"Free-and-easy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the most accustomed haunt of the casuals in Saarbruecken, including myself. Of the waifs and strays which the war had drifted down to the pretty frontier town the great rendezvous was the Hotel Hagen, at the bend of the turn leading from the bridge up to the railway station. The Hagen was a free-and-easy place compared with the Rheinischer, and among its inmates there was no one who could sing a better song than manly George—type of the Briton at whom foreigners stare—who, ignorant of a word of their language, wholly unprovided with any authorisation save the passport signed "Salisbury," and having ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... I never brought her up at all, except to give her a lick of a strap now and again. Don't put it on me, Governor. She ain't accustomed to it, you see: that's all. But she'll soon pick up your free-and-easy ways. ...
— Pygmalion • George Bernard Shaw
... light upon the scene, seeming to say that it could disclose a good deal more if it wished. Harper paused at the door and laid a hand upon his companion's arm. "It is all up with us, Doctor," he said in extreme agitation, which contrasted strangely with his free-and-easy words; "the game has gone against us all. Let's not go in there; I'm ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... trappers, and planters of the Mississippi Valley looked as a resort for relieving themselves of accumulated thirst and passion; as the home of mixed races, some of which were but a few decades removed from savagery; this city could not avoid its reputation for lax principles, and free-and-easy vice. ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... practice. Men who were connected with the Church were received by them only under the most formal restrictions. Finding it impossible to eat Chinese food, a simple, but foreign menage, took the place of the hitherto free-and-easy conditions. ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... the free-and-easy life of the blacks. The burdens of the present and the future weigh lightly upon their shoulders. They love all the worldly amusements; in their homes they are free entertainers, and in their fondness for conversation and love of street life they are equal to the ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... She was not beautiful, but she seemed to be in trouble, and a troubled woman can command, to the death, even worse men than free-and-easy miners. She had a refined, pure face, out of which two great brown eyes looked so tenderly and anxiously, that these men forgot themselves at once. She seemed young, not more than twenty-three or four; she was slightly built, and dressed in ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... takes her savings of the winter, packs her trunk and takes a trip more or less extensive, and there is none to say her nay,—nothing to bother her save the accumulation of her own baggage. There is an independent, happy, free-and-easy swing about the motion of her life. Her mind is constantly being broadened by contact with the world in its working clothes; in her leisure moments by the better thoughts of dead and living men which she meets in ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... me;—a true human soul... one of the finest-looking men in the world. A great shock of rough dusty-dark hair, bright-laughing hazel eyes, massive aquiline face, most massive yet most delicate, of sallow-brown complexion, almost Indian-looking; clothes cynically loose, free-and-easy;—smokes infinite tobacco. His voice is musical metallic,—fit for loud laughter and piercing wail, and all that may lie between; speech and speculation free and plenteous: I do not meet, in these late decades, such ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... This free-and-easy bear then continued his stroll. But the crowd behind him grew larger and larger, and he again turned upon them, and made them run, all laughing and shouting, ...
— The Nursery, May 1877, Vol. XXI. No. 5 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... and cross eyes, would not steal his master's goods or any one else's did he get the chance. Unless he were caught in the act, he could do it with impunity, for everything here is carried on in such a free-and-easy fashion that any amount of goods might be carried off ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... profess to have drawn such a portrait as will raise the same sort of Sponge in the minds of all, but we trust we have given such a general outline of style, and indication of character, as an ordinary knowledge of the world will enable them to imagine a good, pushing, free-and-easy sort of man, wishing to be a ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... thing of its own kind, complete in itself. It was for this reason that he gave it a distinctive meter, having convinced himself that meter of some kind was essential if he would avoid banality. With a wise instinct he chose the old free-and-easy tetrameter, which Goethe had used with excellent effect in some of his early plays. In German this meter lends itself beautifully to the bluff, off-hand discourse of soldiers. It gives an illusion of realism while ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... Chinaman's garden she saw that Mrs Hensor and her boy—the yellow-headed urchin of about six—were hastening towards the Bachelors' Quarters. The woman carried a basket of vegetables, the boy hugged a big pawpaw fruit which he held up proudly as his mother responded in her free-and-easy, rather sulky fashion to Lady Bridget's stiff nod. 'It's for the House,' cried the child. 'Fo Wung said I was ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... Buck. He hated to think that some day the freedom of the range would be annulled, for he knew that it would be the first blow against the cowboys' occupation. When a man's cattle couldn't spread out all over the land he wouldn't have to keep so many men. Farms would spring up and the sun of the free-and-easy cowboy would slowly set. ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... who had been desperadoes before they were adopted by the Delawares, and who eventually became fierce and relentless savages. Simon had been captured at the same time as his brothers, but he did not at once fall under the influence of the unsettled, free-and-easy life of the Indians. It is probable that while in captivity he acquired the power of commanding the Indians' interest and learned the secret of ruling them—two capabilities few white men ever possessed. ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... favour upon the advent of a probable rival. He lived peacefully in a way—that is, when he was not in open conflict with the natives. He killed his game and cooked it and ate it heartily, and he enjoyed a measure of happiness. He had found a home; the free-and-easy life suited him; and if he was not possessed of riches (which would have been of little value to him then), he had, at least, health and strength and ...
— The Boer in Peace and War • Arthur M. Mann
... notion you are. Franz will come and play for you whenever you say. But besides that I'd awfully like to have a note from you as soon as you are able to write. I'll answer it, you know—and then you'll answer that, perhaps—and so the hours will go by. I know this is a rather free-and-easy-sounding proposition from a perfect stranger, as I suppose you think me, but circumstances do alter cases, you know, and if our circumstances can't alter our cases, then it's no good being ...
— Red Pepper's Patients - With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in Particular • Grace S. Richmond
... nephew of the great Duke of Marlborough, suggested to the disconsolate widow-by-brevet that she should share his home, the proposal was accepted, and the actress entered for a second time into a free-and-easy compact, and for a second time remained faithful thereto until her new admirer went the way of Mr. Maynwaring. It was even rumoured—scandalous gossip!—that the two were married; and one day the Princess of Wales, afterwards Queen Caroline, asked the "incomparable sweet girl," ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... and restless, to be sure, in the absence of the sort of female society he had become accustomed to; but there were many compensations in his free-and-easy bachelor life, in his pretense of business, which consisted in watching the ticker, as it is called, in an occasional interview with Henderson, and in the floating summer amusements of the relaxed city. There was nothing unusual in this life ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... fraction of truth, have lain soaking in the mind of our free-and-easy community so long, that what strength they had is well-nigh got ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... trysting-place, accompanied by Andson, a chum from the Upper Fourth, and Fletcher junior. It was quite an informal little gathering, and the business was conducted in a free-and-easy manner, and with an entire absence of the cut-and-dried ceremony which characterized similar undertakings in the palmy days ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... the Etmeidan a much more free-and-easy sort of entertainment is taking place. The women of the lower orders are there diverting themselves in gaily adorned tents, where they can buy as much mead as they can drink, and in the midst of the piazza on round, outspread carpets dance the bayaderes of the streets, whom ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai
... a thousand times more of plotting and counterplotting, was going on among four children and their elders in a comfortable, free-and-easy seeming household in Washington, as the boys and girls, young men and young women were in the last agonies of making ready for Christmas. Matty is fully entitled to be called a young woman, when we see her. She has ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... is, if not its essence, at any rate its chief protection. It is a part of their system that religion shall be perfectly free, and that no man shall be in any way constrained in that matter. Consequently, the question of a man's religion is regarded in a free-and-easy way. It is well, for instance, that a young lad should go somewhere on a Sunday; but a sermon is a sermon, and it does not much concern the lad's father whether his son hear the discourse of a freethinker in the music-hall, or the eloquent but lengthy outpouring of a preacher in a Methodist chapel. ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... little French, though it was of a very free-and-easy sort, I suspect. The brig proved to be, as he had thought, of that nation; and such a jabbering and noise as saluted our ears I never have in all my life heard on board of a man-of-war. However, they wished to deal kindly by us. They at once sent us down ropes with which the wounded men ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... even this. When the sailor flinched, and hung back, Philip strode forward, determined to conquer, unheeding the battery of stares turned upon himself and his companion by the inhabitants, and the free-and-easy comments, of which they ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... long half minute they stood without speaking. "Oh, good afternoon," Diantha said at last, and veiled her eyes from his fascinated stare. Formerly she had treated him with the free-and-easy pertness of a precocious child. Now the exquisite shyness of maidenhood enveloped her. Instinct drew her back from the man's inevitable advance. "I didn't know it was so late," she said to Persis, oblivious to Thad's gasping greeting. ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... her commit any follies, but I shall teach her a great many." On his deathbed he said: "My only regret is that I cannot leave anything to my wife with whom I have every imaginable reason to be content." In this free-and-easy salon, a young noble said, soon after the marriage of Scarron: "If it were a question of taking liberties with the queen or Mme. Scarron, I would not deliberate; I would sooner take ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... was particularly riotous to-night, wasn't it? Yes, she understood! A great many of the men were wearing little badges. Some society or other was celebrating—and was doing it with abandon. Most of the men were half drunk. It was certainly a free-and-easy night! Everything went! ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... thought it well to refresh my jaded frame by a bath, which the prince had ordered to be prepared in a small court behind my chamber. But I grieve to say, that my modesty was put to a sore trial, when I began to unrobe. Locks and latches are unknown in this free-and-easy region. It had been noised abroad among the dames of the harem, that the Furtoo would probably perform his ablutions before he slept; so that, when I entered the yard, my tub was surrounded by as many inquisitive ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... it's drawin' mighty close lines on him. You can't take a man living a free-and-easy life the way he was and wing him all at once and tie him down to a chair without seein' some ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... well filled with other passengers, many of them tourists on the way to Colorado or the Pacific coast, and they were much amused at the free-and-easy spirit with which the boys conducted themselves, and when it became generally known that they were the broncho boys, with Ted Strong at their head, they received a great deal of attention, which was ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... nothing could be extracted—the comic faces always kept behind! As a matter of policy I got behind the man who had the longest and most quizzical face; for he gave out signs of seeing daylight through political darkness. I made his acquaintance, and found him of the free-and-easy school. 'On your way to see the General, stranger?' I inquired, edging up to him in a polite sort of way—at the same time keeping up the free-and-easy. 'No,' he answered with a laconic air, and a half significant shrug of ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... Chesterfield himself. But it was hard work. No sooner did we return to our quarters than we threw off our uniform coats, spread our bearskins on the floor and sat down upon them with crossed legs, to enjoy a comfortable smoke in the good old free-and-easy style. If our faces had only been just a little dirty we should ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... gave her black friend what comfort she could; but Dick Lee's tongue would never again be the free-and-easy member of society it had been. Even when at home, and about his commonest "chores," he was all the while struggling with what he called his "pronounciation." If he should succeed as well with the rest of his "schooling," it was safe to ...
— Dab Kinzer - A Story of a Growing Boy • William O. Stoddard
... right one. It was about this time that the Whig gentlemen of London, to unite their party and to organise places of gathering, established "mug-houses" in various parts of the City. At these places, "free-and-easy" clubs were held, where Whig citizens could take their mug of ale, drink loyal toasts, sing loyal songs, and arrange party processions. These assemblies, not always very just or forbearing, soon led to violent retaliations on the part of ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... dignity of Homer, but then, while Tennyson has left us only a few lines speaking with the dignity of the Iliad, Morris gave us a translation of the entire Odyssey, which, though it missed the Homeric dignity, secured the eagerness as completely as Chapman’s free-and-easy paraphrase, and in a rendering as literal as Buckley’s prose crib, which lay frankly by ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... Pasqual whenever he pleased. Bob realized that a longer stay at the Hat Ranch, while inviting enough, would nevertheless prove expensive, by reason of the retention of his nurse, for Donna could not continue to entertain him unchaperoned, even in such a free-and-easy town as San Pasqual, and he was fearful that a longer stay, even under the prevailing conditions, might prove embarrassing to Donna, in case interest in his affairs should revive; hence he announced his determination of going up to San Francisco to recuperate and complete his plans for the acquisition ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... pudding, and roast fowls, and sweetmeats, with a gallantry that did honour to his nation. After about fifteen dishes, he concluded the repast with dessert, some of which he even carried out of doors, for some young gentlemen at table, amused with his coolness and gallant free-and-easy manner, induced him to pocket a handful of macaroons, which he discussed on his way to the theatre, whither everybody went in the cheery social little German place. The lady in black, the boy's mamma, ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... attached to their native habits and costumes, and though driven, on state occasions especially, to imitate French and English habits, yet they love nothing better than at times to enjoy themselves in their native way. The ball given by the prince to-night is what might be called a free-and-easy. It is his particular desire that no one should come in full dress; in fact, he rather likes to have his stranger guests come in their worst clothes, for this prevents the attention of the public being called to them as they enter the palace. After you have lived ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... American sea-captain, of Norwegian birth, as I afterwards found, who would gladly have joined us. The other passengers were three Norwegians, three fossil Englishmen, two snobbish do., and some jolly, good-natured, free-and-easy youths, bound to Norway, with dogs, guns, rods, fishing tackle, and ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... the door of the room, filled up the space a second and gave a sort of free-and-easy salute. "A message for you, Captain," ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... to a more civil aspect of affairs than the picture of thirty death-dealing demons in the tops of a Yankee frigate, let us see how they manage their aggressions upon the untamed field and forest. During his various ramblings, our traveller's free-and-easy manner gained him the confidence of several able and energetic men—an advantage which enabled him to peep behind the scenes in many of the western movements. The following incident, which came under his own knowledge, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 454 - Volume 18, New Series, September 11, 1852 • Various
... powder, a formidably tall and stiff white "choker," and upon all occasions of ceremony, black shorts and silks, with gold buckles. Remarkably upright and somewhat pompous in his gait, and abominating the free-and-easy manners of the modern school, his bow would have graced the court of Versailles, and his step was a subdued minuet. Equipped with somewhat more than his wonted care, the rev. junior bursar of Oriel was introduced into Mrs Phillips's ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... Maine and Canada. During this cool excursion, he got way up among the wood-choppers and log-men of the Aroostook and Penobscot country. These wood-chopping and log-rolling gentry, according to all accounts, must be a jolly, free-and-easy, hard-toiling and hardy race. The "folks" up about there live in very primitive style; their camps and houses are very useful, but not much addicted to the "ornamental." Howard had a very long, tedious and perilous tramp, ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... very free-and-easy field hospital; no irksome regulations, and restrictions, and inspections. A doctor comes round in the morning and looks at each of us. The dressings are done once in twenty-four hours by an orderly. He ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... watches, as models of brevity and point. After this the Empress went and talked sociably (for an Empress) with various ladies around the circle; several gentlemen entered into a disjointed general conversation with the Emperor; the Dukes and Princes, Admirals and Maids of Honor dropped into free-and-easy chat with first one and then another of our party, and whoever chose stepped forward and spoke with the modest little Grand Duchess Marie, the Czar's daughter. She is fourteen years old, light-haired, blue-eyed, unassuming and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... formally engaged. The Princess said at first that she did not think her betrothed "by any means so disagreeable as she had expected." In time, however, this ardour of affection abated. The Prince was a baddish subject, and he had a free-and-easy manner, and wanted tact and refinement. He returned to London from some races seated on the outside of a coach, and in a highly excited state. Worst of all, he lodged at his tailor's. The engagement was ultimately broken off by a difficulty with regard to the future residence of the ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... some three or four hundred patients, arranged Spurgeon-wise: the ladies on one side, and the gentlemen on the other. There was a somewhat rakish air about the gathering, due to the fact of the male portion not being in full dress, but arrayed in free-and-easy costume of corduroys and felt boots. The frequent warders in their dark blue uniforms lent quite a military air to the scene; and on the ladies' side the costumes were more picturesque; some little latitude was given to feminine taste, and the result was that a large ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... you know, when first I met him at Rogers's; but that was Lady Holland's fault; even now, his being a clergyman hurts my mind a little sometimes, and I fancy I should like him more entirely if he were not so. I have a superstitious veneration for the cloth, which his free-and-easy wearing of it occasionally disturbs a little; but I feel deeply honored by his notice, and most grateful for the good-will which he expresses towards me, and should have been too glad to have heard him laugh once more at his own jokes, ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... buzzing little auditorium of the Players' Studio, Charlie endeavored to further his quest. But the atmosphere seemed, paradoxically enough, a handicap. A free-and-easy atmosphere with men and women in odd-looking rigs sauntering about. The place was as immoral as a honky-tonk. Charlie stared at the young women in smocks and bobbed hair, smoking cigarettes, sitting ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... for what he was; and, being a sagacious set, every one's true value was pretty accurately known. It was a neighborly town, with gossip enough to stir the social atmosphere with small gusts of interest or wonder, yet do no harm. A sensible, free-and-easy town, for the wisest man in it wore the worst boots, and no one thought the less of his understanding; the belle of the village went shopping with a big sun-bonnet and tin pail, and no one found her beauty lessened; oddities of all sorts ambled peacefully ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott
... poisoned with smoking that I could endure it no longer. I had not only the general atmosphere to bear, but special puffs, right in my face, accompanying the questions and remarks which, in that free meeting, of free citizens, in a free country, were freely put to me by the free-and-easy gentlemen around. The meeting resulted in the raising of 15,000 dollars for the relief of the Irish. The sum was handed by the American Minister in London to Lord John Russell; and a note from his Lordship, acknowledging ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... free-and-easy character: volunteers were called for, and responded with songs, step-dances, and the like; while the audience, lying and sitting round on the sand, greeted their efforts with hearty applause, and joined in every chorus ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... is just like his nephew in thinking that he has a divine right to the world's oyster, cannot swallow it properly till he has donned a white choker, and refuses to be comforted when Jonathan disposes of it in his rapid way with the shell for a platter. We confess that we prefer the free-and-easy manner in its proper place to the diplomatic way of always treating the reader with sentiments of the highest consideration, and like a book all the more for having an ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... time Frances was walking up-hill. She had now reached the summit of a long incline, and, looking ahead of her, saw a dusty traveler walking quickly with the free-and-easy stride of a man who is accustomed to all kinds of ...
— Frances Kane's Fortune • L. T. Meade
... decided to play, he seemed to throw off the air of restraint that had been about him since he discovered the kind of company Bart Hodge had brought him into. He became his free-and-easy, jolly self, soon cracking a joke or two that set the boys laughing, and beginning by taking the very first pot on the table after ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... mighty free-and-easy style of talking of late. He was perfectly right, though in addition to the wind, which sprung up immediately afterwards, we got a thick fog, which totally obscured the land. I steered a course, however, ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... brilliant, blending the delicate perfume of aristocracy with free-and-easy Bohemianism, and enhanced by the artistic background of pictures, bric-a-brac, and marble facsimiles of the masterpieces of statuary, including the Venus of Milo and the ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... question once answered, pirates straightway steer apart, for they are infernal villains on both sides, and don't like to see overmuch of each other's villanous likenesses. But look at the godly, honest, unostentatious, hospitable, sociable, free-and-easy whaler! What does the whaler do when she meets another whaler in any sort of decent weather? She has a Gam, a thing so utterly unknown to all other ships that they never heard of the name even; and if by chance they should hear ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... temperament and—they've usually gone wrong sometime in their lives. It seems to be in the blood. They can't help it. Mr. Ledoux told Amy all about it at the time of their marriage, and that is the reason they have tried to keep Opal as secluded as possible from the usual free-and-easy associations of American girls, and are so anxious ...
— One Day - A sequel to 'Three Weeks' • Anonymous
... Perhaps there is a little too much familiarity in all this, for the worthy man has not yet begun to realize the prestige and authority of his new station; and there was some one who considered this free-and-easy manner very humiliating. But that some one can not see him at this moment, and the master takes advantage of the fact to bestow a hearty greeting upon the old bookkeeper, Sigismond, who comes out last of all, erect and red-faced, imprisoned in ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... them books and chocolates, watered the garden, mowed the tennis ground, mended the bells, and made himself generally useful. At first this flashy, muddling, free-and-easy household had disgusted him; and his cool assured manner and critical air irritated his relatives; whilst his attitude of superior comment had proved a vexatious restraint. But week by week Douglas came to see that it was to this particular class ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... the free-and-easy sort, who plume themselves on being acquainted with a move or two, and being usually equal to the time of day, express the wide range of their capacity for adventure by observing that they are good for anything from pitch-and-toss to manslaughter; between which opposite extremes, no doubt, there ...
— A Christmas Carol • Charles Dickens
... by Edison throws a vivid light on the free-and-easy condition of early railroad travel and on the Southern extravagance of the time. "In 1860, just before the war broke out there came to the train one afternoon, in Detroit, two fine-looking young men accompanied by a colored servant. They bought tickets for Port Huron, the ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... in provisions bought full supplies from one of the best markets in America. And the people of the place, largely made up of Loyalists, vied with each other in providing entertainment for the British army. There were fashionable balls for the officers and free-and-easy revels for the soldiers. Almost at any time the British army might have marched out to Valley Forge and dealt a final blow to Washington's naked and starving troops, but it preferred the good food and the dissipations of ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... out from its hiding-place; and, seeing no cause for alarm in the presence of the little picnic party, with whom no doubt it was now well acquainted, it came further out from the coppice, sitting up on its haunches in the usual free-and-easy fashion of rabbitikins, and beginning to comb out its whiskers with ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson
... gentlemen in your ways, sir," said smooth Tait, "and that makes me 'esitate in saying it. But I took on a gay, agreeable young woman of the free-and-easy sort, and went in for a bit o' pleasure, and more drink along with it. One nail drives out another, you know, sir. And if the young lady have thrown ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... with difficulty. His upper teeth overlapped each other, and this defect (which Lavater calls terrible) was all the more apparent because they were as white as those of a dog. But for a certain lawless and slothful good humor, and the free-and-easy ways of a rustic tippler, the man would have alarmed the least ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... suspect PUNCH of any prestige in favour of the restrictions laid upon the drama—for our own free-and-easy habit of erecting our theatre in the first convenient street we come to, and going through our performance without caring a rush for the Lord Chamberlain or the Middlesex magistrates, must convince all who know us, that we are for a thoroughly free ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 28, 1841 • Various
... poor men's houses in Palestine still—a one-storied building with a low, flat roof, mostly earthen, and easily reached from the ground by an outside stair. It would be somewhat difficult to get a sick man and his bed up there, however low, and somewhat free-and-easy dealing with another man's house to burrow through the roof a hole wide enough for the purpose; but there is no impossibility, and the difficulty is part of the lesson of the incident, and is recognised expressly in the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... insisted upon being called "Walt" instead of Walter, so let it be. The name accords with the free-and-easy style of his verse. If you can find some abridged selections from that verse, read them by all means; but if you must search the whole of it for the passages that are worth reading, then pass it cheerfully by; for such another ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... particular difference of temperament that I have in mind in making these remarks is one that has counted in literature, art, government and manners as well as in philosophy. In manners we find formalists and free-and-easy persons. In government, authoritarians and anarchists. In literature, purists or academicals, and realists. In art, classics and romantics. You recognize these contrasts as familiar; well, in philosophy we have a very similar contrast expressed in the pair of terms 'rationalist' ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... large and almost as elegant as Booth's Theatre in New York, but it is a cafe chantant. Keeping still to the favorite haunts of the blousard, we enter the showiest of the cafes chantants peculiar to him—as free-and-easy a beuglant as one could wish. Beuglant, by the way, is the argot name of this sort of place; and as the word comes from beugler, to "bellow," it may easily be seen how flattering it is as a definite noun for a place where the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... steady, was sought for, if not popular, even in the free-and-easy West; one of those men who are unwillingly masters among men. Just and mild, always; with a peculiar gift that made men talk their best thoughts to him, knowing they would be understood; if any core of eternal flint lay under the simple, truthful ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... looking from one to the other as if it was an announcement full of interest, while the lad on the pier frowned a little at his brother's free-and-easy way. ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... wit, the traffic in the body of woman. True, at one time, some ten years ago, he had travelled over Russia as the representative for the dubious wines of some unknown firm; and this activity had imparted to his tongue that free-and-easy unconstraint for which, in general, travelling salesmen are distinguished. This former activity had, as well, brought him up against his real profession. In some way, while going to Rostov-on-the-Don, he had contrived to make a very young sempstress fall in love with him. This girl had not ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... Club, where to their friends in town Our country neighbours once a month come down; We term it Free-and-Easy, and yet we Find it no easy matter to be free: E'en in our small assembly, friends among, Are minds perverse, there's something will be wrong; Men are not equal; some will claim a right To be the kings and heroes of the night; Will their own favourite themes and notions start, And you must hear, ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... Dream,' you won't wonder at my sending the present one on Trial, both done as they are in the same lawless, perhaps impudent, way. I know you would not care who did these things, so long as they were well done; but one doesn't wish to meddle, and in so free-and-easy a way, with a Great Man's Masterpieces, and utterly fail: especially when two much better men have been before one. One excuse is, that Shelley and Dr. Trench only took parts of these plays, not caring surely—who ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... in the minds of many, much stronger than the ostensible occasion might have awakened. Had Margaret been a fashionable woman, in a great city, she might have disappointed the vulgar desire, by keeping to her chamber. Nay, even according to the free-and-easy standards prevailing at Charlemont, she might have done the same thing, and incurred no ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... conclusion that patriotism costs dearly: in other words, that if you take away eighteen girls to do strawberry picking, you cannot expect them, immediately on their return, to settle down again into ordinary routine and everyday habits. An atmosphere of camp life seemed to pervade the place, a free-and-easy, rollicking spirit that was not at all in accordance with Miss Beasley's ideas of propriety. The Principal, who had never altogether approved of the week on the land, considered that the school was demoralized, and made a firm ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... be a constant fire of free-and-easy flirtation going on between them. At one table a man in a cloth cap was saying to the girl ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... Meals are free-and-easy affairs; there is no dinner-bell and no fixed time for eating. But food is always ready, hanging in a pot over the fire; and when anyone feels inclined to eat, the hand is plunged into the pot, and a piece of meat pulled out and devoured. In addition to reindeer-meat—of ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Norway • A.F. Mockler-Ferryman
... mien natural to a ruler, and Big James, with dignified deference, would submit unresentingly to his attitude. It was the subtlest thing. It was not that Edwin obscurely objected to the suggestion of his being present at the free-and-easy; it was that he objected (but nicely, and with good nature) to any assumption of Big James's right to influence him towards an act that his father would not approve. Instead of saying, "Why not?" Big James ought to have said: ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... This free-and-easy rural character of the London parks is quite in keeping with the tone and atmosphere of the great metropolis itself, which in so many respects has a country homeliness and sincerity, and shows the essentially bucolic taste of ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... might judge from the looks of the party, a happier mode of convincing them of our "free-and-easy" feelings could not possibly have been discovered. From any mortification this proceeding might have caused me, I was speedily relieved by Trevanion calling O'Leary to one side, while he explained to him that he must nominally act ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... that of our club-men at home. He leaves his lodgings every morning at a certain hour, throws himself upon the town, gets through his day in some manner quite satisfactory to himself, and regularly appears at the door of his own house again at night, like the mysterious master of Gil Blas. He is a free-and-easy, careless, indifferent kind of pig, having a very large acquaintance among other pigs of the same character, whom he rather knows by sight than conversation, as he seldom troubles himself to stop and exchange civilities, but goes grunting ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... the speaker's side. There is none of the rude beating of the gavel, nor any paraphrase of "The gentleman's time is up," which marks the stiff proceedings of men "in congress assembled." To an unprejudiced eye this free-and-easy method of procedure might lack symmetry and dignity, but there is not the slightest doubt that Miss Anthony has been as wise as a serpent while being as ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper |
