His questioner frowned: "That's very wrong," he blustered; "and I dare swear you young fellows make a silly affectation of not writing decently....

"Got a bit on?" "Well, no; I haven't exactly got anything on," said Mr. Clarkson, uneasily; "but may I ask what cable you mean?" "Don't be silly," said the cabman, and spat between his feet.

It sounds silly and cheap.

"I want you to know that I realize just how silly and cheap and theatrical I've been.

" Marten looked so cross, that Reuben did not even like to cry, for he felt he had been very silly; so the poor little fellow stood where his brother had bade him stand, half afraid to breathe, and quite afraid of movinglest by any noise he should again drive away the doves, and Marten should again be angry.

" "You don't know what is best for you, silly one," replied nurse, "nor who is your truest friend either, but your little head is bent upon being a man soon, and you must ever be trying to do what your brother does.

And now,to return to Reuben, he had ate and ate so much, that I am almost ashamed even to think of it; and silly Mary Roscoe, who should have put a bridle on his little mouth, never once thought of doing so, and how should she, for she had never had one on her own?

It seems a cruel thing to try to put down any of the nonsense, and perhaps worse than nonsense, that was then and there talked; and I would not do so if I did not hope it would prove a warning to some girls that persons do listen to their conversation sometimes when they fancy no one hears, and that those same persons do think them very silly and ignorant, and occasionally wrong.

called!I don't care how silly it soundsI was called by the voices that had sung into that box.

How silly it all sounds!

She told him that was silly, that she had grown very stupid.

How silly she had been not to see that.

He sputtered wrathfully again: "Silly ass!

"Much use me acting to deceive the Germans if some silly blighter in another bit o' the line goes and gives the game away.

I'd like to know how the devil I'm going to be a hero now?" "Silly boy," she laughed, her radiant eyes burning on him, at which he threatened to begin the treatment forthwith.

A very good judge may be a wretchedly bad joker; and he must go through his career at this disadvantage, that people, finding him silly at the thing they are able to estimate, find it hard to believe that he is not silly at everything.

A very good judge may be a wretchedly bad joker; and he must go through his career at this disadvantage, that people, finding him silly at the thing they are able to estimate, find it hard to believe that he is not silly at everything.

It makes me feel like a womanhow silly of me!" Her face and throat looked ghastly white for a moment in the sheltered candles.

"Isn't it silly of meisn't itisn't it?"

In the later essay on "Silly Novels" her powers of sarcasm were fully displayed.

She described four kinds of silly novels, classing them as being of the mind-and-millinery, the oracular, the white-neck-cloth, and the modern-antique varieties.

"In all labor there is profit;" but ladies' silly novels, we imagine, are less the result of labor than of busy idleness.

And so we have again and again the old story of La Fontaine's ass, who puts his nose to the flute, and, finding that he elicits some sound, exclaims, "Moi, aussi, je joue de la flute;"a fable which we commend, at parting, to the consideration of any feminine reader who is in danger of adding to the number of "silly novels by lady novelists.

" Her praise of the great novelists is as enthusiastic as her condemnation of the silly ones is severe.

It is interesting to note that in the first of these papers she selects Jane Austen and George Sand as the chiefest among women novelists, and that she praises them for the truthfulness of their portraitures of life, nor is she any the less aware of the defects of these masters than of the deficiencies of silly women who write novels.