"Freak" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... McClellan replied: 'Why, Mr. President, according to Military Science it is our duty to guard against every possible or supposable contingency that may arise. For example, if under any circumstances, however fortuitous, the Enemy, by any chance or freak, should, in a last resort, get in behind Washington, in his efforts to capture the city, why, there the fort is ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... Even his mother, a woman of keen discernment and delicate intuitions, had been deceived by this girl's specious exterior. She had brought away from her interview of the morning the impression that Rena was a fine, pure spirit, born out of place, through some freak of Fate, devoting herself with heroic self-sacrifice to a noble cause. Well, he had imagined her just as pure and fine, and she had deliberately, with a negro's low cunning, deceived him into believing that she was a white girl. The ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... dreaming, Captain Prescott. Some freak of the fancy has mastered you. I know nothing of the documents. How could I, a woman, do ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... feasts, don't you find? The mere sound of the word is sufficient to transport us to the great temple of Ishtar, and to dazzle our imagination with processions of flower-crowned priestesses. Heaven alone knows by what odd freak this peaceful lane was named after the city of Semiramis. But you ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... could not deny that he had acted and sung, though, as he said, his performance in both cases was vile. Little Miss Primrose had most comically taken upon her to patronize him, and to offer him as buccaneer captain had been a freak of her own, hardly to be accounted for, except that Purser Briggs's unsuitableness had ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... gallant and heroic attempt. It had succeeded as to the blowing up of a Federal warship, but it had failed otherwise. By a singular freak of fortune the blow had not fallen upon the vessel for which it had been intended. After dark the fine new sloop-of-war Housatonic had replaced the Wabash off the Main Ship Channel, and she had suffered instead ...
— A Little Traitor to the South - A War Time Comedy With a Tragic Interlude • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... lands. It is in the Dismal Swamp that Lake Drummond was discovered, by whom I do not know, but is said to have been found by a man named Drummond, whose name it bears; that will make no difference with me, the question is, how came it there? Was it a freak of nature, or was it caused by warring of the elements, is a question for the consideration of those who visit it? That it was the effect of fire caused by lightning setting fire to the turf, or some dead tree, there can be no doubt. ...
— The Dismal Swamp and Lake Drummond, Early recollections - Vivid portrayal of Amusing Scenes • Robert Arnold
... staff was that their journal was too "respectable," too intelligent, to be widely read; that the "yellow journals" grovelled, "appealed to the mob," drew their vast crowds by the methods of the fakir and the freak. They professed pride in the News-Record's smaller circulation as proof of its freedom from vulgarity and debasement. They looked down upon the journalists of the popular newspapers and posed as the ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... Another strange freak, in a land where there is no night for two or three months, is that the better houses never have shutters, and seldom blinds, at the windows; therefore the sun streams in undisturbed; and when a room has four windows, as happened to us at Sordavala, the light of day becomes ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... 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
... out in this crusade I was called crazy and a "freak" by my enemies, but now they say: "No, Carry Nation, you are not crazy, but you are sharp. You started out to accomplish something and you did. You are a grafter. It is the money you are after." Jesus said: "John came neither eating or drinking and ye say, Behold a wine bibber ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... this time out of the exaggerated taste, and must have delighted the French heart of Charles. Other artists have had the handling of this great domain since the days of Le Notre. A crazy wilderness of rock-work, amid which the artificial waters commit freak upon freak, has been strewed athwart the lawn; a stately conservatory has risen, under which the Duke may drive, if he choose, in coach and four, amid palm-trees, and the monster-vegetation of the Eastern archipelago; the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... have been more utterly unforeseen, and yet, in reviewing all the steps which led to the ultimate catastrophe, Rickman said to himself that nothing would have been more consistent and inevitable. It came about first of all through a freak, a wanton freak of Fate in the form of a beardless poet, a discovery, not of Jewdwine's nor of Rickman's but of Miss Roots'. That Miss Roots could make a discovery clearly indicated the finger of fate. Miss Roots promptly asked Rickman to dinner and presented to him the discovery, ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... outbreak of revelry and extravagance. The trappers were newly fitted out and arrayed, and dashed about with their horses caparisoned in Indian style. The Shoshonie beauties also flaunted about in all the colors of the rainbow. Every freak of prodigality was indulged to its fullest extent, and in a little while most of the trappers, having squandered away all their wages, and perhaps run knee-deep in debt, were ready for another hard campaign ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... just one or two little items more that I've got to write. One is what I heard mother tell father when they were on the front piazza alone, and I was teaching the puppy to beg, right in sight of them on the grass. They think I'm an earless freak, maybe. She told him that dear Peggy was growing into such a strong, splendid woman; that she'd been talking to her, and she thought the child would be able to give up her weak, vacillating lover with hardly a pang, ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... birth. She remembered how often persons had expressed surprise that she did not resemble her supposed father or mother in the least. She remembered that, on those occasions, Mrs. Minford had been much disconcerted; and Mr. Minford, remarking that it was a freak of nature, he presumed, had always seemed desirous of changing the subject. She remembered that this strange want of resemblance to either of her reputed parents had often been a puzzle to her before Mrs. ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... been a clever fellow a very clever fellow in the eyes of his father. Bernard Amedroz knew that he himself was not a clever fellow, and admired his son accordingly; and when Charles had been expelled from Harrow for some boyish freak in his vengeance against a neighbouring farmer, who had reported to the school authorities the doings of a few beagles upon his land, Charles had cut off the heads of all the trees in a young fir plantation his ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope
... they had founded their orders for the first assorted cargo ever to be sent from America to Edomo. Bill of particulars there was, stretching down the long tissue-paper in exquisite chirography. But by some freak of the "total depravity of things," the translated order for the assorted cargo was not there. John Coram, in his care to fold up the Japanese writing nicely, had left on his own desk at Shanghae the more intelligible ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... sixteen when you were born, and, having had my head shaved during my illness, my hair grew out the bright gold you see it now, instead of the dark brown it had hitherto been. A strange freak of nature, but a providential aid to the disguise I wished to maintain. I wrote to Cuthbert, informing him of your birth, praying his speedy return, but no reply came; and again and again I repeated ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... to entrap me into any such mad scheme, you will find I am not your man!" He declared that if another word were said on the subject he would forthwith leave the room. The others present also repudiated the proposal with more or less of vehemence, but they all regarded it as a mad freak of Mackenzie's, and hardly worth grave consideration. Mackenzie found that nothing was to be done, and a few minutes later ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... this instant, you young villain!" yelled Pearl, whose hope of saving himself was thus endangered by the unexpected freak of ...
— All Adrift - or The Goldwing Club • Oliver Optic
... flocks of the settler and the herds of the ranchman. Bears are very capricious in this respect, however. Some are confirmed game, and cattle-killers; others are not; while yet others either are or are not accordingly as the freak seizes them, and their ravages vary almost unaccountably, both with the ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... through the years to a day long, long ago, when she sat, a girl in her teens, talking to the little boy brother who was the dearest of all created things, telling him stories, and watching the wonder in his eyes! Pert, self- sufficient, and presumptuous as she might be, by some contradictory freak of nature, that divine innocence still lingered in this young girl's eyes. The sight of it arrested the words on the spinster's lips. She realised with shame that almost every word which she had spoken to the girl since her arrival ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... points are nearly on 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
... time had made sufficient progress in their simple movements to begin to feel that there was after all something more in it than they had fancied. For the first hour it had seemed to them a sort of joke—a mere freak on the part of their young chief; but they were themselves surprised to find by the end of the day how rapidly they were able to change from their rank two deep into the solid formation, and how their spears rose and fell together ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... visions of human infirmity and of death, to ride over the plain to the Seldja gorge, an astonishing freak of nature. I was twice within its towering walls of rock; the first time on horseback, accompanied by a young Tripolitan miner, and in the evening; yesterday again, in the torrid noon, ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... Committee, but they enable him to delay it grievously. We divided seventeen times, and between every division this vexatious Irishman made us a speech of apologies and self-condemnation. Of the two who had supported him at the beginning of his freak one soon sneaked away. The other, Sibthorpe, stayed to the last, not expressing remorse like Shaw, but glorying in the unaccommodating temper he showed and in the delay which he produced. At last the bill went through. Then Shaw rose; congratulated ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... and malevolence, and he makes his ominous appearance in history as a Caligula, a Domitian, a Nero. More fit for a madhouse than a throne, his advent is the signal of a despotism controlled by no guiding principles, but given over to that spirit of freak and mischief which springs from the union of the boy's brain with the man's appetites; and his fate is to have that craze of the faculties and delirium of the sensations which he calls his life abruptly closed by ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... said and heard the music of the phonograph too. A ship two thousand miles out on the Atlantic heard the same record, and so did another ship in a harbor in Central America. Of course, the paper said, that was only a freak, and amateur sets couldn't do that once in a million times. But it did it that time, all right. I tell you, fellows, that wireless telephone is a wonder. Talk about the stories of the Arabian Nights! They ...
— The Radio Boys' First Wireless - Or Winning the Ferberton Prize • Allen Chapman
... 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 Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... are much enjoyed by this type. The Alimentive likes lots of rich food but he is not so desirous of varieties or freak dishes. But the Thoracic specializes ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... evening at college in their junior year. Upon coming out of the dining-room Lila caught sight of Bea waiting at the elevator door. Dodging three seniors, a maid with a tray, and a man with a truck full of trunks, she made a dash for the new arrival who in a sudden freak of perversity ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... of course; merely to his clerks and his servants and his wife and the people who are afraid of him. This was a nasty habit of our grandfathers—modern wives are hardly meek enough to stand much of it. However, if Perseus by some freak of atavism ever should so far forget himself in this way, Persephone will find the Biblical soft answer more efficacious than the loudest returning volume of sound. To speak in an exaggeratedly gentle voice always shames the shouter ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... member of the family to whom he is favorably disposed, offered the biscuit in the same way, entirely of his own accord, to his own foot—sitting on the floor, holding the biscuit in a waiting attitude to his toes—and this strange freak was repeated many times in the twenty-third month. The child ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... him that all his features were those of a woman, and that I wanted the testimony of my eyes before I could feel perfectly satisfied, because the protuberance I had felt in a certain place might be only a freak of nature. "Should it be the case," I added, "I should have no difficulty in passing over a deformity which, in reality, is only laughable. Bellino, the impression you produce upon me, this sort of magnetism, your bosom worthy of Venus herself, which you have once abandoned to my eager ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... the Hat was a Scream and the Overcoat was a Riot and the overlapping Collar with the dinky Four-in-Hand was a Comic Supplement, and why had such a Freak been wished on ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... go for four months? A clock could be made that would go for four months. But this was not a freak-clock. It was a large Louis Seize pendule, and he knew it to be genuine of his own ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... Cash began to conserve his enthusiasm, "there's nothing so sure as an assay. And it was too dark in the hole to see how much was uncovered. This may be just a freak deposit. There may not be any real vein of it. You can't tell until it's developed further. But it looks good. ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... 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
... very happy portrait. The little one was nestled in her arms, and she herself was just looking up with a bright smile of happiness and pride. That look came full at the spectator, and perhaps it was because it was so very lifelike that I had (ever since I could remember) indulged a curious freak of childish sentiment by nodding to the picture and saying, "Good-morning, mamma," whenever I came into the room. Such little superstitions become part of one's life, and I freely confess that I ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... Freak canes are displayed here and there by persons of a pleasantly bizarre turn of mind: canes encased in the hide of an elephant's tail, canes that have been intricately carven by some Robinson Crusoe, or canes of various other such species of curiosity. There is a veteran New ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... papers the world can read if it choose to waste its time; at any rate, I am not going to lock them up and have the worry of a key preying on my mind. I should only lose it as I lost the other one. Now, by a freak of fortune, the key of Jaffery's flat remained in the suit-case wherein I had flung it at Havre, until it was fished out by Franklin ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... hand. The two friends, the informer, and the policeman were present. The magistrate could not have received them differently if they had been accused of robbing and murdering their parents. To be sure, he behaved no better to the informer. His expression of unmitigated disgust was perhaps a freak of nature, and no indication of the ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... way to 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 along the yielding sand was a harder task. All were thoroughly winded when at last the skiff floated ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson
... that she was not carrying her audience with her, and longing for the time when she could take her letter away and have it all to herself. If she stopped now, Christine, in this sudden new freak of distrustfulness, would ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... him ten years. I am his right-hand man. All his business I transact down to the last penny. I even order his meals. His discoveries have taken shape in my hands. Suddenly he gets a freak. He will go on a voyage. Where? I shall know in good time. For how long? I shall know in good time. For what purpose? Same answer. What accommodations shall I engage? I experience the worst shock of my life;—he will engage them himself. What scientific ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... on I will look for him 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 ...
— Madge Morton's Secret • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... them off a tree. She just slips it on and comes down, and then—my stars! All the other women in the room may just as well go to bed and get a good night's rest for all the chance they've got. It isn't that she's beautiful. From what they tell you about her, you might fancy her a freak. Looks don't appear to matter to her; she gets there anyhow. I tell you she just makes ...
— The Angel and the Author - and Others • Jerome K. Jerome
... a boyish freak, perpetrated rather in thoughtlessness than malice: but the tone of the answer, however simple the words, manifestly breathed revenge. Richard de Clare was not an ill-natured boy. But he had been taught from his babyhood that a Jew was the scum of the earth, and ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... freak of nature," remarked Josie, gazing at the waste with a puzzled expression. "It is easy to understand why Mr. Cragg hasn't sold this lot, as he did all his other land. No ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)
... certainly an odd collection. Flossie, in her hunt for brains, had issued her invitations broadcast; and her fate had been that of the Charity concert. Not all the stars upon whom she had most depended had turned up. On the other hand not a single freak had failed her. At the moment, the centre of the room was occupied by a gentleman and two ladies in classical drapery. They were holding hands in an attitude suggestive of a bas-relief. Joan remembered ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... we are about to enter was originally framed by some freak of Nature, or was the invention and subsequent accomplishment of art, we are unable to determine. Like many a structure better formed to endure for ages, it has been long swept away by the encroachments of the sea, which, since ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... queer 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 use ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... years, tall, spare, sallow of complexion, with long, straight, black hair, and dark eyes—the precise colour of which no man precisely knew, for it seemed to change with his varying moods—was, as we have seen, by some strange freak of fortune, an apothecary's assistant. But merely to say that he was an apothecary's assistant very inadequately describes the man; for, in addition to that, he was both a poet and a painter in thought and feeling, if not in actual fact. He was also a voracious reader of everything that treated ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... crowded 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
... an entering wedge to that advancing wall of fire. No man, no ten thousand men could stop the fire. But, against all probabilities, some one man might be able, by some chance of the lay of the ground, or some freak of the wind, to split off a sector of it. That sector might be fought and narrowed down by other men until it was beaten. And so something would be gained. For this men stayed, stifled and blinded, and fought on until the last possible moment, and then ran past their ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... startling, awe-inspiring apparition—a grimy old man of Mongolian aspect. He might have been frozen to stone, so immobile, so lifeless were his features. Belated visitors passed near the entrance of the shrine, peered within as at some outlandish and sinister freak of nature, and moved on with jocular words. Nobody ventured to overstep the threshold, whether from religious fear or because of something repellent, something almost putrescent, which radiated from his person. A contingent of ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... great despair about his mistress, who has taken a freak of——. He began a letter to her, but was obliged to stop short—I finished it for him, and he copied and sent it. If he holds out, and keeps to my instructions of affected indifference, she will lower her colours. If she don't, he will, at least, get rid of her, and she ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... old brands, and a hundred old codgers who are so broken into the office system that they think they are 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, ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... at this 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 ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... through some process of transformation. One would think that the atmosphere, continually filled with tobacco-smoke, might impregnate the water unpleasantly for the scaly people; but then it is continually flowing away and being renewed. And what if some toper should be seized with the freak of emptying his glass of gin or brandy into the basin,—would the fishes die or ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the poetry was strictly on the bum, but what it lacked in quality it made up in quantity and he could spiel it off by the yard. Whenever he got stuck for a rhyme he would blow the whistle which he used to call the crowd in front of the freak he was lecturing about and move to the next platform. That didn't happen often, but whenever we had a Circassian Beauty among the freaks Merritt's poetry got so sentimental that no one but a bride and groom could stand for it—and it had to be ...
— Side Show Studies • Francis Metcalfe
... necessary condition of human life, and all his sophistry in confusing it with the abstract sense of obligation. It is, perhaps, scarcely fair to call attention to such a mere argumentative and literary freak; but there is something so comical in a defence of debt, however transparent, proceeding from a man to whom never in his life a bill can have been sent in twice, and who would always have preferred ready-money payment to receiving a bill at all, ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... turned and altered his whole career. 'Tis with almost all of us, as in Monsieur Massillon's magnificent image regarding King William, a grain de sable that perverts or perhaps overthrows us; and so it was but a light word flung in the air, a mere freak of a perverse child's temper, that brought down a whole heap of crushing woes upon that family whereof ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of a gentleman who had been intimately acquainted with Boulanger when he was a political recluse in Jersey; and one afternoon he drove me to the charming villa the General had occupied, situated in an ideal spot on the coast. The villa was most solidly built, and of picturesque architecture—the freak of a rich Parisian merchant, who had spared no pains or money over it. The work both inside and out was that of the best artists Paris could supply. It was magnificently furnished—a museum of beautiful objects, and curious ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... 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 ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas
... agitation and an undefinable dread. "The sky is clear, the moon is shining brilliantly and the sea is altogether tranquil; if a storm were coming it would not be so. Banish your fears and reassure yourself; the lightning is but a freak of nature." ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg
... and I gave him a stroke with the whip, which I nearly repented, for he kicked up with his hind legs, and had not I seized the after part of the saddle I should have gone over his forecastle. I held on until he righted. After this freak, which was nearly knocking up my cruise, we jogged on steadily until we came to a narrow street, down which he turned in spite of all my endeavours to prevent him, and again hove to at the ...
— A Sailor of King George • Frederick Hoffman
... Perhaps he paused to gaze A moment on the quiet moon-lit face, The face yet beautiful with new-told love! Perhaps his heart misgave him,—or, perhaps—— Now, whether 't was some dark avenging Hand, Or whether 't was some fatal freak of wind, We may not know, but suddenly the door Without slammed to, and there was Regnald shut Beyond escape, for on the inner side Was neither spring nor bolt to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... a freak. It was a policy. It was in perfect keeping with an amazing attack made by the Republican press of Paris not long afterwards upon the then American Minister in France, Mr. Morton, now Vice-President of the United States, for giving a dinner in honour of the Comte de Paris. The Comte ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... the young inventor reflected, it was only a freak of nature that the Faber and nose-cone factories had been wrecked by the shock. But in spite of the seismographic clues, Tom was not entirely convinced. A nagging doubt still buzzed in the back ...
— Tom Swift and The Visitor from Planet X • Victor Appleton
... Not a single voice was raised In arrest of judgment, not one tongue—before my powder blazed— Ventured "Can it be the youngster blundered, really seemed to mark Some irregular proceeding? We conjecture in the dark, Guess at random,—still, for sake of fair play—what if for a freak, In a fit of absence,—such things have been!—if our friend proved weak —What's the phrase?—corrected fortune! Look into the case, at least!" Who dared interpose between the altar's victim and the priest? Yet he spared me! You eleven! Whosoever, all or each, To the disadvantage ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... of pity or devotion in those lurid, upturned faces. To many of them it was a show, a spectacle; to others a terrible nightmare, to others a cruel freak of ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... banged yet again. I took up a stick and presented it—bang! With amazing verisimilitude Beppo rolled over—shot through the heart. Really, for a moment I had a mad apprehension that in some occult way, some freak of hypnotic suggestion, I had actually wrought the child harm. I stood there breathlessly triumphant and wondering whether it was now my business to rush in and scalp the defenceless prisoners. I became aware of a head and a ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... curiosity," said Chip, getting on his feet again. "I've always had the name of being something of a freak—I don't wonder you want to exhibit me to your—friends." He went down the hill to the bunk house, holding the unlighted ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower
... 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 ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... good joke," he remarked, "to call upon others to uphold the dignity of one who is always at some freak ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... harmless hooks, and launch a leadless line! Their shadows on the stream, the sun behind— Egregious anglers! are the fishes blind? Gull'd by the sportings of the frisking bleak, That now assemble, now disperse, in freak; They see not deeper, where the quick-eyed trout, Has chang'd his route, and turned him quick about; See not those scudding shoals, that mend their pace, Of frighten'd bream, and silvery darting dace! Baffled at last, they quit the ungrateful ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... acquainted 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 from ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... this was not, without undue publicity, to be done. Finally to put an end to the scene, she bore off her booty. She has often wondered what actress was deprived of her over-the-foot-lights trophy by the sudden freak of an exhilarated messenger. ...
— The Native Son • Inez Haynes Irwin
... beating me when poor Jake was after them, for the simple reason that it was a snap case, and even I didn't know that Poddington was trying for the giants until he had started. But Waydell was soon after him, and he knows that when I once set out for a freak or a certain kind of animal I keep on until I get it. So he has probably already figured out that I'm making new plans to get ...
— Tom Swift in Captivity • Victor Appleton
... things that 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. And malicious ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... 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 profound wonder. ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... energy fascinated Lord Emsworth. As for Mr. Peters, nothing like the earl had ever happened to him before in a long and varied life. Each, in fact, was to the other a perpetual freak show, with no charge for admission. And if anything had been needed to cement the alliance it would have been supplied by the fact ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... you—you, the 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
... to think. No acquaintanceship with her girlish impulses, nothing that had occurred between us before or during this night, had prepared me for a freak of this nature. I felt backward along the wall; I felt forward; I even handled the pegs and counted them as I passed to and fro, touching every one; but I could not alter the fact. The groping she had done had been in this direction. She was searching for ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... "as an interesting social freak we might have used him; but as an ordinary, well-behaved steamship captain—" Mrs. Van Vleck shrugged her shoulders ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... wall. Through chattering teeth he babbled, "... enough radioactives ... kill a thousand men ... freak ... a freak ..." In his agitation he forgot for a moment to inhale ...
— The Moon is Green • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... 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 ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes
... curious looking stranger. He seemed to be a three-legged creature at first sight, but on coming nearer you would have seen that 'twas really naught but a poorly clad man, who for a freak had covered up his rags with a capul-hide, nothing more nor less than the sun-dried skin of a horse, complete with head, tail, and mane. The skin of the head made a helmet; while the tail ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... Their attachment was celebrated all through the country. To talk of disparity in marriages was vain after that. My Lady Castlewood and her two children held their peace whilst Madame Bernstein prattled. Harry was enraptured, and Maria surprised. Lord Castlewood was puzzled to know what sudden freak or scheme had occasioned this prodigious amiability on the part of his aunt; but did not allow the slightest expression of solicitude or doubt to appear on his countenance, which wore every mark of the ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Mind. These are the two answers which we have hitherto obtained, but, as we have explained, a study is not complete if it confine itself to these two answers. When we know the law and the cause of an object submitted to our study, we further look for the end designed. This is no freak of our fancy, but the direct result of the constitution of our understanding. The universe is the creation of God. What is the design of the creation? I answer: the design of the creation is the happiness of spirits. Nature is made for the spiritual beings to which it offers the condition ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... Through a queer freak of fate, Thad Brewster and his comrades of the Silver Fox Patrol find themselves in somewhat the same predicament that confronted dear old Robinson Crusoe; only it is on the Great Lakes that they are wrecked instead of the salty sea. You will admit that those ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... of the "Colored American" is correct in the stand taken, and is supported by the well-thinking colored people of the entire country. The word "Afro-American" grew out of a freak at Chicago, and is only generally used by the "Age" and a few others; and as far as its application is concerned, it can never be acceptable, and will die a natural death, without even a struggle to smother. I am sure ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various
... That there are such truths can not be doubted. We may take, for example, all relations of number. Three and Two added together make Five. We can not conceive it to be otherwise. We can not, by any freak of thought, imagine Three and Two to ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... the companion piece did 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 husband, ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... it! It was a freak of mine just then to win that prize, but I've never looked at the book since. I'm sorry I troubled about it. I'd rather have the ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... especially where the exposed sides of the pebbles have been worn down smooth and even with the clay—how they are marked and striated by shallow grooves, all running in one direction as straight as though graven by rule. Is it possible that any freak or flood of the glacial period could have floated this huge rock to its resting place on the very summit of this high mountain, almost two thousand five hundred feet above the level of the sea? Oh! tell me, ye listening mortals, or ye winged ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... have run no slight risk in so doing. But Francis had no desire to be caught, and perhaps imprisoned for a considerable time, until he was able to convince the council that his share of the night's work had been merely the result of a boyish freak. With two strokes of his oar, therefore, he swept the boat's head round, thereby throwing their pursuers directly astern of them; then he and Giuseppi threw their whole weight into the stroke, and the boat danced over the water at a pace very different ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... she contemplated some idle freak that might try his gallantry, perhaps his purse. But she was in earnest, if ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... of the woodland glade. Nearer and nearer it came, uttering a strange, shrill cry, as if to attract his attention; and then, after circling in the air above his head, came fluttering down, and lighted upon the gate-post at his elbow. It was Dorothy's parrot. But what did it mean by this unusual freak of familiarity? Paul spoke to the bird, which pleased it; and when he put out his hand to smooth its feathers, the parrot lifted its wings, and with a loud cackle exhibited a note which had been carefully tied beneath one ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale
... fact, the blushes which empurpled his cheeks spoke better than the best speeches of the Greek and Latin orators, and were well understood. At this sweet sight, the countess, to make sure that it was not a freak of nature, took pleasure in experimentalising how far the virtue of her eyes would go, and after having heated her slave more than thirty times, she was confirmed in her belief that he would bravely die for her. This idea so touched her, that from three repetitions ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... but that the head exploited his natural capacities out of all proportion, getting such an outrageous share of the money they all made together, for doing what was natural to him, and what he enjoyed doing. Take himself for instance. If by some freak, he could make more money out of being one of the hands, would he go down in the ranks, stand at a machine all day and cut the same wooden shapes, hour after hour: or drive a team day after day where somebody else told him to go? You bet your life he ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... most absurd things. She gave a freak dinner when you were away that cost I don't know how much. She is always doing something. Well, I suppose Bailey knows what he is about; but at her present pace she must be keeping him busy making money to pay for all her fads. You ought to paint a picture of Bailey, Kirk, ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... 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 ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... freak was at the bottom of the furious meeting at the Bunk. Philip Price, the tutor, sympathising fully with the ardent pursuits of boyhood, had been over-indulgent in the matter of granting whole Wednesdays, instead of half-holidays. Any excuse sufficed. Skating ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... mischief-maker, who taught the North American Indians the game of hazard, and stripped them, by his winnings, of all their possessions. In a mad freak Pau-Puk-Keewis entered the wigwam of Hiawatha and threw everything into confusion; so Hiawatha resolved to slay him. Pau-Puk-Keewis, taking to flight, prayed the beavers to make him a beaver ten times their own size. This they did; but when ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... in front of her companions, With bashful cheek, but with a kindling eye— "'Tis not for one like me to have a thought In thy rare presence, Queen," KOLONA said,— "Yet I would dare to tell thee what I saw Only a moon ago, when a wild freak Possessed me to go voyaging alone, Across the sea, to find what curious things The other shore might hold. My lily bark, Being too frail for such a venturous cruise I borrowed GONDOR's boat of nautilus' shells, Put up my lua-leaf sail and swiftly sped Across the ocean, till ...
— The Arctic Queen • Unknown
... back Loaded with thanks and all that words could speak, The stars were overcast, the night was black, The wind arose as from some sudden freak; At intervals was seen a livid streak, And distant rumblings fell upon the ear; 'Twas true a storm had threatened all the week And lurked about the sultry atmosphere, Then was the time they were to have it, ...
— The Minstrel - A Collection of Poems • Lennox Amott
... that for two hours after your departure I lay in bed in no small trepidation, thinking whether His Majesty might have a fancy to send me to Spandau, for the freak of which we had both been guilty. But in that case I had taken my precautions: I had written a statement of the case to my chief, the Austrian Minister, with the full and true story how you had been set to spy ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... yes, of course I know you will reimburse me, but that isn't the question; and, anyway, it's the opinion of your friends, old man, that you will not be worse off for a little abstinence from fleshly pleasures. You are positively a freak in this famine-cursed ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... water, which flowed on to the very brink of the hill where it overshadowed the creek below. Thus it was, more than half the lake was held suspended in mid-air, with no other support than the parent hill from which its bed projected. It was an awesome freak of nature, calculated to astonish even eyes that were accustomed to the ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... dear, no; whoever said there was? By the way, is not this freak of yours of going out into the roads to smoke, as you say, alone, rather a slight on your guest? Here is Mr. Wilde; how very amusing! we all seem to be drawn out ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... So it happened that without seeking fame, fame came to him. All over the Missouri Valley, men knew that Grant Adams, a big, lumbering, red-polled, lusty-lunged man with one arm burned off—and the story of the burning fixed the man always in the public heart—with a curious creed and a freak gift for expounding it, was doing unusual things with the labor situation in the Harvey district. And then one day a reporter came from Omaha who uncovered this bit of news in his Sunday ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... actually descended, turning himself over and over till he came to the bottom." This story was told with such gravity, and with an air of such affectionate remembrance of a departed friend, that it was impossible to suppose this extraordinary freak an invention of Mr. Langton.' It must have been in the winter that he ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... own land prohibition is nationally enacted and women's suffrage comes to be, and Irving Berlin, reading the signs of the times, decides to write The Blue Laws Blues. Fashions of thought change; other fashions, also. A girl who was born without hips or eyebrows and who in childhood was regarded as a freak, now finds herself, at the age of eighteen, exactly in the mode, thus proving that all things come to those who wait. Czecho-Slovakia is discovered. The American forces spent three days taking Chateau-Thierry and three years trying to learn to pronounce it. ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb
... laughing at the strange, ungirlish freak; And the boy was scared and panting, and so dashed he could not speak. And "Miss, I have good apples," a bolder lad did cry; But she answered, "No, I thank you," from the corner ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various
... 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 ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... some freak of that drunken rakehell," said Albert, in a low voice, to his sister, who had crept ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... alleged to have seized the lady in a drunken freak. It is stated that the Sultan was so much enraged at this that he proposed to make war on Bruni. His minister, however, suggested that enquiries should be made into the strength of that kingdom before commencing operations. ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... 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
... change. He fixed his eyes on the ground and spoke as if repeating a lesson, while his color varied, and a half-proud, half-submissive expression replaced the former candid one. Lillian observed this, and it disturbed her, but my lady took it for shame at his boyish freak and received his confession kindly, granting a free pardon and expressing sincere pleasure at his amended fortunes. As he listened, Lillian saw him clench his hand hard and knit his brows, assuming the grim look she had often seen, as if trying to steel himself against some importunate emotion ...
— The Mysterious Key And What It Opened • Louisa May Alcott
... Lady Swansdown hardly understands herself to-night. That scene with her hostess has upset her mentally and bodily, and created in her a wild desire to get away from herself and from Baltimore at any cost. Some idle freak has induced her to use Beauclerk (who is detestable to her) as a safeguard from both, and he, unsettled in his own mind, and eager to come to conclusions with Joyce and her fortune, has lent himself to the wiles of his whilom foe, and ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... imperfection about these children, that they had inherited from their father, which was a freak growth of an inch-wide streak of white hair which started from the center of their heads and continued downwards to the base of their skulls, and which as it showed plainly in their black hair made this strange birth-mark all the more conspicuous. ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... opened city gates fresh troops of horsemen dash down the wide causeway that crosses the narrow river. With equal speed the camp of the Crusaders, fully roused, is pouring forth its thousands, and King Baldwin sees, with the joy of a practised warrior, that the foolish freak of a thoughtless little maiden has brought about a great and glorious battle. The rescued Isabelle is quickly given in charge of a trusty squire, who bears her back to camp, and then, at the head of the forward battle, the boy Crusader bears down upon the Saracen host, shouting: "Ho, knights ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... el-Murayt'bah ("of the Little Step") is lumpy grey granite of the coarsest elements, whose false strata, tilted up till they have become quasi-vertical, and worn down to pillars and drums, crown the crest like gigantic columnar crystallizations. We shall see the same freak of nature far more grandly developed into the "Pins" of the Shrr. It has evidently upraised the trap, of which large and small blocks are here and there imbedded in it. The granite is cut in its turn by long horizontal dykes of the hardest quadrangular basalt, occasionally pudding'd ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... hearing it, for they remembered with bitterness how basely the Kaid had treated them at last in his false loyalty and hypocrisy. But Israel himself was too nearly touched by a sense of Fate's coquetry to rejoice at this new freak of its whim, though the victim of it had so lately turned him from his door. Miserable was the man who laid up his treasure in money-bags and built his happiness on the favour of princes! When the one was taken from him ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... he had entirely forgotten her or not. 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 had ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... could have been borne hither in ages gone by, by the force of the waters of the sea. But Tom declared, with a student's air which did not escape his father's attention, that since they all showed the marks of glacial action, it must have been so. After visiting this novel freak of nature, they drove up through the Essex woods. These woods of nearly four miles in length were especially dear to Mrs. Gordon, since they were so associated with good times of her youth. She ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various
... quite right, Quatermain. I had that foolish fancy, a lover's freak, I suppose. When we married the curtain was removed although the brass rod on which it hung was left by some oversight. On my return to England after my loss, however, I found that I could not bear to look ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... which the most unimaginative mind would feel glad to hear explained. Ere the second gate swung open and he found himself again in the street, he had built up more than one theory in explanation of this freak of parallel fences with ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... mounted some new guns of increased range, and now the whole city must go. But the next shell fell inside the established limits, and those following were equally well behaved, so that the panic abated. I have never heard any explanation of the matter. It may have been some freak of the gun-squad, trying the effect of an extra charge of powder. Had our people known of its signal effect, they could have depopulated the place in ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... bank he had climbed so laboriously before, Ross miscalculated and tumbled back, rolling down into the mud of the reed bed. Mechanically he wiped the slime from his face. The tree was still anchored there; by some freak the current had rammed its rooted end up ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... the name indicates, consists of two sets of planes, one above the other. There are some triplanes, but they have not been very successful, and there are some freak aeroplanes built with as many ...
— Dick Hamilton's Airship - or, A Young Millionaire in the Clouds • Howard R. Garis
... not long ago to look up the account of Charles Waterton the naturalist. [3] He did good work in his line, but nothing is more peculiar to the man than his waywardness. It was impossible for him to do anything after the manner of other folks. In all his words and actions he was a freak, a curiosity, the prince of eccentrics. Yet this, the essence of the man, the fundamental trait of his character which shines out of every page of his writing and every detail of his daily life—this, the feature ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... Thus, strange freak of chance! one of the two scents which he had so diligently sought, the one in connection with which he had lately again exerted so many efforts and which he supposed to be forever lost, had come and presented itself to him of ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... he lay there in the grass, wet-cheeked but no longer sobbing, listening to the sound and wondering that he had been able to hear it on the beach of Ringmanu. Some freak of air pressures and air currents, he reflected, had made it possible for the sound to carry so far. Such conditions might not happen again in a thousand days or ten thousand days, but the one day it had happened had been the day he ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... little case over and over in his hands, again examining the clasps of it. His next freak was to snatch his pistol and look to the priming. I burst out laughing, for his antics seemed absurd. My laughter cooled him, and he made a great effort to regain his composure. But I began to ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... the motley crowd were laughing at the strange, ungirlish freak, And the boy was scared and panting, and so dashed he could not speak; And, "Miss, I have good apples," a bolder lad did cry; But she answered, "No, I thank you," from the corner of ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... admiration. "I know you will not be afraid," he said, "and if Anderton gets through it may not be long before help arrives. Also it must be remembered that we may be disturbing ourselves unnecessarily. That," he nodded towards the arrow—"may be no more than the malicious freak of some hunter returning home, and ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... What wouldst thou in these mountains seek, O stranger from the city? Is it perhaps some foolish freak Of thine, to put the words I speak Into ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... that its gray and hoary exterior, while rejuvenated as to the roof and walls, presented in a little while an appearance as of a sudden eruption of bright yellow shingles upon its aged hide. Nor would our Captain offer any other explanation for so odd a freak of fancy than to say that it pleased him to do as ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... Neither within nor without a freak exhibition had I seen so small a human being! A kind of supernatural dread gripped me by the throat at sight of it. As it turned with animal activity and bounded into my bathroom, I caught a three-quarter view of the creature's ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... could be reached. Fifty thousand Russians, in a single band, were marching through Germany to cooeperate with the Austrians on the French frontiers. The more polished Germans were astonished at the barbaric character of their allies. A Russian officer, in a freak of passion, shot an Austrian postilion, and then took out his purse and enquired of the employer of the postilion what damage was to be paid, as coolly as if he had merely killed a horse or a cow. Even German law was compelled to wink ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... would sometimes degenerate into sallies of passion, but which, upon the whole, raised and exalted his character to the true heroic dimensions. His factor, a respectable Edinburgh burgess, a gunsmith by trade, whom he had selected for no aptitude but from the freak of the name (Innes), could not always appreciate his schemes of improvement on the estate, which really were not based on economic considerations, but were meant to afford large means of employment to the people. In consequence, the duke, though he respected him greatly, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... Duerer, Thorwaldsen and Benvenuto Cellini in one presents an engaging figure. His domestic life makes very pleasant reading. We find no dark holes and corners in the career of one who may be said to have remained a boy to the end, at fifty as at five full of freak and initiative, clingingly attached to a devoted and richly-endowed mother, and the ebullient spirit of a happy home. With his rapidly increasing fortune, the historic house in the Rue Dominique became an artistic, musical and dramatic centre. His fetes were worthy of a millionaire, ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... while the boy carried out his freak, for such they judged his bit of reconnoitring to be. Cautiously George crept towards the mill, the sloping roof of which came almost down to the very hill side. Tying a wisp of long grass and weeds round each boot, he crawled noiselessly up till within ...
— With Marlborough to Malplaquet • Herbert Strang and Richard Stead
... world. But the interest is not what is commonly called philosophic, it is personal. Because the Revolution is the dominant fact in modern history, therefore people suppose that the doings of this or that provincial lawyer, tossed into temporary eminence and eternal infamy by some freak of the revolutionary wave, or the atrocities committed by this or that mob, half drunk with blood, rhetoric, and alcohol, are of transcendent importance. In truth their interest is great, but their importance is small. What we are concerned to ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... they wholesomely feared him, they were amiable in the main towards each other. There were certain members of the Family who might be described as perennial. They were of the nature of established institutions. Such were Stumpy, the freak-legged dachshund-setter; James Edward, the wild gander; Butters, the woodchuck; Melindy and Jim, the two white cats; Bones, the brown owl, who sat all day on the edge of a box in the darkest corner of the cabin; and Ananias-and-Sapphira, ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... acuteness of vision. They could see the odor emanating from flowers and fruit. They described it to me as resembling attenuated mist. They also named other colors in the solar spectrum than those known to me. When I first heard them speak of them, I thought it a freak of the imagination; but I afterward noticed artists, and persons who had a special taste for colors, always detected them with greater readiness. The presence of these new colors were apparent to all with whom I spoke upon the subject. ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... it is like an oval loaf of bread split lengthwise by a great groove down the centre, and with a curiously wrinkled or folded surface. The two halves of the brain, called hemispheres (though more nearly the shape of a coffee-bean), are alike; and each one, by some curious twist, or freak, of nature, receives messages from, and controls, the opposite half of the body—the right half controlling the left side of the body, while the left half controls the right side of the body. Thus an injury or a hemorrhage on the left side of the brain will produce paralysis of the right side, ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson |
