"Freak" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Hazen had really said that they should have the cattle. I replied in the affirmative, and added that I had been directed to bring the cattle to them. I followed this up with a very dignified inquiry, asking why his young men had treated me so. The old wretch intimated that it was only a 'freak of the boys'; that the young men wanted to see if I was brave; in fact, they had only meant to test me, and the whole thing was ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... a menace. The only thing that had escaped destruction in that shattering blast was the strange head-piece the thing had worn. Either the small shining globe was practically indestructible, or else it had been spared by some odd freak of the explosive, for it still blazed in baleful opalescence atop the ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... there except to taste the brew; a proceeding which would have been deemed humorous but for the air of stern rigidity which that auctioneer's face preserved, tending to show that the eccentricity was a result of that absence of mind which is engendered by the press of affairs, and no freak of fancy ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... in sight; For Providence, that dealt him one long night, Had given, in pity to the blooming boy, Feelings more exquisitely tuned to joy. Fond to excess was he of all that grew; The morning blossom sprinkled o'er with dew, Across his path, as if in playful freak, Would dash his brow, and weep upon his cheek; Each varying leaf that brush'd where'er he came, Press'd to his rosy lip he call'd by name; He grasp'd the saplings, measured every bough, Inhaled the fragrance that the spring months throw Profusely round, till his young heart confess'd ...
— May Day With The Muses • Robert Bloomfield
... two natural objects east of the Rocky Mountains that he thought entitled to the epithet "sublime" were Niagara Falls and the Natural Bridge; and as for scenery, he did not know of any more noble and refined than this region of the Blue Ridge. Take away the Bridge altogether, which is a mere freak, and the place would still possess, he said, a charm unique. Since the enlargement of hotel facilities and the conversion of this princely domain into a grand park, it has become a favorite summer ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... with more or less conviction and indignation. But, whatever might chance to be the truth about that, it was plain that the duchess had something to say for herself when she declined to receive the lady. Her refusal was no idle freak, but a fixed determination, to which she would probably adhere. And, in fact, adhere to it she did, even under some ...
— The Indiscretion of the Duchess • Anthony Hope
... Told her he was a great admirer of her ladyship once on a time—a boyish freak—that sort of thing! Pretends all the gilt is off the gingerbread now. Wish I had been there when Sir Hamilton turned up at the Towers, ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... breadth of the tracks, too, surprised him not a little. They were much deeper and broader than those caused by any species of cart he had yet seen or heard of in the country, and the width apart was so great, that he began to suspect he must have mistaken a curious freak of nature for the tracks of a gigantic vehicle. Following the track for some distance, he came to a muddy spot, where the footprints of men and horses became distinctly visible. A little further on he passed the mouth of what appeared to be a cavern, and, ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... "What freak is this?" quoth Stuyvesant grim. Quoth Herman, "'Twas a charger brave— Like my first bride in eye and limb— A wedding-gift; indulge the whim! And from his back to plunge, I crave, A bridegroom, in ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... said it, Pearl laughed, and began to dance up and down, with the humorsome gesticulation of a little imp, whose next freak might be to fly up ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... influence received and borne as a yoke"—(that of the Italian Renaissance) "because no living generative force was there to throw it off—with results too often dreary beyond measure; and, finally, we shall meet this strange freak of nature, a soil without artistic initiative bringing forth the greatest initiator—observe, I do not say the greatest artist—the greatest initiator perhaps since Lionardo in modern art—except it be ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... 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 the former. The wind rushed in, carrying with it spray from the sea. ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... The freak memory is not worth striving for, but a good working memory decidedly is. Your power as a speaker will depend to a large extent upon your ability to retain impressions and call them forth when occasion demands, and that sort of memory is ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... grave in Woodlawn was supposed to be sacred to him and to his mother, was overlooked in the silent contemplation of what an even less sophisticated person might have been justified in describing as a "freak." Nothing was farther from his mind, however, than the desire or impulse to be disrespectful. And yet, as he was about to turn away from this sombre pile, he leaned over and struck a match on one ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... account than the Human. The Horse, the Hound, the Pheasant, the Bag-fox, and, fifthly, Man, were there the gradations of rank; and a compound being—half man, half brute—was, by a not unparalleled freak of fortune, the master of all. Carew had never fed his mares with human flesh, but there was a legend that he had rubbed a friend over with anise-seed, and offered that dainty morsel to his dogs. The victim was snatched ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... Jebel el-Murayt'bah ("of the Little Step") is lumpy grey granite of the coarsest elements, whose false strata, tilted up till they have become quasi-vertical, and worn down to pillars and drums, crown the crest like gigantic columnar crystallizations. We shall see the same freak of nature far more grandly developed into the "Pins" of the Shrr. It has evidently upraised the trap, of which large and small blocks are here and there imbedded in it. The granite is cut in its turn by long horizontal dykes of the hardest quadrangular basalt, occasionally ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 2 • Richard Burton
... but to hear you say so, makes me feel like a man. Then I shall do for my mother what you did for yours, and get Josephine out of that school-teaching freak of hers. She has actually gone and done it, Scheffer.... Worth money, eh? Then I shall do some things as well as others, ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the lad could see the bonfire still blazing, casting the foreground in all the deeper shadow from its flickering light; and, never did he regret anything more in his life than the sudden impulse which had led him into so dangerous a freak, as ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... there, declared with so much violence against it, that I was obliged to submit, and to accept of another lodging, about twelve doors off, which Mrs. Moore recommended. And all the advantage I could obtain was, that Will., unknown to my spouse, and for fear of a freak, should lie ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... or was it changed by a freak of my brain? I cannot tell, but I felt as though I had been suddenly awakened. It seemed as though a change had taken place in the motion of the schooner, which was sliding along on the surface of the quiet sea, with a ...
— An Antarctic Mystery • Jules Verne
... and a hundred old codgers who are so broken into the office system that they think they are perfectly happy—don't know how much fun in life they miss. Still, they're no worse than the adherents to any other paralyzed system. Look at the comparatively intelligent people who fall for any freak religious system and let it make their lives miserable. I suppose that when the world has no more war or tuberculosis, then offices will be exciting places to work in—but not till then. And meantime, if the typical business man ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... the dominant race of Pellucidar. By a strange freak of evolution her kind had first developed the power of reason in that world ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Tyrant's frenzies, rancour, spites, He knew as little as men's claim on rights. A kindness for old servants, early friends, Was constant in him while they served his ends; And if irascible, 'twas the moment's reek From fires diverted by some gusty freak. His Policy the act which breeds the act Prevised, in issues accurately summed From reckonings of men's tempers, terrors, needs:- That universal army, which he leads Who builds Imperial on Imperious Fact. Within his hot ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... whose first sewing-machine was smashed by a Boston mob; with McCormick, whose first reaper was called "a cross between an Astley chariot, a wheelbarrow, and a flying-machine"; with Morse, whom ten Congresses regarded as a nuisance; with Cyrus Field, whose Atlantic Cable was denounced as "a mad freak of stubborn ignorance"; and with Westinghouse, who was called a fool for proposing "to stop a railroad ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... the west end of the nave, with which it is connected by an arch, low at first, but loftier as time goes on, until, in later Gothic churches, its height frequently is nearly that of the whole nave. The remaining three walls are usually external, and clear of the aisles. But sometimes, owing to a freak of planning, or, more frequently, owing to the conditions of the site, the tower is, as at Bibury, at the west end of one of the aisles. At Gedling in Nottinghamshire the tower and spire are at the end of the ...
— The Ground Plan of the English Parish Church • A. Hamilton Thompson
... wrecked fort followed and among other interesting sights the guide pointed out the trail of the famous freak shot that killed the cow. The shell went first through a glass window, then through the wall at the back of the room, into a second chamber, where, without exploding, it had amputated a hind leg of the milch cow whose loss is still mourned by two ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... a tiny dwarf! Neither within nor without a freak exhibition had I seen so small a human being! A kind of supernatural dread gripped me by the throat at sight of it. As it turned with animal activity and bounded into my bathroom, I caught a three-quarter view of the creature's swollen, incredible head—which was nearly as large ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... lengthwise by a great groove down the centre, and with a curiously wrinkled or folded surface. The two halves of the brain, called hemispheres (though more nearly the shape of a coffee-bean), are alike; and each one, by some curious twist, or freak, of nature, receives messages from, and controls, the opposite half of the body—the right half controlling the left side of the body, while the left half controls the right side of the body. Thus an injury or a hemorrhage on the left ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... on a small flat car. The propelling power is furnished by two husky natives who stand on either side of the bench and literally shove the vehicle along with long sticks. It is like paddling a railroad canoe. This transportation freak is technically called a maculla. The strong-armed paddlers were able to develop an astonishing speed. I think that this is the only muscle-power railroad in the world. Light engines are employed for hauling ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... with Flora for a time. Come, come, Mr. Holland, you ought, and you shall know all; then you can come to a judgment for yourself. This way, sir. You cannot, in the wildest freak of your imagination, guess that which I have now ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... was a boyish freak, perpetrated rather in thoughtlessness than malice: but the tone of the answer, however simple the words, manifestly breathed revenge. Richard de Clare was not an ill-natured boy. But he had been taught from his babyhood that a Jew was the scum ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... name of Gibbon Wakefield will probably be remembered as long as the history of Australia and New Zealand is read, the man himself was, during most of his active career, under a cloud. The abduction of an heiress—a mad freak for which he paid by imprisonment and disgrace—deprived him of the hope of ordinary public distinction. For many years he had to work masked—had to pour forth his views in anonymous tracts and letters, had to make pawns of dull men with respectable names. This ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... 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 added ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... jealous mistress; she allows no divided affection." Are my affections divided? I think not, and I certainly do not confess any such thing to M. Mouillard, who has not yet forgotten what he calls "that freak" of a Degree in Arts. He builds some hopes upon me, and, in return, it is natural that I should build a ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... every trifling freak fellows were to be telling the monitors, we had better inaugurate at once the ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... or so, she did not chance to meet the poet on the boulevard; and since she wished to conquer her tenderness for him, one cannot doubt that all would have been well but for the Editor of L'Echo de la Butte. By a freak of fate, the Editor of L'Echo de la Butte was moved to invite monsieur Tricotrin to an affair of ceremony two days previous to the wedding. What followed? Naturally Tricotrin must present himself in evening dress. ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... instance, the only available forest fire was one to the south of the Ohio River. For all I know, soot from a very great fire south of the Ohio might fall in Montreal, Canada, and conceivably, by some freak of reflection, light from it might be seen in Montreal, but the earthquake is not assimilable with a forest fire. On the other hand, it will soon be our expression that profound darkness, fall of ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... them came up to me. I had heard this stranger speak, and did I think he could hold an audience? I gave assurance; he was a man of dignity, and would do them credit. They were afraid the newspapers would represent him as a freak, but of course their meeting would hardly fare very well in the papers anyhow. One of them asked, cautiously, how much of an extremist was he? Labor leaders were having a hard time these days to hold down ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... the greatest romantic actress in America! This man Douglass has got you hypnotized. Honestly, there's something uncanny about the way he has queered you. Brace up. Send him whirling. He isn't worth a minute of your time, Nellie—now, that's the fact. He's a crazy freak. Say the word and I'll fire him and ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... young, and such a wonderful musician. The men were more cold-blooded. They could not see that Bud's good looks or the haunting melody of his voice had any bearing whatever upon his winning a race. They called him a fool, and either refused to bet at all on such a freak proposition as a lame horse running against Skeeter, or bet against him. A few of the wise ones wondered if Jeff and his bunch were merely "stringing the kid along "; if they might not let him win a little, just to make him more ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower
... reflections, "if you do not know that what seems most improbable is what is most likely to be true. This maid is certainly not one of the flute-players or the like. Who knows what incomprehensible whim or freak may have brought her here? At any rate, it will be easier for her to keep her eyes open than it is ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... not very uncommon, nor, without a proper distinction of circumstances, to be condemned either as naughty or nonsensical. Howbeit, this, though far from the most aggravated, is perhaps the strangest instance on record of marital delinquency, and, moreover, as remarkable a freak as may be found in the whole list of human oddities. The wedded couple lived in London. The man, under pretence of going a journey, took lodgings in the next street to his own house, and there, unheard of by his wife or friends and without the shadow of a reason for such self-banishment, ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... as they had appeared on the night of that escapade, I realized that the real romance of life is made by memory, and that for these two old friends to be able thus to recall together across all those years that laughing freak of their young blood was still more romantic than the original escapade. But as I went on looking at Irene, with the bloom of her immortal youth upon her, I grew jealous of the General's share in that historic night. Well, never mind, it is I who take her to the theatre nowadays—and, after ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... with decision, yet kindly. Never should the event be made matter of public remark, nor should a letter or line of the former correspondence be rudely exposed. Let oblivion rest on the whole transaction. But so painful an issue should, if possible, be averted. For no freak of fancy, still less for the gibes and jests of others, should so important a connection be frustrated. The cause should be one that sober judgment will approve, to ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... coming out of the dining-room Lila caught sight of Bea waiting at the elevator door. Dodging three seniors, a maid with a tray, and a man with a truck full of trunks, she made a dash for the new arrival who in a sudden freak of perversity danced tantalizingly just ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... stood in the pelting rain and howling wind, with the roaring sea below him. Was it all a dream, or was this only another freak of capricious fate, which doomed him to eternal misery. The storm roared and the hungry sea ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... each, either, every, much, neither, no, or none, some, this, that, these, those. The pronominal adjectives which precede the article, are all, both, many, such, and what; as, "All the world,"—"Both the judges,"—"Many a[336] mile,"—"Such a chasm,"—"What a freak." In like manner, any adjective of quality, when its meaning is limited by the adverb too, so, as, or how, is put before the article; as, "Too great a study of strength, is found to betray writers into a harsh manner."—Blair's Rhet., p. 179. "Like many an other poor wretch, I now ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... me hungry to look at them and beseeched of me to lift the orange petticoat I had on with the sunray pleats that there was nobody he said hed kneel down in the wet if I didnt so persevering he would too and ruin his new raincoat you never know what freak theyd take alone with you theyre so savage for it if anyone was passing so I lifted them a bit and touched his trousers outside the way I used to Gardner after with my ring hand to keep him from doing worse where it was too public ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... shelter between violent showers, and pedal vigorously against the stiff breeze. The prevailing weather is stormy, and inky clouds gather in massy banks at all points of the compass, culminating in violent outbursts of thunder and lightning, wind and rain. Occasionally, by some unaccountable freak of the elements, the monsoon veers completely around, and blowing a gale from the north, hustles me along over the cobbly surface at ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... than tease your uncle?" In it all Chip had found two subjects of wonderment: first, the strange egoism of this middle-aged woman who could see nothing in the expansion of her husband's affections but what was stolen from herself; and then, the extraordinary freak of marital loyalty that could keep a man like Emery Bland, with his refinement and his knowledge of the world, true to a woman whom he had once loved, no doubt, in a youthful way, but who was now his inferior by every token of character. A good enough woman she ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King
... up to a week or two ago I greatly liked the life I led. You said it would kill you in a month. Was it only last May that you pranced in the drawing-room in Grosvenor Street inveighing against 'the whole beastly show,' as you called it—the freak fashions, the ugly eccentric dances, the costly pageant balls, the shouldering, the striving, the worship of money, the gambling, the self-advertisement—all the abject vulgarity of it? And my set, the artistic, soulful literary set, you said was the worst of all: you actually described ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... speak, who begins to find out that some young wag of the company is "chaffing" him? Have you ever tried the sarcastic or Socratic method with a child? Little simple he or she, in the innocence of the simple heart, plays some silly freak, or makes some absurd remark, which you turn to ridicule. The little creature dimly perceives that you are making fun of him, writhes, blushes, grows uneasy, bursts into tears,—upon my word it is not fair to try the weapon of ridicule upon that innocent young victim. The awful objurgatory ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... entire saddle stock, and these three were the last left of the entire bunch. Now a little boy or girl, and many an older person, thinks that a spotted horse is the real thing, but practical cattle men know that this freak of color in range-bred horses is the result of in-and-in breeding, with consequent physical and mental deterioration. It was my good fortune that morning to get a good mount of horses,—three sorrels, two grays, two coyotes, a black, a ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... his ears to all the coarser or finer cynicism, and congratulate himself when the clown becomes shameless right before him, or the scientific satyr speaks out. There are even cases where enchantment mixes with the disgust—namely, where by a freak of nature, genius is bound to some such indiscreet billy-goat and ape, as in the case of the Abbe Galiani, the profoundest, acutest, and perhaps also filthiest man of his century—he was far profounder ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... 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 ...
— On With Torchy • Sewell Ford
... advantage which render the union of Scotland and Ireland with England a necessity apply with even more force to the several States of our Union. To let one, or two, or half a dozen of them break away in a freak of anger or unjust suspicion, or, still worse, from mistaken notions of sectional advantage, would be to fail in our duty to ourselves and our country, would be a fatal blindness to the lessons which immemorial history has been ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... in northern New England, why should not a poet or a painter come to his full growth here just as well? Yes, but if the gorgeous tree-flower is rare, and only as if by a freak of Nature springs up in a single spot among the beeches and alders, is there not as much reason to think the perfumed flower of imaginative genius will find it hard to be born and harder to spread its leaves in the clear, cold atmosphere of our ultra-temperate zone ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... automobilism of this great trial one can hardly overestimate it. There is no place here for the freak machine or scorching chauffeur, such as one has found in many great events of the past. A great touring contest over such a course would be bound to have important results in many ways. The ordinary class of circuit is a very ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... "patronage" of all the clowns and boors That squint their little narrow eyes at any freak of yours, Do leave them to your prosier friends,—such fellows ought to die When rhubarb is so very scarce and ipecac ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... returned George. 'These English folk might not thole to see my father's son in their hands without winning something out of him, and I saw by what passed the other day that thou and thy father would stand by me, hap what hap, and I'll never embroil him and peril the lady by my freak.' ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... And won at Rome encouragement from man Only because they stayed at home and span; While PERICLES in Attic Greek expressed The view that those least talked about were best. There were exceptions, but the normal Greek Regarded SAPPHO as a dangerous freak, And CLYTEMNESTRA for three thousand years Was pelted with unmitigated sneers, Till RICHARD STRAUSS and HOFMANNSTHAL combined To prove that she ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 8, 1914 • Various
... dreaming, Captain Prescott. Some freak of the fancy has mastered you. I know nothing of the documents. How could I, a ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... 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 ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... wed the chinless moon-struck fool Sprung from five hundred years of idiocy Who now besought her hand; would force her bear Some heir to a calf's tongue and a coronet, Whose cherished taints of blood will please his friends With "Yea, Sir William's first-born hath the freak, The family freak, being embryonic. Yea, And with a fine half-wittedness, forsooth. Praise God, our children's children yet shall see The lord o' the manor muttering to himself At midnight by the gryphon-guarded gates, ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... was right. In ten minutes I knew, that a sudden freak on the part of the girl he was engaged to had released him, without fault of his own, and that with this release new life had entered his veins, for the conflict was over and love and duty were ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... for the welfare of the empire of which they are the guardians. But if, from whatever cause, they are unwilling to recall the noble lord, then I implore them to take care that he be immediately ordered to return to Calcutta. Who can say what new freak we may hear of by the next mail? I am quite confident that neither the Court of Directors nor Her Majesty's Ministers can look forward to the arrival of that mail without great uneasiness. Therefore I say, send Lord Ellenborough back to Calcutta. There at least he will ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... I charged them with it," replied Paul. "I knew there was something up when they got ahead on that jump. Then I asked if I might take a look at that freak engine, and they allowed me to do so. I smelled camphor the minute I stepped aboard. They even had not sense enough to hide the bottle, and it's against the present racing rules on this lake to doctor gas. So I taxed them with ...
— The Motor Girls On Cedar Lake - The Hermit of Fern Island • Margaret Penrose
... was on her way out to California, you see," Ellsworth began again; "down at El Paso she took a sudden freak for coming up here to see about the climate—lots of folks go West nowadays, you know, even in the spring. I'll warrant she's sick of the trip by now. A good climate has to have dust to season it. One of the ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... sitting in his study at midnight on the date named he had heard the Gipsy song from "Il Trovatore," which had been a favourite of his boy's, and being unable to trace the origin of the music, had finally thought that it was a freak of his imagination. The test connected with the quick-step had reference to a tune which the young man used to play upon the piccolo, but which was so rapid that he never could get it right, for which he was ...
— The Vital Message • Arthur Conan Doyle
... more beautiful and more easily understood than most of Michael Angelo's allegorical figures. Nevertheless, I used sometimes, when looking at these four figures, to think that they had been created merely as architectural auxiliaries, and that their expression was an accident or a freak of the artist's fancy, rather than the expression of some particular thought: at other times I saw as much in them as most enthusiasts do—enough, I have no doubt, to astonish their great author himself. I believe that very few people really experience rapturous sensations ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... lady considerably; and she awoke her other daughters. Next, she learned from the maid that Aglaya had gone into the park before seven o'clock. The sisters made a joke of Aglaya's last freak, and told their mother that if she went into the park to look for her, Aglaya would probably be very angry with her, and that she was pretty sure to be sitting reading on the green bench that she had ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... hour before our melancholy-looking guest had fully improved the opportunity with which a benignant Providence had supplied him,—a freak in which, one might conclude, she seldom indulged. He ceased to eat, and sat for a moment gazing pensively at the dishes. It seemed to me—but in this I may possibly be mistaken—that a darker shade of ...
— The Busted Ex-Texan and Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... put 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 ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... insanity, for, on one occasion, when rain prevented a contemplated progress to Hosho-ji, he sentenced the rain to imprisonment and caused a quantity to be confined in a vessel.* To the nation, however, all this meant something very much more than a mere freak. It meant that the treasury was depleted and that revenue had to be obtained by recourse to the abuses which Go-Sanjo had struggled so earnestly to check, the sale of offices and ranks, even in perpetuity, and the inclusion ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... freak has got into my head, Which I can't conquer for the life of me, Of taking up some history, little read, Or known, and ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... Quatermain. I had that foolish fancy, a lover's freak, I suppose. When we married the curtain was removed although the brass rod on which it hung was left by some oversight. On my return to England after my loss, however, I found that I could not bear to look upon this lifeless likeness of one who had been taken from me so cruelly, and I ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... I think this freak of Law-less's may enable me to get rid of my rival—this Mr. Lowe Brown—and I should take it as the greatest kindness if you would go with him, and keep him in order; of course I must not be seen at all in ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... Tom simply; "I got the reputation of being kind o' queer, anyway, and they'll just say I had a freak. You can see for yourself," he added, "that it wouldn't be good for us to go back together—even if my foot was ...
— Tom Slade with the Colors • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... coffin and proceeds to fill it with some heavy substance which has been smuggled into the carriage under the pall. He screws the lid down and presently makes his way along the footboard to the next compartment. An athlete in good condition could do that; in fact, a sailor has done it in a drunken freak more than once. Mind you, I don't say that murder was intended in the first instance; but will presume that there was a struggle. The thief probably lost his temper, and perhaps Mr. Skidmore irritated ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... were laughing at the strange, ungirlish freak, And the boy was scared and panting, and so dashed he could not speak; And, "Miss, I have good apples," a bolder lad did cry; But she answered, "No, I thank you," from the ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... multiplied on all sides, "what would I not give for a full moon and a clear sky, just now. Bet your life, Dick, there are some very queer scenes being enacted all round us at this moment, had we but light to reveal them. I have come to the conclusion that this swamp is unique in many respects. By some freak of nature, things here are entirely different from what they are elsewhere. Even the vegetation is new and strange to me; and I am convinced that it is also the home of many forms of animal life unknown elsewhere. The exasperating part of the whole thing is that most of the creatures inhabiting ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... in his protest against this unexpected freak of fortune, for Sylvia seized the paper and read the paragraph aloud with such happy emphasis amid Prue's outcries and his father's applause, that Mark began to feel that he really had done something praiseworthy, and that the "daub" was not so ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... time a remarkable freak was perpetrated on the body of Capt. Broady. He was standing, when in an instant he was thrown to the ground with great force, and he lay there quivering as if life were the same as extinct. Col. Barlow saw him fall and ordered his body taken to the rear. This was done by a number of men, who remained ...
— Personal Recollections of the War of 1861 • Charles Augustus Fuller
... age, Mildred Carr had never known a single touch of love: she had not even felt particularly interested in her numerous admirers, but now this marble Galatea had by some freak of fate found a woman's heart, awkwardly enough, without the semblance of a supplication on the part of him whom she destined to play Pygmalion. And, when she examined herself by the light of the flame thus ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... them bluffs, to whar I hed a good look-out erlong the north trail. I laid out thar all night. The storm come up, an' I mighty nigh froze, but snuggled down inter ther snow an' stuck. When yer onc't get a killin' freak on, yer goin' through hell an' high water ter get yer man. Thet's how I felt. Well, just 'long 'bout daylight an outfit showed up. With my eyes half froze over, an' ther storm blowin' the snow in my face, I could n't see much—nuthin' ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... goes back ten degrees to convince a petty king of a barbarous people that he is not going to die of a boil; fire refused to burn; water positively declined to seek its level, but stands up like a wall; grains of sand become lice; common walking-sticks, to gratify a mere freak, twist themselves into serpents, and then swallow each other by way of exercise; murmuring streams, laughing at the attraction of gravitation, run up hill for years, following wandering tribes from a pure love of frolic; prophecy becomes altogether easier than history; the sons of God become enamored ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... might be worse. Don't blame you for feeling him a freak, but the schools in Jersey are footy affairs. If you want a fair sample of a school you'd have to try England proper. We've messed about here long enough. ...
— The Spanish Chest • Edna A. Brown
... people—and doubtless very honest, decent people, too—attributed those inexplicable emerald circles to supernatural agency; if, indeed, anything connected with the "good folks" or "men of peace" could properly be called supernatural in times when a belief in fairies and every sort of fairy freak and frolic was deemed the most correct and natural thing in the world. Did not these circles, it was argued, appear in the course of a single night? In the sequestered woodland glade, nor herd nor milkmaid could see anything odd or unusual as the sun went down, and lo! ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... had grumbled at first at the labor which this freak of his masters entailed. But as the work went on and he saw how snug and comfortable was the result, he took a pride in it, and the time was not far off when its utility was to become manifest. Indeed, later on in the winter the greater portion ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty
... that night FitzHugh looked us up, an' Joanne thought she'd been dreamin'. He didn't have any help, but his intention was to finish us alone—murder us asleep—when Joanne cried out. Joe says it was just a devil's freak that took 'im to the top of the mountain alone that night. He saw our fire an' came ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... wipe out the disgrace you have cast upon yourself and your family," added the major warmly. "I induced your officers to look upon it as a freak of a boy, and by returning to your duty you can soon wipe ...
— Taken by the Enemy • Oliver Optic
... deeply interested. "I've understood that tremendous prices were being paid out for that scarce skin; but is Cale meaning to try and raise black or silver foxes for the market? I was told by several people that they considered the silver fox only a freak, and that they would never breed true to species. How about ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... concerning his, Dayton's, conversation with Louis Napoleon, points to Europe being likewise menaced by revolutionists. Unnecessary spread-eagleism, and an awful want of any, even diplomatic, tact. I hope that Mr. Dayton, who has so much sound sense and discernment, will keep to himself this freak of ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... in Hyde Park, I suppose," he said to himself, "or in one of his pirate's caves. What a story he could write if he had the talent. What a freak of chance which set him down here amongst us—well born and educated and yet as much a prisoner as the poorest. Some day we shall hear of him—I am convinced of it. We shall hear of Alban Kennedy and claim his acquaintance as wise people do when a ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... whispered Sah-luma to his companion,—"how yon aged fool wears upon his breast the Symbol of his own Prophecy? 'Tis the maddest freak to thus display his death-warrant!—Only a month ago the King issued a decree, warning all those whom it might concern, that any one of his born subjects presuming to carry the sign of Khosrul's newly invented Faith should surely die! ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... next week. I have been here since Friday as much a hermit as yourself. I wanted air and quiet, having been much fatigued on my nephew's amendment, trying to dissuade him from making the campaign with his militia; but in vain! I now dread hearing of some eccentric freak. I am sorry Mr. Tyson has quite dropped me, though he sometimes comes to town. I am still more concerned at your frequent disorders-I hope their chief seat is ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... Clotilda," she interrupts; "remember there is a wide difference between us. Do not cross Uncle; he is kind, but he may get a freak into his ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... "About a singular freak of Nature, a curious effect of chance. Do you know, now, in what kind of soil that man of self-denial, that poor one in spirit, ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... was two live specimens in one. When I asked why it was impossible to catch the animal, he informed me that it had eight legs with which to run. Four of the legs came out of the back, and, when tired with using the four lower ones, it just turned over and ran with the upper set. I did not see this freak, so add the salt to your taste, ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... looked quite "skeery," doubtless taking the old captain and his black charger for quite a different individual! It was some time before order and decorum were restored, as it was much easier for the judge to order Captain Maguire to be arrested for his freak, than to do it, "Bonny Doon" not being disposed to let any man approach her head or heels. They shut the captain up, finally, for contempt of court, and fined him twenty dollars, but he escaped the disagreeable attitude of sustaining the suit of an enemy. At another time, the captain, ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... in a lengthy corridor in the rear building, where there were no great signs of life. Through a door I could see a long room filled with ornaments, pictures, furniture, rugs, and all the vast freak collections of a property room. Along the side of the hallway itself was a line of steel lockers of ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... would have run no slight risk in so doing. But Francis had no desire to be caught, and perhaps imprisoned for a considerable time, until he was able to convince the council that his share of the night's work had been merely the result of a boyish freak. With two strokes of his oar, therefore, he swept the boat's head round, thereby throwing their pursuers directly astern of them; then he and Giuseppi threw their whole weight into the stroke, and the boat ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... a city of people given over to the meditative, if sympathetic, silence. It was an artificial city sprung from the sterile seeds of legislature, and thriving on the arid food of Bills. It was a mere habitation of governments. It was a freak city created coldly by an act of Solomonic wisdom. Before 1858 it was a drowsy French portage village, sitting inertly at the fork of the Ottawa and Rideau rivers, concerning itself only with the lumber trade, almost inattentive to the battle which Montreal and Quebec, Toronto ...
— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton
... writing of himself, often uses these three letters in playful allusion to a freak of his trusty henchman Tom Purdie, who, in his joy on hearing of the baronetcy, proceeded to mark every sheep on the estate with a large letter "S" in addition to the owner's initials, W.S., which, according to custom, had already been stamped ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... and he not one for attack. But though reason argued well, it did not dislodge his longing. He would have been perfectly happy to have braved her indignation for a single glance at her face. He walked back, lighting his pipe. Who could she be? What peculiar whimsical freak had sent her singing past his window at one o'clock of the morning? A grand opera singer, returning home from a late supper? But he dismissed this opinion even as he advanced it. He knew something about grand opera singers. They attend ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... strange freak for him to take, when he expressed his wish to join the mountain boys, and Ethan could not ...
— The Hero of Ticonderoga - or Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys • John de Morgan
... And they soon after reached the hermitage of Arishtanemi, son of Kasyapa. And saluting that great Muni, so constant in austerity, they all remained standing, while the Muni, on his part, busied himself about their reception. And they said unto the illustrious Muni, 'By a freak of destiny, we have ceased to merit thy welcome: indeed, we have killed a Brahmana!' And the regenerate Rishi said to them, 'How hath a Brahmana come to be killed by you, and say where may be he? Do ye all witness the power of my ascetic practices!' And they, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... impartially consider the career of 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., for instance, that wise ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 290 - Volume X. No. 290. Saturday, December 29, 1827. • Various
... once finding myself, by some freak of mocking destiny, in a house in which two bores had established fortified camps. On the first night, we all became so dazed with intolerable dulness, that our powers of resistance faded away to the vanishing point. Both bores sallied out from their ramparts, laid ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 3, 1892 • Various
... his arrival in an adjoining parlor. O'Leary enters the room, where he finds, sitting at the table, with the whole correspondence before him, his brother friar, Lawrence Callanan, who, either from an eccentric freak, or from a wish to call O'Leary's controversial powers into action, had thus drawn him into a lengthened correspondence. The joke, in O'Leary's opinion, however, was carried too far, and it required the sacrifice of the correspondence ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... flower, after having touched them all at first with that heavenly timidness, the shadow of Proserpine's; and gilded them with celestial gathering, and never stops on their spots, or their bodily shape, while Milton sticks in the stains upon them, and puts us off with that unhappy freak of jet in the very flower that without this bit of paper-staining would have been the most precious to us of all. "There is pansies, that's ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... Clemence's "strange freak," as they called it in the little village, was not condemned by every one. There were a few liberal-minded ones, who saw at once how the case stood, and resolved to uphold the girl in her course, though they feared for ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... summer;—for all the English orchises are here: that which so curiously imitates the dead oak leaf, that again which imitates the human figure; the commonest but most pretty bee orchis, and the parallel ones which are called after the spider, the frog, and the fly. Strange freak of nature this, in a lower order of creation, to mimic her own handyworks in a higher!—to mimic even our human mimicry!—for that which is called the man orchis is most like the imitation of a human figure that a child might cut from colored paper. ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... cause I did not understand. Then, too, I was threatened with the wretched condition of an object of common curiosity. If I was going to be gazed at by this officer and his men,—if I was to be regarded as a freak,—my way certainly did not ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... suddenly bounded forward; but as Grant followed he could see that the cause was the example of Phemie, who had, in some mad freak, dashed out in a frantic gallop. A half-dozen of the younger people hilariously accepted the challenge; the excitement was communicated to the others, until the whole cavalcade was sweeping down the slope. Grant was still at Mrs. Ashwood's side, restraining ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... shuddered slightly, and by a singular freak of my brain pictured to myself Monsieur Georges—Georges—my husband—in a cotton night cap and a dressing-gown. The vision flashed across my mind in the midst of the storm. I saw him just as plainly as if he had been there. It was dreadful. The nightcap came over his forehead, down ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... as the name indicates, consists of two sets of planes, one above the other. There are some triplanes, but they have not been very successful, and there are some freak aeroplanes built with as many as ...
— Dick Hamilton's Airship - or, A Young Millionaire in the Clouds • Howard R. Garis
... to speak in that way of your client you would be very angry with me. Besides, what does it all amount to? Will the old gentleman say that he gave the letter into his son's hands, so that, even if such a freak should have come into my client's head, he could have signed it and sent it off? If I understand, Mr Longestaffe says that he locked the letter up in a drawer in the very room which Melmotte occupied, ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... ledges or among the hanging roots near the tops of embankments, and on the rafters or beams of old buildings. The nests are made of mud, moss and grass, lined with feathers. The four or five eggs measure .75 x .55. Occasionally, eggs will be found that have a few minute spots of reddish brown. Freak situations in which to locate their nests are often chosen by these birds, such as the brake beam of a freight car, in the crevices of old wells, hen houses, etc. The birds are one of the most useful that we have; being very active and continually on the alert for ...
— The Bird Book • Chester A. Reed
... creaked and wobbled past apricot hedges and detached houses and huts, and got into an open country without a tree, but here and there a stunted camel-thorn. The soil was arid, and grew little food for man or beast; yet, by a singular freak of nature, it put forth abundantly things that here at home we find it harder to raise than homely grass and oats; the ground was thickly clad with flowers of delightful hues; pyramids of snow or rose-color bordered the track; yellow and crimson stars bejewelled ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... from Edgar Crandall's face; he pulled his hat over the flaming helmet of hair. "I might have known such things ain't true," he said; "it was just a freak that saved Alec. There's no chance for a man, for a living, in these dam' mountains. They look big and open and free, but Greenstream's the littlest, meanest place on the earth. The paper-shavers own the sky and air. Well, I'll ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... other edge of the avenue the action is a little different. The midshipman, full of youthful freak, determines on having his "lark." He sees the chance, and cannot restrain himself. As Calderon sweeps past, he draws his dirk, and pricks the Californian's horse in the hip. The animal, maddened by the pain, springs upward, and then shoots ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... the affairs of their dioceses, and a sort of courts were gradually formed, where these pompous ecclesiastics gave audience, and received the homage of a cringing multitude" (p. 123). Superstition performed its maddest freak in the Stylites, men "who stood motionless on the tops of pillars;" the original maniac being one Simon, a Syrian, who actually spent thirty-seven years of his life on pillars, the last of which was forty cubits ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... occasion ordered a sumptuous entertainment there, in which he alone took part. This rustic Sardanapalus returned from Italy so passionately charmed with the scenery of that beautiful country that, by a sudden freak of enthusiasm, he spent four or five millions in order to represent in his park the scenes of which he had pictures in his portfolio. The most charming contrasts of foliage, the rarest trees, long valleys, and prospects ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... By a curious freak of nature, the tendency of the channel of the Mississippi is always toward one or the other of its banks, being influenced by the direction of its bends. The principle is one of nicely regulated refraction. ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Arcadia was for many years after his death one of the most popular books in the country. His prose, as prose, is not equal to his friend Raleigh's, being less condensed and stately. It is too full of fancy in thought and freak in rhetoric to find now-a-days more than a very limited number of readers; and a good deal of the verse that is set in it, is obscure and uninteresting, partly from some false notions of poetic composition which he and his ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... wealth. Nor in the vain luxury of New York can we detect anything save the signs of age. It is only in modern America that the mad extravagance of Nero's Rome may be matched. There the banquet of Trimalchio might be presented without surprise and without reproach. It differs from what are known as "freak dinners" only in the superiority of its invention and in the ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... Leddieship laugh at that auld rhyme," replied the servitor. "Fear naething for a madman's freak. But it's true that three oaks by its side are blasted, riven and laid on the earth, and yet ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... inspiration of the Scriptures must be interpreted with this fact in mind. To find in these words of Paul the guarantee of the inspiration and infallibility of the books of the collection which are translated from the Hebrew, and not those which are written in Greek, is a freak of exegesis not more violent than fantastic. We know that Paul read and used some of these apocryphal books, and there are several of the books in our Hebrew Bible that he never quotes or refers to in the remotest way. The attempt which is often made to show ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... me, upon your honor, that when this freak of yours is over, and the bug business (good God!) settled to your satisfaction, you will then return home and follow my advice implicitly, ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.) |
