"Freak" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... private letters found their way into the archives of Nineveh, unless indeed this is a mere freak of ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Laws, Contracts and Letters • C. H. W. Johns
... way to the handsome church, indulged in characteristic meditations of his own regarding Winifred's strange freak. He heartily hoped she would get over it. It was a stupid turn for affairs to take as regarded himself; for perpetual meetings at the choir, with the pleasant walks attached, and frequent private rehearsals in the Gray drawing-room had furnished admirable facilities for the courtship of whose issue ...
— The First Soprano • Mary Hitchcock
... agreed in allowing a certain amount of free will to direct the actions of men and women that a tale which should be all necessity and no free will would, in effect, be necessity's own contrary—a merely wanton freak. ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... had been greatly impressed by the many things which Ben Greenway had said about his master's present most astounding freak, and hoping in his heart that repentance and a suitable reparation might soon give this hitherto estimable man an opportunity to return to his former place in society, he said as little as he could against the name and fame of this once respected ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton
... rate I was saved from submitting Miss Francis to vulgar publicity. Everything is for the best—Ive seen a hundred instances to prove it. Perhaps—who knew—something might yet happen to make it possible for me to profit by the freak growth. ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... did not seem to the critic to agree with Stuart's handling. To make his impressions fit with the pictures, the critic supposed that Stuart painted a smaller portrait of Jaudenes and started one of his wife, which through some freak of temper he left (as he frequently did) with only the head and part of the background finished. These being brought to Spain, some artist there finished the lady's portrait, painted from Stuart's original a companion piece of her husband, and ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... vex, tease, pique me sometimes about what she called my "bizarreries anglaises," my "caprices insulaires," with a wild and witty wickedness that made a perfect white demon of her while it lasted. This was rare, however, and the elfish freak was always short: sometimes when driven a little hard in the war of words—for her tongue did ample justice to the pith, the point, the delicacy of her native French, in which language she always attacked me—I used to turn upon her with my old decision, and arrest bodily the sprite ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... possible; and the only circumstances likely to arouse suspicion in the minds of the authorities, was the unusual absence of all disturbances of a minor nature within the walls, in consequence of the one engrossing freak in which most of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... it is a freak, or I tired myself last night, or I want to make a sensation—according to whom you ask,' said ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... This was not a freak. It was a policy. It was in perfect keeping with an amazing attack made by the Republican press of Paris not long afterwards upon the then American Minister in France, Mr. Morton, now Vice-President of the United States, for giving a dinner in honour of the Comte ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... accompany him, though he had asked a good many questions respecting the forest and the forest fetes held upon that day. Cuthbert had observed an unwonted animation in his eyes as he had done so; but nothing in the young nobleman's manner had prepared him for this freak on his part, and he had actually failed at the first moment to recognize this fanciful figure in its smart forester's dress when first saluted by the wearer. But he was glad enough of the meeting, and the proposition of travelling ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... however, almost worth while to go through the freak-splendours and transformation-scene excitements of Fortunio to prepare the palate[212] to enjoy La Toison d'Or which follows. Here is once more the true Gautieresque humour, good humour, marvellous word-painting, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... of cause and effect has a history which involves its surroundings, and that the depth of the interest which it awakens in us is in proportion as its integrity in this respect is preserved. In nature we are prepared for any opulence of color or of vegetation, or freak of form, or display of any kind, because of the preponderance of the common, ever-present feature of the earth. The foil is always at hand. In like manner in the master poems we are never ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... Through a queer freak of fate, Thad Brewster and his comrades of the Silver Fox Patrol find themselves in somewhat the same predicament that confronted dear old Robinson Crusoe; only it is on the Great Lakes that they are wrecked instead of the salty sea. You will admit that those ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... effect, a plea for Milton's method, although by a freak of fate it was uttered in vindication of Congreve. Some years earlier, in his edition of Shakespeare, Johnson had remarked on the same passage, and had indicated the poetic method that he approved: "He that looks from a precipice finds ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... were not there—for the first time one was missing from the circle round the Christmas table. Jem, of the steady lips and fearless eyes, was far away, and Rilla felt that the sight of his vacant chair was more than she could endure. Susan had taken a stubborn freak and insisted on setting out Jem's place for him as usual, with the twisted little napkin ring he had always had since a boy, and the odd, high Green Gables goblet that Aunt Marilla had once given him and from which he ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... chevalier made to it. And in fact, the blushes which empurpled his cheeks spoke better than the best speeches of the Greek and Latin orators, and were well understood. At this sweet sight, the countess, to make sure that it was not a freak of nature, took pleasure in experimentalising how far the virtue of her eyes would go, and after having heated her slave more than thirty times, she was confirmed in her belief that he would bravely die for her. This idea so touched her, that from three repetitions between her orisons she was ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... been intimately acquainted with Boulanger when he was a political recluse in Jersey; and one afternoon he drove me to the charming villa the General had occupied, situated in an ideal spot on the coast. The villa was most solidly built, and of picturesque architecture—the freak of a rich Parisian merchant, who had spared no pains or money over it. The work both inside and out was that of the best artists Paris could supply. It was magnificently furnished—a museum of beautiful objects, and curious ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... dismay to the negro, the carpet-bagger, and the scallawag of Ulster. A peculiar freak of weather in the early morning added to their terror. The sun rose clear and bright except for a slight fog that floated from the river valley, increasing the roar of the falls. About nine o'clock a huge black shadow suddenly rushed over Piedmont from the west, and in a moment the town was ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... inclined to criticize than to admire the particular society and world amidst which she moved. Balzac on the contrary, though a bourgeois by origin, cared only for those high spheres for which he had always longed since his early youth, and of which a sudden freak of fortune so unexpectedly had opened him the doors. In that sense he was the parvenu his enemies have accused him of being, and he often showed himself narrow minded, until at last his wife's influence ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... overboard and treat a great question in the spirit of sheer mischief, and the results may be simply amazing. Conceive, for instance, a capitalist getting the railways round London into his power, and then in sheer freak stopping the traffic for a single day. No doubt the day would be a short one, but even twelve hours of such a practical joke would bring about a "Black Monday" such as England has never seen. But there ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... they would," remarked Jerry, shrugging his shoulders, "for you certainly have a collection of freak pictures, some of which would ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen
... did something for Amy Carringford—the pauper! You were spoons with her then, and you wanted to get her to my party. You begged an invitation for her and then dressed her up. like a freak so ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long
... pretty. She is stupid!" Ah, girls, girls, do you really know what she is, or what she may become? A girl commonplace! Suppose she is not lively, is not fond of parties, does not use slang appropriately at all, is utterly ignorant of the last freak of fashion, and hardly knows whether her skirt is draped or plain; suppose she has, on the whole, a rather forlorn appearance, being pitifully unconscious of what is unbecoming in dress, or gait, ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... By these fortuitous and random strokes Performing such inimitable feats, As she with all her rules can never reach. Less worthy of applause though more admired, Because a novelty, the work of man, Imperial mistress of the fur-clad Russ, Thy most magnificent and mighty freak, The wonder of the North. No forest fell When thou wouldst build; no quarry sent its stores To enrich thy walls; but thou didst hew the floods, And make thy marble of the glassy wave. In such a palace Aristaeus found Cyrene, when he bore the ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... which at that hour was thronged with promenaders. Isolated, buried in thought, in the midst of that teeming throng, the various episodes in the drama of which my mysterious neighbor was the principal character, passed before my mind. I again and again reviewed the strange events which, by some freak of fortune, I had been a witness to. What was the basis on which my friend, with two sets of names, founded his dream of inexhaustible wealth, this mission he had intrusted to Pepito? What the mission which the agent laughed at, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... playing the chivalrous role of rescuer of distressed damsels—squire of dames and what not. The last one would have ascribed to you at least at this end of your life. Ha," throwing up his head with a mirthless laugh; "how little any of us would have thought what a blessing in disguise your freak of self-exile was ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... there was no smoke. Crawling up from the deck, sheltered from the wind by the mast, by some freak it took form and visibility at that height. It writhed away from the mast, and for a moment overhung the captain like some threatening portent. The next moment the wind whisked it away, and the captain's jaw ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... air fight happened just above our camp. Its sequel was alarming. A German aeroplane fell worsted in the fight, and dived to ground, a roaring mass of fire, not forty yards from our nearest tents. By a freak of chance the machine fell in a hole made by a German shell. The usual rush was made towards the scene—by those, that is, not already sufficiently close for their curiosity. A crowd, which to some extent disorganised our preparations ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... thoughts, when daylight came to them bringing with it the desire to rise; for the lazy down was never a delight to Don Quixote, victor or vanquished. Altisidora, come back from death to life as Don Quixote fancied, following up the freak of her lord and lady, entered the chamber, crowned with the garland she had worn on the catafalque and in a robe of white taffeta embroidered with gold flowers, her hair flowing loose over her shoulders, and leaning upon a staff of fine black ebony. ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... and wines; she also was in a new spring hat of purple, which made her rosy old face look like a china aster. Lavinia reposed upon the other seat; and the infants insisted on sharing the driver's seat, up aloft, that they might enjoy the prospect, which freak caused Flabeau's boy to beam and blush till his youthful ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... golden youth of his set to adopt the then reviving mode of parting the hair on the middle of the head. In the teeth of the village derision, he persisted in this with a tenacity that Kate declared gave promise of a "Wellington." For many who had at first adopted the foreign freak had been ridiculed out of it, discouraged by the obstinate refusal of the generality to follow the lead. In those sturdily primitive days the rich youth of the land had not so universally gone abroad as they do now, and "the proper thing" among the "well ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... surpassing picture the prophets and the Christ and the evangelists have left us of the mighty God. Caliban will persist in the belief that the visible system was created in Setebos's moment of being ill at ease and in cruel sportiveness. Nature is a freak of a foul mind. But Caliban's god is not solitary. How hideous were the Aztec gods! They were pictured horrors. Montezuma's gods were Caliban's. Caliban's Setebos was another Moloch of the Canaanites, or a Hindoo Krishna. And the Greek ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... the utmost with the paddles, and each time, with heads nigh to bursting from the effort, they were played out and swept back. They succeeded finally by an accident. In the swiftest current, near the end of another failure, a freak of the current sheered the canoe out of Churchill's control and flung it against the bluff. Churchill made a blind leap at the bluff and landed in a crevice. Holding on with one hand, he held the swamped canoe with the other ...
— Lost Face • Jack London
... one singular imperfection about these children, that they had inherited from their father, which was a freak growth of an inch-wide streak of white hair which started from the center of their heads and continued downwards to the base of their skulls, and which as it showed plainly in their black hair made this strange birth-mark all the more conspicuous. Otherwise they were mentally, morally and ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... when he heard of this freak of the Dey. He wrote to O'Brien,—"I frankly own, I would have lost the peace, and been myself impaled, rather than have yielded this concession. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... stopped it the boy might have been killed," said Mr. Bhaer, wondering what freak his irrepressibles would take into their ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... a type that would please every one. My hair is too red—brilliant, dark, fiery red, like a chestnut when it tumbles out of its shell, only burnished like metal. If I had the usual white eyelashes I should be downright ugly, but, thank goodness! by some freak of nature mine are black and thick, and stick out when you look at me sideways, and I often think when I catch sight of myself in the glass that I am really very pretty—all put together—but, as I said before, not a ...
— Red Hair • Elinor Glyn
... eight hurried along over the back road, meaning to branch off at the point nearest to the tall sycamore that had been visited by a freak bolt from the thunder clouds, during some storm in years ...
— Boy Scouts on a Long Hike - Or, To the Rescue in the Black Water Swamps • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... is lumpy grey granite of the coarsest elements, whose false strata, tilted up till they have become quasi-vertical, and worn down to pillars and drums, crown the crest like gigantic columnar crystallizations. We shall see the same freak of nature far more grandly developed into the "Pins" of the Shrr. It has evidently upraised the trap, of which large and small blocks are here and there imbedded in it. The granite is cut in its turn by long ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... tapped with his fingers on the desk. Then he smiled. The postmaster was fond of a joke. Why not let this odd little freak from the West have an interview ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... generally find time to stare at any woman who crosses their path. Why should not a woman go to the City? She has as much right there as man, and yet if she is in the least degree superior to the flower girls (?) who surround the Royal Exchange, she is looked on as a freak of nature, a positive curiosity, and is followed by every pair of male ...
— Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Girl - Sister of that "Idle Fellow." • Jenny Wren
... freak of fortune which translated the Mancini girls from their modest home in Italy to the magnificence of the French Court, as the adopted children of their uncle, Cardinal Mazarin, the virtual ruler of France, and the avowed lover ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... In January, 1597, Ralegh condoled as a most loving comrade with Cecil on gracious Lady Cecil's death. His letter exhorting to implacability testifies to the closeness of their league against Essex. The Earl's fiery anger had burnt against both alike. Had his mad freak of treason succeeded, both would have been ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... from ad-agency tradetalk, 'house freak'] A hacker occupying a technical-specialist, R&D, or systems position at a commercial shop. A really effective house wizard can have influence out of all proportion to his/her ostensible rank and still not have to wear a suit. Used esp. of Unix ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... peace, and regulate the affairs of the young Republic; and to this hour the precincts of its Commons House of Parliament are as distinct and unchanged as on the day when the high-hearted fathers of the emigration first consecrated them to the service of a free nation. By a freak of nature, as the subsiding plain cracked and shivered into twenty thousand fissures, an irregular oval area, of about two hundred feet by fifty, was left almost entirely surrounded by a crevice so deep and broad as to be ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... steel cut through, and given to the plough! Fashion has its Iron Age as well as its Golden; and, what is more remarkable, the first of the two has come last, in the fitful histories of custom. And this last freak of feminine taste has brought a wonderful grist of additional business to the Sheffield mill. The fair Eugenie has done a good thing for this smoky town, well deserving of a monument of burnished steel erected to her memory on one of these hills. More than ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... nights past my sleep has been disturbed by strange, wild dreams. I see the warm ocean currents which wash our shores, shifted westward by some strange freak of nature, and a land far north of us, now ice and snow, turned into greenland; while our whole land is enshrouded in death dealing cold and ice and snow and preceding this, the waters creep up and engulf our city. The mountain on which the great ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... made their way through the village Terry explained Ohto's decision, concluding with: "And so he awaits one of their 'signs,' the appearance of the limocons, or some freak of weather or natural phenomenon like an earthquake—they read ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... no locomotion, stability, or endurance, neither goes to pasture, gives milk, chews the cud, nor performs any other function of the horned beast, but is a mere creation of the brain, begotten by a freak of the fancy and nourished by a conceit ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... Giobbe's wealth of sculptured frieze and floral scroll; the Ponte di Paradiso, with its Gothic arch; the painted plates in the Museo Civico; and palace after palace, loved for some quaint piece of tracery, some moulding full of mediaeval symbolism, some fierce impossible Renaissance freak of fancy. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... to think of the despised grub-rider in the light of a rival, so they decided it was just a freak of ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... Winterbottom looking daggers at his opponent, and Quince not quite easy even under the protection of Titania, Tom had just removed the frying-pan from the fire with its residuary grease still bubbling. Quince having deposited his load, was about to sit down, when a freak came into Tom's head, which, however, he dared not put into execution himself; but "a nod is as good as a wink to a blind horse," says the proverb. Winterbottom stood before Tom, and Quince with ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... face had lingered in my memory for more than two years as the type of all that was best and noblest in the human countenance. He was standing near the gate. A cloud passed before my eyes. What mysterious freak of fate had caused him to pause there at that particular moment? This much is certain, he recognized me as I had recognized him. He bowed, smiling somewhat, and I fled indoors again, indignant with myself for not being angry ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... him for infinite advancement. The idea, therefore, that "death ends all" nips in the bud this grand conception of man's greatness, and blights forever that which is noblest and truest in his nature. To regard this life as the ne plus ultra of man's development, is to charge nature with a freak of folly, and an abortion in her best works. Men may laud human virtue for human virtue's sake; but if man is but the moth of a day, the fire-fly whose phosphorescent light flashes for a moment and then goes out in eternal night, his virtues are but the tales of the hour that have their value ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... what I saw and heard, was, that, the artist, by some unaccountable freak of fate, or perhaps in some fit of enthusiastic and fanciful passion, had been induced to unite himself with a person altogether beneath him, and that the natural result, entire and speedy disgust, had ensued. I pitied him from the bottom of my heart—but ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... the records of thoroughbreds in the animal world. The highest record ever made for milk and butter was by an animal of no family, and she was valuable only for what she could earn. None of her power went to her offspring. She was simply a high-toned freak, but an animal with a clean pedigree back to some great progenitor is valuable independently of ...
— Jukes-Edwards - A Study in Education and Heredity • A. E. Winship
... When, however, the Bill, after passing the Commons, was opposed and modified by the Lords, Defoe suddenly appeared on a new tack, publishing the most famous of his political pamphlets, The Shortest Way with the Dissenters, which has, by a strange freak of circumstances, gained him the honour of being enshrined as one of the martyrs of Dissent. In the "brief explanation" of the pamphlet which he gave afterwards, he declared that it had no bearing whatever upon the Occasional Conformity Bill, ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... strict Constitutionalist, he had words of disgust for princes, acknowledging, however, that we were not practical in our use of them, and kept them for political purposes often to the perversion of our social laws and their natural dispositions. He spoke of his son's freak in joining the Navy. 'That was the princess's doing,' said Temple. 'She talked of our naval heroes, till she made me feel I had only to wear the anchor buttons to be one myself. Don't tell her I was invalided from the service, Richie, for the truth is, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... assimilate a novel idea, and, in consequence, are choosing your words badly," he said. "It was not a freak marriage. Although I may have broken the laws of the State of New York by using a license issued to some other person, Lady Hermione and I are legally husband and wife, and no power on earth can dissolve the union ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... crowd were laughing at the strange, ungirlish freak, And the boy was scared and panting, and so dashed he could not speak; And, "Miss, I have good apples," a bolder lad did cry; But she answered, "No, I thank you," from ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... arms, directed his gaze, and he gasped with amazed admiration. Surging through the muddy tide with a powerful trudgeon stroke, making a wake of swirling bubbles across which snaked the black coils of a heaving line, Little headed for the shore. Once he disappeared, as a freak of churning waters gripped several coils of line and jerked him back and under. But the innocent cause of all the trouble made no false estimate of his ability to rectify his error. He forged straight for his mark—that ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... he said to himself. In three minutes' unpremeditated talk the "Junior Freak," as he mentally denominated her, had managed to irritate him, to puncture his pride, to entertain and ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... to say," says John Burroughs, "that there is a species of smilax with an unsavory name, that the bee does not visit, herbacea. The production of this plant is a curious freak of nature.... It would be a cruel joke to offer it to any person not acquainted with it, to smell. It is like the vent of a charnel-house." (Thoreau compared its odor to that of a dead rat in a wall!) "It is first cousin to the trilliums, among the prettiest of our ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al
... upward until the points are nearly on a level with his flashing dark eyes. Another point of dissimilarity between us is that he seems to have been poured molten into his clothes, whereas mine hang as from pegs clumsily arranged about my person. By no conceivable freak of outer circumstance could I have the ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... into the freak pocket of an expensive garment bought with her own money. "May I begin ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... By a remarkable freak of fortune, about forty of the members of the Mormon Battalion discharged at Los Angeles, were on hand at the time of the discovery of gold in California. Divided into companies, they had made their way northward, expecting to pass the Sierras before the coming of snow. They found work ...
— Mormon Settlement in Arizona • James H. McClintock
... acquisition to us. Miss Marker is just a little schoolgirl, but well connected, I understand. Her mother was a Monroe. I knew her father when he was just beginning the study of law. He had a very brilliant career in prospect, apparently, but through some sad freak of fate lost his money and was obliged to abandon it. He is bookkeeper ...
— Cicely and Other Stories • Annie Fellows Johnston
... I'm on my way, with fifty dollars' worth of freak posies in a box, and instructions to stick around Thundercaps as long as I can, with my eyes wide open and my ears stretched. Mr. Robert figures I'll land there too late for the night train back, anyway, and after that I'm to use my bean. If I finds the case desp'rate, ...
— On With Torchy • Sewell Ford
... with Dr Beddington, who had charge of the asylum, was not sure that he would be pleased with their freak, and earnestly dissuaded his intended from proceeding ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... I waited as long as I could for you to come over this side to look after me, that I might cease wandering and settle down. As you know, I've tried my hand at a good many occupations, often for the freak of the thing, but always with a reserve force for doing the right thing at last, and somehow I've mostly made bread and cheese and a little more. The gold fever was over long before I reached Australia, but I had a turn at the cradle and pan ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer
... at the moment Philippa was suffering acutely, she was by no means prepared to permit this vile thing to conquer. She would fight it and root it out. It had come upon her so suddenly. What was the cause? Was it merely a freak of that incomprehensible phenomenon the human mind that had twisted the chain of her affection into so mischievous a knot, or merely a figment of the brain springing from inner consciousness to torment her with devilish ingenuity? or did the fault ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... that I could not get up enthusiasm enough to cross the room if at the other end of it all Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Southey were condensed into the little china bottle yonder."[4] It was thus no mere freak of juvenile taste that took shape in these early Byronic poems. He entitled them, with the lofty modesty of boyish authorship, Incondita, and his parents sought to publish them. No publisher could be found; ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... night, Rayed out at times a dangerous light; The sharp heat-lightnings of her face Presaging ill to him whom Fate Condemned to share her love or hate. A woman tropical, intense In thought and act, in soul and sense, She blended in a like degree The vixen and the devotee, Revealing with each freak or feint The temper of Petruchio's Kate, The raptures of Siena's saint. Her tapering hand and rounded wrist Had facile power to form a fist; The warm, dark languish of her eyes Was never safe from wrath's ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... rest of the Miamis, and by the side of Little Turtle, in the victories the Northwestern Indians gained over Harmar and St. Clair, and during the last battle he killed several soldiers with his own hand. Afterwards, by some wayward freak of mind, he became harassed by the thought that perhaps he had slain some of his own kinsmen; dim memories of his childhood came back to him; and he resolved to leave his Indian wife and half-breed children ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... spectator might choose to express it—going in and out of the State House gate, dressed ostentatiously in a suit of Confederate gray. He had worn nothing else since the war, I was told. But of course the State of Florida was not to be judged by the freak of one man, and he only a member of the "third house." And even when I went into the governor's office, and saw the original "ordinance of secession" hanging in a conspicuous place on the wall, as if it were an heirloom to be proud of, I felt no stirring of sectional ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... us. I caught Helena to the cabin-top to keep her drier from it, and the two boys also sprang to a point of safety. Mrs. Daniver, less agile, was caught by Peterson and Williams and held to the rail, wetted thoroughly. And by some freak of the wind, at that instant came fully the roar of the surf. We of the Belle ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... rising bank he had climbed so laboriously before, Ross miscalculated and tumbled back, rolling down into the mud of the reed bed. Mechanically he wiped the slime from his face. The tree was still anchored there; by some freak the current had rammed its rooted end ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... and there was little mercy shown for JOANNA's freak. Her husband had slain her. That was all. She with her flashes, her gaiety, her laughter, was consigned to dust. But in Sir JOHN's note-book it was written that, "The hob-nailed boot is but a bungling weapon. The ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99, October 18, 1890 • Various
... no one has ever sufficiently appreciated the general practitioner and the sympathy and help he gives folks. These crack specialists, the young scientific fellows, they're so cocksure and so wrapped up in their laboratories that they miss the human element. Except in the case of a few freak diseases that no respectable human being would waste his time having, it's the old doc that keeps a community well, mind and body. And strikes me that Will is one of the steadiest and clearest-headed counter practitioners I've ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... long talk with my father the night he died, so I happen to know just what my income is. And I don't spend much. There isn't anything to spend it for. Of course, when I go back to school, I mean to put up a new gymnasium. The one we have is a freak; but that won't break ...
— Shelled by an Unseen Foe • James Fiske
... she looked around vaguely, her mind thrown out of gear by this unexpected delay. Another freak of the handsome surgeon! ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... It may be only the child's horoscope, or some old wife's charm that is here sewn up, and these marks may be naught but some sailor's freak; but, on the other hand, they may be concerned with perilous matter, so the less ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... It sobers and clarifies human thinking a little, perhaps, to reflect on how thin a line separates the sublime and the ridiculous, the saint and the sensualist, the martyr and the fool, the genius and the freak. ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... carrying off and hiding Pollyooly had played the important part. It had been a freak of nature to make her and Lady Marion Ricksborough so closely alike, that even when they were together it was hard to tell which was which. The duchess had taken advantage of this likeness to substitute Pollyooly for Lady Marion at Ricksborough Court, the duke's chief ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... cunning mischief-maker, who taught the North American Indians the game of hazard, and stripped them, by his winnings, of all their possessions. In a mad freak Pau-Puk-Keewis entered the wigwam of Hiawatha and threw everything into confusion; so Hiawatha resolved to slay him. Pau-Puk-Keewis, taking to flight, prayed the beavers to make him a beaver ten times their own size. This they did; but when the other beavers made ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... I don't care if Mrs. Allan does say she's the brightest and sweetest child she ever knew. She may be bright and sweet enough, but her head is full of nonsense and there's never any knowing what shape it'll break out in next. Just as soon as she grows out of one freak she takes up with another. But there! Here I am saying the very thing I was so riled with Rachel Lynde for saying at the Aid today. I was real glad when Mrs. Allan spoke up for Anne, for if she hadn't I ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... flag, and was manned by Spaniards. They were phenomenally fast vessels, and simply laughed at the efforts of ships of the squadron to overtake them; but they had been caught in calms on three or four occasions, and boarded by means of boats; when, by a curious freak of fortune, if the boarding party happened to be British, it always proved to be the American that they had boarded; while, if the boarders happened to be American, it was the Spaniard that they found themselves meddling with. Thus, as there was no treaty existing between Spain and the United ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... have followed the festive example of his royal predecessor, and to have drunk deep in the majestic halls of Persepolis. It has been supposed by some that he caused the splendid palaces there to be set on fire in a drunken freak. ...
— Persia Revisited • Thomas Edward Gordon
... "If it wasn't for Warde Hollister I'd take him into my patrol. I've got every kind of a freak in ...
— Roy Blakeley's Bee-line Hike • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... inflamed book-collecting was simply a quaint hereditary freak, and scholarship a distinction wholly superfluous in a race that owned half the parish, and had its arms blazoned on the east windows of a church and the sign-board of a public-house. And with the last generation the hereditary ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... friend. I take the subjects for his corridor, Finish the potrait out of hand—there, there, And throw him in another thing or two If he demurs; the whole should prove enough To pay for this same cousin's freak. Beside, What's better and what's all I care about, {240} Get you the thirteen scudi for the ruff! Love, does that please you? Ah, but what does he, The cousin! what does he to ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... sorts, potatoes, and dried fruit. No milk, butter, cheese, tea, or meat appeared. Even salt was considered a useless luxury, and spice entirely forbidden by these lovers of Spartan simplicity. A ten years' experience of vegetarian vagaries had been good training for this new freak, and her sense of the ludicrous supported ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... moonlight, and should repair to the meeting-place when the moon should be high enough to illumine the hollow. The weapons were to be rapiers. The preliminary appearance at the tavern was to save a useless cold wait in case one of the participants should, by some freak of duty, be hindered from the appointment; in which event, or in that of a cloudy sky, the matter should be postponed to the next ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... of one of the great circuses some years ago was a strange creature which, for lack of a better name, its owner and the public dubbed, "A What Is It?" This freak had the semblance of humanity, and yet was not human. All its functions and feelings reversed the normal. Tickle it and it would cry bitterly; pinch or torture it and it would grin rapturously; when starved it repelled food, and when ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... Land of Oz, but none more queer than this giant frog, who dresses like a man and walks on his hind legs. Come here, Wiljon," she called to her husband, who was eating his breakfast, "and take a look at this astonishing freak." ...
— The Lost Princess of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... making the direct appeal to an Anglo-Saxon populace, which in its art must have something to catch hold of, like the tannin in its overdrawn tea. It loved to stand before this poster and pick out the easily recognized characters and argue (as Sypher, whose genius had suggested the inclusion of the freak had intended) what the hairy creature could represent, and, as it stood and picked and argued, the great fact of Sypher's Cure sank deep into their souls. He remembered the glowing pride with which he had regarded this achievement, the triumphal progress ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... [NOTE—By a freak of liberality, unusual in those good old days, when the State never spent over ninety thousand dollars a year for all purposes, when taxes were six cents on the one hundred dollars value of real estate only, and personal property was entirely exempt, the General ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore
... "What strange freak will you take to next?" he asked. "And do you really expect to make a novelist out of ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... given birth to a freak of nature. The animal's face is almost human in appearance, it has neither eyes nor nostrils, but a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 2nd, 1914 • Various
... he said. "A son. That's what I want. A real son. Not a freak. Not a damned little monster that has to go to the Clinic every month and take injections so it won't grow. And what happens to you if you take your shots now? What if they drive you ...
— This Crowded Earth • Robert Bloch
... cavern into which we are about to enter was originally framed by some freak of Nature, or was the invention and subsequent accomplishment of art, we are unable to determine. Like many a structure better formed to endure for ages, it has been long swept away by the encroachments of the sea, which, since the period we write of, has been gradually ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... these details, to you so paltry, and try to describe the vision of green with which my prophetic gaze clothes this bare rock—on which top some freak of nature has set up a magnificent parasol pine—it is because in all this I have found an ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... pew and the aristocratical air of the family struck My imagination wonderfully, and I fell desperately in love with a little daughter of the squire's about twelve years of age. This freak of fancy made me more truant from my studies than ever. I used to stroll about the squire's park, and would lurk near the house to catch glimpses of this little damsel at the windows, or playing about the lawns, or ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... rector. He was reading in church the fourth chapter of Judges, and after 'Now D[)e]borah, a prophetess', suddenly stopped, not much to the astonishment of the rustics, for they knew his ways. Then he went on 'Deb[)o]rah? Deb[)o]rah? Deb[o]rah! Now Deb[o]rah, a prophetess', and so on. Probably a freak of memory had reminded him that the letter was omega in the Septuagint. It will be remembered that Miss Jenkyns in Cranford liked her sister to call her Deb[o]rah, 'her father having once said that the Hebrew name ought to be so pronounced', and it will not be forgotten that ...
— Society for Pure English Tract 4 - The Pronunciation of English Words Derived from the Latin • John Sargeaunt
... as when Greeks and Trojans cite Plato and Aristotle in Troilus and Cressida, while Plato and Aristotle lived more than a thousand years after the latest conceivable date of the siege of Troy, I cannot possibly suppose that a scholar would have permitted to himself the freak, any more than that in The Winter's Tale he should have borrowed from an earlier novel the absurdity of calling Delphi "Delphos" (a non- existent word), of confusing "Delphos" with Delos, and placing the Delphian Oracle in an island. ...
— Shakespeare, Bacon and the Great Unknown • Andrew Lang
... stranger's bedroom. 'But,' continued Mr. Swancourt, 'I felt that I wanted to say a few words to you before the morning, on the business of your visit. One's patience gets exhausted by staying a prisoner in bed all day through a sudden freak of one's enemy—new to me, though—for I have known very little of gout as yet. However, he's gone to my other toe in a very mild manner, and I expect he'll slink off altogether by the morning. I hope you have been ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... recollection of the republican enthusiasm of his youth, as well as personal antipathy, Bernadotte had never liked General Bonaparte when they were comrades and rivals for military fame. The fortune of Napoleon had dug a gulf between them. Raised to the throne by a curious freak of destiny, Bernadotte had brought to his new country no attachment for Napoleon, nor the enthusiastic recollections of France with which he was generally credited. He had asked the emperor to grant him Norway; but Napoleon did not wish ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... on all her ornaments. Then she told her parents she was going to meet her little lover, the chieftain of the green plume, who was waiting for her at the Spirit Grove. Supposing she was going to act some harmless freak, they let her go. When she did not return at sunset alarm was felt; with lighted torches the gloomy pine forest was searched, but no trace of the girl was ever found, and the parents mourned the loss of a daughter whose inclinations they had, in ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... head of a negro, our teachers make him resemble as far as possible the profile of Antinoeus, and then say, 'We have done our utmost; if, nevertheless, we fail to make the negro beautiful, then we ought not to introduce into our pictures such a freak of nature, the squat nose and thick lips, which are so unendurable to the eyes.'" True idealism treats everything after its own kind, making it more intensely itself than it is in the play of nature; the ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... in fancy, there came before me Vaness's well-dressed person, panting, pale, perplexed; and beside him, by a freak of vision, stood the old darky's father, bound to the live-oak, with the bullets whistling past, and his face transfigured. There they stood alongside the creed of pleasure, which depended for fulfilment on its waist measurement; and the creed of ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... interested in Corp'el Tullidge were allowed to see his head and hear his arm. The corp'el gave these private views at any time, and was quite willing to show off, though the exhibition was apt to bore him a little. His fellows displayed him much as one would a 'freak' in a ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... the deaf and dumb girl accept the scarlet pouch by his wife; but neither she nor Zack had said a word before him upstairs about taking Madonna into the studio. When the painter was well out of earshot, young Thorpe had confided to Mrs. Blyth the new freak in which he wanted to engage; and, signing unscrupulously to Madonna that she was wanted in the studio, to be presented to the "generous man who had given her the tobacco-pouch," took her out of the room without ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... little ironical curl of the lip that showed plainly her good sense held her steady, on the crest of that high wave whereon it had been fortune's freak to raise her. "Lucile showed me a place, on the next floor of the store, where I could get the tan taken off my face while I was waiting for alterations to my suit. They did it with a sort of cold cream and hot water. There's just a streak left around my neck, and I can ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... earnestly. "America seems rife with modernism. Free-masonry, socialism, and countless other fads and religious superstitions are widely prevalent there. Nor do I underestimate their strength and influence. And yet, I fear them not. There are also certain freak religions, philosophical beliefs, wrung from the simple teachings of our blessed Saviour, the rapid spread of which at one time did give me some concern. The Holy Father mentioned one or two of them to-day, in reference to his contemplated encyclical on modernism. But I now see that they ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... often witnessed these rude sports in vessels of the King; but I do not remember to have known any more serious result than the settlement of some ancient quarrel, or some odd freak of nautical humour, which has commonly proved as harmless ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... and fully surrendered Piso into his hands, would, it is believed, even now use him as he did the unhappy emperor. But he is safe in the keeping of the prince. And the guard about him, it is my present suspicion, is as much to defend him against any sudden freak of the king or his satellites, as it is to prevent his escape. The least that could happen to any Roman falling into Sapor's power would be to be flayed alive. My safety will lie in my being known only as a Jew, not ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... my imagination carry me before I reached home. But I was clear in my mind about one thing. I meant to present myself at the office in the morning, and if the chance were given me, to apprentice myself for a while. It was indeed a strange freak of destiny, that he should have been confronted by me with the same appeal that I had heard him make so short a time ago. Perhaps it were better called a strange freak of my caprice, for though of course my position was not ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... homes she found children with skins as white, with hair as fair and bright, as her own, and if the traveller wander so far from the beaten track, he can verify my statement. For in Var, by some racial freak—which, like all such matters, is in point of fact inexplicable—a large proportion of the people are of fair ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... Sol was, as he said, going to "stay right aboard all the voyage." No cooking could be done, of course, but the Captain arranged to eat at Mrs. Higgins's hospitable table during the transit. His sudden freak was furnishing material for gossip throughout the village, but he did not care. Gossip concerning his actions was the last thing in the world to ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... choir filed in. They were all dressed alike, and the men had on a kind of gown. Dave thought that was very silly. By some mental freak he found himself picturing a man with a gown roping a steer, and it was only by a sudden tightening of his jaws that he prevented an explosion of amusement. He was still feeling very happy over this when a tall man entered from a side door and ascended the steps to the pulpit. He moved very solemnly, ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... infinitude of relations which surround a favorite, and which require constant and sustained attention, for any absence of mind might cause great misfortunes. He thus almost forgot the trifling circumstance which had made him uneasy, and which he thought might after all have only been a freak of the imagination. Giving himself up to the sweets of a kind of continual apotheosis, he mounted his horse in the great courtyard, attended by noble pages, and surrounded ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... however reassured him. His clothes were drying nicely, and did not seem to be losing any of their former generous proportions. So in time Landy might hope to be garbed in his proper attire as became a scout, and not an Arab or a "side show freak," such as ...
— Afloat - or, Adventures on Watery Trails • Alan Douglas
... buttresses and the quasi-porch formed between them. The body of the church is likewise peculiar, but of more merit. It is one of Sir G. Scott's restorations. In the S. wall of the nave is the recumbent effigy of a layman (cp. Cleeve). Beneath the tower is a tablet commemorating a local "freak"—the two ladies of Foxcote, who appear to have been an early edition of the Siamese Twins. A neighbouring garden contains a good Elizabethan dovecot. Norton St Philip claims to possess the oldest licensed house in England—the George—a stately 15th cent. hostelry standing at the top of the village. ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade
... "I heard of that freak," said the jester. "There be a dozen tailors and all the Queen's tirewomen frizzling up a good piece of cloth of gold for the lion's mane, covering a club with green damask with pricks, cutting out green velvet and gummed silk for his garland! ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a similar freak of nature, this instinct which prompts one bird to lay its eggs in the nests of others, and thus shirk the responsibility of rearing its own young. The cow buntings always resort to this cunning ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... tree-tops or the underbrush, she would step like a dryad from behind some tree at his side, with a ringing laugh at his discomfiture. Again, she might startle him by running lightly along the fallen trunk of a tree that lay across a torrent, or, in a freak of wilfulness, would let herself down the bare face of some steep cliff. If he scolded her, she laughed. If he grew angry, she was serious instantly, and once she fell to weeping and fled home. ...
— A Mountain Europa • John Fox Jr.
... nautical expedition against poor little Gombroon; and how else could he get at me? Surely the very fiend himself, if he happened to be in a high arctic latitude, would not indulge his malice so far as to follow its trail into the tropic of Capricorn. And what was to be got by such a freak? There was no Golden Fleece in Gombroon. If the fiend or my brother fancied that, for once they were in the wrong box; and there was no variety of vegetable produce, for I never denied that the poor little island was only 270 miles in circuit. Think, ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... Through some strange freak of atavism the father of the boy bred back, and was more or less of a Stone-Age cave-dweller. He was a butcher by trade, in the little town of Waldorf, a few miles from Heidelberg. A butcher's business then was to travel ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... dared ridicule in order to save him from ridicule? And in what light should he regard this suddenly prompted action on her part, which seemed to him so bewildering at the time, but which she appeared to look on as only a sort of half-humorous freak of friendship? ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... whose sense of humor was not of a kind to comprehend this freak of Vere's, was for once really taken aback. There were two sliding doors to the cabin, one opening into the bows of the launch, the other into the stern. He got up, looking very grave and rather confused, and opened ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... this potentate, that he was by no means of a sane mind. In short, to speak plainly, he was mad, and deserved a strait-waistcoat as richly as any straw-crowned monarch in Bedlam. A single instance, in my opinion, fully substantiates this. I allude to his absurd freak at Frederickshall, when, in order to discover how long he could exist without nourishment, he abstained from all kinds of food for more than seventy hours! Now, would any man in his senses have done this? Would Louis XVIII., ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 290 - Volume X. No. 290. Saturday, December 29, 1827. • Various
... Al-Maamun's Wazirs. The Caliph married his daughter whose true name was Buran; but this tale of girl's freak and courtship was invented (?) by Ishak. For the splendour of the wedding and the munificence of the Minister see Lane, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... No wonder now I look so thin; The tyrant stript me to the skin: My skin he flay'd, my hair he cropt: At head and foot my body lopt: And then, with heart more hard than stone, He pick'd my marrow from the bone. To vex me more, he took a freak To slit my tongue and make me speak: But, that which wonderful appears, I speak to eyes, and not to ears. He oft employs me in disguise, And makes me tell a thousand lies: To me he chiefly gives in trust To please his malice ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... a drink of water; and there is no breach of caste so heinous as to take water from the hand of a Christian. Now and then a Hindu lad will display such an audacious courage in religious matters that it partakes rather of the nature of a boyish freak. Several big Brahmin lads, most of them being about sixteen or seventeen years old, had been visiting the Mission-house rather frequently and showed a good deal of interest in Christianity. One of them, when sitting in ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin |
