"Freak" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... this, two sturdy Englishmen and their sister had come to the New World, with a good deal of energy and some money. The freak that led them up the river to this place was their love of beautiful scenery. Land was cheap, and at first they tried farming, but presently they started a carpet factory, their old business, and being ingenious men, they made some improvements. Ralph Stanwood, another Englishman, joined them. ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... was there to say?" Harriet answered. "Our meeting was entirely accidental. He had no idea of finding me; was as surprised as I was." She stopped abruptly, musing on some unpalatable thought. "You wouldn't know him, Linda. He is a perfect freak," she said, presently, "talks about Karma and Nirvana and I don't know what all! Whether he's a Theosophist or a ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... had proved fruitless. "You can know nothing of women," was the end of his reflections, "if you do not know that what seems most improbable is what is most likely to be true. This maid is certainly not one of the flute-players or the like. Who knows what incomprehensible whim or freak may have brought her here? At any rate, it will be easier for her to keep her eyes open than it is ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... same thing," I replied. "By some freak its vibratory qualities had that effect. The deep whistle of the sunken Lusitania would, for instance, make the Singer Building shake to its foundations; while the Olympic did not affect the Singer at all but made the Woolworth shiver ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... touches, while Tods patrolled the Burra Simla Bazar in his morning rides, and played with the monkey belonging to Ditta Mull, the bunnia, and listened, as a child listens to all the stray talk about this new freak of the Lat Sahib's. ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... thought, a petty pique, Enwraps in gloom, or bursts in storm; She questions all that love may speak, And weighs its tone, and marks its form, Or yields her frailty to a freak ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland
... Would he call, now that he was informed of her presence in the city? She knew (almost as well as if he had written it) the reason for his hasty flight from Colorow, and with a knowledge that he considered her a freak if not something worse she could not write to him, although she still ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... some news for you," went on young Crawford, "did you know that Sam Redding has entered that freak motor boat he's been building in the yacht club regatta? He's out for ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Eagle Patrol • Howard Payson
... overboard and treat a great question in the spirit of sheer mischief, and the results may be simply amazing. Conceive, for instance, a capitalist getting the railways round London into his power, and then in sheer freak stopping the traffic for a single day. No doubt the day would be a short one, but even twelve hours of such a practical joke would bring about a "Black Monday" such as England has never seen. But there would be no need of such an enormous operation to enable us to realize ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... were to great goodness of heart and many sterling qualities, did not appear very pleasing to the stiff, etiquette-loving fine lady, and it was without any great surprise that we heard, some time afterwards, of the marriage being broken off, in consequence, it was said, of some wild freak of Doughby's. We were asking one another for the particulars of this rupture, which neither of us had heard, when the Kentuckian made his reappearance in the cabin. He had changed his dress, and, taking him altogether, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... bowed, to this strange freak of an introduction; and, of course, I rose and Curtsied low, and waited his commands to sit again; which were given ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... Fingers" was a freak? He wasn't born strong-fingered. Naw. He had to develop it. What made him do it? Well, I don't know as I could answer that exactly. I remember "Butter Fingers" saying once he'd gotten a kick out of chinning himself ever since he was a baby. Sure! ...
— Interference and Other Football Stories • Harold M. Sherman
... astray by my freak of fancy, without an opportunity of correcting it by MR. TURNER'S statement, the proper course for me is to acknowledge myself wrong—palpably, unmistakeably wrong,—MR. TURNER'S explanation is the correct one; thanks to ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 78, April 26, 1851 • Various
... the side show of one of the great circuses some years ago was a strange creature which, for lack of a better name, its owner and the public dubbed, "A What Is It?" This freak had the semblance of humanity, and yet was not human. All its functions and feelings reversed the normal. Tickle it and it would cry bitterly; pinch or torture it and it would grin rapturously; when starved it repelled food, ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... conversation between her cousin and Lady Stafford rankles in her mind. What a foolish freak it was her ever permitting Marcia to think of her as one altogether without education! Instinct might have told that her cousin would not scruple about applying such knowledge to her disadvantage. And yet why is Marcia her enemy? How has she ever injured her? ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... freak of atavism the father of the boy bred back, and was more or less of a Stone-Age cave-dweller. He was a butcher by trade, in the little town of Waldorf, a few miles from Heidelberg. A butcher's business then was to travel around ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... whether I am on land or on sea. Some day, somewhere, I shall hear news of him. I wish you to remember that if ever you need a friend, you have only to let me know. I am ashamed to think that I have let this strange freak of circumstance find Robert Morton's daughter for me. I should have looked you up years ago. Do you know what a fellow's chum means to him when he is a boy at school?" Captain Moore queried, less seriously. "Don't you think a man ought to wish to do something for that fellow's ...
— Madge Morton's Secret • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... where a pile of great timbers and plank had been cast up by the angry waters during a recent storm. There, resting on top of the heap of lumber and timbers, was a fine skiff apparently sound and whole. By some curious freak of the storm it had been gently deposited there and left to rest while great ships had been sorely wrenched and even wrecked. The boys lost no time in removing the skiff with Wyckoff's help. To drag it ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson
... favorites. Fear of his mother was the only thing that had kept him from frequenting Cupido's shop—the rendezvous of the city's gayest set, a hotbed of gossip and practical jokes, a school of guitar playing and love songs that kept the whole neighborhood astir. Besides, Cupido was the freak of the city, the sharp-tongued but irresponsible practical joker, who was forgiven everything in advance, and could enjoy his idiosyncrasies and speak his mind about people without starting a riot against him. He was, for instance, the one person in Alcira who scoffed at the tyranny of the ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... as a garrison into a conquered town and were exposed to dangers on all sides. Every colony acted as a fortress to protect the boundary and keep subjects to their allegiance to Rome. This establishment was not a matter of individual choice nor was it left to any freak of chance. A decree of the senate decided when and where a colony should be sent out, and the people in their assemblies ...
— Public Lands and Agrarian Laws of the Roman Republic • Andrew Stephenson
... transgression as they ever come to anything definite. The girl is the offspring of a stupid surf-man and a nondescript sort of woman. She is not the product of any known better stock; she is, well, a freak of nature! You cannot transplant that kind of flower, Dick. The roots are hid in shallow soil of a peculiar kind. If you planted her in, well, in even your artistic world, she would either die, shrivel up, and be finished, or she might spread her roots, ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... with Dr Beddington, who had charge of the asylum, was not sure that he would be pleased with their freak, and earnestly dissuaded his intended ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... wasn't for Warde Hollister I'd take him into my patrol. I've got every kind of a freak in ...
— Roy Blakeley's Bee-line Hike • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... a level with his flashing dark eyes. Another point of dissimilarity between us is that he seems to have been poured molten into his clothes, whereas mine hang as from pegs clumsily arranged about my person. By no conceivable freak of outer circumstance could I have the ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... hear you say this, Countess," he said very seriously. "I have been so bold on occasion as to assert—for your private ear, of course—that you could not, by any freak of nature, happen to care for Count Marlanx, whom I know only by description. You have laughed at my so-called American wit, and you have been most tolerant. Now, I feel that I am justified. I'm immeasurably glad to hear you confess that you ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... man cracked enough to make freak wills and not cracked enough to have them disputed on the ground of insanity. What did you do to him at Marvis Bay? ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... meaning to watch from that elevated station the course she would take; although, indeed, he would not have been surprised if he had seen nothing, no trace of her in the whole nearness or distance; in short, if she had been a freak, an illusion, of a hard-working mind that had put itself ajar by deeply brooding on abstruse matters, an illusion of eyes that he had tried too much by poring over the inscrutable manuscript, and of intellect that was mystified and ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... gentlemen"; and really you have made of the author one of the good people of his own book! That is a malicious revenge for his "tedious accuracy," is it not? And you dare to speak of his "hypnotic power of illusion which is so essentially a freak element in his mode of expression that even in portraying the tubby, good-natured, elderly gentleman in this story he refines upon his vitals and sensibilities until the wretched victim becomes a sort of cataleptic." Now that is a "human unfairness" ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... was of the lightest. This descent on the Champs—Elysees had been a freak on Elise's part, who wished to do nothing so banal as take her companion to the Palais Royal. But the restaurant she had chosen, though of a much humbler kind than those which the rich tourist commonly associates with this part of Paris, was still a good deal more expensive than she ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... with more than adequate enthusiasm; if Marchmont were converted to him, who could still be obstinate? The two men began to talk, May falling more and more into silence. She did not accuse Marchmont of deliberate malice, but by chance or the freak of some mischievous demon everything he said led Quisante on to display his weaknesses. She knew that Marchmont marked them every one; he was too well bred to show his consciousness by so much as the most fleeting glance ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... no dancing of clothes-pins from the pockets of the dancers, as Emerson has said, or if it once happened it was probably the intentional freak of a happy schoolboy—a bit of farcical fun, too unworthy even to be mentioned by the "Sage of Concord" in his "Historic Notes." It was poor history and undignified in ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... stated, they have heard that he gave sound advice, and was a good and profitable man to consult. Was it not a strange freak on the part of God, who plays sometimes jokes on us, to have granted so many perfections to a man ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... sculptured frieze and floral 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. ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... cheese, tea, or meat appeared. Even salt was considered a useless luxury, and spice entirely forbidden by these lovers of Spartan simplicity. A ten years' experience of vegetarian vagaries had been good training for this new freak, and her sense of the ludicrous supported her through ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... did he keep possession of the road, stopping all communication for several weeks, until it was his sovereign will and pleasure that people might receive their letters and travel across the country as before. Now what an unaccountable freak was this! It was like the madness of a reasonable being. If I recollect right, it was when Captain Owen was on the east coast of Africa, some of his party who landed were attacked by elephants, who threw them down on the ground and, instead of killing them, as might have ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... a map worth fifty dollars as well as the map-makers, and this gave the young man practice. Hope, kindled into such a flame, led the young man in a march of improvement that even continued in his dreams, for he often dreamed out some combination of colors, some freak of lettering, that elicited everybody's admiration. All ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... more than a freak, or a mere geographical adaptation, in taking together, and at the last, the contributions of the three peninsulas which form the extreme south of Europe. For in the present scheme they form, as it were, but an appendix to the present book. The dying literature of Greece—if indeed it be not ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... about my friend's previous life and occupation. He was of very good family, had enjoyed an excellent university education, and had the finest prospects of a prosperous career at home, when, as far as I could ascertain, he took a sudden freak to emigrate. He had inherited a modest fortune, and now maintained himself as cashier in a large tea importing house in the city. He read the newspapers diligently, apparently with a view to convincing himself of the universal wretchedness of mankind in general and the American people ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... magnolia can bloom in northern New England, why should not a poet or a painter come to his full growth here just as well? Yes, but if the gorgeous tree-flower is rare, and only as if by a freak of Nature springs up in a single spot among the beeches and alders, is there not as much reason to think the perfumed flower of imaginative genius will find it hard to be born and harder to spread its leaves in the clear, cold atmosphere of our ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... with the utmost spirit and vivacity, hardly ceasing all the forenoon, and again bursting out toward evening and maintaining their song until every other bird's lay is hushed in the twilight. White of Selborne would have delighted in such a freak on the part of these pretty gay strangers, who have left secluded swampy haunts, the deep dells where the blackberries twine and the daisies and clover blossom, for our close-cut lawns ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... benignant it may be. What, the devil! it is not the place for a man like you, a man who plays with crowns and scepters as a Bohemian plays with his balls; it is not the place of a serious man, I said, to be shut up in a box like some freak of natural history; for you must understand it would make all your enemies ready to burst with laughter, and you are so great, so noble, so generous, that you must have many enemies. This secret is enough to set half ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... His hands shook. Porbus was so amazed by the passionate vehemence of Frenhofer's words that he knew not what to reply to this utterance of an emotion as strange as it was profound. Was Frenhofer sane or mad? Had he fallen a victim to some freak of the artist's fancy? or were these ideas of his produced by the strange lightheadedness which comes over us during the long travail of a work of art. Would it be possible to come to terms ...
— The Unknown Masterpiece - 1845 • Honore De Balzac
... credit and for the welfare of the empire of which they are the guardians. But if, from whatever cause, they are unwilling to recall the noble lord, then I implore them to take care that he be immediately ordered to return to Calcutta. Who can say what new freak we may hear of by the next mail? I am quite confident that neither the Court of Directors nor Her Majesty's Ministers can look forward to the arrival of that mail without great uneasiness. Therefore I say, send Lord Ellenborough ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... thing is to wipe out the disgrace you have cast upon yourself and your family," added the major warmly. "I induced your officers to look upon it as a freak of a boy, and by returning to your duty you can ...
— Taken by the Enemy • Oliver Optic
... deposit round the edges of this pool were very pretty, and the bubbles as they ascended took the most lovely colours—emerald, purple, etc., turning into aqua-marine before breaking on the surface; but the odour was like terribly bad eggs. These hot springs are a curious freak of Nature, boiling and bubbling up within three feet of a cold water lake; in fact, we sat down and placed one hand in cold water and the other in hot. This was ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... loved Sybil Lamotte as a sister; she thought and sorrowed not a little over the strange freak Fate had played with her friend's life, and she wondered often if Doctor Heath had really lost all regard for her; she knew, as what woman does not, that a warm regard had once existed; and she assured herself that whether he had or not, was a matter of no consequence ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... milder in those days; he covered all the downlands with woods, as Savernake was still covered; beneath the trees he restored a thicker, richer soil. These people must have done an enormous lot with wood. This use of stones here was a freak. It was the very strangeness of stones here that had made them into sacred things. One thought too much of the stones of the Stone Age. Who would carve these lumps of quartzite when one could carve good oak? Or beech—a ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... in his closet, this same Philemon aforesaid, a very marvellous painting, wherein was limned a young Faun in act to filch away with a craftie hand a light cloth did cover the belly of a sleeping Nymph. 'T was plain to see he was full fain of his freak and seemed to be saying: The body of this young goddess is so sweet and refreshing as that the fountaine springing in the shade of the woods is not more delightsome. How I do love to look upon you, soft sweet lap, and prettie white thighs, and shady cavern at once terrifying and entrancing! ...
— The Merrie Tales Of Jacques Tournebroche - 1909 • Anatole France
... next minute or two by the rest of the Murhapas. To Ashman this was proof that the party had decided to withdraw from the cavern, but would keep watch of the egress to make sure that the white man did not get away by some freak of fortune. ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... captive in their midst. He knew at once who they were; even if the viciously triumphant look in Shu[u]zen's eyes, the piteous fright and affectionate sympathy in theirs, had not enlightened him. The presence of O'Kiku and O'Yui was due to an ill freak played by fortune. In the fall of the year an illness of the mother—cold?—came to its end and herself with it. What was to be done with farm and girls? To the villagers this question was of serious debate. Of one thing they were in dense ignorance. Three years ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... "Come on! I'll snake him out of there if I have to drag him by the collar. But he's a fussy old freak, and I don't guarantee he'll stay ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford
... truth, I have not yet had an opportunity to question them. Some freak of the girl's, I should guess. The young teacher to whom I give house-room informs me that they were excited last night by an appearance of the Northern Lights—a very fine display, he tells me. I regret ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Lanning's coming to Los Toros a mad freak, whereas it was in reality a very clever stroke. Hal Dozier would have been on the road five hours before if he had not been held up in the matter of horses, but this is to tell the story ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... both of his, looked at her speechlessly; his chin trembled. Instantly, without words of shame on one side or of forgiveness on the other, they were back again, these two, in the old friendship of youth and middle age. "It was a freak," said Mrs. Richie, soothingly. "She is probably at the hotel by this time. Don't be troubled, Blair. Go and see. If she isn't at the hotel ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... the burning such as induced Cassidy, who knew little of impressions and feelings in the absence of facts, to believe that no other head than his ever concocted the crime. Still, from the manly sincerity with which his young client spoke, he felt inclined to impute the act to a freak of boyish malice and disappointment, rather than to a spirit of vindictive rancor. He entertained no expectation whatsoever of Connor's acquittal, and hinted to him that it was his habit in such cases to recommend his ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... after ELSIE] 'Tis an odd freak for a dying man and his confessor to be closeted alone with a strange singing girl. I would fain have espied them, but they stopped up the keyhole. ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... sufficiently appreciated the general practitioner and the sympathy and help he gives folks. These crack specialists, the young scientific fellows, they're so cocksure and so wrapped up in their laboratories that they miss the human element. Except in the case of a few freak diseases that no respectable human being would waste his time having, it's the old doc that keeps a community well, mind and body. And strikes me that Will is one of the steadiest and clearest-headed counter practitioners I've ever ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... time in getting accustomed to it, and that meanwhile the traditions of both are so far agreed in allowing a certain amount of free will to direct the actions of men and women that a tale which should be all necessity and no free will would, in effect, be necessity's own contrary—a merely wanton freak. ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... wish you wouldn't be so sarcastic over Helen," she went on stoutly. "She can't help being such a freak." ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton
... loss. Week after week, as he overcame one difficulty after another, he was learning, learning, just as he had done at Weil & Street's. His hazel eyes grew keener, his face thinner. For the job began to develop every freak and whimsy possible to a growing building. The owner of the department store next door refused to permit access through his basement, and that added many hundred dollars to the cost of building the party wall; the fire and telephone companies were continually fussing ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... it to Clarence, to talk to him, and feel his sympathy. He never retired much before midnight, and it was scarcely ten minutes' walk. She would get back before her father returned, and no one would know. Seizing her hat, she went quietly out. It was a freak, but then Beth had freaks now and then. A great black cloud drifted over the moon, and made everything quite dark. A timid girl would have been frightened, ...
— Beth Woodburn • Maud Petitt
... greatest romantic actress in America! This man Douglass has got you hypnotized. Honestly, there's something uncanny about the way he has queered you. Brace up. Send him whirling. He isn't worth a minute of your time, Nellie—now, that's the fact. He's a crazy freak. Say the word and I'll fire him and ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... Rather a liberty! Don't like liberties. Always courteous to everybody—consequently, expect everybody to be courteous to me! Still, can't help smiling. It was a quaint idea to hang my old wideawake on the clock in my study. I wonder what put such a freak into the joker's head! Now let me look at the paper that has just reached me from London. Dear me, "The Vacant Chair." That seems a good title. And all about Gray's Inn! Now, I like Gray's Inn—a most excellent place; everyone connected with it great friends of mine. And writing of Gray's Inn, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 1, 1890 • Various
... To start with, I bought this hoss for little or nothing. Mostly nothing. I knew he was a freak. He couldn't begin to untrack himself till he had gone a mile, but after that it seemed like every mile he went he got better. I held a watch on him an' he ran four miles close enough to the record to show me that ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... contained in this MS. (which has thus presumably lain unnoticed for a whole century, under, as one may say, the very noses of the many students of Arabic literature who would have rejoiced in such a find) has, by a curious freak of fortune, been delayed until our own day in consequence of a singular mistake made by a former conservator of the Paris Bibliotheque, the well-known Orientalist, M. Reinaud, who, in drawing up the Catalogue of the Arabic MSS. in the collection ...
— Alaeddin and the Enchanted Lamp • John Payne
... for the change, of course. Her sudden materialization and the freak of fortune which had thrown her, weak and ill, upon our hands, were responsible for everything. For how much more, how many other changes, she would be responsible the future only could answer. And the future would answer in its own good, or ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... forward, believing 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 in ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... auction. It was done then and there, and the Genin hat sold for fourteen dollars! Gentlemen from city and country rushed to Genin's store to buy their hats, many of them willing to pay even an extra dollar, if necessary, provided they could get a glimpse of Genin himself. This singular freak put thousands of dollars into the pocket of "Genin, the hatter," and yet I never heard it charged that he made poor hats, or that he would be guilty of an "imposition under fair pretences." On the contrary, he is a gentleman of probity, and of the ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... desolate and grim in its disorder and dirt. My thought centered on that picture of Judge Henley hanging against the further wall. Perhaps it had not moved; the supposition that it did might have been an illusion, produced by some flaw in the mirror opposite, or by a freak of imagination. Yet I could never be satisfied until I learned absolutely what was concealed behind that heavy gilded frame. There was mystery to this house, and perhaps here I had already stumbled ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish
... next week or so, she did not chance to meet the poet on the boulevard; and since she wished to conquer her tenderness for him, one cannot doubt that all would have been well but for the Editor of L'Echo de la Butte. By a freak of fate, the Editor of L'Echo de la Butte was moved to invite monsieur Tricotrin to an affair of ceremony two days previous to the wedding. What followed? Naturally Tricotrin must present himself in evening dress. Naturally, also, ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... Owen leaned toward Sanderson, his face working with passion. "I hate Dale," he said hoarsely. "I hate him worse than I hate any snake that I ever saw. I hadn't been here two days when he sneered at me and called me a freak. I'll kill him—some day. Your coming has merely delayed the time. But before he dies I want to see him beaten at this game he's tryin' to work on Miss Bransford. And I'll kill any man that tries to give Miss Bransford the ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... its art must have something to catch hold of, like the tannin in its overdrawn tea. It loved to stand before this poster and pick out the easily recognized characters and argue (as Sypher, whose genius had suggested the inclusion of the freak had intended) what the hairy creature could represent, and, as it stood and picked and argued, the great fact of Sypher's Cure sank deep into their souls. He remembered the glowing pride with which he had ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... a grinning gargoyle head, to which he will give in an instant more a pair of spider legs, and then, with one roll, stretch it out into a crocodile, whose jaws seem so near snapping that you involuntarily draw your chair further back. Next, in a freak of ventriloquism, he startles you still more by bringing from the crocodile's mouth a sigh, so long drawn, so human, that you really shudder, and are ready to implore him to play no more tricks. He knows when he has reached this limit, and soothes you at once ...
— Bits About Home Matters • Helen Hunt Jackson
... afternoon we ran the little rapid and kept on for about six miles making twenty in all from El Vado, when we camped on a heavy talus on the left. The following morning, October 18th, we had not gone more than a mile when we came to a singular freak of erosion, a lone sandstone pinnacle on the right, three hundred or four hundred feet high, the river running on one side and a beautiful creek eight feet wide on the other. We named these Sentinel Rock and Sentinel Creek ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... of tender solicitude, was, Brigit thought, almost divinely beautiful as she watched it. And by some curious freak of the down-falling light only his head and shoulders were visible, and seemed almost to be floating in the gloom. Never had he been so handsome, and never so pitilessly remote. He had forgotten her; he had forgotten love; he was not even the Musician—he was a Healer, a being miles ...
— The Halo • Bettina von Hutten
... (1591-1674). Herrick is the true Cavalier, gay, devil-may- care in disposition, but by some freak of fate a clergyman of Dean Prior, in South Devon, a county made famous by him and Blackmore. Here, in a country parish, he lived discontentedly, longing for the joys of London and the Mermaid Tavern, his bachelor establishment consisting of an old housekeeper, a cat, a dog, a goose, a tame lamb, ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... is 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 extensions that look as if they had been ...
— An Old Town By The Sea • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... feasibility of Mr. Lincoln's plan is matter of fruitless disputation, having to do only with fancied probabilities, and having never been put to the proof of trial, at least no one will deny that it was creditable to his nature. A strange freak of destiny arranged that one of the most obstinate, sanguinary wars of history should be conducted by one of the most humane men who ever lived, and that blood should run in rivers at the order of a ruler to whom bloodshed was repugnant, and to whom the European idol of military ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... I don't win to-night," she said, "it's all over. I shall have to own that he cares for me less than the dust. I shall have to throw up my hands and creep away and hide. Oh, my God, am I such a rotten little freak as all that, Irene? Tell me, go on, ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... had some definite object in view," said Harley, "or it may have been merely a freak of his client. Is there anything characteristic about the topmost room, ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... boat, or kept step with him in the race. Like the Sun-god, he was buoyant and beautiful, careless, free, elastic, unfading. Years never cramped his bounding spirits, or dimmed the lustre of his soul. He was ever ready for prank and pastime, for freak and fun. Of all his loves at Elleray, boating was the chief. He was the Lord-High-Admiral of all the neighboring waters, and had a navy at his beck. He never wearied of the lake: whether she smiled or frowned on her devotee, he worshipped all the same. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... their stern, heeling over till the cabin windows were buried, and so close that it appeared she must run them down. But a freak of the waters lurched the two crafts apart. Red Nelson, seeing that the manoeuver had miscarried, instantly instituted another. Throwing the helm hard up, the Reindeer whirled on her heel, thus ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London
... remained insensible from the effects of the blow nearly two weeks; and when he recovered from that, he was sound again; his insanity was all gone. I saw him about three weeks afterward, but he had no recollection of me. He remembered nothing of the past year, not even his mad freak on my engine. But I remembered it, and I remember it still; and the people need never fear that I shall be imposed upon again by a ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... the imprisoned songs of the forest, or give out in brilliant scintillations the sunshine it absorbed in its growth. Flame is an ethereal sprite, and the spice of danger in it gives zest to the care of the hearth-fire. Nothing is so beautiful as springing, changing flame,—it was the last freak of the Gothic architecture men to represent the fronts of elaborate edifices of stone as on fire, by the kindling flamboyant devices. A fireplace is, besides, a private laboratory, where one can witness the most brilliant chemical experiments, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the Latin language. Even my "Caesar" caused me less misery at this period than did the problem of the proper disposal of my hands and feet. Do what I would they were hopelessly (by some singular freak of nature) in my way. The breeding of all the Bolingbrokes would have been taxed to its utmost, I believe, to behave for a single instant as if they ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... scarlet pouch by his wife; but neither she nor Zack had said a word before him upstairs about taking Madonna into the studio. When the painter was well out of earshot, young Thorpe had confided to Mrs. Blyth the new freak in which he wanted to engage; and, signing unscrupulously to Madonna that she was wanted in the studio, to be presented to the "generous man who had given her the tobacco-pouch," took her out of the room without stopping to hear ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... tell you all these details, to you so paltry, and try to describe the vision of green with which my prophetic gaze clothes this bare rock—on which top some freak of nature has set up a magnificent parasol pine—it is because in all this I have found an ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... can readily repeat the Matter it self; therefore, though she exposes all the whole Town, she offends no one Body in it. She is so exquisitely restless and peevish, that she quarrels with all about her, and sometimes in a Freak will instantly change her Habitation. To indulge this Humour, she is led about the Grounds belonging to the same House she is in, and the Persons to whom she is to remove, being in the Plot, are ready to receive her at her own Chamber again. At stated Times, the Gentlewoman ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... 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 call ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... joke," he remarked, "to call upon others to uphold the dignity of one who is always at some freak or other ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... Stanley. "But what is this I hear of a visit from a lion? Did the brute actually dare to leap into the midst of our camp and carry off one of its inmates? It shall not be the fault of my rifle if he does not pay dearly for his freak ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... not think Voban understood that, through some freak of purpose, Doltaire was telling him thus obliquely he had saved him from Bigot's cruelty, from prison or death. Once or twice he glanced at me, but not meaningly, for Doltaire was seated opposite a mirror, and could see ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... a strange freak Ashmole MS. writes Guesse, and the Museum MS. Ghesse; but the emendation Kiss (adopted both by Dr. Grosart and Mr. Hazlitt) cannot ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... had never defined them very clearly, even to himself, Juan de Montalvo had two aims in life: first to indulge his every freak and fancy to the full, and next—but this was secondary and somewhat nebulous—to re-establish the fortunes of his family. In themselves they were quite legitimate aims, and in those times, when fishers of troubled waters generally caught something, and when ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... Piazza was a marsh, and just as the foundations of the Tower of S. Niccolo have given a little, so these sank much earlier, offering an unique opportunity to a barbarian architect. There is, as has been often very rightly said, no such thing as a freak in Italian art: its aim was beauty, very simple and direct; nowhere in all its history will you find a grotesque such as this. It is strange that a northerner, William of Innspruck, finished the Tower the fifth storey in 1260; and it may well be that this Teuton brought to the work something of ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... from its coping." Helen, pretty dear, hurried after her friend and leader; and before I had time to realize what she was going to do, she was balancing herself on the crumbling summit of this stone wall (which was only the freak of a landslip), and as it proved impossible to remain there, perched like a bird on a very insecure branch, nothing remained except to gather herself well together and jump off. But what a jump! the ground fell sheer away at the foot ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... impossible to catch the animal, he informed me that it had eight legs with which to run. Four of the legs came out of the back, and, when tired with using the four lower ones, it just turned over and ran with the upper set. I did not see this freak, so add the salt to your taste, ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... has had a limited amount of recognition in law, unfortunately not always wise or timely. Freak legislation and half-baked schemes are the familiar preliminaries which precede the grim onset of a real attack supported by public sentiment. Typical examples of such premature legislation may be found in the setting ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes
... once finding myself, by some freak of mocking destiny, in a house in which two bores had established fortified camps. On the first night, we all became so dazed with intolerable dulness, that our powers of resistance faded away to the vanishing point. Both bores ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 3, 1892 • Various
... please her, and it is but a harmless freak," answered Mistress Audley, "though I acknowledge that her Indian costume becomes ...
— The Settlers - A Tale of Virginia • William H. G. Kingston
... Miamis, and by the side of Little Turtle, in the victories the Northwestern Indians gained over Harmar and St. Clair, and during the last battle he killed several soldiers with his own hand. Afterwards, by some wayward freak of mind, he became harassed by the thought that perhaps he had slain some of his own kinsmen; dim memories of his childhood came back to him; and he resolved to leave his Indian wife and half-breed children ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... intention of asking Wallace Hood what he thought about it. But perhaps he might have some other explanation of her niece's sacrifice. It must have been a sacrifice to something. An answer to some fancied call of duty. Unless it were a freak of sheer perversity. But this ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... long, bad chute I saw a hole open up in the crown of that ridge and could look down into it, it seemed to me, fifteen feet—some freak in the current made it—no one can tell what. It seemed to chase us on down, and all our men paddled like mad. If our stern had got into that whirlpool a foot, no power on earth could have saved us. As luck would ...
— The Young Alaskans in the Rockies • Emerson Hough
... that," she said, "I hadn't thought of that." She stood still with her hands clasped, thinking. The officer at her side, looking down at her, was thinking also. He was fighting a slight mental struggle, a sort of combat he was quite unused to. Should he let the child go on in this wild freak? He knew the cottage by the sea; the peasant home would be dreadful to her. He knew that by that same day after to-morrow, life in lower Italy, with the dirty, coarse people about her would be a burden. Yet he hesitated. He fought the battle ...
— Mae Madden • Mary Murdoch Mason
... By some strange freak of his half awakened intellectual faculties, Holmes was living over again the incident of his meeting Barbara on the desert the morning after her first arrival in Kingston. "Is it really you, or is it some new trick of this confounded ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... near the tops of embankments, 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 alert ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... pride and affection made him nicely observant of any change in Angelica, but still he was at a loss to understand this new freak, and her ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... Had given, in pity to the blooming boy, Feelings more exquisitely tuned to joy. Fond to excess was he of all that grew; The morning blossom sprinkled o'er with dew, Across his path, as if in playful freak, Would dash his brow, and weep upon his cheek; Each varying leaf that brush'd where'er he came, Press'd to his rosy lip he call'd by name; He grasp'd the saplings, measured every bough, Inhaled the fragrance that the spring months throw Profusely ...
— May Day With The Muses • Robert Bloomfield
... how calmly he is sleeping! Is it but a freak of the lamplight, or is there a smile upon his lips? Eustace takes the lamp and bends over him to see; and as he bends he hears Frank whispering in his dreams his mother's name, and a name higher and ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... third of which amount his expenditure had then already anticipated. Egremont had been brought up in the enjoyment of every comfort and every luxury that refinement could devise and wealth furnish. He was a favourite child. His parents emulated each other in pampering and indulging him. Every freak was pardoned, every whim was gratified. He might ride what horses he liked, and if he broke their knees, what in another would have been deemed a flagrant sin, was in him held only a proof of reckless spirit. If he were not a thoroughly selfish ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... encounter," - the Putney Pet had "established a reputation;" and a reputation is a reputation, even though it be one which may be offensive to the nostrils. Retiring, therefore, from the more active public duties of his profession, he took unto himself a wife and a beershop, - for it seems to be a freak of "the Fancy," when they retire from one public line to go into another, - and placing the former in charge of the latter, the Pet came forth to the world as a "Professor of the noble ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... and indignation. But, whatever might chance to be the truth about that, it was plain that the duchess had something to say for herself when she declined to receive the lady. Her refusal was no idle freak, but a fixed determination, to which she would probably adhere. And, in fact, adhere to it she did, even under some considerable ...
— The Indiscretion of the Duchess • Anthony Hope
... house on horseback. She was a fat, clumsy woman, and got on and off her horse with difficulty. Isaac knew that all the family were absent; but when he saw her come ambling along the road, he took a freak not to tell her of it. He let down the bars for her; she rode up to the horse-block with which every farm-house was then furnished, rolled off her horse, and went into the house. She then discovered, for the first time, that ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... of these people's opinions did not oppress me much; for I knew equally well that, should some freak of Fate endow me with fame and fortune, they would be the first to receive me with open arms— ignoring all my former social enormities.—Their tune would ...
— She and I, Volume 2 - A Love Story. A Life History. • John Conroy Hutcheson
... face was distorted. For, in the darkness of the hall, he heard the child crying and lamenting. He stopped and listened to it like a man who resolutely faces his destruction. And, as so many times, he asked himself; "Is this a freak of my imagination, a trick of my nerves?" No, the sound was surely real, was close to him. It thrilled in his ears keenly. He could not doubt its reality. Yet he acknowledged to himself that he could not actually locate it. Only in ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... I could see how; it is the oddest freak. You seem to go the furthest around to get at a thing—but you are in earnest, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... and potassium may be relied upon to fizz flamingly about on a surface of water. Of geology he was perfectly ignorant, though he lived in a district whose whole livelihood depended on the scientific use of geological knowledge, and though the existence of Oldcastle itself was due to a freak of the earth's crust which geologists call ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... he's more fool than knave!" said Michele. "Anyhow, the people are mad after him, and the last new freak is for the pilgrims to go round that way to ask his blessing. Domenichino thought of going as a pedlar, with a basket of cheap crosses and rosaries. The people like to buy those things and ask the Cardinal to touch them; ...
— The Gadfly • E. L. Voynich
... vanished race, on its magnificent bluff of granite that juts 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. ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... I was looking as amazed as I felt. I hope not, for I felt as if my brain were giving way. The perfect calmness with which she spoke of this extraordinary freak added to my confusion. ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse
... this werry mornin' vith your best langwidge. Vith that tongue o' yours, Billy, an' that 'ere himposin' presence, ef you honly ad' a crook in yer back or ef yer heye vos honly in the middle uv yer 'ed, Billy, you'd be the leadin' Freak on herth!" ...
— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg
... not for the company in which the fragments occur, we should be tempted to assign it to a much later age.' It is unfortunate that only a part of the design has survived, and that no parallel to it has ever been found. Was it merely a sport, the freak of some ancient potter who was weary of the conventional designs of his time, and tried his hand at something new, combining the wild life that he could see from the window of his workshop with that which crawled upon its floor, without ever dreaming of the problem ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... may be only the child's horoscope, or some old wife's charm that is here sewn up, and these marks may be naught but some sailor's freak; but, on the other hand, they may be concerned with perilous matter, so the less ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... safe this time of year," he said. "Folks expect no better from that reckless, harum-scarum Joe Raymond. He'll drown himself some day, there's nothing surer. This mad freak of starting off down the shore in November is just of a piece with his usual performances. But you shouldn't have ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... people there. But here, heaps of the most ordinary are very rich and think they have the best right, which of course they have if they pay, to enter the most select places; so the conglomeration even at Sherry's sometimes is too amusing, and at the mirror place, which society would only go to as a freak, the company is beyond description. But they all seem such kindly, jolly people, all amusing themselves, and gay and happy. I like it, and the courtesy and fatherly kindness of the men to the women is beautiful, and a lesson to the male creatures of other ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... "What freak is this?" Sir Ralph said, angrily, when they entered. "Your mother has been anxious about you for the last two hours, and I myself was beginning to think that some ill must have befallen you. Why, what has happened to you, Albert, there is blood ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... not at the time condescend to offer any explanation of his "smilin' expression;" but years afterwards, on an occasion when he and I were making a journey together, he told me that he never quite understood, himself, what whimsical freak took possession of his mind that day. To have saved his life—he said—he could not have kept a sober face when Lockett raised his hand to the cap. The ambrotype faithfully reproduced the sudden resentful expression ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... we should adopt freak styles. There is no necessity for that Clothing need not be a bag with a hole cut in it. That might be easy to make but it would be inconvenient to wear. A blanket does not require much tailoring, but none of us could get much ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... compelling than anything in his life, to be certain that personal predilections do not dictate a reply unjustified by intellectual considerations. Yet for all that we give our answer without hesitation. For the multiplication of what may be conveniently, if somewhat unkindly, classed together as "freak" schools, breaks no fresh ground at all. Boys who have been brought up in an "intellectualist" atmosphere, and those alone, are sent there; and even if there were no schools to which they could be sent, home influence ...
— The School and the World • Victor Gollancz and David Somervell
... associated with his memory. His name calls up a story often told, yet never clear, of a man who seemed to possess several distinct and contradictory personalities, all strong but by no means all noble, which by a freak of fate were united in one man under one name, to make him by turns a hero, a fool, a Christian knight, a drunken despot and a philosophic Pagan. The Buddhist monks of the far East believe today that a man's individual ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... floe, drifting steadily southward, by the strange freak of the antarctic current, came in view of the lookouts on the ships, who had been posted as soon as the boys were missed. The boats were at once despatched, and headed ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... freak, yes, but with hands and feet. That's the living skeleton, but if he keeps on eating the way he's been doing lately the boss will have to change the bills and bill him as the fattest ...
— The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... their soft iron would not do so well as a hard stone. It is true a small light one might be made, but let any one see how the hammers of their iron bevel over and round in the faces with a little work, and he will perceive that only a wild freak would induce any sensible native smith to make a mass equal to a sledge-hammer, and burden himself with a weight for what can be better performed by a stone. If people are settled, as on the coast, then they gladly use any mass of cast iron they may find, but never where, as in ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... "What strange freak will you take to next?" he asked. "And do you really expect to make a novelist out of ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... impossible to avoid contrasting this beautiful account of elegant dissipation with the noted freak of Sir Charles Sedley, to whom it is addressed. In June 1663, being in company with Lord Buckhurst and Sir Thomas Ogle, in a tavern in Bowstreet, and having become furious with intoxication, they not only exposed themselves, by committing ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... that heavenly timidness, the shadow of Proserpine's; and gilded them with celestial gathering, and never stops on their spots, or their bodily shape, while Milton sticks in the stains upon them, and puts us off with that unhappy freak of jet in the very flower that without this bit of paper-staining would have been the most precious to us of all. "There ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... Simply corking!" cried Haynerd, when he and Hitt had finished reading Carmen's report on her first few days in Washington. "Makes a fellow feel as if the best thing Congress could do would be to adjourn for about fifty years, eh? Such freak legislation! But she's a wonder, Hitt! And she's booming the Express to the skies! Say, do you know? she's in love, that girl is! That's why she ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... thought she contemplated some idle freak that might try his gallantry, perhaps his purse. But she was in earnest, ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... for instance, who must needs be so foolish as to release all her slaves just because of a silly fancy that Christians should not possess human beings as property. She would lose half her income by this freak, and a good share of her principal invested in these slaves. What would Aureus Cantus have said to such a wild thing as this? He should have tied up his affairs in a way which would have prevented the widow from having the rights to do it. She was now in for trouble and ...
— Virgilia - or, Out of the Lion's Mouth • Felicia Buttz Clark
... taking any time away from my family. Eventually, of course, my condition became an extremely common one. Who is there today among my readers who has all the parts with which he was born? If any such person past the childhood sixty years did, he would be the freak. ...
— Man Made • Albert R. Teichner
... more purple-faced and important than ever, sat in his private office, twirling his thumbs and nodding his head for lack of business on which to employ his mighty mind. The afternoon, by some freak of the sun which had to do with his solar majesty's unusual spotty complexion, was exceptionally hot for a late September day, and the heat made Mr Inspector drowsy and indolent. He might have fallen into the condition of an official sleeping beauty, but that a sharp knock at the door ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... ambition, or any abnormal love of it. She did it, so far so I can find out, because she wished to do good that way. She's been a little notional, she's had her head addled by women's talk, and she's in a queer freak; but it's only a girl's freak after all: you can't say anything worse of her. She's a splendid woman, and her property's neither here nor there. I could ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... therefore, that "death ends all" nips in the bud this grand conception of man's greatness, and blights forever that which is noblest and truest in his nature. To regard this life as the ne plus ultra of man's development, is to charge nature with a freak of folly, and an abortion in her best works. Men may laud human virtue for human virtue's sake; but if man is but the moth of a day, the fire-fly whose phosphorescent light flashes for a moment and then goes out in eternal night, his virtues are but ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... in the early days of the goldfields, she, going to draw water at a little stream soon after her first arrival, had seen these lying close together in the bed of the shallow rivulet—three lumps of gold formed by a freak of nature into the likeness of the golden pippins her father used to be so proud of, and the gathering of which had been the crisis of the courtship of the two handsome lads ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... is a freak of a sick man's brain? Then why do you start and shiver so? That's the sob and drip of a leaky drain? But it sounds like another noise we know! The heavy drops drummed red and slow, The drops ran down as slow as fate— Do ...
— The Haunted Hour - An Anthology • Various
... natural, and not altogether unpardonable. Those who intrust a petulant, hot-blooded, ill- informed lad with power, are more to blame than he for the mischief which he may do with it. How could it be expected of a lively page, raised by a wild freak of fortune to the first influence in the empire, that he should have bestowed any serious thought on the principles which ought to guide judicial decisions? Bacon was the ablest public man then living in Europe. He was near sixty years old. He had thought much, and to good purpose, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... prediction, Clemence's "strange freak," as they called it in the little village, was not condemned by every one. There were a few liberal-minded ones, who saw at once how the case stood, and resolved to uphold the girl in her course, though they feared for the future, in which there was the possibility of failure. ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... be old? Was there perchance, after all, some truth in the legend of Samson and did it dwell in that gigantic beard and those long locks of his? It was impossible to say and probably the man was but a Herculean freak, for that he was as strong as Hercules all the stories that I heard afterwards of his feats, left little room ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... and pedal vigorously against the stiff breeze. The prevailing weather is stormy, and inky clouds gather in massy banks at all points of the compass, culminating in violent outbursts of thunder and lightning, wind and rain. Occasionally, by some unaccountable freak of the elements, the monsoon veers completely around, and blowing a gale from the north, hustles me along over the cobbly surface ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... some of these were inevitably at first expensive, so that in the first four years the office became above nine hundred pounds in debt to us. But it soon after began to repay us; and before I was displac'd by a freak of the ministers, of which I shall speak hereafter, we had brought it to yield three times as much clear revenue to the crown as the post-office of Ireland. Since that imprudent transaction, they have receiv'd from ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... automobilism of this great trial one can hardly overestimate it. There is no place here for the freak machine or scorching chauffeur, such as one has found in many great events of the past. A great touring contest over such a course would be bound to have important results in many ways. The ordinary ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... by some chemical law or daguerreotyping process the (white) tobacco. The tobacco was allowed to go to seed. This seed was sown the next year, and produced the same kind of tobacco. The tobacco, before the white tobacco was daguerreotyped, was a cinnamon blotch, so it may be seen by this freak of nature how it was changed ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... which, somewhere on its way, stretched the sycamore tree into which Zaccheus climbed. Ah how barren and empty the way looked now! - with Him no longer here. For a moment, so looked my own path before me, - the dusty, hot road; the desolate pass; the barren mountain top. It was only a freak of fancy; I do not know what brought it. I had not felt so a moment before, and I did not a ...
— Daisy in the Field • Elizabeth Wetherell
... or areca-palm, is the proper name of the island, but out of compliment to George IV, it was called Prince of Wales Island. Georgetown is the name of the capital, but by an odd freak we call the town Penang, and spell it with an e instead of ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... at the house gable could see that the innocent had climbed to the top of the peat-stack in some elvish freak, and sat there cracking his thumbs and singing with all ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... one eye Staring to threaten and defy, That thought comes next—and instantly The freak is over, The shape will vanish, and behold! A silver shield with boss of gold That spreads itself, some fairy bold In ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... father's grave in Woodlawn was supposed to be sacred to him and to his mother, was overlooked in the silent contemplation of what an even less sophisticated person might have been justified in describing as a "freak." Nothing was farther from his mind, however, than the desire or impulse to be disrespectful. And yet, as he was about to turn away from this sombre pile, he leaned over and struck a match on one of the huge boulders. As he was ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... It was a strange freak for him to take, when he expressed his wish to join the mountain boys, and Ethan could not ...
— The Hero of Ticonderoga - or Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys • John de Morgan
... around her doubly awful and dispiriting. Lord Lansmere himself, who did not as yet know the views of Harley, and little dreamed that he was to anticipate a daughter-in-law in the ward, whom he understood Harley, in a freak of generous romance, had adopted, was familiar and courteous, as became a host; but he looked upon Helen as a mere child, and naturally left her to the countess. The dim sense of her equivocal position, of her comparative ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... risk a hundred-foot disk crashing in some American city?" said Redell. "No remote control is perfect, and neither is a detonator system. By some freak accident, a disk might come down in a place like Chicago, and then blow up. I just can't see the British—any more than ourselves—letting huge unpiloted missiles go barging around the world, flying along airways and over cities. Certainly, they could have automatic devices to make ...
— The Flying Saucers are Real • Donald Keyhoe
... connection with the fact that Cockburn was the only English competitor at the meeting, that the Rheims Meeting did more than anything which had preceded it to waken British interest in aviation. Previously, heavier-than-air flight in England had been regarded as a freak business by the great majority, and the very few pioneers who persevered toward winning England a share in the conquest of the air came in for as much derision as acclamation. Rheims altered this; it taught the world in general, and England in particular, ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... of the crowd, he bustled to and fro, never still for a moment, "dragging his anchors," as the sailors say, gesticulating, making free with everybody, biting his nails with nervous avidity. He was one of those originals which nature sometimes invents in the freak of a moment, and of which she then ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... that I should make fun of anything that I have seen in this country!" replied the Hunter. "I now rejoice that a mad freak brought me here to these woods and fields, for otherwise I should probably never have learned to know the region; for it has very little reputation abroad, and there is, in fact, nothing here to attract exhausted and surfeited tourists. But the feeling has gripped me ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... ape-man had experienced a thrill of hope at sight of the shaggy bodies of the anthropoids—a hope that by some strange freak of fate he had been again returned to his own tribe; but a closer inspection had convinced him ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... a streak of light in the western sky, whether caused by the low-hanging, mist-hidden moon or a freak reflection of the coming dawn. Against that patch of brightness the northern headland of Lost Island loomed up high and barren save for its one tall tree. But it was neither headland nor tree that caught Jerry's attention and ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Air on Lost Island • Gordon Stuart
... of 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 ...
— The Old Bell Of Independence; Or, Philadelphia In 1776 • Henry C. Watson
... Statue accordingly whispered a most elaborate panegyric on Furioso, which was of course duly delivered. The Admiral, who was neither a coward nor a fool, was made ridiculous by being described as the greatest commander that ever existed; one whom Nature, in a gracious freak, had made to shame us little men; a happy compound of the piety of Noah, the patriotism of Themistocles, the skill of Columbus, and the courage of Nelson; and his exploit styled the most glorious and ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli |
