"Wild-goose chase" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... young man. Don't threaten me. This search looks like a wild-goose chase. How do you propose to reach this retreat of the Danites?" he asked, turning ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish
... to Morsbronn, where I lost all traces of him; and now here I was with my orders concerning the unfortunate people at La Trappe, staring out at the dismal weather and wondering where my wild-goose chase would end. ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... I, until the business here is settled," Seguis retorted, in a tone of finality. "Do you expect me to leave this camp when the traders are expected, and go on some wild-goose chase out of personal revenge? For my part, I think Tom would have been sorrowed over a little more if he hadn't been such a fool. Why he went gunning for McTavish out of pure spite, I don't see. We need every man we ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... house had been, as Eustace guessed, a greater strain than she had allowed any one to see; she could not be certain that they were on a wild-goose chase. This, coming on the top of it, was just too ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield
... not until June, 1893, that any find was made of more than passing interest. Curiously, this great goldfield of Hannan's (now called Kalgoorlie) was found by the veriest chance. Patrick Hannan, like many others, had joined in a wild-goose chase to locate a supposed rush at Mount Yule—a mountain the height and importance of which may be judged from the fact that no one was able to find it! On going out one morning to hunt up his horses, he chanced on a nugget of gold. In the course ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... or his mother?' said the locksmith dubiously. 'Ah! you needn't shake your head, sir. It was a wild-goose chase. I feared that, from the first. You exhausted all reasonable means of discovery when they went away. To begin again after so long a time has passed is ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... from India, where he had been hunting for Lupin on the strength of a number of most convincing proofs supplied by former confederates of Lupin himself. Feeling that he had once more been tricked by his everlasting adversary, fully believing that Lupin had dispatched him on this wild-goose chase so as to be rid of him during the business of the tapestries, he asked for a fortnight's leave of absence, called on Mme. Sparmiento and ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... about it already," replied Garrick. "I got him at his home. Herman, it seems, got back from some wild-goose chase over in New Jersey and saw the report in the records filed at police ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve
... my first impulse, I should have rushed after him in pursuit; but an instant's reflection told me how worse than futile such a wild-goose chase must prove. Cunning must be met with ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... about to suggest myself, Mr. Greve. You're unofficial-like and can be more helpful than if we detailed one of our own people from the Yard. And with the investigation in its present stage I don't reely feel justified in going off on a wild-goose chase myself. There are several important enquiries going forward now, notably as to where Mr. Parrish bought his pistol. But we certainly ought to find out what takes Miss Trevert careering off to Rotterdam in this ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... enough to have you rising and sinking there, without your staring at all: If you're going to stay, I wish you'd lie down. I don't see why you're so well, anyway, after getting us all to come on this wild-goose chase." ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... plight you have brought us into!" he snarled. "Here we are miles and miles from anywhere, and with hardly a dollar in our pockets! It's a shame! If I had remained in the East, selling mining stock, or something like that, instead of going on this wild-goose chase——" ...
— Dave Porter in the Gold Fields - The Search for the Landslide Mine • Edward Stratemeyer
... steam, and off in the same direction; but in a moment I saw what he was up to. The Bison was going in the chase. 'See to the brake, John,' was all Mat said, when off we were after the runaway at full speed. It seemed to me nought but a wild-goose chase; for, d'ye see, master, we were on another line o' rails altogether. But Mat knew what he was about, and it was my place to do his bidding. I was always proud o' the old Bison before that morning, ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... India until the end of 1881, six weeks out of these precious months of leave having been spent in a wild-goose chase to the Cape of Good Hope and back, upon my being nominated by Mr. Gladstone's Government Governor of Natal and Commander of the Forces in South Africa, on the death of Sir George Colley and the receipt of the news of the disaster at Majuba Hill. While I was on my ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... lady, if you will allow me to say so that you are making a needless mystery of the matter, and further, that you are embarking upon what will certainly prove to be a wild-goose chase. We had news of your father not long before his sad death, and ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Nobody can do that conscientiously, for the reason that before one's letter has time to reach him he is off on some new wild-goose chase. Would you encourage in literature a man who the older he grows the worse ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... been there," he said. "I'd have given fifty cents, right out, to see how old Mudge looked, I calc'late he's pretty well tired with his wild-goose chase by this time." ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger
... jack rabbits out on the flat than here. There was no trout stream near, at least, none that was not more accessible from another point. To be sure, some tenderfoot tourist might have been told some yarn that brought him up here on a wild-goose chase. You can, thought Starr, expect any fool thing of a tourist. He remembered running across one that was trying between trains to walk across the mesa from Albuquerque to the Sandia mountains. It had been hard to convince that particular specimen that ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... not my affair," Wrayson answered stiffly. "I could not possibly pledge myself to enter upon such a wild-goose chase." ...
— The Avenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... here," he said. "You and I have got to leave, at once; we have to get Pelton and Claire to safety. He can help Major Slater till we can get back with re-enforcements. I am going to kill a man named Horace Yingling, and then I'm going to round up the storm troops he diverted on a wild-goose chase to North Jersey." He nodded to the medic and the four plain-clothes guards. "Get Pelton on the stretcher. Better use the canvas flaps and the straps. He's under hypnotaine, but it's likely to be a rough trip. Claire, get anything you want to take with you. Ralph will ...
— Null-ABC • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... hung up in New York. The Old Antiquarian Society rooms are the first object of interest sought by us. On making our way thither we look for a copy of the Herald, of the date of our departure, in which we find an account of the scientific expedition fitted out by us, facetiously termed "The Great Wild-Goose Chase after the Thermal Equator"—presenting one of the most humorous bits of sensational pleasantry ever ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... information which would be of value. Hartley firmly believed the elder man to be a rascal, but of course he knew nothing definite save the two facts which he had accidentally learned from Helen Benham, and it had occurred to him that Captain Stewart might have sent Ste. Marie off upon another wild-goose chase such as the expedition to Dinard had been. He would have been sure that the elder man had had something to do with Ste. Marie's disappearance if the latter had not been seen since Stewart's party, but instead of that Ste. Marie ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... traveled for miles, and Locke was commencing to think that it was merely a wild-goose chase, when Balcom's car came to a halt in one of the lower quarters of the city, before a house that ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... a ghose of a trace on her at Carnarvon, and it'll be a long kind of a wild-goose chase from here; but if you ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... while, for a century before that again, it was only galvanized into a semblance of life by a great school of rhetorical acting. The playwright who sets forth with the idea that, in writing a poetical drama, he is going to continue the great Elizabethan tradition, is starting on a wild-goose chase. The great Elizabethan tradition is an incubus to be exorcised. It was because Mr. Stephen Phillips was not Elizabethanizing, but clothing a vital and personal conception of drama in verse of very appealing lyrical quality, that some of us thought we saw in Paolo and Francesca the dawn ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... "It looks like another wild-goose chase to me," growled Slugger Brown, when they were close to the place. "We've been here three times now, and the old man hasn't done a thing out ...
— The Rover Boys on Snowshoe Island - or, The Old Lumberman's Treasure Box • Edward Stratemeyer
... and bald account of the most famous of these pirates. But they are only a few of a long list of notables, such as Captain Martel, Capt. Charles Vane (who led the gallant Colonel Rhett, of South Carolina, such a wild-goose chase in and out among the sluggish creeks and inlets along the coast), Capt. John Rackam, and Captain Anstis, Captain Worley, and Evans, and Philips, and others—a score or more of wild fellows whose very names made ship captains ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... miles. My brother Joseph's coming and asking for me, had first set them to inquiring and searching me out. When I went into the room where my brother Rufus sat, he said, "Why, my poor little sister! I did not mean to send you off on such a wild-goose chase to the end of the rainbow. I thought you would know ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... captain, on a tolerably high key, "a d—d pretty wild-goose chase you've sent us all on, down here, into this bay! The southerly wind is failing already, and in half an hour the ships will be frying the pitch off their decks, without a breath of air; when the wind does come, it will come out at west, and bring us all four ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... something; on the contrary, our flighty friend Ralph speaks vigorously, yet says nothing! Of all men that have ever stood and delivered in presence of "a reporter," none surely ever led these indefatigable knights of the pen such a wild-goose chase over the verdant and flowery pastures of King's English, as Ralph Waldo Emerson. In ordinary cases, a reporter well versed in his art, catches a sentence of a speaker, and goes on to fill it out ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... is going on a wild-goose chase to-day. The Nordrum mare is over on the other side of our saeter. I ...
— Lisbeth Longfrock • Hans Aanrud
... then that we sometimes go on a wild-goose chase after pleasure; it is not surprising that the wisest of us make foolish attempts to grasp the will-o'-the-wisp that has been coaxing and deceiving men for centuries. It is surprising that our persistent self-confidence persuades our better sense that where countless generations ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... on the round-up, to wander up some of the countless coulees with a rifle on his shoulder after deer, or to ride away over the prairies after antelope; and the cowpunchers decided that it would be rather good fun to send him on a wild-goose chase. So they told him with great seriousness of a dozen antelope they had seen five or six miles back, suggesting that he had ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... have no desert march to make to-day,—all on a wild-goose chase," was his pious ejaculation. "What on earth could have induced the paymaster to send a detachment over to the Gila?" He took from his pocket a pencilled note and slowly twisted it in his fingers. It was too dark to read, but in its soldierly brevity ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... out his vessel, urging that it was a matter of concern to the whole colony. To this the Governor replied that with the port stripped of defences it would be possible for a pirate fleet to enter and plunder without difficulty, while Curtis's ship was careering over the seven seas on a wild-goose chase. Naturally the personal element in the affair blinded Curtis to the truth in this argument. However, with the advent of Job Howland and the news he bore, all differences were forgotten. The planter and ship-owner now needed thorough, ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... singular case, Harry," the old detective exclaimed. "We may be on a wild-goose chase, or we may be on the eve of exposing a revolting crime. Everything up to the present moment leads me to believe in the latter idea. We can only verify our suspicion by opening that big box and looking at the contents. This I intend ...
— The Bradys Beyond Their Depth - The Great Swamp Mystery • Anonymous
... enough Lady Ruth has just bethought herself of her fan, and the military figure of the stalwart Briton is seen passing through the door-way upon a wild-goose chase for the much maligned article of ladies' warfare, which has played its part in many a bit of diplomacy, and which he will never find, as it is at that moment resting in the folds of milady's dress, cleverly hidden ...
— Miss Caprice • St. George Rathborne
... case, And all be-slurred head and face, On runs he in this wild-goose chase, As here and there he rambles; Half blind, against a mole-hill hit, And for a mountain taking it, For all he was out of his wit Yet to the top ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... strong; Nor do I wish at all to be thy mate, For thou, sweet Fury, art my utter hate. Nay, shake not thus thy miserable pate; I am yet young, and do not like thy face; And, lest thou shouldst resume the wild-goose chase, I'll tell thee something all thy heat to assuage, —Thou wilt not hit my fancy ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... got wind of a Corot in a Cedar Street auction room. It might be, so his news went, the pendant to the one he had recently bought at the Bolton sale. He suggested we should go down together and see. So we joggled down Broadway in the 'bus, on what looked rather like a wild-goose chase. But it paid to keep the run of Cedar Street in those days; one might find anything. The gilded black walnut was pushing the old mahogany out of good houses; Wyant and Homer Martin were occasionally ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... first town belonging to the belligerents she found it so silent and dark that she began to imagine the chief was right, and she had come on a wild-goose chase. She crept quietly up to the house of an old freewoman whose granddaughter had once lived with her: there was a cautious movement within and a whispered, "Who's there?" She had barely answered, when she was surrounded by a band of armed men, ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... of those victories, and I protested with all possible earnestness against a policy that would fail to reap them. After this conversation General Kirby Smith returned to Shreveport, leaving me under the impression that my last proposition was acceded to. The loss of valuable time incurred by a wild-goose chase after Steele was most annoying, but I was hopeful it might be recovered. To get the fleet down to Alexandria and over the falls at that place would require much time in the low condition of the water; and Banks's army was so ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... adopting the tactics of Conachar when brought face to face with Hal o' the Wynd, I have been trying to get my simple-minded adversary to follow me on a wild-goose chase through the early history of Christianity, in the hope of escaping impending defeat on the main issue. But I may be permitted to point out that there is an alternative hypothesis which equally fits the facts; and that, after all, there may have been method in the ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... I would have done almost anything; but it did seem a wild-goose chase for a lot of grown people to rush down to Pleasure Bay for the fun of pulling up a lot of the strangest vegetables ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... letter, as it came, to Jimmy, It was over some later letter, pretty much like the one I've just read to you, that Jimmy, frowning thoughtfully, put the sudden question, "I say, Otty, are we fond enough of him to start on another wild-goose chase?—to ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... flew to the Praya, engaged the fast motor-boat he had previously bespoken against the need, and started for the Macao Passage, with the vague hope of speaking The Tigress. He hung round those broad waters from noon until three and realized that he had embarked upon a wild-goose chase. Still, his conscience was partly satisfied. He made Hong-Kong at dusk: wet, hungry, and a bit groggy for the want of sleep; but he was in no wise discouraged. The girl was in the game now, ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... Frank demanded, as the cab started with a lurch. "What sort of a wild-goose chase ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... yourself. All these schemes of your friend (of whom I know nothing, by the by) and talk of openings in the West, I simply disregard. I have no idea whatever of your going troking across a continent on a wild-goose chase. In this situation, which I am fortunately able to place at your disposal, and which many a well-conducted young man would be glad to jump at, you will receive, to begin with, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fice! You figgered on breakin' my heart an' sendin' me off on a wild-goose chase, didn't you?" Mr. Gibney leaped and his great hand closed over Captain Scraggs's collar. "Own up," he bellowed. "Where'd you git this dope about me an' Pinky? Lie to me agin an' I'll toss you overboard," and in order to impress Captain Scraggs with the seriousness ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... tell Mr. Giles directly," said Gardener, and then stopped. For he had promised not to leave the children; and it was such a wild-goose chase, after an escaped kangaroo. But he might get half a crown as a reward, and he was sure of ...
— The Adventures of A Brownie - As Told to My Child by Miss Mulock • Miss Mulock
... idea of sending him on such a wild-goose chase, after night. Papa would turn in his grave could he know he had been forced out in the rain at such an hour, for a woman's whim. I would have suffered tortures till morning ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... send her on a wild-goose chase, and while the Wild Rose was away I thought it out. I wrote a love-letter to the skipper signed with the name of "Dorothy," and asked 'im to meet me at Cleopatra's Needle on the Embankment at eight o'clock on Wednesday. I told 'im to look out for a tall girl (Mrs. Smithers was ...
— Night Watches • W.W. Jacobs
... a couple of light easy sketches, by, I suppose, the Author, which makes the Baron regret that he didn't do more of them. "Buy it," says the Baron. The Baron recommends the perusal of this little book, if only to understand the full meaning of the old proverbial expression "Going on a wild-goose chase." The author is a wonderfully rapid-act traveller. He apparently can "run" round every principal city in Europe and see everything that's worth seeing in it in about an hour and a half at most. In this manner, and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, October 4, 1890 • Various
... king, expected to rise, and beginning to rise, till a vile bit of splinter stopped me, and then sent down to this hole of a place to starve, and be laughed at, and baffled by a boy? Another lucky run, and the revenue bamboozled, and the whole of us sent upon a wild-goose chase! Every gapper-mouth zany grinning at me, and scoundrels swearing that I get my share! And the only time I have had my dinner with my knees crook'd, for at least a fortnight, was at Anerley Farm on Sunday. I am not sure that even ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... there. They went anyway. They are probably sitting on a rock resting, and if so they are safe. If they are not on the trail the rangers could not find them, and I have no right to ask my men to endanger their lives by going on such a wild-goose chase." ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith
... — N. caprice, fancy, humor; whim, whimsy, whimsey^, whimwham^; crotchet, capriccio, quirk, freak, maggot, fad, vagary, prank, fit, flimflam, escapade, boutade [Fr.], wild-goose chase; capriciousness &c adj.; kink. V. be capricious &c adj.; have a maggot in the brain; take it into one's head, strain at a gnat and swallow a camel; blow hot and cold; play fast and loose, play fantastic tricks; tourner casaque [Fr.]. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... picked Ralph to tease most. After a long while, the others learned to ignore, or to pretend to ignore, her tantalizing overtures. But Ralph could look at nothing else while she was about. She loved to lead him in a long, wild-goose chase across the island, dipping almost within reach one moment, losing herself at the zenith in another, alighting here and there with a will-o'-the-wisp capriciousness. Sometimes Ralph would return in such an exhausted condition that he dropped to sleep while he ate. At such times his mood ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... Serve him right. It will finish this wild-goose chase and send him back quite satisfied, ready to ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn
... now knows well, was to send the English fleet upon a wild-goose chase, whether to Egypt, the west coast of Ireland, or the West Indies, as the case might be; and then, by a rapid concentration of his ships, to obtain command of the English Channel, if only for twenty-four hours at a time. Twenty-four hours ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore |
