"Free-and-easy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... like the widow's cruse of oil. We went to see the fat lady, who, if she was really as big as she looked to me then, must have weighed at least a ton. My admiration for gran'ther's daredevil qualities rose to infinity when he entered into free-and-easy talk with her, about how much she ate, and could she raise her arms enough to do up her own hair, and how many yards of velvet it took to make her gorgeous, gold-trimmed robe. She laughed a great deal at us, but she was evidently touched by his human interest, for she confided ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... conduct by appealing to a clause in Luther's Smalkald Articles.67 He contended that there provision was made for the kind of meeting that he was conducting; and, therefore, he invited men of all classes to meet him on Sunday afternoons, read a passage of Scripture together, and talk in a free-and-easy fashion on spiritual topics. He became known as rather a curiosity; and Valentine Lscher, the popular Lutheran preacher, mentioned him by name in his sermons, and held him up before the people as an example they would ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... haunches, and clapped their hands as he passed, exclaiming and laughing, "Just see the old fellow! just look at him!" Burnside laughed at their fun as jollily as they did themselves, and took no offence at the free-and-easy way in which they showed their liking for him. There was no affectation in all this, but an honest enjoyment in following his own whim in style and in accoutrement. His sincere earnestness in the cause for ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... Save for the ugly gray uniforms with the coloured patches in the centre of the back, significant of the term of imprisonment to which their wearers had been sentenced, and the strangely shaved heads of those present, he might have been in a singularly free-and-easy barrack-room. Most of the men looked ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... ran to him with alacrity, and wedging in between his legs, placed his little black hands in a free-and-easy way on his master's knees, and looking up ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... it was he who had to sit down and fill up the form, because she did not understand the Italian questions. She stood at his side, watching the excited, laughing, noisy, east-end Italians at the desk. The whole place had a certain free-and-easy confusion, a human, unofficial, muddling liveliness which was not quite like England, even though it was in the middle ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... accidental externals had no weight in biassing our high opinion of them all. Good-bye, old ship; farewell, jolly captain and sturdy crew; you will never be forgotten any more by us while life lasts, and in far other and more conventional scenes we shall regretfully remember the free-and-easy time we shared with you. So she slipped away round the point and out ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... sorrows past), I repaired to a cafe so-called, which was the evening resort of the purchasers of cavalry mounts, horse-breeders, and other persons. In the billiard-room, which was plunged in grey floods of tobacco smoke, there were about twenty men. Here were free-and-easy young landowners in embroidered jackets and grey trousers, with long curling hair and little waxed moustaches, staring about them with gentlemanly insolence; other noblemen in Cossack dress, with extraordinarily short necks, and eyes lost in layers of fat, were snorting with distressing ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... see a man a-wrestling with the dumps, 'Cause in the game of life he doesn't always catch the trumps, But I can always cotton to a free-and-easy cuss As takes his dose and thanks the Lord it wasn't any wuss. There ain't no use of swearin' and cussin' at your luck, 'Cause you can't correct your troubles more than you can drown a duck. Remember that ...
— The Story of Cole Younger, by Himself • Cole Younger
... the stairs, and Ronicky Doone paused. To go down was to face the mysterious chief whom he had no doubt was the old man to whom Harry Morgan had already referred. In the meantime the conviction grew that this was indeed Caroline Smith. Her free-and-easy way of talk was exactly that of a girl who might become interested in a man whom she had never seen, merely ...
— Ronicky Doone • Max Brand
... 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... traders, 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
... can 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 trade in theatricals; but, nevertheless, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 28, 1841 • Various
... profuse assurances of amicable consideration, he departed, probably laying the flattering unction to his soul that much valuable information had been unconsciously imparted to him. He did not know that the free-and-easy young cavalry soldier who talked with such apparent frankness had learned a staff officer's duties as aide-decamp to one of our most astutely cautious Generals. This is the story as it was told to me at second hand, and if only well invented it is ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... Gentlemen of 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 ...
— A Christmas Carol • Charles Dickens
... fondness for vino blanco, and gained the reputation of being able to drink more of it than any three men in town. Everybody called him "Dicky"; everybody cheered up at the sight of him—especially the natives, to whom his marvellous red hair and his free-and-easy style were a constant delight and envy. Wherever you went in the town you would soon see Dicky or hear his genial laugh, and find around him a group of admirers who appreciated him both for his good nature and the white wine he was always ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... should accept the prelude as a 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 preserving ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... me some mountain pinks, which I admired. I mention these little incidents to indicate the habit of respectful courtesy to women which prevails in that region. These men might have been excused for speaking in a somewhat free-and-easy tone to a lady riding alone, and in an unwonted fashion. Womanly dignity and manly respect for women are the salt of society in this ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... gold 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
... 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, laughed and blushed, and looked exceedingly pleased and shy as the dinner ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... funny, when some unexpected grasshopper, some free-and-easy beetle presents itself without invitation or excuse, scampering over our white mats, to see the manner in which Chrysantheme indicates it to my righteous vengeance—merely pointing her finger at it, without another word than ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... proprietress of the plantation, Senora Carmen Vargas, and her children, were spending the season here. During the rainy winter months they live in Cuzco, but when summer brings fine weather they come to Huadquina to enjoy the free-and-easy life of the country. They made us welcome, not only with that hospitality to passing travelers which is common to sugar estates all over the world, but gave us real assistance in our explorations. Senora Carmen's ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... 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 of it, they only grin at it, and repeat gamesome stuff ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... at need, have explained this free-and-easy demeanor. The old maid wore a merino gown of a dark plum color, of which the cut and trimming dated from the year of the Restoration; a little worked collar, worth perhaps three francs; and a common straw hat with blue satin ribbons edged with straw plait, such as the ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... Simpson; but having incurred it, I do not think it can be justly paid off with a 'glad-to-know-you-when-I'm-at-Bath-again' acquaintance; and I feel bound to be civil to him, though he does bother me immensely at times with his free-and-easy habits,—walking into my parlor with his hat on and cigar in his mouth; chaffing me or my wife in language about as elegant as an omnibus driver's; or pawing ladies about in a way that he takes for gallantry. Talking of ladies, I wish mine would show themselves ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... were women who came in occasionally to do the washing, or to help about extra work. But they were decently clothed, and had homes of their own, more or less comfortable, and their quaint talk and free-and-easy ways were often as much of a lift to the household as the actual assistance ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... said, "is against Nature. It flies in the face of the processes of evolution. You have only to look about you to see that everything has been made for a quite different purpose. For ages Mother Nature has been keeping house in her own free-and-easy fashion, gradually improving her family by killing off the weaker members, and giving them as food to the strong. It is a plan that has worked well—for the strong. When we interrogate Nature as to the 'reason ...
— By the Christmas Fire • Samuel McChord Crothers
... 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
... a delightfully free-and-easy, laisser-aller air about everybody and everything at Nome City, which would, perhaps, have jarred upon an ultra-respectable mind. Most of the ladies at the Golden Gate Hotel were located there in couples, unattended, permanently at any rate, by male protectors. The bedroom ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... 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 suffering. Don't you ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... 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 ...
— George Washington • William Roscoe Thayer
... writes in a pleasant, free-and-easy way.... He accepts things chiefly at their face value, but he describes them so accurately and agreeably that he recalls vividly to mind the plays we have seen and the pleasure we have ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... illicit pleasures is there moral safety and health, while integrity, peace, and happiness, are the conscious rewards of virtue. Impurity travels downward with intemperance, obscenity, and corrupting diseases, to degradation and death. A dissolute, licentious, free-and-easy life is filled with the dregs of human suffering, iniquity, and despair. The penalties which follow a violation of the law of chastity are found to be severe and ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... to enjoy himself—to "live in the free-and-easy style of the Regency days." He wanted to learn the shoe-trick, in order to visit the thieves' taverns of the city, like Rodolphe in the Mysteries of Paris; drew out of his pocket a dirty clay pipe, abused the servants, and drank a great ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... kept as the room for state occasions, it was not a stately room. It was furnished with elegance and good taste; but what was better, the genial home atmosphere from the rest of the house had invaded it, and one did not feel, on entering it from the free-and-easy sitting-room, as if passing from a sunny climate to the icebergs of the Pole. Therefore I am sure my reader will follow me gladly out of the biting, boisterous wind into the homelike apartment, and as we stand in fancy before the glowing ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... 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 ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... got into a 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, which I hoped would ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... so centrally situated that the young people of both sexes found it very convenient to drop in for a few minutes on their way up or down town. Mr. Sherwood loved to see the rooms filled with laughing faces, and encouraged this free-and-easy intercourse, and he looked forward to the evening's pleasure with the ardor of a young man. When Guy Traverse made his appearance he was sure of a hearty greeting, and the weeks flew by very pleasantly until summer ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... 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 ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott
... to mark that she had given him no ready smile by way of welcome, that now she regarded him coolly and critically. In her morning attitude there was little to lead him to hope for a free-and-easy chat ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... quiet and 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 manner of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... DE BOURDEILLES, a French chronicler, contemporary of Montaigne, born in Perigord; led the life of a knight-errant, and wrote Memoirs remarkable for the free-and-easy, faithful, and vivid delineations of the characters of the most ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... pass, and address him familiarly as "thou." 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 ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... that I'd carry the trunks up on Bald-Top before I'd let her touch them. That's the way it will always be with these city people, I suppose. Everybody must jump and run the moment they speak. Father's right, and we'll have to give up our old free-and-easy life and become porters ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... that chink into the singer's extended hat show how fully his efforts are appreciated; but at this moment P——, with the free-and-easy command of a true John Bull, elbows his way through the throng, and calls out: "Holloa, Johnny! we only got the fag-end of that song. Tip us another, and here's five piastres ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... nothing. His good nature never forsook him, and he always had his temper well under control. He knew to a nicety the side his bread was buttered on. That happy-go-lucky disposition of his stood him in good stead many a time, and his free-and-easy manner of drawing people out frequently served as an aid to determine his future course of action. The limited exchange of conversation he had with the loungers satisfied him that he was right in his estimate that there would be a hot time in the old town on Saturday night if he remained. ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... moment when she came down the stairs and took the white apron which Brophy handed to her she had ceased to be the city-wearied girl. It was homely adventure, to be sure, but the very plainness of it, in the free-and-easy environment of the north woods, appealed to her sense of novelty. There was especial zest for her in this bullyragging of Crowley by the man who was to be victim of the machinations by the Vose-Mern agency. Her eyes revealed her thoughts. The city man opened his mouth. He promptly shut it and turned ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... the greatest land speculators of his time, owned over 32,000 acres along the Ohio. He held a patent from Lord Dunmore, dated July 5, 1775, for nearly 3,000 acres lying about the mouth of this stream. In accordance with the free-and-easy habit of trans-Alleghany pioneers, ten men squatted on the tract, greatly to the indignation of the Father of his Country, who in 1784 brought against them a successful suit for ejectment. Twelve years later, more familiar with this than with most of his land grants, he sold ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... monkey was the cause of our getting into trouble, a couple of Italians, who had taken offense at the free-and-easy ways of Fogarty, Crane and Carroll, who occupied the same apartment with them, informing the guard that the New-Yorker had the little animal in his pocket, the fare for which was immediately ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... no sympathy whatever with the idea of a Theatre Libre or with a Free-and-Easy Theatre, but we shall be very glad when all Theatres are made Easy, Easy, that is, as to sitting accommodation, and Easy of egress and ingress. But if the space is to be enlarged, will not the prices have to be enlarged too? 'Tis ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 16, 1892 • Various
... they glorified their office, you may be sure. Discipline had grown rather free-and-easy in the town about that time, and it is said that the guard-house never was so full within human memory as after their first tour of duty. I remember hearing that one young reprobate, son of a leading Northern philanthropist in those parts, was much aggrieved at being taken to the lock-up merely ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... the high position that her husband would then occupy. He would pay their state dividends to Granoux, Roudier, and all those people who now came to her house as they might come to a cafe, to swagger and learn the latest news. She had noticed the free-and-easy manner in which these people entered her drawing-room, and it had made her take a dislike to them. Even the marquis, with his ironical politeness, was beginning to displease her. To triumph alone, therefore, to keep the cake for themselves, ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... out about them," Nekhludoff said, more and more astonished by her free-and-easy manner. "But I was going to speak to you about myself. Do you remember what I told you ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... 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 gentleman ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... corn which he had confiscated, he remarked significantly, from a field down yonder. He nodded jauntily right and left, and then disposed himself comfortably in a corner, and began cracking his dainties in a very free-and-easy manner, not noticing the woe-begone aspect of his friends. All at once, however, he awoke to a realizing sense of things, and showed his sympathy after his own fashion, by giving a sudden flirt with his tail, and calling out, ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various
... were in a large majority, Cardailhac having reflected that, where a bey was concerned, the performance was of little consequence, that one need only emit false notes from pretty lips, show lovely arms and well-turned legs in the free-and-easy neglige of the operetta. All the plastic celebrities of his theatre were on hand, therefore, Amy Ferat at their head, a hussy who had already tried her eye-teeth on the gold of several crowns; also two or three famous comic actors, whose pallid faces produced the same effect of chalky, ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... nasal passages, through which the air then passes 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 observing ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... speech or action. The boy and girl who went to school together grow up to be the young man and woman of society; and while the memory of school days is a bond of hearty friendliness between them, it is not necessary that they should evince their mutual regard by a free-and-easy demeanor. ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... of his type—and a fine type—in England. Setting aside the mere romantic exterior of a Macedonian brigand, here was a young man of the period with astonishingly courteous manners, of—and this was of secondary consideration—of frank and winning charm, with a free-and-easy intimacy with Balzac, of fearless truthfulness regarding his deficiencies, and with a golf handicap of one. The Colonel's hand and heart went out in instinctive coordination. The Colonel Winwoods of this country ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... to their respective rooms by several servants. The one given to Isabelle was a little apart from the others—those in their immediate vicinity being occupied—which was not displeasing to the modest young girl, who was often greatly annoyed and embarrassed by the promiscuous, free-and-easy way of getting on, inseparable from such a Bohemian life. She always accepted the inevitable with a good grace, and never complained of the vexation she felt at being obliged to share her bed-chamber with Serafina ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... 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
... like other 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
... 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 say that it would not ...
— Dab Kinzer - A Story of a Growing Boy • William O. Stoddard
... 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 effort to restore discipline. The monitresses, ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... at him all evening mistrustfully, as he sat on the sofa-bed, stroking old Pluto, who had come with him to the party. Specht now poured out another glass for Pix, and laid it down beside him. Pix quaffed it in silence; Specht refilled it, and began in a free-and-easy tone—"Now, Pix, what do ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... very big men do not look well in glossy black coats and silk hats; they seem to want wideawakes, bowlers, caps, anything rather than a Paris hat, and some loose-cut jacket of a free-and-easy colour, suitable for the field, or cricket, or boating. They do not belong to the town and narrow doorways; Nature grew them for hills ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... any sort, but later, when I had formed a speaking acquaintance with diseases, I began to get them rapidly and in the most typical form. For the present I took life as easy as I could and had no boyish ambition to be a cowboy or a desperado. Such ambitions as I did foster were of the free-and-easy sort. ...
— Confessions of a Neurasthenic • William Taylor Marrs
... 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, comes within the design of this article, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 454 - Volume 18, New Series, September 11, 1852 • Various
... joined the local club, of course, and when Bunch read some of his poetical outbursts at a free-and-easy one evening, Society got up on its hind legs and with one voice declared my old pal Jefferson to be the logical successor to Robert H. Browning, Sir Walter K. Scott, Bert Tennyson, or any other poet that ever shook ...
— Skiddoo! • Hugh McHugh
... for Aspel. He had been depressed before; he was in the depths of despair now. If May had only shown confusion, or shyness, or anything but free-and-easy goodwill, hope might have revived, but he was evidently nothing more to her than the old playmate. Hope therefore died, and with its death there came over Aspel the calm subdued air of a crushed but resigned man. He observed her somewhat worn face and his heart melted. ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... Lord 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 have ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... 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 just passed her twenty-first birthday. ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... whether the charming account I heard was all youthful enthusiasm. Edith went out driving with my mother, and we began our TETE-A-TETE walk, in which I heard a great deal of the difficulties of that free-and-easy house at Oxford, and how often Isa wishes for some one who would be a real guide and helper, instead of only giving a playful, slap-dash answer, like good- natured mockery. The treatment may suit Mary's own daughters, ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... I had not a shilling in actual money, although plenty of hypothetical thousands and sundry castles in the air. It was the consciousness of the latter kind of property, no doubt, that gave me so free-and-easy an air, and made me so completely the master of my own actions. How I did worry that blessed old woman! how Laura lectured and scolded! how the governor stormed! and how I was forgiven the next minute, and ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 461 - Volume 18, New Series, October 30, 1852 • Various
... apportioning the new possessions to which the mutineers had served themselves heirs. In that free-and-easy mode in which men in power sometimes arrange matters for their own special behoof, they divided the island into nine equal parts, of which each appropriated one part. The six native men were not ...
— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne
... Esquires, on either side of it, Solomon was lost in wonder. When Mr. Jackson noticed a fine service of old blue china in an open japan closet, Mr. Smith had never seen anything like it. And finally, when Jeremiah, having bestowed upon Mrs. Wood a very free-and-easy sort of stare, winked at Mr. Kneebone, his impertinence was copied to the letter by Solomon. All three, then, burst into an immoderate fit of laughter. Mrs. Wood's astonishment and displeasure momentarily increased. ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... teeth: a circumstance which made him avoid, in general, those parts in which he had to force a great deal of laughter. Next, there was a little girl, of about fourteen, who played angels, fairies, and, at a pinch, was very effective as an old woman. Thirdly, there was our free-and-easy cavalier, who, having a loud voice and a manly presence, usually performed the tyrant. He was great in Macbeth, greater in Bombastes Furioso. Fourthly, came this gentleman's wife, a pretty, slatternish woman, much ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... no notice of our entrance, but the little fellow ran to the Colonel and caught hold of the skirts of his coat in a free-and-easy way, saying, 'Ole massa, you got suffin' ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... lights and the clamor—a stringed orchestra playing in this open front, and a hot-dog vender declaiming in this open front; a moving-picture entrance brilliantly illuminated, and a constant movement of folk up and down the streets in free-and-easy fashion, and he almost forgot the cumulative hazards of their companionship in experiencing his first plunge into city life. Brevoort, who knew the town, made for a Mexican lodging-house, where they took a room above the noisy saloon, washed, and after downing ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... or stands erect and uncompromising by 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 gentle ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... pretensions or size, but like hundreds of 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 narrative by Christ's notice of their 'faith.' We can fancy ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... and twitched, and appeared to shrink back in his chair: I presume my tones went straight through the poor twisted invalid's head. He must have fancied me (from the racket I was making) as a sort of free-and-easy Hercules (which is not quite the case), if not as the whole football squad rolled into one. Whether he really saw me, then or thereafter, I don't know; he wore a sort of green shade over his eyes. Of course I met him in due form. I tried not to give ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... 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 ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... although he disturbs all the company. Soup and fish are brought for him, and meat, which he leisurely eats, while twelve other gentlemen are kept waiting. We mark Mr. Binnie's twinkling eyes, as they watch the young man. "Eh," he seems to say, "but that's just about as free-and-easy a young chap as ever I set eyes on." And so Mr. Barnes was a cool young chap. That dish is so good, he must really have some more. He discusses the second supply leisurely; and turning round simpering to his neighbour, says, "I really hope ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the bar—that solemn sanctuary—and, smiting old John upon the back, inquire if there was never a pretty girl in the house, and where he hid his little chambermaids, with a hundred other impertinences of that nature; none of your free-and-easy companions, who would scrape their boots upon the firedogs in the common room, and be not at all particular on the subject of spittoons; none of your unconscionable blades, requiring impossible chops, and taking unheard-of ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... other through and through!" he now protested. It gave a tang of the unexpected to her uniform sweetness, this always having a corner still to turn which kept her out of his sight. Paul was used to seeing most women achieve this effect of uncertainty by the use of coquetry, and in the free-and-easy give and take between young America of both sexes, he had learned with a somewhat cynical shrewdness to discount it. He entered into the game, but, in his own phrase, he always knew what he was about. Lydia, on the contrary, ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... the next morning, my scout came in with a face of the most ludicrous importance, and quite a deferential manner. I declare I don't think he has ever got back since that day to his original free-and-easy swagger. He laid a card on my table, paused a moment, and then said, 'His ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... destructive to the safeguards of personal virtue and of social purity; and his arguments for the lie of exigency are similar to those which are put forward in excuse for common sins against chastity, by the free-and-easy defenders of a lax standard in such matters. "Some moralists," says the average young man of the world, "in their extreme regard for personal purity, will not admit that any act of unchastity is necessary, even to protect one's health, or as an act of love. But the men of virility ...
— A Lie Never Justifiable • H. Clay Trumbull
... form to smoke when anyone is singing, unless in those free-and-easy places of amusement where ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... 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 ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... not her hard taskmaster, Farmer Groby; it was one in a semi-clerical costume, who now represented what had once been the free-and-easy Alec d'Urberville. Not being hot at his preaching there was less enthusiasm about him now, and the presence of the grinder seemed to embarrass him. A pale distress was already on Tess's face, and she pulled her curtained hood ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... marble-topped tables, too good for human nature's daily food; and being sustained by this consciousness, they cheerfully went on receiving their friends in the study, and having good times in the old free-and-easy way; for did not everybody know that this room was not their best? and if the furniture was old-fashioned and a little the worse for antiquity, was it not certain that they had better, which they could use, if ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... While he was speaking, the Commandant kept staring fixedly at Paganel in rather an embarrassing manner. The geographer could not understand what he meant by it, and was just about to interrogate him, when the Commandant came forward, and seizing both his hands in the most free-and-easy fashion, said in a joyous voice, in the mother tongue of ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... though?" said Josh, 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
... a motive, 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 ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... used by the men; for it must be remembered that idlers in this country are an invisible minority of the community! The natural consequence is, that they are clean and expensive. The drivers are charmingly independent and undeniably free-and-easy birds, but not meaning to be uncivil. One of them showed his independence by asking two dollars one night for a three-mile drive home to the hotel. I inquired of the master, and found the proper charge was a dollar and a half; but, on my sending out the same, Jarvey ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... host was round and jovial; his bulk bespoke hearty living; his rosy face reflected good cheer; his stentorian voice, free-and-easy hospitality. His eyes constituted the only setback to this general impression of friendliness and fellow-feeling; they were ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... right, me b'hoys," nodded Arthur Street, who was known at Yale as Easy Street, on account of his free-and-easy way. ...
— Frank Merriwell at Yale • Burt L. Standish
... (the Honourable Jake's) was a free-and-easy democratic resort. No three knocks and a password before you turn the key here. Almost before your knuckles hit the panel you heard Mr. Botcher's hearty voice shouting "Come in," in spite of the closed ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... 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 ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... they had come down in a body. Oh, how shabby I felt as I saw them there with their fine clothes and free-and-easy manners! ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... He lays the blame partly on the general licentiousness, partly upon the French education of many of Charles's courtiers, and partly on the poets. Dryden undoubtedly formed his diction by the usage of the Court. The age was a very free-and-easy, not to say a very coarse one. Its coarseness was not external, like that of Elizabeth's day, but the outward mark of an inward depravity. What Swift's notion of the refinement of women was may be judged by his anecdotes ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... Third Act, does Erda the witch "rise from below," and we all saw her and 'Erd 'er. Then, later on, appears Bruennhilde, asleep, "in a complete suit of gleaming plate-armour, with helmet on her head and long shield over her body," a style of free-and-easy costume which, as everyone knows, is highly conducive to sleeping in perfect comfort. No wonder Siegfried mistakes her for a man-in-armour out of the Lord ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 18, 1892 • Various
... that Robert Ashford, with his foxy face 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
... the 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 ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... inside, watching her graceful movements, and attempting, with his free-and-easy insolence, to make friendly advances, but, seeing that she refused to notice him, he ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... 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. ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... such occasions. How good it tasted in the open air! how different from any made indoors! No longer was Sunnyside a dull place, for Mrs. Brett kept all the girls laughing with the funny stories she told and the extraordinary sort of free-and-easy manner in which she did everything. And yet she was so good-natured, so full of fun ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... activity—to 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 ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... and indifferent of this free-and-easy family, who always had roast turkey when it was to be had, and who could laugh and chat merrily over warmed-up meat and johnny-cake, or even no meat at all, when such days came. How she ever came to think that she could go to Chautauqua was a matter of surprise to herself; ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy
... 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 except that he needed a little more ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... glad you don't like him," James said, warmly. "Somehow I made up my mind that you were all sure to like him, and I don't suppose the idea made me like him any the better. He was just the free-and-easy sort of fellow to get along well, and I was quite sure that Aggie would not want me, when she had him to go about with her. I saw him drive through in the pony carriage with her, two or three times, and it was easy to see how thoroughly she ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty
... things when these wild sprouts of Bohemia, "with kindly solicitude, help her on with her clothes." We can even pause to admire the experienced skill with which they put each garment in its proper place—and deftly button it. That she should have the ribald slang of the free-and-easy neighborhood at her tongue's end and be destitute of delicacy as a young cow might be expected; but we are hardly prepared to see one grown up among such surroundings so unutterably stupid as not to know when her companions ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... not but notice that her very tendons and bones mollified, paralysed-like from feeling, so that his was the sensation of basking in a soft bower of love. What is more, her demonstrative ways and free-and-easy talk put even those of a born coquette to shame, with the result that while Chia Lien, at this time, longed to become heart and soul one with her, the woman designedly indulged in ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... a growing uneasiness in Rory's manner, despite his efforts towards a free-and-easy cordiality. ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... cold blood just to horrify her—and then burst into a laugh and jeer; but as to Captain Williams (Sebright had been with him from a boy), he ought to have known he was quite incapable of keeping straight after all these free-and-easy years. ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... At another time, he remarked: "I shall not make 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 them ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... that sandy-headed young fellow who had been twice to the Friary that day. What business had he to be shutting the gate after him in that free-and-easy way at ten o'clock at night? He must find it out somehow; he must make an excuse for calling there, and put the question as indifferently as he could; but even when he made up his mind to pursue this course, Archie felt just as ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... 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. It is certain that he, like the noted French-Canadian Joucaire, ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... tragic occurrences through which he had passed would have made Matt melancholy and low-spirited, but such was not the case. Mrs. Lincoln had naturally been of a light heart, and the boy partook of much of his mother's disposition. He loved a free-and-easy life, loved to roam from place to place. With a captain who was a friend of Uncle Dan, he had made a trip to Bangor and Augusta, and he had likewise put in two weeks at a lumber camp in Maine, and a month during the summer at a hotel among the ...
— Young Auctioneers - The Polishing of a Rolling Stone • Edward Stratemeyer
... 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 of the ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... Bible to make you weep, but nothing to move you to laughter. Why is this? Are there not smiles as well as tears in life? Have we not a deep, joyous nature, as well as aspiration, reverence, awe? Is there not a free-and-easy side of existence, as well as vexation and sorrow? We assent ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... a strange state of mind at the time. Among the ladies especially a sort of frivolity was conspicuous, and it could not be said to be a gradual growth. Certain very free-and-easy notions seemed to be in the air. There was a sort of dissipated gaiety and levity, and I can't say it was always quite pleasant. A lax way of thinking was the fashion. Afterwards when it was all over, people blamed Yulia Mihailovna, her circle, her attitude. But it can hardly have been altogether ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... in this free-and-easy way; but at eight o'clock, after John had visited the Palace and taken an oath in the Princess's presence (which was his first sight of her), he was driven down to the house beside the Lord Chamberlain, who admitted him to the black front hall, and, slamming the door upon him, ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... to speak to the Doctor. He had been but a few months in the place; but the old church-goers had found him out as a passionate, free-and-easy, honorable fellow, full of joke and anecdote,—shrewd, too. They "fellowshipped" with him heartily, and were glad when he got the post of surgeon with their sons. If there were anything more astringent below this, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... records of pleasant occasional junketings—'shoe-maker's holidays' he called them—in the still countrified suburbs of Hampstead and Edgware; there was the gathering at the Turk's Head, with its literary magnates, for his severer hours; and for his more pliant moments, the genial 'free-and-easy' or shilling whist-club of a less pretentious kind, where the student of mixed character might shine with something of the old supremacy of George Conway's inn at Ballymahon. And there must have been quieter and more chastened ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... aristocrat before her and contrasted his manner with that of some of the men in her own set, she did not know quite what to say. Pelgram's poses seemed cheap and shallow, and Charlie Wilkinson's free-and-easy carriage might have its virtues, but it certainly was not marked by dignity, nor did it ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... sofa, lay the tall form of Frank Willders, arrayed in an old dressing-gown, and with one of his legs bandaged up and motionless. His face was pale, and he was suffering great pain, but a free-and-easy smile was on his lips, for beside him sat a lady and a young girl, the latter of whom was afflicted with strong sympathy, but appeared afraid to show it. Mrs Willders, with a stocking and knitting-wires in her hands, sat on a chair at the head of the bed, looking anxious, ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne |
