"Freak" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the hood soon showed Lucy who it was, and with an exclamation of surprise she turned inquiringly to a young lady who was standing near. To her look the young lady replied, "A freak of Anna's, I suppose. She thinks a ...
— Homestead on the Hillside • Mary Jane Holmes
... and then at Mike and me, with a puzzled expression which seemed to ask: Is this a crazy freak, or an ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... that magnificent freak of the caliphs, the construction of the palace of Azahra, of which not a vestige now exists, we may form a sufficient notion of the taste and magnificence of this era from the remains of the far-famed mosque, now the cathedral ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... characteristic of their family is the Ornithorhynchus, or Duck-bill, which the early naturalists first thought was a fraud of the taxidermists, or bird-stuffers, and then, when finally convinced, deemed it a "freak-of-nature." But it is not a freak creature, but a "connecting-link" between the two great families of creatures. This animal presents a startling appearance to the observer who witnesses it for the first ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... and Cressida, while Plato and Aristotle lived more than a thousand years after the latest conceivable date of the siege of Troy, I cannot possibly suppose that a scholar would have permitted to himself the freak, any more than that in The Winter's Tale he should have borrowed from an earlier novel the absurdity of calling Delphi "Delphos" (a non- existent word), of confusing "Delphos" with Delos, and placing the ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... said Mr. Hawley. "He's got the freak of being a popular man now, after dangling about like a stray tortoise. So much the worse for him. I've had my eye on him for some time. He shall be prettily pumped upon. He's a damned bad landlord. What ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... remarked Jerry, shrugging his shoulders, "for you certainly have a collection of freak pictures, some of ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... and limestone ridges affording good natural protection against fire; abundant fuel and water everywhere—these seemed to constitute the ideal ranch conditions. At the Upper Forks, through some freak of formation, the stream divided into two. From this point was easy access into the valleys of the Y.D. and the South Y.D., as they were subsequently called. The stream rippled over beds of grey gravel, and mountain trout darted from the rancher's ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... Serpentine; and after five minutes I came to the conclusion that Miss Gibson is as beautiful as it is possible for a dark beauty to be, and as nice as she looks. She isn't dark really, only her eyes and hair; her complexion is like cream: she's a freak of nature. Lucky young Maurice if she is to be his fate—and ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... fancy in this freak, we have partly lost the power of restraint and guidance. We distinguish an unlooked-for figure in our visionary scene. Among those ancestral people there is a young man, dressed in the very fashion of to-day: he wears a dark frock-coat, almost destitute of skirts, gray pantaloons, gaiter boots ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... point that the timorous-hearted among the witnesses turned their heads away. Those who were more resolute—or as the case might be, more morbid—and who continued to look, were made aware of a freak of physics which in accord, I suppose, with the laws of horizontals and parallels decrees that a man cut off short from life by quick and violent means and fallen prone upon the earth, seems to shrink up within himself and to grow shorter in body and in sprawling ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... freak Arizona place names, applied to a creek and district, as well as to a thrifty little settlement, lies about south of Snowflake, twenty miles or more. The name antedates the Mormon settlement. The valley jointly was held by C.E. Cooley and Marion Clark, both devoted to the ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... free from himself, not determined even by his own character. And if we ask what it really is that causes him to act, it must be answered, some caprice of the moment, some accidental impulse or arbitrary freak of fancy. The late Professor James makes a valiant attempt to solve the 'dilemma of determinism' by resorting to the idea of 'chance' which he defines as a 'purely relative term, giving us no information about that which is predicated, except that ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... of the world has many unusual experiences in his life, but he rarely encounters men who say 'Well?' to him between their teeth. Mr Shute eyed this freak with ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... vision thus inflamed book-collecting was simply a quaint hereditary freak, and scholarship a distinction wholly superfluous in a race that owned half the parish, and had its arms blazoned on the east windows of a church and the sign-board of a public-house. And with the last ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... aware. Among the true were some vainglorious fools Called by the fife and drum from native mire To lord and strut in shoulder-straps and buttons. Scrubs, born to brush the boots of gentlemen, By sudden freak of fortune found themselves Masters of better men, and lorded it As only base and brutish natures can— Braves on parade and cowards ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... Dayton's, conversation with Louis Napoleon, points to Europe being likewise menaced by revolutionists. Unnecessary spread-eagleism, and an awful want of any, even diplomatic, tact. I hope that Mr. Dayton, who has so much sound sense and discernment, will keep to himself this freak ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... perfectly happy—don't know how much fun in life they miss. Still, they're no worse than the adherents to any other paralyzed system. Look at the comparatively intelligent people who fall for any freak religious system and let it make their lives miserable. I suppose that when the world has no more war or tuberculosis, then offices will be exciting places to work in—but not till then. And meantime, if the typical business ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... a tough game, anyway you play it, if you are disposed to be fat. No man living, who isn't a freak, can persist always in one diet. Nor can any man who has anything else on his mind be always exercising—especially after he has reached forty years of age, when there are so many better things to do and ...
— The Fun of Getting Thin • Samuel G. Blythe
... feeling, I pushed on among the most enthusiastic followers of Colonel Arnold. The concluding part of the history is written in the blood of our brave and gallant general; and now, in the closing scene of the drama, I find myself, by a singular freak of fortune, thrown again in your company, in a place where I had little dreamed of such ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson
... I can only repeat, general, that our foolhardy freak has put us in collision with your sentries," said Lagrange, with a slight hauteur, that replaced his former jauntiness; "and we were very properly made prisoners. If you will accept my parole, I have no doubt our commander will proceed to exchange a couple ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... a swift glance about him, to measure his surroundings. Then he laid down his cudgel, and proceeded to unbutton his great-coat, which by some strange freak of irony happened to be one of mine that they had lent him at the Cedars for ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... saintly-hearted wit, a satirist pure, Mover of mirth spontaneous as sure, And innocent as mad; Incongruous freak and frolic phantasy Were thy familiar spirits, quickening glee And wakening ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 24, 1891 • Various
... a broidery freak'd with tissue of images olden, 50 One whose curious art did blazon valour of heroes. Gazing forth from a beach of Dia the billow-resounding, Look'd on a vanish'd fleet, on Theseus quickly departing, Restless in unquell'd passion, ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus
... hard-drinking, hard-fighting cavaliers, upon whose deeds and adventures the staid, circumspect Carmodys looked aghast. And this girl-wife, whose soft eyes and gentle nature had won his love, had borne him a son, and by some freak of atavism had transmitted to him the turbulent spirit of the ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... The Empress of Russia, Catherine II., in a magnificent freak, built a palace of ice, which was a nine-days' wonder. Cowper has given a poetical description of it in The ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... looking daggers at his opponent, and Quince not quite easy even under the protection of Titania, Tom had just removed the frying-pan from the fire with its residuary grease still bubbling. Quince having deposited his load, was about to sit down, when a freak came into Tom's head, which, however, he dared not put into execution himself; but "a nod is as good as a wink to a blind horse," says the proverb. Winterbottom stood before Tom, and Quince with his back to them. Tom looked at ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... chaps he tells us about. Haven't you noticed, since he came home, it's impossible to mention any type or freak or extraordinary individual that wasn't like somebody in his platoon? It must have been about five thousand ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 14, 1920 • Various
... not seem to understand the value of pleasure. Few people in the Five Towns did seem to understand the value of pleasure. He had no distractions except his pipe. Existence was a harsh and industrious struggle, a series of undisturbed daily habits. No change, no gaiety, no freak! Grim, changeless monotony! ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... Secretary was saying earnestly. "America seems rife with modernism. Free-masonry, socialism, and countless other fads and religious superstitions are widely prevalent there. Nor do I underestimate their strength and influence. And yet, I fear them not. There are also certain freak religions, philosophical beliefs, wrung from the simple teachings of our blessed Saviour, the rapid spread of which at one time did give me some concern. The Holy Father mentioned one or two of them to-day, in reference to his contemplated encyclical on modernism. ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... Herbert nor the housekeeper took much notice of it. The latter was somewhat surprised at this new freak on the part of Abner, as he had never tried to deprive any of Herbert's predecessors of tea or coffee. But the fact was, Mr. Holden disliked Herbert, and was disposed to act the petty tyrant over him. He had neither forgotten nor forgiven the boy's spirited defiance ...
— Try and Trust • Horatio Alger
... that her strong inclination to sit down was owing to want of exercise, and the heaviness of her eyelids a freak of imagination; so, speedily smoothing her ruffled plumage, she ran down to tell her father of ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... becomes us not to tell how that strange wooing sped. Suffice it to say that at the expiration of an hour Maude Glendower had promised to be the wife of Dr. Kennedy when another spring should come. She had humbled herself to say that she regretted her girlish freak, and he had so far unbent his dignity as to say that he could not understand why she should be willing to leave the luxuries which surrounded her and go with him, a plain, old-fashioned man. Maude Glendower scorned to make him ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes
... reassured him. His clothes were drying nicely, and did not seem to be losing any of their former generous proportions. So in time Landy might hope to be garbed in his proper attire as became a scout, and not an Arab or a "side show freak," such as Toby ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas
... American uniform is high-waisted, and a fat man never was designed for a Kate Greenaway! So we paced the platform at Modane trying to look unconcerned while the soldiers of France, Italy, Russia, Belgium, England and Rumania walked by us, clearly wondering what form of military freak we were. For the American Red Cross uniform was not so familiar in those latitudes as it was to be a month later, when Major Murphy came swinging through Modane with forty-eight carloads of Red Cross supplies, a young army of Red Cross nurses and workers, and half a million dollars in ready cash ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... on to assimilate a novel idea, and, in consequence, are choosing your words badly," he said. "It was not a freak marriage. Although I may have broken the laws of the State of New York by using a license issued to some other person, Lady Hermione and I are legally husband and wife, and no power on earth can dissolve the union without the expressed consent of one ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... "Good-evening! You will excuse me, but I am not very well to-night." And so at last I got rid of him, still brandishing his pencil and his note-book. My troubles may be bad to hear, but at least it is better to hug them to myself than to have myself exhibited by Wilson, like a freak at a fair. He has lost sight of human beings. Every thing to him is a case and a phenomenon. I will die before I speak to him again upon ...
— The Parasite • Arthur Conan Doyle
... begins to find out that some young wag of the company is "chaffing" him? Have you ever tried the sarcastic or Socratic method with a child? Little simple he or she, in the innocence of the simple heart, plays some silly freak, or makes some absurd remark, which you turn to ridicule. The little creature dimly perceives that you are making fun of him, writhes, blushes, grows uneasy, bursts into tears,—upon my word it is not fair to try the weapon of ridicule upon that innocent young victim. The awful objurgatory ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... freak of our human nature, that those who use the Bible in a dead, foreign language, unsuited for use in our public schools, should call our English version of the scriptures a sectarian book, and then oppose its ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... strides. She hazarded this in the lowest key; but it happened in just that momentary hush upon which the faintest remark falls resonantly. The Commandant heard it across the room as he waited for Mr. Rogers to cut the cards; and the Vicar, by a freak of hearing, picked ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... noble badge of manhood, Ted soothed his wounded soul by appearing in collars of an amazing height and stiffness, and ties which were the wonder of all female eyes. This freak was a sort of vengeance on his hard-hearted mother; for the collars drove the laundress to despair, never being just right, and the ties required such art in the tying that three women sometimes laboured long before—like Beau Brummel—he turned from a heap of ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... the Sixteenth Amendment, since, should it arrive at woman's estate, it will, of course, be entitled to a double vote. How will it be should one end go Republican and the other Democratic? To send a duplex woman into the world seems to be a very unnecessary freak of Nature, seeing that there is enough of duplicity in ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 34, November 19, 1870 • Various
... there.... So what I am is some kind of a freak. Maybe a kind of super-Master and maybe something altogether different. Maybe duplicable in a less lethal fashion, and maybe not. Veree helpful—I don't think. But I don't want to kill anybody, either ... especially if it wouldn't do any good. But we've ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... brink of marrying her," Lush went on. "But I hope it's off now. She's a niece of the clergyman—Gascoigne—at Pennicote. Her mother is a widow with a brood of daughters. This girl will have nothing, and is as dangerous as gunpowder. It would be a foolish marriage. But she has taken a freak against him, for she ran off here without notice, when he had agreed to call the next day. The fact is, he's here after her; but he was in no great hurry, and between his caprice and hers they are likely enough not to get together again. But of course he has lost ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... for an hour by some freak of the memory, comes back to him, and he sees his sullen, morbid boyhood changing into something worse still, until by slow degrees he became what he ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... terminated so famously, Count Brenda now related to his friends and comrades. To be sure, the general had punished the mad freak with an arrest of four-and-twenty hours. But after undergoing this punishment, he was more than ever the hero of the day, the idol of his comrades, who now celebrated his release from arrest with loud rejoicing and the cracking of champagne bottles. After they ...
— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach
... you correctly?" said I; "or are you only playing off some new freak upon me? Answer me frankly one question, and I shall be better able to comprehend the meaning of your mysterious menace. Are you—but I know it is absurd, I feel that the question is very ridiculous, only that ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... from your experience to hear of such foolish proceedings at Bridge of Allan, contrary to canon and to common sense.... The green part of the dress which caused your wonder, naturally enough, is not a freak of new vestments, but is a foolish way which the Glenalmond students have adopted of wearing the hood, which our Bishops (not without diversity of opinion) had granted for those who had been educated at our College. It is a hood lined with ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... He wanted to be alone with his own thoughts, to arrange the impressions he had carried away from his recent journey. Valentina Mihailovna had looked at him intently several times during dinner, but there had been no opportunity of speaking to him. Mariana, after the unexpected freak which had so bewildered him, was evidently repenting of it, and seemed to avoid him. Nejdanov took up a pen to write to his friend Silin, but he did not know what to say to him. There were so many conflicting thoughts ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... one occasion, when rain prevented a contemplated progress to Hosho-ji, he sentenced the rain to imprisonment and caused a quantity to be confined in a vessel.* To the nation, however, all this meant something very much more than a mere freak. It meant that the treasury was depleted and that revenue had to be obtained by recourse to the abuses which Go-Sanjo had struggled so earnestly to check, the sale of offices and ranks, even in perpetuity, and the inclusion of great ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... mount upon it, nor could I even dismount from Rocinante, because they no doubt had me enchanted; for I swear to thee by the faith of what I am that if I had been able to climb up or dismount, I would have avenged thee in such a way that those braggart thieves would have remembered their freak for ever, even though in so doing I knew that I contravened the laws of chivalry, which, as I have often told thee, do not permit a knight to lay hands on him who is not one, save in case of urgent and great necessity in defence of his ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... first edition, by a strange and distressing freak of the imagination, I took the 'old struggler' out of Lockhart and ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... Paul's prompt reply. "I am no longer in the army, but it seems to me that to repair the damage done by the Kaiser's freak performances in the international arena, quite a number of national committees must be constituted under the auspices of the German Government. There are the Anglo-German, the Austro-German, the American-German and the Canadian-German committees, all to be formed in their ...
— The Doctor of Pimlico - Being the Disclosure of a Great Crime • William Le Queux
... the bookman's trivial adventures and discoveries. They would be worse than trivial indeed if they led him to forget or ignore that by which Goldsmith earned his immortality, or to regard Traherne merely as a freak in the history of literary reputations, and not primarily as the writer of such ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... choir filed in. They were all dressed alike, and the men had on a kind of gown. Dave thought that was very silly. By some mental freak he found himself picturing a man with a gown roping a steer, and it was only by a sudden tightening of his jaws that he prevented an explosion of amusement. He was still feeling very happy over this when a tall man entered from a side door and ascended the steps to the pulpit. ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... in fancy, there came before me Vaness's well-dressed person, panting, pale, perplexed; and beside him, by a freak of vision, stood the old darky's father, bound to the live-oak, with the bullets whistling past, and his face transfigured. There they stood alongside the creed of pleasure, which depended for fulfilment on its waist measurement; and the creed ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... felt, and an office which had never before paid anything to that of Great Britain came, under their administration, "to yield three times as much clear revenue to the crown as the post-office of Ireland." Franklin narrates that in time he was displaced "by a freak of the ministers," and in happy phrase adds, "Since that imprudent transaction, they have received from it—not one farthing!" In this connection it may be worth while to quote Franklin's reply to a ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... I saw and heard, was, that, the artist, by some unaccountable freak of fate, or perhaps in some fit of enthusiastic and fanciful passion, had been induced to unite himself with a person altogether beneath him, and that the natural result, entire and speedy disgust, had ensued. ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... Thus, by a strange freak of fortune, the Athenians, at the most momentous crisis of their history, were urged along the road to ruin by the most opposite qualities in their leaders, the cold caution of Nicias, and the wild ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... Joseph returned, bringing his mother from Madame Desroches's, the concierge told him of Philippe's freak,—how he had called intending to wait, and ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... are said about women in society. You are being constantly seen with an uncouth freak who is scarcely a gentleman, however much he may be a man. ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... there with a front tooth is Show Low," began Slim, speaking like a lecturer in a freak-show. "The one without a front tooth is Fresno, a California product. This yere chap with the water-dob hair is Sage-brush Charley. It makes him sore when you ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... What freak of criticism can induce a man who has written such poetry as this, to discard it, and say it is not poetry? Mr. Arnold is privileged to speak of his own poems, but no other critic could speak so and ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... Mr Bideawhile. I fancy that if I were to speak in that way of your client you would be very angry with me. Besides, what does it all amount to? Will the old gentleman say that he gave the letter into his son's hands, so that, even if such a freak should have come into my client's head, he could have signed it and sent it off? If I understand, Mr Longestaffe says that he locked the letter up in a drawer in the very room which Melmotte occupied, and that ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... properties of all the animals in its tribe, for it has no locomotion, stability, or endurance, neither goes to pasture, gives milk, chews the cud, nor performs any other function of the horned beast, but is a mere creation of the brain, begotten by a freak of the fancy and nourished by a ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... skittish horse, which was startled by stray hogs breaking at a dead run through the bushes, and that the horse bolted and ran away. And the man died from concussion of the brain. That would have happened if we had had a road of the first class, twenty feet wide, instead of this little seven-foot freak you all are so ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... cause of his odd freak of dress, when he had joined the train a few miles out from Cheyenne, ...
— Deadwood Dick, The Prince of the Road - or, The Black Rider of the Black Hills • Edward L. Wheeler
... not seem to the critic to agree with Stuart's handling. To make his impressions fit with the pictures, the critic supposed that Stuart painted a smaller portrait of Jaudenes and started one of his wife, which through some freak of temper he left (as he frequently did) with only the head and part of the background finished. These being brought to Spain, some artist there finished the lady's portrait, painted from Stuart's original a companion piece of her ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... but the escape of the rainfall was by simple soakage. As usual, the land was dotted with mimosas, all of which were now bursting into leaf. The thorns of the different varieties of these trees are an extraordinary freak of Nature, as she appears to have exhausted all her art in producing an apparently useless arrangement of defence. The mimosas that are most common in the Soudan provinces are mere bushes, seldom exceeding six feet in height; these spread out towards the top like mushrooms, but the branches commence ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... brother. When he put his arms round my neck, and looked into my eyes, as if to read there the troubles I dared not tell, I felt that I still had something to love. But even that pleasant emotion was chilled by the reflection that he might be torn from me at any moment, by some sudden freak of my master. If he had known how we loved each other, I think he would have exulted in separating us. We often planned together how we could get to the north. But, as William remarked, such things are easier said than done. My movements were very closely watched, ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... an amateur painter who, by his taste and social position, was all-powerful in the artistic circles of the metropolis. It was he who asked the young painter the famous question, "Where do you place your brown tree?" this freak of vegetation being one of the essential component parts of the properly constructed academical landscape of the period. For a year or two the youth placed brown trees, submissively enough, in landscapes painfully precise in detail and deficient in atmosphere. Then he did that ...
— McClure's Magazine, Volume VI, No. 3. February 1896 • Various
... from a turf-clad neck of land, is far more glorious than any logging-stone, even though it may have been displaced and replaced by a nephew of the poet Goldsmith. The little hamlet of Treen is just across the fields. Logan rocks are simply a freak of nature, in spite of the Druidic nonsense that has been talked about them; softer soils have been eroded beneath, and the rock has remained balanced. Treen is in the parish of St. Levan, but we have to pass Porthcurnow Cove before reaching that saint's immediate locality. Porthcurnow, with ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... the street, an upright and pliant form, laden with green boughs. It was Luigi, with whom it had been a holiday, and who, roaming in the woods, had come across a wild stock on whose rude flavor the kindly freak of some wayfarer had grafted that of pulpy wax-heart cherries, tart ruddiness and sugared snow. Pausing before Eve, he gazed at her lingeringly, then sprang half-way up the adjacent door-steps, and proffered her his fragrant freight. Eve deliberated for a moment, but the fruit was tempting, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... as the statesman he fully believed he was. In fact, Doctor Jameson had made up his mind to outlive the odium of the Raid, and to become rehabilitated in public opinion to the extent of being allowed to take up the leadership of the party which had once owned Rhodes as its chief. By a strange freak of Providence, helped no doubt by an iron will and opportunities made the most of, Jameson, who had been the great culprit in the mad adventure of the Raid, became the foremost man in Cape Colony for ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill
... downstairs to find the house deserted except for the noiseless butlers who stared at her as though she were some strange freak. Apparently no one stirred before noon, for Tom, coming in from the garage, greeted her with a pleasant: "Say, you're an early bird, aren't you?" and then directed one of the butlers to bring her ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... comfort, and command him, might have depended on as warranting the courage, the sympathy, and the sense demanded for such a responsibility. She had been trying her powers of consolation on Miss Silence. It was a sudden freak of Myrtle's. She had gone off on some foolish but innocent excursion. Besides, she was a girl that would take care of herself; for she was afraid of nothing, and nimbler than any boy of her age, and almost as strong as any. ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... a plea for Milton's method, although by a freak of fate it was uttered in vindication of Congreve. Some years earlier, in his edition of Shakespeare, Johnson had remarked on the same passage, and had indicated the poetic method that he approved: "He that looks from a precipice ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... day for his freak, By a Narrabri beak, He was jawed with a deal of verbosity; For his only appeal Was 'professional zeal' — He wanted ...
— Rio Grande's Last Race and Other Verses • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... freak of Nature; that's what you are, Alf. Two months ago you were as thin and white as a sheet of paper, and even Saturday's school resurrection-pie failed to tempt you. Now you are the colour of a redskin, and nothing is safe from ...
— The Fiery Totem - A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian North-West • Argyll Saxby
... and on the rafters or beams of old buildings. The nests are made of mud, moss and grass, lined with feathers. The four or five eggs measure .75 x .55. Occasionally, eggs will be found that have a few minute spots of reddish brown. Freak situations in which to locate their nests are often chosen by these birds, such as the brake beam of a freight car, in the crevices of old wells, hen houses, etc. The birds are one of the most useful that we have; being very active and continually on the ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... encountered, at a fateful coincidence in time, the insidious and unidentifiable terrain deception of a classic whiteout situation. They had encountered that type of visual illusion which makes rising white plateaux appear perfectly flat. This freak of polar weather is known and feared by every polar flier. In some Arctic regions in the Canadian and in the north European winter, it is responsible for numbers of light aircraft crashes every year. Aircraft fly, in clear air, directly into hills and ...
— Judgments of the Court of Appeal of New Zealand on Proceedings to Review Aspects of the Report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Mount Erebus Aircraft Disaster • Sir Owen Woodhouse, R. B. Cooke, Ivor L. M. Richardson, Duncan
... freak," said the jester. "There be a dozen tailors and all the Queen's tirewomen frizzling up a good piece of cloth of gold for the lion's mane, covering a club with green damask with pricks, cutting out green velvet and gummed silk for his garland! In sooth, ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and real knowledge of books and languages, and were naturally, though imprudently, disposed to gratify him by deferring to his judgment in matters wherein his studies were supposed to have rendered him a special proficient. Unfortunately, besides the more harmless freak of becoming a prentice in the art of poetry, by which words and numbers were the only sufferers, the monarch had composed a deep work upon Demonology, embracing in their fullest extent the most absurd and gross of the popular errors on this subject. He considered ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... kangaroo fur, but exactly like our hair except that it is much finer and softer, and instead of being black is red. I am like to lose my mind over the capricious and harassing developments of this unclassifiable zoological freak. If I could catch another one—but that is hopeless; it is a new variety, and the only sample; this is plain. But I caught a true kangaroo and brought it in, thinking that this one, being lonesome, would rather ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... red—brilliant, dark, fiery red, like a chestnut when it tumbles out of its shell, only burnished like metal. If I had the usual white eyelashes I should be downright ugly, but, thank goodness! by some freak of nature mine are black and thick, and stick out when you look at me sideways, and I often think when I catch sight of myself in the glass that I am really very pretty—all put together—but, as I said before, not a type to please ...
— Red Hair • Elinor Glyn
... not have been quite so amused at a similar freak of Mrs. Hidleberg's—but our honest general was no especial worshipper of money—he was rich, too, and his daughter, well dowered, was about to marry a peer, and beside all this, though he loved 'Sister Becky,' her yoke galled him; and I think he was not altogether sorry at the notion ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... to keep on the good side of the Blithers syndicate," said Robin soberly, after his mirth and subsided before her wrath. "Good Lord, Aunt Loraine, I simply cannot go up there and stand in line like a freak in a side show for all the ladies and girls to gape at I'll get sick the day of the party, that's what I'll do, and you can tell 'em how desolated ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... arranged, and in the course of a few days the parlor of Locust Grove was echoing sometimes to the laughter, and sometimes to the screaming, of little Ella Grey, who, from some unaccountable freak of babyhood, conceived a violent fancy for Eugenia, to whom she would go quite as readily as to Dora, whose daily absence at school she at last did not mind. Regularly each day, and sometimes twice a day, Mr. Hastings came down to Locust Grove, and his manner ...
— Dora Deane • Mary J. Holmes
... gesticulating arms, directed his gaze, and he gasped with amazed admiration. Surging through the muddy tide with a powerful trudgeon stroke, making a wake of swirling bubbles across which snaked the black coils of a heaving line, Little headed for the shore. Once he disappeared, as a freak of churning waters gripped several coils of line and jerked him back and under. But the innocent cause of all the trouble made no false estimate of his ability to rectify his error. He forged straight for his mark—that mass ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... scroll; the Ponte di Paradiso, with its Gothic arch; the painted plates in the Museo Civico; and palace after palace, loved for some quaint piece of tracery, some moulding full of mediaeval symbolism, some fierce impossible Renaissance freak of fancy. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... that, so long as it does the business," replied Bumpus; and so the amateur doctor continued to dab each bite with the lavender-colored fluid until the patient looked as though he might be some strange freak intended for a ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... and at no great distance from the West Gate, is a peculiar rock, which the action of the weather has worn out into the shape of a gigantic tooth. Whence comes its name of Tooth-stone. There would be nothing wonderful about this, if it were not for the fact that a visit to this freak of nature, has, according to Corean accounts, the property of curing the worst of tooth-aches. Though I was not myself afflicted with the complaint in question, I went one afternoon to witness the pilgrimage that takes place every day to ...
— Corea or Cho-sen • A (Arnold) Henry Savage-Landor
... perhaps that the queer freak of fortune which had turned the gambler's luck would not hold. In a few minutes there was more money on the table than the one-eyed man had stood before ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... the machine at a sharp angle over the prison camp, and as he cleared the barbed wire fence Tom, who had been given charge of the packets, let one go. It fell just outside the barrier, caused by some freak of the wind perhaps, and the lad could not keep back a sigh of dismay. One of the three precious packages had fallen short of the mark, and would doubtless be picked up by ...
— Air Service Boys in the Big Battle • Charles Amory Beach
... in her. She had never had any illusions about herself, and had never attempted to curb the obstinate self-will and haughty pride that had characterized her. She thought of it curiously, her mind going back over the last few months that had changed her whole life. The last mad freak for which she had paid so dearly had been the outcome of an arrogant determination to have her own way in the face of all protests and advice. And with a greater arrogance and a determination stronger than her own Ahmed Ben Hassan had tamed her as he tamed the magnificent ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... an architectural freak. The main building—if it is the main building—is generally two stories in height, with irregular wings forming three sides of a square which opens in the water. It is, in brief, a cluster of whimsical ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... sweep of the breathless bay Southwestward, far past flight of night and day, Lower than the sunken sunset sinks, and higher Than dawn can freak the front of heaven with fire, My thought with eyes and wings made wide makes way To find the place of souls that ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... And, to conclude, as Ximenes had written several theological treatises, our cardinal was also desirous of leaving posterity various polemical works. But his gallantries rendered him more ridiculous. Always in ill health, this miserable lover and grave cardinal would, in a freak of love, dress himself with a red feather in his cap and sword by his side. He was more hurt by an offensive nickname given him by the queen of Louis XIII., than even by the hiss of theatres and the critical ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... is some mad freak of theirs, that is all," said Eliza, trembling. "Come, dear sir, leave the balcony and follow me into the room. I wish to tell you something—quite secretly, sir,—oh, come! I do not want heaven and God and the snow-clad mountains yonder to hear a ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... it, Pearl laughed, and began to dance up and down with the humoursome gesticulation of a little imp, whose next freak might be to ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... of the cathedral were covered with corpses burned black from the heat of the flames and exposure to the sun. One woman, by some freak of nature, had her arms poised above her head as she sat dead, shrivelled almost beyond human recognition. It was probable that the Boxers had pitched many of their victims alive into the flames and driven them back with their swords and spears whenever they ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... not care to go on after that; to recall the mortification of his father, whose pride was hurt and whose hopes were dashed by this sudden, mad freak of fortune, nor how he railed at it and provoked him until the boy rebelled and went back to the courses, where he was a celebrity and ...
— Gallegher and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... which multiplies them. It sobers and clarifies human thinking a little, perhaps, to reflect on how thin a line separates the sublime and the ridiculous, the saint and the sensualist, the martyr and the fool, the genius and the freak. ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... Muni might be. And they soon after reached the hermitage of Arishtanemi, son of Kasyapa. And saluting that great Muni, so constant in austerity, they all remained standing, while the Muni, on his part, busied himself about their reception. And they said unto the illustrious Muni, 'By a freak of destiny, we have ceased to merit thy welcome: indeed, we have killed a Brahmana!' And the regenerate Rishi said to them, 'How hath a Brahmana come to be killed by you, and say where may be he? Do ye all ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... hurried along over the back road, meaning to branch off at the point nearest to the tall sycamore that had been visited by a freak bolt from the thunder clouds, during some ...
— Boy Scouts on a Long Hike - Or, To the Rescue in the Black Water Swamps • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... idea of such a freak, was quite willing to intervene. But she closed his mouth with her gloved hand and repeated with the gay obstinacy of intoxication: "Pooh, it will be all the more amusing if they do jeer at us! Come, let us be off, let us be ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... His gaze fall slowly. And quietly striking himself on the breast with a bony finger, Iscariot repeated solemnly and sternly: "I, I shall be nearest to Jesus!" And he went out. Struck by his insolent freak, the disciples remained silent; but Peter suddenly recalling something, whispered to Thomas ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev |
