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.

" Pennington, with the blood flowing from his damaged nose, would have made a most ludicrous figure saluting!

The blunders of personal application are ludicrous.

This was a sort of caricature of Mephistopheles, who became, through his ludicrous clumsiness, a pet-devil of the populace in the puppet-shows, particularly in Holland.

To those who believe in solemn reticencein motionless communion with the "inner light,"there is nothing curious in this; it is, in fact, often a source of high spiritual ecstacy; but to an unitiated spectator the business looks seriously funny, and its continuance for any length of time causes the mind of such a one to run in all kinds of dreadfully ludicrous grooves.

Bishoprics and all benefices were bought and sold; "canons were trodden under foot; ancient traditions were turned out of doors; old customs were laid aside;" boys were made archbishops; ludicrous stories were recited in the churches; the most disgraceful crimes were pardoned for money.

And then she began to whistle and warble, twitter and crow, through a ludicrous series of noisy variations.

This ludicrous circumstance led to the confusion I had noticed when I arrived; the man had gone they knew not whither, and had it been possible to overtake him, I question whether he would have been pursued, the cleverness of the trick being highly applauded by the company, and the landlord feeling, perhaps, ashamed of being outwitted a second time, after himself giving the challenge.

" But for the gravity of our situation and prospects I could have burst out laughing when Don Sanchez gave us the translation of this promise, for the idea of regarding these pens as chambers was not less ludicrous than the air of pride with which Don Lopez bestowed the privilege of using 'em upon us.

" At this point, Rachel applied a segment of a pocket handkerchief to her eyes; but, unfortunately, owing to circumstances, the effect instead of being pathetic, as she intended it to be, was simply ludicrous.

As the negative opinion was to carry the day, Mr. Maugham saw that there was grave danger that the final scene might appear an almost ludicrous anticlimax.

The ludicrous horror of it stunned Mr. Woods.

It was a ludicrous business, if you will.

And long and heartily did Dick Varley laugh as he told the horse his future designation in the presence of Crusoe, for it struck him as somewhat ludicrous that a mustang which, two days ago, pawed the earth in all the pride of independent freedom, should suddenly come down so low as to carry a hunter on his back and be named Charlie.

At times, and particularly in those trades where the aspirants were not required to produce a chef-d'oeuvre, the installation of masters was accompanied with extraordinary ceremonies, which no doubt originally possessed some symbolical meaning, but which, having lost their true signification, became singular, and appeared even ludicrous.

I believe very many Readers have been shocked at that ludicrous Prophecy, which one of the Harpyes pronounces to the Trojans in the third Book, namely, that before they had built their intended City, they should be reduced by Hunger to eat their very Tables.

This Jest did not, however, go off so well as the former; for one of the Guests being a brave Man, and fuller of Resentment than he knew how to express, went out of the Room, and sent the facetious Inviter a Challenge in Writing, which though it was afterwards dropp'd by the Interposition of Friends, put a Stop to these ludicrous Entertainments.

The explanation of the comic (the ludicrous is based, according to Kant, on a sudden transformation of strained expectation into nothing) lays great (indeed exaggerated) weight on the resulting physiological phenomena, the bodily shock which heightens vital feeling and favors health, and which accompanies the alternating tension and relaxation of the mind.

He has the art, as no man but himself ever had, of sustaining the illusion of an awful or solemn narrative through a long poem, to be closed in a catastrophe that is at once unexpected and ludicrous.

But sometimes the terrible so prevails as to overpower the ludicrous, or rather, it becomes more terrible by the very presence of the ludicrous.

But sometimes the terrible so prevails as to overpower the ludicrous, or rather, it becomes more terrible by the very presence of the ludicrous.

Sometimes we find the idea of the supernatural added to the ludicrous with great moral and imaginative effect.

Sometimes the ludicrous element entirely disappears, and we have the purely terrible,the terrible in itself, as in "The Tower of Lahneck,"the terrible in pathos, as in "The Work-House Clock,"the terrible in penitence and remorse, as in "The Lady's Dream,"the terrible in temptation and despair, as in "The Dream of Eugene Aram.

But, in recording the virtues of the departed, either zeal or vanity leads to an excess perfectly ludicrous.

The picture Browning presented and the incident he was relating were altogether too ludicrous.

The jack-boots they wear sometimes fit very tight to the legs, in which case poor Sambo has to roll up his pants till they assume the appearance of small bolsters tied round the knee, presenting a most ludicrous caricature.