"Jesting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... moment Venner and his friends saw what they imagined to be a piece of grim jesting; but they, as well as Rufe, speedily saw there was no jest in this. For as the rope tightened, and other roaring ruffians ran joyously to take a pull at it, Rufe was drawn irresistibly toward the weather rail ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... of this serious jesting. Hummel never used the pedal. He was an extremist; and, in his graceful, clear, elegant, neat, though not grand playing, often lost fine effects, which would have been produced by the correct and judicious use of the pedal; particularly on the instruments of Stein, Brodmann, Conrad Graff, ...
— Piano and Song - How to Teach, How to Learn, and How to Form a Judgment of - Musical Performances • Friedrich Wieck
... storm her balcony. Some climbed on each other's shoulders to get nearer her, others even began to swarm up the pillars supporting her balcony. To the delight of the audience the noisy mob eventually clambered up to the railing of the balcony and, jesting, laughing, uttering weird cries, perched on it and shouted and jeered ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... I thought you were jesting. [He gets up and speaks confidentially and half-humorously.] Now, you don't mean to say you're really capable of undermining the ground here where a friend of yours has been fortunate enough to ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... Colorado and talk this way!" she said in amazement. "Surely you are jesting. Take the effect on the polling places alone. Compare those of New York with those of Denver, and I have seen them in full operation in both places. In the first is the atmosphere of barrooms; in the second the manners and air of drawing-rooms. If I were a Colorado ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... long after the villagers had gone to bed, the festivities in the castle were continued. Wine flowed free and the revellers became more and more boisterous. From mere jesting they came to quarrelling, and, in the midst of their drunken orgy, there was heard an alarm. A sentry on the walls of the castle reported that he heard stealthy movements in the distance as of a large number of ...
— Legend Land, Vol. 1 • Various
... DIPLOMAT!" he said in his most kindly jesting tone as he looked at me with his small bright eyes. "Woloda tells me you have passed the examinations well for a youngster, and that is a splendid thing. Unless you start and play the fool, I shall ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... it. She made fun of me, too, because my hair fell out. Hair lay and floated about in the basin I washed in the mornings, and she made merry over it. Then my shoes, too, had grown rather shabby of late, particularly the one that had been run over by the bread-van, and she found subject for jesting in them. "God bless you and your shoes!" said she, looking at them; "they are as wide as a dog's house." And she was right; they were trodden out. But then I couldn't procure myself any others just ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... turned me all round as she spoke, and could scarcely say anything more for laughing. Meanwhile, the lovely Lady fair was quite silent, and could hardly raise her eyes for shame and confusion. It seemed to me that at heart she was provoked at all this jesting talk. At last her eyes filled with tears, and she hid her face on the breast of the other lady, who first looked at her in surprise and then clasped ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... the other grimly, 'let me remind you once again, that the habit of light jesting—persiflage—is so essentially Irish, you should keep it for your countrymen; and if you persist in supposing the career of a private secretary suits you, this is an incongruity that will totally unfit you ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... nobility or gouty Aldermen in gold chains and robes on the bench beside him. The body of the court was filled with bewigged lawyers—a tippling lot of sharks and rogues, always after lunch half tipsy with the punch or dry sherry which English lawyers drink, jesting and cracking jokes, unmindful of the fate of their clients. Capt. Curtin and a score ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... forgotten all about those charming water-color sketches in the small gallery up-stairs?" exclaims Molly, with an airy irrepressible laugh. "There, don't be angry: I was only jesting; no one would for a moment suspect you ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... never, indeed, been ignorant that his friend's hold on life was precarious; some such scene as this had often been in his mind before; only, insensibly, Rainham's own jesting attitude towards his disabilities had half imposed on him, and made that possibility appear intangible and remote. But now, in view of the change which the last fortnight had wrought in him, he could cherish no illusions; the worst that ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... and the Wazir beat him; whereupon he turned to the Minister and said to him, "What art thou that thou shouldest beat me? 'Tis no fault of mine: didst thou not thyself bid me ask some important thing?" And he added, "Let me go to my own land." With this, the Sultan knew that he was jesting and took patience with him awhile; then turned to him and said, "O my brother, ask of me some important thing, befitting our dignity." So the Stoker said, "O King of the Age, I ask first of Allah and then of thee, that thou make me Viceroy of Damascus in ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... world round Such another hodypeak wretch to be found, And Ragan my man, is not that a fine knave? Have any mo masters such a man as I have? So idle, so loit'ring, so trifling, so toying? So prattling, so trattling, so chiding, so boying? So jesting, so wresting, so mocking, so mowing? So nipping, so tripping, so cocking, so crowing? So knappish, so snappish, so elvish, so froward? So crabbed, so wrabbed, so stiff, so untoward? In play or in pastime so jocund, so merry? In work or in labour so dead or so weary? O, that I had his ear ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Robert Dodsley
... inconceivably acute; he divines all. He knows my position, I am quite sure. He took advantage yesterday of a moment when I was quite alone to come into my room, and with an air half sad, half jesting, he knelt down before me and drew from his pocket a little bouquet of dried flowers tied with a white ribbon and fastened by a gold pin.... I could not at first tell what he meant, but soon the bouquet I had worn at Barbara's wedding flashed across my memory. He gave me the flowers, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... by some impertinent observations, to punish which I told him the next day that I would point-tie him when he married. It so happened that he had the intention of uniting himself with a servant girl who lived in the neighbourhood, and although I had threatened him merely in a jesting manner, it made so strong an impression upon him that although, when married, he felt the most ardent desire to enjoy his connubial rights, he found himself totally incapacitated for the work of love. Sometimes when he ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... bid us, as some giant foe, Or willing or unwilling go; But they must ope our very graves, To tell the dead they too are slaves! And hang their bones upon the wall, To please their gaze and gust of thrall; As if a dead dog from below Were made a jesting-stock and show! ...
— The Myth of Hiawatha, and Other Oral Legends, Mythologic and Allegoric, of the North American Indians • Henry R. Schoolcraft
... not think me in earnest in that letter? It was because I understood you so perfectly that I felt at liberty for the jesting a little—for had I not thought of that before, myself, and was I not reproved for speaking of it, when I said that I was content, for my part, even so? Surely you remember—and I should not have said it if ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... then went from easel to easel, scolding, flattering, jesting, and making, as usual, his jests more dreaded than his reprimands. Ginevra had not obeyed the professor's order, but remained at her post, firmly resolved not to quit it. She took a sheet of paper and began to sketch in sepia the head of the hidden man. A work done under the impulse of an emotion ...
— Vendetta • Honore de Balzac
... his usual light jesting manner but very seriously. Hugh's lips parted,—Mrs. Rossitur looked with a sad thoughtful look at Fleda,—Mr. Rossitur walked up and down looking at nobody. ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... through the sprouting grass,'" answered the hemp-dresser in a slightly hoarse but terrible voice. "You must be jesting, my poor friends, singing us such time-worn songs. You see very well that we can stop you at ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... because the King was an evil man, and he liked not evil; yet he loved not rebellion, and feared for his safety if the King had the upper hand; but it was still more that he had grown idle and soft-hearted, and feared the hard faring and brisk jesting of the camp. Yet even so the thought of the war lay heavy on his heart, and he wondered how men, whose lives were so short upon the goodly earth, should find it in their hearts to slay and be slain for such shadowy things as command and dominion; and ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Englishmen have echoed and re-echoed the question throughout the century which has elapsed. The mode in which it is asked reminds me, I must confess, of that first sentence in Bacon's Essays—"What is truth? said jesting Pilate, and would not ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... better dinner than anyone had thought Dolly could cook. But, despite her jesting ways, Dolly was a close observer, and she had not watched Margery, a real genius in the art of cooking, in vain. Everyone enjoyed it, and, when they had eaten all they could, Dolly lay back ...
— The Camp Fire Girls on the March - Bessie King's Test of Friendship • Jane L. Stewart
... have overthrowne the Voyage: and now lately being imbayed in a deepe Bay, which the Master had desire to see, for some reasons to himselfe knowne, his word tended altogether to put the Companie into a fray [fear] of extremitie, by wintering in cold: Jesting at our Master's hope to see Bantam ...
— Henry Hudson - A Brief Statement Of His Aims And His Achievements • Thomas A. Janvier
... a cheerful countenance, with blue eyes; very tall, so much so that it was long before any of the royal robes could be found to fit him. He was anxious to imitate Constantius, often occupying himself with serious business till after midday, and being fond of jesting with his friends ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... Chosroes, and after speaking at length concerning the breaking of the peace and hearing much from him, they retired. But on the morrow the populace of Antioch (for they are not seriously disposed, but are always engaged in jesting and disorderly performance) heaped insults upon Chosroes from the battlements and taunted him with unseemly laughter; and when Paulus came near the fortifications and exhorted them to purchase freedom for themselves and the ...
— History of the Wars, Books I and II (of 8) - The Persian War • Procopius
... such jesting with me!" cried the queen vehemently. "No one has any consideration for me—no one pities me, and I suffer fearfully! Euergetes scorns me—you, Philometor, would be glad to drag me down! If only the banquet is not interfered with, and so long as nothing ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... was her unconsciousness of self. Even though she might be talking of herself, frankly admitting her beauty, she was really thinking of other people, how she could get to them to help them. This I must emphasize, because, apart from jesting, I would not have it thought that I had fallen under the spell of a beautiful countenance, combined with a motor-car and a patrician name. There were things about Sylvia that were aristocratic, that could be nothing ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... wheeling hand-barrows filled with corpses, scarcely covered with clothing, and revealing the blue and white stripes of the pestilence, towards a cart which was standing near the church gates. The driver of the vehicle, a tall, cadaverous-looking man, was ringing his bell, and jesting with another person, whom the young man recognised, with a shudder, as Chowles. The coffin-maker also recognised him at the same moment, and called to him, but the other paid no attention to ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... he, "I had no idea that a prisoner could become attached to such a gloomy dungeon as this. Ah, senorita, you are jesting. I assure you, however, that there are better rooms than this in the castle, and in a few minutes you shall be taken to one. You shall also be provided with proper attendants; for there are women about the castle who can ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... truly a great one. Since the time of OLAF, the Northman, our Anglo-Saxon-Celtic race has loved its jesting philosophers. No fools are they, in fact, even when to that name ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 7, May 14, 1870 • Various
... at the other side of the picture," said Andrew, rising and following him: "'Truth' reduced to threepence, and then to a penny; yourself confused with Tracy Turnerelli or Martin Tupper; your friends running when you looked like jesting; the House emptying, the reporters shutting their note-books as you rose to speak; the great name of Labouchere ...
— Better Dead • J. M. Barrie
... ourselves with fundamental seriousness—with that absolute gravity which imperils the publication of a book and entirely prohibits the production of a play on such matters. There is something in human nature beyond my explaining which leads towards jesting in these directions. An instinct, I know, is an instinct; of which a main character is that its exercise shall be independent of any knowledge as to its purpose. We eat because we like eating, rather than because we have reckoned that ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... saving herself promptly. "To be always with one's brother shows devotion indeed; but you forget your rle, don't you? Where has he been for the past hour? You haven't told us that! Surely you have not forsaken him now, when it may be the hour of his extremity." Her tone is jesting, but all through it Rylton can read ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... even in his written speeches, both political and judicial, we see him continually trying to show his learning by the way. And one may discover the different temper of each of them in their speeches. For Demosthenes's oratory was, without all embellishment and jesting, wholly composed for real effect and seriousness; not smelling of the lamp, as Pytheas scoffingly said, but of the temperance, thoughtfulness, austerity, and grave earnestness of his temper. Whereas, Cicero's love of mockery ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... volume has felt the importance of his task, and diligently sought how to distinguish true wit from false,—the pure gold from Brummagem brass. He has carefully perused the Eight learned chapters on "Thoughts on Jesting," by Frederick Meier, Professor of Philosophy at Halle, and Member of the Royal Academy of Berlin, wherein it is declared that a jest "is an extreme fine Thought, the result of a great Wit and Acumen, which are eminent Perfections of the Soul." ... "Hypocrites, with the ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... 'Must bear such age, I think, as thou.— Hear ye, my mates! I go to call The Captain of our watch to hall: There lies my halberd on the floor; And he that steps my halberd o'er, To do the maid injurious part, My shaft shall quiver in his heart! Beware loose speech, or jesting rough; Ye all ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... reach us save from such lips, they would, in no long time, become terms of insult or of malediction. But so often as the sweet greeting comes from wife, child, or friend, its proper savors are restored. A jesting editor says that "You tell a telegram" is the polite way of giving the lie; and it is quite possible that his witticism only anticipates a serious use of language some century hence. Terms and statements are perpetually saturated ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... exclaimed the Captain, almost beside himself with joy—'dear ladies, you cannot be jesting, and I accept your offer with gratitude and delight. Good heavens, what a lucky ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... Captain Crewe, brought her from India and gave her into my care," the speech proceeded, "he said to me, in a jesting way, 'I am afraid she will be very rich, Miss Minchin.' My reply was, 'Her education at my seminary, Captain Crewe, shall be such as will adorn the largest fortune.' Sara has become my most accomplished pupil. Her French and her dancing are a credit to the seminary. Her manners—which have caused ...
— A Little Princess • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... over and over again that there are ten volumes, at one guinea each—my object in making it so expensive being to keep it from the general public. I am also troubled with inquiries as to who is my publisher I am my own publisher, inaugurating (Inshallah!) a golden age for authors. Jesting apart the book has no publisher. It is printed by myself for the benefit of Orientalists and Anthropologists, and nothing could be more repugnant to me than the idea of a book of the kind being published or being put into the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... matronly old lady put up a pair of gold eye-glasses, looked at me awhile in silence, and pronounced in a clangorous voice her verdict. 'You give me very much the effect of a coward, Mr. Stevenson!' I had very nearly left two vices behind me at Glenogil - fishing and jesting at table. And of one thing you may be very sure, my lips were no more opened ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... seemed fairly crazed by his joy. After so many long years of hopeless grief and wistful longing, to find his loved ones, safe and sound, far more beautiful than of yore! Surely enough to turn the gravest of men into a laughing, jesting, voluble lad! ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... Arthur's feeble, fretful voice, and in a minute the poetry had all gone out of her head, and she was by her boy's side, feeding him, jesting with him, and planning how the first day of his convalescence should be celebrated by a grand festival, inviting the two others to tea in his room. It was her own room, from which he had never been moved since the first night. How familiar ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... worst of it. It is the fashion in the States to speak of "poor old Punch," and to affect astonishment at seeing in its "senile pages" anything that they have to admit to be funny. Doubtless a great deal of very laborious and vapid jesting goes on in the pages of the doyen of English comic weeklies; but at its best Punch is hard to beat, and its humours have often a literary quality such as is seldom met with in an American journal of the ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... Count Tristan, breathing hard, while his face rapidly changed color; for at one moment it was overspread with a death-like pallor, and then, suddenly grew purple. "Decline? Such a thing is not to be thought of; you are jesting?" ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... Mrs. Gunilla, "all that may be very good, but——" But just then the coffee came in, with biscuits and gingerbread, which made an important diversion in the entertainment, which now took a livelier character. Mrs. Gunilla imparted to Elise, with jesting seriousness, a variety of good counsel on the education of her children. She sent for and recommended particularly a certain Orbis Pictus, which she herself had studied when a child, and which ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... supremacy calmly exercised by his minister at the centre of affairs, while he, the King, so soon as his minister summoned him, must hasten in, and yet at last could do nothing but accept the resolutions which he put into his hands. A small deformed man, to whom James, as was his wont, gave a jesting nickname on this account, he yet impressed men by the intelligence which flashed from his countenance and from every word he spoke; and even his outward bearing had a certain dignity. His independence was increased by his enormous wealth, acquired mainly by investments in the Dutch ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... know what you are talking about, Sally,' her husband replied good-humouredly, for he was a man of excellent temper, and a little given to jesting. 'But I suppose you thought it good for you last christmas, when you got ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... rejoined she, "don't joke, it's not a subject for jesting. It is heavier upon my heart than you dream of. Wouldn't you like to live in the free States? There is nothing particular to keep you here, and only think how much better it would be for the children: and Garie," she continued in a lower tone, nestling close ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... jesting out of sight! I tell you, once for all, that speed With this fair girl will not succeed; By storm she cannot captured be; We must make ...
— Faust • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... down the narrow staircase, laughing, jesting, and humming snatches of tunes as they burst out into the ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... in a jesting tone, and laughed loudly, but the look in his eyes told more than his words, and I guessed that for all his play my cousin would show me but scant mercy. Still, he was pleasant enough, and I passed a very agreeable hour ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... very idly," said St. George, then, softening his falcon's glance. "Pray excuse such savage jesting. I should like to share my grandfather's estate with you, the adopted child of his elder grandson. It looks ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... them. Our medicines produce no effect on them, and all we can do is, like quacks, to increase the dose. Of course, if ten boxes of Morison's pills have killed a man, it only proves that—he ought to have taken twelve of them. We are jesting, but, as an Ulster Orangeman would say, "it is in good ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... this must seem very quixotic to you as a business man, Mr. Chelm," I continued after a moment's reflection. "Very likely you think I am merely jesting. But I am not. I am perfectly serious. I want to help Mr. Prime. I was very much interested by what he said, and I believe he is in earnest. The plan that I have just suggested seems to me entirely feasible. Even supposing that I lose a couple of hundred thousand dollars, what ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... than Absalom staid on his mule after his hair brought him to grief, he was reduced to ordinary humanity. He felt his loss keenly. I ventured to compliment him on features which I had never seen till then, and he answered, with asperity, that it was "no jesting matter." ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... Bertram, with your worthy friend here, that I have been rather jesting with edge-tools; and although neither you nor I, nor any sensible man, can put faith in the predictions of astrology, yet, as it has sometimes happened that inquiries into futurity, undertaken in jest, have in their results produced serious and unpleasant effects both upon actions and ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... that's a good way of getting out of it. And as for jesting about sacred matters, I always understood that one couldn't prove his zeal for Protestantism better than by having a shot ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... should receive only one portion. Ishmael, who had been accustomed from his youth to use the bow and arrow, was in the habit of aiming his missiles in the direction of Isaac, saying at the same time that he was but jesting.[211] Sarah, however, insisted that Abraham make over to Isaac all he owned, that no disputes might arise after his death,[212] "for," she said, "Ishmael is not worthy of being heir with my son, nor with a man like Isaac, and certainly ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... thy jesting, good sir; thou art a traveller from afar, and lookest the part to perfection. I am at mine ease at home going to pay a call to a pretty neighbour. Let us be jogging; 'tis a long walk to Newnham, and the ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... her eye and saw that she had passed a sleepless night. The most stupendous of Dickey's efforts to enliven the dreary table failed, and there was utter collapse to the rosy hopes they had begun to build. Her brain was filled by one great thought—escape. While they were jesting she was wondering how and where she could find the underground passages of which they had spoken and to what ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... say, but I was in no humor to talk, or even to listen; and yet I can now frankly confess that if he had not made light of my misfortune I should have suffered ten times the amount of mental agony that I did. His jesting style of treating the affair was alone sufficient to make me keep up my spirits, and imagine the matter as one of less consequence than it ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... Macquart was in a jesting mood, glowing with wild exultation. The money he had in his pocket, the treachery he was preparing, the conviction that he had sold himself at a good price—all filled him with the self-satisfaction characteristic ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... gentlemen,' said Mr. Serjeant Buzfuz, 'it is difficult to smile with an aching heart; it is ill jesting when our deepest sympathies are awakened. My client's hopes and prospects are ruined, and it is no figure of speech to say that her occupation is gone indeed. The bill is down—but there is no tenant. Eligible single gentlemen pass and repass-but there is no ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... lose there; treating Meetings and prayer lightly; resenting little unkindnesses and persecution; carelessness of speech; gossiping, frivolity, forgetting that whilst the Holy Ghost is a Spirit of Joy, He is grieved by lightness and frivolous jesting. These are some of the little holes through which the blessing drops out. You must watch and pray, that ye enter ...
— Standards of Life and Service • T. H. Howard
... head to listen, and Elsie murmured the name low and softly, the rose deepening on her cheek as she spoke. For a moment Lucy seemed struck dumb with astonishment. Then, "Elsie!" she exclaimed, "I can't believe it; you are only jesting." ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley
... matter for jesting, after all," said Frank; "but I saw Sir Thomas often, and I cannot believe he was in his senses, so frantic was his vanity and his ambition; and all the while, in private matters as honorable a gentleman as ever. However, he sailed at last for Ireland, with his eight ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... by nearly choking with rage. He hardly knew why he did not seize the seducer by the throat. But the culprits would have a complete defence ready. Was it not all mere harmless jesting? Whatever anguish of jealousy he might feel, he must ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... as long as he goes and walks up and down, eats and drinks, he thinks that the tide will turn again. Yet finding himself inwardly weaker of body rallies with his own distemper, in hopes that by his jesting, among his merry Companions, he may from them understand what is best, upon such occasions, to be done or avoided; and they seriously jesting say to him: O friend, wean yourself from your wife and Tobacco, ...
— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh
... one person, however, who did not join in the jesting; and this was Langley. When he began to understand the matter he regarded the two with sympathetic curiosity and interest. Why should not their primitive and uncouth love develop and form a tie to bind the homely lives together, ...
— "Seth" • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... does not say so?" said Edith, in a voice of alarm quite different from the agitation she had previously evinced,—"you cannot say so consistently with respect for your own honour and for mine, your husband's kinswoman! Say you were jesting with me, my royal mistress, and forgive me that I could, even for a moment, think it possible you could be ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... poetry amongst the Grecians, but only these representations of Satyrs who carried canisters and cornucopias full of several fruits in their hands, and danced with them at their public feasts, and afterwards reading Horace, who makes mention of his homely Romans jesting at one another in the same kind of solemnities, might suppose those wanton Satyrs did the same; and especially because Horace possibly might seem to him to have shown the original of all poetry in general (including the ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... nonsense, master Collins, this is no time for jesting. Go and dry these arms, and when you have them so that they can send a bullet from their throats, join Jackson and Philips in covering the boat. Weston and I will take ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... summary shall be brief, and to the point.— The said right honourable Prime Minister Has thought it proper to declare my speech The jesting of an irresponsible;— Words from a person who has never read The Act he claims him urgent to repeal. Such quips and qizzings [as he reckons them] He implicates as gathered from long hoards Stored up with cruel care, to be discharged With sudden blaze of pyrotechnic art On the devoted, ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... risked so much for nothing!" whispered one. "Can she have it, or was the old fool jesting ...
