"Maniac" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... make a maniac of her. I am serious in this; you must not allude in the remotest way to the cause of her illness when you visit her, or you may regret your indiscretion ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... claws, burrowing deep into the hidden graves. Now the forgotten wrecks, like long-buried sins, rise and stand naked, showing every scar and stain. This is the work of the sea-puss—the revolving maniac born of close-wed wind and tide; a beast so terrible that in a single night, with its auger-like snout, it bites huge inlets out of farm lands—mouthfuls deep enough for ships to sail where but ...
— The Tides of Barnegat • F. Hopkinson Smith
... allowed to make a few remarks founded upon my actual personal knowledge of Poe, in at least the phase of character in which he appeared to me. What he may have been to his ordinary associates, or to the world at large, I do not know; and in the picture presented to us by Dr. Griswold,—half maniac, half demon,—I confess, I cannot recognize a trait of the gentle, grateful, warm-hearted man whom I saw amid his friends,—his careworn face all aglow with generous feeling in the kindness and appreciation to which he was so little accustomed. His faults were sufficiently apparent; ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... The maniac bellowed: she parted her shaggy locks from her visage, and gazed wildly at her visitors. I recognised well that purple face,—those ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... sitting there I saw Umbopa get up and hobble towards the patch of green, and a few minutes afterwards, to my great astonishment, I perceived that usually very dignified individual dancing and shouting like a maniac, and waving something green. Off we all scrambled towards him as fast as our wearied limbs would carry us, hoping that he ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... to the tutor, on the contrary, it seemed to afford the most extreme amusement; and as Miss Letitia bowed gracefully hither and thither in the energy of her conversation with the widow, the green paper fluttering with each emphasis, he fairly shook with delight, his shadow dancing like a maniac beside him. He had scattered some more powder on the coals, and it may have been that the smoke got into her eyes, and confused her ideas of colour, but Miss Letitia was struck with a fervid and otherwise unaccountable admiration for the paper ends of the cracker, which were most ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... said Moore, as we reached the inn and ordered a trap to carry our valuable bargain home in—"I wonder what on earth made Isaacs run off like a maniac." ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... like the hag Remorse That gloateth over on a nameless deed Of darkness and of dole unhistoried. And were there that might hear him, they would hear The murmur of a prayer in deep fear, Through unbarr'd lips, escaping by the half, And all but smother'd by a maniac laugh, That follow'd it, so sudden and so shrill, That swarms of sea-birds, wandering at will Upon the wave, rose startled, and away Went flocking, like a silver shower of spray! And aye he called for water, and the sea Mock'd him with his brine surges tauntingly, And lash'd them over on his fev'rous ...
— The Death-Wake - or Lunacy; a Necromaunt in Three Chimeras • Thomas T Stoddart
... of better transportation for coal, cotton, merchandise, and passengers, the bill failed. Such was the blindness, and ignorance, and prejudice of the House of Commons! Think of calling George Stephenson "an ignoramus, a fool, a maniac," in Parliament, yet such ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... and numbness had rendered the poor maniac unconscious, that the sailors were able to pull him on board in ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... variety of papers, which I had the option of destroying or preserving, as I thought proper. I can hardly believe that the manuscript is genuine, though it certainly is not in my friend's hand. However, whether it be the genuine production of a maniac, or founded upon the ravings of some unhappy being (which I think more probable), read it, ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... them on all present with the most vindictive looks: he thrust out his tongue as the snakes do; he hissed through his teeth with inconceivable strength, and became an object of terror to all by-standers. To the lividness of a corpse he united the desperate force of a maniac; they hardly were able to fasten him, so as to guard themselves from his attacks; when in the space of two hours death relieved the poor wretch from his struggles, and the spectators from their apprehensions. The poison ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... amiable old gentleman who controls our Accounts Department, who is the mirror of tenderness. The person I would impale is a creation of my own wrath, a mere official type struck in frenzied fancy, [at a moment when Time seems a maniac scattering dust, and Life a Fury ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... Isabel Sawtelle married a miserable aristocrat, who recently died of delirium tremens. Her father failed, and is now a raving maniac, and wants to bite little children. All her brothers (except one) were sent to the penitentiary for burglary, and her mother peddles clams that are stolen for her by little George, her only son that has his freedom. Isabel's sister Bianca rides an immoral spotted horse in the circus, HER husband ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 3 • Charles Farrar Browne
... actual existence. It is a disease of the same nature which renders many men incapable of distinguishing colours; only the patients go a step further, and pervert the external form of objects. In their case, therefore, contrary to that of the maniac, it is not the mind, or rather the imagination, which imposes upon and overpowers the evidence of the senses, but the sense of seeing (or hearing) which betrays its duty and conveys false ideas to a ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... occurred to me, for the first time, seriously, that I had no assurance that this man who drove me was not a maniac! ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... difficulty in recognising several of those zealots who had most distinguished themselves by their intemperate opposition to all moderate measures, together with their noted pastor, the fanatical Ephraim Macbriar, and the maniac, Habakkuk Mucklewrath. The Cameronians neither stirred tongue nor hand to welcome their brethren in misfortune, but continued to listen to the low murmured exercise of Macbriar, as he prayed that the Almighty would lift up his hand ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... they had sent out no scouting parties. Only a day or two before they had been enjoying themselves at a great dance. The boy who had come with the news that Santa Anna was at hand must be distraught. Certainly he had looked like a maniac. ...
— The Texan Scouts - A Story of the Alamo and Goliad • Joseph A. Altsheler
... in "Damocles." Pale, painted with grey and opaline tints of morning passes the grand figure of Rachel Conway, a victim chosen for her beauty, and crowned with flowers of sacrifice. She has not forgotten the face of the maniac, and it comes back to her in its awful lines and lights when she finds herself rich and loved by the man whom she loves. The catastrophe is a double one. Now she knows she is accursed, and that her duty is to trample out her love. Unborn generations ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... startled by the face of the woman who found her way into the court. She had seen the look of madness in her eyes as she looked first at Paul and then at her father. After which she uttered the scream of a maniac and then fell ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... however, had the courage to tell her the truth. It was a poor maniac who by her tears gave her to understand that the King was no longer alive. Sainte-Marthe records the incident as follows: "Now the day that Francis was taken away from us (Margaret herself has since told me so), she thought whilst sleeping ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... strange were these records, so eccentric the vagaries of the soul during its nocturnal wanderings, that I was induced to abandon the task, lest some friend hereafter, might examine, the mystic scroll, and conclude that it was written by a maniac. ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... you to inquire, as likewise me to mention—enough to 'int that he occupies a prominent position amongst the hupper circles of Society, and is frequently to be met with in the papers. His faithlessness preyed on my Sister's mind to that degree, that she is now in the Asylum, a nopeless maniac! My honely Brother was withdrawn from 'Arrow, and now 'as the yumiliation of selling penny toys on the kerbstone to his former playfellers. 'Tantee nannymice salestibus ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. February 14, 1891. • Various
... the maniac (though maniac is too harsh and decided a word for the dreaming wildness of Lucilla's insanity), as, dropping the curtain, she took her guest's hand and conducted her back into the outer room—"and now, farewell! You sought me, and, I feel, ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Virginian, has about him something of the Cavalier, it is still more curious to note that nineteenth-century New England, with its atmosphere of quiet scholars and cultured tea parties, suddenly flung forth in John Brown a figure whose combination of soldierly skill with maniac fanaticism, of a martyr's fortitude with a murderer's cruelty, seems to have walked straight out of the seventeenth century and finds its nearest parallel in some of ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... description: Age about forty-eight. Head receding, with large nose and stupid expression. Body corpulent but strong. Nicholas has no trade and works at general utility. He is a homicidal maniac. ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... reactionaries to have "punched Tom Warton's historick body full of deadly holes." But his strictures were not really important. In marshalling some thousands of facts, Warton had made perhaps a couple of dozen mistakes, and Ritson advances these with a reiteration and a violence worthy of a maniac. Moreover, and this is the fate of angry pedants, he himself is often found to be as dustily incorrect as Warton when examined by modern lights. Ritson, who accuses Warton of "never having consulted or even seen" the books he quotes from, and of intentionally swindling ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... out of the room, with somewhat curtailed good nights, although nine o'clock, her usual signal, had not yet struck. When she came into the lamplit hall, Jumbo was grinning and nodding like a maniac, and when she asked what was the matter, he only rolled his eyes, and said, "Missie ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... around the homeless shores the evergreen trees seemed to hunch their backs and crowd closer together in patient misery. Not a bird had the heart to sing; only the loon—storm-lover—laughed his crazy challenge to the elements, and mocked us with his long-drawn maniac scream. ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... against the abominable pettiness of German prejudice. But, withal, I cannot find that his life was great, as a whole; I cannot see him caring for his land, for the poor, for religion, for humanity; he was always a restless soul; and the ceaseless wear of incompleteness finally killed, as a maniac, him whom a broader Love might have kept alive as a glorious artist ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... I am not mad, although I have been bitten deeply enough to have made me as mad as a raving maniac." ...
— The Black-Sealed Letter - Or, The Misfortunes of a Canadian Cockney. • Andrew Learmont Spedon
... I'll give you the Maniac Bride, with my best Ha-ha!' cried Josie, glaring at him like an offended kitten. Being set on her feet, she made a splendid courtesy, and dramatically proclaiming, 'Mrs Woffington's carriage waits,' swept down the steps and ...
— Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... for the Maniac's woe, And thou art fair, and thou, like me, art young; Oh! may thy bosom never, never know The pangs with which my wretched heart is wrung. I had a mother once—a brother too— (Beneath yon yew my father rests his head:) I had a lover once, and kind and true, But mother, brother, ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... effect upon the over-strained nerves of the crowd. Some cried out with terror, some sobbed with hysterical agony, some shouted in triumph, and it was generally believed that Virginia Waters, who died a maniac many years afterward, lost her reason at that moment. Bill Day ceased his mocking, and shook till his teeth chattered. And none of his party dared laugh at him. The moon had now gone, and the vivid lightning followed the thunder, and yet louder and more ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... have thought me a maniac; or it may be that the desperation of the moment sounded in my voice. He frowned intently up at me. "Who ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... traitor and the spy have in all ages been rightly considered as foul beings who poison the air and whose touch contaminates. In Germany alone is the spy given honor which is fitting in a country which has substituted Expediency for Honor and Plausibility for Truth, on whose throne is a maniac, and where Conscience has been unseated by Pride, and ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... to play it in the day. For a month chess will be even more to me than golf or billiards—games which I adore because I am so bad at them. For a month, starting from yesterday when I was inveigled into a game, you must regard me, please, as a chess maniac. ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne
... wife and children are starving, he feels it not. He feels better. If his affairs are going to ruin, or are already plunged into ruin, he is not sensible to his condition. If his house is on fire, he sings the maniac's song, and regards it not. He ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... pagan of a father—was he not ashamed of himself to see the results of his own cold-blooded theories? Was this the glory of art? Was this the reward of the sacrifice of a life? That a sensitive girl should be publicly insulted by a tipsy maniac, and jeered at by a brutal crowd? Macleod laid down the letter for a minute or two, and the look on his face was ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... Wheeling Intelligencer. His poems seem to be extremely popular, and have been highly praised, the Professor informs us, by Victor Hugo, the Saturday Review and the Commercial Advertiser. The preface is the most amusing part of the book, but the poems also are worth studying. The Maniac, The Bandit Chief, and The Outlaw can hardly be called light reading, but we strongly recommend the poem ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... the place had passed from our possession into that of an utter alien, against whom I harbored a prejudice which was some excuse in itself. He had enlarged and altered the dear old place out of knowledge; nothing had been good enough for him as it stood in our day. The man was a hunting maniac, and where my dear father used to grow prize peaches under glass, this vandal was soon stabling his hothouse thoroughbreds, which took prizes in their turn at all the country shows. It was a southern county, and ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... longer repress cries; the horror was too great to be borne. What should I do: run to the nearest town or village, and request the assistance of my fellow-men? No! that I was ashamed to do; notwithstanding the horror was upon me, I was ashamed to do that. I knew they would consider me a maniac, if I went screaming amongst them; and I did not wish to be considered a maniac. Moreover, I knew that I was not a maniac, for I possessed all my reasoning powers, only the horror was upon me—the screaming horror! But how were indifferent ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... own blood. His sharpened eyesight sees Jesus from afar, and, with the disordered haste and preternatural agility which marked all his movements, he runs towards Him. Such is the introduction to the narrative of the cure. It paints for us not merely a maniac, but a demoniac. He is not a man at war with himself, but a man at war with other beings, who have forced themselves into his house of life. At least, so says Mark, and so said Jesus; and if the story before ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... any drab of the streets!" bellowed old Anthony. "He never cared for you. He married you to revenge himself on me. He sent you back here for the same reason. He'll take your child, and break its spirit and ruin its body, for the same reason. The man's a maniac." ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... were engaged in their separate duties, a loud exclamation from Basil drew the attention of his brothers. It was a shout of joy, followed by a wild laugh, like the laugh of a maniac! ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... through terrific peril,—as if he had been travelling for many days without sleep and without food, straining forward to a goal of safety, sick both in stomach and heart,—as if he had been rushing, like the maniac of the Gospel, through dry places, seeking rest and finding none. His hair, which should have been black, looked lustreless and bleached, and his skin seemed as if his blood had lost all colour and generosity, as if nothing but serum flowed in his veins. His eyes alone did ...
— Master of His Fate • J. Mclaren Cobban
... powerful man, but a mere stripling who had been scarred and branded for life, some say even deformed, by an attack made upon him in earliest infancy by his own unnatural father, the Sultan Ibrahim. This cruel maniac (whose only excuse was that he was not in possession of more than half his wits at the time) had been seized with a fit of ungovernable rage against the ladies of his harem, and in his fury had done his best to slay his ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... great ones, pitied the poor maniac, (as they called him,) and sent in quest of him to every direction, lest peradventure, he might be found starving in some cavern, or floating in the sea, or dashed in pieces at the ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... forward and endeavoured to prepare her for the awful deed which was about to be done upon her, and for the state into which she was about to enter, when she came to herself it was only to scream like a maniac, to curse the Duke as a butcher and tyrant, and to call upon Magny, ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... drank quantities of lemonade and broth, and felt that as the afternoon wore on, the heat in my limbs was subsiding. Towards sunset, the kind cook again appeared, to see how I was, and to inform me that the captain was raging like a maniac on deck, for a coasting vessel had brought him news that my former captain had sailed straight for Havana, and had there made all sorts of complaints with regard to the robbery that he had sustained. While he was speaking the captain himself rushed ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... of Bar seemed to madden Vidocq immediately. From the time the former entered the house, Vidocq cursed him with every vile oath his drunken lips could frame, and, when Bar attempted remonstrance and command, the infuriated maniac suddenly caught up a table knife, and plunged it in his opponent's side. Then with a yell Vidocq rushed from the house, leaving the door thrown back for the deadly cold to enter and complete his work. ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... his gaze on something that stood just above—something which the dusk half concealed, and by so doing made more impressive. It was the sculptured counterfeit of a human face, that of a man distraught with agony. The eyes stared wildly from their sockets, the hair struggled in maniac disorder, the forehead was wrung with torture, the cheeks sunken, the throat fearsomely wasted, and from the wide lips there seemed to be issuing a horrible cry. Above this hideous effigy was carved the legend: 'MIDDLESEX ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... continued to grow worse, until at last he was reduced to utter despair, tortured by sick headaches, and without the strength, as he said, to put one foot before the other, convinced every morning that he would spend the night at the Tulettes, a raving maniac. He grew thin; his face, under its crown of white hair—which he still cared for through a last remnant of vanity—acquired a look of suffering, of tragic beauty. And although he allowed himself to be waited on, he refused roughly ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... he solicited was not for himself but for various political refugees in whom he was interested. One day the professor happened to meet this wild-looking creature at our door, and inquired of my father who that maniac might be. "Oh, he is a Hungarian refugee; a good fellow, I believe. I have noticed something rather odd in his appearance, but I do not consider ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... the longer she engaged this maniac in conversation, the more hope there was of Sam coming back in time to save her, she ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... misfortune. My life was my own to make or mar after that; what I chose to do with it was my own concern. But here I do not live. I want the means to get away; to make a fresh start in different surroundings. Sooner or later I must go, or I shall become a raving maniac. You can help me in this, even as I can help you in the cause in which you are now spending and wasting a lot of money. Get mother to give me fifteen thousand dollars, not only as the price of my information, ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... must rend the cloud, though the latter be near Jove's throne, so the frenzied father, regardless, nay, forgetful, of the place, the time, the occasion, of himself and natural ties, assailed the scared Narcisse, clutching him by the throat with the strength of a maniac, and pushing him backwards against the balustrade, and holding him there transfixed, while, with eyes seething with wrath beneath the blanched, and big, umbrageous brows, and showing like a sudden opening of the infernal pit, he cried: "Demon, degenerate dog, where hast ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... at that. I thought it was between us, so I jerked off my big mittens to be ready; but the mules' turn was to come first, it seems. He didn't wait for anything, just simply went at them, like a maniac, like a demon. I won't tell you about it—it was too horribly brutal—or about what followed. I simply saw red. For the first time and the last time in my life, I hope, I fought a man—fought like a beast, tooth and nail. When it was over he ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... a prisoner escapes, in the country at least—unless he be a criminal maniac in for a serious offence, and therefore a real danger to society—we all honestly hope that they won't catch him, and we don't hide it. And, if put in a corner, most of us would help ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson
... this for three minutes, stopping to laugh like a maniac about every three words, before I can get a word in to tell him that I'm a delicate, high-strung organization myself, if you come right down to it, and I can't stand there in my nightgown listening to a string of nonsense. He chokes and ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... her children, that Sojourner had left New York, they were filled with wonder and alarm. Where could she have gone, and why had she left? were questions no one could answer satisfactorily. Now, their imaginations painted her as a wandering maniac-and again they feared she had been left to commit suicide; and many were the tears they shed at the loss ...
— The Narrative of Sojourner Truth • Sojourner Truth
... unlike the Milly of Tims's intimacy, far from exerting the unnatural strength of a maniac, passively permitted herself to be placed in the chair and listened to what Tims was saying with the puzzled intentness of a child or a foreigner, trying to understand. She laid her head back in its little cloud of amber hair, and looked up at Tims, who, frowning portentously, once ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... his feet. He forgot his crutches. He flung himself across the floor of the cave in three reckless bounds, flung himself on the barrier of logs and limbs, clawing it like a maniac, or a wild beast, tore his way through it, and stood in the snow on the platform, calling into the storm, shrieking, bellowing, out-shrieking and out-bellowing the storm, swaying dizzily in the wind, and clutching at the air before him in ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... clean and healthy crisp, she dries and frizzes and sticks hers out on end like certain savages in Africa, or lets it wander down her back like Madge Wildfire's, and thinks herself all the more beautiful the nearer she approaches in look to a maniac or a negress. With purity of taste she has lost also that far more precious purity and delicacy of perception which sometimes mean more than appears on the surface. What the demi-monde does in its frantic efforts to excite attention, she also ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... Encyclopaedia torn into a million million fragments by kittens and pasted together again by infants, so that all possible things are inextricably interfused, every one with every other; 't is a Bradshaw edited by a maniac, where the trains that start but don't arrive are not even distinguished from the trains that arrive but don't start. Wherever persons are conscious of the infinite complexities of things, they will be found cautious of creed and timid of assertion. You have probably ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... hero of this battle. "It's now or never," I thought, and saw scarlet, and went for my foe like a maniac. The ring was kept by Alfred and Charlie helped, oddly enough, by a couple of male Prendergasts, who so far forgot themselves as to take an interest in the proceedings. Madge and Mimsey ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... maniac," growled Trendon, feeling in his breast pocket. "The devil," he cried, bringing forth ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... watch; he looked at it with quick intensity, as if not hearing nor heeding her. Then, his calculating eyes raised, he fixed her long enough to exclaim with unsurpassable horror and contempt: "You raving maniac!" He turned away from her; he bounded down the avenue in the direction from which they had come, and, while she watched him, strode away, across the grass, toward the short ...
— The Marriages • Henry James
... the country, house by house, with the obstinacy and the patience of a maniac hunting for a needle ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... overpowered by shyness. She will not exchange a sentence with any of the elders, but in the general laugh she chuckles and shrieks like a young Cochin-Chinese chicken learning to crow; and I hear her squealing like a maniac while she is shrimping with the younger ones and Charley. I must except those two young ladies from the unconscious competition, for one has no manners at all, and the other affects those of a man; but ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... sometimes all day, sometimes both. . . . Heavens! If you could have seen the necks of bottles, distracting in their immense varieties of shape, peering out of the carriage pockets! If you could have witnessed the deep devotion of the post-boys, the wild attachment of the hostlers, the maniac glee of the waiters! If you could have followed us into the earthy old churches we visited, and into the strange caverns on the gloomy sea-shore, and down into the depths of mines, and up to the tops of giddy heights ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... had called building strikes, and some people said he had used dynamite upon uncompleted buildings, and made a joke of it. Anyhow, the business men of the city wanted to put him where he could no longer trouble them; and when some maniac unknown had flung a dynamite bomb into the path of the Preparedness parade, the big fellows of the city had decided that now was the opportunity they were seeking. Guffey, the man who had taken charge of Peter, was head of the secret service of the ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... said Sloane stolidly, "that 'cause you had some sort of indigestion that made you act like a maniac last night, you're never coming on ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... coin was flying from his hand through the air. The beggar, with a livid face and clinched cane, confronted the Congressman like a maniac. ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... stage is ablaze with torches, and an Italian Masque, such as our Marlowe dreamed of, fills the scene. But it is impossible to dower these fancies with even such life as in healthier, happier ruins phantasy may lend to imagination's figments. This theatre is like a maniac's skull, empty of all but unrealities and mockeries of things that are. The ghosts we raise here could never have been living men and women: questi sciaurati non fur mai vivi. So clinging is ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... a man to. If the enthusiasm and mad exaltation of Don Quixote could have been combined with a little of the vulgar self-love of Sancho, one extreme might have corrected the other, and we might have had a wise gentleman instead of a maniac ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... bicycle scorcher who tears past beautiful bits of landscape, his eyes fixed on the dusty path spurned by his whirring wheel, or like the goggled maniac who steers an automobile, I now find that I have played hundreds of times over this course without once ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... dimly suspected, the horrible fact with which Sir John Burney's words had made her acquainted; namely, that Mr. Sleuth was victim of no temporary aberration, but that he was, and had been for years, a madman, a homicidal maniac. ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... whole Anarchist doctrine founders upon its own logic. If any maniac may, because he "wants" to, kill as many men as he likes, society, composed of an immense number of individuals, may certainly bring him to his senses, not because it is its caprice, but because it is its duty, because such is the conditio sine qua ...
— Anarchism and Socialism • George Plechanoff
... never moved. Then Peter sprang to him and shook him. And slowly, yawning and stretching, the man awoke. But the moment he WAS awake he leapt to his feet, put his hands to his head "like a mad maniac," as Phyllis said ...
— The Railway Children • E. Nesbit
... himself had lost his friend, Sir Alexander Boswell, in a duel; on other occasions this institution had brought discomfort into his life, and though he was ready to fight General Gourgaud with Napoleon's pistols, he cannot have approved of the practices of the MacTurks and Bingo Binkses. A maniac, as his correspondence shows, challenged Sir Walter, insisting that he was pointed at and ridiculed in the character of MacTurk. (Abbotsford MSS.) It is interesting to have the picture of contemporary manners from Scott's hand—Meg ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... scene there was a melancholy before which Mrs. Vervain fell fitfully silent. Now and then Ferris briefly spoke, calling Miss Vervain's notice to this or that, and she briefly responded. As they passed the mad-house of San Servolo, a maniac standing at an open window took his black velvet skull-cap from his white hair, bowed low three times, and kissed his hand to the ladies. The Lido in front of them stretched a brown strip of sand with white villages shining out of it; ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... thet las' book we read, 'The Angel Maniac's Revenge,' there was a sayin' that fate knocks wunst on ev'ry man's door. Well, fate's knockin' ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Millville • Edith Van Dyne
... my horse beside him, a blood-curdling chorus of strange barking screams, as from the throats of maniac women, rose at the farther side of the ravine, drowning the shouts of our men, the ping-g-g of the whistling bullets, and even the sharp crack of the muskets. It was the Indian war-whoop! A swarm of savages were leaping from the bush in all directions, and falling upon our men as they stood jammed ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... angular little face, those soft blue eyes, which could flash with such fire, such stern energy, that little body still shaking with indignation and anger—and it all seemed to him more and more strange, almost impossible. "She is a religious maniac!" he repeated to himself. ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... of vows that were perhaps still echoing in the courts of heaven. Such spectacles of human perfidy are the real Medusas that Gorgonize trusting, tender, throbbing hearts, and in view of this one I laughed aloud,—laughed so unnaturally that it was no marvel I was called a maniac. At sight of my desperate white face Edith shrieked and fainted, and Maurice blanched and stammered and cowered. Without a word of comment or recrimination I silently passed on to my own room, where Elsie was waiting to clothe me in my travelling-suit. In three hours the steamer ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... By such examples warned, the rustic crew Abandoned in the fields pick, scythe, and plough, And to the roof of house and temple flew, (For ill secure was elm or willow's bough,) From hence the maniac's horrid rage they view; Who, dealing kick, and bite, and scratch, and blow, Horses and oxen slew, his helpless prey; And well the courser ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... associating as he did Matilda's visit to the Cottage at Detroit, on the memorable night when he had unconsciously saved the life of Colonel Forrester, with the fact of her having previously knelt and prayed upon the grave that was known to cover the ashes of the unhappy maniac, Ellen Halloway, he felt a shuddering conviction that she was in some way connected with that wretched woman. In the intenseness of his new desire to satisfy his doubts—a desire which in itself partook of the character of the fatality by which he was beset—he overcame the repugnance he had ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... seems to show this, that the unfortunate Bakura was a drunkard or a maniac, and, above all, a man of foreign blood. If a genuine Egyptian in his senses were to go without pay for a year, and be clubbed twice as much as this man, would he dare to break into the palace of the nomarch and appeal to thee with ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... meningeal, (covering) blood and lymph vessels, presenting characteristic symptoms, with progressive course and fatal termination usually within three years." There are three stages:—1. The period of incubation (the prodromal stage). 2. A stage of pronounced mono-maniac activity with symptoms of paralysis. 3. Stage of extreme enfeeblement with diminution and final loss of power. These stages run into each other. First stage in a typical case:—There are tremblings and slight trouble in speech and expression of the face. The mind has exalted ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... What have you done to my elderly heart? Of all the ladies of paper and ink I count you the paragon, call you the pink. The word of your brother depicts you in part: 'You raving maniac!' Adela Chart; But in all the asylums that cumber the ground, So delightful a maniac was ne'er ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of their houses along the thickly settled streets awe-struck and wondering. No one knew the man, and some thought he was a maniac and laughed. On and on, at a deadly pace, he rode, and shrilly rang out his awful cry. In a few moments, however, there came a cloud of ruin down the broad streets, down the narrow alleys, grinding, twisting, hurling, overturning, crashing—annihilating ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... Pandemonium reigned on the seats at the goal post end of the course. Shouts of "Carlisle! Carlisle!" rose up through the din of megaphones and screech of whistles from the launches. Paul looked at Walter. The boy had risen, flung his hat up anywhere and was waving his arms like a maniac, screaming out the name of Carlisle, the crack stroke of Burrton. And then, without a second's warning, the big stroke, the hero of the Burrton crew, whose name was on a thousand tongues, suddenly bent forward and collapsed ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... on all sides that Ippolita's beauty had never been so disastrous, her eyes so starry bright, her colour so fire-flushed. Messer Alessandro, who loved her like a maniac, went shivering out alone into the moonlit garden to expostulate with Nature. "Thou hast formed, most cruel Mother," cried he, "an image of thy fatal self, whose eyes are sharp swords, and her breath poison of ineffable sweetness; whose ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... spoken, when again there came that fearful yell, sounding like what I could conceive to be the horrible laughter of a maniac. ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston
... dire, Since Colin is gone? Who'll fearlessly brave the maniac wave, Thoughtless of self, human life to save, Unmoved by the storm-fiend's ire? Who, Shadrach-like, will walk through fire, Since Colin is gone? Or hang his life on so frail a breath That there's but a step 'twixt life and death? For Courage is not the heritage Of the nobly born; and many ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... whiskey. Napoleon Bonaparte, in the person of a heroic tailor, was singing "Bob and Joan;" and the Archbishop of Dublin said he would pledge his mitre for a good cigar and a pot of porter. Sometimes a frightful yell would-reach their ears; then a furious set of howlings, followed again by peals of maniac laughter, as before. Altogether, the stranger was glad to withdraw, which he did, in order to ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... Maria had a small sum every week for her pocket-money, and a large part of it went to Josephine in the shape of chocolates, of which she was inordinately fond; in fact, Josephine, who came of the poor whites, like Gladys Mann, might have been said to be a chocolate maniac. Maria used to arrange with Josephine to meet her on a certain corner on Saturdays, and there the transfer was made: Josephine became the possessor of half a pound of chocolates, and Maria of the baby. Josephine had sworn almost a solemn oath to never ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Duke of Wellington had done wrong. Charles Greville, in commenting on {83} the duel, says that "everybody, of course, sees the matter in a different light; all blame Lord Winchilsea, but they are divided as to whether the Duke ought to have fought or not." "Lord Winchilsea is such a maniac, and has so lost his head, that everybody imagined the Duke would treat what he said with silent contempt." Greville utterly condemns Lord Winchilsea for having made the attack on the Duke, and for not having sent ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... is Wachner—only plays on a system," whispered Anna. "He is in fact what I call a System Maniac. That is why he keeps noting down the turns in his little book. That sort of gambler ought never to leave Monte Carlo. It is only at Monte Carlo—that is to say, at Roulette—that such a man ever gets a real chance of winning anything. I should have expected them to belong to the ...
— The Chink in the Armour • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... loungers there, who were coming down to the Creek to see what mischief had been done during the night, aroused him. He glanced upon his enemy, who pale and trembling, stood gazing on the wreck that he had made. Revenge at last was in his hands—not a moment was to be lost—with the yell of a maniac he sprang upon the powerless and conscious-stricken man—seized him in his arms rushed to the river—and ere any could interpose, both had found a grave where but a few minutes before the bodies of Mary ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... died a little while ago. My cruelty to your father made her, for twenty long years, a maniac. But before her death, all delusion was swept away, and she bade me love and forgive our grandson—that she might tell your father and mother, when she met them in heaven, that at last all was well here below. I promised her, and since then ...
— The Fatal Glove • Clara Augusta Jones Trask
... a far point in the dark background. It was the scalp yell, the most terrible of all Indian cries, long, high-pitched, and quavering, having in it something of the barking howl of the wolf and the fiendish shriek of a murderous maniac. The warriors instantly took it up, and gave it back in a ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler
... living creature a hint of his intention, to fly off at a tangent and go to the Indian country and become a missionary to those red devils, and be massacred for his pains—it was the work of a raving maniac. But what drove him mad? Surely it was not his high elevation that turned his head, for if it had been, his madness would never have taken this particular direction of flying from his honors. No! it is as I have always suspected. He heard, in some way, of the ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... my child and there's no wrong!" The sardonic laugh that followed was that of a raging maniac. "You've fooled me, you fiend! ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... muscle of my body, and for the space of two minutes remained in a stupor in the same attitude—immovable, rooted, frozen to the spot where I stood. At length recovering at once my senses and power of motion, I bounded like a maniac from the stage, pursued by the convulsive roars of the spectators, and upsetting in my retreat the unlucky Verasawmy, who rolled down to the footlights, doubled up, and in a paroxysm of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 18, 1841 • Various
... near a maniac as a man can be and still go about his business. There'll be a lot of trouble come from this. Hadn't you better advise your folks to call it off? They haven't the least idea, I imagine, what a proposition ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... intervals his delusions were always shaped by the bitterest experiences of his life. Sometimes he fancied that the Americans were pursuing him, or that they were carrying off Ramona, and he was pursuing them. At such times he would run with maniac swiftness for hours, till he fell exhausted on the ground, and slowly regained true consciousness by exhaustion. At other times he believed he owned vast flocks and herds; would enter any enclosure he saw, where there were ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... started to build this castle," said Alec, drily. "They felt dead sure after it happened; for hold your breath now, fellows, because to be honest with you there was a terrible tragedy, and after the poor young wife was buried the judge lived as much as ten years in an asylum. He had become a maniac, you see, from jealousy of his ...
— The Boy Scouts with the Motion Picture Players • Robert Shaler
... San Antonio, until their neutrality shall be established, and pending the further pleasure of the Council. And it is further decreed and declared that one Capitano Bunker, formerly of the Excelsior, but now a maniac and lunatic—being irresponsible and visited of God, shall be exempted from the ordinances of this decree until his reason shall be restored; and during that interval subjected to the ordinary remedial and beneficent restraint ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... maniac on the subject of old prints," he explained. "I never see a pile without a wild longing to examine them. And, by Jove, there are some good things here. Unless I am greatly mistaken—here, Steel, pull up the blinds! ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... this man's voice produced a most singular effect upon Edward. The moment before, his actions had been those of a raving maniac; but, when the words struck his ear, he paused, put his hand to his forehead, seemed to recollect himself, and finally advanced with a firm and steady step. His countenance was dark and angry, but ...
— Fanshawe • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... lives to be stale unless it is also serious. Henry was popular in his first days, and even foreign contemporaries give us quite a glorious picture of a young prince of the Renascence, radiant with all the new accomplishments. In his last days he was something very like a maniac; he no longer inspired love, and even when he inspired fear, it was rather the fear of a mad dog than of a watch-dog. In this change doubtless the inconsistency and even ignominy of his Bluebeard ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... if it were now," continued the maniac, "although years have rolled away. Never will it be effaced from my recollection while this heart, broken as it is, continues to beat, or this brain may be permitted to burn. The sun had just disappeared behind the rugged summits of ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... said to one another as they sought their houses: "What a powerful witch she must be, to calm down that maniac with one word." While others replied, "But he is possessed with a devil; and she does it because her ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... and still the loved one did not return, when every effort to find her had been made in vain, then, the dread certainty settled down upon her soul that her child was lost to her forever. Hope, gave place to despair, and she became, from that time, a raving maniac. At length death came to her relief, and her husband ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... meaning of the word. Hatchments! To commemorate that sniveling tramp and his, fraternal duplicate. And he is going to send me the remains. The late Claimant was a fool, but plainly this new one's a maniac. What a name! Mulberry Sellers—there's music for you, Simon Lathers—Mulberry Sellers—Mulberry Sellers—Simon Lathers. Sounds like machinery working and churning. Simon ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... his pocket, he actually began to measure it! Miss Du Page saw no more. Hurriedly closing her door, she locked and bolted it, firmly convinced that Gabriel Lane was harboring in the guise of Uncle Sylvester a somnambulist, a maniac, or an impostor. ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... presence of Big and Little Bonsa and all the people. His eye fell upon the Mungana, who had also been destined to play a prominent part in that ceremony. At once he saw that there was something wrong with the man. A curious change had come over his emaciated face. It was working like that of a maniac. Foam appeared upon his dyed lips, his haunted eyes rolled, his thin hands gripped the side of the canoe and he began to sing, or rather howl like a dog baying at the stars. Jeekie hit him on the head and bade him be ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... Hollow, Milk-sick Hollow, Little Fiery Gizzard Creek, Falling Water Cove, Maniac's Hell, Lost Creek Cove, Jump Off Point, Rainbow Hollow, Slaughterpen Hollow—they come back to me in picturesque array, and with them come back the memories of the gray cabins, the clear bright water on the race, the silent forests, the billows of laurel, ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... "youth but gave promise of the man," Mr. B., at the present time, standing without a peer in his peculiar line of declamation and oratory. In 1845, he traveled with Professor De Bonneville, giving his wonderful rendition of "The Maniac," so as to attract the attention of ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... hard at me since she was born; but maybe it was something else besides. They say there are no miracles in these days, but we don't know everything yet. I ran in at the farm, before them all, dripping, looking like a maniac, I don't doubt. I caught up the child out of the cradle, and wrapped it in the shawl I'd brought, and ran off again before they'd got their eyes shut from staring at me as if I was a spirit of evil. How my ...
— Melody - The Story of a Child • Laura E. Richards
... a blood-curdling laugh, and the horrible truth burst upon the listener's dazed senses. She was alone with a maniac. All the stories she had ever read rushed to her memory, and the only clear idea she had was the conviction that she must, if possible, humor his vagaries till help came. She was a petted, spoiled ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... next door to a really entertaining miracle might happen to me before I went to amuse the worms. To see that red-haired maniac waving a great sword, and making speeches to his incomparable followers, would have been a glimpse of that Land of Youth from which the Fates shut us out. I had planned some quite delightful things. A Congress of Knightsbridge with a treaty, and myself in the chair, and perhaps a Roman triumph, with ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... the dynamite simply went to the bottom, the force of the shock not being sufficient to explode it. When Jerry comprehended what had happened, however, he was changed instantly from a mild, gentle-appearing old man into a raging maniac. He ran forward, his face terrible to see, and leaping into the crowd of Kanakas began striking right ...
— The Pirate Shark • Elliott Whitney
... whether she had Van Ruyne's emeralds or not I saw no particular mystery in the Valenka girl's disappearance: she had probably had some one outside who had taken her clear away in a motor car. I said so, more because Dudley was glaring at Macartney like a maniac than anything else. And Dudley caught me up short. "I won't have either of you say one more word about Valenka in my house. She was as good as she was pretty; and if some one helped ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... felt at seeing this child of sorrow relieved from her sufferings, and restored to liberty. I had seen this young and comely looking woman, who was endowed with more than common good sense, driven to the depths of despair by the intensity of her sufferings. I had seen her a raving maniac. Now, I saw her 'sitting and clothed in her right mind.' I was a thousand times more than compensated for all the pains I had taken. I had sympathized deeply with her sufferings, and I now ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... concertinas in different parts of the hall, as well as upstairs, was heard, "It's a long way to Tipperary." Tommy began to behave like a maniac. He rushed about more wildly than before. He stopped his ears. He tried to hide. Then he began ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 18, 1914 • Various
... for Cripp. The scent was there, and the warped foreleg. Cripp did not recognize his friend. His mind was clouded and the light of insanity gleamed in his sunken eyes. Breed whirled and fled, and a weird cry sounded behind him,—the eerie howl of a maniac. ...
— The Yellow Horde • Hal G. Evarts
... As the maniac finished the last words, before they could be aware of his intention, he made a spring from the deck over the bulwark, and disappeared under the wave. The boatswain, who had been diverted from his fanatical attempt by the unexpected attack of Price, more than by the ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... evident, and, I think, intentional contrast between the two scenes, of the Transfiguration, and of this healing of the maniac boy. And in nothing is the contrast more marked than in the demeanour of these enfeebled and unbelieving Apostles, as contrasted with the rapture of devotion of the other three, and with the lowly submission ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... Couthon! He is one, Who flies from silent solitary anguish, Seeking forgetful peace amid the jar Of elements. The howl of maniac uproar Lulls to sad sleep the memory of himself. A calm is fatal to him—then he feels The dire upboilings of the storm within him. A tiger mad with inward wounds!—I dread The fierce and ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... in the Catheron blood—I knew that from the first. His father lived and died a maniac. The father's fate is the son's. It has lain dormant for three-and-twenty years, to break out on his wedding-day. Lady Helena, am ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... we reply. For how can we even keep company with Khalid, who has become such a maniac on flounces? And was this fantastic, phantasmagoric rhapsody all inspired by Najma's simple remark on his hair? Fruitful is thy ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... that perfume is the art of arts?" she demanded. He rushed from the room and was shaking the grilled gate in the hallway like a caged maniac, when with a pitying smile she released him. He reached the ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... thrilling; and this speed was not the product of blind insensate agencies, that had no sympathy to give, but was incarnated in the fiery eyeballs of the noblest amongst brutes, in his dilated nostril, spasmodic muscles, and thunder- beating hoofs. The sensibility of the horse, uttering itself in the maniac light of his eye, might be the last vibration of such a movement; the glory of Salamanca might be the first. But the intervening links that connected them, that spread the earthquake of battle into the eyeballs of the horse, were the heart of man and its electric ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... my sickly gaze upon him and saw that he was deadly pale, and that the perspiration stood out in great drops upon his forehead. The explanation was plain enough—he took me for a maniac. I would have protested and moved the previous question, but taking a small phial from his pocket he broke off the head and threw the contents in my face. Ten seconds later I was totally oblivious, and upon recovering found myself in this place, where such strange things are going ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 33, November 12, 1870 • Various
... remind him how poor a creature he had become. And now, after a night of wakefulness and delirium, Brian, with his brain still wild and disordered, perhaps, had taken the boy out with him on some indefinite excursion—alone—the helpless child in the power of a maniac! ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... beacon blazing on a height Warms o'er his piety by night.) The Moslem deprecates the deed, Cuts off the head that holds the creed, Then reverently goes to grass, Muttering thanks to Balaam's Ass For faith and learning to refute Idolatry so dissolute! But should a maniac dash past, With straws in beard and hands upcast, To him (through whom, whene'er inclined To preach a bit to Madmankind, The Holy Prophet speaks his mind) Our True Believer lifts his eyes Devoutly ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... put into his hands the most sentimental exotics of the publishing firms. There was the 'Elegant Maniac; or, the Snuff-coloured Rose and the Field of Silver,' a beautiful romance. Then there was the 'Sentimental Footpad; or, Honour among Thieves.' And 'Syngenesia,' the last of the melancholies; with the 'Knight of the Snorting Palfrey; or, the Silken ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... as over rocks and through scrub and thorns we ran and scrambled, gaining upon the fugitive. When he was but fifty yards ahead, he paused and turned, and the moonlight gleamed upon his gilded teeth as he laughed at us in maniac mockery. Then, even as we sprang towards him, a grey circle surged round him, and together they came towards us. For a time we were hard set to beat them off. When our Winchesters were empty a ring of dead lay around us, and then the moon was blotted ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... was still alive, but a maniac; it was heartbreaking to hear his broken, feeble cries for his brother, but he lay quiet after a bit, and died in half an hour, though we chafed his feet and poured rum into his mouth, and did what men in our miserable plight could for a fellow-sufferer. ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... be introduced as a disaster?" asked Kew, with a sigh of relief. "Is she a maniac, or a suffragette, or a Mormon, or just some one who has never read any of ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... threat was unnecessary, for Henry and his men were close at hand; and before the natives could make up their minds what to do, the whole band came pouring over the hill, with Jo Bumpus far ahead of the rest, leaping and howling like a maniac with excitement. ...
— Gascoyne, the Sandal-Wood Trader • R.M. Ballantyne |
