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More "Jocularity" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... your father, I suppose," said Mr. Carr, with an attempt at jocularity that did not, however, disguise an irritated suspiciousness. "He really seems to have supplanted ME as he has poor ...
— Devil's Ford • Bret Harte
... (which Mim, a short, swarthy member of the gang, with a countenance too astute to be pleasing, instantly started forth to obey) the gypsy stretched himself at full length by the youth's side, and began reminding him, with some jocularity and at some length, of his promise to drink ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... This jocularity was in strange contrast to the sombre indifference with which the king of the forest looked down on the speaker. Rounders infringed on the rules laid down by Brinton in giving bits of meat to the beast whenever an opportunity presented itself; but ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... hand. I'm used to rising early for a canter. I'll take it with a cab horse this time. That will be all the difference." And with this attempt at jocularity, Mr. Evringham shook hands once more and departed, swallowing his ill-humor as best he could. Any instincts of the family man which might once have reigned in him had long since been inhibited. This episode was a cruel invasion ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... commentator on Sterne can possibly shirk, but which every admirer of Sterne must approach with reluctance. There is, of course, a sense in which Sterne's humour—if, indeed, we may bestow that name on the form of jocularity to which I refer—is the very reverse of pure and delicate: a sense in which it is impure and indelicate in the highest degree. On this it is necessary, however briefly, to touch; and to the weighty and many-counted indictment which may be framed against Sterne ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... no doubt," ejaculated Cowdray, sitting down in triumphant jocularity. "It was the ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... reproof, jocularity, and the style of the Lord High Warden, and I had almost to pinch the Hawley Boy to make him keep quiet. She grunted at the end of each sentence and, in the end he went away swearing to himself, quite like a man in a novel. He looked more objectionable ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... Miss Coleridge's pages, we seem to have heard before in the Arena chapel or at the end of a Bach fugue. It is the comment of sophisticated refinement that can neither sit still nor launch out into rapturous, but ill-bred, ecstasies, of the weakling who takes refuge in slang or jocularity for fear of becoming natural and being thought ridiculous. Miss Coleridge stood for Kensington and Culture, so she smiled and shrugged her shoulders at Medea, and called the Bacchae "Hallelujah Lasses." She and Kensington admired Greek literature ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... Coleridge's zeal on these questions was by far the most conspicuous, as will appear by some of his Sonnets, and particularly by his Poem of "Fire, Famine, and Slaughter;" though written some considerable time after. When he read this Poem to me, it was with so much jocularity as to convince me that, without bitterness, it was ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... hangers-on of the criminal courts would have described him as a highbrow and as a holier-than-thou; perhaps he might in a moment of jocularity have even so described himself—for he had his human—perhaps I should have said, his weaker—side. Surely he seemed human enough when he kissed Eleanor good-by at the door of their country place on the Sound ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... spoken with cheerful seriousness, but Madame de Bellegarde's tone made him go on, after a meditative pause, with a certain light grimness of jocularity. "No, I lost money on wash-tubs, but I came out ...
— The American • Henry James
... professed great content with Smith, but desired to see his father, Captain Newport. He inquired also with a merry countenance after the piece of ordnance that Smith had promised to send him, and Smith, with equal jocularity, replied that he had offered the men four demi-culverins, which they found too heavy to carry. This night they quartered with Powhatan, and were liberally feasted, and entertained with singing, dancing, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... too have listened to the report of my marriage, and must forsooth display a pretty vein of jocularity upon the mournful occasion. Did you really believe it? If you did, you will never be able to astonish me with any thing else that is wonderful in your creed, for I shall reckon your judgment at least ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell
... sat in the cockpit smoking, he became down-right obnoxious by excessive jocularity. It can be disgustingly overdone. Believing that his triumph was assured, he sputtered and giggled with small regard for my presence, and the farther he went the madder I got. Despite his former protestations ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... Andrew, to stir up the multitude with jests, perhaps hundreds of years old, but still effective, by their appeals to the very broadest sources of mirthful sympathy. All such professors of the several branches of jocularity would have been sternly repressed, not only by the rigid discipline of law, but by the general sentiment which gives law its vitality. Not the less, however, the great, honest face of the people smiled, grimly, perhaps, ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... there's no danger of your ever being mayor, Judd," Tallant observed, with a somewhat uneasy jocularity. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... carried; and it would have been too vapid for the toleration of any palate, had it not been so sour. As I sat regardless before this repast, in abstracted grief, I underwent the first of the thousand practical jokes that were hereafter to familiarise me with manual jocularity. My right-hand neighbour, jerking me by the elbow, exclaimed, "Hollo, you sir, there's Jenkins, on the other side of you, cribbing your bread." I turned towards the supposed culprit, and discovered that my informant had ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... Lord," replied the Governor, affecting a jocularity he did not feel, for he knew how true were the words of the Bishop, "we must all do our duty, nevertheless: if France requires impossibilities of us, we must perform them! That is the old spirit! If the skies fall upon our heads, we must, like true Gauls, hold them up on the points ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... eminence[1321] being mentioned, Johnson said, 'Why, Sir, he is a man of good parts, but being originally poor, he has got a love of mean company and low jocularity; a very bad thing, Sir. To laugh is good, as to talk is good. But you ought no more to think it enough if you laugh, than you are to think it enough if you talk. You may laugh in as many ways as you talk; and surely every way of talking that is ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... subject of the Certina factory admitted of no jocularity. She took him under advisement with a grave and ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... were doomed to guide the hero or heroine to the ruinous precincts? Would not the owl have shrieked and the cricket cried in my very title page? and could it have been possible to me with a moderate attention to decorum to introduce any scene more lively than might be produced by the jocularity of a clownish but faithful valet or the garrulous narrative of the heroine's fille-de-chambre, when rehearsing the stories of blood and horror which she had heard in the servant's hall? Again, had my title borne 'Waverley, a Romance from the German,' what head ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... anxiously sedulous. A cloud on her face dimmed instantly his beaming looks; on an early visit to their maniap' my wife saw he had cause to be wary. Nan Tok' had a friend with him, a giddy young thing, of his own age and sex; and they had worked themselves into that stage of jocularity when consequences are too often disregarded. Nei Takauti mentioned her own name. Instantly Nan Tok' held up two fingers, his friend did likewise, both in an ecstasy of slyness. It was plain the lady had two ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... dotard endured, every time his wife entered our apartment, constantly fidgetting at her elbow, and scrutinizing, suspiciously, every look that passed between her and her guests. His fears served us for a jest, however, and produced a vein of jocularity, that reconciled us to our earthen flooring, upon which some of our party were doomed to seek repose ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... Farrel," he replied, with a heroic attempt at jocularity, "you will understand now that it was not altogether a cold hard heart that prompted me to decline your request for a renewal of the mortgage this morning. I couldn't afford to. I had agreed to gamble one million ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... down, sir." Mr. Norbury would not, in the ordinary way of business, have mentioned this fact, but it had given him a resource against a pleasantry he found distasteful. Of course, he knew the event of the morning. Yet he could not say to the gentleman:—"A truce to jocularity. A man was shot dead half a mile off last night, and the body has been taken to the ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... Marcus Aurelius as an example of that non-Christian morality and religiosity which also had so strong an attraction for him. There is no trace in either essay of the disquieting and almost dismaying jocularity which was later to invade his discussion of such things: we are still far from Bottles; the three Lord Shaftesburys relieve us by not even threatening to appear. And accordingly the two essays add in no small degree, though somewhat after the fashion of an appendix or belated ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... often entertained, and who had always paid his way at the Maypole gallantly, it may be remarked that it was his very penetration and sagacity in this respect, which occasioned him to indulge in those unusual demonstrations of jocularity, just now recorded. For Mr Willet, after carefully balancing father and son in his mental scales, had arrived at the distinct conclusion that the old gentleman was a better sort of a customer than the young ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... to see Jack, then?" he asked, with a dreadful feigning of jocularity. "But you are not a painter. You require no model, living or dead." He burst again ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... obscenity from the English theatre and ended by banning so fiercely Puritanical a play as "Mrs. Warren's Profession" because it admitted the existence of brothel-keeping as a business and by shutting up such innocent merriment as "The Mikado" because its jocularity might offend the ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... Cleopatra or the Queen of Sheba?" I exclaimed testily to cover my annoyance that my aunt had effected her descent in my absence. "Well, she was expected; the house is hers; what do you want me to do about it?" I ended with affected jocularity. ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson
... sure, but it looks like plenty. What's the equation for it?" Beneath his jocularity, Phil felt a tremendous sinking within him. It looked serious, despite the fact that he did not understand ...
