“A few bad shows, a few failures, and I could be sleeping on the street,” she once said, not joking.

She looked at me with surprise, doubtless wondering if I was not joking.

For a moment she was under an impression that she had not heard Nelson aright, or else that he was joking.

Not that I think the professional mover expects to be addressed in a joking mood.

There were women, children, old men, all joking there on the very spot where a man had just expired in the most supreme agony.

But, joking aside, he does not know and you can scarcely guess the full companionship of my pipe these days.