"Freak" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... eccentric specimen of humanity lived at Whorl's Farm, and, as it will be generally known took to his bed through being "blighted" in love. He kept to his bed for about forty years. During the period he was "bed-fast," I often used to go and peep through the window at this freak of nature—for I can scarcely call it anything else. Then, while I was a lad, we had such a thing as a hermit in Holme (House) Wood. The name of this hermit I used to be told was "Lucky Luke." For a score of years did "Luke" live in Holme Wood. I remember my mother giving the old man his ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... Ned, "is the character of the opening. If it extended from cliff to cliff I should say that the same freak of nature that made this solitary island of rock also split off this end at some time. But it ...
— The Air Ship Boys • H.L. Sayler
... a look in with him if we were both candidates for a Freak Show," he conceded. "On the other hand, no one can say I'm ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... peculiarities—the snarling habit and that high-pitched animal voice, for instance—which made him a being different from others—one separate and far apart? Was he, so admirably formed, so complete and well-balanced, merely a freak of nature, to use an old-fashioned phrase—a sport, or spontaneous individual variation—an experiment for a new human type, imagined by Nature in some past period, inconceivably long ago, but which she had only now, too late, ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... appeared. Even salt was considered a useless luxury, and spice entirely forbidden by these lovers of Spartan simplicity. A ten years' experience of vegetarian vagaries had been good training for this new freak, and her sense of the ludicrous supported her through ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... I have not yet had an opportunity to question them. Some freak of the girl's, I should guess. The young teacher to whom I give house-room informs me that they were excited last night by an appearance of the Northern Lights—a very fine display, he tells me. I regret that, being asleep, I missed it. ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... 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 matter from the sky, lights in the sky, and earthquakes are phenomena ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... may answer with another question. Why is a two-headed calf? And my own answer to this is that it is a freak. And so I answer your question. I have this other-personality and these complete racial memories ...
— Before Adam • Jack London
... magnolia can bloom 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 ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... what strange freak of fashion and blindness to artistic rules, women of the present day think that a deformed and ill-proportioned waist is a requisite of beauty, we do not know. Certainly they never derived such ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... at the thought of parting, she still lingered and ran to take one or two trifles from her dressing-table, a little mirror and some tiny scissors that Martha would remember, and one of the pretty handkerchiefs marked with her maiden name. These she put in the box too; it was half a girlish freak and fancy, but she could not help trying to share her happiness, and Martha's life was so plain and dull. She whispered a message, and put the little package into cousin Harriet's hand for Martha as she said good-by. She was very fond of cousin Harriet. She smiled with a gleam of ...
— The Queen's Twin and Other Stories • Sarah Orne Jewett
... attention to the faddist who gives you a rigorous diet or unpalatable food. You simply make yourself miserable and you generate more worry and unhappiness by your discipline than the good you get from these freak fads. ...
— Evening Round Up - More Good Stuff Like Pep • William Crosbie Hunter
... eyes. Another point of dissimilarity between us is that he seems to have been poured molten into his clothes, whereas mine hang as from pegs clumsily arranged about my person. By no conceivable freak of outer circumstance could I ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... about all over the world in this way?" asked William McEldowney, and Sam McKinley said to my mother, "I swear, I don't see how you and Dick ever raised such a boy. He's a 'sport,'—that's what he is, a freak." To all of which mother answered only with a ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... hundred-foot disk crashing in some American city?" said Redell. "No remote control is perfect, and neither is a detonator system. By some freak accident, a disk might come down in a place like Chicago, and then blow up. I just can't see the British—any more than ourselves—letting huge unpiloted missiles go barging around the world, flying along airways and over cities. Certainly, they ...
— The Flying Saucers are Real • Donald Keyhoe
... signal rises, Mildred's star! I never saw it lovelier than now It rises for the last time. If it sets, 'Tis that the re-assuring sun may dawn. [As he prepares to ascend the last tree of the avenue, TRESHAM arrests his arm.] Unhand me—peasant, by your grasp! Here's gold. 'Twas a mad freak of mine. I said I'd pluck A branch from the white-blossomed shrub beneath The casement there. Take this, ...
— A Blot In The 'Scutcheon • Robert Browning
... me, I had lived in a world where I was great—alone. I had made myself a life—for that. I had thought I was the victim of some strange freak of nature. And now my world has crumbled down, in half an hour, and I see another ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... Marley's a freak like the white peacock at the gardens?" broke in a callow youth ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... sacred in the same sense that his father's 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 of the huge boulders. As he was conveying ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... It was resorted to for the last time during the Peloponnesian War (417 B.C.). The people then, in a freak, ostracized a man whom all admitted to be the meanest man in Athens. This was regarded as such a degradation of the institution, as well as such an honor to the mean man, that never thereafter did the Athenians degrade a good ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... he heard of this freak of the Dey. He wrote to O'Brien,—"I frankly own, I would have lost the peace, and been myself impaled, rather than have yielded this concession. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... have a tradition that a vast serpent once lived in the waters of the Mississippi, and that, taking a freak to visit the Great Lakes, he left his trail through the prairies, which, collecting the waters from the meadows and the rains of heaven as they fell, at length became ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... awaited 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 and the interference of mutual ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... but how would he get the fun out of doing a thing like that? No, we have to look either for a freak or a poor neglected child. Now, True Treds, take your ...
— The Girl Scouts at Sea Crest - The Wig Wag Rescue • Lillian Garis
... in London, long before the invention of freak verse and Freudism, I was standing in front of the Cafe Royal in Regent Street when there emerged from its portals the most famous young writer of the day, the Poet about whose latest work "The Book Bills of Narcissus" all literary London was ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne
... and Meg and her mother busy at some necessary needlework, while Beth and Amy got tea, and Hannah finished her ironing with what she called a 'slap and a bang', but still Jo did not come. They began to get anxious, and Laurie went off to find her, for no one knew what freak Jo might take into her head. He missed her, however, and she came walking in with a very queer expression of countenance, for there was a mixture of fun and fear, satisfaction and regret in it, which ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... 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, ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... passage was imminent, but suddenly, before reaching its entrance, they diverged with a volley of oaths, and dashing along the left bank of the arroyo, disappeared in the intervening willows. Divided between relief at their escape and indignation at what seemed to be a drunken, feast-day freak of these roystering vaqueros, the little party re-formed, when a cry from Barker arrested them. He had just perceived a horseman motionless in the arroyo who, although unnoticed by them, had evidently been seen by the Mexicans. He had apparently leaped into it from the bank, and had halted as if ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... But this was not, without undue publicity, to be done. Finally to put an end to the scene, she bore off her booty. She has often wondered what actress was deprived of her over-the-foot-lights trophy by the sudden freak of an exhilarated messenger. ...
— The Native Son • Inez Haynes Irwin
... does Love speak? By the uneven heart-throbs, and the freak Of bounding pulses that stand still and ache, While new emotions, like strange barges, make Along vein-channels their disturbing course; Still as the dawn, and with the dawn's swift ...
— Poems of Passion • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... happened to be one of the very few people who knew or surmised anything about the matter, I thought it better to take affairs into my own hands—especially when I found that my daughter had come to your house. But for this freak of hers I should not, perhaps, have interfered. As you are no doubt prepared now to resign all hope of her, I am quite satisfied with the result of my afternoon's ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... that the men of that time had formed their taste upon, and accepted as their sole artistic standards. To people brought up upon pure David and Thorvaldsen, the Primavera at the Belle Arti must naturally have seemed like a wild freak of madness. The Zeitgeist then went all in the direction of cold lifeless correctness; the idea that the painter's soul counted for something in art was an ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... confounded millionaire soap-boiler," commented Mr. Blunt through his clenched teeth. "A man absolutely without parentage. Without a single relation in the world. Just a freak." ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... he saw his mistake, was fain to make his retreat; but we would not hear tell of it, till he came in, and took a dram out of the bottle, as we told him the not doing so would spoil the wean's beauty, which is an old freak, (the smallpox, however, afterwards did that;) so, with much persuasion, he took a chair for a gliff, and began with some of his drolls—for he is a clever, humoursome man, as ye ever met with. But he had now got far on with his jests, when lo! a rap came to the door, and Mysie whipped away ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... finally arranged, and in the course of a few days the parlor of Locust Grove was echoing sometimes to the laughter, and sometimes to the screaming, of little Ella Grey, who, from some unaccountable freak of babyhood, conceived a violent fancy for Eugenia, to whom she would go quite as readily as to Dora, whose daily absence at school she at last did not mind. Regularly each day, and sometimes twice a day, Mr. Hastings came down to Locust Grove, and his manner was very kind toward Eugenia, when ...
— Dora Deane • Mary J. Holmes
... violation of custom, violation of usage, infringement of law, infringement of custom, infringement of usage; teratism^, eccentricity, bizarrerie^, oddity, je ne sais quoi [Fr.], monster, monstrosity, rarity; freak, freak of Nature, weirdo, mutant; rouser, snorter [U.S.]. individuality, idiosyncrasy, originality, mannerism. aberration; irregularity; variety; singularity; exemption; salvo &c (qualification) 469. nonconformist; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... had acted and sung, though, as he said, his performance in both cases was vile. Little Miss Primrose had most comically taken upon her to patronize him, and to offer him as buccaneer captain had been a freak of her own, hardly to be accounted for, except that Purser Briggs's unsuitableness had been ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the negro, the carpet-bagger, and the scallawag of Ulster. A peculiar freak of weather in the early morning added to their terror. The sun rose clear and bright except for a slight fog that floated from the river valley, increasing the roar of the falls. About nine o'clock a huge black shadow suddenly rushed over Piedmont from the west, and in a moment the town was shrouded ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... hearth; a room with but one window, and that containing only one whole pane of glass; not an article of furniture to be seen, save an old painted pine-wood cradle, which had been left there by some freak of fortune. This, turned upon its side, served us for a seat, and there we impatiently awaited the arrival of Moodie, Wilson, and a man whom the former had hired that morning to assist on the farm. Where they were all to be stowed might have puzzled a more sagacious brain than mine. It is true ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... the lightest. This descent on the Champs—Elysees had been a freak on Elise's part, who wished to do nothing so banal as take her companion to the Palais Royal. But the restaurant she had chosen, though of a much humbler kind than those which the rich tourist commonly associates with this part ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Digby, Endymion Porter, and some others still spoke manfully for Montrose with the King, he is found back in Carlisle, late in July, with only his little band of Scottish adherents. Then ensued the strangest freak of all. With this very band he set out again distinctly southwards, as if all thought of entering Scotland were over, and nothing remained but to rejoin the King at Oxford. The band, however, had been but two days on their ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... not far off. Being short of fresh food, he hitched up his team, and also his pilot's team, leaving only his boy driver in charge, while the men pursued the caribou. He enjoined the boy very strictly not to move on any account. By an odd freak a sudden snowstorm swept out of a clear sky just after they left. They missed their way, and two days later, starving and tired out, they found their first refuge, a small house many miles from the spot where they had left the sledges. ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... "Singular freak on the part of Grayson. Most eccentric man," he continued. "Danby tells me—now really what a coincidence! Sir James, by all that is singular! Ah, my dear Sir James, I was thinking about you. Ah, Edgar, ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... was a doctor, and it once belonged to him. Properly, it ought to have no place in a collection of this sort, but—well, it's such an amazing thing I couldn't quite refuse it a place, sir. It's a freak of nature. The skeleton of a ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... with Dr Beddington, who had charge of the asylum, was not sure that he would be pleased with their freak, and earnestly dissuaded his intended from proceeding ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... was a broidery freak'd with tissue of images olden, 50 One whose curious art did blazon valour of heroes. Gazing forth from a beach of Dia the billow-resounding, Look'd on a vanish'd fleet, on Theseus quickly departing, Restless ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus
... her house. "I have seen many queer creatures in the Land of Oz, but none more queer than this giant frog, who dresses like a man and walks on his hind legs. Come here, Wiljon," she called to her husband, who was eating his breakfast, "and take a look at this astonishing freak." ...
— The Lost Princess of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... the influence of this taste upon modern production. With the exception of the novel now and then which touches some religious problem or some socialistic speculation or uneasiness, or is a special freak of sensationalism, the novels which suit the greatest number of readers are those which move in a plane of absolute mediocrity, and have the slightest claim to be considered works of art. They represent the chromo ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... that until afterward. In a mad freak—there was to be a masked ball—he yielded to the lady's persuasions to let her wear the famous Rainbow Pearl for that one night. He journeyed back to Mauravania and abstracted it from among the royal jewels—putting ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... no gleam of pity or devotion in those lurid, upturned faces. To many of them it was a show, a spectacle; to others a terrible nightmare, to others a cruel freak of Providence, calling ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... presented her with the half kindly, half patronising air of one who feels that any genius in man or woman is a kind of disease, and that the person affected by it must be soothingly considered as a sort of "freak" or nondescript creature, like a white crow or a ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... 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 now ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... to his call. Some freak of the moonlight still kept the shadowy head in view, while its owner remained completely hidden, unconscious, perhaps, that any part of his reflection was showing. Ned did not know what to do. After waiting a long time, and, seeing that the shadow did not move, ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... 