"Fad" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... column article from the Chicago Chronicle of 1897, yellowed and framed and recounting in sonorous phrases ("pulchritudinous epidermis" is featured frequently) that the society folk of Chicago have taken up tattooing as a fad, following the lead of New York's Four Hundred, who followed the lead of London's most aristocratic circles; and that Prof. Al Herman, known from Madagascar to Sandy Hook as "Dutch," was the leading artist of the tattoo needle ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... her lieges, under a penalty, to learn, and if possible to speak, French. So far from practising non-interference, she allows no one to fight but herself. This imperious, warlike, imperial attitude is what Africa wants. It reverses our Quaker-like 'fad' for peace. We allow native wars to rage ad libitum even at Porto Loko, almost within cannon-shot of Sierra Leone. On the Gambia River the natives have sneeringly declared that they will submit to the French, ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... sharply: "She couldn't afford to fail, though, at any point. The fad that fails is extinguished forever. Will these simple facts do for fiction? Or is it for somebody in real ...
— Widger's Quotations from the Works of William Dean Howells • David Widger
... to-day this cult of the Stuarts is nothing but a fad. No one ever expects to see a Stuart on the English throne. But it is significant of the deep strain of romance which the six Stuarts who reigned in England have implanted in the English heart. ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... turnpikes became, in the years following 1800, a popular form of public spirit. Says Miss Taber: "In fact, turnpikes seemed to be a fad in those days all over the state and probably a necessary one. The longest one I learn of in this part of the country was from Cold Spring on the Hudson River to New Milford in Connecticut. The turnpike in which the people of this ...
— Quaker Hill - A Sociological Study • Warren H. Wilson
... perhaps be said on the recent fashion—not to say fad—of suppressing in the printed play the traditional list of "Dramatis Personae." Bjoernson, in some of his later plays, was, so far as I am aware, the first of the moderns to adopt this plan. I do not know whether his example has ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... the rifle, and the figures that had loomed up seemed to melt away. But as soon as the rifle had flashed there was the fad, fad, fad of hurried steps, something whizzed in at the window, and with a dull thud a spear stuck in the ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... chief of the land instead of Belarab. A brave and foresighted man, however treacherous at heart, can always be trusted to a certain extent. One can never get anything clear from Belarab. Peace! Peace! You know his fad. And this fad makes him act silly. The peace racket will get him into a row. It may cost him his life in the end. However, Tengga does not feel himself strong enough yet to act with his own followers only and Belarab has, ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... stay. It has nothing to do with superstition at all. It's part of Advanced Thought — quite scientific, you know, while Spiritualism was just a fad. ...
— Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers • Don Marquis
... still kept up in some of the back streets of the town a few years back, and though it may have died out now with us those who enjoy such amusements will find the old custom observed in villages not far away.—At Handsworth, "clipping the church" was the curious "fad" at Easter-time, the children from the National Schools, with ladies and gentlemen too, joining hands till they had surrounded the old church with a leaping, laughing, linked, living ring of humanity, great fun being caused when some of the link loosed ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... began to attract the attention of those surgically ambitious. The ovariotomy or celiotomy expert began to feel the sting of envy and jealousy aroused by those who were making history in the new surgical fad—appendectomy—and they got busy, and, as disease is not exempt from the economic law of "supply always equals demand," the disease accommodatingly sprang up everywhere; it was no time before a surgeon who had not a hundred appendectomies to his credit was not respected by the rank and ...
— Appendicitis: The Etiology, Hygenic and Dietetic Treatment • John H. Tilden, M.D.
... To be quite athletic. That's our fad, you know. I can hold the strap, sir! And keep off your lap, ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... saturated with a poison that bites into every pore, cut, or abrasion and plants malignant ulcers, and that many strong men who escape dying there return as wrecks to their own countries. It is also true that the natives of the Solomons are a wild lot, with a hearty appetite for human flesh and a fad for collecting human heads. Their highest instinct of sportsmanship is to catch a man with his back turned and to smite him a cunning blow with a tomahawk that severs the spinal column at the base of the brain. It is equally true ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... ask you gents not to leave the room," he said meaningly, over his shoulder, as he stepped toward the rear door. "It's kind of a fad of mine to keep some things ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... apparently on the wrong side of fifty. His grizzly beard, grown comparatively long, his closely-trimmed mustachios, and his head-cloth, worn like a turban, made me take him at first sight for a Moslem. He has a cunning eye, which does not belie his reputation. His fad is to take money and to do no work for it; he now wants us to pay for the clearing of an uncleared path. The villagers fear him on account of certain fetish-practices which, in plain English, mean poison; and he keeps up their awe ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... conferring, admitted that this new fad was by all odds the best thing that had ever happened. They determined to encourage it to the limit. Even those who were doubtful at the start, found themselves obliged to admit that never before had Stanhope presented such a clean appearance; and not within ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... you are! But you know that in your heart your pride of family is as great as mine. Only it is the 'fad' of the day to affect to despise birth and lineage. We of Wales ...
— What Dreams May Come • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... days] small snakes were not feared and for several years it was customary for women to carry a tiny green snake in their bosoms. This fad was discontinued when one of the women was severely injured through a ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration
... living, now so far flung as to be a characteristic of American life, is not just a fad. It has been a slow steady growth and has behind it a tradition of a century and more. When our larger commercial centers first began to change from villages to compact urban communities, there were those who found even these miniature cities far ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... were becoming a fad. Astor sorted and sifted his buyers, as he had his skins. He himself dressed in a suit of fur and thus proved his ability as an advertiser. He picked his men and charged all the traffic would bear. He took orders, on sample, from the nobility and sundry of the gentry, and thereby cut the middleman. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... hearers would have followed any counsel even if he had been so misguided as to offer it; they did not come to hear him "preach" in the full sense of the word,—they came to hear him "say things,"- -witty observations on the particular fad of the hour—sharp polemics on the political situation—or what was still more charming, neat remarks in the style of Rochefoucauld or Montaigne, which covered and found excuses for vice while seemingly condemning viciousness. There is nothing perhaps so satisfactory to persons who pride themselves ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... made his coat bulge out, and at this, some of the fairies wondered, but all they thought of was that this spoiled a handsome fellow's figure. Or was it some new idea? To tell the truth, they were vexed at not keeping up with the new fashions, for they knew nothing of this latest fad among ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... have had a many days' growth of beard all over the face; but, owing to one particular fad, he had not; and thank goodness! for it would have been simply appalling to have had to end the book with the hero looking like ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... postage stamps, with no interest in the matter beyond the desire to accumulate as many as possible. The average autograph hunter, with his purposeless insistence, reminds one of the queen in Stockton's story whose fad was ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... yacht and sporting arrangements and that—make himself generally useful, as you might say. He had the spending of a lot of money, I should think. The other was confined entirely to the office affairs, and I dare say he had his hands full. As for his being English, it was just a fad of Manderson's to have an English secretary. He'd had several before ...
— Trent's Last Case - The Woman in Black • E.C. (Edmund Clerihew) Bentley
... and later in America, Germany and elsewhere—have been developing for some years past. Eugenics is beginning to be felt to possess a living actuality which it failed to possess before. Instead of being a benevolent scientific fad it begins to present itself as the goal to which we are ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... heterodox, If creed she ever had. She knew far more of pans and crocks, But this was not her fad; Her light, I fear, did not shine out In pious talk and airs, In fact I entertain a doubt If she oft ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant
... would not have been a miserable one, for the Malletts made it a charming festival with inspired ideas for gifts and a delightful party on Christmas Day, when Caroline was allowed to appear. She refused to say that she was better; she had never been ill; it was a mere fad of the doctor and her sisters; she supposed they were tired of her and wanted a little peace. However, she continued to absorb large quantities of strengthening food, beef tea, meat jelly and heady ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... paid extra beer-money and oatmeal water is made for them gratis, some will, of course, imbibe it, especially if they see that thereby they may obtain little favours from their employer by yielding to his fad. By drinking the crotchet perhaps they may get a present now and then-food for themselves, cast-off clothes for their families, and so on. For it is a remarkable feature of human natural history, the desire to proselytise. The spectacle of John Bull—jovial John Bull—offering ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... feel I'm very ungrateful for your interest. Maybe you mean to be kind—about your mother. But give your interest to those who need it. I don't. I've seen your name in the papers—interviews—things you try to do for the 'poor.' It's a sort of fad, isn't it—in your set? But charity begins at home. You could do more by looking into things and righting wrongs in your father's own shop than ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... a crank with me, who has gone mad on moose-calling," he said. "See here! If we do come across moose-signs, I'll get under cover, and give you quarter of an hour to call and listen for an answer—not a second longer. Now stop thinking about this fad, and keep your eyes ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... proper, I tell yer; 'twas like the free run of a Bar, And Politics wants lots o' wetting. Don't ketch me perched up on a car, Or 'olding a flag-pole no more. No, percessions, dear boy, ain't my fad, But Political Picnics with fireworks, and plenty ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... women's leagues were informed bodies of women whose suggestions they would make no error in adopting, more legislation could be effected. Too often city councils are approached by those who favor some whim or fad, and so ALL women's demands are classed together. Much harm has been done to the cause by indiscreet, pushing women with only a glimmer of knowledge. The question is not WOMAN, but ability and women. It is better, as a rule, to work out ideas ...
— Euthenics, the science of controllable environment • Ellen H. Richards
... son and Grace? "Of course they'll be married," said Mrs Grantly. "It's all very well for you to say that, my dear; but the whole family are so queer that there is no knowing what the girl may do. She may take up some other fad now, and refuse him point blank." "She has never taken up any fad," said Mrs Grantly, who now mounted almost to wrath in defence of her future daughter-in-law, "and you are wrong to say that she has. She has behaved beautifully;—as nobody knows better than you do." Then the archdeacon ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... 'A fad to talk Latin of ye courtiers,' Culpepper said with uninterested scorn. 'Ye will forget God's language of English.' He slapped Throckmorton on the sleeve. 'See, what a fine farm I have for my deserts,' ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... were gratefully received. I spent much of my time at Four Oaks, often going every day, and never let more than two days pass without spending some hours on the farm. To many of my friends this seemed a waste of time. They said, "Williams is carrying this fad too far,—spending too ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... want to spoil it. I don't like your fad for cutting down the bust. The neck is nothing but a connecting link between the head and the bust. Now here you have a charming and youthful head and face—let the neck at ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... does eat fruit. His drink is almost entirely water, milk, and chocolate, and he condemns the use of tea, coffee, liquors, and tobacco. He has almost a perfect set of natural teeth and his sight is excellent. Like most men who live to a great age, Dr. Baynes has a "fad," to which he attributes a chief part in prolonging his life. This is the avoidance of beds, and except when away from home he has not slept on a bed or even on a mattress for over fifty years. He has an iron reclining chair, over which he spreads a ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... were a fad which affected only the wealthy classes it would be reprehensible enough, but it curses rich and poor alike, and almost every day we saw heavily laden coolie women steadying themselves by means of a staff, hobbling stiff-kneed along ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... all things. All of us remember some woman whom we knew in youth who kept canaries, or raised flowers or had some queer little fad. We learn to know why women do this. In her case she expressed her mother's passion in studies, in art, in travel, in friendship, in kindness to every one; above all in devotion to her husband. She mothered him in the most tender and beautiful way. In a little while I knew all her story, ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... French city of the same size. Our churches need a new baptism; they have lost the faith. The same principle applies in our home-life, in education, in literature. The family altar is almost extinct; learning is more easy than sound; and in literature as in other forms of art any passing fad is able to gain followers and pose as worthy achievement. All along the line we need more uprightness—more strength. Even when a man has committed a crime, he must receive justice in court. Within recent years we have heard too much about ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley
... business, and kept on the keen jump all the year round. Then he has a vacation, say for a couple of weeks or a month, in summer, and he goes off into the woods with his fishing kit, or canoeing outfit, or his amateur photographic set, or whatever the tools of his particular fad may be. He goes to a book-store and buys up a lot of paper-covered novels. There is no use of buying an expensive book, because he would spoil it before he gets back, and he would be sure to leave it in some shanty. So he takes ...
— In a Steamer Chair And Other Stories • Robert Barr
... are married," she said, "I do not think you have any right to risk your life and your position for a fad." ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... plausible at once that it quite deceived her, and she went up to London to have its falsity demonstrated by a dentist. Since the collapse of Yoga and the flight of the curry-cook, she had embarked on no mystical adventure, and she starved for some new fad. Then when her first visit to the dentist was over (the tooth required three treatments) and she went to a vegetarian restaurant to see if there was anything enlightening to be got out of that, she was delighted to find herself sitting at a very small table with a very communicative lady ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... clad in summery undergarments fit only for the warm atmosphere of a baker's oven in August. So long as these exhibitions of utter absurdity continue we cannot consistently harp upon woman's recently acquired good sense in dress. It seems more and more the fad for girls to boast that they have never worn a vulgar outfit of flannel undergarments, but it is quite observable that these same girls are the very ones who are eternally grunting and groaning and coughing and fussing. And how can they help it? You can't have good health if you keep yourself ...
— The Woman Beautiful - or, The Art of Beauty Culture • Helen Follett Stevans
... mine, which amounts to nothing, doctors have had to be sent for, medicines, with ginseng and cinnamon, have had to be concocted, and I've given already such trouble as to turn heaven and earth topsy-turvey; so were I now to start again a new fad, by having some birds' nests congee or other prepared, our worthy senior, Madame Wang, and lady Feng, will, all three of them, have no objection to raise; but that posse of matrons and maids below will unavoidably despise me for my excessive fussiness! ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... few choice spirits in California had not discovered James for themselves long since; but James as a definite entity, known and approved by Society, awaited the second advent of Helena. He immediately became the fad; rather, Society split into two factions and was threatened with disruption. One young woman of the disapproving camp even went so far as to call an ardent advocate a "Henry James fool." All of which was doubtless due to ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... to give a fine fresh colour where none existed. When iron is the chief colouring matter, rock-salt assumes a beautiful clear red tint; in other cases it is emerald green or pale blue. As a rule, salt is prepared from it for table by a regular process; but it has become a fad of late with a few people to put crystals of native rock-salt on their tables; and they decidedly look very pretty, and have a certain distinctive flavour of their own ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... was elected president. The industrial fad swept over the country and men soon forgot the Academy. But Prof. John Wesley Cromwell, the secretary, Dr. Francis J. Grimke, the treasurer, Prof. Kelly Miller, Prof. C. C. Cook and Prof. John L. Love, ...
— Alexander Crummell: An Apostle of Negro Culture - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 20 • William H. Ferris
... to him, smiling, well aware that Souris was to be the subject of the chat, and anxious to gratify her second husband's harmless fad. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... simple motion of want of confidence, as an amendment to the Address, the Ministry was defeated. Lord Salisbury resigned, and Mr. Gladstone came into office with a Cabinet in which every shade of unconstitutional opinion and every socially destructive fad were fully represented. Reeve consoled himself with the belief that such a ministry could not last. To Mr. ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... Fair, as we bow and smile, As we talk of the opera after the weather, As we chat of fashion and fad and style, We know we are playing a part together. You know that the mirth she wears, she borrows; She knows you laugh but to hide your sorrows; We know that under the silks and laces, And back of beautiful, beaming faces, ...
— The Kingdom of Love - and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... fourpence for their chairs, when the music could be perfectly well heard without charge outside. It was, in fact, heard there by a large audience of bicyclers of both sexes, who stood by their wheels in numbers unknown in New York since the fad of bicycling began to pass several years ago. The lamps shed a pleasant light upon the crowd, after the long afterglow of the sunset had passed and the first stars began to pierce the clear heavens. But there was always enough kindly ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... "Lakers." It was, of course, a great fur country, and though the fur-bearing animals were sensibly diminishing, yet the prices of peltries had risen by competition, whilst supplies had been correspondingly cheapened. It was a good marten country, and, as this fur was the fad of fashion, and brought an extravagant price, the animal, like the beaver, was threatened with extinction, the more so as the rabbits were then in their ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... fond of it; but it's a fad of hers. She likes to wear it on state occasions. I have often wondered if it is really the Nana Sahib's ruby, as her uncle claimed. Driver, the Savoy, and remember it carefully; ...
— The Voice in the Fog • Harold MacGrath
... of fact, this whole League is just a fad. It's like all these other organizations that start off with such a rush and let on they're going to change the whole works, and pretty soon they peter out and everybody ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... better yet, the scholarly output of the high schools, and equip them for leadership in society, and the point is clear. It is a new problem but coming to be a very real one. Going to college is getting to be the fashion—almost a fad in some places. We all know that a goodly number of students, boys and girls alike, enter the universities, East and West, every year who have no characteristics of leadership, who are not fitted for real university work, ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... upon his life. But the equanimity of Francois Blanc was equal to all adventures. Threats, prayers, temptations, left him untouched. This man of ice, self-possessed, cold, indifferent to the ruin of the thousands of victims of his will, had a fad or fancy. It was for raising red and white roses, and while the mad throngs were fluttering in frenzy around the tables in his halls at Homburg, Wiesbaden and Monte Carlo, he, hoe or trowel in ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... of news is that of the letter purporting to be addressed by Prester John to the Emperor Manuel, which circulated through Europe about 1165. "How great was the popularity and diffusion of this letter," writes Sir Henry Yule, "may be judged in some degree from the fad that Zarncke in his treatise on Prester John gives a list of close on 100 mss. of it Of these there are eight in the British Museum, ten at Vienna, thirteen in the great Paris Library, and fifteen at Munich. There are also several renderings ...
— The Isle Of Pines (1668) - and, An Essay in Bibliography by W. C. Ford • Henry Neville
... political psychologist find the raw material for their work. It is not the business of the politician to preserve an Olympian indifference to what stupid people call "popular whim." Being lofty about the "passing fad" and the ephemeral outcry is all very well in the biographies of dead men, but rank nonsense in the rulers of real ones. Oscar Wilde once remarked that only superficial people disliked the superficial. Nothing, for example, could ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... science?" lisped Maud Leslie timidly. "I've been reading about the possible change of climate and its relation to the sun's rays going wild into space. I don't want to start anything, but it might be judicious to buy more furs next Summer. Also it might justify the premonitory fad." ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... more amused than otherwise by the singular circumstance, "when a fellow pursues any fad as he does golf he seems to chase it just as we've all done one of those jack-o'-lanterns in the marsh. When the fever is on him he can't think of anything else. That match on the links is, in his mind, the greatest event under the sun. We've ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen
... "fad," intended to do what it never does—viz, keep your fingers from sticking, and "your tongue from evil speaking" about ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... not what would be called in America a rich man, but he had made money enough to travel, to allow himself any reasonable relaxation, to cultivate a taste for art, music, literature or the drama, to indulge in any harmless fad, such as collecting etchings, china or bric-a-brac, or even to permit himself the luxury of horses. In the place of all these he found himself, at nearly sixty years of age, forced again into the sordid round of business as the only escape from the ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... what's he up to now? Philately? Arboriculture? What's his last fad? You've seen him lately, you said. I met him for a minute in New York, a few years ago, and he told me he was going ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... fair. The experiment, radical at best, has failed more than once. The style of this essay is slightly wanting in ease and continuity, yet possesses the elements of force. "The Traitor", by Agnes E. Fairfield, is a short story of artistic development but questionable sentiment. The present fad of peace-preaching should not be allowed to influence a writer of sense into glorifying a socialistic, unpatriotic fanatic who refuses to uphold the institutions that his fathers before him created with their toil, blood, and sacrifice. It is not the right ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... still involved. According to Kromitzki, a great deal of her fortune might still be saved if she would part with the estate. Kromitzki looks upon the reluctance to part with ancestral lands as a mere fad. He said he might be able to understand it if she had the means to prevent it, but as the case stood ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... females; the wimmen looked more meek and meachin. We didn't stay long in Saigon, but we visited the Whampoo garders and found that they were perfectly beautiful, made by Mr. Whampoo, a rich Chinaman. There wuz fifty acres under most perfect cultivation. Here the Chinese fad of dwarfing and training trees wuz carried to perfection; there wuz trees trained into all sorts of shapes. One wuz a covered carriage about three feet high, with a horse, all tree, but natural as life; and then there wuz pagodas and men and wimmen and animals ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... "As a matter of fad," Clayton went on, "it's a national move, in a way. You don't owe any gratitude. We need our babies, you see. More than we do hats! If this war goes on, we shall need ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... to ashes, and the officers of the ship informed that if they wanted to carry the "remains" to America they would be sealed in a jar and certified. The ship's officers did not want ashes, and the Japs hold the jar. They are so "advanced" that cremation is becoming a fad with them. It would not be surprising to find that the impending danger of the Japanese is excessive imitative progress, which is not certain to be exactly the right thing for them. They have reached a point where it is worth while to examine the claim of new things ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... generous mint and watermelon crops, a few long-shot winners at the New Orleans race-track, and the brilliant banquets given by the Indiana and Kansas citizens who compose the North Carolina Society have made the South rather a "fad" in Manhattan. Your manicure will lisp softly that your left forefinger reminds her so much of a gentleman's in Richmond, Va. Oh, certainly; but many a lady has to work now—the war, ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... and freedom. There is no consenting estimate of this poet. {547} Many think that his so-called poems are not poems at all, but simply a bad variety of prose; that there is nothing to him beyond a combination of affectation and indecency; and that the Whitman culte is a passing "fad" of a few literary men, and especially of a number of English critics like Rossetti, Swinburne, Buchanan, etc., who, being determined to have something unmistakably American—that is, different from any thing else—in ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... desire for association, for they had their clubs, societies, and learned fellowships. Still less could a mere curiosity to learn certain signs and passwords have held such men for long, even in an age of quaint conceits in the matter of association and when architecture was affected as a fad. No, there is only one explanation: that these men saw in Masonry a deposit of the high and simple wisdom of old, preserved in tradition and taught in symbols—little understood, it may be, by many members of the order—and this it was ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... Mont was turned into a show—to see it or any part of it, everyone had to pay toll. On the great fete-days, when St. Michel wore his crown, the gold ran like water into the monks' treasury. It was still then a fashionable religious fad to have a mass said for one's dead, out here among the clouds and the sea. Well, try to imagine fifty masses all dumped on the altar together; that is, one mass would be scrambled through, no names would be mentioned, no one save ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... connection with the psychology of the people it interprets in satire. There is the psychology of individuals and the psychology of a whole society—the latter was du Maurier's theme. It is generally an obsession, a "fad," a "craze," or "fashion" that his pencil exploits. He does not with Keene laugh with an individual at another individual. His art is well-bred in its style partly through the fact of its limitations. ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... matter of doctrine had intervened. And, with such men, a matter of doctrine is a matter of conscience. And a matter of conscience is the most stubborn of all obstacles to overcome. I looked into their stern, expressive faces, and I saw that they were no triflers. A fad had no charm for either of them. They looked into each other's faces, and each read the truth. The breach ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... cut in. "The tickler is the newest fad for increasing worker efficiency. Once, I read somewheres, it was salt tablets. They had salt-tablet dispensers everywhere, even in air-conditioned offices where there wasn't a moist armpit twice a year ...
— The Creature from Cleveland Depths • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... indeed. You're quite off the hinge. What's the meaning of this new fad?" And he tossed me, with visible irreverence, a drawing in which I happened to have depicted both my elegant models. I asked if he didn't think it good, and he replied that it struck him as execrable, given the sort of thing I had always represented myself to him as wishing ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James
... daughter who's to blame. Did you see her new white spats to-night?" Right away the minute they come out she has to have 'em. I'm only surprised she 'ain't got one of them red hats from Gimp's what is all the fad. Believe me, if not for such ideas, her mother could afford something better as succotash for us ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... on his squad who had a great habit of digging up unusual fads, generally in the matter of diet. At this particular time he had decided to live solely on grape nuts. As he was one of the best men on the team, Jack did not burden himself with trouble over this fad, although at several times Moakley told him that he might improve if he would eat some real food. However, when this man started a grape nut campaign among the younger members of the squad he aroused Jack's ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... teacher.—Chickens are kept by all classes of people. Many keep them for the profit in eggs and meat, others keep them as a fad, and others to gratify a craving for animal companionship. There are one hundred and seventy-five recognized breeds, varying in size from that of the Japanese bantam weighing ten ounces to that ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... with admiration, thrilled with this new experience in his blase existence. Who would have expected to find a beauty like that in a little out of the way place like this? His theory of a great estate and a rich man's daughter with a fad for music instantly came to the front. What a lucky happening that he should have broken down close to this church. He would find out who the girl was and work it to get invited up to her house. Perhaps he was a fortunate loser of his ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... her door to with a slam, That sounded like a wooden d—n; For so some moral people, strictly loth To swear in words, however up, Will crash a curse in setting down a cup, Or through a door-post vent a banging oath,— In fad, this sort of physical transgression Is really no more difficult to trace, Than in a given face A very ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... it has already narrowed all the rest of Germany. There is a spirit of diseased egoism, which at last makes all things spin upon one pin-point in the brain. It is a spirit expressed more often in the slangs than in the tongues of men. The English call it a fad. I do not know what the Italians call it; the ...
— The Appetite of Tyranny - Including Letters to an Old Garibaldian • G.K. Chesterton
... public fancy at once. The "Tatler" was the theme in every coffeehouse, and in the drawing-rooms, as well. Those who understood it laughed and passed it along to others who pretended they understood, and so it became the fad. Then the anonymity lent the charm of mystery—who could it be who was into all the secrets, and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... charming women, too good to be stenographers or clerks or housekeepers. They come to the settlements, where they receive a good salary and keep their social position, which they feel they could not do if they worked. You see it's rather a fad to be a social settlement worker, and most of the women couldn't make their living to save their soul at work that really took trained brains ...
— Drusilla with a Million • Elizabeth Cooper
... coming of December the holiday gaieties began. A spirit of festivity lurked in the very air. A mock Christmas tree was one of the yearly features of the school, when each pupil's pet fad or peculiarity was suggested by appropriate gifts. Preparations for the tree began early in the month, and whispered consultations were carried on in every corner, with much giggling and profound ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston
... is witty and talented, and from the way she treats me, I know she has a tender heart. And her mother is a perfect wonder of a manager, and never makes mistakes except such as happen to be the fad of the hour. And Mr. Edgerton Compton could be splendid, for he seems to know everything, and when we travel with him, or go to the parks and all that, people do just as he says, as if he were a prince; he has a magnificent way of ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... corporeal pathway of molecule and atom. Yet these secrets of the vital process are also gradually being revealed. When we remember that it is in this very field of nutrition that there exist great popular ignorance and a special proneness to fad and prejudice, we realize how practically helpful are such exact studies ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... you doubtless know, I am credited with a fad as regards this label business. But I do not see why I should be, seeing that so many frauds have been perpetrated in relation to old instruments, aye, and to new ones—my own not excepted. If I write with my own hand all that is written on all labels appearing in my violins, etc., ...
— Violin Making - 'The Strad' Library, No. IX. • Walter H. Mayson
... overaccentuates everything which stands in relation to sex. Soon she lives in an atmosphere of high sexual tension in which the sound and healthy interests of a young life have to suffer by the hysterical emphasis on sexuality. The Freudian psychoanalysis, which threatens to become the fad of the American neurologists, probably goes too far when it seeks the cause for all neurasthenic and hysteric disturbances in repressed sexual ideas of youth. But no psychotherapist can doubt that the havoc ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... raised Tariffs trade rivals must smash, And his eloquence sounds neither rabid nor rash, At night, at night! But oh! what a difference In the morning! He vows he merely meant a friendly warning, But fuss and fad 'twill boom. And his colleagues growl with gloom O'er the "Times" upon ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 3, 1892 • Various
... the movement is sometimes dismissed contemptuously as a pacifist fad or an unattainable ideal of universal brotherhood, it is as well to set the matter in its true light. It is true that the inventor of Esperanto, Dr. Zamenhof, of Warsaw, is an idealist in the best sense of the word, and that his language ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... because he will always trot out his conscientious objections with a half-humorous, half-deprecating smile. This same capacity for avoiding the slavery of serious fanaticism enables an Irishman to cease quite joyfully from the pursuit of his own particular fad in order to corner an obnoxious opponent. Thus Augusta Goold and her friends were genuinely desirous of striking a blow at England, and really believed that their volunteers might do it; but this did not prevent ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham
... prow was turned toward the shores of France. Paris was the destination, and seven months were passed in the gay capital. The Parisians received the show with as much enthusiasm as did the Londoners, and in Paris as well as in the English metropolis everything American became a fad during the stay of the "Wild West." Even American books were read—a crucial test of faddism; and American curios were displayed in all the shops. Relics from American plain and mountain—buffalo-robes, bearskins, buckskin suits embroidered with porcupine quills, Indian ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... engagements. Furthermore, the employees know nothing about the restaurant business. If they did, they would probably be engaged in it instead of in their different trades. All experiments along this line of which we have heard have failed. The so-called "democratic idea," purely a fad, ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... inclined people whose selfish instincts have stultified their souls; a people whose ultimate goal is the acquisition of material things; a people whose only ambition is to satisfy self: a people whose ideas of real happiness are the pursuit of material pleasures, art has little place except as a fad. ...
— The Planet Mars and its Inhabitants - A Psychic Revelation • Eros Urides and J. L. Kennon
... of modern society, of civilisation, the fad of showing off, of exhibiting a life instead of living it, very largely comes, it is not too much to say, from the lack of normal egoism, of self-joy in civilised human beings. It has come over us like ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... from Paris he had been rather a fad as a teacher, and his class had been kept quite strictly to the ladies who got it up and to such as they chose to let enter it. These were not all chosen for wealth or family; there were some whose gifts gave the class distinction, and the ladies were glad ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... would have found himself making one of a fashionable throng of promenaders; it being at that time a fad with society people to walk to Forest park and back of a Sunday afternoon. Driving was then considered a respectable diversion only on the six ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... seasons. Under the circumstances, it was not surprising that her wash-tub bore about the same relationship to her real duties as does the crochet needle or embroidery hoop to the lives of less arduously engaged women. It was at once her fad and her relaxation, the dainty feminine accomplishment with which she whiled away the hours after a busy day spent with pick and shovel. Of all this Mary was ignorant when she proposed that Mrs. Yellett saw ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... literary style it is this litterateur. Of the journals which profess letters The Academy has ever been my friend and I have still the honour of corresponding with it: we are called "faddists" probably from our "fad" of signing our articles and thus enabling the criticised to ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... Warrior, person, and fellow—no more: We must knight our dogs to get any lower. Brave Knights Kennelers then shall be, Noble Knights of the Golden Flea, Knights of the Order of St. Steboy, Knights of St. Gorge and Sir Knights Jawy. God speed the day when this knighting fad Shall go to the dogs and the dogs ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... to the public, and became a sort of fashionable fad. It was commended, and after Parliament had voted ten thousand pounds toward it, it was everywhere accepted as the correct thing. The charter was given in June, 1732, and a suitable design was not wanting for the corporation seal—silkworms, ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... spot, Edmonds cursed briefly. "If it hasn't, it's because the public has a dam'-fool fad for pretending it doesn't believe what it reads. Of course it believes it! Otherwise, how would it know who's president, or that the market sagged yesterday? This 'I-never-believe-what-I-read-in-the-papers' guff makes me sick to ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... was in his stride. "All this evolutionary fad becomes ridiculous, of course, when a mind that is properly trained in clear thinking by the diligent perusal of the classics strips it of its pseudo-scientific rags and shows it straight out from the shoulder, in the fire ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... Well, between this new fad of the old man's and our having a notion that we had better keep quiet for a spell and let things settle down a bit, we had a long steady talk, and the end of it was that we made up our minds to go and put in a month or two ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... same general order as the library, but with an emphasis on comfort. Thus, the sofa should be replaced by a wide divan, which may also serve on occasion as a sleeping-place. The Turkish style of furnishing is the customary one; the Japanese style being a fad that came in with the aesthetic craze, was carried to an uncomfortable excess, and has gone out of fashion. The most appropriate style for an American house is American Indian. The brilliant and strikingly designed Navajo blankets ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... this latest fad, it is doubtful if its effect is wholly harmful, for it at least introduced vigorous exercise and rhythmic movement into the midnight life of the city. Women went home in the gray dawn with faces flushed from natural causes; ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... delights Jack, picking up these links, and fitting them together like bits of jigsaw puzzles. He's absolutely thrilled, and wants to stop the car whenever we come to one of the curiously deformed old trees which still, on country roads, mark the direction of ancient Indian trails. This fad of Jack's leads to awkwardness during our present excursion, as we're part of a weird cavalcade which I'll describe to you later. But just now I can't let you off ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... Laurier the presence of Julio flashed like a ray of sunlight in the tiresome salon of Lacour. She was dancing the fad of the hour and frequenting the tango teas where reigned the adored Desnoyers. And to think that she was being entertained with this celebrated and interesting man that the other women were raving about! . . . In order that he might not take her for a mere middle-class woman like the other ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... without cracking a single pit or stone. This is a great improvement, as one crushed stone will give an acrid taste to a quart of oil. There is a fashion in fruits as much as in bonnets or sleeves. Olive culture is just now the fad. Pears, prunes, almonds, walnuts, have each had their day, or their special boom. Pomona is headquarters for the olive industry. Nursery men there sold over 500,000 trees last year. The tree does not ...
— A Truthful Woman in Southern California • Kate Sanborn
... to spend the day with us—her mother having gone to town—were eating timothy roots. Bertha Lawrence, a Charlottetown girl, who had visited Kitty Marr in June, and had gone to school one day with her, had eaten timothy roots, affecting to consider them great delicacies. The fad was at once taken up by the Carlisle schoolgirls. Timothy roots quite ousted "sours" and young raspberry sprouts, both of which had the real merit of being quite toothsome, while timothy roots were tough and tasteless. But timothy ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... kept their word. Thereafter, nearly every Saturday of the summer found them taking tea with Miss Sally at Golden Gate. Sometimes they came alone; sometimes they brought other girls. It soon became a decided "fad" in their set to go to see Miss Sally. Everybody who met her loved her at sight. It was considered a special treat to be taken by the Seymours to ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... soon my mind began to wander off on other things, decidedly unghostly and material things, such as my wife's shopping and how on earth I was going to cure her of her alarming tendency to take every new fad that came along and work it to death. But I realized that would never get me any place, so I went back ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... fad of Courtenay's, you know. Wherever he went, he'd never be photographed. He was annoyed that day that your father should have taken him unawares. He hated being 'done,' he said. He's so handsome and so nice, but he's not a bit conceited. And he was such a splendid bicyclist! ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... very latest fad in London to drive in a victoria with a white bulldog on the seat with you!" she said, complacently. "And Jack will be simply ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell
... if by reputable words already in the language he can express his meaning. And just as he should not be the first to take up an untried word, so the young writer should not be the last to drop a dead one. There is at present a sort of fad for old English. A large number of words that have been resting quietly in their graves for centuries have been called forth. Some may enjoy a second life; most of them will feel only the weakness of a second obsolescence. "Foreword" and "inwit" were good once; but "preface" ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... will not a fifty times millionaire give employment to as many men as will 500 men with $100,000 each. No. Not even if madam and himself are at home from toadying up and down through Europe in search of a princeling. (Stop this fad of the spoiled darlings of fortune and you stop a leak through which over $1,000,000,000 of American money has already disappeared. We will sustain this with facts in its proper place.) One million dollars divided among ...
— Confiscation, An Outline • William Greenwood
... the eunuchs' made a very reasonable objection. He had been appointed to see after the health of the lads, and had ample means at his disposal; and if they lost their health in this chase after what he could only think a superstitious fad, the despot whom he served would think nothing of making him answer with his head. His fear gives a striking side-light as to the conditions of service in such a court, where no man's head was firm between his shoulders. Why should the prince of the eunuchs have supposed that the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... well, that old trouble with her heart, only worse? They'd been obliged to hire a maid—how in the world were the La Rues going to exist on American cooking? Cousin Parnelia said she could cure Madame with some Sanopractic nonsense, a new fad that Cousin Parnelia had taken up lately. Professor Kennedy had been elected vice-president of the American Mathematical Association, and it was funny to see him try to pretend that he wasn't pleased. Mother's ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... held the little bits of black sticking-plaster with which ladies used to adorn their faces. According to Addison ('Spectator', No. 81), ladies even went so far in this fad as to patch on one side of the face or the other, ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... care for such things, the devotees of art, of high endeavor, of a stage worthy the traditions of its past. And in her case, in addition to all these helpful elements, Society grew suddenly interested and enthralled. The actress became a fashion, a fad, about which revolved the courtier and the butterfly. Once, it was remembered, she had been one of them, one of their own set, and out of the depths of their little pool they rose clamorously to the surface, imagining, as ever, that they were the rightful leaders of ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... keep it pure? Not rich monopolists, nor prigs demure, Those shriek for freedom, these for prohibition, "Vend the drugged stuff sans scrutiny or condition!" Cries Vested Interest. "Close, by law or Vote, The Witler's tavern and the Workman's throat!" Shouts the fanatic. Which, then, fad or pelf, Cares really, solely, for the Poor Man's self? Nay; the Monopolist fights for his money, The Monomaniac for his craze. How funny To hear one shout for freedom, t'other cheer The poisoner's cant about ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, April 15, 1893 • Various
... a fad at present for a man to relate a nonsensical story, and then, if his hearer does not laugh, say gravely: "You have no sense of humor. That is a test story, and only a true humorist laughs at it." Now, the hearer ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... seemed the longest day I ever spent. The Vrouw Prinsloo would scarcely allow me even a glimpse of Marie, because of some fad she had got into her mind that it was either not proper or not fortunate, I forget which, that a bride and bridegroom should associate on the eve of their marriage. So I occupied myself as best I could. First I wrote ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... craze, though, to keep up," said Winnie, "because we couldn't most of us collect enough crests to fill a book. Post-marks were much easier. We used to arrange them according to the different counties they were in. Miss Harper encouraged that fad; she said it ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... we seek to strengthen—character. This is the justification for the emphasis now laid upon industrial training. This training and the resulting character are the pre-requisites of all race progress. Industrial education is thus not a fad nor a mere expedient to satisfy the selfish demands of southern whites. It is the foundation without which the superstructure is in vain. If I have fairly stated the difficulties in the way and have ...
— The Negro Farmer • Carl Kelsey
... to the weaknesses and foibles of the public, and there's nothing that appeals to them like a report of generosity. Of course, they never stop to think that the poor creatures are much better off dead than alive, and that they really have no hold on the sympathies of others. It's a fad among rich people to weep over the poor! Some of them will probably send flowers to the funeral of that woman, and think themselves angels of light for doing it! I tell you, religion is a trade mark in all lines of business, and I've decided in the last few ...
— For Gold or Soul? - The Story of a Great Department Store • Lurana W. Sheldon
... that it has been a fad with the ladies here to spell out their dates, and, though the fashion is waning, Mrs. Makely is a woman who would remain in such an absurdity among the very last. I will let you make your own conclusions concerning ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... fit for any eye to light on, like a conscious beauty going forth conquering and to conquer. I doubt the crew grumbled and d——d a little under their breath, for the process was tedious; yet it was not only a fad, but necessary, and the deck-officer who habitually neglected it might possibly rise to an emergency, but was scarcely otherwise worth his salt. In my humble judgment, he had better have worn a ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... venture, then, to consider it as a real and not an abstract question,—"academic," I think it is the fad of these later days to say,—and I propose again (and again unblushingly) to consider it from what has been called a low and sordid point of view—so low, in fact, so unworthy the respect of latter-day altruistic philosophers, that ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid
... traits of its mountain population, which included presently their remarkable idiosyncrasies of speech. When he was fairly launched on this theme, which was of genuine interest to him, for he had long fostered a linguistic fad, all danger of awkward silence or significant pauses was eliminated. He found that Briscoe could furnish him with some fresh points in comparative philology, to his surprise and gratification, for he ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... this booklet could easily be dismissed as a new fad that will gain limited attention for a short time and then be forgotten, but it may instead be the discovery of vast untapped resources that can raise primary human relationships to new and higher levels of richness and creativity. If this should be the case the loss ...
— Marriage Enrichment Retreats - Story of a Quaker Project • David Mace
... over ornamental nor artistic, but very distinct; Jim sees them from the reverse side of the sheet first, maybe, and turns it over with interest to see what it is. He grins a good-humoured grin as he reads—poor old Bill is just as thick-headed and obstinate as ever—just as far gone on his old fad. It's rather rough on Jim, because he's too far off to argue; but, if he's very earnest on the subject, he'll sit down and write, using all his old arguments to prove that the man who wrote that rot was a fool. This is one of the few things that will ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... fad for women to carry such playthings," he ridiculed her. "I wonder how frightened you'd have to be before you ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... easily satisfied. I have two derringers up stairs exactly alike; my father was out with them twice! Quite a fad duelling was in his day, but the guns haven't been used for years. Come handy now. By the way, Lieutenant, you shoot equally well with either hand, I believe? Very valuable accomplishment; never could myself. We will meet you, Captain Bell, ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... living," Doris said, calmly, though her heart beat quicker. "These fad things are often successes, financially, and I can ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... Francie sometimes," he answered, carelessly, "or about her, anyway, whenever I get a letter from home. She's very well. Boarding out pauper sick children is her new fad; and I believe she's very busy and very happy over it. Come along, Maurice; we'll walk up to the Garden, and get something of an appetite ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... the metropolis were scarce sufficient to protect the House from one clamorous aspect of the new problem. The members went about Westminster with an odd, new sense of being beset. A good proportion of us kept up the pretence that the Vote for Women was an isolated fad, and the agitation an epidemic madness that would presently pass. But it was manifest to any one who sought more than comfort in the matter that the streams of women and sympathisers and money forthcoming marked far deeper and wider ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... never gives her right hand to anybody. She has some fad about spoiling the magnetic current of Apollo or something. ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... atheists. For at bottom, atheism is either a fad or a trade or a fatuity. And whether the one or the other, it is a sham more pernicious than the worst. To the young mind, it is a shibboleth of cheap culture; to the shrewd and calculating mind, to such orators as Khalid ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... leg over the bench and got up with cheerful alacrity. "I'll do it now, if you say so; I didn't know but what that was some new fad ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... sight, As at Achilles' self! beneath thy dart Lies slain the great Achilles' dearer part. Thou from the mighty dead those arms hast torn, Which once the greatest of mankind had worn. Yet live! I give thee one illustrious day, A blaze of glory ere thou fad'st away. For ah! no more Andromache shall come With joyful tears to welcome Hector home; No more officious, with endearing charms, From thy tired ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... curious. A few are unconnected with the use of books. One girl came to the library because "it was a very handy library"; another, because she "saw it was a nice place to come to on a rainy day." Still another frankly avows that "it was the fad among the boys and girls of our neighborhood; we used to meet at the library." A postman reported that he entered the library first in the line of his duty, but was attracted by it and began to take out books. A clergyman had his attention called to the library by requests from ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... Mountstuart stop when they visit Paris, and they'd been talking of running over next day with Lord Robert West, to look at a wonderful new motor car for sale there—one that a Rajah had ordered to be made for him, but died before it was finished. Lady Mountstuart always has one new fad every six months at least, and her latest is to drive a motor car herself. Lord Robert is a great expert—can make a motor, I believe, or take it to pieces and put it together again; and he'd been insisting for days ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson
... somewhat the better of her taste and breeding, and lovely Agatha had cried large tears. So it was comforting to be told that Lord Walderhurst had said such an extremely amiable thing. If he was not young, he was really very nice, and there were exalted persons who absolutely had rather a fad for him. It ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... and talked of generalities. Then an idea occurring to her, she conducted the conversation by devious paths to ties and asked Alwyn if he had heard of the fad of collecting ties. He had not, and she ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... Harv Dorflay believed that somebody had been falsely informed that the emperor would visit the plant that day. "These great and frightening changes will probably turn out to be a new fad in abstract sculpture. Any change ...
— Ministry of Disturbance • Henry Beam Piper
... right which was conquered by the prima donna generations ago, appears always garbed in the very latest style, whether she be wearing one of her two ball dresses or her simple afternoon gown. For aught that I know, the latest fad in woman's dress may also be hidden in the dainty folds of the robe de chambre in which she dies. The elder Germont has for two years appeared before the New York public as a well-to-do country gentleman of Provence might have appeared sixty years ago, but ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... did not appear to so much advantage. These comprised old Karka, young Dam Zeneb, Sallaamto, Fad-el-Kereem, Marrasilla, and Faddeela. They had learnt to wash, but could never properly fold the linen. Ironing and starching were quite out of the question, and would have been as impossible to them as algebra. Some of these girls were ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... them with my eye.' In some respects the arbitrary way in which he used to arrange his orchestra was really very irrational. From his old days in Paris he had retained the habit of placing the two oboists immediately behind him, and although this was a fad which owed its origin to a mere accident, it was one to which he always adhered. The consequence was that these players had to avert the mouthpiece of their instruments from the audience, and our excellent oboist was so angry ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... begun to agree with George about their being more a fad than anything else, and I think it must be the height of the fad just now. You know how roller-skating came in—everybody in the world seemed to be crowding to the rinks—and now only a few children use rollers for getting to school. Besides, people won't permit ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... you know, you ought to explain to me. A citizen of the world and a student of its purlieus, like myself, ought to know what there is to know! Now you're a man of sense, in spite of a few bad habits—such as myself, for example. Is this fad of yours madness?—which would be quite to your credit,—for gadzooks, I like a lunatic! Or is it the complaint of a man who has gathered too much data on the subject of Old Rye? Or is it, as I suspect, something more occult, and ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie |
