"Practical joke" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of course," said Terry. "No fellow would be ass enough to advertise himself like that in earnest. Probably the thing's been put in for a bet, or else it's a practical joke." ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... shocks. I was engaged in shaving early one morning in our little wooden house, when I felt myself pushed violently against the dressing-table, almost removing my chin with the razor at the same time. I suspected my nephew of a practical joke, and called out angrily to him. In an aggrieved voice he protested that he had not touched me, but had himself been hurled by an unseen agency against the wardrobe. Then came a perfect cannonade of nuts from an overhanging tree ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... sinks this relation to a level with sensualism or folly. I hear almost daily from the lips of professedly religious men and women, language and thoughts on this subject which bespeak a carnal heart and an unsanctified mind. They treat the relation with levity. They make it a practical joke. They look at it through carnal eyes, and listen to its language with carnal ears. Their whole conception and practical understanding of it is sensuous. I have but little confidence in their religion. It is only an emotion of the heart. It has never sanctified the conscience ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... a Higher Power, Peters had replied, good humoredly, that "a Creator who could fool around with them in that style was above being interfered with by prayer." At first the calamity had been a thing to fight against; then it became a practical joke, the sting of which was lost in the victims' power of endurance and assumed ignorance of its purport. There was something almost pathetic in their attempts to ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... couldn't be otherwise. If it were otherwise it would be ridiculous. A man who made love as though he were preaching a sermon, or a man who preached a sermon as though he were teasing schoolboys, or a man who described a death as though he were describing a practical joke, must necessarily be either an ass or a lunatic." Just so. You have put it in a nutshell. You have disposed of the problem of style so far as it can ...
— Literary Taste: How to Form It • Arnold Bennett
... not moved the shadows three inches before Jim had reached the conclusion that this world was all a practical joke, of so low an order that no sensible man would even laugh at it, and he drew a letter from his pocket in proof thereof. It was a thin letter, written on delicate paper in a delicate hand, and it showed much wear. He ...
— The Mascot of Sweet Briar Gulch • Henry Wallace Phillips
... who came back from the Ypres neighborhood a few days ago, told me a delightful story of a practical joke played upon the Germans, who were entrenched only about thirty or forty yards away from his platoon. One bright spirit was lecturing the enemy and making dialectical ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... comfort it was to feel one's self a gentleman again and to associate with one's equals. Ha! ha! how savage Sir Ferdinand is by this time, and the Commissioner! As for the Dawsons, they'll make a joke of it. Fancy my dining at the camp! It's about the best practical joke I ever carried out, and I've been in ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... kiss her hand as he passed out, but she snatched it away. "Uncle," she said, coming directly to him, "can it be that you sanction anything so wicked as this? It seems as if you and aunt were permitting my cousin to put upon me a cruel practical joke." ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... by the same gang; but in that they were wrong, for Master Tommy Baker, aided by his two chums, Noel and Jack Danvers, had committed the burglary at Colonel Baker's house the preceding evening as a practical joke. ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler
... it! All the Press will shout the story of my practical joke—Paris will be astounded that I, Robichon, lectured as Jacques Roux and curdled an audience's blood. Millions will speak of your intended lecture tour who otherwise would never have heard of it. I am giving you the grandest advertisement, and paying you for it, besides. Enfin, I will throw a ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... the message, he repaired at once to the room where Jack and Harry Girdwood were located, preparing another practical joke for ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... he asked Rosa, if she had not been laughing at us all, and whether the whole thing was not a practical joke. He took to twitting her about her visions, and proposed to write a ballad on "the two invisible men of Brandon Woods," on which I said, "And I will write a sequel, which shall be called 'The ruined ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... utmost confidence that the testing of his horsemanship by means of Rocket had been intended only as a practical joke, and that Gowan would never have permitted him to mount the horse had he considered it at all dangerous. Yet the fellow might next undertake jokes containing no element of physical peril and consequently all the ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... not nearly so easy to take a practical joke as to perpetrate one. Evelyn was sitting thoughtfully on the porch when her father and mother returned. Mrs. Ellsworth was sitting at the center window above, placidly looking out. Her eyes swept carelessly over the Van Kamps, and unconcernedly passed on to ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... thinks he has affronted me, now I have seen through him, and that I shall be against meeting him. But, of course, I am not so touchy. I can stand a practical joke, as can any man who has been afloat. I'll call and see him, ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... to present his facts and figures to Alice, and I laughed slyly to myself as I pictured the meeting between himself, Mr. Teddy, and Colonel Doller. This may strike you as having been malicious, but I claim that under the circumstances I was warranted in planning this practical joke. ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... Tommy more skeptically still. "In the middle of New York State? And I alone can help him? You sound more and more as if you were playing a rather elaborate and not very funny practical joke. I've driven sixty miles to get here. What is ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... he said, glancing at his hosts with the quick Californian suspicion of some practical joke. But the honest faces of the partners ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... give my life for a stupid practical joke? "Yes!"—a voice within me answered sharply. "It would be well if a man could always choose the cause for which he risks his life, but it may happen that he ought to throw it away for a ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... a practical joke upon her? Was the marriage which she had believed in so fully no ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... sometimes carried on without their feeling any real sorrow or sympathy. Parties kept arriving, and when there was not room for them to thrust themselves round the hut, they sat down in groups, perfectly unconcerned, employing themselves in cleaning their firelocks, or playing off upon each other some practical joke; but the moment a vacant space was presented near the hut, they deliberately stripped themselves, put on a most sorrowful countenance, and, seating themselves as near to the ornamented bones as possible, they immediately began ...
— A Narrative of a Nine Months' Residence in New Zealand in 1827 • Augustus Earle
... angry at the idea of a negro servant playing such a practical joke. I was paying 10 pounds sterling for a thirty-six hour's passage; and as I always treated everybody courteously, it was quite uncalled for and unprovoked. I thought it exceedingly impertinent, and told the captain so. Nevertheless he did not trouble to inquire into the matter. The Bishop of ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins
... dig quick," pleaded Phil. "I want to see if we've found a fortune, or are only the victims of a practical joke, or gigantic hoax." ...
— The Ranger Boys and the Border Smugglers • Claude A. Labelle
... escapes. Pike and the bears appeared to have an understanding that there was room enough in the woods for both and that his hunting was all in the way of innocent amusement and recreation, to be spiced now and then with a practical joke. ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly
... had actually spent yesterday at the king's palace on Mount Khalak. He perceived that he must give them more definite attention than his half-idle device of the wine—intended as that had been as a mere hyperspatial practical joke, not in the least irreconcilable with ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... at once, with such a gleeful visage that his father's intended chastisement for the recent practical joke ended in ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne
... prospered in business, and nobody was sorry. He enjoyed his practical joke and his glass of Madeira, which had made at least three voyages round the Cape. His temperament, like his person, was just unctuous enough to enable him to slip ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... heart returned to Overton. Miss Dragwell was as much shocked when she was informed of the unfortunate issue of her plot; and made a resolution, to which she adhered, never to be guilty of another practical joke. ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... agree with Rooney on all points of his argument; but they had played a coarse, practical joke upon a man who sometimes "took on airs" and vaunted himself as their patron; he who had been only their equal once. It was only a joke, a witless, mirthless, coarse saloon joke, and they drank on and grew hilarious, never dreaming that they had sent one man to his grave, and another to the ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... window toward the Rhine. Suddenly he uttered a loud imprecation, and his companions, thronging to the window, were all fiercely incensed at the sight which greeted their eyes. For the famous seven sisters were perpetrating something of a practical joke; they were leaving the castle in a boat, and on perceiving the men's faces at the windows they gave vent to a loud laugh of disdain. Hardly had the angry suitors realized that they were the butt of the ladies' ridicule when they were seized with consternation. ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... with an air of authority as President, and tell him that it is really too bad of him to carry such a liquid about. He exculpates himself by saying that the Professor didn't know how to use it, and that he oughtn't to have taken the things out of his Practical Joke Box. ...
— Happy-Thought Hall • F. C. Burnand
... for when he had a practical joke in that little knob of a head of his, he was as restless and full of thought as a poet or painter with some great work on hand; and it was only after working hard for some days, that he all but won over the Indian to his plan; and the question of his going formally to ask ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... cupboards and chests, where many a fantastic piece of old rubbish is huddled away. The bargaining, much discussed, is laughingly carried on for several days, as if we were trying to play off some excellent little practical joke upon each other. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... Mabane asked curiously, "a practical joke, or a part of your plot? What does it all mean? Where on earth did you come across ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... startled almost out of a year's growth at the sight of the statue, which he supposed to be standing on the stage in the building, running up the front steps after him, he did not disappear into space as had all of the others she had met. After the first fright he suspected some practical joke and stood still to see what would happen next. Sahwah knew that the only thing visible of her was her feet and that she could not explain matters with her voice, so, coming close to Dick, she stretched out her foot as far as possible. Now Sahwah, with her riotous ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... is incapable of such a thing; I will answer for him," said Rastignac, who never dreamed of a practical joke. ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... by the word. But judging from the corner of Will's eye that initiation was Latin for a practical joke, he led forth his victim behind the arras again, and waited five minutes while the room was being darkened, till Frank's voice called to him to bring in ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... perpetrated. Gundling, a beer-bibbing author, whom the king made at once his historian and his butt, was the principal sufferer from these frolics, which displayed abundantly that absence of wit and presence of brutality which is the characteristic of the practical joke. As if in scorn of rank and official dignity, Frederick gave this sot and fool the title of baron and created him chancellor and chamberlain of the palace, forcing him always to wear an absurdly gorgeous gala dress, while to show his disdain of learned pursuits ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... to many friends, Madame Carraud being among the number; but she, with her usual rather provoking common-sense, refused to share his enthusiasm, and suggested that it might have been written as a practical joke. To this insinuation Balzac gave no credence; he naturally found it easy to believe in one more enthusiastic foreign admirer, and he was seriously troubled by the fact that the first dizain of the "Contes Drolatiques," which ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... butt. She wondered how she had been able to sit daily in front of that stout and earnest index without poking it in the ribs and making a fool of it. The office clock, alone among clocks, had never played a practical joke. The sad fire below it, conscious of a Mission, was overloaded with ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... a practical joke of the Devil's that gave Jean that father and then threw me in her way. Old Heriot Walkingshaw is one of those men who were created as an antidote to human affection. He stands between his children's hearts and the sunshine outside like the brick wall of a prison. His ...
— The Prodigal Father • J. Storer Clouston
... This was a practical joke that did not please me, as it smacked of distrust and defiance. It took place on the same day upon which I had liberated the slave-hunter's people, and engaged them as ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... his master's use, and the animal made its way rapidly through the mud and rain; but Norbert by this time was half mad with excitement, and spurred him madly on. As he neared home a new idea crossed his brain. Suppose it was a practical joke on the part of some of the members of the club? In that case, they would doubtless be watching for his arrival, and, after talking to him on indifferent subjects, would, when he betrayed any symptoms of impatience, overwhelm him with ridicule. The fear of this made him cautious. ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... heaven, Ruth, purer or sweeter than you are. No doubt—because he did not understand you—he thought you had run away with someone. The trader you spoke about: he disliked your father, didn't he? Well, he probably played your father a horrible practical joke." ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... At the same time William Philander Tubbs came there from Putnam Hall. He was a dudish fellow who thought more of his dress and his personal appearance than anything else, and was often made the butt of some practical joke. ...
— The Rover Boys in Alaska - or Lost in the Fields of Ice • Arthur M. Winfield
... "It'th a practical joke, I shuppothe," said the dark man. "Our gardening friend wanth a liththon: and I'll thee he ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit
... with the ardour of the instinctive schemer, the man who, with the ability to originate, throws himself heart and soul into the promotion of the product of his imagination. Kellogg was not sketching the outlines of a gigantic practical joke; he believed implicitly in the feasibility of his project; and so strongly that he could infuse even the less susceptible fancy of Duncan ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... the practical joke if it is domestic and simple. We may concede that apple-pie beds and butter-slides are sometimes useful things for the education of pompous persons living the Higher Life. But imagine a man making a butter-slide and telling everybody it was made with the ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... have. Because, slothfully, by His neglect, or, wantonly, for His amusement, the Creator has tortured us, maiming, distorting us up as a laughing-stock before all man and womankind—because He has played a ghastly and brutal practical joke on us, fixing the marks of low comedy in our living flesh and bone—therefore we, forsooth, are to be more pious, more clean-living, temperate, and discreet than the rest—to bow amiably beneath the cross, gratefully to kiss the rod! ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... imitate Thomas Hardy, and say by the President of the Immortals, who makes sport with more humans than Tess," he answered. "Mistakes may be deliberate, just as their reverse may be accidental. Even a mighty power may condescend sometimes to a very practical joke. To a thinker the world is full of apple-pie beds, and cold wet sponges fall on us from at least half the doors we push open. The soul-juggleries of the before-mentioned President are very curious, but people ...
— The Return Of The Soul - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens
... of the man and of the time. Soon after the arrival of Frederick Prince of Wales in England, Doddington set up for a favourite, and carried the distinction to the pitifulness of submitting to all the caprices of his royal highness; among other instances, submitting to the practical joke of being rolled up in a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCLXXVI. February, 1847. Vol. LXI. • Various
... and down his horse's flanks. He reined in indignantly and stood up in his stirrups. Nothing was to be seen above the level of the grain. Beneath him the trailing riata had as noiselessly vanished as if it had been indeed a gliding snake. Had he been the victim of a practical joke, or of the blunder of some stupid vacquero? For he made no doubt that it was the lasso of one of the performers he had watched that afternoon. But his preoccupied mind did not dwell long upon it, and by the time he ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... proprietor feeds the stranger, informing him at the same time that the authorities take him for a United States commissioner, and have doubled the guards. The next visit is to a banker, who plays him a curious practical joke. Demanding Haytian bank-notes for a few hundred dollars on a letter of credit, the tourist, after a time of waiting, sees the street on which the banker lives completely blocked with donkey-carts, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... cross-road leading to Uncle Carter's plantation. Cousin Molly Belle was laughing too heartily to speak distinctly, and I joined in with all my heart, with a very imperfect appreciation of the extent of the practical joke. Mr. Frank Morton would not have to walk home. He had only to go to his brother's house when he missed Snap and borrow a horse, and Snap would be sent back safely to ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... there served as a foundation for the "Blithedale Romance," and caused no further injury than the loss of his money. It would have required a Thackeray to have realized and described the humorous side of it—the highly practical joke of so many well-educated and cultivated people making ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... marched to the center of the courtyard. Then, without a word of explanation to him his bonds were removed and he was put in an automobile and carried off to rejoin the other members of the unlucky sightseeing party. He never did find out whether he had been made the butt of a hideous practical joke by a half-mad brute or whether his tormentor really meant to send him to death and was deterred at the last moment by fear of the consequences. One thing he did learn—there had been no court-martial. ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... course you know what's in the wind. The Colonel came on that advertisement of yours in 'The Pioneer' just before tiffin, and you should have heard him swear! He showed it to Major Wyndham, and asked: 'Was it a practical joke?' But the Major seemed quite cut up; said he knew nothing about it, and you would probably have good reasons to give. The rest didn't take it so quietly; but of course I understood at once. For God's sake, old chap, cancel ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... three months old, and summer, brief and beautiful, was passing away, when an incident occurred that might have proved disastrous, though, fortunately, it resulted only in a practical joke, such as Nature often plays on the children of the wilds. One calm, dark night, while they were busy in the grass, a brown owl, hunting for mice, sailed slowly by. Now, the brown owl, in spite of proverbial wisdom gained during a long life in the dim ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... for Sam Marlowe. Billie, now in possession of the facts, had examined them and come to the conclusion that Sam had played a practical joke on her, and she was a girl who strongly disapproved of practical humor at ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... spectacle removed any lingering doubt which John might have had as to the possibility of this being some intricate practical joke. ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... (between which she had been purposely placed to secure her for a time) three feet ten inches in height. Knowing my pig's excellent temper, even when she has young pigs, and when domestic sows are always most savage, I was once guilty of a practical joke. I got a blacksmith who was quite ignorant of even the existence of my pig, to 'come and ring a pig.' The stye being under a building, he had to enter it at a low door, which was some distance ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... to suffer the manipulation of a pet monkey, which drilled to the duty, and armed with a comb, was posted on his shoulder, with an air as grave, and an eye as observant, as though he had been regularly educated in the art of the perruquier; and, every where, some coarse and practical joke proclaimed the licentious liberty which had been momentarily accorded to a set of beings who were, in common, kept in that restraint which comfort, no less than safety, requires for the ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... tossed to them, where they undergo ablution (an operation by the way, that they do not seem altogether to enjoy), to wash the dirt and gum from their fleeces. On such occasions, it is regarded as a lawful thing, a standing and ancient practical joke, to pitch any outsider, who may happen to indulge his curiosity by stopping to look on, into the stream. If he is verdant, he will be very likely to be inveigled into the yard, and in an unguarded moment, be made to take an ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... ashes from his pipe, and held the hot briar bowl against the ear of a sleeping fox terrier, which animal growled, without moving, in a manner that suggested its possession of a sense of humour and a full comprehension of the harmless practical joke. ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... you?" the baronet demanded. "What jugglery is this? Are you dressed for an Eastern dervish in a melodrama, and have you come here to play a practical joke? I am afraid I can not appreciate the humor of the masquerade. ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... he answered, "and I owe you a deep debt of gratitude." "Why do you say that?" "Because you have caused me to discover in myself a talent which I did not know that I possessed."—A certain citizen, who wanted a mortar, went to a sculptor and asked him to make one. The fellow, suspecting some practical joke, pointed out Buonarroti's house, and said that if he wanted mortars, a man lived there whose trade it was to make them. The customer accordingly addressed himself to Michelangelo, who, in his turn suspecting ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... Lottie, whose eye had grown so nice and critical that she could refuse the suit of many who from their wealth and position thought it impossible to sue in vain, could never look upon this Western giant in a way other than she proposed,—the ridiculous subject of a practical joke. True, he had proved himself no fool in their table-talk, but mere intellectuality and moral excellence counted for little in De Forrest's estimation when not combined with wealth and external elegance. The thought that the "giant" might have ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... "reserved force" until the passionate moment arrives, is all that Mr. ALEXANDER has to do; but this he does admirably, never under-acting, never over-acting, always as natural as a quiet gentleman, of a peculiarly romantic turn of mind, yet with a keen but chastened appreciation of a practical joke, kept all to himself for five months, should be. Had he been compelled by circumstances to sustain the alias, and to continue playing the part of a Burchell in GOLDSMITH's Vicar of Wakefield for one month longer, could he have done it? However, as the piece has "caught on," it ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 7, 1893 • Various
... converted into admission tickets to the political stage. The Bonapartist representatives were too thinly sowed to be able to build an independent parliamentary party. They appeared only as "mauvaise queue" [2 Practical joke] played upon the party of Order. Thus the party of Order was in possession of the Government, of the Army, and of the legislative body, in short, of the total power of the State, morally strengthened by the general elections, that caused their sovereignty ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx
... he had he has sold by degrees. If he has gone to Brussels now to work honestly, it is for the first time in his life. He lives on the hope of getting money out of an uncle in England—that I know, for he boasts of it to everybody. It is just like him to play a practical joke on strangers. No doubt you have paid him already—n'est-ce pas? I thought as much. Well, never mind! My rooms are next door. I am Elise Delaunay. I work in Taranne's atelier. I am an artist, pure and simple, and I live to please myself and nobody else. But I have a chair or two, and ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Agenor de Vargnes, the Examining Magistrate, was the exact opposite of a practical joker. He was dignity, staidness, correctness personified. As a sedate man, he was quite incapable of being guilty, even in his dreams, of anything resembling a practical joke, however remotely. I know nobody to whom he could be compared, unless it be the present president of the French Republic. I think it is useless to carry the analogy any further, and having said ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... as youth, and youth in aristocratic stations and ages tended to an impeccable dignity, an endless summer of success which needed to be very sharply reminded of the scorn of the stars. It was well that such flamboyant prigs should be convinced that one practical joke, at least, would bowl them over, that they would fall into one grinning man-trap, and not rise again. That the whole structure of their existence was as wholesomely ridiculous as that of a pig or a parrot they could not be expected to realize; that birth was humorous, coming of age humorous, ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... you tell me such lies?" exclaimed the young man in a fury; "it's some d——d practical joke in the most infernal bad taste, and, by God! I have a mind to ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... own part in this drama of innuendo: she knew the exact quality of the amusement the situation evoked. The crude forms in which her friends took their pleasure included a loud enjoyment of such complications: the zest of surprising destiny in the act of playing a practical joke. Lily knew well enough how to bear herself in difficult situations. She had, to a shade, the exact manner between victory and defeat: every insinuation was shed without an effort by the bright indifference of her manner. But she was beginning to feel the strain of the attitude; the reaction was ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... the good man's fault at all; it was Waveney's," Sir Hugh continued, as he got hold of a spoon and delved it into a pigeon-pie. "I assure you it was a practical joke that Captain Waveney played upon the whole of you. He gave the minister a little hint—and the thing ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... history of the case before his hearers. There was a bad family history—a father who drank, and a mother who suffered from epilepsy. At thirteen the girl had received a sudden fright owing to a practical joke, and from that moment she gradually came under the influence of some hidden unknown terror so that she even refused to eat altogether. The strangest fact, however, was that she could still eat and speak in secret, although in public ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... his uncle. "Either this will stand, or that, and I am afraid this is the later. April 18th. Was that the time of that absurd practical joke of yours?" ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... thing; and altogether the most ingenious and laborious and cheerful and painstaking practical joke I have ever heard of. And I liked it; liked to bear him tell about it; yet I have been a hater of practical jokes from as long back as I can remember. Finally ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... in a mirror, I found it was as white as a sheet. The next morning I went out to look for the infernal machine. It was a coarse sack, filled with blocks of wood and sawdust, and I have a strong suspicion that it had been placed where I found it as a practical joke. The ticking which I had heard, and which had convinced me that I had to deal with an infernal machine, was evidently produced by the drip, drip of water from the bag on the step beneath it. Such were features in the lives of men more or ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... that is all text; the incarnation of gab. Handsome, vivacious, versatile, muscular, neat, clean to the marrow. A judge of the effect of clothes, frugal in food and regular only in habits. With brains enough in his head for twenty men all pulling different ways. A man not bad—a practical joke in earnest." ...
— The Story of the First Trans-Continental Railroad - Its Projectors, Construction and History • W. F. Bailey
... she seen? An effect of moonlit mist—a shepherd boy bent on a practical joke—a gleam of white waterfall among the darkening rocks? What had she heard? The evening greeting of a passer-by, wafted down to her from some higher path along the fell? distant voices in the farm enclosures beneath her feet? or simply the eerie sounds of the mountain, ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... voice was not that of Swing Tunstall. On the heels of this unwelcome discovery Racey made another. The man had dragged out a knife from under his armpit, and was squirmingly endeavouring to make play with it. Racey's intended practical joke on Swing Tunstall was in a fair way to become a ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... Burnside had done. Nevertheless, the Ministers felt that it would not do to repudiate him. Lincoln took that view. He wrote to Burnside deploring his action and sustaining his authority.(16) And then, as a sort of grim practical joke, he commuted Vallandigham's sentence from imprisonment to banishment. The agitator was sent across the lines ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... her—with the whole party doting on and adoring her, and wanting to marry her. Miggs was hovering about too; and the fact of her existence, the mere circumstance of her ever having been born, appeared, after Dolly, such an unaccountable practical joke. It was impossible to talk. It couldn't be done. He had nothing left for it but to stir his tea round, and round, and round, and ruminate on all the fascinations of the ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... help of his brethren and friends, a good sized fortune inherited from his father, a retired Confectioner, and he was impatiently waiting for the advent of the Republic to secure a political position deserved by so many revolutionary libations. On the fourth of September, possibly as a result of a practical joke, he had thought that he had been appointed Prefect, but when he wanted to take up his duties, the clerk, who had remained in charge of the office, refused to recognize him, which compelled him to retire. A very good ...
— Mademoiselle Fifi • Guy de Maupassant
... softly, "I am alone, he is not here! I shall have time to recover, and then I can return; I am so frightened—I ought not to have come. Perhaps the ladies of the court have arranged this practical joke at my expense. Yes, that is it. It was folly to believe he would dare to ask me to meet him; he is too timid—too humble. Yes, it is a trap laid for me, and I have ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... his legs was the horse, which ran off with wonderful alacrity several miles before he stopped. Next the bull rose, and shook himself with an astonished air, as if he would like to know "how that was done?" The hunter was on the great brute's back, who, perhaps, took the affair as a good practical joke; but he was soon pitched to the ground, as the buffalo commenced to jump "stiff-legged," and the latter, giving the hunter one lingering look, which he long remembered, with remarkable good nature ran off to join his companions. Had ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... time I have none of those explanations with which people are so generously forthcoming on these occasions. I can only say that I do not think Wilbraham was insane, nor drunk, nor asleep. Nor do I believe that some one played a practical joke.... ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... turn to! She had tried to take counsel with Mrs. Peyton, but the beautiful woman was still, at fifty, a spoiled child, far younger in many ways than Margaret herself; she would only laugh, and advise her to get rid of Miss Sophronia by some trick, or practical joke. ...
— Margaret Montfort • Laura E. Richards
... cheeked him. But she had done so in the prettiest, airiest manner. Pogson's punishment of her indiscretion, if highly ingenious, still struck me as not in the best taste. For was it not at once rather mean and rather cheap to make so charming a person the subject, and that before witnesses, of a practical joke? ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... cab on its way to a neighboring stand, and jumped into it with an air of affected indifference. This departure was a balm to the hearts of the other two lads, who had been somewhat uneasy as to meeting the victim of their practical joke. ...
— At the Sign of the Cat and Racket • Honore de Balzac
... some kind friend; the practical joke of some flippant youngster, who thinks it a delightful piece of humour to play upon the jealousy of a husband of fifty," mused the baronet, as he brooded over his folly. "I wish to heaven I could discover the writer of the epistle. ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... dozen yards before it disappeared. He reached the summer-house—it was empty; he followed the line of hedge—no one was there. It could not have been her, or she would have waited, unless he were the victim of a practical joke. He turned impatiently back to the house, reentered the drawing-room by the French window, and was crossing the half-lit apartment, when he heard a slight rustle in the shadow of the window. He looked around quickly, and saw that it was Yerba, in a white, ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... It has even been instructive, as showing to what extent it is possible for plain facts to be perverted by misdirected ingenuity. But unless you are prepared to consider this crime as an elaborate hoax—as a practical joke carried out by a facetious criminal of extraordinary knowledge, skill and general attainments—you must, after all, come to the only conclusion that the facts justify: that the safe was opened and the property abstracted by the prisoner. Accordingly, gentlemen, ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... impression, which neither time nor circumstances could efface. He was not outwardly sad, but his volatile nature appeared departed. He was no longer the same wild, boisterous youth, ever on the look-out for some change, some new diversion or practical joke, which had been his characteristics while Herbert lived. A species of quiet dignity was now his own, combined with a devotedness to his parents, which before had never been so distinctly visible. He had ever loved them, ever sought their happiness, their wishes ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar
... sometimes brought the company into roars of laughter and even succeeded in bringing occasional smiles to the face of the man who had summoned us—when relating some characteristic story of the queer genius whom the fates (undoubtedly as a practical joke) had made the chief magistrate of the United States of America. All geniuses have weaknesses; Mr. Wading had made a study of the President's, and more than once had lured him into an impasse. The case had ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... ran down to Isaac Martin's house, found him in the garden, and pointing their muskets at him, pulled the triggers. The pieces missed fire, and poor Martin, thinking probably that it was a practical joke, laughed at them. They cocked again, however, and fired. Martin, although he fell mortally wounded, had strength to rise again and fly towards his house. The natives followed him into it. There was one of the sledge-hammers of the Bounty there. One of them seized it, and with one blow ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... for Graham during the next few minutes. It is not pleasant to interview the Doctor when he is feeling very angry. Not that I think he really suspected Graham of playing a practical joke on him, for he must have seen how thoroughly scared he was when he burst into the study. But the fact was that he had been looking out for an opportunity of teaching Graham a lesson for some time, and when it came, he made use of it ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... occasions when his bowling proved expensive. Yesterday's performance, however, stood in a class by itself. It stood forth without disguise as a deliberate rag. One side does not keep another in the field the whole day in a one-day match except as a grisly kind of practical joke. And Mr. Downing and his house realised this. The house's way of signifying its comprehension of the fact was to be cold and distant as far as the seniors were concerned, and abusive and pugnacious ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... perennial joke of this book, then much in vogue in legal offices. In a clerical life where work is the rule, amusement is all the more treasured because it is rare; but, above all, a hoax or a practical joke is enjoyed with delight. This fancy or custom does, to a certain extent, explain Georges Marest's behavior in the coucou. The gravest and most gloomy clerk is possessed, at times, with a craving for fun and quizzing. The ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac
... treatment could be nothing more than a practical joke—one of those tricks played off upon raw recruits, to teach them the necessity of vigilance, and a nice observance of the rules of the service. When he was overpowered, therefore, he submitted to his fate, whatever ...
— In School and Out - or, The Conquest of Richard Grant. • Oliver Optic
... thousand years since Christianity began its work, and it is still unaccomplished. Do you know, I sometimes think that all this talk of virtue, and teaching of religion, is a kind of practical joke, gravely kept up to find a church parade of respectability for States, a profession for hundreds, and a means of influencing men by making a tender point in their nervous system to be touched, as with a rod, when necessary—a rod that is held ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... we had left the Island of Ceylon behind us we were all made the victims of a cruel practical joke, of which Lynch and Fogarty were the authors, and for which lynching would hardly have been a sufficient punishment. It was in the early hours of the morning and while we were still "dreaming the happy hours away," that the loud report of a cannon shook the ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... It is asserted that when the red light falls on the latter's face and it is suggested to her softly to go along, she does so. Then a pointed stone is placed in the girl's way, she steps on it, it wakes her up, and the crude practical joke is finished. It would be interesting, at least, to get some scientific information concerning these cited effects of red light ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... with any one else, and of which she by no means understood the danger. She blushed once at finding that she had called him Bertie, and on the same day only barely remembered her position in time to check herself from playing upon him some personal practical joke to which she was instigated ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... A fresh practical joke now occurred to the duke. He had asked for crawfish for his breakfast on the following morning; he intended to pass the day in making a small gallows and hang one of the finest of these fish in the middle of his room—the red color evidently conveying an allusion to the cardinal—so ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... drew a long breath, but still hoping against his better judgment that the affair was what its originators considered, a practical joke, he restrained all ...
— Adrien Leroy • Charles Garvice
... melancholy gloom, before the slow versicles were half dragged through. But the parson was not the only musical culprit, nor the worse, by many degrees. It would be absurd to expect much cheerfulness here; a hoarse roar breaks out now and then at some coarse practical joke; but a frank, honest laugh—never. Yet I do wish that imprisoned discontent would vent itself otherwise than in discordant, dismal howling. At this minute a cracked voice is ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence |
