"Spree" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a woodland cabin down in the Pennyrile region of Kentucky, with a wife he adored and two or three small children, he was so carried away by an unexpected windfall that he lingered overlong in the nearby village, dispensing a royal hospitality; in point of fact, he "got on a spree." Two or three days passed before he regained possession of himself. When at last he reached home, he found his wife ill in bed and the children nearly starved for lack of food. He said never a word, ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... And the men don't like it. I often heard Dick and Humphrey apologising to their friends for asking them to dance with me. You know the sort of thing, Muriel: 'You might take a turn with my little sister, old man, if you've nobody better. She's up here on the spree and she don't ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... that during the previous winter the village was full, and when he stopped a night there, en route from Winnipeg, some of the Indians took his dog-train over to an opposite point for a fiddler who lived there, and all spent the night in a grand "spree" of dancing and drinking. But in the morning only the shattered remains of his toboggan and dogs were to be found, the half-starved native animals having devoured provisions and robes, and gnawed the toboggan to pieces, so that he had to make the best of his way home on foot—a ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... regular spree to-day," observed the cook, handing a bottle to Tantaine; "but yesterday there was not much of a jollification here, for just as I was setting about getting the dinner two fellows came in and asked ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... o'clock the members of the court met to say good-by, and drink a dozen bottles of Scotch ale at General Ammen's expense. This was quite a spree for the General, and quite his own spree. It was a big thing, equal almost to the battle of "Shealoh." They were pint bottles, and the General would persist in acting upon the theory that one bottle would fill all our glasses. Seeing the glasses empty he would call for another bottle, and say to ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... the Lion had to be taken into confidence; that could not be avoided. He, Sebright, answered for their discretion while sober, anyhow; and he promised me that no leave or money would be given in Havana, for fear they should get on a spree, and let out something in the grogshops on shore. We all knew what a sailor-man was after a glass or two. So that was settled. Now, as to our rejoining the Lion. This, of necessity, must be left to me. Counting from the time we parted from her to land on the coast, ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... dinner, or to one of the gardens where there was music and dancing and dining. This was known as "taking mother out." Hannah Winter didn't enjoy these affairs as much, perhaps, as she should have. She much preferred a mild spree with one of her own cronies. Ed was very careful of her at street crossings and going down steps, and joggled her elbow a good deal. This irked her, though she tried not to show it. She preferred a matinee, or a good picture or a concert with Sarah, ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... said the soldier, taking it. "My name's Ned Travers, and, barring cells for a spree now and again, there's nothing ...
— Captains All and Others • W.W. Jacobs
... expec to here from you if the alferes has killed you or you him i dont want anuther day to pass befour that broot has his punishment if that tim passes an you havent challenjed him ill tel don santiago you was never segretary nor joked with canobas nor went on a spree with the general don arseno martinez ill tel clarita its all a humbug an ill not give you a sent more if you challenje him i promis all you want so lets see you challenje him i warn you there must be no excuses nor delays ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... instructions at Plymouth dated 25th June. They enjoined my immediate departure for the island of Madeira. To ship wine there, and thence to proceed to the Cape of Good Hope, where I was to let the crew have a spree on shore, and obtain the provisions and other stores I needed. To advance southwards and endeavour to find Circumcision Cape, which was said to have been discovered by M. Bouvet, in the 54 degrees southern parallel, and about 11 ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne
... year (guessed to be) 1240, one Ascanier Markgraf "fortifies Berlin;" that is, first makes Berlin a German BURG and inhabited outpost in those parts:—the very name, some think, means "Little Rampart" (WEHRlin), built there, on the banks of the Spree, against the Wends, and peopled with Dutch; of which latter fact, it seems, the old dialect of the place yields traces. [Nicolai, Beschreibung der Koniglichen Residenzstadte Berlin und Potsdam (Berlin, 1786), i. pp. 16, 17 of "Einleitung." Nicolai rejects the WEHRLIN ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol, II. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Of Brandenburg And The Hohenzollerns—928-1417 • Thomas Carlyle
... way has been found to cure them, because they have no will to be cured. And the beginnings of the habit are so often accidental and trivial—curiosity, or bravado, or carelessness on the part of a practitioner. A Harvard college student, of good family, for instance, was on a spree in Boston, with some friends—they went to an opium joint and thought it would be fun to try the sensation. This particular boy remained in the den twenty-four hours, under the influence. That was the beginning—and the end. He went there again—he got himself a lay-out—and is now a hopeless wreck ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... loan Of twenty odd per cent. and more a year? Oh, John! I pray thee that within thy heart The lesson that 'Police Court' teaches thee, That other Jones' rob hen-roosts, and take part In many a rousing fight and drunken spree, May have its influence; and that thou wilt start And have thy name changed, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... likely off on a spree." The old lady spoke bitterly now. "Everybody was kind to my Annie but him, and it was a word from him that would have cheered her the most. Dr. Mayo came and sat beside her just an hour before she died, and says he, 'You still have a chance, Mrs. Johnston,' but Annie just thanked him again ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung
... to whom this kind of show was like an opera or a ball. There were two or three shame-faced believers of the better class, who scoffed a little but trembled in secret, and a few avowed skeptics, young clerks on a mild spree, ready for fun if any should ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... another the other, while the remaining two attended to the upper part of his body. Thus they carried him, followed by an admiring crowd, and watched by other envious drunkards who had to content themselves with a single officer when they went on a similar spree. Sometimes Joe managed to place a kick where it would do the most good against the stomach of a policeman, and when the officer rolled over there was for a few moments a renewal of the fight, silent on the part of the men and vociferous on the part of the drunkard, who had a fine ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... hot night, Wayland, my boy; an' hot for more reasons than one. Th' tin horns an' the plugs an' the toots had come up t' our construction camp, an' of a Monday mornin' after Sunday's spree, y' cud count fifty dead navvies, Chinks an' Japs an' dagoes, washed down th' river after gamblers' fights an' chucked up in the sands o' Kickin' Horse! Well, a lot o' big fellows o' th' railway company had come thro' that day on the first train. ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... his cot. The brief spasm of hope had passed. What good would it do him if Bland carried passengers from morning until night, every day of the six? Bland couldn't save a cent. The more he made, the more he would spend. He would simply go on a spree and perhaps wreck the plane before Johnny was free to ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... quick-witted. He couldn't shoot, but he could yell. Brunner, however was ready for that. He began to bawl a reveler's song, popular with cowboys on a spree, and old man Thomas joined him. From above, it sounded as if a drunken riot had broken out, in which the outpost's warning shout became only a meaningless discord. The babel brought the four sleeping men out of their blankets. They listened a moment, then ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... district between the Spree, the Oder and the Havel, which was added to the mark of Brandenburg during the 13th century. In the 15th century it was divided into upper and lower Barnim, and these names are now borne by two circles (Kreise) in ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... request and owing to Palmer's condition, Alfred decided to keep the matter quiet for the present. Ending the interview with Jake, he returned the paper to the German with the advice that, when Palmer got off his spree, to take the matter up, have the contract ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... people, and as often happens (especially aboard ship) when a bad example is shown by the master, the crew and officers drift into irregularities, and all discipline is destroyed. This was exactly what occurred aboard the Hebe. The master was known to be on the spree, so the mate, Munroe, thought he would have a day off, and took as a drinking chum, Ralph, the half-marrow; and, in order that they might not be disturbed, they travelled to a snapshop in the country, some miles away from the town. Instead of one day, two were ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... guests, who paid for their own. Inside, they drank the health of the married couple; but the dozen of beer barely wet their throats. Jonah and Chook went to the "Woolpack" with jugs, and the company settled down to the spree. At intervals the men offered to shout for a few friends, and, borrowing a dead marine from the heap of empty bottles, shuffled off to the hotel to get it filled. The noise grew to an uproar—a babel of tongues, sudden explosions of laughter, and ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... attacked, and on the 16th April, carried Landsberg, when he was apprised of the danger of Magdeburg. He resolved immediately to march to the relief of that town; and he moved with all his cavalry, and ten regiments of infantry towards the Spree. But the position which he held in Germany, made it necessary that he should not move forward without securing his rear. In traversing a country where he was surrounded by suspicious friends and dangerous enemies, and where a single premature movement might cut off ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... father's. She was only moving to let her pew-fellows pass out, and was waiting for him to come for her, as he did in a few moments, and he too was all pleasure and cordiality. He told us when we were outside that he had come up to preach, and 'had brought Miss Anne up for a spree.' They were at a hotel, Mrs. Fordyce was at home, and the Lesters were not in town this season—a matter of rejoicing to us. Could we not come home and dine with them at once? We were too much afraid of disappointing Gooch to ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to see you. It seems like a week of Sundays. The mater got a notion she wanted me to come up to Bar Harbor and bring down the yacht. I brought three fellows with me. Some spree! But we're good little boys. The captain struck. Waiting for another. Won't round up at your place for another week. I'm yours and don't forget it. It seems like a week of Sundays. Mater popped the news she's going to open up old Grassmere pretty soon. Then it will be like a week of holidays for ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... thought him his sweetest self, brotherly, good, unsuspicious, and unaffected. He complimented her on her appearance; he had a kind word for Harry Redding, for the baby; he told Norma that he and his mother had gone to Portland by water a few weeks before and had a great spree. Norma, tired and excited, loved him for his very indifference to her affairs and her mood, for the simplicity with which he showed her the book he was reading, and the amusement he found all along the dry and dusty and dirty street. Everything was interesting to Wolf, ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... young gent out for a spree," he said. "You don't count. You wonder at me," he continued, "being able to tell the time by the skies. But I dare say there's one, at any rate, of you who can find a train in that thing they ...
— The Slowcoach • E. V. Lucas
... on a thundering sea, When all but the stars are blind — A desperate race from Eternity With a gale-and-a-half behind. A jovial spree in the cabin at night, A song on the rolling deck, A lark ashore with the ships in sight, Till — a wreck goes down ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... whole proceeding, Would have laughed but for good breeding. "Best join me," he cried, "Old Chappie! IBSEN read, be free, and happy! Who'll buy your love-knots? Who'll buy your love-knots? Have a spree—all shackles scorning, Come! We won't go home ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 2, 1891 • Various
... and my servant have been separated in a scuffle with some drunken Germans; it's only a tipsy spree, and whether I have got scratched, or whether in collaring one of these fellows I have drawn some of his blood, it all arises from the row. I don't think I am hurt a bit." So saying, he pretended to feel all ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... BARRING-OUT SPREE. At Princeton College, when the students find the North College clear of Tutors, which is about once a year, they bar up the entrance, get access to the bell, and ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... for Mister Bluebeard, I'm sorry to cause him pain; But a terrible spree there's sure to be When he comes ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... stages; though they used the railway, of course, they did so only for a few hours a day, and got out and remained at places of interest. Richard was very amenable, and indeed showed no desire for dissipation; his one weakness—that of having a "spree"—had no opportunity of being gratified; and Maitland wrote home the most gratifying letters, not only respecting the behaviour of his charge, but of the improvement in his health. As they drew nearer to Italy, Richard observed one day that he should spend a day ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... when unaided by the constant flow of liquor with which a popular bushman is deluged—a deluge hard to resist in a country where to refuse a drink amounts to an insult. A plan recommended by some is to "please 'em all by one jolly good spree, and then knock off and drink with nobody." A man only gives offence who discriminates ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... But the girls were painters; there was nothing to be done; and Barbizon, when I last saw it and for the time at least, was practically ceded to the fair invader. Paterfamilias, on the other hand, the common tourist, the holiday shopman, and the cheap young gentleman upon the spree, he hounded from his villages with ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Long (beside Woman's) burning dim, Has now gone down in dark? Ha! He'd kick up the greatest shine (If he could kick) at—CRINOLINE. Were he recalled to breath, I'll have one last man-mocking spree By donning hooped skirts. Victory! This takes all sting ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, February 11, 1893 • Various
... midshipman before. It will be of great service to you, so pay attention; it will please the captain if the master gives a good report of you. Who knows but you may be sent away in a prize, and I sent with you to take care of you? Wouldn't that be a capital spree?" ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... name's Fishy-Winkle—I live in the sea, To-day I played truant from school, for a spree; But, oh! how I wish that I never had come, For the tide has gone out and I ...
— Fishy-Winkle • Jean C. Archer
... environment of his new home, did not wean him from it. He had not been long in our house before he took to absenting himself for days and nights at a time, returning ragged and fagged out, as if from a long spree. We found out, by accident, that he spent those vacations in a low saloon a mile up the plank road, which he had probably located on one of his excursions through the country to extend his doctrine of evolution. It was the conductor on the horse-car that ran past the saloon who told me of ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... why did he choose a spree as a relief from his particular bunch of ghosts? Trading one misery for another was all you could call it. Doing exactly the things that Marie's mother had predicted he would do, committing the very sins that Marie was always a little afraid he would commit—there must be some ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... of course, and then, when the threatened business uprising against financial control had been crushed, a planet-wide sentimental spree over the revival of the monarchy and the marriage of the beautiful and popular princess. As prince consort, Scar would then find it a simple matter to maneuver himself into position as ...
— The Martian Cabal • Roman Frederick Starzl
... realised that there were nothing but Chinese inns in the place, and therefore it would be a good opportunity to open a hotel for foreigners. Numbers of foreigners would soon be arriving, thanks to Rivers' efforts, and as he was now out of employment (having gone on a prolonged spree to celebrate his success and been discharged in consequence), there still remained an opportunity for helping foreigners in another way. Personally, he would have preferred to open a gambling house, but the risks were too great. At that time ...
— Civilization - Tales of the Orient • Ellen Newbold La Motte
... very honourable man in not wanting any of us to come and hear him if we were all on-end for a jaunt or spree, or to bring the babies to be christened if they were inclined to squalling. There's good in a man's not putting a parish to ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... had struck it rich at the last place we had been at, and we agreed, instead of spending our money in a spree or at the monte tables, we would fit out an expedition and try it. Now I believe that attack was made on me to try and get that piece of paper. The chap who bolted may like enough have hid himself and watched us, and may have seen us ...
— The Golden Canyon - Contents: The Golden Canyon; The Stone Chest • G. A. Henty
... have jailed an Englishman—me, f'rinstance. One little spree, an' they'd put me in the Fort! One li'l indishcresshion an' they'd jug me for shix months! Him they let go wi' a admonisshion! It's 'nother case o' Barabbas, an' a great shame, but you can't change the English. They're ingcorridgible! Brown o' Lumbwa's my name," he added ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... white man of Richland county became quite a friend to Mr. Black, the slave hunter; this apparent friendship soon led Mr. Black to tell the secret, which speedily brought him to trial. While he and his pretended friend were on a drinking spree, in the midst of the merriment,—of course the conversation was how to control negroes, as that was the principal topic of the poor white men South, in the ...
— My Life In The South • Jacob Stroyer
... was in an awful case; if he had been already shot, he could not have looked more clay and corpse-like; so I took up a douce earnest confabulation, while the stramash was drawing to a bloody conclusion, with Mr Harry Molasses, the fourth in the spree, who was standing behind Bloatsheet with a large mahogany box under his arm, something in shape like that of a licensed packman, ganging about from house to house, through the country-side, selling toys and trinkets; or niffering plaited ear-rings, and suchlike, with young ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - tailor in Dalkeith • D. M. Moir
... two pounds to the winner and a pound note to Young William who, crumpling his money in his palm, said, "Oysters for supper and a bottle of fizz—there'll be no end of a spree." ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... a wood fire was kindled in the corner near my bed, and we all sat round on the mud floor—stools there were none—to tell yarns. My confederates were out for a spree. We smoked and drank tea and yarned. Suddenly a stick would be thrust over my shoulder to the fire: it was merely a man's pipe going to the fire for a light. Chinese never use matches; it is a waste when ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... alliance with the Emperor of Russia, Napoleon recalled his legions from the banks of the Niemen, the Spree, the Elbe, and the Danube, in order to reduce Spain. Placing himself at the head of them, he crossed the Pyrenees early in November, and the battles of Burgos, Espinosa, and Tudela, fought under his auspices, once more placed his brother Joseph on the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... when he was sober; but a day of industry was sure to be followed by a spree. He could procure a few drinks at the saloons; but as soon as he began to be tipsy, even the saloon keepers refused to furnish him more, for the public sentiment of the place fiercely condemned them. The cooper had worked a day ...
— Little Bobtail - or The Wreck of the Penobscot. • Oliver Optic
... child, you'd rather see A bit of temper, off and on, A greedy grab, a silly spree— And then a brave thing said or done Than hear your boy whine all day long About the things he musn't do: Just doing nothing, right or wrong: And God may feel the ...
— The Rainbow and the Rose • E. Nesbit
... drinked up my lastest bottle o' that Hundson's Bay rum. Hit war right good rum, an ez I lay lookin' up at the stars, all ter oncet hit come ter me that I was jest exactly, no more an' no less, jest ter the ha'r, ez drunk I was on the leetle spree with Kit at Laramie. Warn't that fine? An' warn't hit useful? Nach'erl, bein' jest even up, I done thought o' everything I been fergettin'. Hit all come ter me ez plain ez a streak o' lightnin'. What it was Kit Carson told me I know now, but no one else shall know. No, not even ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... the smoke when we let drive, An', before we know, 'e's 'ackin' at our 'ead; 'E's all 'ot sand an' ginger when alive, An' 'e's generally shammin' when 'e's dead. 'E's a daisy, 'e's a ducky, 'e's a lamb! 'E's a injia-rubber idiot on the spree, 'E's the on'y thing that doesn't give a damn For a Regiment o' British Infantree! So 'ere's to you, Fuzzy-Wuzzy, at your 'ome in the Soudan; You're a pore benighted 'eathen but a first-class fightin' man; An' 'ere's ...
— Barrack-Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... began to be felt, for after the festivities were over, and most of the settlers had retired to rest, a group of kindred souls gathered round the spirit casks, and went in for what one of them termed a "regular spree." At first they drank and chatted with moderate noise, but as the fumes of the terrible fire-water mounted to their brains they began to shout and sing, then to quarrel and fight, and, finally, the wonted silence of the night was wildly disturbed by the oaths and fiendish yells and idiotic ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne
... first. But, hang the girl, she'll weary me to death with her sermons and crying fits. Moll's worth two of her for that, matter—she scolds, but at least she never would look like a stuck fawn when I came home a little queer. For the matter of that, she don't mind a spree herself at times." And, emptying his glass, the libertine laughed at the remembrance of some ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood
... girls eat rolls and treacle! They beat the boys out and out at that fun. They dabbed the treacle into each other's eyes, and roped it over each other's shoulders, and swung it into each other's faces, like good 'uns. There is nothing like girls for a spree; when they do begin, ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... when it came, was all my own making, and my dismissal was entirely due to an act of silly recklessness and my own idiocy. I had taken chances before and had not been caught; several times I ran the sentries at night for the sake of a noisy, drunken spree at a road- side tavern, and several times I had risked my chevrons because I did not choose to respect the arbitrary rules of the Academy which chafed my spirit and invited me to rebellion. It was not so much that I enjoyed those short hours of freedom, which ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... 40l., I being one of the younger sergeants. When our pay had been given us a week's furlough was granted to the whole regiment, and no doubt most of the money melted away in that period—at least, I know mine did, for not having been in the British Isles for so long, we were all resolved to have a spree. I never went away from Athlone, however, the whole time, but slept in barracks every night, though there was no duty to be done as the militia were ordered out for that. I knew that it would be useless to cross the Channel in that short time to see my parents, though I should ...
— The Autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence - A Hero of the Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns • William Lawrence
... of the wards containing the badly wounded men, at nearly eleven o'clock, A. M., she found that the assistant surgeon, in charge of that ward, who had been out on a drunken spree the night before, and had slept very late, had not yet made out the special diet list for the ward, and the men, faint and hungry, had had no breakfast. She denounced him at once in the strongest terms, and as ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... those who have them, but I have neither one nor t'other," answered Bob. "I've made up my mind to have a jolly spree on shore, and live like a lord till ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... he said. Then, in answer to something in Mary Gowd's eyes: "I'm not going to Tivoli, you see. I met a man from Chicago here at the hotel. He and I are going to chin awhile this morning. And Mrs. Gregg and his wife are going on a shopping spree. Say, ma, if you need any more money ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... had we In yon lane glen— Lads an' lassies young an' spree, In yon lane glen; An' a blither family Than ours there cou'dna be, Beside the bonnie rowan bush In yon ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... the cook, Charlie, commonly called The Doctor. The rivermen early worked off the effects of their rather wild spree, and turned up at noon chipper as larks. Not so the cook. He moped about disconsolately all day; and in the evening, after his work had been finished, he looked so much like a chicken with the pip that Orde's ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... the name of the river that runs through it has anything to do with that, though Josiah thought it did. He said: "You couldn't expect many morals or much stiddy behavior round a river Spree." ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... after gold, nor put his trust in money or treasures. You will never earn that blessing, my dear brethren. Why are you here? You have come from every corner of the world to look for gold. You think it is a blessing, but when you get it, it is often a curse. You go what you call 'on the spree'; you find the 'sly grog'; you get drunk and are robbed of your gold; sometimes you are murdered; or you fall into a hole and are killed, and you go to hell dead drunk. Patrick Doyle was here at Mass last Sunday; he was then a poor digger. Next day he found gold, ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... A short, sweet spree enjoyed by night hawks. Also, an early rising singing-bird. (Dist. bet. "out on a lark," and "up with the ...
— The Foolish Dictionary • Gideon Wurdz
... the Presidio, and leaned back in the cushions as they drove through the streets with such an expression of beaming gratification on his good-humored face that the passers-by smiled at the equipage and its extravagant occupant. To them it seemed the not unusual sight of the successful miner "on a spree." To the unsophisticated Uncle Billy their smiling seemed only a natural and kindly recognition of his happiness, and he nodded and smiled back to them with unsuspecting candor and innocent playfulness. "These yer 'Frisco fellers ain't ALL slouches, you bet," he added to himself ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... immense value in the history of a country." They "took all things in their stride without introspection or hesitation. Their unflinching conscientiousness, their violent church-going (I speak of the sisters), were accompanied by a whole-souled love of a spree and a wonderful gift for a row." I can corroborate her details, especially the last. All those that I recall had some talent for feuds; at least, in every family there would be one warrior, male or female; and all had the complete contempt, ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... whistle. History does not tell how many beaux there were bent upon this reckless enterprise, but there were three girls. For refreshments they bought a couple of gallons of whiskey and a few pounds of sugar. When the spree was over, and the expenses were reckoned up, there was a shilling—a York shilling— apiece to pay. Some of the revelers were dissatisfied with this charge, and intimated that the managers had not counted themselves in, but ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... the beach, as if all the hounds in Christendom were at his tail, and then wheel gracefully, and return with equal speed to his companions, when they all commenced jumping and bounding, and running up and down along the shore, as if they were out on a regular spree, and were determined to be jolly. After half an hour of exceedingly active play, they hoisted their white flags, and went bounding over the meadow into ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... to cheerful garrulity, the wilder fun of weddings has given the Fr. faire la noce, to go on the spree. In Ger. Hochzeit, wedding, lit. high time, we have a ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley
... that sagacious financier. "The country has gone on a big financial drunk, and of course the headache will come when the spree is over. But it won't be over for a considerable time to come, and in the meanwhile the country is getting a good deal of benefit ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... they left their native land; that they did not look especially amiable was not to be wondered at, since they had been prevented from going, as they had intended, to visit their friends, or maybe, in the case of the careless ones, from enjoying a long-expected spree on shore. They were all now waiting to be inspected by the first lieutenant, before their names were entered on the ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... her; that is, I would not want her to think ill of me, as of others. Sometimes I feel disgusted. I think—wouldn't it be a great idea to go out on such a spree that all my veins would start tingling. And then I recall her and I do not venture. And so everything else, I think of her, 'What if she finds it out?' and I am afraid ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... dancing-halls there was a maddening whirl, an immense and incredible hilarity, a wild fling of unleashed, burly men, an honest drunken spree. But there was also the hideous, red-eyed drunkenness that did not spring from drink; the unveiled passion, the brazen lure, the raw, corrupt, and terrible presence of bad women in absolute license at a wild ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... you at the gangplank of his boat—for your 'social' visit. What he wanted was the package of sealed reports from Nazi agents throughout the United States which you were bringing in your brief case. In due time you arrived and gave him the reports. Then you started on a drinking spree—" ...
— Secret Armies - The New Technique of Nazi Warfare • John L. Spivak
... interesting job you're on, and no mistake," Mr. Coulson declared. "I wonder you waste time coming over here on the spree when you've got a piece of business like ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... my money, as violently as possible. I made a noise in the Swede's house, and was proud of myself. My first A.B.'s spree! ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... kind of shindy that the Suffragettes are kicking up, I would as soon do it for my shallowest opinion as for my deepest one. It never could be anything worse than an inconvenience; it never could be anything better than a spree. Hence the British public, and especially the working classes, regard the whole demonstration with fundamental indifference; for, while it is a demonstration that probably is adopted from the most fanatical motives, it ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... of something that was once seen to enter an ocean. It's from the puritanic publication, Science, which has yielded us little material, or which, like most puritans, does not go upon a spree very often. Whatever the thing could have been, my impression is of tremendousness, or of bulk many times that of all meteorites in all museums combined: also of relative slowness, or of long warning of approach. The story, in Science, 5-242, is from an ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... I must come over for a small spree, and to fetch you. Suppose I were to come on the 9th or 10th of August to stay three or four days in town, would that do for you? Let me know at the end ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens
... the Court, if Potsdam may be so described, is hardly less rich in memories than the old palace by the Spree. Indeed it is richer from the cosmopolitan point of view, for though Frederick the Great was born in the Berlin Schloss and spent some of his time there, it was at Potsdam that, when not campaigning, he may be said to have lived and ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... stocking feet to the vantage ground of a kitchen chair, and lifted a stone china pitcher from a corner of the highest cup-board shelf where it had been hidden. "This lemonade's gittin' kind o' dusty," he complained. "I cal'lated to hev a kind of a spree on it when I got through choosin' Rose's weddin' present, but I guess the pig 'll hev to help me out." The old man filled one of the glasses from the pitcher, pulled up the kitchen shades to the top, put both hands in his pockets, and walked solemnly round the table, gazing at his offering ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... there few confirming little trifles, For James, rejoining from the Base, had scann'd Strange waiting infantry with brand-new rifles, In backward areas, but close at hand; And some had marked the D.A.Q.M.G. Approaching Railhead in the dusk, and he (Who, as a fact, was simply on the spree) Had gone, of course, to view ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, July 25, 1917 • Various
... third part of those which the Government was arming; new Russian divisions were on the march from Poland. As the Allies moved eastwards from the Elbe, both their own forces and those of Napoleon gathered strength. The retreat stopped at Bautzen, on the river Spree; and here, on the 19th of May, 90,000 of the Allies and the same number of the French drew up in order of battle. The Allies held a long, broken chain of hills behind the river, and the ground lying between these hills and the village of Bautzen. On the 20th ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... of this spree upon Clayton was that he took to landscape during the hours that he had formerly loafed. He found some quiet bits of dell with water, and planted his easel regularly every day. Sometimes he sat dreaming or reading, but he felt an unaccustomed responsibility if, when his mentor appeared ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... replied coolly. "You garrotted and robbed an old man and had the spree of your life. The old man happened to be a friend of mine, so I took the trouble to see that ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... was yet in his first term at the university and used to go off on a spree sometimes, before he had made the acquaintance of Werner and before he had entered the organization, he used then to call himself half-boastingly, half-pityingly, "Vaska Kashirin,"—and now for some reason or other he suddenly ...
— The Seven who were Hanged • Leonid Andreyev
... man gasped and then went on. "The babies came, and I was so proud of them! Then the fever broke out. I went to get medicine when she and the little ones were so sick, and I got on a spree—I don't remember—but when I came to, they showed me their graves in the potter's field; they said the medicine might have saved them. Oh, Job, I can't think! It makes me wild ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher
... cloth, simple enough, but of fine web, and without a stain on it. He had a brown leather belt round his waist, and I noticed that its clasp was of damascened steel beautifully wrought. In short, he seemed to be like some specially manly and refined young gentleman, playing waterman for a spree, and I concluded ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... thinkin' o' Ripley an' Tukey all the time. I s'pose they have had a gay time of it" (she meant the opposite of gay). "Waal, as I told Lizy Jane, I've had my spree, an' now I've got to git back to work. They ain't no rest for such as we are. As I told Lizy Jane, them folks in the big houses have Thanksgivin' dinners every day uv their lives, and men an' women in splendid do's to wait on 'em, so't Thanksgivin' don't mean anything to 'em; but we ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... gave you the choice of engaging in an occupation in which you could take an interest and a pride, and enabled you occasionally to go on a spree, if you ever went ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... father of his son. His wife was Leah Salomon, the sister of Salomon Bartholdy, afterwards councillor of legation. His surname was really only Salomon; Bartholdy he had assumed from the former owner of a garden in Koepenikerstrasse on the Spree which he had bought. To him chiefly the formal acceptance of Christianity by Abraham's family was due. When Abraham hesitated about having his children baptized, Bartholdy wrote: "You say that you owe it to your father's memory (not ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... of Peter Russet's uncle. It's some years ago now, and Peter and old Sam Small and Ginger Dick 'ad just come back arter being away for nearly ten months. They 'ad all got money in their pockets, and they was just talking about the spree they was going to have, when a letter was brought to Peter, wot had been waiting ...
— Sailor's Knots (Entire Collection) • W.W. Jacobs
... Callahan, "that was after his Christmas spree. The man might 'a' overlooked that. But he got mighty mad. Some bad boys, they see pa couldn't take care of the dray and they stole some things offn it. Pa he couldn't get a job right away and I couldn't keep up my reg'lar sewin'—the baby just being come—and so pa was up before ...
— Honey-Sweet • Edna Turpin
... is grumpy and stumpy, and old and gray, With a sleepy look in his lonely eye, (The other he lost at a matinee— Knocked out by a boot from a window high.) Wherever he goes, he never knows— Quarter or pause in the midnight spree, For the life of a cat is a life of blows, If he is a ...
— The Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56, No. 2, January 12, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... of great promise, although never fully tested with the gun,—his leisure hours, which included every one in the twenty-four, were passed in the invention and perpetration of curiously regulated mischiefs, with all of which he took pains to combine an element of the ludicrous. His great spree was to run amuck into a flock of small children coming out of school. If there was a dirty crossing hard by, over which they had to pass, he would wait until they had got half-way, and then, going through them like a rocket, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... produced that instantaneous effect which admonitions from great rogues generally work upon little. Messieurs the ravmpers ceased from their amusements; and the ringleader of the gang, thumping Paul heartily on the back, declared he was a capital fellow, and it was only a bit of a spree like, which he hoped had not ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... responsible for the exploits, good, bad or indifferent, of the man who, having made money at manufacturing, or mining, or in other commercial pursuits, blows into town, either physically or by telephone or telegraph, and goes on a financial spree, more or ...
— High Finance • Otto H. Kahn
... were when marm was alive, and sister Mary. When they died dad went on a spree—the first and last one—and spent what money was left after the bills was paid. Then he sold our stuff and we came here, and ...
— Richard Dare's Venture • Edward Stratemeyer
... only the most inattentive of historical students who can afford to ignore this. No modern aesthetician from the Rhine to the Spree affects to dispute the succession of Teutonic thought, in its various forms of passion, from Beethoven to Goethe, from Schiller, Jean Paul, or Weber, or Ravner, or Kleist, or Immermann, down to the latest high priest of the ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... lucky "find," for some of the largest nuggets in the State had been taken out at Tough Case. It was not a grand spree, for all sprees at Tough Case were grand, and they took place every Sunday. It was not a fight, for when the average of fully-developed fights fell below one a fortnight, some patriotic citizen would improvise one, that the honor of his ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... widow of Thomas Blythe, And she goeth upon the spree, And red are cheeks of the bystanders For her acts are ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... his benefactress by occasional presents, not trifling when measured by his small emolument of five dollars per week. Just at this time he is confined to his room by indisposition, caused, it is suspected, by a spree on Sunday last. Our gross Saxon orgies would soon be the ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... indifferently. "He looked in 'bout three o'clock. He was tolerable full then, and I 'spec he's been took up by now. He said he was goin' to buy me a bird-cage with a bird in it, but I surely hope he won't. Them white mice he brought me on his last spree chewed a hole in Berney's stocking; besides, I never did care much for birds. Good lands! what are you goin' to wash ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice
... I'll contrive to let you know." He looked Amber up and down with a glance that took in every detail. "I'm sorry," he observed, "you couldn't have managed to look a trace shabbier. Still, with a touch here and there, you'll do excellently well as a sailor on a spree." ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... scandalized drawing-room before. And when to her action she added words, the room absolutely refused to believe its ears. "I feel," she said, with a deep-down mirth in her eyes which only I could suspect rather than see, "I feel today as if I should like to go on a real spree. Do you ever feel ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... heavily overcast, with no sea more than long, slow swells. Through its windless quiet the U-boat racketed with the raving abandon of the Spirit of Discord on a spree in a boiler factory. To the riot of its internal strife was added the remonstrance of waters sliced by the stem and flung back by the sides, a prolonged and stertorous hiss like the rending of an ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... With only two weeks' vacation I won't have time for a real spree of Black Rim dialect and sober up in time for the University. Let me mix it, Belle. I'll eat my own verbal combination salad, if anybody has to. ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... that the struggle appeared to be of no very desperate nature, for it was followed by nothing in the way of a call for help. Indeed, the workman who is telling all this seemed to think that it was more or less in the way of what he calls a spree. He said nothing whatever to the police about it, fearing perhaps that he himself was in no fit state to tell a story; and, besides, there was just the possibility that he might find himself figuring before a magistrate the next morning. That is the whole of the letter, Gurdon, which though ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... snigger, snicker, crow, cheer, chuckle, shout; horse laugh, belly laugh, hearty laugh; guffaw; burst of laughter, fit of laughter, shout of laughter, roar of laughter, peal of laughter; cachinnation^; Kentish fire; tiger. play; game, game at romps; gambol, romp, prank, antic, rig, lark, spree, skylarking, vagary, monkey trick, gambade, fredaine^, escapade, echappee [Fr.], bout, espieglerie [Fr.]; practical joke &c (ridicule) 856. dance; hop, reel, rigadoon^, saraband^, hornpipe, bolero, ballroom dance; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... fish boiled so well, but he could not wait for it to boil, but had fried part of it and eaten it that way. As I heard him relate this and watched his face, the whole event seemed to me to be most disgusting. As I was watching him, some one at my side told me that, because of a drunken spree, he had been disfranchised. He was also a fisherman and another typical specimen of the class. Mr. N., having the same facial defect, though in a much less noticeable way, became identified with him, and I am again found walking down the hill to oblivion in company with this brother in distress. ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... to have advanced so far in his views and knowledge of life as to be able to discuss matters of art, science, and literature. For, be it observed, a bank-'oliday at the Welsh 'Arp, "wich is down 'Endon wy," is no longer a spree for him, however uproarious the "shindy," and however ready his "gal" may be to sit on his knee and "change 'ats" to the accompaniment of cornet and concertina. He travels—on the cheap, of course—but still he travels, and discusses Venus ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... 'Franklin,' in Pearl-street. When you go to New York, mind to call upon him, and if you have any relish for a cool sangaree, a mint jullep, or a savoury oyster-soup, none can make it better than Slick Bradley. Besides, his bar is snug, his little busy wife neat and polite, and if you are inclined to a spree, his private rooms up-stairs are ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... There is not. There were two or three asking for him, wanting him to bring the pipes to some spree-house at the time the fair ...
— New Irish Comedies • Lady Augusta Gregory
... Interesting? On a small town rag? A month of it, perhaps, when you're a kid and new to the game. But ten years. Think of it! With only a raise of a couple of dollars every blue moon or so, and a weekly spree on Saturday night to vary the monotony. (He laughs again.) Interesting, eh? Getting the dope on the Social of the Queen Esther Circle in the basement of the Methodist Episcopal Church, unable to sleep through a meeting ...
— The Straw • Eugene O'Neill
... be precious few larks if they wos, CHARLIE—where'd be the chance of a spree If every pious old pump or young mug was the equal of Me? It's the up-and-down bizness of life, mate, as makes it such fun—for the ups. Equal? Yus, as old BARNUM and BUGGINS, or tigers ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 22nd, 1890 • Various
... towards the door by which Nikta entered the hut] Well, have you had enough spree? You've been puffing yourself up, but now you'll know how it feels! You'll lose some of ...
— The Power of Darkness • Leo Tolstoy
... could receive reinforcements and effectually cover Silesia. Their extreme left rested on the spurs of the Lusatian mountains, while their long front of some four miles in extent stretched northwards along a ridge that rose between the River Spree and an affluent, and bent a convex threatening brow against that river and town. There they were joined by Barclay, whose arrival brought their total strength to 82,000 men. But again Napoleon had the advantage in numbers. ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose |
