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More "Odd" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... odd place for us to have met in at last, is it not, sir?" said George. They were sitting after supper very close together on one of those stationary sofas which are found affixed to the wall in every room in the East, and the son was half holding, half caressing ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... half-brother the enthusiast and dreamer Humphrey Gilbert: the same man whose paradoxical barbarity in Ireland [Footnote: See p. 311, ante.] we have already noticed: a barbarity very difficult at first sight to reconcile with the high chivalrous spirit, the odd sentimentality, and the fundamental piety which, besides his absolutely fearless courage, characterised Sir Humphrey in a degree only a little more marked than numbers of his contemporaries. A few years later, in 1583, Gilbert made his second disastrous attempt ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... logs of chestnut; rude low tables spread with coarse linen embroidered at the edges, and laden with plates of fishes, fruit, quaint glass, big-bellied jugs of earthenware, and flasks of yellow wine. The people of the place were lounging round in lazy attitudes. There were odd nooks and corners everywhere; unexpected staircases with windows slanting through the thickness of the town-wall; pictures of saints; high-zoned serving women, on whose broad shoulders lay big coral beads; smoke-blackened roofs, and balconies that opened on the ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... sometimes take three or four of us together; and I recall how a playmate and I, having been admonished into silence, grew deeply interested in watching a spare old man who sat at a window with its shade drawn down. After a while we became accustomed to this odd sight and would laugh, and talk in whispers and give imitations, as we sat in a low sewing-chair, of the little old pendulating blind man at the window. Well, the old man was the gentle teacher's charge, and for this reason, ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... anything, worse than ever. We were farther from Japan than the night we left the Ghost. Nor could I more than roughly guess our latitude and longitude. At a calculation of a two-mile drift per hour, during the seventy and odd hours of the storm, we had been driven at least one hundred and fifty miles to the north-east. But was such calculated drift correct? For all I knew, it might have been four miles per hour instead of two. In which case we were another hundred and ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... doesn't think of Italy? I wish I knew Italy as well as you do. Isn't it odd that I should be saying that to you? I believe you are now far my superior in all knowledge that is worth having. Did I mention that Ciss wrote an account of you in the letter just after ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... which, though not in them so remarkable, rose to a height before long. He annoys us besides by the constant recurrence of certain phrases, one or two of which are not admirable, and by using, in the midst of a simple style, odd Latin words. Here are portions of, I think, one of his best, and ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... side of that system to the other is less of a distance than from Ansthat, our first planet's orbit, to Insthor's orbit! That sun, as we know, is steady and warm. All will be well, when we have eliminated that rather peculiar race. Odd, that they should, in some ways, be so nearly like us! Nearly Sthorian in build. I would not have expected it. Though they did have some amazing peculiarities! Imagine—two eyes just alike, and in a horizontal row. And that flat face. They looked as though they had suffered some accident ...
— The Ultimate Weapon • John Wood Campbell
... eruptions of Vesuvius, banjos floating in mid-air at a SEANCE, and the like - a mind so fresh and unsophisticated is no despicable gift. I will own I think it a better sort of mind than goes necessarily with the clearest views on public business. It will wash. It will find something to say at an odd moment. It has in it the spring of pleasant and quaint fancies. Whereas I can imagine myself yawning all night long until my jaws ached and the tears came into my eyes, although my companion on the other side of the hearth held the most enlightened opinions on ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... on horseback, brings meat hanging from hooks in frames. Much of the poultry is brought to town in great odd wicker coops strung across the backs of ponies. Here is a poultry vender at the street corner, with his inverted and excited merchandise suspended by strings from his shoulder. (See ...
— A Little Journey to Puerto Rico - For Intermediate and Upper Grades • Marian M. George
... what he would never have won by force, and who had managed, so to speak, to be one of the leaders of the procession less through merit than through a superior faculty for gliding adroitly to the front rank? And, in any case, by what odd chances, what shifts and struggles, what combinations of circumstance and character, had this old man come to be where he was? Such questions are easier to ask than to answer; but it may be instructive, and even amusing, to ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... cheap you know, John, and do without meals an odd day, and go steerage and third class, and that sort of thing. I would say about fifteen pounds roughly. That would let me stay ...
— The Drone - A Play in Three Acts • Rutherford Mayne
... that a match flickers; we pop the cork of a ginger-beer bottle, and the earthquake swallows us on the instant. Is it not odd, is it not incongruous, is it not, in the highest sense of human speech, incredible, that we should think so highly of the ginger-beer, and regard so little the devouring earthquake? The love of Life and the fear of Death are two famous phrases that grow harder to understand ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... expressive moment, and then by a movement she indicated her intention to walk along the avenue with him. "I wanted so much," she said, looking down at her feet, "to thank you for letting Teddy off, you know. That is why I wanted to see you." Lewisham took his first step beside her. "And it's odd, isn't it," she said, looking up into his face, "that I should meet you here in just the same place. I believe ... Yes. The very ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... treasurer, for some odd reason, felt that Mr. Cowperwood was a man who could make him some money. His eye was so keen; his expression was so alert, and yet so subtle. He told the governor and some other of his ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... some bags of marbles, which nobody plays now; a lot of old books; a pair of braces with wool-work on them, that an aunt once made for Oswald, and, of course, he couldn't wear them; some bags of odd buttons for people who like sewing these things on; a lot of foreign stamps, gardening tools, Dicky's engine, that won't go, and a stuffed parrot, but ...
— Oswald Bastable and Others • Edith Nesbit
... to the still-room—drenches that smelt pestilently and tasted worse. She stood over Kim till they went down, and inquired exhaustively after they had come up. She laid a taboo upon the forecourt, and enforced it by means of an armed man. It is true he was seventy odd, that his scabbarded sword ceased at the hilt; but he represented the authority of the Sahiba, and loaded wains, chattering servants, calves, dogs, hens, and the like, fetched a wide compass by those parts. ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... time, than this old Armorica. I find here, dear D'Artagnan, all that is opposite to what I formerly loved, and that is what must happen at the end of life, which is opposite to the beginning. A little of my odd pleasure of former times still comes to salute me here, now and then, without diverting me from the road of salvation. I am still of this world, and yet every step that I take brings me ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the room. She sat down at her desk, unlocked it, and took out her papers. She was just about to commence her study—for the Scholarship study was all extra, and had to be done in odd hours and moments—when, glancing up, she met the disturbed and questioning gaze of ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... which is absolutely necessary to the floating Figure, or else one side or any one part being wider or longer than the rest, it would interrupt the motion of the whole Engine; only there is one extraordinary Feather which, as there is an odd one in the number, is placed in the Center, and is the Handle, or rather Rudder to the whole Machine: This Feather is every way larger than its Fellows, 'tis almost as long and broad again; but above all, its Quill or Head is much larger, and it has as it were ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe
... admirable zeal to perpetuate patriarchal fashions, proves this seeming neglect, a mere oversight: and is an all-sufficient guarantee that henceforward they will religiously illustrate in their own practice, the beauty of this hitherto neglected patriarchal usage. True, it would be an odd codicil to a will, for a slaveholder, after bequeathing to some of his children, all his slaves, to add a supplement, informing them that such and such and such of them were their brothers and sisters. Doubtless it would be at first a sore trial also, but ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... vital topic sure 'tis odd How much a man can differ from his neighbor: One wishes worship freely giv'n to God, Another wants to make it statute-labor— The broad distinction in a line to draw, As means to lead us to the skies above, You say—Sir Andrew and his love of law, And I—the ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... remoter darkness of the place, and its perfect stillness, too stimulating for the imagination. The echoing of the stir and crackling of the fire was no sort of comfort to me. The shadow in the alcove at the end in particular, had that undefinable quality of a presence, that odd suggestion of a lurking, living thing, that comes so easily in silence and solitude. At last, to reassure myself, I walked with a candle into it, and satisfied myself that there was nothing tangible there. I stood that candle upon the floor of the alcove, ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... twice as much on their investments with a trip to Manila as to any other port of the Indias, and with a shorter voyage. He was told by his intimate friend Francisco Sobrino, of Goa, that the said Sobrino came to Manila in eighty-eight with two thousand odd pesos in Chinese goods, and left a year later with eleven thousand three hundred pesos. On the ship sent by the governor, certain citizens of Manila had placed funds amounting to more than one hundred and twenty thousand pesos, the witness himself entrusting four thousand ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume VIII (of 55), 1591-1593 • Emma Helen Blair
... be back on the nine o'clock train," he told his wife; "but the paper says there is a big snowstorm on the way, and for fear I may be delayed I have left word for Joe to come and fill up the heater." Joe was a boy that did odd jobs about the house, and was familiar with the heater. "He will probably be here early in the evening," the Doctor went on; "but I can see to it again ...
— Polly of Lady Gay Cottage • Emma C. Dowd
... dying when the boy was but five years old, he was compelled to work for his own living, riding horse for his neighbors whilst they plowed corn, digging potatoes and picking apples for every tenth bushel, and doing other odd jobs. When he was fifteen years old his mother married again and he lived with his stepfather till twenty-one. His stepfather, being rich, offered him a farm if he would stay with him, but he was bent on seeing the West before accepting the farm, and so set out westward. Whilst in the West he became ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... walking aimlessly about, and a few more solitary figures. But in each case they were accompanied by people whom I saw to be warders. We passed indeed close to an elderly man, rather fantastically dressed, who looked possessed with a kind of flighty cheerfulness. He was talking to himself with odd, emphatic gestures, as if he were ticking off the points of a speech. He came up to us and made us an effusive greeting, praising the situation and convenience of the place, and wishing us a pleasant sojourn. He then was silent for a moment, and added, "Now there is a matter of some importance on ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... people's voice is odd, It is, and it is not, the voice of God. To Gammer Gurton if it give the bays, And yet deny The Careless Husband praise, Or say our fathers never broke a rule; Why then, I say, the public is ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... would appear to carry each of them off. She never failed after such a display of filial affection on their part to explain to those near her; that the young ladies were her step-daughters; and to mention how odd it sounded to her when she was first married, to hear those great girls as tall as herself, call ...
— Lewie - Or, The Bended Twig • Cousin Cicely
... energy of the animal are a never-failing source of interest and surprise. When a dancer is inactive in the experiment box, it is a good indication either of indisposition or of too low a temperature in the room. In no animal with which I am familiar is activity so much an end in itself as in this odd species of mouse. With striking facility most of the mice learn to open the wire swing doors from either side. They push them open with their noses in the direction in which they were intended by the experimenter to work, and with almost ...
— The Dancing Mouse - A Study in Animal Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... This was a roasted leveret, very strong of the fumet, which happened to be placed directly under his nose. His sense of smelling was no sooner encountered by the effluvia of this delicious fare, than he started up from table, exclaiming, "Odd's my liver! here's a piece of carrion, that I would not offer to e'er a hound in my kennel; 'tis enough to make any Christian vomit both gut and gall;" and indeed by the wry faces he made while he ran to the door, his stomach seemed ready to ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... story, or plot, of the piece as it was first produced in Chicago in 1873. Then I shall trace the changes that were made in this story before the play was produced in New York five years later. And after that, to follow the very odd adventures of the same play still further, I shall point out briefly the changes which were made necessary by adapting it to English life with English characters, for its production at the Court Theater, London, in 1879. All the changes ...
— The Autobiography of a Play - Papers on Play-Making, II • Bronson Howard
... the hang of the up-river folks. But there stood Mr. Gabriel, so quiet and easy, his eyelids down, and he humming an underbreath of song; and there sat Faith, so pale and so pretty, a trifle sad, a trifle that her conscience would brew for her, whether or no. Yet, after all, there was an odd expression in Mr. Gabriel's face, an eager, restless expectation; and if his lids were lowered, it was only to hide the spark that flushed and quenched in his eye like ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... grass and put grasshoppers in them, or catch two praying mantises and make them fight; or string a necklace of red and black jungle-nuts, or watch a lizard basking on a rock, or a snake hunting a frog near the wallows. Then they sing long, long songs with odd native quavers at the end of them, and the day seems longer than most people's whole lives, and perhaps they make a mud castle with mud figures of men and horses and buffaloes, and put reeds into the men's hands, and pretend that they are ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... mail at Hong-Kong. Letters and papers from home! Soon she would be in the sitting room recounting her experiences; and the little mother would listen politely, even doubtfully, but very glad to have her back. How odd it was! In the mother the spirit of adventure never reached beyond the garden gate, while in the daughter it had always been keen for the far places. And in her first adventure beyond the gate, how outrageously she had been cheated! ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... window set high up from the floor. Now the disposition of its single ray of light over the dishes and the bowed head of the massive negress gave Peter one of those sharp, tender apprehensions of formal harmony that lie back of the genre in art. It stirred his emotion in an odd fashion. When old Caroline raised her head, she found her son staring with impersonal eyes not at herself, but at the whole room, including her. The old woman was perplexed and ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... be odd if I didn't, seeing that I only came here on your account. As a matter of fact, Nightspore and ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... her.' Baptista thought his manner was somewhat blunt for a lover; but being glad to get Katharine married, he answered that he would give her twenty thousand crowns for her dowry, and half his estate at his death: so this odd match was quickly agreed on, and Baptista went to apprise his shrewish daughter of her lover's addresses, and sent her in to Petruchio to ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... done for the promotion of this frame of mind. "Persons subject to low spirits should make the room in which they live as cheerful as possible; hanging up pictures or prints, and filling the odd nooks and corners with beautiful ornaments. A bay window looking upon pleasant objects, and, above all, a large fire whenever the weather will permit, are favorable to good spirits, and the tables near should be strewed with books and pamphlets." "To this," says Sydney Smith, "must be added as ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... at odd intervals, until at last the fun-loving young men began to appreciate Little Compton's admirable temper; and then for a season they played their jokes on other citizens, leaving Little Compton entirely unmolested. These young men were boisterous, but good-natured, and they had their ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... our oddities," he thought. "Kitten is odd, too; and —who knows?—perhaps she is not joking, perhaps she will come"; and he abandoned himself to this faint, vain hope, and ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... come to that pass? quoth Panurge. Let it go nevertheless, I do not value it at a rush, seeing we can make no better of the game. But howsoever tell me, Should I marry or no? Neither the one nor the other, answered Trouillogan. The devil take me, quoth Panurge, if these odd answers do not make me dote, and may he snatch me presently away if I do understand you. Stay awhile until I fasten these spectacles of mine on this left ear, that I may hear you better. With this Pantagruel perceived at the door of the great hall, which ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... being one representative for 33,000 persons. The census of 1870 gave 1:3,533 persona as the "ratio of representation," The number of representatives is fixed by Congress each decade: at present it is 292. In March of the odd year there is a new House of Representatives. Each organized territory has a delegate who can sit in the House, but not vote. The states are each divided, by its own laws, into congressional districts, as many as Ihe number of representatives to which it is entitled; and the electors in each ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... quite alone. My sisters Harriet and Louisa will not see him, and I can only do so by stealth. His odd other little friend sometimes drives me out on Sundays, to a place where I meet him; and the Duke of Belfield kindly lends me his carriage. Oh, that we might never part! I am only ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... was born on the twenty-ninth of February, and I can't have a birthday except in a leap year. That accounts for anything odd there is about me; so if you find me queer, you must just say: 'She's a twenty-ninth of February girl', and make excuses for me. As for the other questions, I've never been to school before; I've seen Miss Cavendish, but I haven't heard yet what class I'm to be in; five minutes ago I didn't know ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... word which Reginald had never seen, and he frowned until an odd little pucker appeared on ...
— Dorothy Dainty's Gay Times • Amy Brooks
... answered the newcomer, and looked up at her more steadily. During a rather odd silence their eyes rested on each other. What she saw has been already noted, though by her, at any rate, not in the least understood. What he saw was a decidedly beautiful woman with a statuesque face and hair that shone in the sun ...
— The Trees of Pride • G.K. Chesterton
... myself; but, by a fatality by which I was pursued, whilst mamma was a prey to the rascals about her Theresa was the same to her family; and I could not do anything on either side for the benefit of her to whom the succor I gave was destined. It was odd enough the youngest child of M. de la Vasseur, the only one who had not received a marriage portion from her parents, should provide for their subsistence; and that, after having along time been beaten by her brothers, sisters, ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... the bottom of all this? Nothing but the untiring effort to sell words for thoughts; a mode of merchandise that is always trying to make fresh openings for itself, and by means of odd expressions, turns of phrase, and combinations of every sort, whether new or used in a new sense, to produce the appearence of intellect in order to make up for the very painfully felt lack ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... cachiri. Every one undergoes the marake at least twice in his life, sometimes thrice, and oftener if he likes. It may be had from the age of about eight years and upward, and no one thinks it odd that a man of forty should voluntarily submit to it."[152] Similarly the Indians of St. Juan Capistrano in California used to be branded on some part of their bodies, generally on the right arm, but sometimes on the ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... said Smith, "that there's really very little risk. We've come six thousand odd miles safely, and it's not far to Penang, you know. You won't be the first lady to ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang
... have no doubt believes what he says, that in one case of assessments for $10,000 the different persons who paid compared receipts, and found they had paid $30,000. If this be true, the inference is that the collecting agents pocketed the odd $20,000. And true or not in the instance, nothing but the sternest necessity can justify the making and maintaining of a system so liable to such abuses. Doubtless the necessity for the making of the system in Missouri ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... "Very odd indeed," assented Harold, laughing. "It is quite true that we are, in one sense, lost and utterly unable to undertake a journey through this country without men, means, or arms; and nothing could be more fortunate than that we should ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne
... of the history of the London theatres, dating from the Restoration, with piquant sketches of the actors and actresses of that day. Pepys, in his love of wit and admiration of beauty, finds room to love and admire Nell Gwyn, whose name still carries an odd fascination with it after so many generations. In those busy times coffee-houses were new, and we find Pepys dropping in at Will's, where he never was before, and where he saw Dryden and all the wits of the town. The Diarist records sending for "a cup of ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... offering of the author of 'The Amber Gods,' and it is as odd as striking, and as impressive in its shadowy implication as anything she has ever written. Handled differently, the incidents would seem theatrical; as told by Mrs. Spofford, the story is like the vivid passages of a drama from which, once seen, you cannot escape. ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... quite urgent with him to give up a scheme which must keep them so late, and Mrs Harrel repeatedly exclaimed "Indeed people will think it very odd to see us here without any party:" but he heeded them not, and perceiving at some distance Mr Morrice, he called out to him to find them a box; for the evening was very pleasant, and the gardens were so much crowded that ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... majestic piece of Gothic architecture compared with a neat, modern building. The latter is more elegant and glaring, but the former is more strong and solemn. . . It has much the greater variety, and much the nobler apartments, though we are often conducted to them by dark, odd and uncouth passages. Nor does the whole fail to strike us with greater reverence, though many of the parts are childish, ill-placed and unequal to its grandeur." This view of Shakspere continued to be the rule until Coleridge and Schlegel taught the new century that this child ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... taking his pipe out of his mouth, after half an hour's smoking in silence, "I have been thinking it very odd that our holy prophet (blessed be his name!) should have given himself so much trouble about such a son of Shitan as that renegade rascal, Huckaback, whose religion is only in his turban. By the sword of the prophet, is it not strange that ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... of a Siberian Tourist," published in 1896, in which bandits of various odd types tell thrilling tales of nocturnal attacks and other adventures, is a kind of artistic novel. The postillion is the most original character in the book. Huge of stature, audacious and clever, ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... describ'd sae weel, What gen'rous, manly bosoms feel; Thought I "Can this be Pope, or Steele, Or Beattie's wark?" They tauld me 'twas an odd ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... PIM). Quite so, Mr. Pim, a most remarkable name, a most odd story altogether. Well, well, here's your letter—(PIM rises and tales letter)—and if you're sure you ...
— Mr. Pim Passes By • Alan Alexander Milne
... to entertain the idea, but the Colonel had been perfectly in earnest about it. Odd as it may appear in the latter end of this nineteenth century, nothing would have given him greater pleasure than to put his life against that of his unworthy rival. Of course, it was foolish and wrong, but human nature is the same in all ages, and in ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... eyes looked odd in their expression of mingled fun and sadness; he was trying to feel sorry and ashamed, as he knew he ought, but penitence was so very difficult to him. 'Dear little mother, don't fret; I'll do better for the future,' he ...
— Holiday Tales • Florence Wilford
... "She's such an odd little critter and she's got a mind of her own—anybody could see that," Samson reflected. "She ought to be looked after purty careful. Her parents are so taken up with shooting and fishing and books they kind o' forget the girl. I wish you'd go down there to-morrow ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... prejudice. It is probably artificial and of modern origin. I suspect the priestly caste. Royal families kept up the custom and do so still, like that of Siam. Odd, how anachronisms linger longest at the two poles of society. What do you say," he went on, "to climbing a little up that gorge, into the shade? I cannot digest properly with the sun staring at me. And tell me, ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... he retorted sharply. "As it is, I have to spend half my energy running around making excuses for you—why you're so odd, why you always seem to be ailing, why you're always stupid and snobbish and say the wrong thing. But tonight's really important, Effie. It will cause a lot of bad comment if the new member's wife isn't present. You know how just a hint of sickness starts the old radiation-disease rumor ...
— The Moon is Green • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... their own. His costume even was not more remarkable than that of Roustan, to which we were accustomed; and as to his bows, they were hardly lower than those of the ordinary courtiers of the First Consul. At Paris, it is said, the enthusiasm lasted longer—"It is so odd to be a Turk!" A few ladies had the honor of seeing the bearded ambassador eat. He was polite and even gallant with them, and made them a few presents, which were highly prized; his manners were not too Mohammedan, and he was not much shocked at seeing our pretty Parisians without ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... tired, hungry, and worried when they got back to the post, and the lieutenant on escort found the ladies strangely preoccupied and silent. The first thing on reaching home was to go in search of the chaplain. As a devoted friend of Mr. Davies he should be informed of this odd freak of Mira's, and, if there were any grounds for their fears, there was still time to avert what would bring such awful scandal about their social circle. They assumed that they were coming back with sensational news, forgetful of ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... imagination had created?' One thing is certain: 'In every physical laboratory we see ingeniously devised tools for executing the work of sculpture, according to the designs of the theoretical physicist. Sometimes the tool slips and carves off an odd-shaped form which he had not expected. Then we ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... the morning, just after breakfast, with the names of the places where they were going to, upon their sides. One was marked, "Haverhill and Lancaster;" another, "Middlebury;" and a third, "Concord and Boston;" and there was one odd-looking vehicle, a sort of carryall, open in front, and drawn by two horses, which had no name upon it, and so Marco could not tell where it was going. As these several coaches and carriages drove up to the door, the hostlers and drivers put on the ...
— Marco Paul's Voyages and Travels; Vermont • Jacob Abbott
... the blazing building could be plainly seen, and by this they made out that they were in a regular printing office. Three foot-power presses were there, also a quantity of variously colored inks and packages of odd-colored paper. ...
— The Rover Boys on the Plains - The Mystery of Red Rock Ranch • Arthur Winfield
... discoursed on the laws of Topsyturvy Land. Then followed grim-visaged Calvin and "violet-crowned, sweet-smiling Sappho" who danced a Schottische. Aristophanes and Moliere joined for a measure, both talking at once, Moliere in Greek and Aristophanes in German. I thought this odd, because it occurred to me that German was a dead language before Aristophanes was born. Bright-eyed Shelley brought in a fluttering lark which burst into the song of Chaucer's chanticleer. Henry Esmond gave his hand in a stately minuet to Diana ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... some other noted voyager and discoverer—received as a present from a South Sea chieftain a flint axe, beautifully shaped and polished like a mirror. The chief told his white friend it had taken fifty years to produce that polish, his grandfather, his father, and himself having worked on it at odd moments of leisure! ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 44, September 9, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... Pyramides. From him I learned that Mr. Farewell lived on a very small income on the top floor of the house, that his household consisted of a housekeeper who cooked and did the work of the apartment for him, and an odd-job man who came every morning to clean boots, knives, draw water and carry up fuel from below. I also learned that there was a good deal of gossip in the house anent the presence in Mr. Farewell's bachelor establishment of a young and beautiful ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... the dim light Dick recognized the face of a youth named Bart Larkspur, a sophomore who did not bear a very good reputation. Larkspur was poor and Dick had heard that he was used by Flockley, Koswell and others to do all sorts of odd jobs, for which the ...
— The Rover Boys at College • Edward Stratemeyer
... account of Zonaras and extending beyond it, even to the extent of throwing a wire of communication across the yawning time-chasm represented by Books Twenty-two to Thirty-five, are certain excerpts and epitomes found in various odd corners and strangely preserved to the present moment. These are: Excerpts Concerning Virtues and Vices; Excerpts Concerning Judgments; Excerpts Concerning Embassies. The so-called "Planudean Excerpts" ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) • Cassius Dio
... tell you what it is, Peter," said he, "if you'll tell me why it is you have such long hind legs and such a funny short tail, I'll tell you why it is that Mrs. Quack and I have such broad feet, though I must confess that I don't see anything odd about them." ...
— Mother West Wind "Where" Stories • Thornton W. Burgess
... pen in hand to address you, the daughter of the dearest friend of my life, for the first time in the twenty-odd years of your existence. Once as a child you saw me, and you have doubtless heard my name from your mother's people from time to time; but I can scarcely hope that any knowledge of my private life has come to you. It will ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... in the commotion; and although I have got some seven pounds odd shillings of it, the war was a most expensive one to me. I caught old Mahony very busy under the table during the fray; but let us say no more about it now—draw over your chair. Tea or coffee? there's the rum if you like ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... differently when people are looking at him from what he would do if he were alone; the man who speaks what he thinks people want to hear, instead of what he knows to be true; the man who apes other people for fear they will think him odd if he acts like himself; the man who tries so hard to suit everybody that he has no mind of his own; the man who thinks how things will look, instead of thinking how things really are. Whenever we take the determination of our course of conduct ultimately ...
— Practical Ethics • William DeWitt Hyde
... hardened. Loneliness had done odd things to him—thinking of Ringg, a Lhari, one of the freaks who had killed his father, as a friend! If they knew who he was, they would turn on him, hunt him down as they'd hunted Briscoe, as they'd hunted his father, as they'd hounded him ...
— The Colors of Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... was not altogether painful, for the chevrons of his uniform delighted him, and he was happy in concealing his long legs in the skirt of his tunic. He had made two or three new acquaintances,—a thing very agreeable to most children; he had found his fellow-pupils odd enough, but their oddities interested him. They had snowballed each other in the garden, which, to a child who had been living in the warm boudoir of a pretty woman, was ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... yesterday. You want to get a dangerous rival out of the way without trouble, so you set Shields' to smash up Spence's. No, Henfrey. I do not intend to be your catspaw. We will draw lots who is to play which. Here comes Jackson. We'll toss odd man out." ...
— The Politeness of Princes - and Other School Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... accept any crotchet (pardon the word), however odd, rather than embrace at once the notion of ghosts and hobgoblins we imbibed in our nurseries. Still, to my unfortunate house, the evil is the same. What on earth can I ...
— Haunted and the Haunters • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... three yards above the high-water mark, with a few more feet separating that from the point where lazy waves now washed the finer sand. Shann watched the slow inward slip of those waves with growing interest. Where their combined efforts had failed to win this odd battle, perhaps the sea itself could now be pressed ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... be Power made absolute!" Something in the six simple words arrested Henderson, suspended his thoughts and checked his hand. By an odd psychological process his rage became chilled, his mind veered from its point of view. With a curious stiffness of motion he drew away from the fire—the book held uninjured ...
— The Mystics - A Novel • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... servant-girl hand her guest a cup of tea. While Mrs. Chao busied herself pasting shoes, Ma, the Taoist matron, espied, piled up in a heap on the stove-couch, sundry pieces of silks and satins. "It just happens," she consequently remarked, "that I have no facings for shoes, so my lady do give me a few odd cuttings of silk and satin, of no matter what colour, to make myself a pair ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... were sent to His Majesty as his royal fifth; after that event, some ten or twelve days, the two Spaniards who were bringing gold from Cuzco arrived, and part of the gold was melted at once because it was in very small pieces; it equalled the sum of[3] ... five hundred-odd plates of gold torn from some house-walls in Cuzco; and even the smallest plates weighed four or five pounds apiece; other, larger ones, weighed ten or twelve pounds, and with plates of this sort all the walls of that temple ...
— An Account of the Conquest of Peru • Pedro Sancho
... to personate Patty and keep the appointment herself, for the pleasure of inflicting on her nephew a heap of mortification and a moral lecture. Mr. Tack is the next appearance: being an upholsterer, of course he has the run of the house, so it is not at all odd to find him in a maiden lady's boudoir; the more especially as he enters from behind ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... A little odd at first to see Mr. G. on the Bench to the right of SPEAKER, Prince ARTHUR facing him on Opposition Bench. They seem to assume altered position quite naturally. Mr. G. looks pretty much as he has done any time these two years back. Eager, straight-backed, bright-eyed, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, February 4, 1893 • Various
... It seems odd to think of actively using non-resistance, and yet the expression is not as contradictory as it would appear, for the strength of will it takes to attain an habitual attitude of wholesome non-resistance ...
— The Freedom of Life • Annie Payson Call
... Lutheran pastor—dead now—established in New Jersey. In some way she drifted to the stage. Her name was Margarethe Kastenskjold. When she went on the stage she made it Maggie Clare. She had about as much talent for the theater as a paper doll. When I first knew her she was still getting odd jobs in third and fourth rate companies. Since then she hasn't played ...
— The Letter of the Contract • Basil King
... a waltz. Ryder had an odd impression of her irresolution before, with strange eagerness, he swept her into the music. Within the clumsy bulk of her draperies his arm felt the slightness of her young form. She was no more than a child.... No child, either, at ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... two or three pairs of narrow frontal shields, similar to, and behind the nasal shield, with two odd large vertebral shields; nostrils oblong, in the suture between the outer angle of the nasal shield and the front loreal shields; ears distinct, tympanum sunk; eyes surrounded with a series of scales; belly with two ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... liked it too," said the girl. She had an odd trick of lingering over the word she wished to distinguish. "I liked it because it was so queer. Everything's queer here, particularly roommates. Do ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton
... again, Watson," cried the apparently irrational young professor. There was one of the odd-looking machines in each room, so it appears, and the two were connected by an electric wire. Watson had snapped the reed on one of the machines and the professor had heard from the other machine exactly the same sound. It was no more than the gentle TWANG of ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... Templecombe's hawk couldn't come on this yacht without a troop of friends. They can't go anywhere they like unless it's 'the thing' to be done. They do everything because it's the right thing—because if they do something else people will think it's odd—think they're odd. And they ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... corridor, in and out of odd rooms, all associated with her childhood—quaint old rooms, many of them lumber rooms, full of odd corners and old cupboards, the meaning of which she used to strive to divine. How their silence and mystery used to thrill her little soul! Faded rooms whose mystery had departed, ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... great difficulty in keeping myself from laughing in the doctor's face at his odd fancy, but the thought came to me with some force that I must not let his mental condition become known to the men of Mars around us; and so, instead of replying to his question, I turned to Thorwald and asked him if he could tell us how the ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... what he had to work with, he began making arrangements with them, laying them out in odd circular and spiral patterns. Each time he finished a pattern, he would yeek happily to call attention to it, sit and look at it for a while, and then take it apart and start a new one. Little Fuzzy was capable of artistic gratification ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... Here an odd memory comes—of a friend who,—volunteering such a service to a sonnet-writing somebody, gave him a taste of his quality in a side-column of short criticisms on sonnet the First, and starting off the beginning three lines with, of course, 'bad, ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... destined to turn out a rather odd emperor, at once great and ridiculous. He made important laws, undertook gigantic public works and conquests of great moment; but in his own house he was a weak husband, incapable of exercising any sort of authority over his wife. With these conjugal weaknesses he ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero
... Mansion had stood in old times. In her hurried glimpses Sylvia was unable to account for the lack of sociability among the distinguished gentlemen posed in bronze around the circular thoroughfare; and she thought it odd that William Henry Harrison wore so much better clothes than George Rogers Clark, who was immortalized for her especial pleasure in the very act of delivering the Wabash from the ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... to the pastor of Antioch under the fictitious name of Peregrinus. "Writing," says he "soon after A.D. 165," Lucian "caricatures the progress of Ignatius through Asia Minor in his death of Peregrinus." [9:2] This Peregrinus was certainly an odd character. Early in life he had murdered his own father, and for this he was obliged to make his escape from his country. Wandering about from place to place, he identified himself with the Christians, gained their confidence, and became, as is alleged, a distinguished member of ...
— The Ignatian Epistles Entirely Spurious • W. D. (William Dool) Killen
... Facing him across the garden, which was in admirable order, and set with flowers of the most delicious perfume, he beheld the back of a house. It was of considerable extent, and plainly habitable; but, in odd contrast to the grounds, it was crazy, ill-kept, and of a mean appearance. On all other sides the circuit of ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... that horrible night some tangible shred of truth which might help them both. His own incredible share in it was forever being re-enacted in his mind, and haunted his dreams. In the night, at early dawn, at odd moments of his eternal quest, the curtain of his mind would rise on that unforgettable scene—the cliffs, the rocks, the darkling outline of Flint House, with a feeble beam of light slanting down from the upstairs ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... "It's an odd place for us to have met in at last, is it not, sir?" said George. They were sitting after supper very close together on one of those stationary sofas which are found affixed to the wall in every room in the East, and the son was half holding, half ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... all of this odd conversation; but until the spinster's reference to the family album, no phrase had been sufficient in strength of attraction to break the trend of his own unhappy thoughts. Out of an old family album: here was the very comparison that had eluded him. His literary instincts ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... Fort Yukon Angela and Jim were threading their way through a pine-forest. Both carried packs on their backs, for the sled had been discarded but a few days before, having served them faithfully for a hundred-odd miles. ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... gun and the screw flies and drops and stays near where it falls—its range being determined by the size and weight of screw selected by the gunner. Let us assume this is a shell, and it is quite easy to make a rule that will give the effect of its explosion. Half, or, in the case of an odd number, one more than half, of the men within three inches of this shell are dead, and if there is a gun completely within the circle of three inches radius from the shell, it is destroyed. If it is not completely within the circle, it is disabled for two moves. A supply waggon is completely ...
— Little Wars; a game for boys from twelve years of age to one hundred and fifty and for that more intelligent sort of girl who likes boys' games and books • H. G. Wells
... the seat of the breeches held his gaze. It seemed so odd somehow that Nelson's breeches should be darned. It was the last thing he should have suspected of the hero of Aboukir Bay. He longed to put out his finger and feel it, that darn in Nelson's breeches. Was it real?—or was it a dream-darn? It was real; he could swear ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... were very well done; there were tigers and a kind of dragon, like those we saw at the pagoda steps, and many other animals, and each one was in a kind of scrollwork which made a little frame. He spoke a few words of English and pointed at the two men and said, "Them too," then, "All Burmans." It is odd they should go through all that pain; what's ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... breakfast and dinner and for her share of a room with a congenial friend, another Russian girl, in Harlem. The room was close and opened on an air-shaft, but was quiet and rather pleasant. She paid from $1.25 to $1.50 for luncheons, and, out of the odd hundred dollars left from her income, had contrived, by doing her own washing and making her own waists, to buy all her clothing, and to spend $5 for books and magazines, $7 for grand opera, which she deeply loved, and $30 for an outing. On account of her cleverness ...
— Making Both Ends Meet • Sue Ainslie Clark and Edith Wyatt
... but he was crying now, and I stood looking at him till I began to cry too. At last he got up, and climbing on the bed, he pulled off his handkerchief and tied it to the post. I did not know what he was doing, but he looked so odd and so red in the face, that I felt ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... This is the homestead, where father and daughter pass eight months of the twelve; the rest of the year in Baltimore and Washington. The New England winter too many for the old gentleman. The daughter is called Marjorie—Marjorie Daw. Sounds odd at first, doesn't it? But after you say it over to yourself half a dozen times, you like it. There's a pleasing quaintness to it, something prim and violet-like. Must be a nice sort of girl to be called ...
— Marjorie Daw • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... he conceded; "I have been drinking with a most commendable perseverance for these fifteen years. But at present I am far from drunk." Simon Orts took a turn about the hall; in an instant he faced her with an odd, almost tender smile, "You adorable, empty-headed, pink-and-white fool," said Simon Orts, "what madness induced you to come to Usk? You know that Rokesle wants you; you know that you don't mean to marry him. Then why come to Usk? Do you know who ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... "This is very odd," said the mother. "I never heard of such a thing in my life! But since she has been sent to us, I will take care of her, as if ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... openly confessed his fault. He had the odd peculiarity of carrying about him, in all his pockets, a little box of lucifer matches, in order never to be at a loss when he wanted to light his pipe. Whenever any one called on him, and wherever he went, his fingers were almost unconsciously playing with the matches. Often and often ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... united to Bengal, to the vast advantage of both. I mentioned that we should require a considerable loan to begin with; but I think that an issue of paper money, receivable in Oude in revenue, and payable to public establishments in Oude, might safely be made to cover all the outlay required to pay off odd establishments and commence the new work. Little money goes out of Oude, and the increased circulating medium, required for the new public works and new establishments, would soon absorb all the paper issued. It might be issued at little or ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... special means of protection, by which they are guarded from the attacks of insectivorous mammals and birds, have peculiar forms, or strongly contrasted, conspicuous colours, and often make odd movements that attract attention to them. There is no attempt at concealment, but, on the contrary, they appear to endeavour to make their presence known. The long narrow wings of the Heliconii butterflies, banded with black, yellow, and red, distinguish them from all others, excepting the ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... family portraits, their old tables and chairs, not beautiful save for their fidelity, and old thumbed editions of Pushkin and Gogol and Lermontov in the bookshelves. Clocks, old slow clocks, all telling different time, all over the house. The house was very neat, but in odd corners there were all those odd family things that Russians collect, china of the worst period, brass trays, large candlesticks, musical boxes, anything you please. Only in the dining-room there was some attempt ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... from the floor. Now the disposition of its single ray of light over the dishes and the bowed head of the massive negress gave Peter one of those sharp, tender apprehensions of formal harmony that lie back of the genre in art. It stirred his emotion in an odd fashion. When old Caroline raised her head, she found her son staring with impersonal eyes not at herself, but at the whole room, including her. The old woman was ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... into the chair on the porch. It was an odd experience for him. Never before in his life had anyone adopted toward him an air of even partial proprietorship. He had been accustomed to having people—always men—meet him upon a basis of equality, and if a man ...
— The Two-Gun Man • Charles Alden Seltzer
... the reported land from the deck for two hours after it was first seen from aloft, although the odd spectacle of a scattered group of cocoa-nut trees apparently growing out of the sea was for some time presented to us before the island itself came into view. It was Christmas Island, where the indefatigable ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... There wasn't that—well, that distressin' lack o' humility that you mostly finds showin' itself after we've had them a week or two. There seemed about 'em almost a sort o' willingness to learn that put 'em in a class by themselves. I sez to the interpreter, 'There's something odd about that lot. You find out what it is;' which he does. And what do you think it was? They was convicts. All men in for a long term, what had served five years and more o' their sentences and was ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, July 25, 1917 • Various
... sagacity, and put him to all his shifts. It is this ingredient in fox-hunting—viz: the consciousness of having to do with a foe worthy of him, which brings men of all ages, sorts, kinds, intellects, characters, and professions to the covert side, uniting together occasionally as odd an assemblage as ever went into the ark. No man, when he puts on his top-boots in the morning, can say whether he may not be about to assist at a run which may live in story like the Billesdon Coplow or the Trojan War, and of which it shall be sufficient, not only to the ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... it could have been nothing but a sudden impulse. His settled purpose was quite other. It was not my heart that he was after. His fingers indeed were groping amongst the knife handles by the side of his plate but what captivated my attention for a moment were his red lips which were formed into an odd, sly, insinuating smile. Heard! To be sure he had heard! The chief of the great arms ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... her the fortune, increased by his careful management, which her father had left her, and advised her to put her affairs in the hands of Mr. Atherton. She had shown a quite ungirlish eagerness to manage them for herself; in the midst of her profusion she had odd accesses of stinginess, in which she fancied herself coming to poverty; and her guardian judged it best that she should have a lawyer who could tell her at any moment just where she stood. She hesitated, but she did as ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... Rome and other towns; unrestricted entrance at all hours—on payment, an immense convenience to the public, who required to get no tickets beforehand to visit these things. So one day when the Obrero and I were biting our nails, seeing that this miserable thousand and odd pesetas (God forgive me!) that this unhappy State allows us, could not possibly suffice for our monthly expenses, I propounded my idea. Now, could you believe that some of the gentlemen in the Chapter opposed it? ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... In my fancy, irresolute between these two, their battleground, the prize, it would seem, of one who now refused to fight for it, and of one already sure of victory. But this was very odd about the affair, that the stiffer Virginia grew, as I saw her there, the more indurate, the more ruggedly of the soil, declining battle, the more Aurelia shrank in my eyes, the less confident her call to me, the more frail her hold of my heart. Virginia stood apart like a rock and turned ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... a Sasunnach fellow to earn a shilling! the idea had a touch of humorous consolation in it. I will not assert the consolation strong enough to cast quite out a certain feeling of shame that mingled with his amusement—a shame which—is it not odd!—he would not have felt had his sporan been full of sovereigns. But the shame was not altogether a shameful one; a fanciful fear of degrading the chieftainship, and a vague sense of the thing being an imposition, had each a part in it. ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... she have read the depths of her demure daughter's mind, and found there a vague but unquestionable disappointment at having in so many months received neither word nor message from her Moscow cousin. It was odd that Madame Dravikine should not have realized, by this time, that her daughter was the child of her own heart: and, since her childhood, Caroline Ivanovna had certainly never failed to recognize the least ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... on hand already. June stood holding up a small featherbed, and two little figures in white nightgowns were flying round, looking and laughing at two exceedingly fierce, bearded, moustached, black-browed individuals, on whose heads Mrs. Sandford was setting some odd-looking hats. ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 2 • Susan Warner
... will remember that such things are done in our parlors and drawing rooms every day and night in our lives. Our thoughts, our passions, our troubles, are put down, covered over, ignored, and we—play whist, get interested in honors and odd tricks, and win or lose the rub; or do something equally at variance with the inner life, that lives ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... Eva had tracked him and on his departure would undoubtedly enter to investigate the place. Doctor Q, for such was his odd name, understood now, and an evil grimace distorted ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... more than he regretted a single moment of the dreaming and love-making, a single penny of the eighty and odd dollars that had enabled them fittingly to embower their romance, to twine myrtle in their hair and to provide Cupid's torch-bowls with fragrant incense. Still—with the battle not begun, there gaped that deep, wide hollow in the ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... qualify himself for any occupation, although he might have made a fair success in retail salesmanship perhaps, notwithstanding his far greater fitness for educational, ministerial, or platform work. On the contrary, he roamed about the country occupying himself at odd times with such bits of light mental or physical work as came his way. Being without training and taking no real interest in his work, he never retained any job long. Sometimes, lured by the will-o'-the-wisp of some fancied opportunity to make a million, he gave up his work. ...
— Analyzing Character • Katherine M. H. Blackford and Arthur Newcomb
... in the mountains seven miles southwestward from our ranch. We found it congenial work, and Joe and I, who were now seventeen years old, hardened to labor with ax, shovel or pitchfork, saw no reason why we should not put in these odd five or six weeks cutting timbers on our own account. No reason but one, that is to say. My father would readily lend us one of his wagons, but he could not spare a team, and so, until we could procure a team of our own, we were obliged to forego ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp
... to Cerberus, and in order to try and maintain my position of independence a few moments longer, I drew out the odd sixpence which Uncle George had put into my hand along with the two shillings of my tip, giving it to the old porter with the air of one with whom such trifling coins were ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... would go, I'd trail along," said the odd man. "We haven't done anything worth speaking of since he used his great searchlight to detect the smugglers. But I don't believe he'll go. That mining ...
— Tom Swift and his Giant Cannon - or, The Longest Shots on Record • Victor Appleton
... will take it now, except Sir Francis Varney? Why not at once let him have it? I am well aware that this does sound odd advice, but remember, we are all the creatures of circumstances, and that, in some cases where we least like it, we must ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... post. — I have got into a family of originals, whom I may one day attempt to describe for your amusement. My aunt, Mrs Tabitha Bramble, is a maiden of forty-five, exceedingly starched, vain, and ridiculous. — My uncle is an odd kind of humorist, always on the fret, and so unpleasant in his manner, that rather than be obliged to keep him company, I'd resign all claim to the inheritance of his estate. Indeed his being tortured by the gout may have soured ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... the performance of good works, which merit the hearty approbation of every honest man. These are called secret societies, although their proceedings, and the names of the officers, with minute particulars, are published in a thousand shapes. Prominent among these beneficial orders stand the Odd Fellows and the Sons of Temperance. But the order, whose history is related in the following pages, differs from all these. Its proceedings, the names of its members or its officers, and even its very existence as a body, ...
— Secret Band of Brothers • Jonathan Harrington Green
... they are numbered six, that is to say, first of Ranks, when every Rank doubles into the odd, and if it so fall out, that the odd Ranks are to double, then must the Body Face to the Rear, without ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett
... saved me from a ditch to-day," he said; "every fellow has some sort of love for his life, and I must thank you for the odd luck of your coming by. I knew you were on this ground somewhere. If the rascals had searched me, I should not have come off so well. I did not speak falsely to that officer; I am not in the Austrian service. I am a volunteer spy. I am an ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... immense quantities of books were burnt or damaged. The collections, it is true, contain fragments of the Gutenberg Bible, various Caxtons, and other rare books, but there is no reason to think that these were abstracted from complete copies; it is much more likely that they were odd leaves which Bagford had picked up, while the leather stains on some of the most valuable show that they once formed part of the padding of old bindings. Many of the books were probably acquired by Bagford when he took ...
— English Book Collectors • William Younger Fletcher
... an odd, and indeed of what a pretty form all these glens are. How the flat moor ends suddenly in a steep rounded bank, almost like the crest of a wave—ready like a wave-crest to fall over, and as you know, falling over sometimes, bit by bit, ...
— Madam How and Lady Why - or, First Lessons in Earth Lore for Children • Charles Kingsley
... was odd enough, however hard it was to think of coming, you always sent me away more at peace, Ethel. I can't think how you ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in good spirits to-day, I grant you," continue I, more affably; "it would be very odd if I were not. I should jump out of my skin if I were quite sure of getting back into it again; I have had ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... waking from a deep sleep at night in the midst of a forest, he had spoken aloud a name that he had not in memory and hardly had in mind did not arouse an enlightened curiosity to investigate the phenomenon. He thought it odd, and with a little perfunctory shiver, as if in deference to a seasonal presumption that the night was chill, he lay down again and went to sleep. But his sleep ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... studious man—talking over respective exploits, what he, Wilkie, had been doing and what I had been doing, and, then frequently to relieve our minds fatigued by their eight and twelve hours' work, giving vent to the most extraordinary absurdities. Often have we made rhymes on odd names, and shouted with laughter at each new line that was added. Sometimes lazily inclined after a good dinner, we have lounged about, near Drury Lane or Covent Garden, hesitating whether to go in, and often have I (knowing first that there was nothing I wished to see) assumed ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... Valthiof's farm, Valthiofsstadir. Eyiolf the Foul, Valthiof's kinsman, slew the thralls near Skeidsbrekkur above Vatnshorn. For this Eric killed Eyiolf the Foul, and he also killed Duelling-Hrafn, at Leikskalar. Geirstein and Odd of Jorva, Eyiolf's kinsmen, conducted the prosecution for the slaying of their kinsmen, and Eric was, in consequence, banished from Haukadal. He then took possession of Brokey and Eyxney, and dwelt at Tradir on Sudrey, the first ...
— The Northmen, Columbus and Cabot, 985-1503 • Various
... tempted to ask, Who are these wonderful prodigies, so incapable of receiving instruction from anybody? And to our amazement we learn, that some forty odd years ago they made their appearance among mankind as little squalling babies, without insight enough to know their own names, or where they came from, and were actually dependent on an external revelation, ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... babe—was born, its mother gave the midwife some ointment, with directions to "strike the child's eyes with it." Now the word strike in the Devonshire dialect means not to give a blow, but to rub, or touch, gently; and as the woman obeyed she thought the task an odd one, and in her curiosity tried the effect of the ointment upon one of her own eyes. At once a change was wrought in the appearance of everything around her. The new mother appeared no longer as a homely cottager, but a beautiful lady attired in white; the ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... wrapped his ragged cloak around him. Resignedly, he was saying to himself, "I have seen many odd folks, but this one—" He heard ...
— A Street Of Paris And Its Inhabitant • Honore De Balzac
... I had from my groom and countryman, who, along with an odd hundred other people, happened to be patronising the outer chamber tubs at the time. He told me that suddenly they heard "a yowl like a man that's afther bein' bit be a mad dog," and over the screen of the inner ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 23, 1917 • Various
... we found ourselves in a sort of junction village, its two main roads alive with long lines of moving batteries and lorries and transport waggons. Inky blackness everywhere, for the Hun bombed the place nightly, and "No lights" was a standing order. Odd shouts and curses from drivers in difficulties with their steeds; the continuous cry of "Keep to the right!" from the military police; from a garden close by, the howl of an abandoned dog; and from some dilapidated house Cockney voices harmonising: "It's a Long, Long Trail." ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... owing to their dread of Salevao. He was generous, however, to travelling parties of mortals. When the chiefs laid down a previously arranged number of cooked pigs and other food to visitors, there was an odd one over and above found among the lot, and this they attributed to the special favour of ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... road, a Confederate soldier showed himself. He sprang into the middle of the road some six paces in front of me, presented his gun at me with deliberate aim, and pulled the trigger without saying a word. Altogether it was a very odd performance on his part and an unpleasant experience for me. When his gun failed to fire, he changed his attitude at once, and began the second part of his programme. He dropped his piece to the position of ordered arms, kept himself erect as on dress-parade, raised ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... astonishment one of my fellow prisoners spoke to a countryman of his about the horses, who said they were the same kind they had in their country. I understood them, though they were from a distant part of Africa, and I thought it odd I had not seen any horses there; but afterwards, when I came to converse with different Africans, I found they had many horses amongst them, and much larger than those I then saw. We were not many days in the merchant's custody before we were sold after ...
— The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African - Written By Himself • Olaudah Equiano
... in which entire races come and go, some of them leaving a ruin or two, and perhaps an odd indecipherable inscription here and there! The world was fortunate indeed to grasp, from the obliterated and forgotten past, Hebraism and Hellenism—the moral and the beautiful; from which man's craving for goodness has resulted in Christianity; and from which his ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... impairment, beyond his lack of interest in the things which he had once cared about—even in the growth of the city he loved. And in a lonely and unoccupied man, sixty-five years of age, this was not unnatural. It was not unnatural, even, if now and then he was whimsical, and took odd fancies and prejudices. But nevertheless the work was going on within his brain, little ...
— The Story of a New York House • Henry Cuyler Bunner
... or less lifelike illustration of Bolgani in colors and in a cage, with many remarkable looking Tarmangani standing against a rail and peering curiously at the snarling brute. Tarzan wondered not a little, as he always did, at the odd and seemingly useless array of colored plumage which covered the bodies of the Tarmangani. It always caused him to grin a trifle when he looked at these strange creatures. He wondered if they so covered their bodies from shame of their hairlessness or because they ...
— Jungle Tales of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... have in arrangement!" he cried. "Scott, Tolstoi, Meredith, an odd volume of a Saga library, an odd volume of the Corpus Boreale, some Irish reprints, Stevenson's poems, Virgil and the Pilgrim's Progress, and a French Gazetteer of Mountains wedged above them. And then an odd Badminton ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... an old stable that had been turned into a garage, with a couple of rooms finished off upstairs. Then there was a carriage shed, with more rooms over that, also a chicken house beyond. And stowed away in odd corners was all kinds of junk that might be more or less useful to have: a couple of lawn-mowers, an old sleigh hoisted up on the rafters of the carriage house, a weird old buggy, a plow, a grindstone, a collection of old chairs and sofas ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... surprise! Who but a widower a widow's match? What could she see with else but partial eyes To guess me only forty? I'm a wonder! What shall I pass for in my wedding suit? I vow I am a puzzle to myself, As well as all the world besides. Odd's life! To win the heart of buxom ...
— The Love-Chase • James Sheridan Knowles
... the limit of their highest range. As the tones actually sounded are neither B, A, G, nor C, B, A, but are instead a sort of compromise between the two, it is quite evident that the succession intended in each of the seven measures is the same as in the eighth or odd one, viz. C, B, A. If we assume this to be the case, it eliminates seven of the foreign G naturals shown in the notation. If, however, this conjecture is wrong, and the performers really feel that the groups in question all start on B, then the ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... of any curiosity as to why no talking made Margaret McKeon a suitable person for this emergency. The world was full of odd things, even such a remote bit of it as lay about Killesky. The place buzzed with gossip. Every one in it knew already the story of the charge made by the drunken tramp against Sir Shawn O'Gara. It had reached Dr. Costello at an early stage in its progress. He remembered the ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... the street the Kensingtonians, in their picturesque blue smocks, saluted him as a King, and then looked after him as a curiosity. It seemed odd to them that men had once worn so ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... Place," he mused. "Every town has its odd characters. This is one of Lagonda Ledge's little mysteries. Dennie finds it a pathetic one. How graceful those pigeons are!" And his thoughts drifted to a far New England homestead where pigeons used to sweep about an ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... himself that stirred my interest, and I took to him first because of some little tricks of speech and body that reminded me of my old grandfather in Sligo, but soon discovered his spontaneity and joy and made him my chief of men. To-day I do not set his poetry very high, but for an odd altogether wonderful line, or thought; and yet, if some angel offered me the choice, I would choose to live his life, poetry and all, rather than my own or any other man's. A reproduction of his portrait by Watts hangs over ...
— Four Years • William Butler Yeats
... in those early days. The first need, therefore, was of an unbroken interval of training. During this period, which fortunately lasted nearly two months, I rarely left the camp, and got occasional leisure moments for a fragmentary journal, to send home, recording the many odd or novel aspects of the new experience. Camp-life was a wonderfully strange sensation to almost all volunteer officers, and mine lay among eight hundred men suddenly transformed from slaves into soldiers, ...
— Army Life in a Black Regiment • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... "That sounds odd," returned the other, beginning to enter into the spirit of the situation; "how on earth did you get there, and ...
— The Harmsworth Magazine, v. 1, 1898-1899, No. 2 • Various
... war when she went to war with Turkey a score of years ago. But this fact did not stop the war. It merely made the war unsuccessful for Greece. China was not prepared for war with Japan twenty-odd years ago, nor for war with the Allies who marched to Peking ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... least this may be said of books printed before the present era of paper making. Since the invention of printing in the fifteenth century, the product of the myriad presses, principally in Europe, has been enormous, and the output of books in the four hundred odd years of printing defies computation. While many have been destroyed by use, fire, or other agencies, an immense number exists at the present time, and their disposal, made necessary through death or the breaking up of ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... to see his brother, which was the minister at Epworth. The man he informed met with Molly in the market about an hour before my brother got thither. She, full of news, hastened home and told us her uncle Wesley was coming to see us; but we could hardly believe her. 'Twas odd to observe how all the town took the alarm and were upon the gaze, as if some great prince had been about to make his entry. He rode directly to John Dawson's [this refers to a local inn]: but we had soon notice of his arrival, and sent John Brown with an invitation ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... chain and drove him back and forth, hauling the barrel up and down the slideway. At the bottom it was capsized and filled by means of a long pole shackled to its bottom and manipulated by old man Heath. At the top it turned over by its own weight. Thus seventy odd times. ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... chimney house situated in the field opposite the Odd Fellows' Hall was built in Revolutionary times and is probably the oldest dwelling in this vicinity. It is owned by the venerable John Lynch, who was the sexton of the Episcopal Church for so many years before and after the civil war. Mr. Lynch ...
— A Virginia Village • Charles A. Stewart
... forces at once. All was not ready, however, on board, for the stowage of the cargo was still in full swing, and sacks of flour and trusses of hay were being alternately hurled round on the crane and lowered on deck, sailors and 'odd hands' rushing hither and thither ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... anywhere; how much more in an empty land such as this! Pete fancied the inquiring looks turned from the man to the man's posted picture. It was no longer a faithful likeness, of course; still, it was a likeness. There was no other man in all the world like Hugh! He was made of odd, fantastic fragments, of ill-fitting parts—physically, mentally, spiritually. It was as if a soul had seen itself in a crooked mirror and had fashioned a form to match the distorted image. Hugh wouldn't, couldn't force himself to be inconspicuous. He would swagger; he would ...
— Snow-Blind • Katharine Newlin Burt
... that gentleman's wife, "don't you be troubling Mr. Brown. He's got other things to think of than answering your questions. I should like to know myself, I own, because all the town's talking about it. And it does seem odd to me that ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... man went to convert silver into cash, a trying ordeal always. Whilst I sipped my tea and ate a couple of rice cakes, I was impressed, as I seldom have been in my wanderings, with the remarkable number of people, from the six hundred odd houses the town possesses, who during that half-hour found nothing whatever to do to benefit themselves or the community, as members of which they passed monotonous lives, but to stare aimlessly at the resting foreigner. The report spread like wildfire, and they ran ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... mockingly, and disappear into the dusk with odd, zigzagging movements. As they leave, the light grows brighter, but still it remains dim, lifeless, and cold. The corner in which Someone in Gray stands motionless with the burning candle ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... into the smiling face of Woods. As we helped the coroner to his feet and began brushing him off Woods continued: "Gentlemen, if you are going to present me with the key to the city, please make it as unostentatious as possible." His smile still continued, but there was an odd glint in his eyes. Mary had left his side and was walking away. She had evidently seen me and did not ...
— 32 Caliber • Donald McGibeny
... as need be; but, he had no sooner raised his spectacles on his forehead, and thrust his hands behind the skirts of his dressing-gown to take a good long look at Oliver, than his countenance underwent a very great variety of odd contortions. Oliver looked very worn and shadowy from sickness, and made an ineffectual attempt to stand up, out of respect to his benefactor, which terminated in his sinking back into the chair again; ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... Grenville; and, quite suddenly, round a sharp piece of masonry, he came upon Meryl Pym. She wore a large, shady hat, and she was standing quite still, gazing across the country. For a moment Carew stood quite still also. It was odd that she had not heard his steps upon the rough footpath, but apparently she was too absorbed to hear anything at all. He was exceedingly relieved and drew aside stealthily, prepared to return quickly the way he had come. But before he started ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... own, but actually in their turn wandered north over the isthmus and invaded North America. A fauna as varied as that of Africa to-day, as abundant in species and individuals, even more noteworthy, because of its huge size or odd type, and because of the terrific prowess of the more formidable flesh-eaters, was thus developed in South America, and flourished for a period which human history would call very long indeed, but which geologically ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... singular than any he had hitherto been engaged in. Taking from the drawer a silk thread, an awl, and a bit of wax, he put his boot on his knees and began to mend the rents in the leather with the skill of a cobbler! It will readily be supposed that this odd occupation stirred a variety of emotions in the heart of the poor gentleman; violent twitches and spasms passed over his face; his cheeks became red, then deadly pale; till at last, yielding to a passionate ...
— The Poor Gentleman • Hendrik Conscience
... history. Is it odd that we should have a faint desire to know what Americans are doing, as well as what the ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... much pleasanter. It was a large, square room, wainscoted high with green-painted wood, and had a south window and two westerly ones, so that the sun lay on it all day long. Here and there in the walls, and upon either side of the chimney-piece, were odd, unexpected little cupboards, with small green wooden handles in their doors. The doors fitted so closely that it was hard to tell which was cupboard and which wall; anybody who did not know the room was always a long time in finding out just how many cupboards ...
— Eyebright - A Story • Susan Coolidge
... with the steep slate roofs, and singularly intelligent-looking windows, whose bright panes seemed to twinkle with knowledge of what they had seen during these dreadful eighteen months of German occupation. There were the odd, unfinished towers of the cruciform cathedral—quaint towers, topped with wood and pointed spirelets—soaring into the sky above the gray colony of clustered roofs. There was the cobbled pavement, glittering like masses of broken glass, after a shower of rain just past; and even more ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... inevitable ambition of young French authors; but after the failure of 'Guillery' at the Theatre Francaise and 'Gaetena' at the Odeon, renounced the theatre. Indeed, his power is in odd conceptions, in the covert laugh and humorous suggestion of the phrasing, rather than in plot or characterization. He will always be best known for the tales and novels in that thoroughly French style—clear, concise, and witty—which in 1878 elected him president ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... Dr. Morris, is almost a necessity. This sheath may be made by any leather worker and should have at least two pockets, one for the grafting knife and one for another knife to be used for trimming, cutting raffia and other odd things. It is convenient to have a little pocket for a pencil also and one may provide places for other articles of ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifteenth Annual Meeting • Various
... shirt, breeches, legs and thighs. I was dreadfully wounded all over my body. I made bandages of handkerchiefs, and dressed my wounds as best I could, and then put on my fine suit, which on a winter's day would look odd enough. Having tied up my hair, I put on white stockings, a laced shirt, failing any other, and two others over it, and then stowing away some stockings and handkerchiefs in my pockets, I threw everything else into a corner ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
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