— The Einstein See-Saw • Miles John Breuer
... the dairyman saw them, and came forward, throwing into his face the kind of jocularity deemed appropriate in Talbothays and its vicinity on the re-appearance of the newly-married. Then Mrs Crick emerged from the house, and several others of their old acquaintance, though Marian and Retty did not seem ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... great enjoyment in the kitchen. It was a time of high festival, what with me and the egg supper. Merriment and jocularity, a little tide-wave of social excitement, swelled and broke on all sides of me; making a soft ripply play of fun and repartee, difficult to describe, and which touched me as much as it amused. It was very unlike the enjoyment of a set of white people ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... is scarce a trait in his character that is not reflected somewhere in his music, and hardly a characteristic of his music that one does not find quaintly echoed in some recorded saying or doing of the man. His placid and even vivacity, his sprightliness, his broad jocularity, his economy and shrewd business perception of what could be done with the material to hand, his fertility of device, even his commonplaceness, may all be seen in the symphonies. At rare moments he ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... of the ladies and gentlemen of the corps dramatique "at the wing." Otherwise than as a sign of dramatic destitution, the piece called "Behind the Scenes" is highly amusing. Mr. Wild's acting displays that happy medium between jocularity and earnest, which is the perfection of burlesque. Mrs. Selby plays the "leading lady" without the smallest effort, and invites the first tragedian to her treat of oysters and beer with considerable empressement, though supposed to be labouring at the time ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... Little Ironies the part played by the "President of the Immortals" is no sublimer—save in the amount of force exerted—than that of a lout who pulls a chair suddenly from under an old woman. Now, by wedding Necessity with uncouth Jocularity, Mr. Hardy may have found an hypothesis that solves for him all the difficulties of life. I am not concerned in this place to deny that it may be the true explanation. I have merely to point out that art and criticism must take some time in getting accustomed to it, ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... better things than the old Trovatore at any rate, Aunt Georgie?" I queried, with a well meant effort at jocularity. ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... from courtesy or worldly wisdom. Stafforth, the adventurer, had an ugly sneer on his countenance, and was evidently embarrassed, so took refuge in the frequent attitude of the vulgar when ill at ease—a noisy jocularity. ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... half-dressed figure of the lieutenant in command. Neither he nor his men were absolutely uncourteous, when they once recognized that I was not a Confederate spy, or a professional blockade-runner; but they were exultant, of course, and disposed to indulge in a rough jocularity, during the necessary inspection of my person ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... clever, hearing-all sort of a neighbour, said my sermon was greatly thought of, and that I had surprised everybody; but I was fearful there was something of jocularity at the bottom of this, for she was a flaunty woman, and liked well to give a good-humoured gibe or jeer. However, his grace the Commissioner was very thankful for the discourse, and complimented me on ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... teeth giving him an air of genial cordiality at first sight which was fully confirmed by further acquaintance. So long as the world went well with him, Mathew seemed to enjoy life thoroughly, and even its rubs he bore with an easy jocularity that showed what a stout heart he could oppose to Fortune. A long minority had provided him with a considerable sum on his coming of age, but he spent it freely, and when it was exhausted, continued to live on at the same rate as before, till at last, as creditors grew pressing, ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... susceptible of street affronts; the jeers and taunts of the populace; the low-bred triumph they display over the casual trip, or splashed stocking, of a gentleman. Yet can I endure the jocularity of a young sweep with something more than forgiveness.—In the last winter but one, pacing along Cheapside with my accustomed precipitation when I walk westward, a treacherous slide brought me upon my ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... . . It's well to be in good time when you're dealin' with John Peter," said Mr Philp with dreadful jocularity. "As I came along the head o' the town," he explained, "I heard that Snell's wife had passed away in the night. A happy release. I dropped in to see if they'd given you ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... brown eyes, a dazzling set of teeth, and a tempestuously frizzled mop of powdered hair. When I managed to get a side-look at her quietly, without being giggled at or driven half mad by unintelligible incitements to a jocularity I could not feel, it struck me that, if we once found a common term of communication we should become good friends. But for the moment that modus vivendi seemed unattainable. She had not recovered from the first excitement of her capture of me. She was still showing me off and ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... sweets were being handed when she caught a phrase on her other side, where Miss Corby, the comic woman of the company, was bantering Jack Stepney on his approaching engagement. Miss Corby's role was jocularity: she always entered the ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... a very nice chap—I think the best of the lot," he began, with assumed jocularity; then, seeing Cecily's eyes suddenly fixed on him, he added, somewhat lamely, "the padre! There were also two women in ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... knew his own dignity, could not always forbear to show it, by playing a little upon his admirer; but he was in no danger of retort; his jests were endured without resistance or resentment. But the sneer of jocularity was not the worst. Steele, whose imprudence of generosity, or vanity of profusion, kept him always incurably necessitous, upon some pressing exigence, in an evil hour, borrowed a hundred pounds of his friend probably without much purpose of repayment; ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson
... this connection to recall the story which has been told regarding the origin of the word "sirloin." It is said that this steak found such favor with some epicurean king of olden times that he, in a spirit of jocularity and good humor, bestowed upon it the honor of knighthood, to the great delight of his assembled court, and as "Sir Loin" it was thereafter known. It is a pity to spoil so good a story, but the fact is that the word is derived from the French ...
— The Community Cook Book • Anonymous
... of intimate jocularity is reached when the last sorry pretense of drama is discarded and the dramatic machinery itself becomes the subject of jest. So in the Cas. 1006 the cast is warned: Hanc ex longa longiorem ne faciamus fabulam. In Per. 159-60 Saturio ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • William Wallace Blancke
... affections. And—look you!—this misery passes along the world under the mask of easy indifference, and wears a smiling face, and submits to be rallied by the wit, and assumes itself the air of vulgar jocularity. Oh, this penury that goes well clad, and is warmly housed, and makes a mock of its own anguish—I'd rather die on the wheel, or be starved to death in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... the French judges, I had become accustomed to associating with men double or treble my own age. There was nothing corresponding to the gaiete francaise about them, though at times a ponderous playfulness marked their lighter moments, and flashes of elephantine jocularity enlivened the proceedings of the Club. I picked up some useful items of knowledge from them, for I regret to admit that up to that time I had no idea what a bill of lading was, or a ship's manifest; after a while, even such cryptic expressions, too, as f.o.b. and c.i.f. ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... back some desperate essay at jocularity, at which Ada laughed with some perseverance, until even she could no longer resist the influence ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... captains and Wycherly followed the vice-admiral into the after-cabin, where the latter seated himself on a small sofa, while the others took chairs, in respectful attitudes near him, no familiarity or jocularity on the part of a naval superior ever lessening the distance between him and those who hold subordinate commissions—a fact that legislators would do well to remember, when graduating rank in a service. As soon as all were placed, Sir ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... and the spontaneity of the drama of his stories. But when his story was thin, and he was wandering in an excursion with his childish philosophy, he was usually facetious. As an obvious and easily imitable trick for dull evenings, this elaborate jocularity seems to have been more enjoyed by his disciples than his genius for narrative when he was happy, and his material was full and sound. Yet his false and vulgar fun has spoiled many of these volumes pollinated from India. They have another defect, ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... economy, and you'll find, gentlemen, he's just the article for big planters. I am happy to see the calm and serene faces of three of my friends of the clergy present; will they not take an interest for a fellow-worker in a righteous cause?" The vender smiles, seems inclined to jocularity, to which the gentlemen in black are unwilling to submit. They have not been moving among dealers, and examining a piece of property here and there, with any sinecure motive. They view the vender's remarks as exceedingly offensive, ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... Louis's attempt at jocularity most ill-timed, but I said nothing. It seemed to me an immense time that he was gone, but he declares that it was not more than a minute and a quarter. Then I heard him laugh quietly ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... at her forced jocularity; but the hunted expression saddened his eyes again. To these children, brought up animal-like in the midst of misery and hate, their world revolved round their stomachs, too often empty. But this new trouble—the terror of Flea's going with Lem—had ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... of his beaten enemies were resolute enough, accepting defeat with grim carelessness, or with sphinx-like indifference, or even with airy jocularity. But for the most part their alert, eager deference, their tame subservience, the abject humility and debasement of their bent shoulders drove Jadwin to the verge of self-control. He grew to detest the ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... an assumed jocularity which he was very far from feeling, "what are you doing with those ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... COMINES the historian, when residing at the court of the Count de Charolois, afterwards Duke of Burgundy, one day returning from hunting, with inconsiderate jocularity sat down before the Count, and ordered the prince to pull off his boots. The Count would not affect greatness, and having executed his commission, in return for the princely amusement, the Count dashed the boot on Comines' ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... of having been deeply concerned in the sale of Charles the First to the English Parliament, and was therefore, in the estimation of good Cavaliers, a traitor, if possible, of a worse description than those who had sate in the High Court of Justice. He often talked with a noisy jocularity of the days when he was a canter and a rebel. He was now the chief instrument employed by the court in the work of forcing episcopacy on his reluctant countrymen; nor did he in that cause shrink from the unsparing use of the sword, the halter, and the boot. Yet those who ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... elimination and the theatrical entry of Beverly Plank upon the stage. He laughed when he thought of Major Belwether, too, confounded under the loss of such a nephew-in-law, humiliated, crushed, all his misleading jocularity, all his sleek pink-and-white suavity, all his humbugging bonhomie knocked out of him, leaving only a rumpled, startled old gentleman, who bore an amusing resemblance to a very ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... fellow-citizens as the manifestation of a pious and humble spirit. But in his own circles of the financial world the taking up of such a thing as the San Tome mine was regarded with respect, indeed, but rather as a subject for discreet jocularity. It was a great man's caprice. In the great Holroyd building (an enormous pile of iron, glass, and blocks of stone at the corner of two streets, cobwebbed aloft by the radiation of telegraph wires) the heads of principal departments exchanged humorous glances, ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... the middle watch on that eventful night, and just after he had struck four bells, and the wheel had been relieved, he was inexpressibly scandalised by hearing above the howling of the gale loud sounds of singing and jocularity on the forecastle. ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... minds that the Kingdom was Coming, accompanied by the Day of Jubilee. Philander left his spool-thread and tape, rushed into the street, and by his Long-Tail Blue, sed, "Let me kiss him for his Mother." Then, with patriotic jocularity, he inquired, "How is your High Daddy in the Morning?" to which Pomp of Cudjo's Cave replied, "That poor Old Slave has gone to rest, we ne'er shall see him more! But U.S.G. is the man for me, or Any other ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 3 • Charles Farrar Browne
... do him very much harm, you know," said the captain with affected jocularity. "He has confessed ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... smashing my furniture"—Anstice's jocularity was savage—"perhaps you'll be good enough to clear out. I won't pretend I'm anxious for more of your ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... audience; eloquent, but with no trace of the empty rhetoric which so often does duty for that quality; full of a high seriousness, but with no suspicion of pedantry; lightened by an occasional epigram or flashes of caustic humour, but with none of the small jocularity in which it is such a temptation to a lecturer to indulge. As one listened to him one felt that comparative anatomy was worthy of the devotion of a life, and that to solve a morphological problem was as fine a thing as to win a battle. He was an admirable draughtsman, and his blackboard ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley - A Character Sketch • Leonard Huxley
... as the family shook down together, became less afraid of Ethel, and did not think it so needful to snub her either by his dignity or jocularity; though she still knew that she was only on terms of sufferance, and had been, more than once, made to repent of unguarded observations. He was admirable; and the school was so rapidly improving that Norman had put his father into ecstasies by proposing to send home little Dickie to begin ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in a westerly breeze. But in the smoother waters of the Southern seas the passengers plucked up courage, and one morning at breakfast Luke perceived a tall, heavy-shouldered man nodding vigorously, and wiping his mouth with a napkin, which he subsequently waved with friendly jocularity. ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... Palmer; "this sort of—what do you call it? double-dealing about visitors, goes on every where, Madam Beaumont. But how do I know, that when I go away, you may not be as glad to get rid of me as you were to get away from these Duttons?" added he, in a tone of forced jocularity. "How do I know, but that the minute my back is turned, you may not begin to take me to pieces in my turn, and say, 'That old Palmer! he was the most tiresome, humoursome, strange, old-fashioned fellow; I thought we should never have got rid ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... carried off Flora de Barral to Bournemouth for the winter months in the quality of reader and companion. She had said to her with kindly jocularity: "We shall have a good time together. I am not a grumpy old woman." But on their return to London she sought Mrs. Fyne at once. She had discovered that Flora was not naturally cheerful. When she made efforts to be it was still worse. The old lady ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... by a present—now a watch, now some costly lace, and again a lock of his hair, or a simple bunch of dried flowers, while she returns some such homely gift as a little fruit or a fur-lined waistcoat. On both sides, too, a vein of jocularity runs through the letters, as when Catherine addresses him as "Your Excellency, the very illustrious and eminent Prince-General and Knight of the crowned Compass and Axe"; and when Peter, after the Peace of Nystadt, writes: "According to ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... by the intensity of his devotion. Modern literary anarchists are so inclined to fall into jocularity, and irony, and "human, too human" humour. Their Hamlet-like consciousness of the "many mansions" of truth tends to paralyse the impetus of their challenge. They are so often, too, dramatists and novelists ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... glee, high glee, light heart; sunshine of the mind, sunshine of the breast; gaiete de coeur [Fr.], bon naturel [Fr.]. liveliness &c adj.; life, alacrity, vivacity, animation, allegresse^; jocundity, joviality, jollity; levity; jocularity &c (wit) 842. mirth, merriment, hilarity, exhilaration; laughter &c 838; merrymaking &c (amusement) 840; heyday, rejoicing &c 838; marriage bell. nepenthe, Euphrosyne^, sweet forgetfulness. optimism &c (hopefulness) 858; self complacency; hedonics^, hedonism. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Hildegunde bound up the wounds of all three of the combatants, who then sat down to share a meal together, indulged in much jocularity about their wounds, and, parting amicably, sought their respective homes. Walther and Hildegunde were next joyously welcomed by their relatives, duly married, and reigned together over Aquitaine ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber
... you've brought me back my lady, MacPhail," she said; then added, thawing into something like jocularity, "I shouldn't have looked to you to go running away ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... hand, when he had been shut up with brusque, half-savage, energetic Doctor Rogerson, Tom was laconic, decisive, and insupportably ill-bred, till, as we have said, the mirage melted away, and he gradually acquiesced in his identity. Then, little by little, the irrepressible gossip, jocularity, and ballad minstrelsy were heard again, his little eyes danced, and his waggish smiles glowed once more, ruddy as a setting sun, through the nectarian vapours of the punch-bowl. The ghosts of Pell and Rogerson fled to their cold ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... a confectioner in Glasgow, and that the map of the Clyde was nothing but a plan for the outset of a fashionable table—the bailie's island of Arran being the roast beef, and the craig of Ailsa the plum-pudding, and Plada a butter- boat. Nobody enjoyed the jocularity of the business more than myself; but I trembled when I thought of the escape that my honour and character had with the lord advocate. I trow, Bailie Booble never set himself so forward ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... to this jocularity, or even to Mrs. Jasher, to whom he had been so lately engaged. All his soul was in the mummy case, and as soon as he recovered his breath, he loudly proclaimed his joy at this miraculous recovery ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... that follows him, was prepared by some introductory dialogue, in which the audience was informed that they were the fool and page of Phrynia, Timandra, or some other courtesan, upon the knowledge of which depends the greater part of the ensuing jocularity. ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... The situation was too serious for seasickness. In spite of the jocularity of his words, Jim's voice sounded hollow. Both of them knew that it meant a hard fight to ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... hauling up baggage from the hold—they would have been interesting enough to him at any other time, with their seamed bilious complexions of every degree of swarthiness, set off by the touches of colour in their sashes and head coverings, their strange cries and still more uncouth jocularity—but he soon tired of them, and wandered aft, where the steamer-chairs, their usefulness at an end for that voyage, were huddled together dripping and forlorn on the damp red deck. He was still standing ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... am quite serious," said Jeffreys, on whom the apparent jocularity of his last remark had suddenly dawned; "I had no intention of being rude, or treating your question as ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... something more worthy of the refined intelligence of his clever audience. Yet it must be acknowledged that much even of his wit is the mere filth-throwing of a naughty boy; or at best the underbred jocularity of the "funny column," the topical song, or the minstrel show. There are puns on the names of notable personages; a grotesque, fantastic, punning fauna, flora, and geography of Greece; a constant succession ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... in Francis Heathcote's condition in the days which followed was, so the doctor and nurses declared, phenomenal. Robert Gale ceased to tug at his beard in angry perplexity, and melted into something which might almost have been called jocularity, as he watched the man gaining in health and strength. "Splendid! Splendid!" he would say, rubbing his hands together in satisfaction. "Go on as you are going, and you'll see the last of ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... with some," said Mr. Jobling, with jocularity. He helped himself to bread and butter and began to discuss money and how to spend it. His ideas favored retirement and a nice little place ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... Whereupon a control, or state of mind, or personality that called itself Fra Guiseppi would rise to consciousness and dominate the boy. Larmy and the reporter called it "father," and talked to it with considerable jocularity, considering that the father claimed they were talking to a ghost. It would do odd things for them; go into rooms where David had never been: describe their furnishings and occupants accurately; read the numbers ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... on its canvas hood the inscription, in large black letters, "Off to California!" on the other "Root, Hog, or Die," but neither of them awoke in the minds of the children the faintest idea of playfulness or jocularity. Perhaps it was difficult to connect the serious men, who occasionally walked beside them and seemed to grow more taciturn and depressed as the day wore on, with this past ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... to such saints and such rejoicings. But, little could I have thought, threescore years ago, that the hearty and jovial people of England would ever join in so filching and stabbing a jocularity. Even the petticoated torch-bearers from rotten Rome, who lighted the faggots in Smithfield some years before, if more blustering and cocksy, were less bitter and vulturine. They were all intolerant, but they were not all hypocritical; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... contemplated each other with visages of sevenfold blankness. They next unanimously directed their gaze towards their preceptor, hoping to detect some symptom of jocularity upon his venerable features. Nothing could be descried thereon but the most imperturbable solemnity, or, if perchance anything like an expression of irony lurked beneath this, it was not such irony as they wished to ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... gaiety equally difficult to be supported. Consider, Mr. Rambler, and compassionate the condition of a man, who has taught every company to expect from him a continual feast of laughter, an unintermitted stream of jocularity. The task of every other slave has an end. The rower in time reaches the port; the lexicographer at last finds the conclusion of his alphabet; only the hapless wit has his labour always to begin, the call for novelty is never ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... thou art pil'd, for a French velvet?] The jest about the pile of a French velvet alludes to the loss of hair in the French disease, a very frequent topick of our authour's jocularity. Lucio finding that the gentleman understands the distemper so well, and mentions it so feelingly, promises to remember to drink his health, but to forget to drink after him. It was the opinion of Shakespeare's time, that the cup of ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... to his jocularity. Gaston Isbel's eyes narrowed to a slit in his furrowed face and he kept them fastened upon Greaves's store. Blue, likewise, had a somber cast of countenance, not, perhaps, any darker nor grimmer than those of his comrades, ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... jocularity, Ridgeway was sorely troubled. Common sense told him that they were now in a most perilous position. The dead reckoning of the captain and his chartmaster, while able to determine with a certain degree of accuracy the locality in which the ship was beating, could not ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... kept the slang of "the road" (to use his own expression), with a few green-room phrases superadded. Now, artists in the theatrical profession are wont to express themselves with some vigor; Gaudissart borrowed sufficient racy green-room talk to blend with his commercial traveler's lively jocularity, and passed for a wit. He was thinking at that moment of selling his license and "going into another line," as he said. He thought of being chairman of a railway company, of becoming a responsible person and an administrator, and finally of marrying Mlle. Minard, daughter of the richest ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... Dowson turned a deaf ear to his request for information, and it was only when his jocularity on the subject passed the bounds of endurance that she consented ...
— Sailor's Knots (Entire Collection) • W.W. Jacobs
... at a time, something almost revolting in this approach to the littering of one's young. They all tried to unedge that animality by treating it as a joke, by confronting it with their conspiracies of jocularity. But it would be no joke to a nursing mother in the middle of a winter prairie with the nearest ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... were written on my face. I was a mere receptacle for dust and ashes, a living testimony to the vanity of all things. My very thoughts were like a ghostly rustle of dead leaves. But we had an extremely successful trip, and for most of the time Dominic displayed an unwonted jocularity of a dry and biting kind with which, he maintained, he had been infected by no other person than myself. As, with all his force of character, he was very responsive to the moods of those he liked I have no doubt he spoke the truth. But I know nothing about it. The ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... I had learned all the moods of this man and knew that when he assumed that air of cold, saturnine jocularity it was safe to look for the uncovering of some vaporized trickery. My enthusiasm oozed. I hastened ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... hat—an integument of which it is recorded, that he refused to give it to a conjurer to play the egg trick in, "not from respect for his own hat, but for the conjurer's eggs." The future President did not fail to signalize his first appearance as an administrator by a sally of the jocularity which was always struggling with melancholy in his mind. A gentleman of the place, whose education had been defective, was in the habit of calling two or three times a day at the post-office, and ostentatiously inquiring for letters. At last he received a letter, which, ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... where I was dining with the Bulows, and was an addition to my reserves that furnished us with many a jest. As Bulow had to complete the preparations for his concert, I drove out alone with Cosima on the promenade, as before, in a fine carriage. This time all our jocularity died away into silence. We gazed speechless into each other's eyes; an intense longing for an avowal of the truth mastered us and led to a confession—which needed no words—of the boundless unhappiness ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... his eyes very hastily with the sleeve of his gown, and endeavouring to recover his usual tone of indifference and jocularity, answered, but with a voice more tremulous than usual, "I might weel hae judged, Monkbarns, it was you, or the like o' you, was coming in to disturb mefor it's ae great advantage o' prisons and courts o' justice, that ye ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... to discover whether there was not a slight tinge of underlying jocularity in this remark of Mrs. Brand, for she was a strange and incomprehensible mixture of shrewdness and innocence; but no one took much trouble to find out, for she was so lovable that people accepted her just as she was, contented to let any ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... illustrated the difference of character between John Westlock and Martin Chuzzlewit, than the manner in which each of the young men contemplated Tom Pinch, after the little rupture just described. There was a certain amount of jocularity in the looks of both, no doubt, but there all resemblance ceased. The old pupil could not do enough to show Tom how cordially he felt towards him, and his friendly regard seemed of a graver and more thoughtful kind than before. The new one, on the other hand, had ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... probably prove a more effectual check upon her plans of escape than in her ordinary condition. Spite of the seriousness of the issue, there was something inconceivably absurd in this distress. The woman was noisy, familiar, and sometimes indulged in a vein of menacing jocularity, the principal material of which was supplied from scraps of old Norman ditties. There was one in particular which had a specially grisly sound in the ears of the friendless and frightened young wife. It ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... not recognize it. The person who employed the method was of philosophical non- combativeness. The New York phrase was that "He jollied a man along." Immense schemes had been carried through in that way. Men in London, in England, were not sufficiently light of touch in their jocularity. He wondered if perhaps this young fellow, with his ready laugh and rather loose-jointed, casual way of carrying himself, was of ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... man if he had resisted it. He did not,—he succumbed then and there and utterly to his love for Victorine; and the next morning when breakfast was ready he electrified Victor Dubois by saying, with a not wholly successful attempt at jocularity,— ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... "that we have not dealt liberally." Pippin made a motion of the head. "We think we have a good superintendent; I go further, an excellent superintendent. What I say is: Let's be pleasant! I am not making an unreasonable request!" He ended on a fitting note of jocularity; and, as if by consent, all three withdrew, each to his own ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... this out of their common rights, and their common sense? Mr. George Canning may laugh and joke at the idea of Protestant bailiffs ravishing Catholic ladies, under the 9th clause of the Sunset Bill; but if some better remedy be not applied to the distractions of Ireland than the jocularity of Mr. Canning, they will soon put an end to his pension, and to the pension of those "near and dear relatives," for whose eating, drinking, washing, and clothing, every man in the United Kingdoms now pays his two-pence or three-pence a year. You may call these observations ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... was in his own state-room that George Wentworth's jocularity came out at its best. He would grasp John Kenyon by the shoulder and shake that solemn man, over whose face a grim smile generally appeared when he noticed the exuberant ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... here he stopped hastily with a blank, frightened look—then repeated, "Yes, you, my only child, will be properly introduced to the world. Why, you will be quite an heiress, my girl," continued he, with an excited jocularity that frightened Olive. "And the world always courts such; who knows but that you may marry in ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... rich East Indian uncle or aunt who is likely to do it?" inquired Gildart with a desperate attempt at jocularity. ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... however, was jovial, friendly, social, witty, and companionable. At first he was delighted with his new assistant. As time went on, however, the young man's solemnity, his taciturnity, and the quiet, dignified way in which he permitted all attempts at sociability and jocularity to pass over his head, as it were, unnoticed, began to get on his ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... man writing to the most insensible person of his acquaintance would not venture wantonly to indulge in the cruel jocularity which I have quoted; and even if his own manners allowed him to do so, the manners of society at large would forbid it. Whence does this arise? Have we more sensibility than our forefathers? I know not that we ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... throwing himself into a mood of jocularity. "Up and down! I'm used to it. What's the ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... Volunteers had successfully landed a cargo of guns that were purchased in Germany. The Volunteers had seized the coastguard stations at Larne and at Donaghadee and Bangor, overawing the police, and there had been much jocularity. It was all done in excellent taste. Had it not been for the death of a coastguard through heart failure, there would have been nothing to mar ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... I tell thee," answered the Constable, still in the same tone of forced jocularity; "a wooden bar will ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... am not as bilious as I look. If you like, I will cut my hair. There is more innocent fun within me than a casual spectator would imagine. You have never seen me frolicsome. Be a good girl — a very good girl — and one day you shall. If you are fond of touch-and-go jocularity — this is the ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... at the door-way, were still absorbed in their chat, and saw and heard nothing of what was coming. Mrs. Stannard turned pale and trembled so that all could see it. Blake looked, as he afterwards said, "six ways for Sunday;" then, as the officer neared him, with attempted jocularity sang out,— ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... said the officer, with policial jocularity, "since you two ladies already got your hats on, I guess we'll just offer you our ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... as it does in ours; but the vowel has a soft pronunciation. The rein-deer are very fond of salt, and the wildest of them will follow a person, who holds some salt in his hand, for miles together. To put salt on a bird's tail, and catch it, may be an English piece of jocularity; but the Norwegian would be puzzled to think why we should attach a joke to such an act; and to prove to an Englishman the inaptitude of the proverb, the Norseman will go forth with his handful of salt, and take, not his covey of sparrows, for his country ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... The unaccountable depression that possessed Philpot deprived him of all his usual jocularity and filled him with melancholy thoughts. He had travelled up and down this hill a great many times before under similar circumstances and he said to himself that if he had half a quid now for every time he had pushed a cart up this road, he wouldn't need to do anyone out of a job ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... in Paris in those days of early August, on a visit to her uncle's cousin and dearest friend, Mme. de Plougastel. And although nothing could now be plainer than the seething unrest that heralded the explosion to come, yet the air of gaiety, indeed of jocularity, prevailing at Court—whither madame and mademoiselle went almost daily—reassured them. M. de Plougastel had come and gone again, back to Coblenz on that secret business that kept him now almost constantly ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... like of whom has never yet appeared, and it is to be hoped never will again appear, in British history. Immediately before and after their expulsion from office, they pointed to this scene of their long misconduct, and, with a sort of heartless jocularity, asked Sir Robert Peel "What he meant to do with Ireland?"—adding, that whatever else he might be able to do, by the aid of intrigue and corruption, "he could never govern Ireland." How now, gentlemen? What will you find to lay to the charge of Ministers in the coming session? What ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... regret to have to say that it was a mass of the most frightful incendiarism, delivered with an occasional air of jocularity and dry humour that made my flesh creep. Amidst the persistent attacks on property he did not spare other sacred things. He even made an attack on my position, stating (wrongly) the amount of my moderate stipend. Indeed, I think he ...
— The Tables Turned - or, Nupkins Awakened. A Socialist Interlude • William Morris
... His jocularity did not shake my faith in the seriousness of journalism. I had not done laughing when I opened another letter written in a fine, crabbed hand like the scratching of a diamond on a window-pane, and as I slowly deciphered its contents I could hardly believe what I read. It was from ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... the Paris marchand. With a physiognomy of voice—if the expression be pardoned—quite as marked as the cockney's, what he says is yet perfectly clear, often shrewd, gay, cynical, sometimes even spiced with jocularity, as if it were pure fun to get a living, and the world ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... a too much neglected part of our history, and when referred to in reminiscences are generally referred to as matters for jocularity. They exercised, however, a serious influence on the minds and feelings of the people, as well as their manners; more so than a hundred subjects with which the historian ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... come, then?" asked Ravenel, with sarcastic jocularity, "if you had an engagement at that time. I thought you business men kept better account of your minutes and ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... returned, and his voice held no trace of jocularity: he had become serious. "It suits me better if you're enough in earnest to mean that I can come—oh, not whenever I want to; I don't expect so much!—but if you mean that I can ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... and Ale,' by M. G. Lewis, exhibits not only a faithful copy of the spirited, loose, and flowing versification of that singular author, but a very just representation of that mixture of extravagance and jocularity which has impressed most of his writings with the character of a sort of ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... mentioned. Grave, severe, self-restrained, and, except to those who knew him intimately, somewhat repellent in manners. Romaine would have been quite unfitted for the work which Grimshaw and Berridge, in spite—or, shall we say, in consequence?—of their boisterous bonhomie and occasionally ill-timed jocularity were able to do. The farmers and working men of Haworth or Everton would assuredly have gone to sleep under his preaching, or stayed away from church altogether. One can scarcely fancy Romaine itinerating at all; but ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... morning out of doors, afoot, in saddle, or adrift in snow, was Lieutenant Lanier. About the first officer Button wished to see was Bob, and about the last was Blake. Yet such was the freakishness of Fate that the first man to hail him, with ill-timed jocularity, was Blake, and the last of his officers whom he was destined that day to set eyes on was Bob Lanier, whom Schuchardt, in answer to the commander's summons, had earlier declared ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King
... Sterry," he said, assuming an affected jocularity which deceived no one, "I'll own you've played it on me mighty fine. But you can't stand there all night with your Winchester p'inted at me, and bime-by I'll git tired; can't we fix the matter up ...
— Cowmen and Rustlers • Edward S. Ellis
... Its title suggests unbridled jocularity—and it is in fact full of inimitable fun; but there is a basis of solid thought and sympathy to all the mirth. While replenishing the common stock of Irish stories, Mr Birmingham adjusts our conception of the race. Mr Kerr's sixteen illustrations in colour form a gallery of genre studies, ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... I have in Coroll. I. stated to be bad) and laughter I recognize a great difference. For laughter, as also jocularity, is merely pleasure; therefore, so long as it be not excessive, it is in itself good (IV:xli.). Assuredly nothing forbids man to enjoy himself, save grim and gloomy superstition. For why is it more lawful to satiate one's hunger and thirst than to drive ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... Despite his jocularity he was deeply moved. As the situation grew clearer to him he saw that this girl was about to change the whole current of his careless life; her unexpected firmness, her gentle, womanly determination at this crisis was very grateful—he desperately longed to retain ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... of you lately, Sparks," he observed, applying a steady match flame to the oval butt. He spoke in his usual tones, with a gruffness that balanced on a razor edge between rough jocularity and official harshness. "What's new? Have one of ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... 217 perceiving the hoax, recommended the dandies to take care they did not dirty their boots, or get near the hoofs of the prancing prads, Tom was not much disconcerted at this effort of practical jocularity, though his Cousin seemed to have but ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... sent for, that she might hear the family news; and when she expressed some feeling not altogether in favour of Mr Toogood, Mr Crawley thus strove to correct her views. "He is a man, my dear, who conceals a warm heart, and an active spirit, and healthy sympathies, under an affected jocularity of manner, and almost with a touch of vulgarity. But when the jewel itself is good, any fault in the casket may ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... want to know," persisted Mr. Bultitude. "Because," he said with a sickly attempt at jocularity which delighted none, "you see, I don't want to be mashed. I'm not a potato. If I understand you aright, you want to fight me because you think me likely to interfere with your ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... the kindness and sympathy extended to her in that rough settlement. There was not a man or woman, especially the men, who did not do all in his or her power to make her forget her troubles. No one ever alluded to Mosquito Bend in her presence, and, instead, assumed a rough, cheerful jocularity, which sat as awkwardly on the majority as it well could. For most of them were illiterate, hard-living folk, rendered desperately serious in ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... ridiculous in life, and his power of presenting it imaginatively, that Dickens seems to have acquired not only a permanent place in English literature, but a popularity quite unique among standard English novelists. The jocularity of Mark Twain is equally dexterous, but it is not so completely imagined as the humour of Dickens; it springs more often from situation than from character, and to that extent belongs more to the accidents than to the essentials ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... said Major Forsyth, with what he flattered himself was a very good assumption of jocularity. It was his idea to treat the matter lightly, as a man of the world naturally would. ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... his jocularity a sudden thought seemed to strike Mr. Shackford; his features underwent a swift transformation, and as he grasped the rail in front of him with both hands a malicious cunning writhed and squirmed in every ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... emotions quieted sufficiently I pressed Tanno into a chair and resumed mine. We gazed at each other some time before either mastered himself enough for words. Tanno spoke first, veiling his feelings beneath his habitual jocularity. He said: ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... sting me!" he interrupted with condescending jocularity. "My style French does f'r them camels up in Paris all right. ME at Nice, Monte Carlo, Chantilly—bow to the p'fess'r; he's RIGHT! But down here I don't seem to be GUD enough f'r these sheep-dogs; anyway they bark different. I'm lukkin' fer a hotel ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... which languages her ladyship wrote indifferently, and upon the blunders of which the critic pounced with delightful mischief. The critic was no other than Pen: he jumped and danced round about his subject with the greatest jocularity and high spirits: he showed up the noble lady's faults with admirable mock gravity and decorum. There was not a word in the article which was not polite and gentlemanlike; and the unfortunate subject of the criticism was scarified and laughed at during the operation. Wenham's bilious ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... performance down-stairs, with the extravagant epithets of the circus posters, laughing all the while. He urged them on when they lingered, and restrained them when they came too fast, addressing one and another with jocularity, laying his hands on some and pushing them on with assumed playfulness, keeping up the fire of raillery with desperate resistance. When screams were heard now and then from below, he made it appear to be only excited feminine ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... a tone of voice from which every vestige of jocularity had disappeared; "look steady in the direction of the South sandhead light and—see! ain't that the flash ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... an appearance that morning out of doors, afoot, in saddle, or adrift in snow, was Lieutenant Lanier. About the first officer Button wished to see was Bob, and about the last was Blake. Yet such was the freakishness of Fate that the first man to hail him, with ill-timed jocularity, was Blake, and the last of his officers whom he was destined that day to set eyes on was Bob Lanier, whom Schuchardt, in answer to the commander's summons, had earlier declared unfit to leave ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King
... figure of the lieutenant in command. Neither he nor his men were absolutely uncourteous, when they once recognized that I was not a Confederate spy, or a professional blockade-runner; but they were exultant, of course, and disposed to indulge in a rough jocularity, during the necessary inspection of my person ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... Brandenburg, where I was dining with the Bulows, and was an addition to my reserves that furnished us with many a jest. As Bulow had to complete the preparations for his concert, I drove out alone with Cosima on the promenade, as before, in a fine carriage. This time all our jocularity died away into silence. We gazed speechless into each other's eyes; an intense longing for an avowal of the truth mastered us and led to a confession—which needed no words—of the boundless unhappiness which ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... eyes very hastily with the sleeve of his gown, and endeavouring to recover his usual tone of indifference and jocularity, answered, but with a voice more tremulous than usual, "I might weel hae judged, Monkbarns, it was you, or the like o' you, was coming in to disturb mefor it's ae great advantage o' prisons and courts o' justice, that ye may greet your een out ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... deserved eminence[1321] being mentioned, Johnson said, 'Why, Sir, he is a man of good parts, but being originally poor, he has got a love of mean company and low jocularity; a very bad thing, Sir. To laugh is good, as to talk is good. But you ought no more to think it enough if you laugh, than you are to think it enough if you talk. You may laugh in as many ways as you ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... idea, too!" said Tag-rag, with good-humored jocularity. "If I felt a true friendship for you as plain Titmouse, it's so likely I should have cut you just when—ahem! My dear sir! It was I that thought you wouldn't have come into my house! ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... foot upon her brother's unseemly jocularity. "Unfortunately," said Miss Sapphira, speaking with cold civility, "Mr. Jefferson had to come clear to town before he could recapture the horse. We were giving him a lift, and had no idea—no idea that we should find—should ...
— Fran • John Breckenridge Ellis
... pail only half full, she exclaimed: "O horrows!" and said it was a lasting disgrace. But Mrs. Du Plessis smiled sweetly with her empurpled lips, and the colonel did not mind the disgrace a particle. They all went home very merry and full of innocent jocularity. ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... honourable to the memoir-writer, whose resentment was implacable. De Comines was born a subject of the Duke of Burgundy, and for seven years had been a favourite; but one day returning from hunting with the Duke, then Count de Charolois, in familiar jocularity he sat himself down before the prince, ordering the prince to pull off his boots. The count laughed, and did this; but in return for Comines's princely amusement, dashed the boot in his face, and ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... Neal the subject of the Certina factory admitted of no jocularity. She took him under advisement with ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... September day would be so long? Or that the old clock in the hall would go so ridiculously slow? There was a quiet jocularity in the motion of its long pendulum, as if it were laughing bitterly that anyone could be in a hurry. "Ha! ha! ...
— Connor Magan's Luck and Other Stories • M. T. W.
... precincts? Would not the owl have shrieked and the cricket cried in my very title page? and could it have been possible to me with a moderate attention to decorum to introduce any scene more lively than might be produced by the jocularity of a clownish but faithful valet or the garrulous narrative of the heroine's fille-de-chambre, when rehearsing the stories of blood and horror which she had heard in the servant's hall? Again, had my title borne ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... want to see Jack, then?" he asked, with a dreadful feigning of jocularity. "But you are not a painter. You require no model, living or dead." He ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... time and occasion) somewhat ill-chosen words of familiarity, the Bailie claimed kindred with Rob Roy's wife. But in this he did himself more harm than good, for his ill-timed jocularity grated on Helen Mac-Gregor's ear, in her present mood of exaltation, and she promptly commanded that the Sassenachs should one and all be bound and thrown into the ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... up baggage from the hold—they would have been interesting enough to him at any other time, with their seamed bilious complexions of every degree of swarthiness, set off by the touches of colour in their sashes and head coverings, their strange cries and still more uncouth jocularity—but he soon tired of them, and wandered aft, where the steamer-chairs, their usefulness at an end for that voyage, were huddled together dripping and forlorn on the damp red deck. He was still standing by them, ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... ye, cap'en," answered Tim, and although, of course, I couldn't see him, I'm sure he must have winked when he spoke, there was a tone of such rich jocularity in his voice; "but, sure, sor this is the chap as brought himsilf aboard. He's the stowaway, sorr; Joe Fergusson, ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... Houseman, with that tone of coarse, yet flippant jocularity, which afforded to the mien and manner of Aram a still stronger contrast than his ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... and the evening in the billiard-room, sitting forlornly over whiskey-and-soda. A peculiar throbbing silence and mystery seemed to hang about the house. Stanistreet was depressed and hardly spoke, while Tyson vainly tried to hide his nervousness under a fictitious jocularity. He looked eagerly for the night, by which time he had concluded that all anxiety would be ended. But when ten o'clock came and he found that nothing more nor less than a long night-watch was required ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... opposition to one whom he had often entertained, and who had always paid his way at the Maypole gallantly, it may be remarked that it was his very penetration and sagacity in this respect, which occasioned him to indulge in those unusual demonstrations of jocularity, just now recorded. For Mr Willet, after carefully balancing father and son in his mental scales, had arrived at the distinct conclusion that the old gentleman was a better sort of a customer than the young ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... pleaded strongly for a "dress-suit" as a fitting recognition of his seventeenth birthday anniversary, but he had been denied by his father with a jocularity more crushing than rigor. Since then—in particular since the arrival of Miss Pratt—Mr. Baxter's temper had been growing steadily more and more even. That is, as affected by William's social activities, it was uniformly bad. Nevertheless, after heavy brooding, William decided to make ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... self-restrained, and, except to those who knew him intimately, somewhat repellent in manners. Romaine would have been quite unfitted for the work which Grimshaw and Berridge, in spite—or, shall we say, in consequence?—of their boisterous bonhomie and occasionally ill-timed jocularity were able to do. The farmers and working men of Haworth or Everton would assuredly have gone to sleep under his preaching, or stayed away from church altogether. One can scarcely fancy Romaine itinerating at all; but if he had done so, the bleak ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... said, assuming an affected jocularity which deceived no one, "I'll own you've played it on me mighty fine. But you can't stand there all night with your Winchester p'inted at me, and bime-by I'll git tired; can't we fix the matter up ...
— Cowmen and Rustlers • Edward S. Ellis
... any rich East Indian uncle or aunt who is likely to do it?" inquired Gildart with a desperate attempt at jocularity. ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... father, I suppose," said Mr. Carr, with an attempt at jocularity that did not, however, disguise an irritated suspiciousness. "He really seems to have supplanted ME as he has poor Kearney in ...
— Devil's Ford • Bret Harte
... coffee-house of the Moors beyond the gate was already lit up, and the door was open, but the floor was empty. No snake-charmers, no jugglers, no story-tellers, with their circles of squatting spectators, were to be seen or heard. These professors of science and magic and jocularity had never before been absent. Even the blind beggars, crouching under the town walls, were silent. But out of the mosques there came a deep low chant as of many voices, from ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... meant to exhibit this man as a Constitutional coward; if he did, his means were sadly destructive of his end. We see him, after he had expended his Rag-o-muffians, with sword and target in the midst of battle, in perfect possession of himself, and replete with humour and jocularity. He was, I presume, in some immediate personal danger, in danger also of a general defeat; too corpulent for flight; and to be led a prisoner was probably to be led to execution; yet we see him laughing and easy, offering a bottle of sack to the Prince ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... Cross-Triangle short of horses?" asked Nick, with an evident attempt at jocularity, alluding to the situation of the two men, who were riding ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... his beaten enemies were resolute enough, accepting defeat with grim carelessness, or with sphinx-like indifference, or even with airy jocularity. But for the most part their alert, eager deference, their tame subservience, the abject humility and debasement of their bent shoulders drove Jadwin to the verge of self-control. He grew to detest the business; he regretted even the defiant brutality of Scannel, a rascal, but none the less ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... remarks, and Darton, wishing his friend joy of Sally in a slightly hollow tone of jocularity, bade him good-bye. Johns promised to write particulars, and ascended, and was lost in the shade of the house and tree. A rectangle of light appeared when Johns was admitted, and all was ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... down-stairs, with the extravagant epithets of the circus posters, laughing all the while. He urged them on when they lingered, and restrained them when they came too fast, addressing one and another with jocularity, laying his hands on some and pushing them on with assumed playfulness, keeping up the fire of raillery with desperate resistance. When screams were heard now and then from below, he made it appear to be only excited feminine merriment, ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... came up into Violet's face again. There was a maddening sort of jubilant jocularity about these men, the looks and almost winks they exchanged, the distinctly saucy quality of the things they ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... have in Coroll. I. stated to be bad) and laughter I recognize a great difference. For laughter, as also jocularity, is merely pleasure; therefore, so long as it be not excessive, it is in itself good (IV:xli.). Assuredly nothing forbids man to enjoy himself, save grim and gloomy superstition. For why is it more lawful to satiate one's hunger and thirst than to drive away one's ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... what?" said Caspar, interrupting the interrogation of his brother, who spoke in a hesitating and doubtful manner. "Not us, Karl?" continued he, with a slight touch of jocularity in his manner—"you don't ...
— The Cliff Climbers - A Sequel to "The Plant Hunters" • Captain Mayne Reid
... when he had been shut up with brusque, half-savage, energetic Doctor Rogerson, Tom was laconic, decisive, and insupportably ill-bred, till, as we have said, the mirage melted away, and he gradually acquiesced in his identity. Then, little by little, the irrepressible gossip, jocularity, and ballad minstrelsy were heard again, his little eyes danced, and his waggish smiles glowed once more, ruddy as a setting sun, through the nectarian vapours of the punch-bowl. The ghosts of Pell and Rogerson fled to their cold dismal shades, and little Tom Toole was his old ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... meeting which perambulates the streets. Lord Mayor's Day on the 9th—opportunity for letting off "the Mayor the merrier," "L10,000 a Mayor's Nest-egg," &c, &c. Jests about the fog not now popular—the infliction is too serious for jocularity! ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., January 3, 1891. • Various
... of early August, on a visit to her uncle's cousin and dearest friend, Mme. de Plougastel. And although nothing could now be plainer than the seething unrest that heralded the explosion to come, yet the air of gaiety, indeed of jocularity, prevailing at Court—whither madame and mademoiselle went almost daily—reassured them. M. de Plougastel had come and gone again, back to Coblenz on that secret business that kept him now almost constantly absent ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... brow?" originally published in "The Avalanche," over the signature of "The Lady Clare," without feeling the tear of sensibility tremble on his eyelids, or the glow of virtuous indignation mantle his cheek, at the low brutality and pitiable jocularity of "The Dutch Flat Intelligencer," which the next week had suggested the exotic character of the cypress, and its entire absence from Fiddletown, as a ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... to the spot long enough to see the idiot go out into the sunshine, and even to see his dissolute brother hail him with a sort of avuncular jocularity. The last thing he saw was the colonel throwing pennies at the open mouth of Joe, with the serious appearance of ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... AVALANCHE, over the signature of "The Lady Clare," without feeling the tear of sensibility tremble on his eyelids, or the glow of virtuous indignation mantle his cheek, at the low brutality and pitiable jocularity of THE DUTCH FLAT INTELLIGENCER, which the next week had suggested the exotic character of the cypress, and its entire absence from Fiddletown, as a reasonable answer to ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... was a clever, hearing-all sort of a neighbour, said my sermon was greatly thought of, and that I had surprised everybody; but I was fearful there was something of jocularity at the bottom of this, for she was a flaunty woman, and liked well to give a good-humoured gibe or jeer. However, his grace the Commissioner was very thankful for the discourse, and complimented me on what he called my apostolical ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... did not betray the smallest symptom of power either to appreciate or to indulge in jocularity at that moment. But feeling that it was useless to appeal to the former experience of the boatswain, he changed ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... hope she carried off Flora de Barral to Bournemouth for the winter months in the quality of reader and companion. She had said to her with kindly jocularity: "We shall have a good time together. I am not a grumpy old woman." But on their return to London she sought Mrs. Fyne at once. She had discovered that Flora was not naturally cheerful. When she made efforts to be it was still worse. The old lady couldn't stand the strain of that. And then, to have ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... after all, it is in the Rue Neuve-Sainte-Genevieve, and luxury would be out of place here, where we only aim at the purely patriarchalorama. If you mean to cut a figure in Paris, my young friend," Vautrin continued, with half-paternal jocularity, "you must have three horses, a tilbury for the mornings, and a closed carriage for the evening; you should spend altogether about nine thousand francs on your stables. You would show yourself unworthy of your destiny if you spent no more than three thousand ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... manners and customs of the ladies and gentlemen of the corps dramatique "at the wing." Otherwise than as a sign of dramatic destitution, the piece called "Behind the Scenes" is highly amusing. Mr. Wild's acting displays that happy medium between jocularity and earnest, which is the perfection of burlesque. Mrs. Selby plays the "leading lady" without the smallest effort, and invites the first tragedian to her treat of oysters and beer with considerable empressement, though supposed to be labouring at the time under the stroke of the headsman's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... with slightly turned-up nose, large laughing brown eyes, a dazzling set of teeth, and a tempestuously frizzled mop of powdered hair. When I managed to get a side-look at her quietly, without being giggled at or driven half mad by unintelligible incitements to a jocularity I could not feel, it struck me that, if we once found a common term of communication we should become good friends. But for the moment that modus vivendi seemed unattainable. She had not recovered from the first ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... knighted May 29, 1608; in 1610, occurs as Gentleman in Ordinary of the Bedchamber to Prince Henry; and now accompanied the king to Scotland as Lieutenant of his Gentlemen Pensioners. He was recommended to James equally by his sagacity and a peculiar jocularity of humour, and became the king's familiar companion."—Nichols's Royal ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... pil'd, as thou art pil'd, for a French velvet?] The jest about the pile of a French velvet alludes to the loss of hair in the French disease, a very frequent topick of our authour's jocularity. Lucio finding that the gentleman understands the distemper so well, and mentions it so feelingly, promises to remember to drink his health, but to forget to drink after him. It was the opinion of Shakespeare's time, that the cup of ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... high glee, light heart; sunshine of the mind, sunshine of the breast; gaiete de coeur [Fr.], bon naturel [Fr.]. liveliness &c adj.; life, alacrity, vivacity, animation, allegresse^; jocundity, joviality, jollity; levity; jocularity &c (wit) 842. mirth, merriment, hilarity, exhilaration; laughter &c 838; merrymaking &c (amusement) 840; heyday, rejoicing &c 838; marriage bell. nepenthe, Euphrosyne^, sweet forgetfulness. optimism &c (hopefulness) 858; self complacency; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... chambers of his soul and bidden him behold and ponder, he had turned as cold as if ice-water were running in his veins, although he had continued to smile indulgently and had answered with some approach to jocularity. He was floored at last. He'd got the infernal disease in its most virulent form. Not a doubt of it. No wonder he had deluded himself. His ideal woman—whom, preferably, he would have wooed and won in some sequestered spot beautified by nature, not made hideous ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... Foote was at Edinburgh, he thought fit to entertain a numerous Scotch company, with a great deal of coarse jocularity, at the expense of Dr. Johnson, imagining it would be acceptable. I felt this as not civil to me; but sat very patiently till he had exhausted his merriment on that subject; and then observed, ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... early afternoon the Chancellor visited the Crown Prince. Waiting and watching had made inroads on him, too, but he assumed a sort of heavy jocularity ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... connection to recall the story which has been told regarding the origin of the word "sirloin." It is said that this steak found such favor with some epicurean king of olden times that he, in a spirit of jocularity and good humor, bestowed upon it the honor of knighthood, to the great delight of his assembled court, and as "Sir Loin" it was thereafter known. It is a pity to spoil so good a story, but the fact is that the word is derived from the French ...
— The Community Cook Book • Anonymous
... him on the 17th[1124], of which I find all my memorial is, 'much laughing.' It should seem he had that day been in a humour for jocularity and merriment, and upon such occasions I never knew a man laugh more heartily. We may suppose, that the high relish of a state so different from his habitual gloom, produced more than ordinary exertions of that distinguishing faculty of man, which has puzzled ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... a deaf ear to his request for information, and it was only when his jocularity on the subject passed the bounds of endurance that she consented ...
— Sailor's Knots (Entire Collection) • W.W. Jacobs
... the occasion, and was by no means inclined to throw up the sponge. He went down to the City, and delivered not merely a vigorous, but vivacious speech, and in the course of it he said, with a jocularity which was worthy of Lord Palmerston himself: 'If a gentleman were disposed to part with his butler, his coachman, or his gamekeeper, or if a merchant were disposed to part with an old servant, a warehouseman, a clerk, or even a porter, he would say to him, "John—(laughter)—I ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... doors shut, I tell thee," answered the Constable, still in the same tone of forced jocularity; "a wooden bar will be ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... court will allow you a handsome income. So you must cheer up, in spite of the infliction of a large fortune," added Mr. Newton, with unwonted jocularity. ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... . . . It's well to be in good time when you're dealin' with John Peter," said Mr Philp with dreadful jocularity. "As I came along the head o' the town," he explained, "I heard that Snell's wife had passed away in the night. A happy release. I dropped in to see if they'd ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... appearance, that my doom was as it were written on my face. I was a mere receptacle for dust and ashes, a living testimony to the vanity of all things. My very thoughts were like a ghostly rustle of dead leaves. But we had an extremely successful trip, and for most of the time Dominic displayed an unwonted jocularity of a dry and biting kind with which, he maintained, he had been infected by no other person than myself. As, with all his force of character, he was very responsive to the moods of those he liked I have no doubt he spoke the truth. But I know ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... horns, no doubt," ejaculated Cowdray, sitting down in triumphant jocularity. "It was the devil come ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... an angry assailant;" and he entertains us with a really good story of a choleric old gentleman who challenged him once for poaching on his grounds, but who was gradually talked over till he asked him to dinner. If our friend has been a wit in his youth, the propensity to jocularity still survives; but the jests are generally such as you meet with in the very earliest editions of Mr Joseph Miller, though, for the sake of variety, they are often ascribed to the late facetious Mr Joseph Jekyll, or Mr Henry ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... Pippin made a motion of the head. "We think we have a good superintendent; I go further, an excellent superintendent. What I say is: Let's be pleasant! I am not making an unreasonable request!" He ended on a fitting note of jocularity; and, as if by consent, all three withdrew, each to his own room, without ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... part played by the "President of the Immortals" is no sublimer—save in the amount of force exerted—than that of a lout who pulls a chair suddenly from under an old woman. Now, by wedding Necessity with uncouth Jocularity, Mr. Hardy may have found an hypothesis that solves for him all the difficulties of life. I am not concerned in this place to deny that it may be the true explanation. I have merely to point out that art and criticism must ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... it would have been too vapid for the toleration of any palate, had it not been so sour. As I sat regardless before this repast, in abstracted grief, I underwent the first of the thousand practical jokes that were hereafter to familiarise me with manual jocularity. My right-hand neighbour, jerking me by the elbow, exclaimed, "Hollo, you sir, there's Jenkins, on the other side of you, cribbing your bread." I turned towards the supposed culprit, and discovered that ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... present—now a watch, now some costly lace, and again a lock of his hair, or a simple bunch of dried flowers, while she returns some such homely gift as a little fruit or a fur-lined waistcoat. On both sides, too, a vein of jocularity runs through the letters, as when Catherine addresses him as "Your Excellency, the very illustrious and eminent Prince-General and Knight of the crowned Compass and Axe"; and when Peter, after the Peace of Nystadt, writes: "According to the ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... employed the method was of philosophical non- combativeness. The New York phrase was that "He jollied a man along." Immense schemes had been carried through in that way. Men in London, in England, were not sufficiently light of touch in their jocularity. He wondered if perhaps this young fellow, with his ready laugh and rather loose-jointed, casual way of carrying himself, was of ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... him, was prepared by some introductory dialogue, in which the audience was informed that they were the fool and page of Phrynia, Timandra, or some other courtesan, upon the knowledge of which depends the greater part of the ensuing jocularity. ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... affirmed, with robust jocularity. "You should have seen the way they took to me. It was 'Mr. Thorpe' here and 'Mr. Thorpe' there, all over the place. Ladies of title, mind you—all to myself at breakfast two days running. And such ladies—finer ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... his spirit, undertaken my province, he would have found constant gaiety equally difficult to be supported. Consider, Mr. Rambler, and compassionate the condition of a man, who has taught every company to expect from him a continual feast of laughter, an unintermitted stream of jocularity. The task of every other slave has an end. The rower in time reaches the port; the lexicographer at last finds the conclusion of his alphabet; only the hapless wit has his labour always to begin, the call for novelty is never satisfied, and ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... Titelmann was now pre-eminent. He executed his infamous functions throughout Flanders, Douay, and Tournay, the most thriving and populous portions of the Netherlands, with a swiftness, precision, and even with a jocularity which hardly seemed human. There was a kind of grim humor about the man. The woman who, according to Lear's fool, was wont to thrust her live eels into the hot paste, "rapping them o' the coxcombs with a stick and crying reproachfully, Wantons, lie down!" had the spirit of a true ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... of his jocularity a sudden thought seemed to strike Mr. Shackford; his features underwent a swift transformation, and as he grasped the rail in front of him with both hands a malicious cunning writhed and squirmed in every wrinkle of ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... spirit and genius, rebellious to or transcending the usual limitations of Hebraism; with Marcus Aurelius as an example of that non-Christian morality and religiosity which also had so strong an attraction for him. There is no trace in either essay of the disquieting and almost dismaying jocularity which was later to invade his discussion of such things: we are still far from Bottles; the three Lord Shaftesburys relieve us by not even threatening to appear. And accordingly the two essays add in no small degree, ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... the last words we spoke in any thing like a jesting tone; for we were now wet to the skin: and of all situations, I believe a damp one to be the least favourable to jocularity. I confess a certain partiality for adventures, when they are not carried too far. There is nothing I detest like a monotonous wearisome Quaker's journey, with every thing as tame, and dull, and uniform, as ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... be on hand. I'm used to rising early for a canter. I'll take it with a cab horse this time. That will be all the difference." And with this attempt at jocularity, Mr. Evringham shook hands once more and departed, swallowing his ill-humor as best he could. Any instincts of the family man which might once have reigned in him had long since been inhibited. This episode was a cruel invasion upon his ...
— Jewel - A Chapter In Her Life • Clara Louise Burnham
... did not by any means relish this jocularity upon a matter of which pars magna fuit[766], and seemed impatient till he got rid of us. Johnson could not stop his merriment, but continued it all the way till we got without the Temple-gate. He then burst into such a fit of laughter, that he appeared to be almost in a convulsion; ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... dignity, could not always forbear to show it, by playing a little upon his admirer; but he was in no danger of retort; his jests were endured without resistance or resentment. But the sneer of jocularity was not the worst. Steele, whose imprudence of generosity, or vanity of profusion, kept him always incurably necessitous, upon some pressing exigence, in an evil hour, borrowed a hundred pounds of ...
— Lives of the Poets: Addison, Savage, and Swift • Samuel Johnson
... such lachrymose sentimentality in vending his fagots. But quite different is the Paris marchand. With a physiognomy of voice—if the expression be pardoned—quite as marked as the cockney's, what he says is yet perfectly clear, often shrewd, gay, cynical, sometimes even spiced with jocularity, as if it were pure fun to get a living, and the world were ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... pronounced anew each instant of our lives—between the soul and its best affections. And—look you!—this misery passes along the world under the mask of easy indifference, and wears a smiling face, and submits to be rallied by the wit, and assumes itself the air of vulgar jocularity. Oh, this penury that goes well clad, and is warmly housed, and makes a mock of its own anguish—I'd rather die on the wheel, or be starved to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... overcame her, she did not at first notice that Hoskins was gazing at her with a singular expression, which was really one of undisguised admiration. Never having seen this before in the eyes of any man who looked at her, she referred it to some vague "larking" or jocularity, for which she was in ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... Lake; take care your wit don't get you into trouble,' said the baronet, chuckling and growing angrier, for he saw the Hebe laughing; and not being a ready man, though given to banter, he sometimes descended to menace in his jocularity. ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... said Mr. Gorby, with heavy jocularity, "and in a way you won't like, as you'll be called as a witness," he added, mentally. "Did I understand you to say, Mrs. Sampson," he went on, "that Mr. Fitzgerald would ...
— The Mystery of a Hansom Cab • Fergus Hume
... shouted back some desperate essay at jocularity, at which Ada laughed with some perseverance, until even she could no longer resist ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... that the Lord Chamberlain began by exorcising obscenity from the English theatre and ended by banning so fiercely Puritanical a play as "Mrs. Warren's Profession" because it admitted the existence of brothel-keeping as a business and by shutting up such innocent merriment as "The Mikado" because its jocularity might offend the (at the ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... proved to be their commander, the identical giant joker already mentioned. He was not cast in the stern poetical mold of fashionable Indian heroism, but on the contrary, was grievously given to vulgar jocularity. As he passed Mr. Stuart and his companions, he checked his horse, raised himself in his saddle, and clapping his hand on the most insulting part of his body, uttered some jeering words, which, fortunately for their delicacy, they could ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... Tom, with an assumed jocularity which he was very far from feeling, "what are you doing ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... in him, a new wisdom, a sweet jocularity, and, withal, the return of much of his old nature—its rough camaraderie, its boyish liveliness and homely simplicity. For her this was a marvelous relief, and she could only watch him and wonder at the change. He ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... her forced jocularity; but the hunted expression saddened his eyes again. To these children, brought up animal-like in the midst of misery and hate, their world revolved round their stomachs, too often empty. But this new trouble—the terror of Flea's going with Lem—had made a man of Flukey, ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... England. He was appointed by the parliament lord high admiral during the civil war. He was much courted by the independent clergy, was shrewd, penetrating and active, and exhibited a singular mixture of pious demeanour with a vein of facetiousness and jocularity. With him was sent Dr. Calamy, the most eminent divine of the period of the Commonwealth, to see (says Baxter [224]) that no fraud was committed, or wrong done to the parties accused. It may well be doubted however whether the presence of this clergyman did not operate unfavourably ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... told that COMINES the historian, when residing at the court of the Count de Charolois, afterwards Duke of Burgundy, one day returning from hunting, with inconsiderate jocularity sat down before the Count, and ordered the prince to pull off his boots. The Count would not affect greatness, and having executed his commission, in return for the princely amusement, the Count dashed ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... perfect, and so—ha—my dear, we can't blame the porridge," said Mr. Somers with slight jocularity which pleased at least himself. "But Pattaquasset is about as near the impossible state as most places, that I know. What have you heard of, Mrs. Somers? You deal in ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... he replied, with a heroic attempt at jocularity, "you will understand now that it was not altogether a cold hard heart that prompted me to decline your request for a renewal of the mortgage this morning. I couldn't afford to. I had agreed to gamble one million dollars that you were thoroughly and ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... have discarded the coarse farce of his predecessors for something more worthy of the refined intelligence of his clever audience. Yet it must be acknowledged that much even of his wit is the mere filth-throwing of a naughty boy; or at best the underbred jocularity of the "funny column," the topical song, or the minstrel show. There are puns on the names of notable personages; a grotesque, fantastic, punning fauna, flora, and geography of Greece; a constant succession ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... the sailor, flaming up at this ill-timed jocularity, "p'ra'ps you'll tell me what 'tis you're drivin' at; for I've got to hear of it if you, or any o' your cloth either, ever made a find yet. You're mighty 'cute 'bout other folks, though when the spirits was under yer very noses, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... 1823 the Roxburghe made proffers of membership to him, partly, it would seem, under the influence of a waggish desire to disturb his great secret, which had not yet been revealed. Dibdin, weighting himself with more than his usual burden of ponderous jocularity, set himself in motion to intimate to Scott the desire of the club that the Author of Waverley, with whom it was supposed that he had the means of communicating, would accept of the seat at the club ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... and raillery. Some elegant figures and trophies of rhetoric (biting sarcasms, sly ironies, strong metaphors, lofty hyperboles, paronomasies, oxymorons, and the like, frequently used by the best speakers, and not seldom even by sacred writers) do lie very near upon the confines of jocularity, and are not easily differenced from those sallies of wit wherein the lepid way doth consist: so that were this wholly culpable, it would be matter of scruple whether one hath committed a fault or no when he meant only to play the orator or the ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... a propension to jocularity and humour is apparent in the last works of Swift. His Will, like all his other writings, is drawn up in his own peculiar manner. Even in so serious a composition, he cannot help indulging himself in leaving legacies, that carry with them ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... expressed some feeling not altogether in favour of Mr Toogood, Mr Crawley thus strove to correct her views. "He is a man, my dear, who conceals a warm heart, and an active spirit, and healthy sympathies, under an affected jocularity of manner, and almost with a touch of vulgarity. But when the jewel itself is good, any fault in the casket may ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... rough settlement. There was not a man or woman, especially the men, who did not do all in his or her power to make her forget her troubles. No one ever alluded to Mosquito Bend in her presence, and, instead, assumed a rough, cheerful jocularity, which sat as awkwardly on the majority as it well could. For most of them were illiterate, hard-living folk, rendered desperately serious in the ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... of levity resulting from lack of reason, which is unable not only to bridle the speech, but also to restrain outward behavior. Hence a gloss on Eph. 5:4, "Or foolish talking or scurrility," says that "fools call this geniality—i.e. jocularity, because it is wont to raise a laugh." Both of these, however, may be referred to the words which may happen to be sinful, either by reason of excess which belongs to "loquaciousness," or by reason of ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... of the criminal courts would have described him as a highbrow and as a holier-than-thou; perhaps he might in a moment of jocularity have even so described himself—for he had his human—perhaps I should have said, his weaker—side. Surely he seemed human enough when he kissed Eleanor good-by at the door of their country place on the Sound the morning he had been subpoenaed ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... the family shook down together, became less afraid of Ethel, and did not think it so needful to snub her either by his dignity or jocularity; though she still knew that she was only on terms of sufferance, and had been, more than once, made to repent of unguarded observations. He was admirable; and the school was so rapidly improving that Norman had put his father into ecstasies by proposing ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... honours to any Countess of Urach—or even Duchess of Wirtemberg, save from courtesy or worldly wisdom. Stafforth, the adventurer, had an ugly sneer on his countenance, and was evidently embarrassed, so took refuge in the frequent attitude of the vulgar when ill at ease—a noisy jocularity. ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... faces of the two sisters assumed an air of indifference. It was Malignon who made his appearance, dressed with greater care than ever, and having a somewhat serious look. He shook hands; but eschewed his customary jocularity, thus returning, in a ceremonious manner, to this house where for some time he had ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... rein-deer are very fond of salt, and the wildest of them will follow a person, who holds some salt in his hand, for miles together. To put salt on a bird's tail, and catch it, may be an English piece of jocularity; but the Norwegian would be puzzled to think why we should attach a joke to such an act; and to prove to an Englishman the inaptitude of the proverb, the Norseman will go forth with his handful of salt, and take, not his covey of sparrows, ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... gayety, frolic, jest, pleasantry, drollery, waggery, waggishness, facetiousness, divertisement amusement, relaxation, jocularity. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... rode through the city streets joyfully, merrily, light-heartedly. Conversation, interspersed with laughter and jocularity, literally ran riot, so impatiently did each attempt to relate what was uppermost in his or her mind. The ceremony, the music, the procession, the multitude obtained their due amount of comment, until the arrival of the coach ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... carried off by his genius for observation, and the spontaneity of the drama of his stories. But when his story was thin, and he was wandering in an excursion with his childish philosophy, he was usually facetious. As an obvious and easily imitable trick for dull evenings, this elaborate jocularity seems to have been more enjoyed by his disciples than his genius for narrative when he was happy, and his material was full and sound. Yet his false and vulgar fun has spoiled many of these volumes pollinated from India. They have another ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... the stupid man from ever hearing the sound of his own voice outside the secluded walls of his own home—or should. It ought also to bar the simply witty man; for what is more jarring than a misplaced wit or an ill-timed jocularity? ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... Dublin formed a place of execution; even suspected rebels were every day immolated as if convicted on the clearest evidence; and Lieutenant H——'s pastime of hanging on his own back persons whose physiognomies he thought characteristic of rebellion was (I am ashamed to say) the subject of jocularity instead of punishment. What in other times he would himself have died for, as a murderer, was laughed at as the manifestation of loyalty: never yet was martial law so abused, or its enormities so hushed up as in Ireland. Being a military officer, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 559, July 28, 1832 • Various
... his beaming looks; on an early visit to their maniap' my wife saw he had cause to be wary. Nan Tok' had a friend with him, a giddy young thing, of his own age and sex; and they had worked themselves into that stage of jocularity when consequences are too often disregarded. Nei Takauti mentioned her own name. Instantly Nan Tok' held up two fingers, his friend did likewise, both in an ecstasy of slyness. It was plain the lady had ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... seas the passengers plucked up courage, and one morning at breakfast Luke perceived a tall, heavy-shouldered man nodding vigorously, and wiping his mouth with a napkin, which he subsequently waved with friendly jocularity. ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... much more of jocularity than he had heretofore used that Dunburne recovered in great part his dawning assurance. "I am infinitely obliged to you," he cried, "for sparing my brains; but I protest I doubt if you will ever find so good ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... young savage, brought him water, a turkeycock, and bread to eat. Powhatan professed great content with Smith, but desired to see his father, Captain Newport. He inquired also with a merry countenance after the piece of ordnance that Smith had promised to send him, and Smith, with equal jocularity, replied that he had offered the men four demi-culverins, which they found too heavy to carry. This night they quartered with Powhatan, and were liberally feasted, and entertained with singing, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... great recommendations to the favour of Mr. Bertram was, that he never detected the most gross attempt at imposition, so that the Laird, whose humble efforts at jocularity were chiefly confined to what were then called-bites and bams, since denominated hoaxes and quizzes, had the fairest possible subject of wit in the unsuspecting Dominie. It is true, he never laughed, or joined in the laugh which his own simplicity afforded —nay, it is said, he ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... rhetoric which so often does duty for that quality; full of a high seriousness, but with no suspicion of pedantry; lightened by an occasional epigram or flashes of caustic humour, but with none of the small jocularity in which it is such a temptation to a lecturer to indulge. As one listened to him one felt that comparative anatomy was indeed worthy of the devotion of a life, and that to solve a morphological problem ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... of genial cordiality at first sight which was fully confirmed by further acquaintance. So long as the world went well with him, Mathew seemed to enjoy life thoroughly, and even its rubs he bore with an easy jocularity that showed what a stout heart he could oppose to Fortune. A long minority had provided him with a considerable sum on his coming of age, but he spent it freely, and when it was exhausted, continued to live on at the same rate as before, till at last, as creditors grew ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... Russell returned, and his voice held no trace of jocularity: he had become serious. "It suits me better if you're enough in earnest to mean that I can come—oh, not whenever I want to; I don't expect so much!—but if you mean that I can see ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... world," continued Mr. Palmer; "this sort of—what do you call it? double-dealing about visitors, goes on every where, Madam Beaumont. But how do I know, that when I go away, you may not be as glad to get rid of me as you were to get away from these Duttons?" added he, in a tone of forced jocularity. "How do I know, but that the minute my back is turned, you may not begin to take me to pieces in my turn, and say, 'That old Palmer! he was the most tiresome, humoursome, strange, old-fashioned fellow; I thought we should never have ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. V - Tales of a Fashionable Life • Maria Edgeworth
... unaccountable depression that possessed Philpot deprived him of all his usual jocularity and filled him with melancholy thoughts. He had travelled up and down this hill a great many times before under similar circumstances and he said to himself that if he had half a quid now for every time he had pushed a cart up this road, he wouldn't ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... some Greek or Latin classic, which he does with no interruption, just as he pleases, and as well as he can. The statutes next require that he should translate familiar English phrases into Latin. And now is the time when the masters show their wit and jocularity.... This familiarity, however, only takes place when the examiners are pot-companions of the candidate, which indeed is usually the case; for it is reckoned good management to get acquainted with two or three jolly (p. 152) young masters of arts, and supply ...
— Life in the Medieval University • Robert S. Rait
... his children. By a singular reaction in his vigorous temperament, it was about this time that his somber melancholy gave way to a bitter and sarcastic gayety, more in harmony with his nature. From his early youth he had had a taste for jocularity, a mocking turn of spirit, seasoned by that ironical grace of manner peculiar to the great Moscovite nobleman, and resulting from the constant habit of trifling with men and events. His recovery did not, however, restore the ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... see an enemy on that side of the globe. There is something rather revolting, but very indicative of the temper of the age, in the constant reference to the guidance and protection of God, mixed with a quiet jocularity with which "Master Francis Fletcher, preacher in this employment," from whose notes the "World Encompassed," which is a narrative of this voyage, was compiled, speaks of acts very little different from highway robbery, such as would now be held disgraceful in ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... lately, Sparks," he observed, applying a steady match flame to the oval butt. He spoke in his usual tones, with a gruffness that balanced on a razor edge between rough jocularity and official harshness. "What's new? Have one of ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... extreme stage of intimate jocularity is reached when the last sorry pretense of drama is discarded and the dramatic machinery itself becomes the subject of jest. So in the Cas. 1006 the cast is warned: Hanc ex longa longiorem ne faciamus fabulam. ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... solemn discoursing, but, on the contrary, was full of colloquial spirit and pleasantry. He had a certain quiet and grave humour, which ran through most of his conversation, and a vein of temperate jocularity, which gave infinite zest and effect to the condensed and inexhaustible information which formed its main staple and characteristic. There was a little air of affected testiness, and a tone of pretended rebuke and contradiction, with ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... disciples contemplated each other with visages of sevenfold blankness. They next unanimously directed their gaze towards their preceptor, hoping to detect some symptom of jocularity upon his venerable features. Nothing could be descried thereon but the most imperturbable solemnity, or, if perchance anything like an expression of irony lurked beneath this, it was not such irony as they wished to see. Lastly, they scanned the phials, trusting that some infinitesimal distinction ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... something of his desperate character, they had no fear of him. He had shown his chivalry. No one could have been more considerate of them, for he absented himself at Peggy's request instantly and without suggestion of jocularity, and when he came in and found them both ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... to better things than the old Trovatore at any rate, Aunt Georgie?" I queried, with a well-meant effort at jocularity. ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... more above the low rostrum at the far end. The chairs were in place, the windows open, and the two young fishermen who acted as janitors of the hall stood at the rear, greeting those that arrived with familiar jocularity. ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... grave was filled in, the troop regained their former jocularity, and they began dividing among themselves the property which they had found upon the ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... church-building amused Mrs. Gould) was looked upon by his fellow-citizens as the manifestation of a pious and humble spirit. But in his own circles of the financial world the taking up of such a thing as the San Tome mine was regarded with respect, indeed, but rather as a subject for discreet jocularity. It was a great man's caprice. In the great Holroyd building (an enormous pile of iron, glass, and blocks of stone at the corner of two streets, cobwebbed aloft by the radiation of telegraph wires) the heads of principal departments exchanged humorous glances, which meant ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... enemy. It indicated to me his absolute certainty that he could beat him at the flying game. On his lips the Hun was never the German or the Boche, but always "the festive Hun." You can afford to speak kindly, almost pityingly of some one you are going to vanquish. Hatred often indicates fear. Jocularity is a ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... and humour out of a given situation, which was subsidiary to the plot, yet in atmosphere complete in itself. The Hunter's drawing-room just after the funeral, in "The Climbers;" the church scene in "The Moth and the Flame," which for jocularity and small points is the equal of Langdon Mitchell's wedding scene in "The New York Idea," though not so sharply incisive in its satire; the deck on board ship in "The Stubbornness of Geraldine" (so beautifully burlesqued by Weber and Fields as "The Stickiness ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: The Moth and the Flame • Clyde Fitch
... pitiable to observe the misery the old dotard endured, every time his wife entered our apartment, constantly fidgetting at her elbow, and scrutinizing, suspiciously, every look that passed between her and her guests. His fears served us for a jest, however, and produced a vein of jocularity, that reconciled us to our earthen flooring, upon which some of our party were doomed to seek repose for ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... commonly known by the term jocular and comick, is nothing but a turn of expression, an airy phantom, that must be caught at a particular point. As we lose this point, we lose the jocularity, and find nothing but dulness in its place. A lucky sally, which has filled a company with laughter, will have no effect in print, because it is shown single, and separate from the circumstance which gave it force. Many satirical jests, found in ancient books, have ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... can sting me!" he interrupted with condescending jocularity. "My style French does f'r them camels up in Paris all right. ME at Nice, Monte Carlo, Chantilly—bow to the p'fess'r; he's RIGHT! But down here I don't seem to be GUD enough f'r these sheep-dogs; anyway they bark different. I'm lukkin' fer a ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... or obstinate in our refusal. We shall be bored but concessive. I confess that there are some things in the prospect of this imitation which haunt me like a nightmare. The British soldier, whom the German knows to be second to none, is distinguished for the levity and jocularity of his bearing in the face of danger. What will happen when the German soldier attempts to imitate that? We shall be delivered from the German peril as when Israel came out of Egypt, and the mountains skipped ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
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