— The Strand Magazine: Volume VII, Issue 37. January, 1894. - An Illustrated Monthly • Edited by George Newnes
... Cattleland—jingling spurs, fringed chaps, leather cuffs, gray shirt, with kerchief knotted loosely at the neck, and revolver ready to his hand. But he carried them with an air, an inimitable grace, that marked him for a prince among his fellows. Something of the kind she hinted to him in jesting paradoxical fashion, making an attempt to win from his sardonic gloom one of his quick, ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... with her; and on these pretended grounds her head was incontinently put about and the course laid for the river. It was strange to see what merriment fell on that ship's company, and how they stamped about the deck jesting, and each computing what increase had come to his share by the death of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the man was a poseur, and that his affectations were the result of living in a small and admiring coterie. If, when one begins to write and talk in that jesting way, there is some one at your elbow to say, "How refreshing, how original, how rugged!" I suppose that one begins to think that one had better indulge oneself in such absurdities. But readers outside the circle turn away ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... poetic misanthrope; but that existed much more in public imagination than in reality. He liked society, and was extremely kind and amiable, when calm. Instead of being gloomy, he was, on the contrary, of a very gay disposition, and was fond of jesting; it even amused him to witness comic scenes, such as quarrels between vulgar buffoons, to make them drink, or lead them on in any other way to show their drolleries. In his writings, certainly, he loved to paint a character more or less the work of his imagination, ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... spent as recklessly, and blood flowed as plentifully as wine. Rough horseplay and rude practical joking were of the essence of humorous courtliness. Immense processions filled with life and colour, jesting at everything sacred or profane, crowded with symbols decent and indecent, made up the sum of public happiness. Close at men's elbow lay the heavy hand of a merciless and blood-stained law. Once beneath the power of "Justice" the miserable prisoner had little hope of escaping ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... door; and Lord Raglan was found dead, with a bottle of strychnine by the bedside. The affair, so far as the circumstances indicated suicide, was hushed up, and his death represented as a natural one. The English officer seems to have been an unscrupulous fellow, jesting thus with the fresh memory of his dead commander; for it is impossible to believe a word of the story. Even if Lord Raglan had wished for death, he would hardly have taken strychnine, when there were so many chances of being honorably shot. ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... were half done turning off the street lights, before the noisy market-houses all over the town, from Camp Callender to Carrollton, with their basket-bearing thousands of jesting and dickering customers, had quenched their gaslights and candles to dicker and jest by day, or the devotees of early mass had emerged from the churches, Rumor was on the run. With a sort of muffled speed and whisper she came and went, crossed her course and reaffirmed herself, returned to her ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... at my jesting. "It is not exactly a story for boys," he said. "I go on then. The sign, as you call it, was not very plentiful but very much to the purpose, and when Mr. Powell heard (at a certain moment I felt bound to tell him) when he heard that I had known Mrs. Anthony before her marriage, ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... the friends fell in with a procession of Flagellants, flogging their bare shoulders till the blood ran streaming down; but without a sign of pain in their faces, and many of them laughing and jesting as they lashed. The bystanders out of pity offered them wine; they took it, but few drank it; they generally used it to free the tails of the cat, which were hard with clotted blood, and make the ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... that Tanno's jesting replies to the Satronians he had met on the road had given them the idea that Xantha was being conveyed, in a shut litter, to Villa Vedia: similarly his quizzical words to the Vedians he had met had given them a similar notion that ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... captain for his jesting tone, and yet at the same time I detected a ring of truth in what he had said. It flashed upon me that I had indeed been blind, and the revelation thrilled ...
— The Cryptogram - A Story of Northwest Canada • William Murray Graydon
... dwelling, and was received with joy, for the servants knew him; and they brought him to the room of their mistress, in the semblance of whom the maid rose up from supper and welcomed him gladly. And afterwards she sat down to supper again, and Rhun with her. Then Rhun began jesting with the maid, who still kept the semblance of her mistress. And verily this story shows that the maiden became so intoxicated that she fell asleep; and the story relates that it was a powder that Rhun put into the drink, that made her sleep so soundly ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... to explain to his Excellency all the little mysteries of the greenroom, as a man quite at home in this little Parisian province, and lightly, by a word, a gesture even, he gave the minister a rapid biography of the young girls who were laughing, jesting, romping there before them; flitting hither and thither lightly across the boards, barely touching them with the tips of their pink ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... de Coralth checked him, saying gravely: "Upon my honor, I am not jesting. What would ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... King to his merry men spake: “I rede ye treat him fair; I tell to ye for a verity No jesting he will bear.” ...
— Grimmer and Kamper - The End of Sivard Snarenswayne and other ballads - - - Translator: George Borrow • Thomas J. Wise
... grieve and astonish me! You surely must be jesting, in dishing up this long rigmarole, about Miss Houghton's accomplishments! After what I have told you, I cannot conceive how you can fail to understand, that I am not in a mood for jesting. As for the girl, I very much desire to meet her, that I ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... had been running some six months, Fielding formally relinquished his ironic character of a Jacobite, partly because, as he says, the evils of Jacobitism were too serious for jesting and required more open denunciation; partly because the age required more highly seasoned writing, the general taste in reading very much resembling "that of some particular Man in eating who would never willingly devour what doth not ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... shafts such as yours find quarry, Robin. I think that they would sooner kill the archer than the birds. There, mind not my jesting. Men shall talk of you; and I may live to hear them. Be just always; ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... the table, takes a glass, and at once begins talking. What is most characteristic in his manner of talking is the continually jesting tone, a sort of mixture of philosophy and drollery as in Shakespeare's gravediggers. He is always talking about serious things, but he never speaks seriously. His judgments are always harsh and railing, but, thanks to his soft, even, jesting ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... calamities come, from nothing It must be your despair that helps you to bear up It don't do any good to look at its drawbacks all the time It 's the same as a promise, your not saying you wouldn't Jesting mood in the face of all embarrassments Justice must be paid for at every step in fees and costs Less intrusive than if he had not been there Less certain of everything that I used to be sure of Life was like the life at a sea-side hotel, but more monotonous Life of the ship, like the life ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... was not vain of his appearance, and did not seem to care for ornaments of any kind. Peterkin said "it was in memory of the girl he left behind him!" But as he never spoke of this girl to either of us, I am inclined to think that Peterkin was either jesting or mistaken. In addition to these articles we had a little bit of tinder, and the clothes on our back. These last ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... dull day and stormy night. The Starbuck's papers brought news from Yankeeland as late as the 28th of October, and not the least important item was that which told of the excitement occasioned among the enemy by the little craft whose officers were now jesting merrily over the consternation she had raised, and the measures that were being taken for ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... of his graduation from Bowdoin College he had laid aside his jesting and doubt, and in the following period of remarkable seclusion spent in his mother's home in Salem he gave himself to the work of composition. Thirteen years he passed thus in a sort of ideal world, so shut away from his ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... American, in November, 1879, gravely undertook to instruct Edison in the A B C of electrical principles, and then proceeded to demonstrate mathematically the IMPOSSIBILITY of doing WHAT EDISON HAD ACTUALLY DONE. This critic concludes with a gentle rebuke to the inventor for ill-timed jesting, and a suggestion to ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... "Jesting apart," resumed the old gentleman, "I have been much astonished to hear that these two mad-caps ascended to the summit of the Falberg; it must be a girlish exaggeration; they probably went to the crest of a ledge. It is impossible to reach ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... from his swoon, it was late in the afternoon; he was alone; the faint tinkling of the sheep-bell had again replaced the sound of the human chorus of expectation, and dread, and jesting; all was peaceful, he could not understand why he lay there, feeling so weak and sick. He raised himself tremulously and looked around, the turf was cut and spoiled by the trampling of many feet. All his life of the last few months floated ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... meaning ran over them like a wave. They caught the splendid significance of it. They were to offer, in the guise of jesting, their big protest against the folly of sickening over youth by showing how fearlessly they were dancing on toward age. It was more than bravado, more than repudiation of the cowards who hesitated at the onward step. It was loyal and passionate upholding ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... "Jesting apart," he continued, "you are spoiling yourself, ruining your preaching, and pulling down a splendid building to re-fashion it into one which sins against the rules of nature and art. You must remember, too, that if at your age, like a piece of cloth, you have taken a wrong fold, ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... suppose?" he said, and without waiting for a reply, he turned to his wife in his jesting tone: "Well, were a great many tears shed at Moscow ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... Hangman was getting into proper Trim, and fashioning his tools for the slaughter, these callous Clergymen would be smoking and drinking with the keepers in the Lodge, talking now of a Main at Cocks and now of him who was to suffer on the Morrow, fleering and jesting, with the Church Service in one sleeve of their cassock and a Bottle Screw or a Pack of Cards in the other. And the Condemned persons, too, did not take the matter in a much more serious light. They had their Brandy and Tobacco ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... more reassured by the genuine laugh which accompanied these jesting and contemptuous words, because he was a judge of lying and knew that ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... first sleep, was disposed to look upon the matter as a tipsy man's jest. So, says I merrily: 'And what price shall I pay for this palace of mine, which is but twelve feet square, and my five poor pagodas a month? The Devil take you and your jesting: I have paid my price twice over in sickness.' At that moment my man turns full towards me: so that by the moonlight I could see every line and wrinkle of his face. Then my drunken mirth died out of me, as I have seen the waters of our great rivers die away in one night; and ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... "You are jesting," interrupted the old warrior. "I aided him only as the drops in the stream help to turn the wheel of the mill. As to his body, true, I marched at the head of the procession which bore it to Memphis and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... a part of human comedy, has not spared the humours of children. Yet they are fitter subjects for any other kind of jesting. In the first place they are quite defenceless, but besides and before this, it might have been supposed that nothing in a child could provoke the equal passion of scorn. Between confessed unequals scorn is not even suggested. Its derisive proclamation of inequality has no sting and no meaning where ...
— The Children • Alice Meynell
... madam," replied Sir Philip, with a very faint smile, for Sir Philip could not well bear any jesting on the Romans. "I did not only converse with Mr. Marlow on the subject, but I examined carefully the papers he brought down with him, and perceived at once that you have not the shadow of a title ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... was supposed to be located. John Edwards stood in the house door watching him ambling over the waste, yellow plain, until Jim and his horse together appeared a mere speck in the distance, when he went to talk over with his sister the late transaction, and make some jesting remarks on the probability ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor
... here, June 18th, William Rutter was mortally wounded. He had picked up a piece of corn-cake in the field back of the works. Some jesting remark was made about the cake and the rebel that made it, when he said he would go out and get some more. He was sitting in the pit beside me. He rose, still laughing, to carry out his purpose; but as his head and shoulders were exposed above the pit, there was a sharp "crash," ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride
... it out spitefully and Wunpost curbed his wit for he saw where his jesting was leading to. When it came to her father this unsophisticated child would stand up and fight like a wildcat. And he began to perceive too that she was not such a child—she was a woman, with ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... WHAT is truth? said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer. Certainly there be, that delight in giddiness, and count it a bondage to fix a belief; affecting free-will in thinking, as well as in acting. And though the sects of philosophers ...
— Essays - The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. - Verulam Viscount St. Albans • Francis Bacon
... read such texts, but ofttimes when they are brought to any consideration they will search for evidence to neutralize their guilt. They will again read, "Man shall give an account of every idle word," and go on talking foolishly and jesting, seeking to believe they are God's own children. And ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... surprisingly cheerful mood, and described his visit and the friends he had met in glowing words. One incident of his visit, however, he withheld, and for a purpose. The little, half-jesting remark Liddy had made a month previous on Blue Hill—a remark merely expressive of her pride—still lingered in his mind, and he was resolved to test that pride in his own ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn
... Murguia's cries to stop by all the saints, heedless of the saints too. Murguia did not care what happened to his guest, but he cared for what might happen to himself, afterward, at the hands of Don Tiburcio and partner. He frantically called out that he was jesting, that Driscoll owed him nothing. But Driscoll had already turned into the side trail, and was following the hoof prints there. Murguia could hear the furious crackling of twigs as he raced through the timber. But in a little while he heard ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... at hand, the ladies had gathered about the centre-table with their work, while Lester Leland and Edward Travilla hovered near their wives, the one with a newspaper, the other merely watching the busy fingers of the fair workers and making jesting comments ...
— Elsie's New Relations • Martha Finley
... forgot their duty as to consume a part of the sacred wine reserved for the imperial lips alone. It would be criminal to deny that this was a great and culpable oversight; nevertheless, our imperial hero passed it over as a pardonable offence; remarking, in a jesting manner, that since he had drunk the ail, as they termed it, of his trusty guard, the Varangians had acquired a right to quench the thirst, and to relieve the fatigue, which they had undergone that day in his defence, though they used for these purposes the sacred ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... have been wise; Suppose I with caution reveal to his eyes Some few of the reasons which make me believe That I neither am happy nor wise? 'twould relieve And enlighten, perchance, my own darkness and doubt." For which purpose a feeler he softly put out. It was snapp'd up at once. "What is truth? "jesting Pilate Ask'd, and pass'd from the question at once with a smile at Its utter futility. Had he address'd it To Ridley MacNab, he at least had confess'd it Admitted discussion! and certainly no man Could more promptly have answer'd the sceptical ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... he said. "You are always jesting. But you do not know—you cannot read the horrible thoughts in my mind. I cannot resolve their meaning even to myself. There is some truth in your light words; I feel, I know instinctively, that the woman I love has an attraction about her which is not ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... occasions answered in the same tone—"And who says I have not a lover?" So Cousin Betty's lover, real or fictitious, became a subject of mild jesting. At last, after two years of this petty warfare, the last time Lisbeth had come to the house Hortense's first ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... blithe Hellene, Who am too much in love with life to live. (The shrug is pure Hebraic) ... For what I've been, A lenient Lord will tax me—and forgive. Dieu me pardonnera—c'est son metier. But this is jesting. There are other scandals You haven't heard ... Can it be dusk so soon? Or is this deeper darkness ...? Is that you, Mother? How did you come? Where are the candles?... Over my bed a strange tree gleams—half filled ...
— American Poetry, 1922 - A Miscellany • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... speaking seriously, not jesting. If you do not abandon this evil purpose, then our intercourse must end. More than that, I shall become ...
— The Poison Tree - A Tale of Hindu Life in Bengal • Bankim Chandra Chatterjee
... regard to what you call ultimate delights, we at times refuse them with violence, for they are unpleasant to us, almost like violations: and you will see, if you attend to it, no sign of such love in our faces: wherefore you are trifling or jesting, if you also assert, with those seven wives, that we think of our husbands from morning to evening, and continually attend to their will and pleasure in order to catch from them such delights.' I have retained thus much of what ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... escaped. Perhaps, the meeting being one of hilarity, the younger nobles became restive under the infliction of a very long and very solemn harangue. At any rate, as the meeting broke up, there was a good dial of jesting on the subject. De Hammes, commonly called "Toison d'Or," councillor and king-at-arms of the Order, said that the President had been seeing visions and talking with Saint Andrew in a dream. Marquis Berghen asked for the source whence he had derived such intimate acquaintance with the ideas ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... me for that. But, if you remember, when you had finished telling me about it, you added that I was not to take the story in earnest, for that you were not really in love with a country girl, but were only jesting; and I was dull and thick-headed enough to believe you. But so fate decreed, and there is no ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... a morning Babbitt came bouncing and jesting in to breakfast. But things were mysteriously awry to-day. As he pontifically tread the upper hall he looked into Verona's bedroom and protested, "What's the use of giving the family a high-class house when they don't appreciate it and tend ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... perfectly well; but Ransom, behind her, let the chair go up and go down and sway about very unsteadily, besides that every step was with a jolting motion. It kept Daisy in constant uneasiness. Dr. Sandford walked on just before with his gun; Alexander Fish came after, laughing and jesting with the other boys. ...
— Melbourne House • Elizabeth Wetherell
... continuing for I know not how long, bereft of my senses by the perfume of her hair and the touch of her arms. And then at last, I took her face in my hands. And I said: Away with Chaturika! Thou knowest all, and art only jesting: and my soul quivers in my body at the sound of thy name. And she laughed, as I kissed her very gently on her two eyes, and she said: Perhaps I know: and yet, I will not forgive thee for Chaturika, but on one condition. And I said: Ask anything thou wilt: it matters not. Then she ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain
... meanest scullion in my kitchens, the lowliest groom in my stables—and with more honour to himself," answered the proud Duke. "Yet he does not go the length of jesting with me." His eye carried a menace so eloquent that Gonzaga drew back, afraid; but Gian Maria clapped him on the ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... transcribe some Passages relating to this Subject, from the Writings of a good Judge of Wit, and as great a Master of it as perhaps any Nation ever bred, I mean Archbishop Tillotson; "I know not how it comes to pass, says he, that some Men have the Fortune to be esteem'd Wits, only for jesting out of the common Road, and for making bold to scoff at those things, which the greatest Part of Mankind reverence—. If Men did truly consult the Interest, either of their Safety or Reputation, they would never exercise ...
— Essay upon Wit • Sir Richard Blackmore
... and left me brooding over the sad tale which he had told in such an absurd and jesting manner. It was evident from the account he had given of Brian's attempt at suicide, that the hapless hunter was not wholly answerable for his conduct—that he was ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... Was the man jesting, or was he in earnest? It was so hard to decide, that M. Segmuller and Lecoq were equally in doubt. As for Goguet, the smiling clerk, he chuckled to himself as his ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... it was the very night before Pride's Purge. If fines, I reminded them, if imprisonments, grievous mutilations, and brandings of S.L.—which I once called 'stigmata landis;' but 'tis an ill subject for jesting—could bespeak a true friend to liberty, why then sure I am one whose voice might well claim, a hearing. Yet it hath been far otherwise with yonder masterful men of the carnal weapon, who seek their own advancement ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene
... and jesting, finally leaving the city behind and getting out into the country. Up hill and down dale they steadily jogged, covering mile after mile in ...
— Frank Merriwell at Yale • Burt L. Standish
... sought to ruffle his (Dale's) feathers, as he elegantly termed it, by urging him to join the expedition; on the contrary, to the secret but carefully concealed consternation of Rex and Lance, the prime movers in the matter, Mr Dale seemed more than half disposed to yield to Brook's jesting entreaties that he would make one of the party. It almost seemed as though this intensely selfish and egotistical individual were at last becoming ashamed of his own behaviour and had resolved upon an attempt ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... You laugh; but, jesting apart, perhaps it would have been a more accurate classification than placing her ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... affecting to be great with the Queene: and it seems indeed he had more of her eare than every body else, and would be with her talking alone two or three hours together; insomuch that the Lords about the King, when he would be jesting with them about their wives, would tell the King that he must have a care of his wife too, for she hath now the gallant: and they say the King himself did once ask Montagu how his mistress (meaning the Queene) did. ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... in a jesting tone, "that I asked her to marry me. After all, I had saved her son, had I not?... So... I thought. What a rebuff!... It produced a coolness between ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... the guests turned with their laughter and gentle jesting to the newly married pair, the Black Earl relented not his frown. With scant courtesy and brief good-bye he mounted upon his fretting steed, vowing he could no longer stay. Up before him ...
— The Story and Song of Black Roderick • Dora Sigerson
... "and I in turn will do what more I may for thee besides making thee free." And therewith he rode forward that he might get out of earshot, for Bull's tongue seemed like to be long. And presently he heard laughter behind him, as the carle began jesting and talking with ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... was a penny, and the form was so unpretentious that deprecators spoke of its "tobacco-paper" and "scurvy letter." Like Defoe's review, it was strong in Foreign War intelligence, but beyond this the aim was to attract readers, not by political sarcasm or coarse jesting, but by sparkling satire on the foibles of the fashionable world. Addison says that the design was to bring philosophy to tea-tables, and to check improprieties "too trivial for the chastisement of the ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... de Remusat, III., 75, 155: "When the minister of police learned that jesting or malicious remarks had been made in one of the Paris drawing-rooms he at once notified the master or mistress of the house to be more watchful of their company."—Ibid., p.187 (1807): "The emperor censured ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... straggled in a long crowd to Moorgate—man and maid, noble and 'prentice, alderman and oyster-woman, jesting and scolding as we jostled one another in the narrow way, and rejoicing when at length we broke free into the pleasant meadows and smelt the sweetness of ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... his bed, and closed his eyes. They had not been jesting altogether. So long a life in the open made summer skies at night welcome, and roofs and walls almost took from them the power ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... were the strains! and how often through the day he found himself humming the melodies which had floated to him from the open windows of the manor! Once he, too, had taken pleasure in jesting with fair women until their white shoulders would shake with merry laughter. And all this he must look upon and hear at a distance, since he had made himself ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... said. "Jack Warder and I are only half-fledged specimens. You should see the old fellows." Thus jesting, we rode as we were able until we reached the "banks of the Schuylkill, picketed on both shores, but on the west side not below the lower ferry, where already my companion was laying a floating bridge which greatly ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... Georgiana turned upon them in her old jesting way, which yet had in it, as they all felt, a quality which was new. "Stop it, girls. No, I'll not sell one of you a rug of any size, shape, or colour. I'm far behind, as I told you. But—I'll send Madge a gorgeous one for a ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... Tom's entrance, but the gentlemen only vouchsafed him a haughty stare, whilst the perruquier bid him be seated till he had leisure to attend to him. He then adjusted upon each head its own wig, amid much jesting and gossiping that was all Greek to Tom; after which the gallants filed out with much noise and laughter, and the little man turned to ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... woman, looked on superior with folded arms, like a sable Juno looking down with that absolute composure upon the struggles of man and other animals, which Lucretius and his master Epicurus assigned to the Divine nature. Without jesting, the grandeur, majesty, and repose of this figure were unsurpassable in nature, and such as have vanished from sculpture ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... paternity was strong in him. Once married to Jane her genius had become of secondary importance. The important thing was that she was his wife; and even that was not so important as it had been. Only last year he had told her, jesting, that he never knew whether she was his wife or not. He hardly knew now (they saw so little of each other); but he did know that she was the mother of ...
— The Creators - A Comedy • May Sinclair
... mazes tread, That thou shouldst have clear-sighted sense, And nought that's wrong shouldst e'er commence. When others run in strange confusion, Thy gaze shall see through each illusion When others dolefully complain, Thy cause with jesting thou shalt gain, Honour and right shalt value duly, In everything act simply, truly,— Virtue and godliness proclaim, And call all evil by its name, Nought soften down, attempt no quibble, Nought polish up, ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... not at all reciprocating the jesting tone in which I spoke. "If you would consent to give such a promise, it is just one of those we should wish unmade. How could I ask you to promise that I may behave as ill as I please? I dare say I shall be frightened to tears when you are angry; but I shall never wish you to retain ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg |
