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More "Whim" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... all defects. The intellectual excitement of giving free rein to his fancy and his tongue was dangerously pleasant to Arthur, who often more than half convinced himself of the verity of his extravagant theories, and oftener still involved himself in their defense by yielding to the mere whim of phrasing them effectively. ...
— The Pagans • Arlo Bates
... self-confident, somewhat ironical, and had a rather biting humour; he could not fail to please. He began to be seen everywhere, directly he had received his commission as an officer. He was much admired in society, and he indulged every whim, even every caprice and every folly, and gave himself airs, but that too was attractive in him. Women went out of their senses over him; men called him a coxcomb, and were secretly jealous of him. He lived, as has been related already, in ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... often as prodigal, just to gratify a whim, as when he flung the gold coins to Dinnies Kleist, merely to see if he could break them. For instance, he was not content with the old ducal residence at Stettin, but must pull it down and build another in the forest, not far from ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... blue silk and velvet, and looks very pretty, for Marcia brightens up wonderfully with becoming dress. Mr. Wilmarth's tailor has made the best of his figure, and he brings out the training of years agone, when he had some ambitions. Society decides that it must have been merely a whim, for the man is certainly well enough, and really adores her. Even Laura wonders how Marcia managed to inspire this regard, and decides that the marriage is not so bad, after all, and she shall never have Marcia ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... drop the dog, because, you see, he's part of the story. Hamlet would be left out decidedly were I to read the play without him. Besides, I've never told the story to any one. I'll do it, though, to-day. The whim takes me. Surely a fellow may enjoy the luxury of being recklessly confidential once in half a decade or so, especially with an old friend and a trusted one. No need for going far back with the legend. You know it all up ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... the other. "Any sudden whim of the keeper might be our doom. But this we must be prepared for. In times like this we must be ready to meet death at any moment. What says our Lord? 'Be ye also ready.' We must be able to say when the time comes, 'I am now ...
— The Martyr of the Catacombs - A Tale of Ancient Rome • Anonymous
... not prepared to lay stress on it as an argument for the geographical determination of Marco's Arbre Sec. His use of the title more than once to characterise the whole frontier of Khorasan can hardly have been a mere whim of his own: and possibly some explanation of that circumstance will yet be elicited from the Persian historians or geographers ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... was, besides, a prematurely-aged man, exhausted by debauch, crazed by strong drink, a ferocious maniac, mutilating his subjects, his officers or his ministers, as the whim seized him, cutting the nose and ears off some, and the foot or the hand from others. His own death, not unlooked for, would ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... the man at the gate. "I beg! I beg! Do not, I pray, good nymph, torture me with thy dreadful power. I swear that I will obey thy every wish and whim." ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... missed being brained by a stone dislodged by some drunkard above me. Already, however, the stream of tipplers had begun to set back towards the camp, and my main difficulty was to steer against it, avoiding disputes as to the rule of the road. I had no intention of climbing to the castle: my whim was—and herein again I set my training a test—to walk straight to the particular opening from which, across the Zapardiel, I ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Dunstan's-in-the-West, St. Bartholomew-the-Less, and again in Drury Lane Court, now disappeared. Most likely it was the latter, if any of these neighbourhoods, though it is all hearsay now, though formerly one of the "stock sights" of the "Lady Guide Association," who undertook to gratify any reasonable whim of the ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... bored gesture. Everybody asked the same thing, and he who belonged to that country had never seen a rose of Paestum.... Sometimes, just in order to satisfy the whim of tourists, he would bring rose bushes from Capaccio Vecchio and other mountain villages,—rose bushes just like others with no difference except in price.... But he didn't wish to take advantage of anybody. He was sad and greatly troubled ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... came, and unwilling longer to remain the tenants of others. These were induced to [100] emigrate, with the laudable ambition of acquiring homes, from which they would not be liable to expulsion, at the whim and caprice of some haughty lordling. Upon the attainment of this object, they were generally content; and made but feeble exertions to acquire more land, than that to which they obtained title, by virtue of their settlements. Some few, however, ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... and when she has to grow up, even to your mature years, help her to be just such another woman as yourself. Covington gives me glowing accounts of her progress in the little scheme which you so cleverly suggested. He seems to think her interest is more than a mere whim, but I can't ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... "the blame of part of the misfortunes of that day: but the mischief is done; no more is to be said about it." I read this new twenty-ninth bulletin: a few slight changes, suggested by General Drouot, were assented to by the Emperor; but, from what whim I know not, he would not confess, that his carriages had fallen into the hands of the enemy. "When you get to Paris," said M. de Flahaut to him, "it will be plainly seen, that your carriages have been taken. If you conceal this, ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... will call him, has a large establishment at 75, Portsmouth Square. The house next door was empty, possibly it belonged to Mr. Bates. He had a whim for furnishing a room or two in an empty house, or perhaps there was some more sinister purpose behind it. Anyway, after you had blundered on the place and had taken your life in your hands, it became necessary ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... of attachment interchanged between these two. Mai Noie bore the child in her arms to and from the school, fed her, humored her every whim, fanned her naps, bathed and perfumed her every night, and then rocked her to sleep on her careful bosom, as tenderly as she would have done for her own baby. And then it was charming to watch ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... few days at Mrs Budd's, she was sufficiently recovered to walk about Swanage. One day she was even strong enough to get as far as the Tilly Whim caves, where she was both surprised and disgusted to find that some surpassing mediocrity had had the fatuousness to deface the sheer glory of the cliffs with improving texts, such as represent the sum of the world's ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... seem like some days don't belong to any month, but just whim along, doin' as they please?" Calliope said. "Months that might be snowin' an' blowin' the expression off our face hev days when they sort o' show summer hid inside, secret an' holy. That's the way with lots o' things, ain't ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... a nobleman as ever set forth to seek the pleasures of life. His board was known as the most bountiful, his home the cheeriest and most hospitable, his horses the best bred in all Brussels. He loved his wife and indulged her every whim, and she adored him. Theirs was a home in which the laugh seldom gave way to the frown, where happiness dwelt undisturbed and merriment kept the rafters twitching. With them the two London women were to stop until after the wedding. ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... see that it was only the whim of an economist? I cry out against money, just because everybody confounds it, as you did just now, with riches, and that this confusion is the cause of errors and calamities without number. I cry out against it because its function in society is not understood, and very difficult ...
— Essays on Political Economy • Frederic Bastiat
... amusement. Fitz-James O'Brien was a frequent guest, and an eager partaker of our merriment, which sometimes resolved itself into the writing of burlesque poems. We sat around a table, and whenever the whim seized us, we each wrote down themes on little pieces of paper, and putting them into a hat or box we drew out one at random, and then scribbled away for dear life. We put no restriction upon ourselves: we could be grave or gay, ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... of our American hostesses that they will concede to every whim and desire of their guests. They must be pleased at all costs. The dinner is not a success unless each guest leaves a little happier than when he came and incidentally a little better pleased with the person who happens to be giving ...
— Book of Etiquette • Lillian Eichler
... not forget, but that was nothing—nothing to do with you. It was merely the result of a mood, a whim, a lovers' quarrel. No, don't speak, don't stop me. I am not going to lie. It was not a mood, nor a whim. I had been analyzing my own heart, and discovered Captain Le Gaire was not what I had believed him to be. The very fact that both he and my father so took everything for granted, ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... drink, and what not—for, though a hard man, John Hayes had learned to spend his money pretty freely on himself and her—having had all her wishes gratified, it was natural that she should begin to find out some more; and the next whim she hit upon was to be restored to her child. It may be as well to state that she had never informed her husband of the existence of that phenomenon, although he was aware of his wife's former connection with the Count,—Mrs. Hayes, in their matrimonial quarrels, ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... it mean? Tired, angry, and ill at ease, No man, woman, or child alive could please Me now. And yet I almost dare to laugh Because I sit and frame an epitaph— "Here lies all that no one loved of him And that loved no one." Then in a trice that whim Has wearied. But, though I am like a river At fall of evening while it seems that never Has the sun lighted it or warmed it, while Cross breezes cut the surface to a file, This heart, some fraction of me, happily Floats through the window ...
— Last Poems • Edward Thomas
... Izaak Walton; and to serve as an entree, I think some fixed-up morsel, say from James, or from Daudet; The roast will be Charles Kingsley—there's a deal of beef in him. For sherbet, T. B. Aldrich is just suited to my whim. ...
— Cobwebs from a Library Corner • John Kendrick Bangs
... full of wine, and his hair crown'd, Touching his harp as the whim came on him, And praised and spoil'd by master and by guests, Almost as much ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... so well that he had put a clause in his will against its appearance even at his own funeral. Marie Louise loved him dearly, but she feared his prejudices. She had an abject terror of offending him, because she felt that she owed everything she had, and was, to the whim of his good grace. Gratitude was a passion with her, and it doomed her, as all passions do, good or bad, to the penalties human beings pay for every excess of virtue or vice—if, indeed, vice is anything but ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... town talk. The women gathered round the fountain in the Place Royal and filled their water jars and gossiped about Salvatore Urso's silly whim with his child. Madame Dubois settled her cap and gave it as her opinion that no good would come of such a foolish thing. Madame Tilsit knew better, if the child wanted to play, why, let her play. The priest would not forbid it. Madame Perche knew it was far better ...
— Camilla: A Tale of a Violin - Being the Artist Life of Camilla Urso • Charles Barnard
... literature was still, to a large extent, the romantic liberalism of Rousseau, the free and humane truisms that had refreshed the other nations, the return to Nature and to natural rights. But that which in Rousseau was a creed, became in Hazlitt a taste and in Lamb little more than a whim. These latter and their like form a group at the beginning of the nineteenth century of those we may call the Eccentrics: they gather round Coleridge and his decaying dreams or linger in the tracks of Keats and Shelley ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... never should break it—and you may rest assured that I will not break mine. If your view of such matters is so loose, Peter, what security have I that you won't deceive me and betray me when it is your interest or your whim to do so?" ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... the bygone days of knight and dame, the days of real romance, were more devoted to each other. With satisfaction he saw that Gabrielle's apparent indifference had now worn off. It had been but the mask of a woman's whim, and as ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... smoke; it had often proved a powerful sedative to him when wearied with the cares of life, and the numberless irritations of his trying vocation, and therefore she replied, 'Nonsense, you will soon repent of that whim. I shall get two ounces as usual, and I know you'll smoke it.' 'I shall never touch it again,' was his firm reply, and ever after ...
— The Hero of the Humber - or the History of the Late Mr. John Ellerthorpe • Henry Woodcock
... little thing that took place. Like a wise coxswain he felt that he ought to know each man's weakness, if he had any, so as to build him up into a perfect part of the whole machine. For a boat crew must act as though it were one unit, at the nod and whim of the fellow who sits in the stern, doing the steering, and by his motions increasing or diminishing the stroke. If one cog fails to work perfectly, ...
— Fred Fenton on the Crew - or, The Young Oarsmen of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... On the following day Comte Jean laid before me several projects, which were far from pleasing in my eyes; too much time was required in their execution. I knew the king too well to be blind to the danger of allowing this mere whim of the moment to take root in his mind. One idea caught my fancy, and without mentioning it to Comte Jean, I determined upon carrying it into execution. The marechale de Mirepoix happened at this moment not to be at Paris at her hotel in the rue ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... They had clear, loud, lusty, sounding voices, had these Bells; and far and wide they might be heard upon the wind. Much too sturdy Chimes were they, to be dependent on the pleasure of the wind, moreover; for, fighting gallantly against it when it took an adverse whim, they would pour their cheerful notes into a listening ear right royally; and bent on being heard, on stormy nights, by some poor mother watching a sick child, or some lone wife whose husband was ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... dog commences with maiming him while a puppy. He finds fault with the ears that nature has given him, and they are rounded or cut into various shapes, according to his whim or caprice. It is a cruel operation. A great deal of pain is inflicted by it, and it is often a long time before the edge of the wound will heal: a fortnight or three weeks at least will elapse ere the ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... dry and bald, I have confined myself to telling accurately what has happened, my greatest ambition being to leave no one the chance of misrepresenting, as his whim, fancy, or passion may dictate, facts in which I am so deeply interested. Let those note them who, after my time, have to defend my memory ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 24, 1891. • Various
... possesses him. He thinks that he is still the master of Lone as well as the Duke of Hereward. He thinks that he lives in London, and in the most Objectionable part of London, only to gratify my 'eccentric whim' of being a journalist. And he daily and hourly urges me to return ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... was not the least extraordinary feature of his appearance. He constantly wore a full-trimmed scarlet waistcoat of most uncommon dimensions, a light grey coat, which altogether gave him an air of singularity and whim ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... deep heaven within the hearts of men. Nevertheless, the immediate seamen there Knowing how great a ransom they might ask For some among their prisoners, men of wealth And high degree, scarce liked to free them thus; And only saw in Drake's conflicting moods The moment's whim. "For little will he care," They muttered, "when we reach those fabled shores, Whether his cannon break their golden peace." Yet to his face they murmured not at all; Because his eyes compelled them like a law. So there they freed the prisoners and set sail Across the earth-shaking shoulders ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... tongue-like in its response to the performer's emotion. A bow that should at once be flexible to "whisper soft nothings in my lady's ear"; strong—to sound a clarion-blast of defiance; and, withal, be ready for any coquetterie or badinage that might suit its owner's whim. This is what Francois Tourte, the starving ...
— The Bow, Its History, Manufacture and Use - 'The Strad' Library, No. III. • Henry Saint-George
... be always successful in his labours, I should answer you, as I have told him, No: for the profit and applause attendant upon them are not commensurate with his exertions. Moreover, I do verily think that, in some few instances, he sacrifices his judgment to another's whim; by a reluctance to put out the strength of his own powers. He is also, I had almost said, the admiring slave of Ritsonian fastidiousness; and will cry 'pish' if a u be put for a v, or a single e for a double one: but take him fairly as he is, ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... gout? Oh no! But I'm 'Taken in Tow,' And suffering from dejection, 'Spring Cleaning' I'll use for a pair of old shoes (Queer rhyme upon reflection), 'Sound without Sense,' I've no pretence, To write Shakspearian Sonnets. Of her and him, As suits my whim, I sing, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, November 19, 1892 • Various
... wheeled her horse towards the rear with some parting remarks. " I suppose you should attend more strictly to your own affairs, Rufus. Instead of raising the devil I am lending hairpins. I have seen you insult people, but I have never seen you insult anyone quite for the whim of the thing. Go ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... the operations which by the whim of fate had been so strangely revealed to Ali, but Ali's own plan was a different matter. This was the feast of the Moolood, and on one of the nights of it, probably the eighth night, the last night, Friday night, Ben Aboo the Basha was to give a "gathering of delight," to the Sultan, his ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... wont rather to avoid his society: for on this evening he was about to disclose a secret to him, and beg for his advice. The timid, shy Emilius found in every business and accident of life so many difficulties, such insurmountable hindrances, that it might seem to have been an ironical whim of his destiny which brought him and Roderick together, Roderick being in everything the reverse of his friend. Inconstant, flighty, always determined by the first impression, and kindling in an instant, he engaged in everything, ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... face that dilemma forever without going insane. Hawkes shuddered, trying to picture what would happen if he went mad, and the wild talents began operating at every whim of ...
— Pursuit • Lester del Rey
... without value, and its historic interest is considerable, taken in connection with the other memoirs of the same epoch. The style is rather piquant, and the translation good, though a little stiff. The writer is an Orleanist, and thinks the Revolution of 1848 a mere whim of the populace, favored by a "vertigo" on the part of Louis Philippe. It was "an incomprehensible contingency,—sovereign power giving way to a revolt, without the test of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... dissipated man of fortune. Some mothers know this; my wife's mother thought me a good match, and my wife thought so too. I loved her very dearly, or I would not have married—though I don't know, either: people often marry in a whim." ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... exclaimed. "It was a whim of mine, that is all. I liked having you both there. Some day you must come again, and, if you are very good, I may let you bring the young lady, though I'm not so sure of that. Do you know that my brother was asking ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... To please a whim of Madame de Maintenon's, who fed them with scraps from the royal table, some carp were taken out of a muddy pool and placed in a marble basin of bright, clean water. The carp perished. The animals might be sacrificed, but man ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... States are being wooed. Ever since the Western powers' hope of speedy decisive blows on the part of Russia have shriveled up, they would like to lure the Japanese Army, two to four hundred thousand men, to the Continent. What was scoffed at as a whim of Pinchon and Clemenceau now is unveiled as a yearning of those at the ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... had added to his vast acreage, and it was a matter of common knowledge how he had done it. He was rich, powerful, bullying, a man whose self-aggrandizement knew no limit, whose merest whim was his law, whose will must not be thwarted. Year by year his vaqueros drove down the Wall herds of fat cattle, their brands blurred, insolently raw and careless. Many a hapless man had stood and seen his own stock go by in Courtrey's band and dared not open his mouth. In fact Courtrey ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... difference in Tom that Rose felt but could not define, some influence over him that was stronger than her own. She had been conscious before that she had but to speak and he would try his utmost to carry out her whim; but to-day, miserable as he was, oppressed by the weight of sin, she felt respect for a certain strength of purpose that seemed developed in him. Mr. Curzon was right; she had chosen the wrong man. Never had she valued Tom's ...
— The Village by the River • H. Louisa Bedford
... Pratscha-Paramita, the peace that is beyond all knowledge and which Nirvana provides. That peace is—or was—the complete absence of anything, extinction utter and everlasting, a state of absolute non-existence which no whim of Brahm ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... time, it appeared, since this had been first said. Day did not now call upon Caius as a medical man. His wife had taken a fancy to see him because of his remembered efforts to save her child. Day said apologetically that it was a woman's whim, but he would be obliged if Caius, at his convenience, would call upon her. It spoke much for the long peculiarity and dreariness of Day's domestic life that he evidently believed that this would be a disagreeable ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... I to him; of passports We never had the whim. Strong ones I believe it would need To recall, to our side of the limit, Subjects of Pluto King of the Dead: But, from the Germanic Empire Into the gallant and cynical abode Of Messieurs your pretty Frenchmen,—A jolly and beaming air, Rubicund faces, not ignorant of wine, These ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... ear for it; whim also to construe lord and master relaxed but reboant and soaring above the verbal to harmonic truths of abstract or transcendental, to be hummed subsequently by privileged female audience of one bent on a hook-or-crook plucking ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... original Mrs. Nevill Tyson remained to give her own supernatural naeivete to the character. Stanistreet was completely puzzled by this new freak; it looked like recklessness, it looked like vanity, it looked—it looked like an innocent parody of guilt. He had given in to her whim, as he had given In to every wish of hers, but he was not quite sure that he liked the frankness, the publicity of the thing. He wondered how so small a woman contrived to attract so large a share of attention in a city where pretty women were as common as paving-stones. ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... only child, and her wealthy father was pleased to gratify her every whim. So, besides being far too elegantly dressed for a schoolgirl, she was supplied with plenty of pocket money, and being very generous and full of life and fun, she was the acknowledged leader ...
— The King's Daughter and Other Stories for Girls • Various
... them, and so he plunged into them. His only rule was not to be misled by the spelling. That was no guide anyhow. He avoided every recognised phrase in the language and mispronounced everything in order that he shouldn't be suspected of ignorance, but whim. ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... dined and spent the evening at the Walraven palace, and talked about his ward's second flight with her distressed guardian, and opined she must have gone off to gratify some whim of her own, and laughed in his sleeve at the two anxious faces before him, and departed at ten, mellow with wine and full of ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... Belmont. With a docile old general and a niece so young, she had less resistance to encounter than, perhaps, her ardent soul would have relished. Fortunately for the general it was only now and then that Aunt Becky took a whim to command the Royal Irish Artillery. She had other hobbies just as odd, though not quite so scandalous. It had struck her active mind that such of the ancient women of Chapelizod as were destitute of letters—mendicants and the like—should learn to read. Twice ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... they are bent on having a good time. Fighting, feasting, and making love are their usual occupations. If they can be considered as governing the world, it is in a very loose way and on a very irregular system. They interfere with human affairs from time to time, but merely from whim or from passion. With the common relations of life they have little to do. They announce no moral law, and neither by precept nor example undertake to ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... castle or cottage in the air, Rachel lighted up. The little whim had something tranquillising and balmy. It was escape—flight from Gylingden—flight from Brandon—flight from Redman's Farm: they and all their hated associations would be far behind, and that awful page in her ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... extraordinary, and perhaps fantastic my plan may appear to you, be convinced that it is not the outgrowth of a mere passing whim, but has been imposed upon me by the necessary consequences of the essence and being of the subject which occupies me wholly and impels me towards its complete execution. To execute it according to my power as a poet and musician is the only thing that stands before my eyes; anything else ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... with myself. Attracted by this living interesting work, by the little table, the naive exercise books and the charm of doing this work in my wife's society, I was afraid that my wife would suddenly hinder me and upset everything by some sudden whim, and so I was in haste and made an effort to attach no consequence to the fact that her lips were quivering, and that she was looking about her with a helpless and frightened air like a ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... Krumerweg. But my father does not know that she is in Dreiberg; and we dare not tell him, for he still believes that she had something to do with my abduction." Then she stopped. She was strangely making this peasant her confidante. What a whim! ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... "'tis joy to me! Lay you down and rest a while and trust the boat to me." And seeing how quick she was to meet each send of the seas (that were already running high) glad enough was I to humour her whim, and clambered forward again. And there (having nought better to do) I set about rigging a rough awning athwart the bows, with canvas and a stout spar, which methought should keep out the spray and any chance sea that might ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... old Gamewell this to his face. "When I am gone you can do what you will with the place, boy," the old man had answered. "I have no son; but, of course, the fees and revenues will be yours. If, for a whim, you beggar yourself, I cannot stay you. But take it whilst I live; and wear Montfichet's shield in the days when my eyes can be rejoiced by so brave a sight, for you will ne'er disgrace our 'scutcheon, I warrant me. Perchance 'tis Geoffrey's sole ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... On that wily galoot Soon dropped, and you'll say that he leathered him — Not he; with a grim Sort of humorous whim, He took him and tarred him and ...
— Rio Grande's Last Race and Other Verses • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... so well that I have nothing to add to excuse me specially for my negligence or idleness, or whim or distraction, or—or—or—You know that I can explain myself better in person, and, this autumn, when I take you home late by the boulevards to your mother, I shall try to obtain your pardon. I am writing to you without ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... something on two separate occasions, ma'am?" Hugh hastened to ask, beginning to realize now that "where there was smoke there must be a fire," and that after all there was something more in this affair than a mere specter brought into being through an old lady's whim. ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson
... heads and said, "Well, they say there's one black sheep in every family." Now we are beginning to see that the black sheep may be made by the gratification of every physical desire and every mental whim and the ...
— The Girl and Her Religion • Margaret Slattery
... connected the two courts were subsequently drawn closer by marriage; partly from policy and partly from a whim, Amasis espoused a Cyrenian woman named Ladike, the daughter, according to some, of Arkesilas or of Battos, according to others, of a wealthy private individual named Kritobulos.* The Greeks of Europe and Asia Minor fared no less to their own satisfaction at his hand than their compatriots ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... whim," broke in Curtis, who did not feel like explaining at the moment that he was choosing a quiet old inn in a side street because he had been born there! Nevertheless, his words held that ring of decision, of finality in judgment, which invariably forms part of the equipment ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... man's whim was gratified, and he dropped off to sleep with his arm round his instrument, cuddling it up to him on the pillow as if it had been ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... perfectly indifferent to me. The sun and the seasons were not gone out of fashion when I was young; and I may do what I will with them now I am old: for fashion is fortunately no law but to its devotees. Were I five-and-twenty, I dare to say I should think every whim of my contemporaries very wise, as I did then. In one light I am always on the side of the Young, for they only silently despise those who do not conform to their ordinances; but age is very apt to be angry at the change ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... library to the reader. If this takes a hundred or more volumes a day, he is to have them; but to give him the right to throw a library into confusion by "browsing around," is to sacrifice the rights of the public to prompt service, to the whim of one man. Those who think that "browsing" is an education should reflect that it is like any other wandering employment, fatal to fixity of purpose. Like desultory reading of infinite periodicals, it tends rather to dissipate the time and ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... inclined to be amused with the Wise Woman's reiteration of this assertion. What fancy she had taken into her head he could not guess. It was some old-womanly whim, he supposed. If he could have guessed her reason for thus dismissing them in haste—if he had seen in the embers what she saw coming nearer and nearer, and now close to her very door—wild horses would ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... have set their hearts upon. The prince, therefore, to make the time seem short to him, proposed as a kind of merry pastime that they should invent some artful scheme to make Benedick and Beatrice fall in love with each other. Claudio entered with great satisfaction into this whim of the prince, and Leonato promised them his assistance, and even Hero said she would do any modest office to help her cousin to ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Pharaoh rarely left his palace, and bothered little about affairs outside, and Zaphnath must have been at the bottom of an edict which was shortly issued. Nothing that I remember in Kem better illustrated the absolute power of the Pharaoh and the unrestrained enforcement of his merest whim. The edict referred to the scarcity of bread and the multitude of foreigners who were flocking to the city to secure it, and provided (ostensibly for the good of the Kemish people) that no man in the ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... present excited state she would have torn up her best dress with equal readiness. She was elated with her success in the cricket field—what the Scotch call "fey"; and so long as she gratified her present whim, she had no thought at all ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... "It is a true word. We have gained a little experience of the wrong sort: we have learnt how to adapt our poor little gifts to the whim of the moment. Such as our talent has been, we have made a servant of it to minister to our physical necessities. We have lived little lives, ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to an edge by school and story and half-awakened thought. Ill could they be content, born without and beyond the World. And their weak wings beat against their barriers,—barriers of caste, of youth, of life; at last, in dangerous moments, against everything that opposed even a whim. ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... the privilege of getting out by herself into the sunshine which was so in harmony with her own bright mood. Still she could not help feeling that it was rather inconsiderate of Mrs. Montague to require her to walk two miles simply to gratify a mere whim. ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... a dull world. John Raikes! thou livest in times. I feel warm in the sun of your prosperity, Harrington. Now listen to me. Propound thou no inquiries anywhere about the old fellow who gave the supper. Humour his whim—he won't have it. All Fallow field is paid to keep him secret; I know it for a fact. I plied my rustic friends every night. "Eat you yer victuals, and drink yer beer, and none o' yer pryin's and peerin's among we!" That's my rebuff from Farmer Broadmead. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... was a most excellent craftsman and a very good fellow to boot, high-spirited and frank in all his ways. My father would not let him give me wages like the other apprentices; for having taken up the study of this art to please myself, he wished me to indulge my whim for drawing to the full. I did so willingly enough; and that honest master of mine took marvellous delight in my performances. He had an only son, a bastard, to whom he often gave his orders, in ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... help making a study of that singular man. He appeared to me the marked type of a class which ought to exist somewhere but which was unknown to me. One could never tell whether his outbursts were the despair of a man sick of life, or the whim of a ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... the Carlos Hills were seen, and there Jo knew fresh men and mounts were waiting, and that way the indomitable rider tried to turn, the race, but by a sudden whim, of the inner warning born perhaps—the Pacer turned. Sharp to the north he went, and Jo, the skilful wrangler, rode and rode and yelled and tossed the dust with shots, but down on a gulch the wild black meteor streamed and Jo could only follow. Then came ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... water and a piece of dry bread for her breakfast. On account of this abstinence, Henrik now jested, and Petrea answered him quite gaily; Louise, on the contrary, took up the matter quite seriously, and thought—as many others did—that this whim of Petrea's had a distant relationship to folly; and folly, Louise—the sensible Louise—considered the most horrible of horrors; Louise, ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... wanted, but he must needs begin setting a bad example to the donkey, telling him as plainly as one animal could tell another that he did not mean to be caught, and, as "evil communications corrupt good manners," the donkey took the same whim into his great rough ash-grey head, and galloped after the pony as hard as he could. It was of no use to say, "come then," or "coop—coop—coop," for both of the four-footed beasts seemed to have an idea that they were to race and tear ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... not be dependent upon her husband's whim or pleasure for her milliner's bill or her private charities,' answered her lover, smiling at her eagerness ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... hands of one man—the ballet-master—and that man knows his business. Fortunately, he is in a position to dictate the rate of movement to the orchestra, for the expression as well as for the tempo, and he does so, not according to his individual whim, like an operatic singer, but with a view to the ensemble, the consensus of all the artistic factors; and now, of a sudden, it comes to pass that the orchestra plays correctly! A rare sense of satisfaction will be felt by everyone ...
— On Conducting (Ueber das Dirigiren): - A Treatise on Style in the Execution of Classical Music • Richard Wagner (translated by Edward Dannreuther)
... governess who lived in the house with the lady instructed Kiisike and Elsie for some hours daily in reading and writing, and in all kinds of fine work. Elsie learned everything easily, but Kiisike had more taste for childish games than for her lessons. When the whim took her, she threw her work away, caught up her little box, and ran out of doors to play on the lake, and nobody scolded her. Sometimes she said to Elsie, "It's a pity you've grown so big: you can't play with ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... out;—at any rate, I cannot help thinking she wills her strength away from herself, for she has lost vigor and color from that day. I have sometimes thought he gained the force she lost; but this may have been a whim, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... our Harlequin and all his lifeless family are condemned to perpetual silence. They came to us from the genial hilarity of the Italian theatre, and were all the grotesque children of wit, and whim, and satire. Why is this burlesque race here privileged to cost so much, to do so little, and to repeat that little so often? Our own pantomime may, indeed, boast of two inventions of its own growth: we have turned Harlequin into a magician, and this produces the surprise of sudden ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... We can look after the children ourselves. You better save what you get to look after yourself when those two get over this whim!" ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... king returns again to the charge, and determines to carry out his tyrannical whim by the following order of the Council:—"The Council threaten the Lord Mayor and aldermen with imprisonment, if they do not forthwith enforce the king's command that all shops should be shut up in Cheapside and Lombard Street that were not goldsmiths' shops." ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... little girl's confidential friend as well as her mother. The child, quite unreservedly, told her what she wanted and why she wanted it. It was no weak indulgence of a child's whim, but a genuine respect for another person's rights as an individual—even though that individual was merely a little child—that led that mother to allow her daughter to have what she wanted. May not some subtle sense of this have been ...
— The American Child • Elizabeth McCracken
... made, how many have lived and suffered, and died, unlettered and unsung—snatched by a tyrant's whim from life to death, in the glory of the sun, in the gloom of night, in blood and flame, and torment? ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... migration as in civic relations, not by the will or whim of the individual, but by the welfare of the state. Further than this, the government has the right to deport at any time any aliens who may be regarded as unfit to remain. There ought to be no confusion as to rights in ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose
... truth to Matilda, and she were the first To release him: he had but to wait at the worst. Matilda's relations would probably snatch Any pretext, with pleasure, to break off a match In which they had yielded, alone at the whim Of their spoil'd child, a languid approval to him. She herself, careless child! was her love for him aught Save the first joyous fancy succeeding the thought She last gave to her doll? was she able to feel Such a love as the love he divined in Lucile? He would seek her, obtain ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... The hero of a victorious war, at the height of his popularity, his party in undisputed and seemingly indisputable supremacy, made the attempt. Congress, good-naturedly tolerating what it considered his whim of inexperience, granted money to try an experiment. The adverse pressure was tremendous. "I am used to pressure," said the soldier. So he was, but not to this pressure. He was driven by unknown and incalculable currents. He was enveloped ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... over the pages of the best comedies, we are almost transported to another world, and escape from this dull age to one that was all life, and whim, and mirth, and humour. The curtain rises, and a gayer scene presents itself, as on the canvas of Watteau. We are admitted behind the scenes like spectators at court, on a levee or birthday; but it is the court, the gala-day of wit and pleasure, of gallantry and Charles II.! ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... There lurks in each several portion something which they who experience it not know nothing of, but which makes the sufferer wince. Besides, the more favoured a man is by Fortune, the more fastidiously sensitive is he; and, unless all things answer to his whim, he is overwhelmed by the most trifling misfortunes, because utterly unschooled in adversity. So petty are the trifles which rob the most fortunate of perfect happiness! How many are there, dost thou imagine, who ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius
... And Kauffman beside, And the Jessamy Bride, With the rest of the crew. The Reynoldses too, Little Comedy's face, And the Captain in Lace— Tell each other to rue Your Devonshire crew, For sending so late To one of my state. But 'tis Reynolds's way From wisdom to stray, And Angelica's whim To befrolic like him; But alas! your good worships, how could they be wiser, When both have been spoil'd in ...
— Oliver Goldsmith • Washington Irving
... others into the thing we call a man. The encysted child developed until it reached years of virility, until those later Oxford days in which Hogg encountered it; then, bursting at once from its cyst and the university, it swam into a world not illegitimately perplexed by such a whim of the gods. It was, of course, only the completeness and duration of this seclusion—lasting from the gate of boyhood to the threshold of youth—which was peculiar to Shelley. Most poets, probably, like most saints, are prepared for their mission ...
— Shelley - An Essay • Francis Thompson
... beautiful embroidered silk coverlet, and surrounded by everything that heart could wish for, lying there wan, peevish, irritable, dissatisfied with everybody and everything, seemingly because his doting parents had gratified his every whim and humoured his every caprice. It was quite evident that he regarded me with almost if not quite as great distaste as ever; he even seemed to consider it a grievance that he owed his life to a despised Britisher; and seeing how acutely his mother was distressed ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... her face a fascinating study while she talked, and pointed them, as it were, with all the little poises and expressions and reserves which are commonly a feminine result of considerable social training. Kendal, entering into her whim, inwardly compared her with an acknowledged successful girl of the season with whom he had sat out two dances the night before in Eaton Square, to the successful girl's disadvantage. Finding something lacking in that, he came upon a better analogy in a young ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... weather for outdoor sports and sometimes the lads would go out for a game of baseball, or football, just as the whim seized them. Of course the college had its regular teams on the diamond and the gridiron, but the Rovers did not care enough for the sport to try for these, even though they had made creditable records ...
— The Rover Boys in Alaska - or Lost in the Fields of Ice • Arthur M. Winfield
... accomplishment of your designs? Why not fly with your honourable lover, and thus wring the fond hearts of your parents at once to the utmost? Why retract now, when it will be only to delude again? Miserable and deluded girl, what new whim has caused this sudden change? Wherefore wait till it be too late to repent—to persuade us that you are an unwilling abettor and assistant in this man's schemes? Go, fly with him; it were better to reconcile your indulgent mother to an eternal separation, than ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... that it should be as she wished; and that my coach should set us down there and come again when the play was over. So the threads are caught up in those great unseen shuttles that are guided by God's Hand, and the whole pattern changed, it would appear, by a moment's whim. And yet I cannot doubt—for if I did, my whole faith would be shattered—that even those whims are part of the Divine design, and that all is done according to ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... understanding of him, it would be impossible to make the rest of the world, of the world in which she lived and to which she clung, see anything of what she saw. They would laugh if her new position were a passing whim; they would be scornful and angry ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... the Orphan Butte. Ha! why should I not be upon the butte—on its summit? I remember going down to the plain; and there being struck senseless to the earth. For all that, I may have been brought up again. The savages may have borne me back to satisfy some whim? They often act in such strange fashion with, their vanquished victims. I must be on some eminence: since I cannot see the earth before me? In all likelihood, I am on the top of the mound. This will account for my not having a view of the ground. It ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... usual but foolish," Rochester answered. "I need no thanks, I deserve none. I yield to a whim, nothing else. I do this thing for my own pleasure. The sum of money which I propose to put into your hands will probably represent to me what a five-shilling piece might to you. This may sound vulgar, but it is true. I think that I need not warn you never to come to me for ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the Baron, rising after the silence which followed that imprudent whim of a man beside himself, "we will confer again with our client. If you wish, we will resume this conversation tomorrow at ten o'clock, say here or in any place convenient to you.... You will excuse me, Marquis. Dorsenne has no doubt ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... of the Igorot illustrates what seems to be the first distinctively commercial activity. Preceding it is the stage of barter between people who casually meet and who trade carried possessions on the whim of the moment. If we wish to dignify this kind of barter, it may properly ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... on him in this period, finding him bereft of an adviser, and ready to be swayed by whatever whim should come. Perhaps he was attracted by the barber's hardihood, perhaps the absurdity of his inspiration had some fascination for him, perhaps he merely saw that the thing was new and, feeling jaded, let the barber have his way. And so the frivolity became ...
— Tales of War • Lord Dunsany
... old friend of mine. He's an American named Gunn. He's joined the Papal Zouaves from some whim, and a deuced good thing it is for them to get hold of such a man. I happened to call one day, and ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... her mother, who would have been there to watch over her, was alas! sleeping in the very churchyard in which, in the shade of the evening, she first met her seducer. Enough,—the heartless man of the world obtained the love of the poor and simple Herminie,—and his whim, his ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... I asked, with a shrug for the woman's whim. "Why, for Strelsau. She gave no reasons for going, and took with her only one lady, Lieutenant von Bernenstein being in attendance. It was a bustle, if you like, with everybody to be roused and got out of bed, and a carriage to be made ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... his part, had—even although pushed without ceremony through a door—behaved with perfect confidence, for he knew that, whatever her whim or her sense of humor, or her impudence, Yasmini would not fail him in the pinch. Even she, whose jest it is to see men writhe under her hand, has to own somebody her master, and though she would giggle ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... but for the whim of renting this tumble-down house with its great gardens out on the suburb, we could have had snug rooms in some business street, where I could have ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... of these roads. Somebody is always driving recklessly." Lorelei smiled at memory of the miles they had covered so swiftly; but she saw that he was serious and in a sour temper. "One risks his life on the whim of some drunken idiot the moment he enters a motor-car. Now for a telephone." A terse question to his man served to ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... conscientious teacher to tell the pupil that she should work with the C Major Sonata of Haydn instead. The pupil, with a kind of confidence that is, to say the least, dangerous, imagines that the teacher is trying to keep her back, and often goes to another teacher who will gratify her whim. ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... been a dance at Piping Tree, and because she had danced twice with Gay (who had ridden over in obedience to a whim), Abel had parted from her in anger. For the first time she had felt the white heat of his jealousy, and it had aroused rebellion, not acquiescence, in her heart. Jonathan Gay was nothing to her (though he called her his cousin)—he had openly ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... collared for myself. I deceived you both. . . . It's all over and done with, it's no use to be ashamed. And indeed, judge for yourself, Boris Petrovitch, weren't you the very person for me to get money out of? . . . You were a wealthy man and had everything you wanted. . . . Your marriage was an idle whim, and so was your divorce. You were making a lot of money. . . . I remember you made a scoop of twenty thousand over one contract. Whom should I have fleeced if not you? And I must own I envied you. ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... taken too much for granted, you and Betty. Ten years ago your sister gave herself to me. She is mine. I will not for a whim, for a passion, for a temporary alienation, let her go. Neither will I have my good name and the name of a good woman besmirched for the sake of this impertinent desire for a release. I love my wife"—his voice was especially Hebraic and especially abhorrent to the other—"and as a husband ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... all the giving! I've never told you, Esteban, but I'm quite rich." Holding the man away, she smiled into his eyes. "Yes, richer than I have any right to be. I had no need to come to Cuba; it was just the whim of an irresponsible, spoiled young woman. I gave a huge amount of money to the New York Junta and that's why I was ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... reflects all the results of later scholarship on the matters of origins and interpretations. Its bibliographies and extended commentaries make it invaluable. The story of Phaethon is usually thought of as a warning against presumption, conceit, whim, self-will. It was probably invented in the first place to account for the extremely hot weather of ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... message for you, Miss Innes," he said, rising at last. "Mrs. Armstrong asked me to thank you for your kindness to Louise, whose whim, occurring at the time it did, put her to great inconvenience. Also—and this is a delicate matter—she asked me to appeal to your natural sympathy for her, at this time, and to ask you if you will not reconsider your decision about the house. Sunnyside is ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Messieurs, vous y serez parfaitement bien," quoth our civil conducteur, haranguing, handing, and shoving at the same time. The alacrity with which he and his merry little dog Carlin did the honours of the vehicle, and the stout active appearance of the horse (to say nothing of the whim of the moment, and the fine morning), reconciled us to a mode of conveyance no better than that which calves enjoy in a butcher's cart; and for the first few miles we forgot even ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... Holy Spirit. Others speak of a want of respect for the aged, and especially for parents, as a fault of young women. "How often is the kind advice a father and mother set aside, just because it goes against some whim or fancy of their own! A desire on the part of a young lady to live in the fashion, to be well-dressed at all hours and ready for callers—how much toil and sacrifice often fall to a good mother from such an ambition!" The writer gives other illustrations of the same spirit ...
— Girls: Faults and Ideals - A Familiar Talk, With Quotations From Letters • J.R. Miller
... fine whim you took into your head, to write a letter to Mr. Solmes, to persuade him to give up his pretensions to you!—Of all the pretty romantic flights you have delighted in, this was certainly one of the most extraordinary. But to say nothing of what fires ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... had grown into the habit of coming there rather more often than mere neighborliness called for, and it was palpable that he did not come to hold converse with Benton or Benton's gang, although he was "hail fellow" with all woodsmen. At first his coming might have been laid to any whim. Latterly Stella herself was unmistakably the attraction. He brought his sister once, a fair-haired girl about Stella's age. She proved an exceedingly self-contained young person, whose speech during the hour of her stay ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... precluded the suspicion of artifice. Something was clearly, radically wrong. She knew that Alfred had six hundred a year from his father. She had no profound respect for that gentleman; but men are willful. Suppose he should take a whim to stop it? On the other side, she knew that Boniface Newt was an obstinate man, and that fathers were sometimes implacable. Sometimes, even, they did not relent in making their wills. She knew all about Miss Van Boozenberg's marriage with Tom Witchet, for it was ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... little bewildered;—but he has been anxious, I find, for poor Mary, and 'tis national in him to blend eccentricity with kindness. John Bull exhibits a plain, undecorated dish of solid benevolence; but Pat has a gay garnish of whim around his good nature; and if, now and then, 'tis sprinkled in a little confusion, they must have vitiated stomachs, who are ...
— John Bull - The Englishman's Fireside: A Comedy, in Five Acts • George Colman
... fired his revolver at a wooden-legged man, who proved to be a harmless tradesman canvassing for orders. We had to pay a large sum to hush the matter up. My brother and I used to think this a mere whim of my father's, but events have since led ...
— The Sign of the Four • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of my story. My father has an amiable whim of his own—he always prefers to have deserters from the army as his assistants. He is well aware that men of that kidney have practically renounced the world. Now who do you think rushed into his house one evening ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... she had not seen for many years. Aunt Lucinda was busily employed at the ironing-board, but looked often to see that her mother's wants were all supplied; nothing could exceed the affection and care she seemed to bestow upon her aged parent, indulging every whim, so that the old lady hardly can realize that she is old and almost helpless. We were soon seated at the supper table, and they all must have had the idea that I had brought with me from Elmwood ...
— Walter Harland - Or, Memories of the Past • Harriet S. Caswell
... make war on the King of England, and negotiate with the pope on the subject of the Albigensians; but at one time he followed, without well understanding it, his father's policy, at another he neglected it for some whim, or under some temporary influence. Yet he was not unsuccessful in his wax-like enterprises; in his campaign against Henry III., King of England, he took Niort, St. Jean d'Angely, and Rochelle; he accomplished ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... to rodeo work; indeed, he was anxious to go. But, not being a morbid young man, he did not contemplate carrying a broken heart with him. Teresita was sweet and winsome and maddeningly alluring; he knew it, he felt it still. Indeed, he was made to realize it every time the whim seized her to punish Jack by smiling upon Dade. But she was as capricious as beauty usually is, and he knew that also; and after being used several times as a club with which to beat Jack into proper humility (and always seeing very clearly that he was merely ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... home after leaving the fete next door. There were no signs of a struggle in the garden, nor had there been the slightest noise to attract the attention of the waiting maid. It was not impossible, after all, that she had slipped away of her own accord, possessed of a sudden whim or impulse. ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... swinging and squeaking. He straightened himself out, slowly descended the tree, and set off along the top of the fence toward the farmyard. Never before had it occurred to him to visit the farmyard; but now that the moon had put the madness into his head, he acted upon the whim without a moment's misgiving. Unlike the rest of the wild kindreds, he stood little in awe of either the works or ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... the division among the Cardinals reflecting the jealousies of the Roman families of Orsini and Colonna, caused a vacancy in the papal office for more than two years. Then by a sudden whim, which in the event of a successful result would have been called an inspiration, the name of a hermit, Peter, whose austerities in his cell on Monte Murrone in the Abruzzi had won him great reverence, was suggested apparently in all ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... to be understood that a child must have everything that it desires and every whim and wish to receive special recognition by the parents. Children can soon be made to understand the necessity of obedience, and punishment can easily be brought about by teaching them self-denial. Deny them the use of a certain ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... Crosby had done to England, or England to him, I can't say, but he never went near his native country. For years and years he had lived abroad—not in any settled place of residence: they would travel about, and remain a year or two in one place, a year or two in another, as the whim suited them. A respectable, portly man, of quiet and gentlemanly manners, looking as little like one who need be afraid of the laws of his own land as can be. Neither is it said or insinuated that he was afraid of them. A gentleman who knew him had told, many years before, in answer to a doubt, ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... married. Her father, I fear, will leave her too much to herself, and in that case I scarce know what may become of her; she has neither judgment nor principle to direct her choice, and therefore, in all probability, the same whim which one day will guide it, will the next ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... however, in inducing others to take a part in this strange whim. Had it been bull-baiting or badger-drawing or cock-throwing or horse and donkey racing, hundreds would have been found ready to engage in the sport. But for a tournament! Most people did not even know the name of it, and Mr. Mumbles' description was in no way calculated to elucidate its ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... giddiness of being a land-owner for the first time, or perhaps it was the abject wretchedness of the only hotel in town that inspired the whim which seized me during my solitary dinner. I had spent one night here, and did not welcome the prospect of a second. A return to New York was not practicable, because I had arranged to meet several ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... them the finishing stroke by declaring that there never had been, and never could be positive orthography. They concluded that syntax is a whim ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... flattered the precocity with a kind of worship that proved, as it was bound to prove, disastrous. It seems to have been Henry Fox's deliberate belief that the best way to bring up a spirited, gifted, headstrong child was to gratify every wish, surrender to every whim, and pander to every passion that ebullient youth could feel. The anecdotes of the day teem with tales of the fantastic homage that Fox paid to the desires and moods of his imperious infant. He made him his companion while he was still in the nursery; ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... out to be of more interest than you think. You remember that the affair of the blue carbuncle, which appeared to be a mere whim at first, developed into a serious investigation. It may be ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... been in the habit of going on shooting trips at short notice, and so it was his rule to keep a supply of canned eatables in the house to be ready whenever the whim took him. On these he now depended, and was not a little annoyed to find the kitchen store room where they were ...
— The Burglar and the Blizzard • Alice Duer Miller
... 'A whim, a sick man's fancy. Perhaps because it is not so very remote from Old Calabar, the country of Philippa's own father. Mother, tell me, how do ...
— Much Darker Days • Andrew Lang (AKA A. Huge Longway)
... awful?" returned Cora, aghast, thinking of her own merry, enjoyable life, with every whim gratified. "To be so young and attractive and actually buried alive! Don't you think she is a ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... "A woman's whim, Dr. Watson. When you know me better you will understand that I cannot always give reasons for what I say ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... said Mademoiselle gently. "Must you continue this after it has turned into a farce? Must you continue acting from pique, when the thing has been over for more years than you care to remember? Must you keep on now because of a whim to make your life miserable and the lives of others? Will you threaten fifty men with death and ruin, because you once were called a thief? It is folly, sir, and you know it, utter useless folly! Pray do not stare ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... persons of the drama. On the other hand, they show themselves insensible to all genuine illusion, that is, of entering vividly into the spirit of the fable: for them Ralph, however heroically and chivalrously he may conduct himself, is always Ralph their apprentice; and in the whim of the moment they take upon them to demand scenes which are quite inconsistent with the plan of the piece that has been commenced. In short, the views and demands with which poets are often oppressed by ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... little as I dreamt he could be so base, how he could best destroy her prospect of happiness. He resorted, for this purpose, to a most crafty expedient, which I, poor fool, took for nothing but what he feigned it to be. He pretended that a whim had come into his head for seeming to prosper in his suit, out of a kind of revenge for his not being able to do so in reality; and, in order to indulge this whim, he requested me to dress myself in the identical clothes which ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... to the moderately poor the home is the only place of liberty. Nay, it is the only place of anarchy. It is the only spot on the earth where a man can alter arrangements suddenly, make an experiment or indulge in a whim. Everywhere else he goes he must accept the strict rules of the shop, inn, club, or museum that he happens to enter. He can eat his meals on the floor in his own house if he likes. I often do it myself; it gives a curious, childish, poetic, picnic feeling. There would be considerable ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... me, as we followed the servant, that this his ancestor was a brave man, and narrowly escaped being killed in the Civil Wars. "For," said he, "he was sent out of the field upon a private message the day before the Battle of Worcester." The whim of narrowly escaping, by having been within a day of danger, with other matters above mentioned, mixed with good sense, left me at a loss whether I was more delighted with my friend's wisdom ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... a despotism, the lives, liberty and property of the people are at the command of the ruler, subject to his whim. [6] For an illustration of the method of securing private property for public use, ...
— Studies in Civics • James T. McCleary
... Iden humoured her every whim and let her do just as she pleased; the next she insisted on ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... all is perhaps the most wonderful case in point, and when one arrives at the end of things, one need not care any longer. Death, which at this moment mows down men so recklessly, leaves us standing in a bare field by a mere whim. One is astonished and a little thoughtful ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... King's army in Wales, he was succeeded by the false-hearted Geoffrey de Mountmorres, who held the office till 1247. During the next twenty-five years, about half as many Justices were placed and displaced, according to the whim of the successive favourites at the English Court. In 1252, Prince Edward, afterwards Edward I., was appointed with the title of Lord Lieutenant, but never came over. Nor is there in the series of rulers we ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... laughed at ribald jests and quaffed the liquid flame, and the dark-hued nectar which concealed the serpent beneath its foam; I held my head aloft to seem with pride imbued; I gibed at fortune's whim and grinned a soulless sneer at my fate to conceal ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... Dowlah had hated the English. It was his whim to do so; and his whims were never opposed. He had also formed a very exaggerated notion of the wealth which might be obtained by plundering them; and his feeble and uncultivated mind was incapable of perceiving that ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... It was to his credit that neither libertinism nor disgrace nor remorse withered at its root this herb of grace. Cynical speeches with regard to friends and friendship, often quoted to his disadvantage, need not be taken too literally. Byron talked for effect, and in accordance with the whim of the moment. His acts do not correspond with his words. Byron rejected and repudiated bath Protestant and Catholic orthodoxy, but like the Athenians he was "exceedingly religious." He could not, he did not wish to, detach himself ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... of being a land-owner for the first time, or perhaps it was the abject wretchedness of the only hotel in town that inspired the whim which seized me during my solitary dinner. I had spent one night here, and did not welcome the prospect of a second. A return to New York was not practicable, because I had arranged to meet several contractors and an architect at the farm, next morning, ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... insisted that Agnes' child should be raised as a white child, and the secret of his birth effectually concealed. At first, Mr. Le Croix thought it was a passing whim that she would soon forget; that the child would amuse and interest her for awhile; and then she would tire of him as she had of other things; such as her birds, her squirrel, and even her Shetland pony. But when he found that instead of her intention being a passing whim it ...
— Minnie's Sacrifice • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... no friends," said Stratton coldly. "I am not the first man who ever took to a solitary life. It suits my whim. Now, please go and leave me ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... road that lies open before him into the distance, and shows him the far-off spires of some city, or a range of mountain-tops, or a rim of sea, perhaps, along a low horizon. In short, he may gratify his every whim and fancy, without a pang of reproving conscience, or the least jostle to his self-respect. It is true, however, that most men do not possess the faculty of free action, the priceless gift of being able to live for the moment only; and as they begin ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and the sun was hanging on the face of the mightier sky-cliff opposite, and the sea stretched for visible miles and miles along the shore on either hand, its wide blue mantle fringed with lovely white wherever it met the land, and scalloped into all fantastic curves, according to the whim of the nether fires which had formed its bed; and the rush of the waves, as they bore the rising tide up on the shore, was the one music fit for the whole. Ear and eye, touch and smell, were alike invaded with blessedness. I ought to have kept this to ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... Gibbon, son of a Hampshire gentleman, was born at Putney, near London, April 27, 1737. After a preliminary education at Westminster, and fourteen "unprofitable" months at Magdalen College, Oxford, a whim to join the Roman church led to his banishment to Lausanne, where he spent five years, and acquired a mastery of the French language, formed his taste for literary expression, and settled his religious doubts in a profound ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... retrace their steps along the corduroy road, the boys wondering somewhat over the whim of Mr. Hardman. He had not acted like a man who had come to look for a place to erect a dwelling, and, though they expected some oddity in a man who preferred to live in the solitude of the forest, they could not account for his questions about whether or not ...
— Frank Roscoe's Secret • Allen Chapman
... that my old bones would have a rest, I am bundled off to this howling wilderness to strip, and jibber, and be ugly and hairy, and pull down fences and waylay sheep, and waltz around with a club, and play 'Wild Man' generally—and all to gratify the whim of a bedlam of crazy newspaper scribblers? From one end of the continent to the other, I am described as a gorilla, with a sort of human seeming about me—and all to gratify this quill-driving scum ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... live things in their pride to remain. I will not kill one grasshopper vain Though he eats a hole in my shirt like a door. I let him out, give him one chance more. Perhaps, while he gnaws my hat in his whim, Grasshopper ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... it is a whim in me or a piece of foolishness. Yet, the way I am constituted, it is practically impossible for me to do anything for my sake alone. Your sympathy would act as a stimulus to keep me to my resolution." He drew from his pocket a letter from Peter Schmidt, saying that near Meriden ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... hard the lot of them is that have to do so too. Besides, I can't help thinkin', what, perhaps, you never thought of, yourselves, ladies, that every person, who, while they can just as well turn their hands to other business, yet, for their own whim, or pleasure, or convenience, or profit, chooses to do work, of which there a'n't enough now in the world to keep in employment them that must get such work to do, or else beg, or sin, or starve,—when I think, I say, that every such person helps some poor cretur into the grave, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... argy that a man Who does about the best he can Is plenty good enugh to suit This lower mundane institute— No matter ef his daily walk Is subject fer his neghbor's talk, And critic-minds of ev'ry whim Jest all git up ...
— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris
... to him from his mother, who, when not frightened, and when there was nothing on the horizon which might cross the slightest whim of her husband, was an amiable, good-natured woman. If it was not such an awful thing to say of anyone, I should say that she ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... to meet at eight o'clock and before that hour Kenneth Forbes had to finish the first chapter of a serial story. The literary society, named in accordance with the grotesque whim of Oxford undergraduates, consisted of eight members, and it was proposed that each one should contribute a chapter. Forbes was of a fertile wit, and he had been nominated the first operator. He had been allowed the whole Christmas vacation to prepare his opening chapter; which was ...
— Kathleen • Christopher Morley
... let you go—for one small consideration on your part. You've never paid that debt of yours. You will pay it now—in full, freely, both arms round my neck. Come, I've a right to ask that much. It's just a whim that ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... gently. "Must you continue this after it has turned into a farce? Must you continue acting from pique, when the thing has been over for more years than you care to remember? Must you keep on now because of a whim to make your life miserable and the lives of others? Will you threaten fifty men with death and ruin, because you once were called a thief? It is folly, sir, and you know it, utter useless folly! Pray do not stare at me. It ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... to flop and twist and turn Whenever 'tis our whim. Yet social etiquette we learn Because we're ...
— Policeman Bluejay • L. Frank Baum
... bayonets grim And babies slaughtered for a whim, Cathedrals made the sport of shells, No mercy, even for a child, As though the imps of all the hells Were crazed ...
— Over Here • Edgar A. Guest
... her—I should be overjoyed to do it, if there would be nothing preposterous about it, or that would seem like a man making himself too much of a fool, and so degrading her in consenting. I can make her comparatively rich, as you know, and I would indulge her every whim. There is the idea, bluntly put. It would set right something in my mind that has been wrong for forty years. After my death she would have plenty of freedom and plenty of means to ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... whose eccentric entertainment we have laughed many an hour, has here produced a most pleasant and lively melange, the result of much whim and observation, blended with a vast fund of genuine anecdotes, and a very particular account of the various amusements, customs, manners, and inhabitants of the places of fashionable resort in this kingdom."—Monthly Mirror for ...
— The Lawyers, A Drama in Five Acts • Augustus William Iffland
... like him,' forsooth! And pray, are you going to reject the best offer in the county because of a simple whim? the mere fancy of a vain-headed, foolish and inexperienced girl? I did not before suppose that a daughter of mine would manifest such a ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... hostess, especially if the entertainment be a dinner or luncheon may possibly, even at the eleventh hour, be able to supply the vacancy. Make it explanatory as well, that she may feel positive that no mere whim has caused the ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... madame had conveyed to the man and the assembled household generally, her own great scorn of us, and of our plans. What a whim this, of driving, forsooth, to the Mont! Dieu sait—French people were not given to any such follies; they were serious-minded, always, in matters of travel. To travel at all, was no light thing; one made one's ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... foolish whim, but I do crave—ocular evidence for my belief that those books were written and were published. I want to see them all ranged along goodly shelves. A few days ago I sat in one of those libraries which seem to be doorless. Nowhere, to the eye, was broken the array of serried volumes. Each ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... in particular," said the captain. "It's only a whim of mine, to which I thought you might perhaps agree, in consideration of ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... the colorless curls gently; looking back; thinking that she had done much for him; he would humor her whim, not behave like a beast to her. But his brother—It would be better for Stephen in the end. Certainly. Yet he sighed: a womanish, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... o'clock it seemed to the waiting throngs that several ordinary days had passed since they left their sagging canvas cots at daybreak to stand attendant upon the whim of chance. They gathered in the blazing sun in front of the office of the paper, looking in at Editor Mong, who seemed more like a quack doctor that morning than ever before, with his wrinkled coat-sleeves pushed above his elbows and his cuffs tucked back over ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... keeps aloof from the prayers, but respects his scruples, and reveres his character. For proof thereof, I did not cease urging on Harry his careless promise, that our union should have our father's blessing on it; and the good pastor falling in with my whim, prevailed on Mr. Truelocke to remarry us very privately in the little church I spoke of, he himself assisting. 'Twas a foolish fancy, I wot, but I was not easy till I had it gratified. And it ...
— Andrew Golding - A Tale of the Great Plague • Anne E. Keeling
... republicanism has shipwrecked? If that power is given to the chief citizen, the way is prepared for the tyrant. If it abides peacefully in a royal house, it abides with cyphers who dignify, without obstructing, a popular constitution. Do not mistake me, Mr. Townshend. This is no whim of a sentimental girl, but the reasoned conclusion of the men who achieved our liberty. There is every reason to believe that General Washington shares our views, and Mr. Hamilton, whose name you may know, is ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... rid himself of you in a more summary manner, daughter," rejoined Rochford. "If you would stand well with him, you must study his lightest word, look, and action—humour him in every whim—and yield to every caprice. Above all, you ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... in His Humour, is a key to all his dramas. The word "humour" in his age stood for some characteristic whim or quality of society. Jonson gives to his leading character some prominent humor, exaggerates it, as the cartoonist enlarges the most characteristic feature of a face, and so holds it before our attention that all other qualities are lost sight of; which is the method that Dickens ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... They were in their room, with the windows closed, trying to escape the terrible sirocco by shutting it out and putting on thin clothes. She did not want to see her husband with such a gloomy face nor listen to his complaints. As long as he was crazy and was set on his whim, she did not dare to oppose him. He could paint her; but only a study, not a picture. When he was tired of reproducing her flesh on the canvas they would destroy it,—just as if ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... know one thing were his sight less dim; That it whirls not to suit his petty whim, That it ...
— The City of Dreadful Night • James Thomson
... faithfully and persistently, to get out coal for Peter Harrigan, he had never once been able to get ahead of his bill for the necessities of life at Old Peter's store. All his belongings in the world could be carried in a bundle on his back, and whether he ever saw these again would depend upon the whim of old Peter's camp-marshal and guards. Rusick would take to the road, with a ticket purchased by the union. Perhaps he would find a job and perhaps not; in any case, the best he could hope for in life was to work for some other Harrigan, ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... making a study of this singular man. He appeared to me the exact type of a class which ought to exist somewhere but which was unknown to me. One could never tell whether his outbursts were the despair of a man sick of life, or the whim of ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... him as a victim of his own weakness, as the prey of a predaceous and unscrupulous woman who had intrigued and would continue to intrigue against his happiness, a woman away from her own world, a self-complacent and sensual privateer who for a passing whim, for a momentary appeasement of her exile, stood ready to sacrifice the last of his self-respect. She was self-complacent, but she was also a woman with an unmistakable physical appeal. She was undeniably attractive, as far as appearances went, and added to that attractiveness ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... without a prouder tread And a peal of exultation: Little right has he to sing 360 Through whose heart in such an hour Beats no march of conscious power, Sweeps no tumult of elation! 'Tis no Man we celebrate, By his country's victories great, 365 A hero half, and half the whim of Fate, But the pith and marrow of a Nation Drawing force from all her men, Highest, humblest, weakest, all, For her time of need, and then 370 Pulsing it again through them, Till the basest can no ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... no resisting the playfulness of his wit, and the exhilarating whim of his manner. My ill humour soon evaporated; and yielding to the sympathetic gaiety he had inspired, I said to him—'You are a wicked wit, Belmont. But, though I laugh, do not imagine I am a convert to your mandevilian ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... the price?" began Manilov, and then stopped. Presently he went on: "Surely you cannot suppose me capable of taking money for souls which, in one sense at least, have completed their existence? Seeing that this fantastic whim of yours (if I may so call it?) has seized upon you to the extent that it has, I, on my side, shall be ready to surrender to you those souls UNCONDITIONALLY, and to charge myself with the whole ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... while," she cried, looking up through her wind-tossed hair, "'tis joy to me! Lay you down and rest a while and trust the boat to me." And seeing how quick she was to meet each send of the seas (that were already running high) glad enough was I to humour her whim, and clambered forward again. And there (having nought better to do) I set about rigging a rough awning athwart the bows, with canvas and a stout spar, which methought should keep out the spray and any chance sea that might break forward; though indeed ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... boy quickly, with a hot colour in his bent face. "Simply and truly, Baas Cogez did not have me asked this year. He has taken some whim against me." ...
— Stories By English Authors: Germany • Various
... foreigner. I do not think it is of the slightest importance to anybody. I have not opened it, I have no idea what it contains, and your husband himself said it was nothing—only I have promised to give it him alone; it was a whim of the little Frenchman who entrusted me with it, and whom, I must honestly tell you, I believe to have been half-mad. Only, unfortunately, I have promised to deliver ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... quickly learned to purge His fancy of the tender whim That she was floating at the verge Of womanhood, half hid to him, Saw her with ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland
... There is no softness in my future. Thank goodness, at least I am young; I may have a great career; I will be satisfied to be famous. It will be terribly, terribly, difficult to be famous through the whim of another woman; but I suppose Bertha will ...
— The Time of Roses • L. T. Meade
... off the perfumes from his visage with his hand. He eats from the sacred vessels, and then breaks them, and he enumerates, mentally, his fleets, his armies, his peoples. Presently, through a whim, he will burn his palace, along with his guests. He calculates on rebuilding the Tower of ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... to try to take hers without murmuring, although convinced that it was a mere whim, stipulating only that she might go out in the kitchen to swallow it. But with Wealthy, who was younger, the ingestion of Vermifuge was usually preceded by an orgy of tears and supplications. Addison, who was older and generally well, long smiled in ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... morning; she developed a sudden and unshakable resolve to be one of the party, and after his remonstrances had finally brought stormy tears to her eyes, Allison surrendered in perplexity to her whim. ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... training, and (it hardly needs explaining) got a quite unique degree: With his blushing honours laden, he espoused a lovely maiden at the end of Volume Three: This alone he had to grieve for—that he'd nothing more to live for, or expect from Fortune's whim: For I never could discover, when his Oxford days were over, what the ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley
... really want to go on with it, I am to go to Philadelphia to study there. Hope will be shocked, and Hu will make all manner of fun of me, I know. I do hope you and Billy will stand by me, Ted, and believe it is not a schoolgirl whim, but a real wish to find some work ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... determined, in migration as in civic relations, not by the will or whim of the individual, but by the welfare of the state. Further than this, the government has the right to deport at any time any aliens who may be regarded as unfit to remain. There ought to be no confusion as ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose
... set their hearts upon. The prince, therefore, to make the time seem short to him, proposed as a kind of merry pastime that they should invent some artful scheme to make Benedick and Beatrice fall in love with each other. Claudio entered with great satisfaction into this whim of the prince, and Leonato promised them his assistance, and even Hero said she would do any modest office to help her cousin ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... pinched quarters of serfs. The lords of trade have their hundreds and thousands of humble subordinates over whom they rule, often with a rod of iron. They may be turned away from work and wages at any moment, by any whim of the selfish employer. Hence, through fear of this, they lose their manhood, and dare not assert even a decision of their conscience. There is no more melancholy sight to my eyes than that which I often see nowadays—the former ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... arm-chair, and then handed it to whomever the King ordered him to give it to. On this evening the King, glancing all around him, cast his eye upon me, and told the valet to give the candle to me. It was an honour which he bestowed sometimes upon one, sometimes upon another, according to his whim, but which, by his manner of bestowing it, was always coveted, as a great distinction. My surprise may be imagined when I heard myself named aloud for this office, not only on this but on many other occasions. ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... men trace their ancestry, To ape or Adam: let them please their whim; But I in June am midway to believe A tree among my far progenitors, Such sympathy is mine with all the race, Such mutual recognition vaguely sweet There is between us. Surely there are times 90 When they consent to own me of their kin, And condescend to me, and call ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... tearful. Her manner grew more and more moody and constrained, till even her matter-of-fact uncle and aunt, good easy souls, and her absorbed cousin, became curious and anxious. The little elfish black pony was in more frequent request than ever; for his mistress now went out at any hour that suited her whim, in any weather, chose the loneliest by-ways, and rode furiously. Often, at evening, she ascended a dark gorge of the western hills and plunged down on the other side, as though in hot pursuit of the setting sun; and at length there came a report ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... hoar, spake the lordly ocean: "You are sheen and steadfastness: I am sheen and motion, Gulfing argosies for whim, navies for a notion. ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... not an abrogation of the Sabbath, but, on the contrary, a confirmation of the universal and merciful appointment. It does not give permission to keep or neglect it, according to whim or for the sake of amusement, but it does draw, strong and clear, the distinction between a positive rite which may be modified, and an unchangeable precept of the moral law which it is better for a man to die ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... for her Highness in some whim had insulted him with his origin, caused pork to be removed from before him at table, or injured him in some such silly way; and he had a violent animosity to the old Baron de Magny, both in his capacity ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... where another would have been glad to be off. The excellent Davidson had discovered the fact without discovering the reason, and took a humane interest in Heyst's strange existence, while at the same time his native delicacy kept him from intruding on the other's whim of solitude. He could not possibly guess that Heyst, alone on the island, felt neither more nor less lonely than in any other place, desert or populous. Davidson's concern was, if one may express it so, ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... beau-sabreur, whose blade A dozen desert spearmen faced and stayed, Stoops his high-shoulder'd stature To hear the twittering tones of Tiny TIM, A midget, but the soul of whit and whim, The genius ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 1, 1890 • Various
... specification if close estimates from reliable contractors are desired. Surely no engineer will claim that this is too unimportant a matter for consideration when it is known that ramming can easily be made to cost as high as 40 cts. per cu. yd., depending largely upon the whim of the inspector. ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... have killed him, you know. Murders, my dear fellow, are committed by the most unlikely people, and for curious reasons: they have been committed by quite respectable females—like Miss Pett—for nothing but a mere whim." ...
— The Borough Treasurer • Joseph Smith Fletcher
... always successful in his labours, I should answer you, as I have told him, No: for the profit and applause attendant upon them are not commensurate with his exertions. Moreover, I do verily think that, in some few instances, he sacrifices his judgment to another's whim; by a reluctance to put out the strength of his own powers. He is also, I had almost said, the admiring slave of Ritsonian fastidiousness; and will cry 'pish' if a u be put for a v, or a single e for a double one: but take him fairly as he is, and place him firmly in the bibliographical ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... unmercifully berated that he had dragged his family to the country, destroying their happiness and spending all his money for—what, for what? Just to gratify a whim, a boyish illusion. ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... Mix was startled, but outwardly he looked grieved. "Tuesday? Now—that is—wait a minute." He created the impression that he was juggling vast affairs, in order to gratify a whim of his old friend's sister. As a matter of fact, he was wondering what plausible excuse he could give without revealing any hint of the truth. "Is ...
— Rope • Holworthy Hall
... not a single sign of anger. He was simply puzzled. He had come into touch with something which he could not understand. There was Bridges, earning a salary at his theatre, to be thrown out into the streets or made a star of, according to his whim; Heselton, a family man, drawing his salary, and a good one, too, also from the theatre; men whose faces were familiar to him—some of them, he knew, on newspapers in which he owned a controlling interest. The power of which he had bragged was a real ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... memory; but chiefly in a hallucination that possesses him. He thinks that he is still the master of Lone as well as the Duke of Hereward. He thinks that he lives in London, and in the most Objectionable part of London, only to gratify my 'eccentric whim' of being a journalist. And he daily and hourly urges me to return ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... its hoops; his skin drying like a mummy's; his muscles in a starchy misery from lack of exercise. He felt boxed up, an express package labelled and shipped. When he crawled into his berth at night it was with a sense of giving himself up to asphyxiation at the whim of strange gods. ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... client; to-night you are my guest. All who enter here leave their business, with their hats, in the hall. Look; there isn't a law book on those shelves; that table never was defaced by a title deed or parchment. You look puzzled? Well, it was a whim of mine to put my residence and my work-shop under the same roof, yet so distinct that they would never interfere with each other. You know the house above is let out to lodgers. I occupy the first floor with my mother ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... needn't trouble yourself! We can look after the children ourselves. You better save what you get to look after yourself when those two get over this whim!" ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... also that the falcon was renowned as the finest bird throughout the countryside, as well as being the joy and pride of his master's heart. But the boy was fretful and restless, and, fearing to thwart his whim lest his life should depend on it, the poor mother promised to go and ask for the falcon on the very ...
— The Children's Longfellow - Told in Prose • Doris Hayman
... built these two years if he carries the day to-night. I've got a consultation at Decker's—the old lady is dying. It's no sort of use dragging a tired man out there; I can't do her any good; but they will have it. I'm at the beck and call of every whim. Isn't that dinner ready? I wish I had time to change my boots! They are wet through. My head aches horribly. Brake telegraphed me to get down to Stock Street before two o'clock to save what is left of that Santa Ma stock. I ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... appeased only by possession, regardless of cost—was much of a mystery, and afforded the energetic correspondents a fruitful text for many a day. Both, as is well known, had unlimited means with which to indulge their sudden whim; where kings and princes resigned themselves to the melancholy fact that the gem was not for them, these two men battled for it with an unlicensed tendering of fortunes that amazed the world; and one may easily imagine the sleepless anxiety of the Paternostros, as first one and then ...
— The Paternoster Ruby • Charles Edmonds Walk
... puddles—the usual Russian rural thoroughfare. Not because Prince Pavlo wanted to give the peasants work, not because he wanted to save them from starvation—not at all, although, in the gratification of his own whim, he happened to render those trifling services; but merely because he was a great "barin"—a prince who could have any thing he desired. Had not the other barin—Steinmetz by name—superintended the work? Steinmetz the hated, the loathed, the tool of ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... strange that before leaving London my mother, possessed by a strange whim, as I thought, distributed to many of us little things belonging to her. I laughed at her for what I called her "testamentary disposition," little dreaming ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... how it is with labor in our industrial system: we can buy labor, which means we can buy human life and thought, a portion of God's being, and make a profit out of it. By so selling himself the worker is enslaved and limited in a thousand ways. The power of dismissal of one person by another at whim acts against independence of character, or the free expression or opinion in thought, in politics, and in religion. The soul is stunted in its growth, and spiritual life made subordinate to material ...
— National Being - Some Thoughts on an Irish Polity • (A.E.)George William Russell
... fine!" said Ruth with sparkling eyes, "I'm sure he's worth a lot more than some of the fellows who have always had every whim gratified. Now, which street? You'll have to tell me. I'm ashamed to say I don't know this part of town very well. Isn't it pretty down here? This house? What a wonderful clematis! I never saw such a wealth ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... as he finished his simile. Then he lifted the silver cover of a dish which had just arrived, and gave his whole attention to a noble Welsh rabbit, an odd dainty for a Riviera supper—but Ciro prided himself on gratifying any whim of any customer, at five ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... sheep, bred and fattened for the shambles; and this hind that I caress,—if I were the park-keeper, and her time for my bullet had come, would you think her life was the safer because, in my own idle whim, I had tamed her to trust to the hand ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... analogy. Be reasonable; you are a being of will; you can do or not do. He is only a child who exercises no self-control, who is governed only by caprice, whim, or whatever passion of the moment. These follies, of which my mother makes account, and rightly, are beneath one of your age. There is in them nothing ennobling, charming; nothing that should gratify a mind that has the faintest conception ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... all such a matter of personal whim. For instance before Bulgaria entered the war on the side of Germany, even the best informed Germans predicted that King Ferdinand would never join Germany because of an incident which occurred in the Royal Palace of Berlin. This is ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... higher aspirations, and seeks to emulate the peewee, commencing and ending his career as a flycatcher by an awkward chase after a beetle or "miller." He is hunting around in the dull grass now, I suspect, with the desire to indulge this favorite whim. There!—the opportunity is afforded him. Away goes a little cream-colored meadow-moth in the most tortuous course he is capable of, and away goes Socialis in pursuit. The contest is quite comical, though I dare say it is serious enough to the moth. The chase continues for a few yards, ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... I have,—to that where General Bredow slept last winter,—I should work more commodiously. My Secretary (Collini) and I could work together there. I should have a little more sun, which is a great point for me.—Only the whim of a sick man, perhaps! Well, even so, your Majesty will have pity on it. You promised to make me happy." ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... sudden whim of Klaas Verlaan's to make his ward a child of Keizersgracht; but it brought him in more ducats than he cared to ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... Englishman had the end in view, you see, whereas the lesser brain of the Spaniard would have sacrificed the battle for a personal whim, having lost sight, in his vanity, of the importance of ...
— Three Things • Elinor Glyn
... of the dog commences with maiming him while a puppy. He finds fault with the ears that nature has given him, and they are rounded or cut into various shapes, according to his whim or caprice. It is a cruel operation. A great deal of pain is inflicted by it, and it is often a long time before the edge of the wound will heal: a fortnight or three weeks at least will elapse ere the animal ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... is full of instruction. A sovereign concerning himself about trivialities as petty as this pretext on which he sends a man to death; the shameful indignity put upon the ladies-in-waiting to minister to a momentary whim; the composition of poetry by common carpenters, and the ride for life on a horse which there is not time to saddle. It is an instructive picture of ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... mother, his sister, or his friend) to this woman who was almost a stranger. When he afterwards recalled that impulse to unsolicited and inexplicable frankness which had very important results for him, it seemed to him—as it seems to everyone in such cases—that it was merely some silly whim that seized him: yet that burst of frankness, together with other trifling events, had immense consequences for him and for ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... or the fault of romances that we look upon those distant people as more elemental than we, and thus feel for them the indulgent compassion that a child excites? However it is, theirs is to us a simple time of primitive emotion and romance, and the tapestries they have left us encourage the whim. ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... to twenty-five below zero and falling. Wherefore, it was necessary to organize gangs of life-savers, who patrolled the streets to pick up drunken men from where they fell in the snow and where an hour's sleep would be fatal. Daylight, whose whim it was to make them drunk by hundreds and by thousands, was the one who initiated this life saving. He wanted Dawson to have its night, but, in his deeper processes never careless nor wanton, he saw to it that it was a night ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... for a Louise Duval who was young and pretty twenty-one years ago: this search ought to interest me more than that which I entrusted to you tonight, respecting the pearly-robed lady; for in the last I but gratify my own whim, in the first I discharge a promise to a friend. You, so perfect a Frenchman, know the difference; honour is engaged to the first. Be sure you let me know if you find any other Madame or Mademoiselle Duval; and of course you remember your promise not to mention to any one ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... attempted to feel her cunt, and I never had her. The old woman said she was frightened to bring her again, that she and Mary Davis might manage it together, and when Davis came back I wished her to try, but she refused to have anything to do with it. The lech passed away, for it was but a whim. At that time I liked ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... Francis," rejoined the other, "that vengeance—ample, refined vengeance—cannot be too dearly purchased; and you will now perceive that I am willing to pay as extravagantly as yourself for the gratification of a whim. On no other terms than these would Lanyere consent to part with the authority he possesses, which while it will ensure you the hand of Aveline, will ensure me the keenest revenge upon Sir Jocelyn. ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... on each side below, in which position he is exposed to the merciless scourge of the drummer, which is a common cat-o-nine-tails. It is painful even to think of such scenes as these, and when they take place at the mere whim and caprice of the hardened slave merchant, such a picture is revolting in the extreme. Here, however, severe as it may appear, it must be looked upon in a different point of view. The punishment is great, but with the certainty of receiving it, ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... night can say, "My life is lived: the morn may see A clouded or a sunny day: That rests with Jove: but what is gone, He will not, cannot turn to nought; Nor cancel, as a thing undone, What once the flying hour has brought." Fortune, who loves her cruel game, Still bent upon some heartless whim, Shifts her caresses, fickle dame, Now kind to me, and now to him: She stays; 'tis well: but let her shake Those wings, her presents I resign, Cloak me in native worth, and take Chaste Poverty undower'd for mine. ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... a long talk which lasted far into the night. At first both my mother and father were rather against the idea—as they had been from the beginning. They said it was only a boyish whim, and that I would get tired of it very soon. But after the matter had been talked over from every side, the Doctor turned ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... manners were so agreeable and so courteous during the first months after his arrival in India, began now to show symptoms of a haughty and overbearing spirit. He had adopted, for reasons which the reader may conjecture, but which appeared to be mere whim, at Fort St. George, the name of Tresham, in addition to that by which he had hitherto been distinguished, and in this he presisted with an obstinacy, which belonged more to the pride than the craft ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... our promise, let the regret sent be prompt, that your hostess, especially if the entertainment be a dinner or luncheon may possibly, even at the eleventh hour, be able to supply the vacancy. Make it explanatory as well, that she may feel positive that no mere whim has caused the ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... people by their best hopes of a permanent home, much satisfaction may come from the plan. But even in this country or suburban life the shadow of fashion falls sooner or later, and the savings vanish with the years. Some deeper principle must come into play, some stronger force than mere whim of society leaders, before our young people can be released from the bondage of living on the right side of a street under penalty of ...
— The Cost of Shelter • Ellen H. Richards
... sickest fancies; I've humoured your crackedest whim— Dick, it's your daddy—dying: you've got to listen to him! Good for a fortnight, am I? The doctor told you? He lied. I shall go under by morning, and—— Put that nurse outside. Never seen death yet, Dickie? Well, now is your time to learn, And you'll wish ...
— The Seven Seas • Rudyard Kipling
... have to wait more than three hours for the Grand Prix to be run. When the landau had drawn up beside the barriers Nana settled herself comfortably down as though she were in her own house. A whim had prompted her to bring Bijou and Louiset with her, and the dog crouched among her skirts, shivering with cold despite the heat of the day, while amid a bedizenment of ribbons and laces the child's poor little face looked waxen ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... he said. "I'm worth nothing when a whim of hers is in question. But in a losing game at Port Said we used to double the stakes and go on. She do a Melancolia! She hasn't the power, or the insight, or the training. Only the desire. She's cursed with the curse ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... have been expecting; because of Anna's beauty and accomplishments, which I own might well merit a man of higher birth and fortune. But the little hussy has been so nice, and squeamish, that I began to fear she would take up her silly spend-thrift brother's whim, and determine to live single: therefore I shall not balk her, now she ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... are blacker than any negro," she remarked. "Eh, bien! I thank you, Keed, mon ami, for your complaisance. You are very amiable to submit to the whim of a silly girl who suddenly becomes afraid ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... more secure from misconduct while single, than she will be when married. Her father, I fear, will leave her too much to herself, and in that case I scarce know what may become of her; she has neither judgment nor principle to direct her choice, and therefore, in all probability, the same whim which one day will guide it, will the next lead her to ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... are without any recourse, since they dare not interpose that plea before the Audiencia, as it is so powerless to exercise its functions; consequently, to state the case in few words, the archbishop does whatever suits his whim, without there being any ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... of a Hampshire gentleman, was born at Putney, near London, April 27, 1737. After a preliminary education at Westminster, and fourteen "unprofitable" months at Magdalen College, Oxford, a whim to join the Roman church led to his banishment to Lausanne, where he spent five years, and acquired a mastery of the French language, formed his taste for literary expression, and settled his religious doubts in a profound scepticism. He served some years in the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... appeal to your gratitude; I remind you that I saved your life—leaped into the cold water and seized you, not knowing whose life I was striving to save at the risk of losing my own. Isn't that worth some sort of return? Isn't it worth even the sacrifice of a whim? Louise, don't look at me that way. Is it possible that you don't grasp—" He hesitated and turned his face toward the parlor whence came again the cough, hollow and distressing. The sound died away, echoing down the hall, and a hen clucked on the ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... love of ornaments included for a while antique curiosities, cut stones, and medals. M. Denon flattered this whim, and ended by persuading the good Josephine that she was a perfect connoisseur in antiques, and that she should have at Malmaison a cabinet, a keeper for it, etc. This proposition, which flattered the self-love of the Empress, was ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... his palace, and bothered little about affairs outside, and Zaphnath must have been at the bottom of an edict which was shortly issued. Nothing that I remember in Kem better illustrated the absolute power of the Pharaoh and the unrestrained enforcement of his merest whim. The edict referred to the scarcity of bread and the multitude of foreigners who were flocking to the city to secure it, and provided (ostensibly for the good of the Kemish people) that no man in the city of Kem should give bread or any sort of food to any ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... disciple of his in this world must be like Tantalus, tormented with a burning thirst, which he is not allowed to quench. Does not such morality give us a wonderful idea of the author of nature? If, as we are assured, he has created all things for his creatures, by what strange whim does he forbid them the use of the goods he has created for them? Is pleasure then, which man continually desires, only a snare, which God has maliciously laid to surprise ...
— Good Sense - 1772 • Paul Henri Thiry, Baron D'Holbach
... thirty pages, and may be read whilst smoking a cigar. It is all quaint fun, whim, humour, and frolic, and one of those merry morsels which amuse us more than the whole leaven of utilitarianism; and if to laugh and learn be your maxim, why read the "Epping Hunt." After this, hold your sides, and look at the cuts, designed by George ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 393, October 10, 1829 • Various
... he is in all the smuggling expeditions, as well in those that bring a suitable remuneration as in those where one risks death for a hundred cents. And ordinarily, Arrochkoa accompanies him, without necessity, in sport and for a whim. ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... Mademoiselle gently. "Must you continue this after it has turned into a farce? Must you continue acting from pique, when the thing has been over for more years than you care to remember? Must you keep on now because of a whim to make your life miserable and the lives of others? Will you threaten fifty men with death and ruin, because you once were called a thief? It is folly, sir, and you know it, utter useless folly! Pray ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... at the examination, but a sudden whim made William say that he would prefer to be alone with the doctor, and she returned to the gardens. Mr. Alden had not yet gone. He stood with his back turned to her. The little girl she had seen him speaking to was sitting on a bench under ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... IV. was no ordinary King: that one can see even from the scanty extracts from his letters given in "Bunsen's Memoirs." Nor was his love of Bunsen a mere passing whim. He loved the man, and those who knew the refreshing and satisfying influence of Bunsen's society will easily understand what the King meant when he said, "I am hungry and thirsty for Bunsen." But ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... society." He believed that the foundations of society had taken, and would still take, a great deal of "sapping," without detriment to the superstructure. He believed that, as we may read in Herodotus of ancient communities established on all sorts of principles, or even whim-principles, and yet managing to get on, and as these crude polities had been succeeded by other and better ones, to the latest known in the world, so these last need not look to be permanent. Of a tendency to this state of feeling Milton had given evidences from early youth; but I do ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... show their contempt for the Hindu social order, as this ornament was formerly forbidden to the lower castes. Under native dynasties any violation of a rule of this kind would have been severely punished by the executive Government, but in British India the Chamar women can indulge their whim with impunity. It was also a rule of the sect not to accept cooked food from the hands of any other caste, whether Hindu or Muhammadan, but this has fallen into abeyance since the famines. Another method by which the Satnamis show their contempt for the Hindu religion is ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell
... any method of working. When he was strong and well he had always rather suffered from his superabundance than been disturbed at seeing it diminish: he followed his whim: he used to work first as the fancy took him, as circumstances chanced, with no fixed rule. As a matter of fact, he was always working everywhere: his brain was always busy. Often and often Olivier, who was less richly endowed and ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... bad for a girl, only it was the name of a heathen goddess, and would not go well with the idea of a holy palmer. COCOA, PHOENIX, and ARECA, one after the other, went in at his eyes and through his head; none of them pleased him. His wife, however, who in her smiling way had fallen in with his whim, helped him out of his difficulty. She was the daughter of nonconformist parents in Lancashire, and had been encouraged when a child to read a certain old-fashioned book called The Pilgrim's Progress, which her husband had never seen. He did not read it now, but accepting her suggestion, named ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... fate and recriminations touching his own selfishness. On the other hand, however, the journey daunted him. He was not a man to sacrifice his creature comforts, and to be asked to sacrifice them to a mere whim, a shadow, added weight to his ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... her that there was no whim of hers but should be gratified, the fancy took her that, if she might find apt means, she would, before she died, make her love and her resolve known to the King: wherefore one day she besought her father ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... any thing but novelty, and that the greatest novelty to her would be to remain a whole summer in town. Most of her friends, amongst whom she had successfully established a character for caprice, were satisfied that this was merely some new whim, practised to signalize herself by singularity. The real reason that detained her was her dependence upon the empiric, who had repeatedly visited and constantly prescribed for her. Convinced, however, by the dreadful situation to which his prescriptions had lately reduced her ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... I can do all the giving! I've never told you, Esteban, but I'm quite rich." Holding the man away, she smiled into his eyes. "Yes, richer than I have any right to be. I had no need to come to Cuba; it was just the whim of an irresponsible, spoiled young woman. I gave a huge amount of money to the New York Junta and that's why I was ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... forward amongst my seniors and those who were my superiors in everything but worldly position; and as I grew older, and became inconveniently self-asserting, I was alternately snubbed and humoured according to the whim or temper of those who claimed authority over me. And what was the result? Alas! Early reckless extravagance followed by ruin, and a character which might have been moulded into something noble, now for a long time ...
— Working in the Shade - Lowly Sowing brings Glorious Reaping • Theodore P Wilson
... the lives, liberty and property of the people are at the command of the ruler, subject to his whim. [6] For an illustration of the method of securing private property for public ...
— Studies in Civics • James T. McCleary
... of youth in some fashion that shall be through our modern mechanisms as effective as were the old "Fraternities" of primitive life, and as are still the outworn but persistent forms of military discipline, that idea of subordination of private whim to public well-being which lies at the base of all true and ordered social advance. The Children's Courts are a response to the effort of society to give each child a fair chance in life. There are needed, also, devices of education and of compulsory social service ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... of you—get up, dress yourself. It is for your own sake I ask it, for your comfort, for your own welfare. What would become of you if, for a caprice, a stupid whim, ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... you so. Got another of those whim-whams in his head, and making a litter of some kind—skinning snakes or something that he's ...
— The New Forest Spy • George Manville Fenn
... responded to her slightest whim, but suddenly her own particular quarry had eluded her; did not even pine for her; was able to keep silent while he left her and his mother to think what ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... Perdita "now grown in grace." Youth and beauty are the faithful companions of poets; but those charming phantoms scarcely visit the rest of us, even for the space of a season. We do not know how to retain them with us. If the fair shade of some Perdita should ever, through some inconceivable whim, take a notion to traverse my brain, she would hurt herself horribly against heaps of dog-eared parchments. Happy the poets!—their white hairs never scare away the hovering shades of Helens, Francescas, Juliets, Julias, and Dorotheas! But the nose ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... Before the Passing-bell begun, The news thro' half the town has run. "O! may we all for death prepare! What has he left? and who's his heir?"— "I know no more than what the news is; 'Tis all bequeath'd to public uses."— "To public use! a perfect whim! What had the public done for him? Mere envy, avarice, and pride: He gave it all—but first he died. And had the Dean, in all the nation, No worthy friend, no poor relation? So ready to do strangers good, ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... hers, or a kind of magnetic power she could give out;—at any rate, I cannot help thinking she wills her strength away from herself, for she has lost vigor and color from that day. I have sometimes thought he gained the force she lost; but this may have been a whim, very probably. ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... for a time at the embers reflectively. "'T is folly to want her," he said finally, as he rose and began the removal of his coat, "now that ye need not her money; but she's enough to tempt any man with blood in his veins, and I can afford the whim. Keep that blood in check, however, till ye have her fast; and do not frighten her as ye have done. To think of Lord Clowes, cool enough to match any man, losing his head over a whiffling bit of woman-flesh! What devil's baits ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... ring, Not without a prouder tread And a peal of exultation: Little right has he to sing Through whose heart in such an hour 295 Beats no march of conscious power, Sweeps no tumult of elation! 'Tis no Man we celebrate, By his country's victories great, A hero half, and half the whim of Fate, 300 But the pith and marrow of a Nation Drawing force from all her men, Highest, humblest, weakest, all,— Pulsing it again through them, Till the basest can no longer cower, 305 Feeling his soul spring up divinely tall, Touched but in passing by her mantle-hem. Come back, ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... lodging beggars, sometimes in his very bed, continually breaking his night's rest for prayer, and devotional exercise of undue length; "weeping one moment, then smiling in joy the next;" meandering about, capricious, melodious, weak, at the will of devout whim mainly! However, that does not concern us. [Many LIVES of the Saint. See, in particular, Libellus de Dictis Quatuor Ancillarum, &c.—(that is, Report of the evidence got from Elizabeth's Four Maids, by an Official Person, Devil's-Advocate or whatever he was, missioned ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol, II. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Of Brandenburg And The Hohenzollerns—928-1417 • Thomas Carlyle
... beside him, stroked his face with caressing fondness, whispered something smilingly in his ear, and in this manner smoothed the wrinkles that were gathering on his brow. But the moment after, some wild whim would make her resume her antic movements; and ...
— Undine - I • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... on perfection, but on the second best of experience. She would accept the milder joys, the daily miracles, the fulfilled adventures. And so, partly because she liked the girl, and partly because of a generous whim, she said presently: ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... husband he has, I think, what you call the wander fever. For myself, I am tired of it. In Rome we settle down, we stay five days, all seems pleasant, and suddenly my husband's whim carries us away without an hour's notice. The same thing at Monte Carlo, the same in Paris. Who can tell what will happen here? To tell you the truth, Monsieur," she added, a little archly, "I think that if he were to come back at ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... no heart, perversity had killed his courage. It exasperated him beyond all measure to recall what little things his luck had hinged upon, what straws had turned his feet. A moment of pique with Lois, a broken piece of steel, a match, a momentary whim when Guth offered him payment. It was well that he did not know what part had been played by his quarrel with Harkness, that wet muk-luk, that vicious lead dog, ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... suddenly set free, glanced about him, and saw a few feet away an open door, felt the fresh breeze of evening upon his hot forehead, and knew the upper back fire-escape was close at hand. By some strange whim of a panic-maddened crowd but few had discovered this exit, high above the seats in the balcony; for all had rushed below and were struggling in a wild, frantic mass, trampling one another underfoot in a mad struggle to reach the doorways. The flames were sweeping over the platform ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... sung by a Norfolk man, always seems to me a great curiosity, as the last line is lengthened out and twisted about in a most grotesque manner, apparently to suit the whim or fancy of the singer, for no two of them seem to conjure vocally with it in the same way. Everyone present is supposed to join in the last line as a kind of chorus, and not only join in, but "give it ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... had not been caught by that ghastly war! He might so easily have been killed, like poor Jolly twenty years ago out in the Transvaal. Jon would do something some day—if the Age didn't spoil him—an imaginative chap! His whim to take up farming was but a bit of sentiment, and about as likely to last. And just then he saw them coming up the field: Irene and the boy; walking from the station, with their arms linked. And getting up, he ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... easy to die. Men have died For a wish or a whim— From bravado or passion or pride. Was ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... but a short distance below him, though it had gained a little while he was struggling so hard to make land. It was turned on its side, spinning sometimes one way and then whirling the other, according to the whim of the current; then sea-sawing up and down, until all at once it shot upward like a huge sturgeon, which sometimes flings its whole length out ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... sporting expeditions were of this casual character, sandwiched in among other occupations. Guns were handy, as was the game. To seize the one and pursue the other on the whim of the moment was the normal and usual thing. Thus one day Mrs. Kitty drove me over to look at a horse I was thinking of buying. On the way home, in a corner of brush, I hopped out and bagged twelve quail; and a little farther ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... Chioggia!" sprang to Odo's lips. At the same instant the Columbine turned about and swept him a deep curtsey, to the delight of the audience, who had no notion of what was going forward, but were in the humour to clap any whim of their favourite's; then she turned and darted off the stage, and the curtain fell on a ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... to-night. I've got a consultation at Decker's—the old lady is dying. It's no sort of use dragging a tired man out there; I can't do her any good; but they will have it. I'm at the beck and call of every whim. Isn't that dinner ready? I wish I had time to change my boots! They are wet through. My head aches horribly. Brake telegraphed me to get down to Stock Street before two o'clock to save what is left of that Santa Ma stock. I couldn't go. I had an enormous office—forty people. I've lost ten thousand ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... design, a mill for any standard line of manufacture is not a building whose arrangements and proportions are fixed upon at the whim of the owner, but it must conform to certain conditions of dimensions, stability, light and application of power to satisfy the requirements essential for furnishing every advantage necessary for producing the desired results ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, No. 733, January 11, 1890 • Various
... writing day and night. His wife, on the other hand, who was a Frenchwoman, was passionately fond of travel, and change, and gaiety. Her life was consequently very like a prison, and it is stated, too, that besides denying her every whim and forcing her to live in a manner she utterly disliked, her husband ill-treated her shamefully. Well, she made a few friends here and went to see them pretty often, and just at that time an English milord—you can guess who he was—came here to see the statue, and met Mrs. Martival, whom he seems ...
— The New Tenant • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... won't supply her with all the money she wants to spend. What if she does throw it away? That's her privilege now. I've worked twenty-five years to get enough so that she can do just that. There's not a whim in the world she can't satisfy. And the man who marries her must give her every single thing I'm able to give ...
— The Wall Street Girl • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... doing without sleep for ten nights in order to nurse you; capable of dying and seeing you die rather than give way about the tint of a necktie; capable of laughter and tears simultaneously; capable of never being in the wrong except for the idle whim of so being. She had a big mouth and very wide nostrils, and her years were thirty-five. It was no matter; it would have been no matter had she been a hundred and ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... there had been a dance at Piping Tree, and because she had danced twice with Gay (who had ridden over in obedience to a whim), Abel had parted from her in anger. For the first time she had felt the white heat of his jealousy, and it had aroused rebellion, not acquiescence, in her heart. Jonathan Gay was nothing to her (though ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... previous spring he must refuse no more orders: he must not let Mrs. Van Orley slip away from him. He knew there were competitors enough ready to profit by his hesitations, and since his success was the result of a whim, a whim might undo it. With a sudden gesture of decision he caught up his ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... It was only in her husband's presence that she made any pretence of being pleased or interested in things. With him she was always the same—always deferential, affectionate, and attentive; while he, on his side, was the devoted slave of her every whim ...
— Milly Darrell and Other Tales • M. E. Braddon
... curiosity,—but, which is the most extraordinary, he is not quite sure that he had any motive for it at all, which his memory can trace. The whole of this is a period of a year and a half; and here is a man who keeps his account upon principles of whim and vagary. One would imagine he was guessing at some motive of a stranger. Why he came to take bonds for money not due to him, and why he enters some and not others,—he knows nothing of these things: he begs them not to ask about it, because it will be of no use. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... said, "is oddity. For instance, I do not mix up affections with politics; let us talk politics,—business, if you will,—the rest can come later. However, it is not really oddity nor a whim that forbids me to mingle ill-assorted colors and put together things that have no affinity, and compels me to avoid discords; it is my natural instinct as an artist. We women have politics of ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... division of the line where she stood from that one where the world places girls who are affianced wives; her father could hardly be with her; it had gone too far. He loved her, but he would certainly take her to be moved by a maddish whim; he would not try to understand her case. The scholar's detestation of a disarrangement of human affairs that had been by miracle contrived to run smoothly, would of itself rank him against her; and with the world to back his view of her, he might behave like a despotic father. How could ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... from Athens or Corinth, he would certainly have invited to his court the most skilful painters and sculptors, and have given them the queen for their model, as did afterward Alexander his favourite Campaspe, who posed naked before Apelles. Such a whim would have encountered no opposition from a woman of the land where even the most chaste made a boast of having contributed—some for the back, some for the bosom—to the perfection of a famous statue. But hardly would the bashful Nyssia consent to unveil herself in the ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier
... sacrifice was useless. The sudden whim for Radicalism at home, and revolution abroad, which seized British statesmen in the first frenzy of the Reform Bill, instead of punishing the revolt of the Belgians, suffered the dismemberment of the kingdom of the Netherlands; a measure of the most shortsighted policy, which has now placed ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... faith new-stablished would stand, and be No longer vext of this infirmity. And so that night, ere lying down to sleep, There came on him, half making him to weep And half to laugh that such a thing should be, A mad conceit and antic fantasy (And yet more sad than merry was the whim) To crave this boon of Sleep, beseeching him To send the dream of dreams most coveted. And ere he lay him down upon his bed, A soft sweet song was born within his thought; But if he sang the song, or if 'twas nought But the ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... the oldest reigning houses had come to regard as an honor a marriage with, the plain daughter of a French senator,—a girl not united by any ties of blood with Napoleon, but only by adoption; that is to say, by a whim. One might have supposed that the Empire of the new Charlemagne was centuries old, and the German Princes bowed before it like devoted vassals before their suzerain. What a vast power he had attained, and how easily he could have kept it, if he had limited ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... I have suffered. Like you, I loved, not a pure, noble girl, yet a girl fair to look upon. For three years I was at her feet, a slave to her every whim; when, one day she suddenly deserted me who adored her, to throw herself in the arms of a man who despised her. Then, like you, I wished to die. Neither threats nor entreaties could induce her to return to me. Passion never reasons, and she ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau
... strength and latent force that could only be guessed at. Their talks had been less intimate during the time of their preparations, and she understood that it was the result of the purpose that preoccupied him. Now she speculated as to that which was in his mind. What was the boyish whim that had brought them to the place he had selected as their tryst? What was it that had ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... favorite anecdote of General Scott, and it appealed to me then as well as now, as I regard country life a forlorn fate for all women excepting possibly those who are endowed with large wealth with which to gratify every passing whim. ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... eliminated the loop upon which the town stood. Fortunately, however, the Yazoo emptied into the Mississippi above Vicksburg, and it was found possible, by digging a canal, to divert the latter river from its course and lead its waters into the loop left dry by the whim of the greater stream. Thus the river life, out of which Vicksburg was born, and without which the place would lose its character, was retained, and the wicked old Mississippi, which has played rough pranks on men and cities since men ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... therefore, that dictates many of these actions; no serious cause or feeling, indeed, of any kind; but rather an ever-spreading restlessness and levity, a readiness to tamper with the very foundations of society, for a whim, a nothing!—in the interests, of ten, of what women call their 'individuality'! No foolish talk here of being 'members one of another'! We have outgrown all that. The facilities are always there, and the temptation of them. 'The women—especially—who do these things,' she writes me, 'are moral ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... she confessed. "He comes and goes as the whim seizes him, and I very seldom know where he is. One week it is whiting and another codling. Lately he seems to have shown some partiality for ...
— The Zeppelin's Passenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... were so much abroad on horseback that they had become known as the "Saddle Boys." They loved nothing better than to ride the plains, mounted on their pet steeds, and go almost everywhere the passing whim tempted them. ...
— The Saddle Boys in the Grand Canyon - or The Hermit of the Cave • James Carson
... a whim, a fancy, a notion. I do not know that anything will ever come of it. I could wish there might—but that is a very cloudy and misty chateau en Espagne, and I do not much look at it. The present thing is practical. ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... has had some kind of whim," replied Mrs. Dinks, shaking her shoulders as if to settle ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... in the road diverted our attention. It was the cut-under and the horse. They were standing by the roadside where it makes a great turn to enter the village from the south. There is a wide border to the road at this point, clear of underbrush, where the forest edges it, and there are here, at the whim of some one, or by chance, two great flat stones, one lying upon the other, but not fitting by a hand's thickness by ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... over, all's well? Gad, my head begins to whim it about. Why dost thou not speak? Thou art both as drunk and ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve
... been an exceedingly anxious one from the beginning. Notwithstanding his flabbiness, one cannot but regard him with a certain amount of pity—not unmixed with amusement. Most of life's dramas can be viewed as either farce or tragedy according to the whim of the spectator. The actors invariably play them as tragedy; but then that is the essence of ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... served by his walking a few paces more or less. Similarly whatever be the certainty that the laws of nature have been intentionally established, there is in that certainty no proof of their having been established for any purpose beyond that of gratifying some whim or humour of the lawgiver. For indications of design in the universe we must look rather to organic than to inorganic nature, rather to structure than to law. We shall find applying to the former the same reasoning as to the latter, and ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... syriaca, and its common name is the rock nuthatch, an appellation that is most appropriate, for its chosen haunts are rocky cliffs, over the faces of which it scuttles in the most approved nuthatch fashion, head up or down, as the whim seizes it, clinging with its sharp claws to the chinks, ledges, protuberances, and rough surfaces of the rocky walls. A little larger than its European cousin, its markings are quite similar. In Syria it is common as far north as the ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... new and respectful interest. "I wouldn't dare do it," she acknowledged at last. In this lay confession of the reason for her change of whim; but Bobby could not be expected to realize that. With masculine directness he seized the root of his grievance and brought ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... said. "You are a mighty good friend, Mr. Big Beech Tree, and as a mark of gratitude I shall kiss you right in the middle of your honest barky old forehead," and he touched his lips lightly to the great trunk. Paul was an imaginative boy, and his whim pleased him. Such a thought would not have come to Henry, but he ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... church bell attracted his attention, and, following a sudden whim, he went into the tin building and sat down near the door. Mr. Heath did not look down the sparsely-filled church as he read the evening service, and he prayed with an almost violent fervour. Certainly to-night the Rev. Francis Heath was praying as though ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... suitable. Thither one fair June night, for the sake of showing the dowager countess and her beautiful cousin, the French nobleman, Sir Meeson Corby, and others, what were the pleasures of the London lower orders, my lord had the whim to conduct them,—merely a parade of observation once round;—the ladies veiled, the gentlemen with sticks, and two servants following, one of whom, dressed in quiet black, like the peacefullest of parsons, was my lord's ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... saw him tangled in her toils, A shame, said I, if she adds just him 10 To her nine-and-ninety other spoils, The hundredth for a whim! ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... says this man, is the real Herself! But (I maintain) she does not know it. She goes her way, unconscious—or, if conscious, blind to its deepest implication. Caprice, mood, whim: these indeed she uses, for fun, as it were, but of "the trouble behind her" she knows nothing. Just to rise from a couch, pull a curtain, pass through a room! How should she dream that the cornice-wreath blossomed anew? And ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... not seem too awful?" returned Cora, aghast, thinking of her own merry, enjoyable life, with every whim gratified. "To be so young and attractive and actually buried alive! Don't you think she ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... in alone," she replied a trifle impatiently. "I beg of you not to heed my whim, and to await my return, there, where the music ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... together, in holy matrimony, the yellow-bearded Thor and the dark-haired Helen. Master Hiero, his round, snub-nosed face red with fussy emotion, gives the bride away; while Salome, dressed in white and looking very pretty and lady-like, does service as bridesmaid,—such is her mistress's whim. She seems in even better spirits than the pale bride, and her black eyes scarcely wander from ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... instant she divined him. Perhaps her own conscience was not easy. Why had she meddled in the young Englishman's affairs at all? For a whim? Out of a mere good-natured wish to rid him of his troublesome sister; or because his handsome looks, his naivete, and his eager admiration of herself amused and excited her, and she did not care to be baulked of them so soon? At any rate, ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... calm. But I'm not the fellow to be tossed over at a whim. I'm holding you to your word, that's all. You'll change your mind back as it was by to-morrow; you'll be crazy to have me as a husband then. I won't have to tie your hands and feet to keep you at my side when we come riding home to go to the minister's. ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... for granted when he had set out to develop the Stinging Lizard. He had squared out his shaft and sunk on the vein only as far as the muckers could throw out the waste; and then, instead of installing a windlass or a whim, he had decided upon a gallows-frame and hoist. But to bring in his machinery he must first have a road, for the trail was all but impassable; and so, without sinking, he had blasted his way up the canyon, only to find his efforts wasted. The ore had been dug out before his engine ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... cried, looking up through her wind-tossed hair, "'tis joy to me! Lay you down and rest a while and trust the boat to me." And seeing how quick she was to meet each send of the seas (that were already running high) glad enough was I to humour her whim, and clambered forward again. And there (having nought better to do) I set about rigging a rough awning athwart the bows, with canvas and a stout spar, which methought should keep out the spray and any ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... as good condition as I am, and as, I hope you are, M. Morrel, and this day and a half was lost from pure whim, for the pleasure of ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... no attempts were made to remove Mr. Hooper's black veil or by a direct appeal to discover the secret which it was supposed to hide. By persons who claimed a superiority to popular prejudice it was reckoned merely an eccentric whim, such as often mingles with the sober actions of men otherwise rational and tinges them all with its own semblance of insanity. But with the multitude good Mr. Hooper was irreparably a bugbear. He could not walk the street with any peace of mind, so conscious ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... exquisite Colonial four-poster, with a lowboy and dresser to match, and was papered and carpeted in accordance with these, its chief ornaments. Newmark bathed in the adjoining bathroom, shaved carefully between the two wax lights which were his whim, and dressed in what were then known as "swallow-tail" clothes. Probably he was the only man in Monrovia at that moment so apparelled. Then calmly, and with all the deliberation of one under fire of a hundred eyes, he proceeded to the dining-room, where waited the man who had a ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... will is her worthy bridegroom, Herself rules her sea, her fields. Our brother to eastward honors This independence of youth. He knows well that by it only Our wreath can be won in truth. When we from the flag are taking His colors, he knows 't is no whim, But merely because we are holding Our honor higher than him. And none who himself has honor Will seek him a different friend; Our life we can for him offer, But naught of our ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... genealogy. More imperfect, more enigmatic it can seem to few readers than to us. The Professor, in whom truly we more and more discern a certain satirical turn, and deep undercurrents of roguish whim, for the present stands pledged in honour, so we will not doubt him: but seems it not conceivable that, by the 'good Gretchen Futteral,' or some other perhaps interested party, he has himself been deceived? Should these sheets, translated or not, ever reach the Entepfuhl Circulating ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... all the professions of friendship, it would find admittance. No door is latched when scandal knocks. Over here they were very far from home, and it was natural that Elsa should view her conduct leniently. Martha readily appreciated that it was all harmless, to be expressed by a single word, whim. But Martha herself never acted upon impulse; she first questioned what the world would say. So run ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... be done was a mere nothing. Within the last two years, he had made good Father Mestienne, a chubby-cheeked person, drunk at least ten times. He played with Father Mestienne. He did what he liked with him. He made him dance according to his whim. Mestienne's head adjusted itself to the cap of Fauchelevent's will. Fauchelevent's ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... consists, roughly speaking, in knowing how to get into office, and remain there when once in; its objects are to guess and give expression to the prevailing popular feeling or whim with the loss of as ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... remark was nothing but the whim of a moment. But its pessimism cut deeper than he imagined: and Olivier, with his subtle perception, felt it intuitively. Beneath the Mooch of their acquaintance there was another different Mooch, who was in many ways exactly the opposite. His apparent nature was the result ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... this foolish whim, and failed to quite understand him. We remained together until we "collapsed," at Bowling Green, when we ...
— Twenty Years of Hus'ling • J. P. Johnston
... "A mere whim—a sheer piece of perversity—a sleeveless errand," Anthony answered. "So now we might set about sweeping and garnishing ourselves," he ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... is the wife of George Packwood, "the celebrated Razor Strop Maker and Author of 'The Goldfinch's Nest'," whose shop was at 16, Gracechurch Street. 'Packwood's Whim; The Goldfinch's Nest, or the Way to get Money and be Happy', by George Packwood, was published in 1796, and reached a second edition in 1807. It is a collection of his advertisements in prose and verse. The poet, whom Packwood kept, apparently lived in Soho (p. 21), from his verses which appeared ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... running along the street, stumbles and falls; the passers-by burst out laughing. They would not laugh at him, I imagine, could they suppose that the whim had suddenly seized him to sit down on the ground. They laugh because ...
— Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic • Henri Bergson
... this whim of hers long ago, and thought she ought to get married like other people; there was nothing she need wait for—she was old enough and she would not be any richer either, for she was to have half the kingdom, which she inherited ...
— Folk Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... that did not lend itself to immediate comprehension, and that, to one of my temperament, was a fatal attraction, especially as enough was known of his more than peculiar habits to assure me that character, rather than whim, lay back of ...
— The Hermit Of ——— Street - 1898 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
... close to her. "You are my slave, do you understand?—bought in the market-place as I might buy me a mule, a goat, or a camel—and belonging to me body and soul. You are my property, my thing, my chattel, to use or abuse, to cherish or break as suits my whim, without a will that is not my will, holding your very life at ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... had an old French governess come to give her lessons. She taught little Natasha to dance, to play the piano, to put on the airs and graces of a little lady. So the years passed, and the old nobleman obeyed the girl's every whim, and his serfs bowed before her and kissed her hands. Gracefully and willfully she queened it over ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... the wiles of Ahenobarbus and his Greek coadjutors, there was still a great dread which would steal over Drusus lest at any moment a stroke might fall. Those were days when children murdered parents, wives husbands, for whim or passion, and very little came to punish their guilt. The scramble for money was universal. Drusus looked forth into the world, and saw little in it that was good. He had tried to cherish an ideal, and found fidelity to it more than difficult. His philosophy did not assure him that a real ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... pranks. His rich father was a man of considerable influence in Stanhope, and many a man dared not treat the banker's son to the whipping he so richly deserved simply because it might be that his bread and butter depended in a measure on the good will or the whim of ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... in trust; And he was ruined—ruined utterly. The very bed I sat on was not his, Nor mine, except by tender charity. A guilty secret menacing behind, A guilty passion burning in his heart, And, by his side, a guilty paramour, He seized upon this reckless whim, and fled From those he knew would curse him ...
— Bitter-Sweet • J. G. Holland
... the whim of renting this tumble-down house with its great gardens out on the suburb, we could have had snug rooms in some business street, where I could have earned our ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... appears in the title to one of his works, the opus 129. It is a rondo a capriccio for piano, with the title, Die Wuth ueber den verlorenen Groschen (fury over a lost penny), of which Schumann says "it would be difficult to find anything merrier than this whim. It is the most ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... circumstances," replied the little girl. "Mother has often said she conna weel spare Alizon. An mayhap Mistress Nutter may knoa, that she con be very obstinate when she tays a whim into her head." ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... surely conquers a people that, like the Roman armies, is used merely as a tool for foreign dominion and for the subjugation of independent nations; for the former have everything to lose, the latter have merely something to gain. But even a whim can prevail over the mental attitude which regards war as a game of hazard for temporal gain or loss, and which, even before the game starts, has fixed the limit of the stake. Think, for example, of a Mohammed—not the real Mohammed ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... well that you declined," he said. "'Twas but a passing whim of mine, and ten minutes later I'd have been sorry for it had ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... rusticity and remoteness. And yet it is true as I came to that corner of the Park that, for some unreasonable reason of mood, I saw all London as a strange city and the civilization itself as one enormous whim. The Marble Arch itself, in its new insular position, with traffic turning dizzily all about it, struck me as a placid monstrosity. What could be wilder than to have a huge arched gateway, with people going everywhere ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... Tete Rouge. Henry's face was roughened by winds and storms; Tete Rouge's was bloated by sherry cobblers and brandy toddy. Henry talked of Indians and buffalo; Tete Rouge of theaters and oyster cellars. Henry had led a life of hardship and privation; Tete Rouge never had a whim which he would not gratify at the first moment he was able. Henry moreover was the most disinterested man I ever saw; while Tete Rouge, though equally good-natured in his way, cared for nobody but himself. Yet we would not have lost him on any account; he admirably served the purpose of a jester ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... protested, if playfully, against her husband's whim in introducing an English boy into their family circle, now regarded him with real affection, only refraining from constant allusions to the debt she considered she owed him because she saw that he ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty
... the Rhine had been abandoned. Perhaps the well-disposed students could have submitted to this disappointment, if it had not been inflicted upon them as a punishment. It seemed to them that they were to suffer for a whim of Shuffles. The runaways had taken pains to disseminate this idea among the crew, as they had also succeeded in involving the whole of them in the mischief which induced the principal to go ...
— Down the Rhine - Young America in Germany • Oliver Optic
... the Lelias and Sylvias may go in quest of their ideal without being stopped by morality and the laws, those importune customs lines which religion and the institutions have opposed to individual whim and inconstancy. ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... by General Putnam.... Not the least attention has been paid to my order, in your name, for a detachment of one thousand men from the troops hitherto stationed at that post. Everything is sacrificed to the whim of taking New York.... By Governor Clinton's advice, I have sent an order, in the most emphatical terms, to General Putnam, immediately to despatch all the Continental troops under him to your assistance, and to detain ...
— "Old Put" The Patriot • Frederick A. Ober
... hero of a victorious war, at the height of his popularity, his party in undisputed and seemingly indisputable supremacy, made the attempt. Congress, good-naturedly tolerating what it considered his whim of inexperience, granted money to try an experiment. The adverse pressure was tremendous. "I am used to pressure," said the soldier. So he was, but not to this pressure. He was driven by unknown and incalculable currents. He was enveloped ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... have already seen, a certain thread of intelligent association linking the items of his library to each other. The collector knows what he wants, and why he wants it, and that why does not entirely depend on exteriors, though he may have his whim ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... homicide more justifiable. I had, as I believed, got rid of all the traces of the savages outside the tent. When I found the arrows sticking inside it in my bed, it did not occur to me that it would be equally necessary to get rid of them. The whim seized me of keeping them as a memorial of my escape. Instead, however, of concealing them under the bed, I arranged them in the form of a star on the tent covering just above my head, and every time I looked at them I felt grateful that they were not sticking in my body. I have a dislike ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... see into yourself far enough to know that you are paltering with necessity? Are you such a feeble creature that you must be at the mercy of every childish whim, and ruin yourself for lack of courage to do what you know you ought to do? If instability of nature had made such work of me as it has of you, I'd cut my throat just to prove that I could at least once make my ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... know, in effect, if, led away by the various situations in which you were placed, I may not have appeared to destroy what I had advanced on different occasions? How do I know, if, seeing you ready to yield to a whim, I may not have carried too far, truths, which, feebly uttered, would not, perhaps, have brought you back? How do I know, in a word, if, being interested in the happiness of a friend, the desire to serve her may not have sometimes diminished ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... wanted to test this sort of clay as a medium, I suppose. And with a man like Guiccioli, even a whim must result in something like a masterpiece. It was just about the time of that turmoil about the Florentine bronzes; and a bad light was thrown on the old man by persons interested in spoiling his career. I had the good fortune to come at the truth of the matter; ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... quite old: it is seventeenth century, probably; and it reminds one a great deal of that characterizing the antiquated French quarter of New Orleans. All the tints, the forms, the vistas, would seem to have been especially selected or designed for aquarelle studies,—just to please the whim of some extravagant artist. The windows are frameless openings without glass; some have iron bars; all have heavy wooden shutters with movable slats, through which light and air can enter as through Venetian blinds. These are usually painted ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... physique of the man was bracing, his conversation, unless he happened to be suffering from one of his occasional fits of depression, was still more so. Its freshness, raciness, and eccentric whim no pen could describe. There is a kind of humour the delight of which is that while you smile at the pictures it draws, you smile quite as much or more to think that there is a mind so whimsical, crotchety, ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... little hearts made glad by novelty and colour. Great was the surprise of the older folk, who said, 'It is a new thing in the world when so great a show as this comes out of the accustomed track of shows to erect its tent in our small town!' Yet so it was; from some whim of the manager, or of some one who had the ear of the manager, the thing ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... and the Strymon, thus pushing forward the Persian dominion to the borders of Macedonia. Among the tribes which he conquered were the Perinthians, Greeks; the Pseti, Cicones, Bistones, Sapaei, Dersaei and Edoni, Thracians; and the Paeoplae and Siripasones, Pseonians. These last, to gratify a whim of Darius, were transported into Asia. The Thracians who submitted were especially those of the coast, no attempt, apparently, being made to penetrate the mountain fastnesses and bring under subjection the tribes of ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... Because of Mrs. Alexander's whim, the ludicrous experiences that came upon the innocent heads of Polly and her friends, in the tour of England in two motor cars, decided them to escape from that lady, and run away to Paris. Before they could sigh in relief at their freedom, ...
— Polly's Business Venture • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... three-storied tower, built of mighty gray stones without softening wings or adorning spires, beautiful only in its mantling ivy. From the great door in its side a crowd of serfs came running, ducking grinning salutations; and they were followed by a half-dozen old warriors. Seized by a boyish whim, their master rode past them with no more than a wave of ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... to him. And he has told me lately that she refused him with such considered firmness that it seemed unlikely that it was a whim." ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold
... dramatic farewell of that young lady, and its possible influence in turning her susceptible heart towards his protege. He then quietly settled back to his old solitary habits, and for a week left the Robinsons unvisited. The result was a morning call by Trinidad Joe on the hermit. "It's a whim of my gal's, Mr. North," he said, dejectedly, "and ez I told you before and warned ye, when that gal hez an idee, fower yoke of oxen and seving men can't drag it outer her. She's got a idee o' larnin'—never hevin' hed much schoolin', and we ony takin' the papers, permiskiss like—and ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... blow quickly followed. Only a few days after that marriage which her father thought promised so much security and consolation to his old age, the Emperor Paul, in a cruel whim, suddenly banished him from Petersburg. Retiring to Moscow, the galling sense of his disgrace, the separation from his darling daughter, together with a frigid reception by a friend on whom he had especially relied, plunged him into the deepest grief. A terrible attack of apoplexy ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... and art is often only a whim. People wondered why they had ever bought those dark, shadowy things made by that Leyden artist, What's-his-name! One man utilized the frames which contained "Rembrandts" by putting other canvases right over in front ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... of continuing our delightful trip down the river, we three were scurrying to Saalsburg, urged by a sudden and stupendous whim on my part, and filled with a new interest ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... branch of research, and was, moreover, provided with that long purse which either proves to be a fatal handicap to the student's energies, or, if his mind is still true to its purpose, gives him an enormous advantage in the race for fame. Kennedy had often been seduced by whim and pleasure from his studies, but his mind was an incisive one, capable of long and concentrated efforts which ended in sharp reactions of sensuous languor. His handsome face, with its high, white forehead, its aggressive ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... dark-haired Helen. Master Hiero, his round, snub-nosed face red with fussy emotion, gives the bride away; while Salome, dressed in white and looking very pretty and lady-like, does service as bridesmaid,—such is her mistress's whim. She seems in even better spirits than the pale bride, and her black eyes scarcely wander ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... be amused with the Wise Woman's reiteration of this assertion. What fancy she had taken into her head he could not guess. It was some old-womanly whim, he supposed. If he could have guessed her reason for thus dismissing them in haste—if he had seen in the embers what she saw coming nearer and nearer, and now close to her very door—wild horses ...
— One Snowy Night - Long ago at Oxford • Emily Sarah Holt
... took his pistols from the table, and followed him, and Abner, who seemed irresolute and demoralized, came slowly after. The report that Perez, in a sudden whim, now proposed to deprive them of the treat he had promised them, had produced on the drunken and excited crowd, all the effect which Hubbard had counted on, and as Perez reached the front door of the house, a mass of men with brandished clubs and ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... towards the Bay of Biscay in the teeth of an Equinoctial gale. At the behest of one girl eighty men had to endure the discomfort of a storm at sea, and a great steel ship, straining and quivering, was flung into the perilous night. It seemed a misuse of power that, at a woman's whim, so many lives and so noble and costly a fabric could be risked—and risked for nothing. From the captain on the bridge, dripping in his oil- skins, to the coal-passers and firemen below who fed the mighty furnaces, to the cooks in the galley, the engineers, the electrician on duty, the ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... what she had done and take the consequences, believing in her power over him to come scatheless out of the adventure. In those days, when human life was so cheap, she might have asked for the death of almost any one, and her whim would have been gratified by a lover who had not hesitated to put to death his own son at her dictation. But with Ibrahim it was another matter; he was the familiar of the Sultan, his alter ego in fact. It says much for the nerve of the ...
— Great Pirate Stories • Various
... the Widow Sprigg needed no urging to drink her favorite beverage, which, like many another countrywoman,—more's the pity!—she kept steeping on the stove all day long. But now, for an instant, she looked doubtfully upon the cup; then, as a sudden whim seized her, caught it up eagerly and again ascended the stairs to Moses' bedroom. He lay motionless, his leg kept taut by a ball and chain and his poor body encased in plaster, but he could use his arms and eyes, the one thrown restlessly ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... protection, guidance, strength. Every bit of her seemed to appeal for these qualities. But at the same time she dismayed. He moved nearer to her. Yes, she had grandeur. All the costly and valuable objects in the drawing-room she had rejected in favour of the satisfaction of a morbid and terrible whim. Who could have foreseen it? He moved still nearer. He stood over her. He seized her yielding wrists. He lifted her veil. Tears were running down her cheeks from the yellow eyes. She looked ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... thing!" he said impatiently, as he opened the door of his flat, "it isn't worth worrying about. I mustn't let the whim of some mad tradesman get on my nerves. I've got ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... we justly put all others out of the account. It is nothing (as against this asserted influence on the intelligent faculty) that great numbers who may contribute to swell a public bustle about religion; who may run together at the call of whim, imposture, or insanity, assuming that name; who may acquire, instead of any other folly, a turn for talking, disputing, or ranting, about that subject: it is nothing, in short, that any who are ...
— An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance • John Foster
... requires an atmosphere of roses; and the more rugged excitant of Wick east winds had made another boy of me. To go down in the diving-dress, that was my absorbing fancy; and with the countenance of a certain handsome scamp of a diver, Bob Bain by name, I gratified the whim. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... those early days of his disappearance there was money to the Charles name, and Grandemont had spent the dollars as if they were picayunes in trying to find the lost youth. Even then he had had small hope of success, for the Mississippi gives up a victim from its oily tangles only at the whim of its ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... have no priest or peeler in To dance in Beg-Innish; But we'll have drink from M'riarty Jim Rowed round while gannets fish, A keg with porter to the brim, That every lad may have his whim, Till we up sails with M'riarty ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... father! 'Tis only your whim! His house is high over the stars in the sky, Where the white swan sails undefiled, So high 'tis beyond any mortal eye Save that of the dreaming child!— The church that you spoke of! So then it is there We shall ride in festal ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... her guardian would reply. "It is not yours. It is only held in trust for you until you become of age, by which time you will have many other uses for money besides gratifying an old man's whim." ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... out hunting. I have seen you go without food and sleep simply because you were on the track of some beautiful wild creature that was forced to yield its liberty and life merely to gratify your whim. It is in that despicable way ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... mother I was above reproach. Here, then, was surely every promise for the future; here, at last, was a relation in which I might hope to taste repose. But it was not to be. You will hardly credit me when I inform you that she ran away from home; yet such was the case. Some whim about oppressed nationalities—Ireland, Poland, and the like—has turned her brain; and if you should anywhere encounter a young lady (I must say of remarkable attractions) answering to the name of Luxmore, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... lightning still flickering and darting overhead, I cried, "But you are risking your lives for some fantastic whim, some wild superstition of yours. You are mad to brave such a storm! You expose your child to undoubted peril that you may ward off some illusory evil. Let me bear her to the inn, and follow me thither." And I was going to lift the senseless form in my arms ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... lady, here I am, thy slave, My wisest counsel thou shalt have. Thou must lay violent hand on him, And say: 'Unless thou'lt grant my whim, I'll drive thee hence from out my court, And with thy woes I'll have my sport, Nor will I stay thy punishment, Till drop by drop thy blood is spent.' Perhaps he will amend his way, If thou such cruel words ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... their frugal dinner from the market in their senatorial caps, entered our house as beggars, and left it with well-lined purses. Civitella pointed them out to me. "Look," said he, "how many poor devils make their fortunes by one great man taking a whim into his head. This is what I like to see. It is princely and royal. A great man must, even by his failings, make some one happy, like a river which by its overflowing fertilizes the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... riven stone That century on century has slept Until into its heart a tendril crept, And in the quiet majesty of birth New nature broke into her own! Or bid the sun stand still! Or fashion wings To herd the heaven's stars and make them be Subservient to will and rule and whim! Or rein the winds, and still the ocean's hymn! More surely ye shall manage all these things Than chain the ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... noble, discarded all earnestness amidst the giddy bustle and witty brilliance of their daily life, and oscillated between the grandest boldness of enterprise and elevation of spirit on the one hand, and a shameful frivolity and childish whim on the other. It may not be out of place, in connection with a crisis wherein the existence or destruction of nations of noble gifts and ancient renown was at stake, to mention that Plato, who came to Tarentum ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... the morn may see A clouded or a sunny day: That rests with Jove: but what is gone, He will not, cannot turn to nought; Nor cancel, as a thing undone, What once the flying hour has brought." Fortune, who loves her cruel game, Still bent upon some heartless whim, Shifts her caresses, fickle dame, Now kind to me, and now to him: She stays; 'tis well: but let her shake Those wings, her presents I resign, Cloak me in native worth, and take Chaste Poverty undower'd for mine. Though storms around my vessel rave, I will not fall to craven ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... polite; but she did not believe in the new order of things; and her eyelids and the corners of her mouth showed it. Mrs. Megilp admired; thought it lovely for Asenath just now; but of course not a thing to count upon, or to expect generally. In short, they treated it all as a whim; a coincidence of whims. Asenath, although she would not trouble herself about the "ifs away back," had a spirit of looking forward which impelled her to argue against ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... incident probably came to his knowledge about the same time. A beautiful and very intellectual woman was married to a well-known man who had been addicted to drink, but had entirely conquered the vice. One day a mad whim seized her to put his self-mastery and her power over him to the test. As it happened to be his birthday, she rolled into his study a small keg of brandy, and then withdrew. She returned some time after wards ...
— Hedda Gabler - Play In Four Acts • Henrik Ibsen
... case, though, all concerned would have felt easier to keep her on board. Then, when the ship sailed, they were sure to have her there. Otherwise, they assuredly were not. For they knew well her startling capacity for whims. But never, never, could they know the startling next way a whim of hers might jump. Yet did she give herself the small pains of wheedling? Not she. The mystery of her august guardianship, of no less than two emperors, and the responsibility falling on captain, crew, red trousers, and gilt eagles—He bien, what then? ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... thing of clouts, a she moth, That every silkmans shop breeds; to be cheated, And of a thousand duckets by a whim wham? ...
— Rule a Wife, and Have a Wife - Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (3 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... that other subjects were thereby excluded from it. The repression of night-poaching was not a matter that interested him either in principle or practice. He would just as soon that the keeper had not reminded him of his offer to share his watch—the whim that had once seized him to do so had died away; but having once promised his company, he was not one to break his word. So here ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... what whim of wanton chance Do radiant eyes know sombre days? And feet that shod in light should dance Walk weary ...
— Trees and Other Poems • Joyce Kilmer
... their instantaneous desires, than conform the moment to some regulated and considerate, some comprehensive scheme of life and action. The life of unreason is their desire; the experience whose bent is determined by every whim, the expression which has no rational connection with the past and no serious consideration for the future. This is of the very essence of lawlessness because it is revolt against the normal sequence of law and effect, in mind and conduct, in favor ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... try to take hers without murmuring, although convinced that it was a mere whim, stipulating only that she might go out in the kitchen to swallow it. But with Wealthy, who was younger, the ingestion of Vermifuge was usually preceded by an orgy of tears and supplications. Addison, who was older and generally well, long smiled in a superior way at the grimaces ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... had planned to take the six o'clock train. I quite finished my business with Saradokis last night. He's a brilliant business man. Too bad he has that silly whim ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... Fenella exclaimed. "It was a whim of mine, that is all. I liked having you both there. Some day you must come again, and, if you are very good, I may let you bring the young lady, though I'm not so sure of that. Do you know that my brother was asking ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Sidney pleasantly. And vaguely conscious of mischief in the air, but led on by some inexplicable whim, she pursued, "Do you mean that it makes such a difference to you, ...
— The Rich Mrs. Burgoyne • Kathleen Norris
... I told him, "which the founder, for some inexplicable whim, united in one domain, of an ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... reason to fear needle pricks. In short, Louise was one of those fickle birds of passage who from fancy, and often from necessity, make for a day, or rather a night, their nest in the garrets of the students' quarter, and remain there willingly for a few days, if one knows how to retain them by a whim ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... in Behar is a heterogeneous collection of thatched huts, apparently set down at random—as indeed it is, for every one erects his hut wherever whim or caprice leads him, or wherever he can get a piece of vacant land. Groves of feathery bamboos and broad-leaved plumy-looking plantains almost conceal the huts and buildings. Several small orchards of mango surround the village; the roads ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... cuisine, either by the audacious invention of new dishes or the felicitous combination of old ones—either by discovering new sources of food or new methods of preparing it. It was a curious incident in the late history of the city that what had been a fashionable whim became a hard necessity—that after Saint-Hilaire and the hippophagists had struggled to introduce horseflesh as regular provender, the siege of Paris made horseflesh a prized rarity. But the zest resulting from the enforced diet of dogs, cats, rats and monkeys in bombardment days appears ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... years ago at a fancy ball clad in his ancestral clothing of the sixteenth century and wearing the insignia of the chieftainship. He boasted that in doing so he broke no fewer than three statute laws. But times are altered now, and the learned professor was permitted to indulge his whim in peace. No clansmen gathered round him, and no "Sassenach" soldiery rent ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... his whim—if that could be called a whim which was a desire to have repeated to him a sentiment once to him, as he hinted, a reality connected with the young heart when it was lusty, and his pulse strong and thick with the blood of young life—- she went to ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... prospect—her eager hopes converting the possible into the probable, and again, by a rapid change, the probable into the certain, the Greek stood spurning the needle work at her feet. Then glancing around, the whim seized upon her to assume, for a moment in advance, her coming stately dignity. At the side of the room, upon a slightly elevated platform, was a crimson lounge—AEnone's especial and proper seat. Over one arm of this lounge hung, in loose folds, a robe of purple ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... tolerably mild, To make a wash, would hardly stew a child; Has even been proved to grant a lover's prayer, And paid a tradesman once to make him stare; Gave alms at Easter, in a Christian trim, And made a widow happy, for a whim. Why then declare good-nature is her scorn, When 'tis by that alone she can be borne? Why pique all mortals, yet affect a name? A fool to pleasure, yet a slave to fame: Now deep in Taylor and the Book of Martyrs, Now drinking ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... tape-tied curtains never meant to draw; The George and Garter dangling from that bed, Where tawdry yellow strove with dirty red, Great Villiers lies:—alas! how changed from him, That life of pleasure and that soul of whim! Gallant and gay, in Claverdon's proud alcove, The bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love, Or, just as gay, at council in a ring Of mimic'd statesmen and their merry King. No wit to flatter left of all his store, No fool to laugh at, which he valued more, ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... cry up Haydn, some Mozart, Just as the whim bites.—For my part, I do not care a farthing candle For either of them, or for Handel. Cannot a man live free and easy Without admiring Pergolesi? Or through the earth with comfort go, That never heard of Doctor Blow? I hardly have; And ...
— Sketch of Handel and Beethoven • Thomas Hanly Ball
... a bored gesture. Everybody asked the same thing, and he who belonged to that country had never seen a rose of Paestum.... Sometimes, just in order to satisfy the whim of tourists, he would bring rose bushes from Capaccio Vecchio and other mountain villages,—rose bushes just like others with no difference except in price.... But he didn't wish to take advantage of anybody. He was sad and greatly troubled over ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... be consistent? The dullard and the doctrinaire, the tedious people who carry out their principles to the bitter end of action, to the reductio ad absurdum of practice. Not I. Like Emerson, I write over the door of my library the word 'Whim.' Besides, my article is really a most salutary and valuable warning. If it is attended to, there may be a new ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... that every officer above the rank of captain was to lose his higher rank, and that all new reappointments were to be made on military merit and direct from Richmond. Companies accustomed to elect their officers according to the whim of the moment eagerly joined the higher officers in passing adverse resolutions. But authorities who were unanimous for Lee were not to be shaken by such absurdities in face of a serious war. And when the froth ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... an excellent manager, and he himself a pleasant, good-humored man, full of whim and inoffensive mirth. His powers of amusement were of a high order, considering his station in life and his want of education. These qualities contributed, in a great degree, to bring both the young and old to his ...
— Phil Purcel, The Pig-Driver; The Geography Of An Irish Oath; The Lianhan Shee • William Carleton
... his pipe and lit it. His mother had said we when she talked of her plans, as if her son were merely an object to be moved about at her whim. Pick up my lighter at MacAuliffe's ... going to take a trip abroad this summer ... not going to be foolish about her.... He could see the phrases as vividly as if they were written ...
— A World Apart • Samuel Kimball Merwin
... for you to decide, sir. I think his conduct quite unusual, and indeed unjust, as regards Turkey and myself. But it may only be a passing whim." ...
— Bartleby, The Scrivener - A Story of Wall-Street • Herman Melville
... sat in the tentroom, where the long lounges and the shaded electric light were suggestive of desultory conversation, and seemed tacitly to forbid all things that savour of a hind-leg attitude. To-night, however, some whim, no doubt, had prompted him to forsake his usual haunt. Perhaps he had been seized with a dislike for complete silence, such as comes upon men in recurring hours of depression, when the mind is submerged by a thin tide of unreasoning melancholy, and ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... Henry's face was roughened by winds and storms; Tete Rouge's was bloated by sherry cobblers and brandy toddy. Henry talked of Indians and buffalo; Tete Rouge of theaters and oyster cellars. Henry had led a life of hardship and privation; Tete Rouge never had a whim which he would not gratify at the first moment he was able. Henry moreover was the most disinterested man I ever saw; while Tete Rouge, though equally good-natured in his way, cared for nobody but himself. Yet we would not have lost him ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... knowing her power, insisted that Agnes' child should be raised as a white child, and the secret of his birth effectually concealed. At first, Mr. Le Croix thought it was a passing whim that she would soon forget; that the child would amuse and interest her for awhile; and then she would tire of him as she had of other things; such as her birds, her squirrel, and even her Shetland pony. But when he found that instead of her intention ...
— Minnie's Sacrifice • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... importance. It was not that she perceived any glamour of royalty about him; she did not wish to hear his voice. Besides, she had never found a conversational opening so harmless that he could not contrive, were it his whim, to be offensive about it. Besides, she had at the moment ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... drank her health to the company. There was in the place a gay fellow, half fuddled, who offered to jump in, and swore, though he liked not the liquor, he would have the toast. He was opposed in his resolution; yet this whim gave foundation to the present honour which is done to the lady we mention in our liquors, who has ever since been called a "toast." Though this institution had so trivial a beginning, it is now elevated into a formal order; and that happy virgin who is received ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... that they have the actual opportunity for realizing what to other girls are mere dreams. I can imagine what my daughter would have done if a foreign nobleman had paid court to her. I will say this for Miss Wellington though; she would marry her chauffeur if she took the whim." ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... is an idle and impertinent invention there is little need to show, inasmuch as both tower and spire might still have been built to satisfy the whim of the old ladies, though placed in the usual manner, one serving as a substratum to the other. A more probable solution is the following, though it may be as far from the truth:—At the dissolution of the priory of Burscough in the time of ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... old Sir Giles had stored in the secret room was considerable. He had evidently distrusted investments, and, following his own singular whim, had hoarded his money in gold and bank notes. There were precious stones also, in themselves worth a small fortune, which he must have collected, in addition to the family jewels and the old silver plate that had been handed down through ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... half jestingly and endeavored to get possession of the bottle. A struggle ensued, good-naturedly on the part of the guard, but characterized on the part of M'liss by that half-savage passion which any thwarted whim or instinct was sure to provoke in her nature. At last with a curse she freed herself from his grasp, and seizing the bottle by the neck aimed it with the full strength of her little arm fairly at his head. But he was quick enough to avert ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... said to be a whim of the Tzar Ivan the Terrible to see how many distinct chapels could be erected under one roof in a given space of ground, so that services could be performed at one ...
— A Journey in Russia in 1858 • Robert Heywood
... William IV. was no ordinary King: that one can see even from the scanty extracts from his letters given in "Bunsen's Memoirs." Nor was his love of Bunsen a mere passing whim. He loved the man, and those who knew the refreshing and satisfying influence of Bunsen's society will easily understand what the King meant when he said, "I am hungry and thirsty for Bunsen." But what constitution can resist the daily doses of hyperbolical flattery that are poured into the ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... not to be misled by the spelling. That was no guide anyhow. He avoided every recognised phrase in the language and mispronounced everything in order that he shouldn't be suspected of ignorance, but whim. ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... itself was in a way anticlimactic. By the whim of Le ffacase I went in one of the planes on the first day of the task. My protests, as always, proving futile, I spent a very boresome time flying backandforth over the same patch of ground. That is, it would have been boresome had it not been for the dangers involved, for in order to sow the ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... too much care can be exercised at this important epoch of human life, provided it is properly applied; but nothing could be more disastrous in its consequences than a weak solicitude which panders to every whim and gratifies every perverted appetite. Such care ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... suspicious mind is ever the prey of worry. Such an one is to be pitied for he is tossed hither and yon, to and fro, at the whim of every breath of suspicion he breathes. He has no real peace of mind, no content, no unalloyed joy, for even in his hours of pleasure, of recreation, of expected jollity he is worrying lest someone is trying to get ahead of him, his vis-a-vis is "jollying" ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James
... sixpence into it, with the intention of stealing upon him as he sat most mysteriously chattering on the top of a cairn of stones, and then shooting him with silver, which is known never to fail in finishing the imps of the Evil One. And lucky indeed was it for pug that he chanced, through whim, to abscond from that quarter; for if he had not so disappeared, he might have died by the lead, if not by the silver. As it was, the bold peasant laid claim to the full glory of compelling this dreaded goblin ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... seven hundred miles to Virginia, where, it is said, they may be plentifully subsisted. As soon as they are there, they are ordered on some other march, because, in Virginia, it is said, they cannot be subsisted. Indifferent nations will charge this either to ignorance, or to whim and caprice; the parties interested, to cruelty. They now view the proposition in that light, and it is said, there is a general and firm persuasion among them, that they were marched from Boston with no other purpose than to harass and destroy them with eternal marches. Perseverance ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... wedding invitations, are expected to acknowledge them as soon as received, and never fail to accept, unless for some very good reason. Guests invited to the house, or to a marriage feast following the ceremony, should not feel at liberty to decline from any whim or caprice. ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... plaguy good he takes of his CHILDREN! He looks after our domestic as well as our public interests! It was a strange whim in old Fritz to offer each of his soldiers one of the factory girls ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... Uncle Buzz stepped meekly aside and Mrs. Mosby—Aunt Loraine—joined the group, giving him a momentary withering glance. She was an inexorable woman, an inch taller than Uncle Buzz, who stood five feet three, but she matched him whim for whim in her attire. Her hair looked black in the graying light; in reality it was splotched and streaked with a chestnut red, colour not so ill as misapplied. Her dress rustled as she swept forward and there were numberless faint clickings and clackings of chains and bangles ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... is fickle, egotistical, capricious; she exacts adoration, and most frequently loves you for a whim ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... in the least a sportswoman by nature, though she had hunted as a child—albeit much against her will—to satisfy the whim of a father who had been a dare-devil rider across country and had found his joy in life—and finally his death—in the hunting field he had loved. But she was a lover of animals, like most people of artistic temperament, ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... turbulent Irish canal men, who keep the country in constant excitement, and who, owing no allegiance to Britain or to the American Union, cross over from the States to Canada, or vice versa, as work or whim dictates, carrying uneasiness and dismay wherever ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... my dear. As I have told you time out of number since his will was brought to light, I doubt if I ever exchanged a hundred words with the old gentleman. If it was his whim to surprise us, his whim succeeded. For ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... then his compliments began To rain like drops of Frangipanni, A most insinuating man He was, this ancient DON GIOVANNI. You felt, if you could half believe, You'd but to word a whim to find it, You quite forgot he owned a sleeve, And several teeth ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 14, 1891. • Various
... should; for when one begins to reflect why one don't like the country, I believe one grows near liking to reflect in it. I feel very often that I grow to correct twenty things in myself, as thinking them ridiculous at my age; and then with my spirit of whim and folly, I make myself believe that this is all prudence, and that I wish I were young enough to be as thoughtless and extravagant as I used to be. But if I know any thing of the matter, this is all flattering myself. I grow older, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... long talk which lasted far into the night. At first both my mother and father were rather against the idea—as they had been from the beginning. They said it was only a boyish whim, and that I would get tired of it very soon. But after the matter had been talked over from every side, the Doctor turned to my ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... at the races, when seated beside her, Andrea was suddenly seized with the whim to get her to promise to come to the Palazzo Zuccari and receive the mysterious little clock dedicated to her namesake. Hearing his audacious words, she frowned, wavering between curiosity and prudence; but as he, nothing daunted, persevered in the attack, an irrepressible ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... autocratic form of government. Imperial whims, it was said, override grave economic considerations. In recent years, however, a change seems to have taken place in public opinion, and some people now venture to assert that this so-called Imperial whim was an act of far-seeing policy. As by far the greater part of the goods and passengers are carried the whole length of the line, it is well that the line should be as short as possible, and that branch lines should ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... forsooth! And pray, are you going to reject the best offer in the county because of a simple whim? the mere fancy of a vain-headed, foolish and inexperienced girl? I did not before suppose that a daughter of mine would manifest such a want of ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... a moment. If he said no, and went away out of the city wherever his listless and changeful whim called him, he knew how it would be with her; he knew what her life would be as surely as he knew the peach would come out of the peach-flower rosy on the wall there: life in the little hut; among the neighbors; sleepy and safe and ...
— Bebee • Ouida
... love to flop and twist and turn Whenever 'tis our whim. Yet social etiquette we learn Because ...
— Policeman Bluejay • L. Frank Baum
... which he always succumbed, came from the little wheeled chair. No anger did he ever find there—no dark looks or sharp tones—but he found steady, unbending authority; the firm will which never passed over a single fault, or yielded to a single whim. In his wildest passions of grief or wrath, it was only necessary to say to the child, "If the earl could see you!" to make him pause; and many and many a time, whenever motherly authority, which in this case ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... there are depths as well as shallows, and the reader may get now and then a peep into the depths. He may find, if he will, in a man's shadow that outward expression of himself which shows that he has been touched, like others, by the light of heaven. But essentially the story is a poet's whim. Later writings of Chamisso proved him to be one of the best lyric poets of the romance school of his time, entirely German in his tone of thought. His best poem, "Salas y Gomez," describes the feeling of a solitary on a sea-girt rock, living on eggs of the ...
— Peter Schlemihl etc. • Chamisso et. al.
... fingers smoothed the wax, and over the effaced heart—a child's whim—Orion wrote things on which the lives of two human beings depended. He did so with sincere confidence in his little ally's adroitness and fidelity. Early next morning she was to receive a letter to be conveyed to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... belongs to all, and, moreover, to choose the best portion of it? Shall a minority be permitted to destroy the Union, and to imperil those who were its first benefactors, and without whom it would never have existed? If this does not constitute an impious revolt, then any whim that seizes a people is just and right. It is not only political reasons that oppose a separation; geography, the positions of places force the United States to form a single nation. Strabo, meditating on this ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Miss Phillips once more drives away all recollection of Marion, even while he has before him the unopened letter of that wronged and injured girl. Jack's brain was certainly of a harum-scarum order, such as is not often found—he was a creature of whim and impulse—he was a rattle-brain, a scatter-brain —formed to win the love of all—both men and women—formed, too, to fall into endless difficulties—formed also with a native buoyancy of spirit which enabled him to float where others would sink. By those who knew him, he would always ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... Cornwall. After three days there I met some miners, had a night with them, which ended by their initiating me into their clan. Next morning, thinking it over, my better self asserted itself, and the whim took me to learn the ...
— The Wedge of Gold • C. C. Goodwin
... yourself! We can look after the children ourselves. You better save what you get to look after yourself when those two get over this whim!" ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... the cottage, after she had fulfilled her hostess's last demand, Glory's spirits rose to the highest. It was the first time she had entered the ranks of the seven other children which filled it to overflowing, and who were "shooed" into or out of it, according to their mother's whim. ...
— A Sunny Little Lass • Evelyn Raymond
... you in time—beware of the original of that picture, and never again talk to me of going to see those Percys; for though the girl may be only an unfashioned country beauty, and Georgiana has so many polished advantages, yet there is no knowing what whim a young man might ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... patriot warms. Peleus' great son, or Brutus, who had known, Had Lucrece been a whore, or Helen none! But virtues opposite to make agree, That, Reason! is thy task; and worthy thee. Hard task, cries Bibulus, and reason weak: Make it a point, dear Marquess! or a pique. Once, for a whim, persuade yourself to pay A debt to reason, like a debt at play. For right or wrong have mortals suffer'd more? B—— for his prince, or —— for his whore? Whose self-denials nature most control? His, who would save a sixpence, or his soul? Web for ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... wisdom but a whim of mine which causes me to be graciously minded!" she cried. "Think you that Liane ...
— Priestess of the Flame • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... schools of thought relating to amendment of the Constitution. One need not be committed to the belief that amendment is weakening the fundamental law, or that excessive amendment is essential to meet every ephemeral whim. We ought to amend to meet the demands of the people when sanctioned ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Warren Harding • Warren Harding
... luckless husband, Listen to thy wife's opinion, 270 Tongue of lark, and whim of women, Like myself, a youth unhappy, For both bread and meat I bought her, Bought her butter, ale I bought her, Every sort of fish I bought her, Bought her all sorts of provisions, Home-brewed ale the best I bought her, Likewise wheat from ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... purposes. It was to his credit that neither libertinism nor disgrace nor remorse withered at its root this herb of grace. Cynical speeches with regard to friends and friendship, often quoted to his disadvantage, need not be taken too literally. Byron talked for effect, and in accordance with the whim of the moment. His acts do not correspond with his words. Byron rejected and repudiated bath Protestant and Catholic orthodoxy, but like the Athenians he was "exceedingly religious." He could not, he did not wish to, detach himself from a belief in an ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... the print how, moved by whim, Trumpeting Jumbo, great and grim, Adjusts his trunk, like a cravat, To noose that individual's hat; The Sacred Ibis in the distance, Joys to observe ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... with Dolores, who discovered that, notwithstanding his evident weariness, he was astonishingly light on his feet and by no means a poor waltzer. But after midnight she found it increasingly difficult to lure him out on the floor whenever she was seized with the whim to favor him by scratching the name—and ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... Italy. He was a man of gigantic stature, prodigious corpulence, and marked personal daring; agreeable in manners, but subject to uncontrollable fits of passion, and incapable of self-restraint when crossed in any whim or fancy. Upon the habit of his body it is needful to insist, in order that the part he played in this tragedy of intrigue, crime, and passion may be well defined. He found it difficult to procure a charger equal to his ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... him the sobriquet of "Forty Faces" among the police and of the "Vanishing Cracksman" among the scribes and reporters of newspaperdom. That he came in time to possess another name than these was due to his own whim and caprice, his own bald, unblushing impudence; for, of a sudden, whilst London was in a fever of excitement and all the newspapers up in arms over one of his most daring and successful coups, he chose to write boldly to both editors and police complaining that the title given him by each was both ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... rate of production, and so forth, but substitutes water for the old hock and "Scots pint" (magnum) of claret, a dirty little terra-cotta inkstand for the silver utensil of the Noctes, and a single large tallow candle for Christopher's "floods of light." He carried the whim so far as to construct for himself—his Noctes self—an imaginary hall-by-the-sea on the Firth of Forth, which in the same way seems to have had an actual resemblance, half of likeness, half of contrast, ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... grieved at parting with me, whenever it is; and if we give them time to become acquainted with my soul, and with its new powers of loving and honouring them, I fear that when I go, their aged hearts will break under the load of sorrow. As yet, they take my gentle mood for a passing whim, such as they saw me liable to formerly, like a calm on the lake when the winds are lulled; and they will soon begin to love some favourite tree or flower in my place. They must not learn to know this newly obtained, affectionate ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... come home jes' long enough To take the whim 'At he'd like to go back in the calvery— And the old man jes' wrapped up in him! Jim 'lowed 'at he'd had sich luck afore, Guessed he'd tackle her three years more. And the old man give him a colt he'd raised, And follered him over to Camp Ben ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... white gate talking to each other, my Charlotte and I. The old red-tiled roof which I had seen in the distance sheltered the girl I love. The solitary farm-house which it had been my whim to examine was the house in which my dear love made her home. It was here, to this untrodden hillside, that my darling had come from the prim modern villa at Bayswater. Ah, what happiness to find her here, far away from all those stockbroking surroundings—here, where our hearts expanded ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... about her education. I didn't know she had one," said Jarvis, "but this whim of hers, in marrying me, is very trying to me. ...
— Bambi • Marjorie Benton Cooke
... out upon the ledge, but keep inside the grotto that had given them such well-timed shelter. Some sulky savage, disappointed at not getting their scalps, might take it into his head to return and hurl down into the hole another shower of stones. Such a whim was ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
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