often. It was a great jest of his, I recollect, to pretend that he couldn't keep his teeth from chattering, whenever mention was made of an Alguazill in connexion with the adventures of Gil Blas; and I remember that when Gil ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens

... considered these preachers of a new religion really good or not; to which the unsophisticated child of nature responded naively, 'Good, very good—roasted; but not quite so good boiled,' and the professor gravely entered the answer in his philosophic note-book. It was a very ancient jest indeed, but it tickled the ribs of the house mightily, as ancient jests usually do, and they burst forthwith into a hearty roar of genuine approval. Then Arthur began to breathe more freely. After that the house toned down again quietly, and gave no decided ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen

... there is gladness and revelry; The dancers foot it with jest and glee. The air weighed hot on my brow and breast; For Gudmund, he was not there. [She ...
— The Feast at Solhoug • Henrik Ibsen

... its sweet inflections, was broken, or "cracked," as singers term it, a circumstance occasioned, perhaps, by the constant use she made of it, for she was not a little remarkable for that volubility which a rude jest attributes to her sex in general. She was a very successful beggar, too, amongst the rest of her accomplishments, for munition and strong drink. Just before the battle of Dodowah commenced, she passed along the ranks, encouraging her people with an appropriate harangue, ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman

... reading Charles Lamb's writings; but many have become wiser and better. Sometimes, as he hints, "he affected that dangerous figure, irony;" and he would sometimes interrupt grave discussion, when he thought it too grave, with some light jest, which nevertheless was "not quite irrelevant." Long talkers, as he confesses, "hated him;" and assuredly he hated ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall

... comported herself as if she had been a Member's wife since infancy, thereby causing my heart to swell with noble pride. This unparalleled young person compelled me to take my engagement almost seriously. If I shot forth a jest, it struck against a virtue and fell blunted to the earth. Indeed, even now I am sorry I can't marry Eleanor. But marriage is out of ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke

... devil!" said the Chevalier, "the matter is this; it is very likely that we shall win his money. The Piedmontese, though otherwise good fellows, are apt to be suspicious and distrustful. He commands the horse; you know you cannot hold your tongue, and are very likely to let slip some jest or other that may vex him. Should he take it into his head that he is cheated, and resent it, who knows what the consequences might be? for he is commonly attended by eight or ten horsemen. Therefore, however he may be provoked at his loss, it is proper to be in such a situation ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton

... of the paid taletellers, who squat and drone and reach a climax, and then pass the begging bowl before they finish it—each merrily related jest brought in by members of the constantly arriving trading parties—each neigh of his three chargers—every new phase of the kaleidoscopic life he watched stirred new ambition in him to be up, and away, and doing. ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy

... besides there not to interrupt one in the relation of his tale, or to feed it with odde interlocutions: One shall learne also not to laugh at his own jest, as too many used to do, like a Hen, which cannot lay an ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard









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