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 ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... against what I took to be the rail, breathed, and breathed the sweet air again. I tried to rise, but struck my head and was knocked back on hands and knees. By some freak of the waters I had been swept clear under the forecastle-head and into the eyes. As I scrambled out on all fours, I passed over the body of Thomas Mugridge, who lay in a groaning heap. There was no time to investigate. I must get the jib ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... is, that this terrific object was a freak of fancy on the part of some old-world sculptor, and that its presence had suggested to the Kukuanas the idea of placing their royal dead under its awful presidency. Or perhaps it was set there to frighten away any marauders who might have designs upon the treasure ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... escort looked troubled. No longer striding proudly in front, he showed a desire to loiter behind, although so long as my grand chair kept close at my heels he could save his face by explaining my strange proceeding as the mad freak of a foreigner. But finally, when I bade the chair-men stop for a smoke at a rest-house, knowing they could easily overtake my slow-moving vehicle, he too disappeared, and only took up his station again at ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... I move thee now in the last duty, Dost thou with a turn or gesture anon respond; Startling my fancy fond With a chance attitude of the head, a freak ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... make fun of anything that I have seen in this country!" replied the Hunter. "I now rejoice that a mad freak brought me here to these woods and fields, for otherwise I should probably never have learned to know the region; for it has very little reputation abroad, and there is, in fact, nothing here to attract exhausted and surfeited tourists. But the feeling has gripped me here even more strongly ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... about these children, that they had inherited from their father, which was a freak growth of an inch-wide streak of white hair which started from the center of their heads and continued downwards to the base of their skulls, and which as it showed plainly in their black hair made this strange birth-mark ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... talk that way. Don't reproach me when I am in such need of—of friendship. One of these days you may know me better, but now you can regard me only as a freak. ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... the walls, and she ran from one to another rejoicing over them. There was even a further surprise. Years ago an artist cousin had sketched her portrait in pastel crayons upon the color-wash of the wall. It had been done as a mere artistic freak, but like many such spontaneous drawings it had been an admirable likeness and a very pretty picture. It bore her name, "Ingred," in flourishy letters underneath. The whole of this had now been protected with a sheet of glass and enclosed by a frame. A table in the room, ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... will be standing at my door. It is as well that you should look carefully round, before you enter, so as to be sure there is no one in the corridor, and that you can slip in unobserved. You may be sure that I am asking you to come for no idle freak, but because I have something very ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... prince his son, and fully surrendered Piso into his hands, would, it is believed, even now use him as he did the unhappy emperor. But he is safe in the keeping of the prince. And the guard about him, it is my present suspicion, is as much to defend him against any sudden freak of the king or his satellites, as it is to prevent his escape. The least that could happen to any Roman falling into Sapor's power would be to be flayed alive. My safety will lie in my being known only as a Jew, not as ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... on virgin snows, So vies the lily with the rose Full on your dimpled cheek; But ah! the worm in lazy coil May soon prey on this putrid spoil, Or leap in loathsome freak. ...
— Cottage Poems • Patrick Bronte
... my voice, sir. It is not a voice, it is a freak of grammar. It is masculine, feminine, and neuter in gender, singular by nature, and generally accusative, and it is optative in mood and full of acute accents. If you can find such another voice in creation, sir, I will forfeit mine ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford
... what was there to say?" Harriet answered. "Our meeting was entirely accidental. He had no idea of finding me; was as surprised as I was." She stopped abruptly, musing on some unpalatable thought. "You wouldn't know him, Linda. He is a perfect freak," she said, presently, "talks about Karma and Nirvana and I don't know what all! Whether he's a Theosophist or ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... truth might compromise the family. The officers, who well knew their sometime hosts, were so well assured of this that the seniors were at once acquitted, and, regarding the girls, they were too gentlemanly to push an inquiry which might have punished a childish freak with the gravest military consequences, for, as the officer on the quest said, "Even it's being a woman would not protect the author of such a grave insult to the flag." Irrepressible as they were, in spite ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... good joke," he remarked, "to call upon others to uphold the dignity of one who is always at some freak or other ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... there came before me Vaness's well-dressed person, panting, pale, perplexed; and beside him, by a freak of vision, stood the old darky's father, bound to the live-oak, with the bullets whistling past, and his face transfigured. There they stood alongside the creed of pleasure, which depended for fulfilment on its waist measurement; ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... "If for every trifling freak fellows were to be telling the monitors, we had better inaugurate at once the era ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... "A foolish freak—worrying the whole family, delaying supper, and what not. Now come and eat your porridge without more delay. Mary, go bring the milk; and, Timmie, you fetch a clean saucer from the pantry. Martin, stop pestering your brother until he eats something; he'll play with you and Nell by and by. Such ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... clue. The pebble worried me, and I made a peevish gesture to throw it away. No! Whatever it was, I must not do that, rather wash it, wash it. Yes! that was what we used to do. But where was the batea, for now by some strange freak I was back in Brazil, and must have my batea. We washed our gravel for diamonds in that wooden ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... 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 tracing on the earth's surface, either with the beneficent ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... sympathy and help he gives folks. These crack specialists, the young scientific fellows, they're so cocksure and so wrapped up in their laboratories that they miss the human element. Except in the case of a few freak diseases that no respectable human being would waste his time having, it's the old doc that keeps a community well, mind and body. And strikes me that Will is one of the steadiest and clearest-headed counter practitioners ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... was at the ball, but he had developed a flirtation with Miss Guest, and Biddy felt that he was not to be trusted as a confidant. Perhaps, too, he had helped the girls to disappear. It seemed cruel to frighten Mrs. East, when the scheme, whatever it was, might be no more than an innocent freak; so Biddy said nothing to Queen Cleopatra or her Roman attendant. She slipped across the garden to the hotel, and sent an Arab messenger off in a taxi with a note to the address "Antoun" had told her would find him. ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... you?" he asked, studying her face curiously, and with a doubtful sound in his voice. "I don't believe that strange freak of ...
— The Chautauqua Girls At Home • Pansy, AKA Isabella M. Alden
... that Claire would find him intrusive, Milt was grave in her presence. He couldn't respond either to her enthusiasm about canyon and colored pool—or to her rage about the tourists who, she alleged, preferred freak museum pieces to plain beauty; who never admired a view unless it was labeled by a signpost and megaphoned by a guide as something they ought to admire—and tell the ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... brown—eyes dreamy and mournful, and deeply sunk in their orbits—looked out at you, and (in my case, at least) took your attention captive at their will. Add to this a quantity of thick closely-curling hair, which, by some freak of Nature, had lost its colour in the most startlingly partial and capricious manner. Over the top of his head it was still of the deep black which was its natural colour. Round the sides of his head—without the slightest gradation of grey to break the force of the extraordinary ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... be now?" he said to himself. "Some new freak of Willie's, of course. Yes; the thread goes right up to his window! I dare say if I were to stop and watch I should see something happen in consequence. But I am too tired, and must go ...
— Gutta-Percha Willie • George MacDonald
... when you were born, and, having had my head shaved during my illness, my hair grew out the bright gold you see it now, instead of the dark brown it had hitherto been. A strange freak of nature, but a providential aid to the disguise I wished to maintain. I wrote to Cuthbert, informing him of your birth, praying his speedy return, but no reply came; and again and again I repeated the petition. At length I was answered by the return of all my letters, without ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... like a curious freak of fate that such a sovereign, at such a time, should have had to get rid of the Duke of Wellington and accept Lord Grey as his Prime Minister. The Duke of Wellington was himself simple, plain, and occasionally rough in manners, with little taste for Court ceremonial ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... to see him talking to Nan while he, old Abe, was too far away to hear what they were saying. He had a good deal of confidence in Nan, she was a sensible, level-headed girl. Still, there was no knowing what freak even a sensible girl might take into her head, and Nan was so determined when she did make up her mind. She was his ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... we took to our canoes. For such a pair of eyes, for those exquisite features, some scraggy denizen of Vanity Fair would have given a king's ransom. Yet here was a thing of beauty, dropped by a vile freak of Nature into an appalling environment of filth and ignorance; a creature destined, no doubt, to spring into mature womanhood, and lapse, in time, into a counterpart of the bleared Hecate who mumbled her Cree ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... only vulnerable point which could be reached. Fifty thousand Russians, in a single band, were marching through Germany to cooeperate with the Austrians on the French frontiers. The more polished Germans were astonished at the barbaric character of their allies. A Russian officer, in a freak of passion, shot an Austrian postilion, and then took out his purse and enquired of the employer of the postilion what damage was to be paid, as coolly as if he had merely killed a horse or a cow. Even German law was compelled to wink at such outrages, for an ally ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... 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 the ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... of the eyes, but Psmith was in his element. His demeanour throughout the meal was that of some whimsical monarch condescending for a freak to revel with his ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... only was he fully dressed, but the white evening waistcoat he had been wearing had been changed by him within the last few moments for a waistcoat she had not seen before, though she had heard of its arrival from London. It was of cashmere, the latest freak of fashion. She also saw with surprise that his nankeen trousers were stained, as if he had been kneeling on damp ground. He looked very hot, his wavy hair lay damply on his brow, and he ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... perfected, and to our eyes they looked impregnable. We did not then realize how useless it is to attempt to defend a town, and, unfortunately, our ignorance was not limited to civilians. It is a curious freak of modern war that a ploughed field should be stronger than any citadel. But, as I say, these things were hidden from us, and our allies gave the finishing touches to their trenches, to the high entertainment of the ...
— A Surgeon in Belgium • Henry Sessions Souttar
... so few, her positive, personal recollections of him, and one of them now came back to her with a symbolic meaning. It had been a not uncommon occurrence in her childhood—a school picnic in the Black Rock woods; but this one stood out from all the others because, by what freak of chance she never knew, her father had gone with her instead of her mother. How proud she had been to have him there! How eagerly she had done the honors of the "entertainment"! How anxiously she had hoped ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... 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 ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... the benefit of their measures was felt, and an office which had never before paid anything to that of Great Britain came, under their administration, "to yield three times as much clear revenue to the crown as the post-office of Ireland." Franklin narrates that in time he was displaced "by a freak of the ministers," and in happy phrase adds, "Since that imprudent transaction, they have received from it—not one farthing!" In this connection it may be worth while to quote Franklin's reply to a request to give a position to ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... "She is a freak, must be, most of these writer people are freaks," said Wilbur sympathetically. "Poor old girl, and I suppose you have got ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... any abnormal love of it. She did it, so far so I can find out, because she wished to do good that way. She's been a little notional, she's had her head addled by women's talk, and she's in a queer freak; but it's only a girl's freak after all: you can't say anything worse of her. She's a splendid woman, and her property's neither here nor there. ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Thrice he carried it over to the fireplace and decided to chuck it behind the Japanese umbrella in the grate; then he thought it absurd to waste an expensive frame. There was no good in beating about the bush. Anna looked like a stranger—abnormal, a freak—it might be a picture taken just ...
— In a German Pension • Katherine Mansfield
... cardinal was also desirous of leaving posterity various polemical works. But his gallantries rendered him more ridiculous. Always in ill health, this miserable lover and grave cardinal would, in a freak of love, dress himself with a red feather in his cap and sword by his side. He was more hurt by an offensive nickname given him by the queen of Louis XIII., than even by the hiss of theatres and the critical condemnation ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... descended, turning himself over and over till he came to the bottom." This story was told with such gravity, and with an air of such affectionate remembrance of a departed friend, that it was impossible to suppose this extraordinary freak an invention of Mr. Langton.' It must have been in the winter ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... cheers of those on shore, as the boats pulled off, told that the brave buccaneers carried with them the heartfelt good wishes of their countrymen." Wandering on in his talk from the campaign of Sicily and Calabria, my companion spoke of the last wild freak of Garibaldi and the day of Aspromonte, and finally of the hero's imprisonment at Varignano, in ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... servant was the elder of the two. He had a giant-like, sinewy frame and a grotesquely small head; his cheeks were round and red like apples, and his long whiskers evidently received some attention from his vanity; it seemed an odd freak for vanity to take, for all the rest of him was rough and dirty. He wriggled when the girl darkened the doorway, but did not ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... freak of the caliphs, the construction of the palace of Azahra, of which not a vestige now exists, we may form a sufficient notion of the taste and magnificence of this era from the remains of the far-famed mosque, now the ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... freak of chance, so perfect, yet so rough, A whim of Nature crystallized slowly in granite tough; The thick spires yearned towards the sky in quaint harmonious lines, And in broad sunlight basked and slept, like a grove of ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... a member of the dominant race of Pellucidar. By a strange freak of evolution her kind had first developed the power of reason in ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... 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 ...
— Storyology - Essays in Folk-Lore, Sea-Lore, and Plant-Lore • Benjamin Taylor
... in the absence of facts, to believe that no other head than his ever concocted the crime. Still, from the manly sincerity with which his young client spoke, he felt inclined to impute the act to a freak of boyish malice and disappointment, rather than to a spirit of vindictive rancor. He entertained no expectation whatsoever of Connor's acquittal, and hinted to him that it was his habit in such cases to recommend his clients to be prepared for the worst, without, at the ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... hiding Pollyooly had played the important part. It had been a freak of nature to make her and Lady Marion Ricksborough so closely alike, that even when they were together it was hard to tell which was which. The duchess had taken advantage of this likeness to substitute Pollyooly for Lady Marion at ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... of a visit from a lion? Did the brute actually dare to leap into the midst of our camp and carry off one of its inmates? It shall not be the fault of my rifle if he does not pay dearly for his freak before another ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... be called old fashioned. Her views on life had certainly little in common with those held by most present-day women. She had no taste for bridge, she refused to adopt freak fashions in dress, she discouraged the looseness of tone in speech and manner so much affected by other women of her acquaintance—in a word she was in society but not of it. Naturally, she had more acquaintances than friends, ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... not an exhibition of love—or, at least, not necessarily so. You might exhibit sensibility before a famous poet, or a gallant soldier, or a celebrated traveler—or, for that matter, before a remarkable buffoon, like Cagliostro, or a freak, like ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... agreeable effect, owing to its design or color or both, if it were turned upside down. Decorative painting in this sense may easily be carried so far as to seem incongruous and inept, in spite of its superficial attractiveness. The peril that threatens it is whim and freak. Some of Monticelli's, some of Matthew Maris's pictures, illustrate the exaggeration of the decorative impulse. After all, a painter must get his effect, whatever it be and however it may shun the literal and the exact, by rendering things ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... Charlie for what happened. He is as skilful a pilot as I know. It was a mad freak of the sea ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... could not have repeated it to make it comprehensible. She drank at every sentence, getting no more from it than the gratification of her thirst. His father, at least, was a man of title, a baronet. What was meant by estates not entailed? What wild freak of fate put this noble young man in the power of an eccentric parent, who now caressed him, now made him an outcast? She heard of the sum that was his, coming from his dead mother to support him just one hundred pounds annual! Was ever ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... time had Nancy in early youth stamped her foot and cried: "Don't talk about Julia! I will not hear about Julia!" for she was always held up as a pattern of excellence. Truth to tell she bored her own mother terribly; but that is not strange, for by a curious freak of nature, Mrs. Allan Carey was as flighty and capricious and irresponsible and gay and naughty as Julia was steady, limited, narrow, conventional, and dull; but the flighty mother passed out of the ...
— Mother Carey's Chickens • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the name and guise of some virtue that she has caused well nigh all to lose cognisance of their own selves. Greed she calls thrift; in her tongue riotous living is innocent joy; pride is courtesy; the froward, a clever, courageous man; the drunkard, a boon companion; and adultery is a mere freak of youth. On the other hand, if she and her scholars' {110a} are to be believed, the godly is a hypocrite or a fool; the gentle, a coward; the abstemious, a churl, and so for every other quality. Send her thither in all her adornment, and I warrant you she will deceive everyone; ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... look for him whether I am on land or on sea. Some day, somewhere, I shall hear news of him. I wish you to remember that if ever you need a friend, you have only to let me know. I am ashamed to think that I have let this strange freak of circumstance find Robert Morton's daughter for me. I should have looked you up years ago. Do you know what a fellow's chum means to him when he is a boy at school?" Captain Moore queried, less seriously. "Don't you think a man ...
— Madge Morton's Secret • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... think I'd have some Darkovan freak meddling with my mind—" Jay began hotly, then stopped. Under Regis' grave eyes, he felt a surge of unfamiliar humility. This crew of men needed their leader, and obviously he, Jay Allison, wasn't the leader they needed. He covered his ...
— The Planet Savers • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... attracts the ball and by this simple method it is in the power of the operator to let the ball go to red or black as he may wish. Other similar arrangements control the odd or even, and other combinations from other push buttons. A special arrangement took care of that '17' freak. There isn't an honest gambling-machine in the whole place—I might almost say the whole city. The whole thing is crooked from start to finish—the men, ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... dairymaid forever. All the day was sweet to Eleanor. But at the end of it a thought darted into her mind, with the keenness of an arrow. Mr. Carlisle in a few days more might have learned of her run-away freak and of her hiding-place and have time to come after her. There was a barb to the thought; for Eleanor could not ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... tamed, though at times she still rebels. Both of these young women exercise authority over me all day long until the ownership of my own soul has become a moot question. When my leg is properly spliced again I shall take that freak Susie to New York and exhibit her as the greatest natural curiosity I have been able ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... Thorpe, by some strange freak of psychology, suddenly recalled a wild, windy day in the forest. He had stood on the top of a height. He saw again the sharp puffs of snow, exactly like the smoke from bursting shells, where a fierce swoop of the storm struck the laden tops of pines; ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... may be only the child's horoscope, or some old wife's charm that is here sewn up, and these marks may be naught but some sailor's freak; but, on the other hand, they may be concerned with perilous matter, so the less ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... weather, and, to complete the resemblance, there was a scrubby growth of weeds or lichen upon it, which against the sun looked for all the world like the wool on a colossal negro's head. It certainly was very odd; so odd that now I believe it is not a mere freak of nature but a gigantic monument fashioned, like the well-known Egyptian Sphinx, by a forgotten people out of a pile of rock that lent itself to their design, perhaps as an emblem of warning and defiance ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... us!" exclaimed the King. "Don't let all those whimsies trouble you further, or you will give birth to some monstrosity, some freak of nature." His Majesty was a true prophet. The Queen was delivered of a fine little girl, black as ink from head to foot. They did not tell her this at once, fearing a catastrophe, but persuaded her to go to sleep, saying that the child had been ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... by the answer which, without saying a word, the chevalier made to it. And in fact, the blushes which empurpled his cheeks spoke better than the best speeches of the Greek and Latin orators, and were well understood. At this sweet sight, the countess, to make sure that it was not a freak of nature, took pleasure in experimentalising how far the virtue of her eyes would go, and after having heated her slave more than thirty times, she was confirmed in her belief that he would bravely die for her. This idea so touched her, that from three repetitions between her orisons ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... uttering the obvious remark on hearing this. Two words from him would have wrecked the house of cards. Instead, he blushed and smiled modestly. Slowly it was filtering into his brain that by some unusual, unexpected, unprecedented freak of fortune his difficulties had been overcome; that some way or other he had proposed and had ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IX (of X) • Various
... adjusting it exactly to some footprint before him; and Middleton doubted not that, having studied and re-studied the family records and the judicial examinations which described exactly the track that was seen the day after the memorable disappearance of his ancestor, Mr. Eldredge was now, in some freak, or for some purpose best known to himself, practically following it out. And follow it out he did, until at last he lifted up his eyes, muttering to himself: "At this point ...
— The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... to hear you say this, Countess," he said very seriously. "I have been so bold on occasion as to assert—for your private ear, of course—that you could not, by any freak of nature, happen to care for Count Marlanx, whom I know only by description. You have laughed at my so-called American wit, and you have been most tolerant. Now, I feel that I am justified. I'm immeasurably glad to hear you confess that you ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... old woman plays a very sober game; drops a ten-franc piece here and there. The girl is more headlong. But it is only a freak." ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... mixture of native and foreign dress they are positively ridiculous, and do violence to every rule of art and law of taste. Usually when an oriental—for it is equally true of China, Japan and Turkey—adopts European dress he selects the same colors he would wear in his own, and he looks like a freak, as you can imagine, in a pair of green trousers, a crimson waistcoat, a purple tie, a blue negligee shirt and a ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... by a strange freak of nature are more easily obtainable in April and May than in any other month. In fact in December they are worth their weight in gold, and are then to be found on the tables only of Mr. MALLABY-DEELEY, Mr. ROCKEFELLER, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 15, 1914 • Various
... hill his companion drew rein, reeling in the saddle with the suddenness of the halt. However, in such a horseman, this could not be. It must be merely a freak feature of ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... nowhere to be seen. "Then, Paddy," exclaimed Jack, clutching his rifle, "let us have a cruise on our own hook. You remember the prize you took among the Ionian Islands, old fellow?" How merrily they laughed at the recollection of that early freak of theirs. Paddy, of course, was delighted to join in any scheme of Jack's. They could not tell in which direction the frigate had gone. They, at a hazard, steered to the southward. They had a good supply of provisions ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... a spinster sister to whom his specimens were the bane of her life. As the car rolled swiftly along, he occupied his time by peeping into the bag at frequent intervals to see that none of the specimens, by some freak of ...
— The Boy Inventors' Radio Telephone • Richard Bonner
... Through a queer freak of fate, Thad Brewster and his comrades of the Silver Fox Patrol find themselves in somewhat the same predicament that confronted dear old Robinson Crusoe; only it is on the Great Lakes that they are wrecked instead of the salty ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... Michel Agnolo— Judge all I do and tell you of its worth. Will you? To-morrow, satisfy your friend. I take the subjects for his corridor, Finish the potrait out of hand—there, there, And throw him in another thing or two If he demurs; the whole should prove enough To pay for this same cousin's freak. Beside, What's better and what's all I care about, {240} Get you the thirteen scudi for the ruff! Love, does that please you? Ah, but what does he, The cousin! what does he ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... did something for Amy Carringford—the pauper! You were spoons with her then, and you wanted to get her to my party. You begged an invitation for her and then dressed her up. like a freak so she could ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long
... given the modern style of these regiments as they were before the last freak of the War Office. What they may be now, I do not know; nor is the knowledge important, for the style I have used will probably be most familiar to my readers. "My Uncle Toby," it will be remembered, was of Leven's regiment. There ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... industrial freak, As a labourer sadly to seek; But he leapt into fame By preferring a claim For a general ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 23, 1919 • Various |
