United States or Djibouti ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
At first, when the boys assembled, they seemed inclined to treat the matter as a joke, and were rather disorderly; but Avonley briefly begged them, if they determined to have a trial, to see that it was conducted sensibly; and by general consent he was himself voted into the desk as president. He then got up and said "There must be no sham or nonsense about this affair.
'Hospital! cried the sick man, and then he too burst out into that furious laugh, the most awful sound I ever had heard. Some of the passers-by stopped to hear what the joke was, and surrounded me with once more a circle of mockers. 'Hospitals! perhaps you would like a whole Red Cross Society, with ambulances and all arranged? cried one. 'Or the Misericordia! shouted another.
Naturally as we did all this in the spirit of an idle joke our rewards and punishments were rather desultory. To our surprise, however, we soon found that our boys took Little Simba quite seriously. He was a fetish, a little god, a power of good or bad luck. We did not appreciate this point until one evening, after a rather disappointing day, Mahomet came to us bearing Little Simba in his hand.
Boswell enjoys the joke far too heartily to act upon the advice. There is nothing, however, which Boswell seems to have enjoyed more heartily than his own good impulses. He looks upon his virtuous resolution with a sort of aesthetic satisfaction, and with the glow of a virtuous man contemplating a promising penitent.
The Emperor himself seemed to enjoy his artistic joke hugely, for he looked at it, and laughed again and again.
I do not think he has ever understood what seems to me the very sensible answer of the man in the street, "I laugh at the dirty joke of The Spring Chicken because it is a joke. I criticise the philosophy of The Wild Duck because it is a philosophy." Shaw does not do justice to the democratic ease and sanity on this subject; but indeed, whatever else he is, he is not democratic.
So years after, when papa Karl's purse was a good deal fuller, and a piano did make its appearance, it was welcomed solemnly, as something long and rapturously expected. The custom of playing a joke upon one's neighbor upon the First of April is of very ancient origin, dating so far back in the past that we are unable to tell just when or with what nation it had its birth.
In a moment of imbecility I mentioned what I had seen from the shop-window at Eastwich, and, though they passed the matter off with a joke, I could see that they were mightily disturbed by it. Their efforts to induce me to join them were redoubled, and Hearn took to calling almost daily at my house usually with documents and signatures which he tried to persuade me to copy.
Those Yellow Jackets just naturally got after him. He didn't dare come out for fear of Reddy Fox and me, and so he went on down to Jimmy Chuck's old bedroom, and he's down there now, wondering how ever he is to get out without getting stung. I reckon I don't need to scare Peter to pay him for that joke. I reckon he's been punished already."
Perhaps Surtees was afraid of what he had done, like that teller in the House of Commons who is said by tradition to have attempted to make a bad joke in the division on the Habeas Corpus Act by counting a fat man as ten, and, seeing that the trick passed unnoticed, and also passed the measure, became afraid to confess it.
Word Of The Day