Free Translator Free Translator
Translators Dictionaries Courses Other
Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




More "Queer" Quotes from Famous Books



... who had caught a glimpse of Jean Valjean, said to her: "That's a queer fish." She replied: "He's ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... "It was queer Dan Baxter should act so," said Sam to his uncle, when Mr. Rover came back from his interview with the bully. "I thought he wanted to, go ...
— The Rover Boys in the Jungle • Arthur M. Winfield

... My queer guardian angel disappeared. I fastened the door so that it should not swing in the wind, and then climbed back into my wire hammock, stretched out my limbs, laid my cheek on my pack, ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham

... sink again. Finally, about six o'clock, just before sunset, we slid into North Bay once more and beached the catamaran, much to the relief of our companions, who were beginning to grow somewhat anxious as to how our queer-shaped craft would stand the continuous strain of beating to windward for many hours at a stretch against the strong wind and ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood

... that you came up on deck, because it affords me an opportunity to say something that Kennedy's queer talk has rather forced upon my mind. It is this. If by any chance we should be attacked, will you undertake to see that Mrs Vansittart, her daughter, and the boy are, any or all of them, prevented from coming on deck? Their presence here under such circumstances could be of no possible assistance ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood

... possession receipts given by them for public stores. Meanwhile, I received from Canby a letter informing me that he had directed two of his corps commanders, Generals Steele and Granger, to apply to me for instructions concerning the movement of their troops, as to time, places, and numbers. It was queer for one to be placed in quasi command of soldiers that he had been fighting for four years, and to whom he had surrendered; but I delicately made some suggestions to these ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor

... all mean? Who was the man in the hall, the man who had argued so loudly, who had struck so surely with that queer Indian knife? Where is ...
— The Agony Column • Earl Derr Biggers

... "In a queer place. As I told you, I have visited South Africa before, under different circumstances. Four years ago I was out here big-game shooting. Going in from the East coast my brother and I—he is dead now, poor fellow—got up somewhere in the Matabele ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard

... know of this root; the queer paisano (? ground woodpecker) which eats snakes, when wounded by a vibora de cascabel, runs into woods, digs up and eats a root of the agave, just like the mongoose; but more than that, goes back, polishes ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 360, November 25, 1882 • Various

... friend, getting warm—"five times more than the ordinary pay. If it hadn't been for that, Richard Shandon wouldn't have found a soul to go with him. A ship with a queer shape, going nobody knows where, and looking more like not coming back than anything else, it ...
— The English at the North Pole - Part I of the Adventures of Captain Hatteras • Jules Verne

... Hopalong confidentially, "I know who put up this joke on yu. Yu ask Billy who hid th' hat," suggested the tease. "Here he comes now—see how queer he looks." ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford

... nine thousand warriors, the husband of sixty-four wives, the father of a hundred children, rose from the ox-hide on which he was seated, under the shade of a tree, and came to the gate to meet us. And a queer sight this potentate was as he stood there shaking hands through the gate. Of middle age, about forty-five years of age, rather fat, with a flat nose, and small, twinkling, black eyes, he presented an entirely hideous and semi-repulsive appearance. ...
— Cetywayo and his White Neighbours - Remarks on Recent Events in Zululand, Natal, and the Transvaal • H. Rider Haggard

... and even now I should not care to risk my life in this street after midnight, with no policemen near. It is exceedingly narrow, for I stood in the center and touched with the tips of my fingers the walls of both sides of the street. It is very dark and gloomy, and queer-looking passages run up on either side from the street. Some of them were frightful enough in their appearance. To be lost in such a place in the dead of night, even now, would be no pleasant fate, for desperate characters still haunt the spot. Possibly the next morning, or a few ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett

... beginning of the American settlements, likewise, there were evidences of the weaker, the over-excitable side of the romantic temper. There were volatile men like Morton of Merrymount; there were queer women like Anne Hutchinson, admirable woman as she was; among the wives of the colonists there were plenty of Emily Dickinsons in the germ. Among the men, there were schemes that came to nothing. There were prototypes of Colonel Sellers; a temperamental tendency ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry

... tell her, never," muttered Hagar; and Maggie continued: "What a queer habit you have of talking to yourself. Did you ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes

... the great lake, did they talk of Paymaster Bullen and wonder what had become of him. Donald was inclined to believe that he had either returned to New York, or still remained where they had left him; but Christie only smiled, and said Bullen was such a queer fish that there was no predicting what he might ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore

... that his lordship must have fainted," he said. "I heard a queer noise, and when I went in, he had fallen forward across the table. Parkins has rung for ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... believe in system, because I don't. There never was a system that'd beat roulette or any percentage game. But just the same I've seen some queer strings of luck, and I ain't going to let this bank go bust if I ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London

... without a heart, without a soul, and, I believe, absolutely without conscience—the type of man who even his associates feel is likely to bring in after their deaths queer bills against their estates as an offset for what he owes them; the type of man whose promise is just as good as his bond, and whose bond is so near his promise as to make it absolutely immaterial ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson

... Preference for—Cows, Bargaining for Brides Amorous Preferences Zulu Girls not Coy Charms and Poems A Kaffir Love-Story Lower than Beasts Colonies of Free Lovers A Lesson in Gallantry Not a Particle of Romance No Love Among Negroes A Queer Story Suicides Poetic Love on the Congo Black Love in Kamerun A Slave Coast Love-Story The Maiden who Always Refused African Story-Books The Five Suitors Tamba and the Princess The Sewing Match Baling ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... not only did wrestling matches take place, but also queer kinds of combats with sticks or birch boughs. Two men, blindfolded, each armed with a stick, and holding in his hand a rope fastened to a stake, entered the arena, and went round and round trying to strike at a fat goose ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix

... o'clock the air became so close that she felt a sudden faintness, and opened the window to obtain a breath of fresh air. The noise aroused Madame Leon from her slumbers. She rose, yawned, and rather sullenly declared that she felt very queer, and would certainly fall ill if she did not take some refreshment. It became necessary to summon M. Casimir, who brought her a glass of Madeira and some biscuits. "Now I feel better," she murmured, after her repast. "My excessive sensibility will be the death ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau

... "It is very queer. One of them had just inherited a hundred thousand francs—he hanged himself. Another, an author from Italy, took poison, while all Rome was reading his novel. To be infatuated by her is harmless enough, but to ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick

... exactly like the first, waiting for me in the sitting-room. Not one of them said a word, but my companion took the lamp and walked upstairs with her two sisters behind her, and me bringing up the rear. I can see those three queer shadows cast by the lamp upon the wall as clearly as I can see that tobacco pouch. In the room above was the fourth sister, a remarkably beautiful girl in evident need of my assistance. There was no wedding ring upon her finger. The three ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle

... upon a Welsh rabbit after her lesson. She is such a queer girl. Welsh rabbits at 5 in the afternoon. The General was there. You should have seen him run for the chafing dish, Joe, just as if there wasn't a servant in the house. I know Clementina isn't in good health; she is so nervous. In serving the rabbit she spilled ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry

... 'It's Jo! It's Jo's love that's made me different,' and then I got scared thinking that I might want to take it, and how awful it would have been if I had never met you and loved you. I got up and walked right out of the room so I could be alone and think about you. It must have looked queer to her the way I acted—till she found ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates

... It was queer how Jimsy's conversation seemed to bristle with verbal shocks. Aunt Judith gasped. Mr. Sawyer fixed a stern eye upon ...
— Jimsy - The Christmas Kid • Leona Dalrymple

... real, military airplane in his possession, cached away in some niche in the lava wall to the west of Sinkhole—a wall that featured queer niches and caverns and clefts. He was seeing—what wonderful things was ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower

... than that it was better for her not to marry him. What a wonderful marriage for a girl like Miss Tulliver,—quite romantic? Why, young Guest will put up for the borough at the next election. Nothing like commerce nowadays! That young Wakem nearly went out of his mind; he always was rather queer; but he's gone abroad again to be out of the way,—quite the best thing for a deformed young man. Miss Unit declares she will never visit Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Guest,—such nonsense! pretending to be better than other people. Society couldn't be carried ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot

... an American girl in rather a queer sort of way," he said, between cups. "It was in London, on the Duke of York's wedding-day. I'm rather a tall chap, you see, and in the crowd somebody touched me on the shoulder and a plaintive voice behind me said, 'You're such a big man, and I am so little, will you please help me to save ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin

... his new friend. He was a queer-looking old man, carrying a formidable cudgel, and this he now brandished recklessly in the faces of his adversaries, beating ...
— Ralph on the Engine - The Young Fireman of the Limited Mail • Allen Chapman

... "It's a queer thing," he said; "but I canna joy in the gear, unless I kend the puir body was happy that gave ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott

... of the free population would give an undue preponderance to the free States, while to base it upon all, both slave and free, would give an undue advantage to the five slave States. Hence the rather queer compromise that representation "shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free persons, including those bound to service for a term of years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other persons"—"all other persons" being a euphemism for "slaves," ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various

... unpleasant proportion. The livery servants form a complete lane on either side of the passage, and you reduce yourself into the smallest possible space to avoid being turned out. You see that stout man with the hoarse voice, in the blue coat, queer-crowned, broad-brimmed hat, white corduroy breeches, and great boots, who has been talking incessantly for half an hour past, and whose importance has occasioned no small quantity of mirth among the strangers. That is the great conservator of the peace of ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... know what the general said. Now don't you go and queer this deal for us just because you're getting a little homesick," Harry warned. "We're the only Army GI's in this outfit and this is pretty plush. You know what the general said, 'no talking with Ma until you get ...
— Sonny • Rick Raphael

... at last in stopping this precious scheme. The wily Russian got up the trouble by hinting verbally to Lord Granville that Russia would act with England and Italy in this matter. A curious league: England, Russia, and Italy against France; and a queer Concert. The proposal led to trouble three days later, for, of course, the Russians told the French in such a way as to make them believe that the ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn

... a trifle hesitatingly, "it is nothing connected with him or his miracles, as far as I know, except that there was certainly something decidedly queer about the man and the impression he made upon one. Of course I have seen something like the same thing in Egypt and the Farther East; but he seemed quite what I might call uncanny. Still, that's not the point, although possibly it may have had something ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith

... Fifi and Mimi are royal-bred Persian cats with a wonderful pedigree, and I don't know how much trouble and expense it cost Mr. Sanders to get them for me. They're entirely different from ordinary cats; they're very fine and queer, and if anything happens to them, after all the trouble papa's made over other presents I've had, I'll go straight to a sanitarium! No, Florence, you keep away from the kitchen to-day, and I'd like to hear the front ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington

... queer story," said the professor gravely. "Nevertheless, I am of opinion that Madame Patoff is under the influence of a delusion. I cannot think that if she were in her right mind she would insist as she does, and with such violence, ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford

... heart. Instantly something stirred in a corner; a fierce growl was followed by a furious bark, and a lithe brown body leapt from the greater into the lesser shadows to attack the intruder. But at one word of his the hound checked suddenly, crouched an instant, then with a queer, throaty sound bounded forward in a wild delight that robbed it on the instant of its voice. It found it anon and leapt about him, barking furious joy in spite of all his vain endeavours to calm ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini

... seems to come mostly from the eyes; a chummy, confidential, trustin' smile that sparkles with good faith and good nature, and kind of thrills you with the feelin' that you must be a lot better'n you ever suspected. Honest, after one application I forgets the queer rig she has on, the mud-colored hair, and the way her chest slumps in. Whoever she might be and whatever she might want, I'm strong for givin' her the helpin' hand. If I could have gone in and led old K. W. out by the arm, I'd have done ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford

... changes demand new guidance. But the routineers are always unprepared. It has become one of the grim trade jokes of innovators that the one thing you can count upon is that the rulers will come to think that they are the apex of human development. For a queer effect of responsibility on men is that it makes them try to be as much like machines as possible. Tammany itself becomes rigid when it is too successful, and only defeat seems to give it new life. Success makes men rigid and they tend to exalt stability over all the other virtues; tired of the ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann

... as pleased as Punch," said Joe. "We was a feared as it might be somebody foreign—not a Carlingford gentleman; and some parsons is queer, saving your presence, Mr. May; but we knows where you comes from, and all about you, as one of the old gentlemen was just a-saying to me. Furnished, Miss? Lord bless you, yes! they're furnished. It's all furnished, is College. You'll think as the things look a bit queer; they wasn't ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant

... why the tenants did not stop here, and if I thought there was anything queer about the place; and he asked how you liked it, and how long you were going to stay; and if you had ever seen aught strange in ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell

... fearfully at his master, Jocko began to grimace and beg for something to eat. The man pulled the string and struck up a merry tune, and in a minute the monkey spun around and around at such a lively pace, and put in so many queer antics that the little audience were ...
— Five Little Peppers And How They Grew • Margaret Sidney

... had been so near one of her wild screams of terror that now, in spite of her instant absorbed interest in the reins, she gave a queer little yelp. She was all ready with the explanation, her conversations with Aunt Frances having made her very fluent in explanations of her own emotions. She would tell Uncle Henry about how scared she had been, and how she had just been about to scream ...
— Understood Betsy • Dorothy Canfield

... Mrs. Hart!" said Zillah. "I suppose she does seem a little odd to you; but I know her well, and I assure you she is as far removed from insanity as I am. Still she is undoubtedly queer. Do you know, Hilda, she seems to me to have had some terrible sorrow which has crushed all her spirit and almost her very life. I have no idea whatever of her past life. She is very reticent. She never even so much as hints ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille

... we were shelled we should only lose a certain number. Many of the men could hardly stand, their feet were so numbed with the cold of the trenches, but we got them safely in about 10 p.m., and they are sleeping in all sorts of queer places. One lot are in a granary four stories high. There is only one ladder, so it will take nearly half an hour to get four hundred men out of the building. By-the-bye, you might tell Sir John Ross of ...
— Letters of Lt.-Col. George Brenton Laurie • George Brenton Laurie

... [12]This queer word occurs for the first time, I think, in Jerome's notes to the first chapter of Ezekiel. He writes the word in Greek, and explains it as that part of the soul which always opposes vices. The word is common in Bonaventura and other scholastic mystics, ...
— Light, Life, and Love • W. R. Inge

... legs. Their eyes were set at the extreme sides of their heads a trifle above the center and protruded in such a manner that they could be directed either forward or back and also independently of each other, thus permitting this queer animal to look in any direction, or in two directions at once, without the necessity of turning ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... chuckle. Mr. Franklin Sharp was the principal of Central High, and was very much admired by all the pupils; while Professor Dimp, because of his harshness and his queer ways, was the butt of more ...
— The Girls of Central High in Camp - The Old Professor's Secret • Gertrude W. Morrison

... telescope and directed it toward the Atlantic horizon, without being able, however, to find the vessel, for she could distinguish nothing—nothing but blue, with a colored halo round it, a circular rainbow—and then all manner of queer things, winking eclipses ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant

... would be an easy—and—and delightful way out, but I am really frightened down in some queer part of my anatomy that lies between my breast bone and my spinal column. Something is stirring in my heart and I'm afraid of it. I've got to get out in a ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess

... fight his way, never had a show. Sick and maimed and sore, he was being made much of, though he had been caught where the boys were forbidden to go. Things were queer, anyhow, and— ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis

... seven black dots on its cupola of a back, a minute black head and bright little eyes. Peeping from under the dotted dome and supporting it as best they could Maya detected thin legs fine as threads. In spite of his queer figure, she somehow took a great liking to the stout little fellow; ...
— The Adventures of Maya the Bee • Waldemar Bonsels

... see all kinds of monomania and insanity. We learn from them to recognize all sorts of queer tendencies in minds supposed to be sane, so that we have nothing but compassion for a large class of persons condemned as sinners by theologians, but considered by us as invalids. We have constant reasons for noticing the transmission of qualities from parents ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... the grease it became more or less damp and there developed in it a peculiar kind of worm, the largest about an inch long, with multitudinous legs. There were a great many of them and they gave the beef a queer taste. In order to clear the sacks as far as possible of these undesirable denizens I several times emptied them on wide smooth rocks, and while the worms were scrambling around I scraped up the beef ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh

... down once in a while, but there's no question of his ability or of his loyalty. He never shirks a duty and never forgets a kindness. Queer combination when you think of it, Peter. What he will make of himself ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith

... voice tunes, not for instrumental performance. The instrumental music consists of that marvellously developed series of drum tunes—the attempt to understand which has taken up much of my time, and led me into queer company—and the many tunes played on the 'mrimba and the orchid- root-stringed harp: they are, I believe, entirely distinct from the song tunes. And these peaceful tunes my men were now singing were, in their florid elaboration very different from ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... looks; but they are a queer race. You must not trust him too much," continued Oswald, in an undertone, "until you have tried him, and are satisfied of his fidelity. They are very excitable, and capable of strong attachment if well treated. That I know, for I did a gipsy a good turn once, and it ...
— The Children of the New Forest • Captain Marryat

... reference to the Great Elchi's reputation, no one knows better than Sir R. Burton by what queer methods reputations may be annexed, but it is strange that anyone with the reputation of a traveller should consider Constantinople ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... are a queer girl!" was Mary's comment, while Caroline expressed her disappointment and vainly endeavored to change Elsie's determination. The little girl was firm, because she felt sure she was doing right, and soon managed to change ...
— Holidays at Roselands • Martha Finley

... Moore's Navigator, the latter the predecessor of Bowditch. The first was a miserable book, and I think its methods, which were crude in the extreme, though not incorrect, were rather more harmful than beneficial. The queer diagrams in Euclid had in my early years so little attraction for me that my curiosity never led me to examine its text. I at length did so in consequence of a passage in the algebra which referred to the 47th proposition of the First Book. It occurred to me to look into ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb

... embarrassment, a more or less distressing curiosity."—He met little Lady Constance Quale's ruminant stare again in imagination, heard Lord Fallowfeild's blundering speech.—"Remember our luncheon to-day. It was flattering, at moments, wasn't it? And so if I do queer things, things off the conventional lines, who will be surprised? No one, I tell you, not even the most strait-laced or censorious. Allow me at least the privileges of my disabilities. I am a dwarf—a ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... many persons have a very queer idea of the suffragist. She is represented as a woman who dislikes home work and is absent from her home at all hours of the day and night. The most common picture is that in which the wife addresses a gathering of other women, while the husband ...
— The Woman and the Right to Vote • Rafael Palma

... her the first time she was permitted to see him, and his eyes had lights in them: "do you know, this isn't such a bad old world after all. Sometimes as I've lain here, it has looked twisted and queer. But there are things that straighten it out. To-day I feel as though I had a place in it—as though I could fight things and win out. What do you think, Peggy? Do you suppose there is something that I could do? You know what I mean—something that some one else ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon

... catch yourself. You'd better have Maggie sleep in your room for a while. Well, it's all pretty plain, Miss Agnes. We bury some things as deep as possible, especially if we don't want to remember that they ever happened. But the mind's a queer thing. It holds on pretty hard, and burying is not destroying. Then we get tired or nervous—maybe just holding the thing down and pretending it is not there makes us nervous—and up it pops, like the ghost of ...
— The Confession • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... the letter, but put it in his pocket, perhaps intending to do so, and a few days later, in Boston, when a reporter called, he happened to remember it. The reporter asked permission to print the queer document, and it appeared in his Mark Twain interview next morning. A few days later the writer of it sent a ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine

... flute, and played upon it to the delight of all the celestial auditors; but the mischievous urchin Cupid having dared to laugh at the queer face which the goddess made while playing, Minerva threw the instrument indignantly away, and it fell down to earth, and was found by Marsyas. He blew upon it, and drew from it such ravishing sounds that he was tempted to challenge Apollo himself to a musical contest. ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR

... lady's house; when he rather astonished us by hinting that he should like to go on with us to the Casa Grande, and could walk back. At the same time, it struck us that the youth, though so well dressed, had no luggage; and we began to understand the queer expression of the coachman's face when he saw him get into the carriage with us. So we stopped at the corner of the road, and the young gentleman ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor

... her head ashamed at having been betrayed into such an exhibition of weakness in public; an Owl, who, living habitually in the barn, regarded the others with suspicion as intruders, and possibly thieves; and, lastly, two queer Japanese birds, who had lived all the summer on the ornamental lake in ...
— More Tales in the Land of Nursery Rhyme • Ada M. Marzials

... sold again—blast 'im!" said Hurd, with a note of quite disproportionate exultation in his queer, cracked voice. "Now I'll set them snares. But ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... stifled—crushed—in misery—all I could do was to grasp my token—my Daisy Chain," and he pressed Margaret's hand as he said so. "And, behold, the tumult and despair were passed. I lay on the grass in the cloisters, and the Daisy Chain hung from the sky, and was drawing me upwards. There—it is a queer dream for a sober old country doctor. I don't know why I told you, don't tell ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge

... rather a curious place. There's a queer colony up there, you know: sort of out-laws, a little independent kingdom. Of course you've heard them spoken of; but I'm told they have nothing to do with the people in the valleys—rather look down on them, in fact. I suppose they're rough customers; but they must ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton

... crying as if his heart would break (Pilgrimage iii. 216 and 220). The same is done at the place Al-Multazam'"the attached to;" (ibid. 156) and various spots called Al-Mustajab, "where prayer is granted" (ibid. 162). At Jerusalem the Wailing place of the Jews" shows queer scenes; the worshippers embrace the wall with a peculiar wriggle crying out in Hebrew, "O build Thy House, soon, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton

... week after week. Whenever lesson hours were done she clamoured for Marcie Boyce, and Marcella was always eager to go to her. She would fly up stairs and passages, knock at the bedroom door, run down the steps to the queer little dressing-room where the roof nearly came on your head, and down more steps again to the sitting-room. Then when the door was shut, and she was crooning over the fire with her friend, she was entirely happy. The ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... wished, and played such strains of sweet music as no one in all the world has heard from that day to this. And as he played, queer old Argus lay down upon the grass and listened, and thought that he had not had so great a treat in all his life. But by and by those sweet sounds wrapped him in so strange a spell that all his eyes closed at once, and he ...
— Old Greek Stories • James Baldwin

... has always had a queer streak, although he has never said much, and though he was pardoned, it cost him everything he had. I can't help being sorry for Master Olof; I have always had a liking for him, even though ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg

... approved of Frank altogether; he didn't quite like the queer kinds of things that Frank did; for Frank's reputation at Merefield was very much what it was at Cambridge. He did ridiculous and undignified things. As a small boy, he had fought at least three pitched battles in the village, and that was not a proper thing ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson

... mornin'.—About his ways, he was spry and quick and impatient, and, except in a good company,—he used to say,—where he could get away at any minute, he didn't like to set still very long to once, but wanted to be off walkin', or rowin' round in one of them queer boats of his, and he was the solitariest creetur in his goin's about (except when he could get that schoolmistress to trail round with him) that ever you see in your life. He used to say that usin' two eyes and two ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various

... claimed that Daddy Longlegs must be much more than only a hundred years old. They thought that his queer, tottering walk alone was enough to show his ...
— The Tale of Daddy Longlegs - Tuck-Me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey

... Rose, to her own measureless relief, had stopped laughing, but she felt oddly faint and queer. Sir Jacques poured out a very small wineglassful of brandy, and made her drink it. How odd to have a bottle of brandy here, in Mr. Robey's study! ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... poor soul had seen a less fanciable maiden than herself in our village, or any other. But 'tis the mercy of Providence to hide reality from us where 'tis like to hurt most, and no doubt if our neighbours knew the naked truth of their queer appearances and uncomfortable natures, there would come a rush of them felo-de-sees and a lot of unhappiness ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts

... jerking—Frankie began to jerk about half an hour ago when we were sitting down a bit; but he's seemed queer since breakfast. And he didn't seem to ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson

... the horse was going a little too fast, and Tom was calling out, 'Gently! gently!' two strangers came up. 'What an odd thing that is!' said one: 'there is a cart going along, and I hear a carter talking to the horse, but yet I can see no one.' 'That is queer, indeed,' said the other; 'let us follow the cart, and see where it goes.' So they went on into the wood, till at last they came to the place where the woodman was. Then Tom Thumb, seeing his father, cried out, 'See, father, here I am with the cart, all right and safe! now take me down!' ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm

... one, and him readin' a book like a dead man without a civil word out of him! It's queer they'd be allowin' the sick ones to read books, when I'll bet it's the same lazy readin' in the house brought the half of them down with the consumption itself. (Raising his voice.) I'm thinking this whole shebang is a big, thievin' fake—and I've ...
— The Straw • Eugene O'Neill

... an elaborate wink, denoting extreme satisfaction, at Tom Ryfe. "If you were going through," said he, "I could tell you some funny stories. Queer tricks upon travellers I've seen in my time. Why I was the first person to find out the sinking-floor dodge in West Street. My evidence transported three people for life, and a fourth for fifteen years. I once ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville

... hastily; "the note was queer, though, wasn't is? They found it crumpled up in the jar of ammonia. Oh, there are lots of problems the newspapers have failed to see the significance of, let alone trying to ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds

... streets of Louisville, to inquire upon the subject of "yarn socks." The General informed him he never transacted business on the street, and suggested the propriety of calling at head-quarters. A short time after this the General met Igo on the street, and having heard something queer about Igo's forage account, requested information in regard thereto. Igo coolly remarked: "General, I never transact business on the street. You will please call at my quarters, when I shall be happy to afford you an insight ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett

... 'andsomer than 'elmets, I will say that for them. (They enter Modern Venice, amidst cries of "This way for Gondoala Tickets! Pass along, please! Keep to your right!" &c., &c.) It does have a foreign look, with all those queer names written up. Think it's like what it ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 30, 1892 • Various

... and watched for a long time with pitiless eyes. Then a queer, uneasy, wondering light began to develop in those dark, ominous eyes. She leaned forward the better to listen to the choked, inarticulate words that were pouring from the girl's lips. At last, moved by some power she could not have accounted ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon

... old leather bag she found a number of tin-types of queer looking men and women in old-fashioned clothes. And there was one picture of a very pretty little girl with long curls tied tightly back from her forehead and wearing a long dress and queer pantaloons which reached to her shoe-tops. And then out of the heap she pulled an old rag doll ...
— Raggedy Ann Stories • Johnny Gruelle

... said the poor tutor, in so tiny a voice that it was quite all the Prince could do to hear him. "Dear me! what is the matter? I certainly feel very queer; ...
— Prince Vance - The Story of a Prince with a Court in His Box • Eleanor Putnam

... Beck. He had talked himself with one of the sailors who was in charge of the officers' gig down by the landing-stairs while his chief was on shore; and that wasn't all he heard, but a lot of other queer things besides." Here he looked round him evidently with a satisfied feeling that he must have convinced them this time at ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie

... through Camden before people are about. There are Yankee soldiers at the bridge, but it will be all right you driving in, however early, to sell your stuff. Going out you ain't likely to meet with Yankees; but as it would look queer, you taking your garden truck out of the town, it's just as well to be on the road before people are about. Once you get five or six miles the other side you might be going to the next ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty

... hardly think that the last bewitches you with young memories as it does me. For the same reason I come back to damask roses, after having raised a good many of the rarer varieties. I like to go to operas and concerts, but there are queer little old homely sounds that are better than music to me. However, I suppose it's ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... buildings were low by the standards of a contragravity-using people, the highest barely a thousand feet and few over five hundred, and they were more closely set than Sword-Worlders were accustomed to, with broad roadways between. In several places there were queer arrangements of crossed roadways, apparently leading nowhere. Harkaman laughed when ...
— Space Viking • Henry Beam Piper

... Jack said; "I thought I understood Nell as well as I did you or myself, but I begin to think I doant understand her as much as I thought. It comes of her being a lass, of course, but it's queer too," and Jack shook his head over the mysterious nature of lasses. "You can't understand 'em," he went on again, thoughtfully. "Now, if you wanted some clothes, Harry, and you were out of work, I should just buy you a ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty

... that abyss—frayed fine linen cheaply laundered, a tie of one time smartness showing signs of too long wear, a suit from the best kind of tailor with shiny spot glistening here, patch peeping there, a queer unkemptness about the hair and skin—these the beginnings of a road that leads straight and short to the barrel-house, the park bench, and the police station. Because, when a man strikes into that stretch of the road to perdition, he ceases to be one of our ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips

... of returning. Asking him why he did not he said that it would be necessary for him to get a wife and a lot of other things. I suggested the possibility of boarding in another family. He shook his head and said: "Niggers is queer folks, boss. 'Pears to me they don' know what they gwine do. Ef I go out and live in a man's house like as not I run away wid dat man's wife." The second illustration is taken from an unpublished manuscript by Rev. J. ...
— The Negro Farmer • Carl Kelsey

... on board, we determined on making for the nearest point of the Bahama Islands, and luckily reached a queer little island called Green Turtle Quay, on the extreme north of the group, where was a small English colony, without being seen by the cruisers. We had not been there long, however, before one of them came sweeping round the shore, and ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha

... a queer thing," said the boy. "I should have thought Caroline was one to care about such matters more than I, but perhaps she means to convert him. So! I did think Caroline was good for something, but it is no affair of mine; and I shall be ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... the fourth-classman was a bear—or a fool—for extra duty. He had gone out for half a dozen teams and applied for membership in the exacting Math Club and Writing Club. The Commandant glanced up; Grayson was still in his extreme brace. The Commandant suddenly had the queer idea that Grayson could hold it until it ...
— The Adventurer • Cyril M. Kornbluth

... was acting queer lately. He was worried. Told me he saw something, and he was going to know for sure. He borrowed my switch-blade knife that my wife gave me. And he went out looking for something. Then I heard him a-running, and I looked up, ...
— Let'em Breathe Space • Lester del Rey

... make a fool of oneself, commit an absurdity. Adj. ridiculous, ludicrous; comical; droll, funny, laughable, pour rire, grotesque, farcical, odd; whimsical, whimsical as a dancing bear; fanciful, fantastic, queer, rum, quizzical, quaint, bizarre; screaming; eccentric &c. (unconformable) 83; strange, outlandish, out of the way, baroque, weird; awkward &c. (ugly) 846. extravagant, outre, monstrous, preposterous, bombastic, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... thing like that. Besides, it isn't fair to Lu and Ruth. You ought to give them a chance to set themselves straight. You've no right to believe things of them till you've their own word for it that it's true. Give them a chance, and if they act queer ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann

... was on the edge of a hill, with a wood behind it - and the chalk-quarry on one side and the gravel-pit on the other. Down at the bottom of the hill was a level plain, with queer-shaped white buildings where people burnt lime, and a big red brewery and other houses; and when the big chimneys were smoking and the sun was setting, the valley looked as if it was filled with ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit

... the Big River for a brief visit before leaving on their long, difficult journey to the far-away Southland. Farewells are always rather sad, and this particular farewell had left Peter with a lump in his throat,—a queer, choky feeling. ...
— The Adventures of Lightfoot the Deer • Thornton W. Burgess

... than there is between the primitive man and the modern Caucasian man. This creature, hairy and brown as a squirrel, stunted in stature, skinny of limb, was our immediate progenitor. So say the confident scientific men. The owner of the queer ape-like skull found at Neanderthal belonged to a race that was ultimately to develop into Shakespeares and Newtons and Napoleons. In all the enormous series that had its first term in the primeval ooze and ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman

... consumption these last two years, and she works to support them both. She's a hard-working woman, is Martha Cullen; she works in the fields harvesting just now; if I could feel I'd be welcome I would go to sit with her husband sometimes, but she's very queer, she won't let a neighbor come near him, I have tried more than once. It seems hard on him to be bedridden there day after day without a soul to speak to; or any one ...
— His Big Opportunity • Amy Le Feuvre

... one has," said John Gilman meditatively, "and it's a queer thing. I can't see why people don't plan a house the way they ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter

... Slapstean," he says, "there stood until a few years agone the cottage in which there lived many years sen one Isaac Haw, who in his day did hunt the fox with George Villiers, and many a queer story did he use to tell. Here be one. There lived on the moor not over an hour's ride from Kirkby Moorside, one Betty Scaife, who had a daughter Betty, a good like wench." George Villiers seeing this girl one day is said to have induced her to become his mistress either by force or with ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home

... be distinguished when the eye happens accidentally to focus itself exactly upon the spot occupied by the unobtrusive caterpillar. Other larvae which frequent pine trees have their bodies covered with tufts of green hairs that serve to imitate the peculiar pine foliage. One queer little caterpillar, which lives upon the hoary foliage of the sea-buckthorn, has a grey-green body, just like the buckthorn leaves, relieved by a very conspicuous red spot which really represents in size and colour one of the berries that grow around ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen

... what happened. For a time I was, as it were, stunned; I had nothing to say. It was just as if I had never heard of this idea of leaving the world before. Then I perceived an unaccountable change in my bodily sensations. It was a feeling of lightness, of unreality. Coupled with that was a queer sensation in the head, an apoplectic effect almost, and a thumping of blood vessels at the ears. Neither of these feelings diminished as time went on, but at last I got so used to them ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells

... a whole lot. Fact is, before we landed I almost had him sized up for queer, but when he introduced me to the Countess I saw my mistake. He must be the real thing. She certainly is! You come ...
— His Own People • Booth Tarkington

... but with all his descendants. God is a God of righteousness and therefore in a future world He will torture every human being who dies without availing himself of a certain "plan of salvation" designed to give him a chance of escape. This is a queer sort of righteousness! The plan of salvation consists in sending His own Son—a Son who has existed eternally, which the rest of us have not—to live a few years on earth and go through a certain programme ending with a violent ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell

... The queer thing about the morbid-minded specialists in fabricated woe is that they believe themselves to be telling the whole truth of human life instead of telling only the worser half of it. They expunge from their records of ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton

... again and began what he expected would be a perfect imitation of one of Bobby Bobolink's songs. But somehow there seemed to be something wrong. They were very strange notes that he uttered. And the moment she heard them Mrs. Bobolink said aloud to her husband, "What in the world is that queer call? I never heard anything like it ...
— The Tale of Bobby Bobolink - Tuck-me-In Tales • Arthur Scott Bailey

... "That's queer," he said thoughtfully. "Margovan is the only man in the office here whom I know well and like. When he came in this morning and we had passed the usual greetings some singular impulse prompted me to say: 'Oh, I beg your pardon, Mr. Margovan, but I neglected to ask your ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce

... This queer bird—also shown in the heading above—is found in the tropical and temperate regions of the globe, and frequents marshes and shallow lakes. In deep water flamingoes swim, but they prefer to wade, for then they can bend down their necks and rake the bottom with their peculiar-shaped bill in ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... this whole affair was partly managed or manipulated by the girl's father. Jew Westbrook knew that Shelley was related to rich and titled people, and that he was certain, if he lived, to become Sir Percy, and to be the heir of his grandfather's estates. Hence it may be that Harriet's queer conduct was not ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr

... it in the linen hamper," she said. "It must be Mr. Halsey's, but it seems queer how ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... the raven were thinking so—the three chickens who lived in a queer little house in one corner of the yard thought so, and huddled the closer together, as they settled themselves for the night. For though it was only half-past three in the afternoon, they thought it was no use sitting up any longer on such a make-believe ...
— The Tapestry Room - A Child's Romance • Mrs. Molesworth

... face and waistcoat. He rolled in, upon two little turned legs, and having bobbed gravely to the Bar, who bobbed gravely to him, put his little legs underneath his table, and his little three-cornered hat upon it; and when Mr. Justice Stareleigh had done this, all you could see of him was two queer little eyes, one broad pink face, and somewhere about half of a big and very ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... shake hands, young man. It is a hollow social custom. With Damon and Pythias it meant something. One was ready to die for the other, and that hand-clasp meant friendship until death. How many hand shakings mean that nowadays? Besides," with a queer smile, "I have just been cutting up a broiler that I intend to cook for my dinner. Come in, you are welcome on the conditions ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin

... mother engaged as you are, and faith I would not have missed the sight for a thousand guineas, paid down on the nail. Ah! Mistress Burton, it reminds me of days gone by, but I won't say I have no hopes that they will ever return," and our visitor twisted his eyes about in what I thought a very queer way, ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston

... of the caverns, sometimes stooping to get through and sometimes standing beneath domes thirty and forty feet high. And always that queer, mystical light, with exaggerated shadows and sometimes black darkness ahead, where could be heard the drip, drip, drip of water in invisible lakes. In time of siege the holders of this cave, with granaries filled and with herds of cattle ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon

... "There's something queer about this," mused the famous electrician. "Widding tells me he submitted his idea to the Navy Department over a year ago. Think of that! An idea ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett

... seen anything more beautiful than the scenery of Port Louis harbour. High above the town rises La Pouce, or the thumb mountain, clothed with trees to its very top. It forms one of an amphitheatre of queer-shaped mountains, at the foot of which nestles comfortably the capital of the island. To the left, seen over a range of hills, rises "Pieter Bot," a mountain so called from a Dutchman who, in a spirit ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston

... helplessly from time to time, and then hid her head ashamed at having been betrayed into such an exhibition of weakness in public; an Owl, who, living habitually in the barn, regarded the others with suspicion as intruders, and possibly thieves; and, lastly, two queer Japanese birds, who had lived all the summer on the ornamental lake in ...
— More Tales in the Land of Nursery Rhyme • Ada M. Marzials

... and reached the place where a hundred roads crossed, as Moglung had said. But he stopped there to rest and chew betel-nut. Soon he began to feel queer and dizzy, and he fell asleep, not knowing anything. When he woke up, he wandered along up the mountain until he reached a house at the border of a big meadow, and thought he would stop and ask his ...
— Philippine Folk-Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss, Berton L. Maxfield, W. H. Millington,

... in his yellow coat and trousers and his queer pointed hat, sat on a magnificent pony a little in front of the crowd ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... I was awakened by something white, hard, and round which rolled gently and stopped still quite close to me. It was not alive, although it had a queer smell, and I wondered why it moved at all. Presently I heard voices and there appeared a little man, and with him somebody who was not a man because it was differently dressed and spoke in a higher voice. I saw that they had sticks in their hands and thought ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard

... "Queer we can't see any of the boys," muttered Mr. Wilder in a low voice. "I know they are tired. But, all things considered, one of them at least ought to be on watch if for nothing else than to keep the cattle from breaking away. That ...
— Comrades of the Saddle - The Young Rough Riders of the Plains • Frank V. Webster

... and see for myself what it all meant. Two senses had been affected—touch and hearing—and I could not believe that I had been deceived. So, with a lighted candle, I went stealthily forth on my unpleasant journey into the upper regions of this queer little old house. ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various

... "It's queer for bushes to be growing so far out from shore," muttered Tom, "and it shows how shallow the water must be about here. You had better back ...
— The High School Boys' Fishing Trip • H. Irving Hancock

... true thet this hyur ain't the fust painter I've comed acrosst. About fifteen yeern ago I moved to Loozyanny, an' thur I met a painter, an' a queer ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid

... with a queer look, "if you had smoked that black devil and I hadn't—all would have been over between ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson

... I am particularly fond of this kind of travel," Frank confided to Jack. "It's all right as long as we remain on the surface, but I'll bet it would feel queer to be ...
— The Boy Allies Under Two Flags • Ensign Robert L. Drake

... Toby could not make anything out of the queer-looking marks they saw revealed by the ...
— In Camp on the Big Sunflower • Lawrence J. Leslie

... raise Queer ladies in the olden days. Either the type had not been fixed, Or else Zoology got mixed. I envy not primeval man This female on the feathered plan. We only have, I'm glad to say, Two kinds of human bird to-day— Women and warriors, who still Wear feathers ...
— The Mythological Zoo • Oliver Herford

... mind and do not discuss the fast or any of the symptoms with anyone except the adviser. It is best not to tell any outsiders about the fast, for the public has some queer ideas on the subject. If you are afraid, or if you have to fight with neighbors, friends, relatives, or perhaps with the health authorities, as sometimes happens, it is better not to take ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker

... the Moosefoot Injuns?" began the trader slowly. Nick nodded. "They're a queer lot o' neches. I used to do a deal o' trade wi' them on the Peace River, 'fore they was located on a reserve. They were the last o' the old-time redskin hunters. Dessay they were the last to hunt the buffalo into the drives. They're pretty fine men now, I guess, ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum

... childhood—an only child for six years—and family letters show that I was "always and for ever talking," asking questions, making queer remarks, or allowing free play to a vivid imagination, which my parents thought it wise to restrain. Father felt called upon to write for a child's paper about Caty's Gold Fish, which were only ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn

... waistcoats, and flannel shirts, and such like, and oncommon good they be, too, and oncommon cheap. He wor givin' we a bit of a lecture loike, on lions and tigers, and ryenosed-horses, and such-loike beasts, and on they queer creatures wot lived before the flood. Lord! there was one beast with a long neck, and paddles for swimmin' with, as made we all ready to bust with laughin' when him showed us the pictur' ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon

... man came from, and when I told them I came from California they looked incredulous, having probably never of such a country. Then I strolled down through the fish-market, where there were a great many queer fish exposed for sale by ancient and slimy old men and women, whose hands and aprons were covered with fish-scales, and whose faces had a very fishy expression. They offered me fish in every shape—skinned, gutted, chopped up, or whole, just as I pleased to buy them. One wrinkled old woman, ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne

... be a man he fancied he wor i' love wi' a young woman 'at lived claise to his mother's,—one at wor just as queer a karacter as hissen, wi this difference, shoo could haddle ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley

... lord mayor, who was arrayed in his robes, chain, and all the glories of his office, stood the toastmaster, who announced the toasts in a manner fit to make an American think himself dreaming,—something, in fact, after this sort, in a queer singsong way, with comical cadences, brought up at the end with a sharp snap: "Me lawds, la-a-a-dies and gentleme-e-e-n, by commawnd of the Right Honorable the Lawrd Marr, I cha-a-awrge you fill your glawse-e-e-s and drink to the health ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White

... telegraphed up to all the children, of the way we went to muster when we were boys together? Ah well! I ought not to have supposed that all worlds were like this old world. Indeed, I often say this is the queerest world I ever knew. Perhaps theirs is not so queer, and it is I ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale

... him. He had smiled and said in a shrill voice that he thought Jack was a very nice boy. He wore a light grey-green Palm Beach suit and carried a big brown leather briefcase that looked too heavy for his soda straw-thin legs and arms. He was queer-looking because his waist was so narrow and his back so humped. And when he took off his tan Panama hat, a white fuzz exploded from his scalp. His face was pale as the moon in daylight. His broad smile showed teeth that Jack knew ...
— They Twinkled Like Jewels • Philip Jose Farmer

... imprinted it, with a stencil and black paint, on pepper-bags, and baskets of anatto, and cigar-boxes, and bales of all kinds of dutiable merchandise, in testimony that these commodities had paid the impost, and gone regularly through the office. Borne on such queer vehicle of fame, a knowledge of my existence, so far as a name conveys it, was carried where it had never been before, and, I hope, will never ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... very severely, "What for you stop too long?" But he walked up to me, without a word, and put down before me a little dirty handkerchief, all tied up in knots, which I finally made up my mind to open. It was full of the most curious sweet-meats and candy, little curls of cocoanut, frosted with sugar; queer fruits, speckled with seeds; and some nuts that looked exactly like carved ram's-heads with horns. We had to accept this as a peace-offering, ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton

... pulled up in front of the Perkins' house and the idiot lad with queer cries of delight came stumbling out to meet him. The girl named Gladys ran out too, and the old man handed her a sheaf of glowing crimson dahlias. She buried her face in them and hugged them to her in a passion ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith

... gasped Sally May; "well, of all the queer schools! Ask a teacher if we may have a midnight supper? Well, I ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett

... heart, and thoroughly so, and yet, in some sort, sly,—at least, endowed with a sort of tact and wisdom that are akin to craft, and would impel him, I think, to take an antagonist in flank, rather than to make a bull-run at him right in front. But, on the whole, I like this sallow, queer, sagacious visage, with the homely human sympathies that warmed it; and, for my small share in the matter, would as lief have Uncle Abe for a ruler as any man whom it would have been practicable to put in ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... with a horrid headache (to adopt a suggestion of GILBERT's), When too freely you've dined, or too heavily wined, or munched too many walnuts or filberts; When your brain is a maze, and creation a haze, then each queer social craze—there are many!— Gets your wits in a spool, and there isn't a fool for your thoughts ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, May 23, 1891 • Various

... in something which was like a half-laugh. His queer, sharp, incomprehensible face, his queer, unmoved voice were too extraordinarily unlike anything she had ever ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... that don't seem so queer to me as it used to? It seems all right fur pertickler friends to call me Jim, but clo'es is what puts the Mister into a man. I felt it comin' when I looked into the glass. Says I to myself: 'Jim, that's Mr. Fenton as is now afore ye. Look ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland

... "Yes, sir, ain't it queer? I was thinking the same. I ain't done nothing but be civil to the chaps since we come aboard, but they're as pleased as Punch to see us back again. They're a bit disappointed though that Sir John didn't go in for giving the ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn

... the night of the musicale, when he had raced across the Square to tell her of his talk with the little lady. Sue, as he remembered afterward, had listened abstractedly. She would have preferred at the time his running in to talk about herself rather than about his queer ambitions. She was ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith

... profuse in his thanks, go down a few steps before him, and then he turned back to say to his nephew, "Well, you are a queer fellow! you keep me here ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac

... still remember Betty Wells, and they shake their heads as they say, "Well, you see, the old woman had a very queer-looking eye," giving you to understand that it was with that particular eye she worked all ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield

... there yet, grubbing at some papers. Come on over, and tell him what you have told me. I believe the lass will turn up all right, but it does look rather queer." ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish

... upon me. "By Jove, old chap," he said, with a queer note in his voice, "you touch me awfully close. You're like men of my own family—you stir something in me that I used to know. The word of a fighting man—that's the same for yours and mine; and that's why I've ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough

... favour at Croisette's girlish face, I thought: Marie and I were dark and ugly by the side of the boy. But he turned from him now with a queer, excited gesture, thumping his gold-headed cane on the floor. He called his servants in a loud, rasping voice, and left the room in seeming anger, driving them before him, the one carrying his dag, ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman

... examined the photograph for a moment. A queer expression entered his eyes. He touched a bell at his elbow, and an ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... backstays and shrouds parted under the terrific strain suddenly thrown upon them, then an ear-splitting crash as the three masts went over the bows, and I found myself struggling and fighting to free myself from the raffle of the wrecked mizenmast. I felt very dazed and queer, and a bit sick, for I was dimly conscious of the fact that I had been struck on the head by something when the masts fell, and upon putting up my hand I found that my hair was wet with something warm that was soaking it and trickling down into my eyes and ears. Then I heard the ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood

... shirts, papers, and dresses of all kinds out of the windows. They are not rogues, these French; they are not stealing, burning, or doing much harm. In the Tuileries they have dressed up some of the statues, broken some, and stolen nothing but queer dresses. I say, Frank, you must not hate the French; hate the Germans if you like. The French laugh at us a little and call out Goddam in the streets; but to-day, in civil war, when they might have put a bullet through our heads, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... tide, and reports that Jack was knocked off the foretopsail yardarm, and they never see'd him again. He shouted 'Guidbye, I cannot hold on any longer.' I asked God to have his body picked up and sent home, and while I was doing it, a queer thought came over me that little Bobby was being washed overboard from the Savannah. I hope it's not true, and that God won't take him from us as well. ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman

... admiration filled her mind. She was primitive, elemental. A little tingle of delight thrilled her to know that this strong man wanted her and would fight to win what his heart craved. After all he was her first lover. A queer shame distressed the girl at the memory of his kisses, for through all the anger, chagrin, and wounded pride had come to her the first direct realization of what sex meant. Her alarmed innocence pushed this ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine

... remember times when a word they know quite well and use often has suddenly seemed very strange to them. Perhaps they began repeating the word half to themselves again and again, and wondered why they had never noticed before what a queer word it is. Then generally they have forgotten all about it, and the next time they have used the word it has not ...
— Stories That Words Tell Us • Elizabeth O'Neill

... ask to see her father then, so as to get a few minutes conversation with the other. Sarah would be surprised to see him, of course, at this queer hour, ...
— Fred Fenton on the Track - or, The Athletes of Riverport School • Allen Chapman

... brought from the country of Flanders, where he had sold his mechanical secrets. He bought a splendid house in Rue St. Montfumier, which is still to be seen, and is the astonishment of the passers-by, because it has certain very queer round humps fashioned upon the stones of the wall. Carandas, the hater, found many notable changes at the house of his friend, the dyer, for the good man had two sweet children, who, by a curious chance, presented no resemblance either to the mother or to the father. But as it is necessary that ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac

... eerie shadows now, in the queer light of the leader's lamp. Small fluorescent markings guided them. The last man grunted ...
— A World is Born • Leigh Douglass Brackett

... of the queer anomalies of a volunteer army were to be found. So strongly ingrained in the heart of the British youth of good family is the love of country, that when he is unable to get his commission he goes in any capacity. I heard of a little chap, too small for the regular service, who has gone to the ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... do, though that's a queer way to put it. You talk as though you had come to smoke a ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts

... has probably come home with her head full of queer-fangled notions which would be out of keeping with our institutions. Just the reason why she shouldn't be chosen. We are greatly troubled as to the result, dear, for though we expect to win, the prejudice ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant

... he made up his mind to return to the house, But the merry wind pushed itself under his blouse; And it roared and it roared, as he puffed and he ran, Till it just knocked over this queer little man. "Ho-ho!" said Mike, and he said "He-he! I'll get up again, Old Wind, ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various

... towards the portraits on the wall, she flippantly asked one of those cavaliers to oblige her fancy for company by stepping down from his frame. The temerity of the request led her to prudently withdraw it almost as soon as conceived: old paintings had been said to play queer tricks in extreme cases, and the shadows this afternoon were funereal enough for anything in the shape of revenge on an intruder who embodied the antagonistic modern spirit to such an extent as she. However, Paula still stood before the picture ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy

... in a queer condition!" said Mr. Cruncher, more and more disturbed. "Wot can she have been a takin', to keep her courage up? Hark! There's the roll of them dreadful carts! You ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens

... when I perceived you accost a strange-looking person—a courier from the moon, perhaps! You may remember you sauntered with him as far as Sir William Miller's. I would have joined you, but seeing the family standing in the balcony, I did not wish them to suppose that I knew anything of such queer company." ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter

... think so?" Lila smiled a little doubtfully. "It sounds like one of the sophists—'to make the worse appear the better reason.' I'd love to believe it, and you are sweet to me." She laid one arm caressingly across Bea's shoulders. "It is queer that I don't mind more when you ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz

... in spite of every effort it was impossible to discover the slightest analogy between the writing of the anonymous letters and the impressions left on the blotting-pad of the duke. The countess and her assistants in this queer task, therefore, came to the conclusion that they would have to search in ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy

... England's proud fleets was collected. The gig was waiting at the point. I stepped into her with as much dignity as I could command and we pulled out of the harbour. When we got into the tide-way the boat began to bob about a good deal. I felt very queer. "Edkins, is this what you call a storm?" I asked, wishing the boat would ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston

... confidential, trustin' smile that sparkles with good faith and good nature, and kind of thrills you with the feelin' that you must be a lot better'n you ever suspected. Honest, after one application I forgets the queer rig she has on, the mud-colored hair, and the way her chest slumps in. Whoever she might be and whatever she might want, I'm strong for givin' her the helpin' hand. If I could have gone in and led old K. W. out by ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford

... immediately directed to the old man. Mrs Rayleigh, who was a fine lady, and had never seen so queer a specimen of a critic as Mr Roe, was a little alarmed at his uncouth pronunciation. And Mr Gillingham Howard made a feeble and unsuccessful effort to deaden ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various

... rolled down her cheeks. "He was old and was tired, and everyone he loved had gone before him. It will be like going home to meet them again. He was grim and cross and suspicious, but I loved him all the same, and in his queer way I am sure that he liked me too. I'm thankful he is at rest! ... 'Will write details.' Thursday!—that means that she will write on Thursday evening. Mrs Thornton is nothing if not businesslike. We shall hear from her by the second ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... light he could on these interesting questions, and Sir Robert thoughtfully ran his hands through his side-whiskers, while, with an apologetic "One moment, I beg," or "Very odd, very; that must go down verbatim," he entered the gist of Mr. Ketchum's queer remarks ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various

... Claudio had a queer friend called Lucio, and Lucio saw a chance of freedom for Claudio if Claudio's beautiful sister Isabella ...
— Beautiful Stories from Shakespeare • E. Nesbit

... swung into the road, the Subaltern could not help thinking that this was indeed a queer send-off. A few sergeants' wives, standing at the corner of the Parade ground, were saying good-bye to their friends as they passed. "Good-bye, Bill;" "Good luck, Sam!" Not a hint of emotion in their voices. One might have thought that husbands ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"

... heartily in the shout of laughter which we indulged in. 'He is a queer character — Alphonse,' he said. 'By and by I will tell you his history; in the meanwhile ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard

... been rather cold at first, but Herzog's amiability had thawed her. This man, with his slow speech and queer eyes, produced a fascinating effect on one like a serpent. He was repugnant, and yet, in spite of one's self one was led on. He, had at once introduced the grain question, but in this he found himself face to face with the real Madame Desvarennes; and no politeness held good on her part when it was ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet

... little creatures (Smynthurus luteus) coquetting together. The male, which is much smaller than the female, runs round her, and they butt one another, standing face to face and moving backward and forward like two playful lambs. Then the female pretends to run away and the male runs after her with a queer appearance of anger, gets in front and stands facing her again; then she turns coyly round, but he, quicker and more active, scuttles round too, and seems to whip her with his antennae; then for a bit they stand ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin

... fish-houses and flakes that crop out like queer mushrooms on stilts all over the edges of the cove, and it was a shaky damsel who shuddered over the passing of a wobbly plank. The crew of two waited below in the boat, and smiled encouragingly, so that I had to try and show more bravery ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick

... slowly, "but three days after Madame Danterre's death a foreigner asked to see me who refused to give his name to my clerk. I had him shown in, and thought him a superior man—not, perhaps, a gentleman, but a man with brains. He asked in rather queer English whether I would object to giving him all the information I could, without betraying confidence, as to Sir David Bright and his wife. I thought for a moment that he was your Florentine detective, but then I reflected that ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward

... certainly acting queer. He was circling around, sniffing, sniffing, his nose in the air, his tail wagging. He edged over to the door ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock

... leg, anyway," said Mr Penhaligon sympathetically, and stared about the room. "Life's a queer business," he went on after a pause, his eyes fixed on the old beam whence the key depended. "To think that I be eatin' the last meal in this old kitchen. An' yet so many have eaten meals here an' warmed ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)

... like a play-actor, just the same as he'd seen at Carlisle. He was a captain, and he murdered a king, and then he was made king himself, and the ghost came and sat in his chair at a great feast he gave. Lord o' me! but it was queer. First he came on when he was going to do the murder and let wit he saw a dagger floating before him. He started and jumped same as our big tom cat when Mouser comes round about him. You'd have died of laughing. Then he comes ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine

... it would rattle and squeak; it would make noises like swiftly torn canvas, or like a steam siren in a hurry. It would climb up to the heavens and come banging down to hell. And every thing with queer, tormenting motions, gliding and writhing, wriggling, jerking, jumping. Peter would never have known what to make of such music, if he had not had it here made visible before his eyes, in the behavior of the half-naked goddesses and the black-coated ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair

... noticed for some time that Josiah Allen had acted queer. He would seem lost in thought anon or oftener, and then seemin'ly roust himself up and try ...
— Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition • Marietta Holley

... to you; because I fancy I shall have to be put under restraint if I do live. I don't always know what I am doing in the least. I know now, though. You can bear me out, doctor, isn't my brain in a very queer state?" ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... us what your next adventures are, Mary," exclaimed one clear voice. "Your family ought to be named Gulliver instead of Ware, for you are always travelling around to such queer, out-of-the-way places. I suppose you haven't the faintest idea where you'll be six ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston

... at Black Tanks the expressman saw Texas Dick and Juan Brincos with our ponies," said Henry. "What a queer name that is!—Juan Brincos, John Jumper, or Jumping Jack, as ...
— Captured by the Navajos • Charles A. Curtis

... at frequent intervals, so that I might not have the trouble of dragging it about the country, but could collect it on my return journey, if I wanted it, and should push on right into the interior, up into Mashonaland, and, possibly, farther still. The Mashonas are queer chaps, I'll allow; but they're all right if you take them the right way, make their headmen a few presents, take care to obtain permission before entering their country, and make it perfectly clear to them that your only object in desiring to enter their territory is sport, and trade with them. ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood

... particular, but merely on account of a kind of devilish comfort he got out of it. I never could get into a sound sleep but he would fetch me out of bed, all in a cold sweat, with one of those dreadful war-whoops. A queer being—very queer being; no respect for anything or anybody. Sometimes he called me "Johnny." And he kept a fiddle, and a cat. He played execrably. This seemed to distress the cat, and so the cat would howl. Nobody could sleep ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... a lot of girls, my boys, and drunk a lot of beer, And I’ve met with some of both, chaps, as has left me mighty queer; But for beer to knock you sideways, and for girls to make you sigh, You must camp at Lazy Harry’s, ...
— The Old Bush Songs • A. B. Paterson

... get out before we starve, we must get out before we starve," sang the regular blows of the bar to a queer little tune which Malipieri had ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... day more," cried Patty Hirst, surveying with deep interest the large new box which stood by the side of the chest of drawers in her bedroom; "just one day! How dreadfully quickly the time has come! I feel quite queer when I think about it. I can scarcely believe that before the end of the week both I and my luggage will be a whole hundred miles away, and settled at Morton Priory. I do wonder how I ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil

... side and tells me that honesty is the best policy, and to never lie, 'cause my character as a man will depend on the start I make as a boy. He don't want me to go through life regretting the past, and being afraid of the cars for fear some act of my younger days will become known and queer me. I guess pa ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck

... always been in this same little queer old shop on Prytania Street, at least to the memory of the oldest inhabitant in the neighbourhood. When or how they came, or how they stayed, no one knew; it was enough that they were there, like a sort of ancestral fixture to the street. ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar

... sunshine in front of this hut sits the dwarf himself, cutting broom-sticks with a knife out of the straightest of a bundle of ash saplings that lie beside him. He is dressed in a queer mixture of native and European costume, but otherwise time has ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard

... Beauclerc almost as well as his father; he was well read, and two histories were dedicated to him, William of Malmesbury's, and Geoffrey of Monmouth's wonderful chronicle of the old British kings, whose blood flowed in Robert's veins; that chronicle—wrought out of queer Welsh stories—that served as a foundation for Edward's claims on Scotland, and whence came our ...
— Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... Interplanetary Power rose from his chair and walked to the window. Below spread the roaring inferno of New York, greatest city in the Solar System, a strange place of queer beauty and weighty materialism, dreamlike in its super-skyscraper construction, but utilitarian in its purpose, for it was a port of ...
— Empire • Clifford Donald Simak

... Grand Officers (except Grand Master) shall be selected out of that body"—meaning the past Grand Stewards. This act was amazing. Already the Craft had let go its power to elect the Wardens, and now the choice of the Grand Master was narrowed to the ranks of an oligarchy in its worst form—a queer outcome of Masonic equality. Three months later the Grand Stewards presented a memorial asking that they "might form themselves into a special lodge," with special jewels, etc. Naturally this bred discontent and apprehension, ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton

... this vehement, fiery way, she had been regarding him with an expression of faint curiosity. "I believe you do really mean it," she said, wonderingly, lingering over the words; "you always were a queer fellow." ...
— Dr. Heidenhoff's Process • Edward Bellamy

... said her brother; 'don't spoil the first morning by going off into a howl for nothing. No one supposes you wanted to drown a lot of people for the sake of watching a shipwreck, only, as Alie says, you should be more careful. Strangers might think you a very queer little girl if they heard you say ...
— The Rectory Children • Mrs Molesworth

... probably have been the most remarkable work of fiction by an American author that ever masqueraded in the quaker garments of fact. From title-page to colophon—on which he would have insisted—the book would have been one studied effort to quiz and queer (a favorite word of his) the innocent and willing-to-be-deluded reader. "Tell your sister for me," I recall his saying, "what a kind, good, and deserving man I am. How I love little children and ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... well-kept road. They reached the woods, and wandered about there a long time; then they lunched very heartily at a country inn; then climbed on to the mountains, admired the views, rolled stones down and clapped their hands, watching the queer droll way in which the stones hopped along like rabbits, till a man passing below, unseen by them, began abusing them in a loud ringing voice. Then they lay full length on the short dry moss of yellowish-violet colour; then ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev

... looking very quaint and queer in his livery coat, drab breeches, and white stockings, came to invite me to the table, where I found Mr. B. and his sisters and guests sitting at the fruit and wine. There were port, sherry, madeira, and one bottle of claret, all very good; but they ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... to live your thanks, if you think they're worth while. I reckon that's what our two sisters would say on the subject. Don't let there be any more talk about dying like there was to-day, that's all, you know. And oh, by Jove! doesn't it feel queer to be gabbling this way, when you remember what we've just come out of—those grinning brutes down there, with their red mouths in their white shirt fronts, so to speak. Ugh! I don't want to think of it, but I'm hanged if I can help it. I say, did ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson

... honest at heart, and thoroughly so, and yet, in some sort, sly,—at least, endowed with a sort of tact and wisdom that are akin to craft, and would impel him, I think, to take an antagonist in flank, rather than to make a bull-run at him right in front. But, on the whole, I liked this sallow, queer, sagacious visage, with the homely human sympathies that warmed it; and, for my small share in the matter, would as lief have Uncle Abe for a ruler as any man whom it would have been practicable to ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields

... see him again. She was little less indifferent than she seemed; her motive was little more than curiosity. She had never seen that manner of man before. Evidently he was a " furriner "from the " settlemints." No man in the mountains had a smooth, round face like his, or wore such a queer hat, such a soft, white shirt, and no galluses," or carried such a shiny, weak-looking stick, or owned a dog that he couldn't make mind him. She was not wholly contemptuous, however. She had felt vaguely the meaning of his politeness and deference. ...
— A Mountain Europa • John Fox Jr.

... they made a little pair of trousers out of an old gray woolen skirt of Aunt Abigail's. This was for practice, before they cut into the piece of new blue serge that the storekeeper had sent up. Cousin Ann showed them how to pin the pattern on the goods and they each cut out one piece. Those flat, queer-shaped pieces of cloth certainly did look less like a pair of trousers to Betsy than anything she had ever seen. Then one of the girls read aloud very slowly the mysterious- sounding directions from the wrapper of the pattern about how to ...
— Understood Betsy • Dorothy Canfield

... what we will all do," cried Major Arms, with enthusiasm, "we'll all go to the City to-morrow night, and we'll see that dance. I tell you it's worth it. It's a queer thing, utterly unlike anything I have ever seen. It is a sort of cross between a cake-walk and an Indian war-dance. Jove! how it carried me back!" Arms began to hum. "That's it, pretty near, isn't ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... very old book, and very queer. It has a brown leather back—not russia—and stiff little gold flowers and ornaments all the way down, where Miller's Dictionary has gold swans in crowns, ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... at the last, I am going to tell you something of the ways and doings of one of the queer little people, whom I ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... something to tell you which will hurt you very much,'" Westerling read on, "'but you must recollect that I was always regarded as a little queer. And I don't think people will hold you to blame on my account. I hope they will sympathize with you for having such a son. You will have heard the story from the men of the company, but I also want ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer

... break through the clouds," and, going again to the window, Hugh looked out into the yard, where the shrubbery and trees were just discernible in the grayish light of the December moon. "That's a big drift by the lower gate," he continued; "and queer shaped, too. Come see, mother. Isn't that a shawl, or an apron, or ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes

... differently fro' what yo did just now, mon," said the miller, regarding him narrowly and distrustfully. "An yo look differently too. There's a queer glimmer abowt your een that ey didna notice efore, and that ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... also trained their boys to steal. They praised them when they succeeded in doing so without being found out, and punished them only when caught in the act. The reason for this queer custom was this: the people were often engaged in war, and as they had no baggage wagons following their army, and no special officer to furnish food, they had to depend entirely upon the provisions they could get ...
— The Story of the Greeks • H. A. Guerber

... Mr. Southey's study at Keswick. The visitor informs the hospitable poet that he is not an American but a spirit. Mr. Southey, with more frankness than civility, tells him that he is a very queer one. The stranger holds out his hand. It has neither weight nor substance. Mr. Southey upon this becomes more serious; his hair stands on end; and he adjures the spectre to tell him what he is, and why he comes. The ghost turns out to be Sir Thomas More. The traces ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... flannel-swathed instrument, under the weight of which, being but a youth, or very rarely an adult, he staggers slowly along, with outstretched back and bended knees. On the top of his old organ sits a monkey, or sometimes a marmoset, to whose queer face and queerer tricks, he trusts for compensating the defective quality of his music. He dresses his shivering brute in a red jacket and a cloth cap; and, when he can, he teaches him to grind the organ, to the music of which he will himself dance wearily. He wears an everlasting ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 430 - Volume 17, New Series, March 27, 1852 • Various

... that he is; but he is a very queer fellow. You said I had better not ask those who would be likely to ...
— The Birthday Party - A Story for Little Folks • Oliver Optic

... the bells.] Somebody else arriving! That's queer—nobody comes here in the winter; that's why we chose it, because it would be quiet! ...
— The Climbers - A Play in Four Acts • Clyde Fitch

... left to do to the stockade, the Boy announced that he thought he'd go up over the hill for a tramp. Gun in hand and grub in pocket, he marched off to play his last trump-card. If he could bring home a queer enough bird or beast for the collection, there was still hope. To what lengths might Mac not go if one dangled before him the priceless bait of a golden-tipped emperor goose, dressed in imperial robes of rose-flecked snow? Or who, knowing ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)

... clustered buildings which made it a quaint little village, much more interesting than the town itself. The large trees among the houses gave the place a cool, refreshing shade, and the grass a deeper green. Within this large court of grass and trees stood a low green pump. The queer boxlike case had a revolving handle on its side, ...
— American Indian stories • Zitkala-Sa

... deal for the time you have been in it, but I am an old stager, and have been six seasons in Paris for your one. I don't want to dry-nurse you, nor are you the man to let me, but two heads are better than one, and you may sometimes be glad of a hint. This is a queer town, and there are an infernal lot of swindlers about.' I little dreamed that my kind adviser was one of the most expert of the class he denounced, but reposed full trust in him, and, by attending to his disinterested suggestions, gradually ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various

... years ago. M'ri wuz twenty-eight and Mart ten years older. It would hev ben a match as sure as preachin', but Eliza died and M'ri, she done her duty as she seen it. Sometimes I think folks is near-sighted about their duty. There is others as is queer-sighted. Bein' crossed hain't spiled M'ri though. She's kep' sweet through it all, but when a man don't git his own way, he's apt to curdle. Mart got sort of tart-tongued and cold feelin'. There wa'n't no reason why they couldn't a kep' on bein' friends, ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates

... she was sure she didn't understand what they were talking about and that Louie had some very queer ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair

... to be fought with; for we were comfortable enough in our little cabin, what with the sheep and my mother's savings, and my father's fish, and the little that Tim and I could earn ferrying passengers over the lough. I was too young, I say, to know what wanted altering, but the sight of this queer-looking craft set me thinking ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed

... The Custom-House marker imprinted it, with a stencil and black paint, on pepper-bags, and baskets of anatto, and cigar-boxes, and bales of all kinds of dutiable merchandise, in testimony that these commodities had paid the impost, and gone regularly through the office. Borne on such queer vehicle of fame, a knowledge of my existence, so far as a name conveys it, was carried where it had never been before, and, I ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... the children. Robert scanned the distance for any such apparition. They would doubtless remain away till the dinner hour. The young man ascended to his mother's room. It was situated at the top of the house, made up of odd angles and a queer, sloping ceiling. Two broad dormer windows looked out toward the Gulf, and as far across it as a man's eye might reach. The furnishings of the room were light, ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin

... once more upon the road, Mr. Petulengro began to talk of the place which he conceived would serve me as a retreat under present circumstances. 'I tell you frankly, brother, that it is a queer kind of place, and I am not very fond of pitching my tent in it, it is so surprisingly dreary. It is a deep dingle in the midst of a large field, on an estate about which there has been a lawsuit for some years past. I daresay you will be quiet enough, for ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... cried a querulous voice, and we looked up to find a queer little old man, jerking and twitching in the doorway. He was dressed in rusty black, with a very broad brimmed top-hat and a loose white necktie—the whole effect being that of a very rustic parson or of an undertaker's mute. Yet, in spite of his shabby and even absurd appearance, ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle

... some lovely bits of a greenish yellow marble and some brown. These beautiful stones and pieces of marble were brought to these Ziarats from great distances by devotees. Stones reduced by nature into queer shapes, hollowed for instance by the action of sand or water, perfectly spherical, or strikingly ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... imaginative capacity nor a dashing ratiocinative faculty, but he has a clear sense of the importance of his pastoral duties, he goes easily and earnestly to work, makes neither much fuss nor smoke, and if he does now and then seem to pull queer faces in his sermons— give odd twists to some of his muscles—that does not debar him from preaching fair even-sounding sermons, soothing to his general hearers and pleasing to those who have to pay him. There are a few people whom Mr. O'Dell's sermons fail to keep awake; but ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus

... Cup Entertainment Suggestion Have a Peanut What the Eyes Tell Revealed by the Thumb Characters in Finger Nails Beauty's Seven Nurses To Discover a Woman's Age How He May Be Won Dew Drops Birth Stones for Luck Kruger's Unlucky Diamond Strange Wills Laughagraphs The Man Who Can Make Us Laugh Queer Blunders A Mysterious Telegram Fortune Dead Easy A Bad Spell of Weather For An Evening Game Something to ...
— Cupology - How to Be Entertaining • Clara

... of college students Queer lot. Ignorant? Why, they didn't know the catheads from the main brace. But if you took them for fools you'd get bit, sure. They'd learn more in a month than another man would in a year. We had one, once, in the Mary Ann, that came aboard ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... But the visit was one of courteous deprecation, in order that the little hunter of forbidden game might personally apologise for his delinquency.] prattling to the old women in "mutches" and "short gowns," whose houses were so charmingly queer and convenient, with the fires on the hearths to warm cold little toes, and the shadowy nooks ready for hide-and-seek. These children are now older than their mother was when she first came up Dee-side, heads of houses in their turn, but they have not forgotten ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler

... cried Ham. "Sleepy can go when he gets started, but O my! what a lot it takes to start him! I don't believe he ever moved so fast before, do you? Mr. Dean, you're a wonder on the growling stunt—I felt kind of queer myself once or twice." Fat was too far gone to express himself, but stood leaning against the rock, half-choked with laughter. He had been behind the rock all the time, and had heard all ...
— Buffalo Roost • F. H. Cheley

... call me Miss Bev'ly. Now, just you pay 'tention to me and I'll tell you something queer. Get my revolver right away, and don't let those men see what you are doing." While Aunt Fanny's trembling fingers went in search of the firearm, Beverly outlined the situation briefly but explicitly. The old woman was not slow to understand. Her wits sharpened ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... now she usually defended herself with "Papa says—" or "Mary says—" and though she really thought she spoke the truth, she made them say such odd things, that it was no wonder Lady Barbara thought they had very queer notions of education, and that her niece had nothing to do but to unlearn their ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Monte!" said the muleteer, wrinkling all the queer puckered leather of his visage in the strong light which streamed out as the great door opened. A most dignified Venetian senator, in the black and radiant linen of the time, came forth to meet me, and with the utmost ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett

... been saving, as he told me afterward, to light a cigarette on the return drive, proved friendly, and the lamp smoked instead. Armed with this rather unsatisfactory torch, we explored, and as we went up and down, in and out of the queer old place, built a hundred years ago (Mr. Close said!), we decided to take it, and most unwisely said so, thereby paying, as usual, the top price for something which we could have got at a bargain ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell

... know what to make of it," Walter confessed. "Every few hundred feet there are branches partly broken off and left hanging. Queer, isn't it?" ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... extraordinarily queer and dismal last night," said Rose to Clover as they stood a little aside from the rest on the platform. "I can't quite see what ails her. She looks thinner than when we came, and doesn't seem to know how to smile; depend upon it she's going to be ill, or something. I wish you had a pleasanter ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge

... certainly one of the great figures in Greek literature, but his system lies outside the subject of this essay. We are concerned only with those last manifestations of Hellenistic religion which probably formed the background of his philosophy. It is a strange experience, and it shows what queer stuff we humans are made of, to study these obscure congregations, drawn from the proletariate of the Levant, superstitious, charlatan-ridden, and helplessly ignorant, who still believed in Gods begetting children of ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray

... belong when it comes to a woman like Annabel," said Persis with unwonted pessimism. "And Thad's just young enough to be proud of having that sort of acquaintance with a married woman. Men are queer cattle, Mis' West. The worst woman living likes to pretend to herself that she's as good as anybody, but a man who's been decent from the cradle up, gets lots of comfort out of thinking he's a regular devil. At the same time," she conceded, with a change of tone, ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith

... old man spoke in a queer, suppressed tone, and his eyes, when he turned them upon his fellow-packer, were even smokier than usual. "Somebody's up to a little thievin', most likely, and it looks like I had 'em red-handed. I've been layin' ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach

... of man or animal is called an organ." "Well," he said, "I never knew that dogs carried horgins about with them before." I said, "Well, they do, and don't you go biting any of them again." Jimmy of course, my reader can see, was a queer young fellow. On one occasion further back, a good many crows were about, and they became the subject of discussion. I remarked, "I've travelled about in the bush as much as most people, and I never yet saw a little ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles

... them. Some one must." She set her feet on the floor, and the deafening thunder of applause seemed to raise her. She took a step forward. And then with a queer motion she raised her hand. There was an appalling silence, a silence more dreadful than the noise, and Myra felt her tongue dry ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim

... that there was no further need to escape the Bacteriologist. In Wellington Street he told the cabman to stop, and got out. He slipped on the step, and his head felt queer. It was rapid stuff this cholera poison. He waved his cabman out of existence, so to speak, and stood on the pavement with his arms folded upon his breast awaiting the arrival of the Bacteriologist. There was something tragic in his pose. The sense of imminent ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

... the Mayor cried, looking bigger: And in did come the strangest figure! His queer long coat from heel to head Was half of yellow and half of red, And he himself was tall and thin, With sharp blue eyes, each like a pin, And light loose hair, yet swarthy skin No tuft on cheek, nor beard on chin, ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various

... the upper deck, taken speedily up by the men on the main deck. The enemy were seen bearing down on us. On they came, nearer and nearer. Where we lay it had fallen a perfect calm, and our sails kept flapping against the masts. Still the breeze favoured them. I felt very queer, I confess. I had no intention of going below till I was wanted, and it did not occur to me that I might be turned into a patient myself. The delight of the sailors at seeing the French thus boldly approaching was excessive, nor did they fail to ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston

... the stranger it seemed that anyone else, outside, should know. I began to wonder how it leaked out, for I understood that it was a strictly private affair. I asked Mr. Murtha and he told Mr. Dorgan. Mr. Dorgan at once guessed that there had been something queer. He looked about his rooms there, and, sure enough, they found the detectaphone concealed in the wall. I can't tell any more," she added, facing Carton and using her bewitching eyes to their best advantage. "I can't ask ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve

... "a flounder is a queer sort of a flat fish. He's dark on top and white on the bottom. He swims on his side and has his two eyes on the one side of his head unlike any other fish. When the tide comes in he comes close inshore and burrows down into the sand to wait till ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson

... THE FREE LOVERS. (Some queer people, calling themselves "Free Lovers," and possessing very original ideas about life and morality, established themselves at Berlin Heights, in Ohio, a few years since. Public opinion was resistlessly against them, however, and ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne

... We're queer folks here. We'll talk about the weather, The good times we have had together, The good times near, The roses buddin', an' the bees Once more upon their nectar sprees; The scarlet fever scare, an' who Came mighty near not pullin' through, An' who had light attacks, an' all The ...
— Just Folks • Edgar A. Guest

... headquarters after supper with a queer, nervous feeling in the pit of his stomach. Outside, the Eagles were making one last hurried practice of the business of making a coat stretcher. Tim wished he could do a little practicing, too; but when he went inside and ...
— Don Strong, Patrol Leader • William Heyliger

... guest, slowly puffing away at his pipe. "Yes, he was a very bright fellow, with a great gift at doctoring, but he was willful, full of queer twists and fancies, the marry in haste and repent at his leisure ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett

... manicurist; but his colour was peculiar, being almost unhumanly florid, and, as Mrs. Schofield afterward claimed to have noticed, his eyes "wore a nervous, apprehensive look", his hands were tremulous, and his manner was "queer and jerky"—at least, that ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington

... boy who hasn't got no sister, to be in love with a girl, and so I kind of tumbled to myself and she don't go no where without I go with her. I take her to dancing school, and everywhere, and she loves me like a house afire. Say, was you ever in love? Makes a fellow feel queer, don't it? Well sir, the first time I went home with her I put my arm around her, and honest it scared me. It was just like when you take hold of the handles of a lectric battery, and you can't let go till the man turns the ...
— Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa - 1883 • George W. Peck

... and frankness vanished, and with them his rationality. He looked queer. His contrasting eyes shot little malignant gleams. He muttered incoherently, and moved back toward the skiff, making violent gestures, and his muttering grew to shouting, though still incoherent. He got in the boat and started to row back over ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey

... know about that," objected another of the queer people. "The Grahams and the Browns and Whites are all excellent families, and there is none better of their kind. I'm ...
— The Emerald City of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... and played upon it to the delight of all the celestial auditors; but the mischievous urchin Cupid having dared to laugh at the queer face which the goddess made while playing, Minerva threw the instrument indignantly away, and it fell down to earth, and was found by Marsyas. He blew upon it, and drew from it such ravishing sounds ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR

... consider it, in some sense, a story of eugenics, but that its outlook is emotional rather than scientific. Yet the Pomfrets, as a result of family pride and over-specialization, had become a sufficiently queer lot to warrant a normal girl in any violence of house-breaking to be free of them. Therein of course lies the cleverness of the book; it is full of atmosphere, and the atmosphere is full of dust, Pomfret dust. You can feel how heavy to rebellious lungs must ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 16, 1917. • Various

... don't say that I suspect anything—oh no,—only, if they had not been so close and queer, one would have been able to contradict it. I like people to be straightforward, that's all I have to say. And it is terribly hard on your poor brother to be so disappointed, after having his expectations so raised!' and Mrs. Morton melted into tears, leaving ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge

... for a moment. A queer expression entered his eyes. He touched a bell at his elbow, and an instant later ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... man in this country to foresee the coming of the half-holiday Saturday as an innovation that promised general adoption. He granted it to all his employees at a time when lesser industrial captains believed him to be at least "queer." Ford set the pace for a minimum rate of five dollars a day in his plant, and lesser captains still frown upon him for having perpetrated this "evil." Edison, among other things, has told of the importance of loose clothing—loose shoes and collars and hats—to a man who would enjoy good ...
— Opportunities in Engineering • Charles M. Horton

... and smoked," continued Georges. "I saw him smoking, in a queer way, too, at Waterloo, when Marshal Soult took him round the waist and flung him into his carriage, just as he had seized a musket and was going ...
— A Start in Life • Honore de Balzac

... of an emotion is usually something external which has nothing directly to do with the internal state of the body. Here I am, perfectly calm and normal, my organic state neutral, when some one insults me and throws me into a state of rage; this queer state seems to be inside me, specially in the trunk. Now how can the sound of the insulting person's voice produce any change in my insides? Evidently, by way of the auditory nerve, the brain and lower centers, and the motor nerves to the interior. ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth

... he reminded himself—"to the left—that wide field with a queer white thing in the middle that looks like a winged grub—that must be De Morbiban's aerodrome and his Valkyr monoplane! Are they bringing it out? Is that what Vauquelin means? And if so—what of it? I don't ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance

... became engaged to the Rev. Frank Besant, giving up with a sigh of regret my dreams of the "religious life", and substituting for them the work which would have to be done as the wife of a priest, laboring ever in the church and among the poor. A queer view, some people may think, for a girl to take of married life, but it was the natural result of my living the life of the Early Church, of my enthusiasm for religious work. To me a priest was a half-angelic creature, whose whole life was consecrated to heaven; all that was deepest and truest ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant

... bed, and laid the baby there while he was fast asleep, and set the ark afloat in the water where the bulrushes were growing. She knew that presently the great princess, Pharaoh's daughter, would come down to bathe in the river, and would notice the queer ...
— The Babe in the Bulrushes • Amy Steedman

... before the door of the inn, and a queer group we must have made by the light of the moon, and a nice caricature, I thought to myself, our friend Mr. G—— would have made of us, ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca

... "It seems queer to me," wrote one of them, "that whole villages close to the front look as flattened as a child's toy run over by a steam-roller. Not one stone remains on another. The streets are one line of shell—holes. Add to that the thunder of the guns, and you will see with what feelings we come into the ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs

... to him with a vacant grin, he explained, stretching out his legs cynically, that this queer old Hagberd, a retired coasting-skipper, was waiting for the return of a son of his. The boy had been driven away from home, he shouldn't wonder; had run away to sea and had never been heard of since. Put to rest in Davy Jones's ...
— To-morrow • Joseph Conrad

... swaying, holding on to the edge of a bunk.] I'm never too drunk to sing. 'Tis only when I'm dead to the world I'd be wishful to sing at all. [With a sort of sad contempt.] "Whiskey Johnny," ye want? A chanty, ye want? Now that's a queer wish from the ugly like of you, God help you. But no matther. [He starts to sing in a ...
— The Hairy Ape • Eugene O'Neill

... down ag'in. 'Twant only a little while 'fore the boy felt somethin' prickin' uv him. He hollered 'n kicked ag'in. The panther he growled 'n spit 'n dumb a tree 'n sot on a limb 'n peeked over at thet queer little critter. Couldn't neither on 'em understan' it. The boy c'u'd see the eyes o' the panther 'n the dark. Shone like tew live coals eggszac'ly. The panther 'd never sot 'n a tree when he was hungry, 'n see a boy below him. Sumthin' ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller

... the castle, where we had often been before, and for a while I was more good-natured, for there was nothing I liked better than climbing up and down the broken stairway, which wound round and round like a great screw, or looking into every queer little room hid away in the thick walls, or climbing to the turrets to wave my handkerchief like the flag ...
— The Old Castle and Other Stories • Anonymous

... laugh at this, but he soon discovered that Mr. Thimblefinger was right. He found that he could hop and jump ever so far in this queer country, and the first use he made of the discovery was to jump over Drusilla's head. This he did with hardly any effort. After that the journey of the children, which had grown somewhat tiresome (though they wouldn't say so), became a frolic. They skimmed along over the gray fields with ...
— Little Mr. Thimblefinger and His Queer Country • Joel Chandler Harris

... or whether an utterly baseless slander would outweigh all the five years of his life which he had spent among the people of Carlingford. Meanwhile John stood at the door and watched him, and of course thought it was very "queer." "It aint as if he'd a-been sitting up all night, like our young ladies," said John to himself, and unconsciously noted the circumstance down in his memory against ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant

... of queer people. It is the chosen home of every kind of eccentricity. It sounds incredible in this year of grace, but my friend Oliver Haddo claims to be a magician. I think ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham

... not attempt to tell my young friends all the queer fancies concerning the squadron in which they indulged. They were essentially air castles, very beautiful structures, it is true, but as yet they rested only on the clouds. But the means of realizing this magnificent ideal was within their ...
— All Aboard; or, Life on the Lake - A Sequel to "The Boat Club" • Oliver Optic

... variations, contains the explosive chord which gave to the work its descriptive title. Needless to say that this chord does not "surprise" our modern ears to any great extent. The Minuet is one of Haydn's best—full of queer antics in rhythm and modulation. The Finale (Allegro di molto), in the Rondo Sonata form, is the acme of Haydn's vivacity and is a "tour de force" of brilliant writing for the strings. In many passages they seem fairly ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding

... business and failed, I signed his notes and freed him from the strife Which bankruptcy and ruin hath entailed On them that lead a queer financial life. ...
— Coffee and Repartee • John Kendrick Bangs

... out for benches, and split sticks were set upon them for people. Mary was always the leader, both in praying and preaching, and the others were good listeners. Mrs. Rice would be so much amused at the queer scene, that a smile would creep over her face; but Mr. Rice would look on reverently, and say, "I wish you had been a boy; you could have ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton

... light comedy abound in Nash; they are especially numerous in his "Lenten Stuff,"[286] a queer little book, his last work, and one which he seems to have written con amore. Never was he in better humour than when, the year before his death, he betook himself to singing "the praise of the red herring," Monsieur Herring, Solyman Herring, Sacrapant ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand

... was life, and the life in me spoke of a most capacious appetite. So I cast about for a shop where I might buy a little food with my few coppers, and seeing a confectioner spreading out his wares, I went near and took stock of the queer balls of flour and sugar, and strange oily-looking sweetmeats. Having selected what I thought would be within my modest means, I addressed the shopkeeper to call his attention, though I knew he would not understand me, and I ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford

... announced Madge, as the yacht "Greyhound" steamed out from the pier, "we forgot to tell you last night that we think Mollie is old enough to come away from her father if she wishes. She doesn't know how old she is. That is one of the queer things about Mollie. She seems quite sensible until you ask her to recall something, and then she becomes confused. Still, I am sure she is several years older than either ...
— Madge Morton, Captain of the Merry Maid • Amy D. V. Chalmers

... "But wasn't it queer for it to think the wig was its mother?" asked the boy, with a merry laugh. "I don't think it could have had much sense to ...
— Minnie's Pet Monkey • Madeline Leslie

... cruising about," he said, "and his sloop was pitching her catheads under, this thing was washed upon a spare anchor, where it stuck. It's a queer flag. Can it have had ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper

... present writing, snow is falling in the street, and the weather is very cold, but not so cold as it was yesterday. I dined with Lord Normanby on Sunday last. Everything seems to be queer and uncomfortable in the diplomatic way, and he is rather bothered and worried, to my thinking. I found young Sheridan (Mrs. Norton's brother) the attache. I know him very well, and he is a good man for my sight-seeing ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens

... of friends, but she doesn't seem to want them. She's queer and different somehow; none of us understand her, ...
— Phyllis - A Twin • Dorothy Whitehill

... went a walking out one day, as I've heard said, And, coming to a faggot-maker, begged a crust of bread The faggot-maker gave a crust and something rather queer To wash it down withall, from out a bottle that stood near. The Angel finished eating; but before he left, said he, "Thou shalt have two wishes granted, for that thou hast given me. One wish for that good drinkable, another for the bread." The he left the faggot-maker all amazed at ...
— Pepper & Salt - or, Seasoning for Young Folk • Howard Pyle

... and able to fight his way, never had a show. Sick and maimed and sore, he was being made much of, though he had been caught where the boys were forbidden to go. Things were queer, anyhow, and— ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis

... Van Dam's ardent words and plausible excuses burned themselves into her memory, her weak foolish heart relented, and she half believed he was wronged by Edith after all. The withering answer became a queer jumble of tender reproaches and pathetic appeals, and ended by saying that if he would marry her in her own home it all might be as secret as he desired, and she would wait ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe

... is a queer sort of pleasure," said the Hen. "I think you must be crazy. Not to speak of myself, ask the Cat—he is the most sensible animal I know—whether he would like to swim, or to plunge to the bottom of the water. Ask our mistress, the old woman—there ...
— Favorite Fairy Tales • Logan Marshall

... to me. An insane girl, locked in this empty house. I gripped Larry; said to him: "Take it easy; there's something queer about this. We ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various

... Methuselah. He has no beard. He wears a large curly glossy brown wig, and his eyebrows are painted a deep olive- green. It was odd to hear this man, this walking mummy, talking sentiment, in these queer old chambers ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.

... in!" the Mayor cried, looking bigger: And in did come the strangest figure! His queer long coat from heel to head Was half of yellow and half of red, And he himself was tall and thin, With sharp blue eyes, each like a pin, And light loose hair, yet swarthy skin No tuft on cheek, nor beard on chin, But ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various

... I!" agreed Priscilla, dolefully. "But she's got the fancifullest notions! All about that old stone knight in the garden—an' what wi' the things he's left carved all over the wall of the room where she read them queer old books, she's fair 'mazed with ideas that don't belong to the ways o' the world at all. I can't think what'll become o' the child. Won't there be any means of findin' out where ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli

... from a curious woman,' thought Calton, glancing at her as she sat at the writing-table in her black dress with the knots of violet ribbons upon it; 'what queer creatures ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume

... was small of stature and when he passed people in the street laughed a queer unmirthful laugh. When he laughed he scratched his left elbow with his right hand. The sleeve of his coat was almost worn through from the habit. As he walked along the street, looking nervously ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson

... "That's a queer place to build a house," said Sam, as he surveyed the scene; "no one can earn a living there, and it must make a long walk to reach the neighborhood where ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis

... you lead such a monotonous life," I asked Bielokurov, as we went home. "My life is tedious, dull, monotonous, because I am a painter, a queer fish, and have been worried all my life with envy, discontent, disbelief in my work: I am always poor, I am a vagabond, but you are a wealthy, normal man, a landowner, a gentleman—why do you live so tamely and take so little ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff

... all the masts of his vessels were carried away in a storm, and it was only by diligent pumping that he was able to keep his craft afloat and put back to Plymouth. Thence on the 24th of June he made another start in a vessel of sixty tons with thirty men. But ill-luck still attended him. He had a queer adventure with pirates. Lest the envious world should not believe his own story, Smith had Baker, his steward, and several of his crew examined before a magistrate at Plymouth, December 8, 1615, who support his story by their testimony up to a ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... wished to adopt. As the native women do not as a rule stay with their masters very long, the children are registered under the formula: "Child of N. N., mother unknown," an expression which sounds somewhat queer to those who do not know the ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser

... over afterwards, the farmer and his wife agreed that she must be a gipsy who had been lost, and that she was queer with hunger and exposure. ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany

... nothing unusual. And he had almost made up his mind that something had fallen out of the sky, when a head showed itself from behind a limb and a queer, wrinkled face peered ...
— The Tale of Major Monkey • Arthur Scott Bailey

... at Maryport two years, during which time my eldest sister was born. Often would my mother carry me into the battery, and at the sight of the large guns, and the queer looking helmets hanging on the walls, my little smile would be converted into vehement crying. How little I dreamed then of my familiarity with them in after years! But ...
— From Lower Deck to Pulpit • Henry Cowling

... 1861, when a passenger in the "Highbury Bus" asks the conductor to "change him into a Hangel." Jack Harris has often appeared in Punch. He was a driver beside whom Mr. Edmund Yates often rode—"a wonderfully humorous fellow, whose queer views of the world and real native wit afforded me the greatest amusement. A dozen of the best omnibus sketches were founded on scenes which had occurred with this fellow, and which I described to John Leech, whose usually ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann

... you think about his shaving off the beard at that time in the morning?" Braceway urged, fingering the dollar bill. "Didn't you think it was queer?" ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.

... around a circular table, whence they glowered at me from time to time. They all wore their hair tied behind in a short, thick queue which looked quite dandified. "Here you are," I said to myself, as I ate my supper, "here you are in the country from which such queer people used to come to the Herr Pastor's with mouse-traps, and barometers, and pictures. How much a man learns who makes up his mind not to stick close to his ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various

... for Mr. W.S. GILBERT (it was thoughtful and kind of the artist to put the names below), who is apparently explaining to a select few why he has been compelled to come out in this strange old coat and these queer collars. All the Dramatists look as cheerful as mutes at a funeral, their troubled expression of countenance probably arising from the knowledge that somewhere hidden away is a certain eminently unbiassed Ibsenitish ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 15, 1891 • Various

... statement that there are about twenty-two match factories in the United States and Canada, and that the daily production—and consequent daily consumption—is about twenty-five thousand gross per day. It may seem a queer statement to make that one hundred thousand hours of each successive day are spent by the people of the two countries in striking a light, but such is undoubtedly the case. In each gross of matches manufactured there are ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various

... Her tall, graceful body was most expensively attired. Kisses were exchanged between her and Mrs. Jameson. She bowed to the rest of the assembly, and stole a half glance and a smile at Faull. The latter gave her a queer look, and Backhouse, who lost nothing, saw the concealed barbarian in the complacent gleam of his eye. She refused the refreshment that was offered her, and Faull proposed that, as everyone had now arrived, they should ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay

... merely an open space, larger than any he had met before, with a little grass mound in the centre. Mounting this, he could see a run of trees in the distance, and in between a sea of green leaves, giving back myriad points of light under the rays of the sun. Queer soft noises came out of the white rows of reeds all around, and from the vast expanse a continual murmur that was something like the moaning of ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville

... loss of time. I persist in thinking it a very pleasant, but utterly lazy life. I sleep a great deal, but don't eat much, and my cough has been bad; but, considering the real hardship of the life—damp, cold, queer food, and bad drink—I think I am better. When we can get past Finisterre, I shall do very well, ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon

... had once more taken up his knife and fork, though of a truth the last of his hunger had vanished. But these Dauphine peasants were suspicious and queer-tempered, and already the young man's surprise had matured into a plan which he would not be able to carry through without the help of Aristide Briot. Noisy cavaliers—he mused to himself—a wounded man! . . . wounded by the stray shot aimed at him by Crystal de Cambray! Indeed, St. Genis had much ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy

... normal school at Athens, and it has not altered his belief that the ikon in the neighbouring monastery was made by St. Luke and the Bulgar beyond the mountains by the Devil. On the other side of you sits the returned emigrant, chattering irrepressibly in his queer version of the 'American language', and showing you the newspapers which are mailed to him every fortnight from the States. His clean linen collar and his well-made American boots are conspicuous upon him, and he will deprecate ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth

... huntsman. "Let us run to the river and see what these queer gods are doing. We'll present the skin of Siva to our master!" ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath

... attempt to tell my young friends all the queer fancies concerning the squadron in which they indulged. They were essentially air castles, very beautiful structures, it is true, but as yet they rested only on the clouds. But the means of realizing this magnificent ideal was within their grasp. They had the money to buy the ...
— All Aboard; or, Life on the Lake - A Sequel to "The Boat Club" • Oliver Optic

... her hands a model of the Palace of Westminster, and sundry docks, resists the approach of an interminable centipede, on which she stamps, vainly endeavouring to impede the progress of the coil of fire and blood approaching to soil and fire her fair robe; beside her stands John Bull, in a queer mixed costume, half sailor, with the smalls and gaiters of a coalheaver. He bears the Habeas Corpus Act under his arm, but stands aghast and paralysed, it never seeming to have occurred to the artist that this "Monsieur John ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton

... the observatory at the time of his appointment was such that Lord Auckland, the first lord of the Admiralty, considered that "it ought to be cleared out,'' while Airy admitted that "it was in a queer state.'' With his usual energy he set to work at once to reorganize the whole management. He remodelled the volumes of observations, put the library on a proper footing, mounted the new (Sheepshanks) equatorial and ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... Bermuda be a queer sort of place, and water very scarce; all they get there is a Godsend, as it comes from Heaven; and they look sharp for the rain, which is collected in large tanks, and an inch or two more of water in the tank is ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat

... remarking on Susan's observation that he was a "queer boy," for he esteemed that a compliment "the Count is the only man among 'em who hasn't falled in love with nothink or nobody. But tell me, Susan, is your fair buzzum free from ...
— Rivers of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne

... all day from nine till four, and which the neighborhood calls 'Mrs. Griffing's signs.' It reminded me of another crowd of impotent folk, lame, halt, and blind, which filled the loveliest space in Jerusalem, and was a sign of joy and charity in the place. Queer, tender, wistful faces, so earnest one forgets their grotesque character and ragged, faded forms, cluster in the porch; such a set as one might once have seen put up at auction as a 'refuse lot' of plantation negroes. The men wear old army cloaks, while the women, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... feeling suddenly old. Things like Jubilees do date you—no doubt about it. Nearly fifty. Three- quarters of life behind her and what had she to show for it? An unlucky marriage, much physical health and fun, some friends—but, at the last, lonely—lonely as perhaps every human being in this queer world was. That old woman now preparing to ride in fantastic procession before her worshipping subjects, she was lonely too. Poor, little, lonely, old woman! Well, then, Charity to all and sundry—Charity, kindliness, the one and only thing. Aggie Combermere was not a sentimental ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole

... we value here Wakes on the morn of its hundredth year Without both feeling and looking queer. In fact, there's nothing that keeps its youth, So far as I know, but a tree and truth. (This is a moral that runs at large; Take ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various

... which the walls were subsequently hung as a screen. They might, theoretically, be of paper; though as a matter of fact the material used was generally terra-cotta or some fire-proof brick. The American said that it was queer to see a house being built at the eighth storey in midair, as it were, with nothing but the thin steel supports ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson

... the consciousness of being deemed dead, is next to the presumable unpleasantness of being so in reality. One feels like his own ghost unlawfully tenanting a defunct carcass. Even Jarl's glance seemed so queer, that I begged him to ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville

... your tricks," said the squire; "yours is not bad music; you speak your words articulately, and even eloquently. Your accompaniment is a little queer, especially in the bass; but you find out your mistakes, and slip out of them Heaven knows how. Zoe, you are tame, but accurate. Correct his accompaniments some day—when I'm out of hearing. Practice drives me mad. Give ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade

... Morgan had learned that a criminal case was something like a dusty roadway. Many tracks crossed and re-crossed one another, becoming just a bewildering mass to the untrained eye. In the present instance, the situation in the Atwood apartment had queer aspects which seemed to connect it with the incident of the night before. The suspicious points were not so glaringly apparent, perhaps, as the circumstances which connected the man Marsh, but they were there just the ...
— The Sheridan Road Mystery • Paul Thorne

... on his hat, of course, but never asked any questions, for his face was strange. I didn't know. The name, when you just spoke it, struck me rather queer. I—I used to know a Brant in the Seventh, but he was much older; ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish

... out automatically and in accordance with plans worked out in advance. Indeed almost the first time that such a question arose in at all aggravated form was when the Antwerp affair got going. That was a queer business altogether, and it seems necessary briefly to deal with what most military men ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell

... his gray eyes were bright and wild, so wild at times that they frightened those upon whom they were turned. He wore his own hair, which was coarse and straight, and in an age when every man wore a wig this made him look absurd. He had a trick of making queer gestures with hands and feet. He would shake his head and roll himself about, and would mutter to himself until strangers though that he was ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall

... stranger to be treated with feminine reserve than the doctor. Now it was different. She was about to take up her own life again, with new responsibilities, and the dearly loved creature whom she had bullied and laughed at and leaned on would go away to take up his own queer way of life, and the relations between them could not possibly be the same again. The diligence was taking her on the last stage of her journey towards the new conditions, and it jolted and bumped and smelled and ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke

... It was certainly a queer house. Even through the blinding storm they could distinguish its eccentric outlines as they alighted from the stage. Dorothy laughed happily, heedless of the fact that her husband's umbrella was dripping down her neck. "It's a dear old ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed

... then I had a few oats, then a little leading about; and this he did every day till I began to look for the oats and the saddle. At length, one morning, my master got on my back and rode me around the meadow on the soft grass. It certainly did feel queer; but I must say I felt rather proud to carry my master, and as he continued to ride me a little every day, I soon became accustomed ...
— Black Beauty, Young Folks' Edition • Anna Sewell

... of the older people present felt scandalized by the singing and by the dancing of the "town girls," who could not for the life of them take the thing seriously. The room was so little, and hot, and smoky, and the men looked so queer in their ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland

... want to know; and I can't think of any reason why he shouldn't want us to go there. It seems so queer." ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn

... immediate answer, turning his head, however, and studying her with a queer, impersonal deliberation. She was wearing a smoke-coloured muslin gown and a black hat with gracefully arranged feathers. For a moment the weariness had passed from her face and she was a very beautiful woman. Her features were delicately shaped, ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... Bordighera, I strolled up the hills behind the town to Sasso. It is a queer little cluster of gleaming white-washed houses that top the crest of a steep ridge; and, like many other Italian villages, it makes a brave show from a distance, though within it is full of evil smells and all uncleanness. But I found it had a church—a picturesquely ugly and dilapidated church; ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen

... to see her. That was where we were when you arrived. And now,' Chetney added, 'I will say good-by to her, and you had better return home. No, you can trust me, I shall follow you at once. She has no influence over me now, but I believe, in spite of the way she has used me, that she is, after her queer fashion, still fond of me, and when she learns that this good-by is final there may be a scene, and it is not fair to her that you should be here. So, go home at once, and tell the governor that I am following you in ten minutes.' "'That,' said Arthur, 'is the way we parted. I never ...
— In the Fog • Richard Harding Davis

... it, Patty; I'll write them all down most explicitly. And then I want a scarf, a very long one, cream-coloured ground, with a Persian border in blues and greys. But not a palm-leaf border—I mean that queer stencilled sort of a design; I'll draw a pattern of it ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells

... "You can't fool me. I knew there was something queer about this whole arrangement." Then her voice changed. "It's very, very kind of you, Mr. Kelley, and I deeply appreciate it, and if you don't want me to do it—I will not let mother into ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland

... came the impresario with his large locket and the rest. And now, quaintly enough, I was fulfilling somebody else's dream of life—Cousin Elizabeth's! Perhaps I was fulfilling my own; but my dream of life was a queer vision. ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope

... land of plenty we could afford to keep going. Later in the afternoon the smokers found that a match would not strike, and the primus went out. Then the man reading said that he felt unwell and could not see the words. Soon several others commented on feeling "queer," and two in the sleeping-bags had fallen into a drowsy slumber. On this evidence even the famous Watson would have "dropped to it," but it was some time before it dawned on us that the oxygen had given out. Then ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson

... somewhat startling eccentricities, his dirty linen, his face and hands to match, his shapeless garments hanging loosely over the flabby corpulence of his uncomely old body, his beery breath. To her, old Reinhardt was but the queer external symbol of a never-failing enchantment. Through the pleasant harmonious give-and-take of the other instruments, the voice of his violin vibrated with the throbbing passion of a living thing. His dirty old hand ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield

... had received and the fact that, by the testimony of all who saw him under fire, the young lieutenant gave evidence of very great courage and of indomitable energy. That he was, by what he calls a queer coincidence, the youngest officer of his regiment and its only member of the Legion of Honour, afforded him ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse

... "Mighty queer what has become of Hank," one of them said. "But I don't reckon there's any use looking any farther. You don't figure he's aiming to throw us down—do ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine

... changing its appearance very quickly. Its head is growing rather "lopsided." The eye next the sand is, little by little, brought round to the upper side, until it looks up instead of down. Its mouth gets a queer one-sided look, owing to the twisting of the ...
— Within the Deep - Cassell's "Eyes And No Eyes" Series, Book VIII. • R. Cadwallader Smith

... without sleep." "Doing what?" asked Tom. "Poker!" replied Oakhurst, sententiously; "when a man gets a streak of luck,—nigger luck—he don't get tired. The luck gives in first. Luck," continued the gambler, reflectively, "is a mighty queer thing. All you know about it for certain is that it's bound to change. And it's finding out when it's going to change that makes you. We've had a streak of bad luck since we left Poker Flat—you come along, and slap you get into it, too. If you can hold your cards ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte

... ax, I looks round fer Daddy. No Daddy thar! I goes out and asks some o' the boys. 'Daddy WAS there a minnit ago,' they say; 'must hev gone home.' Bein' kinder responsible for the old man, I hangs around, and goes out in the hall and sees a passage leadin' behind the scenes. Now the queer thing about this, boys, ez that suthin in my bones tells me the old man is THAR. I pushes in, and, sure as a gun, I hears his voice. Kinder ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte

... while Bunny kept on brushing the tiny whittlings from his jacket and short trousers. And there was a queer look on the face ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue and Their Shetland Pony • Laura Lee Hope

... through when I go out. I'll stand here while your sister reads that letter. He said the answer would be just 'yes' or 'no,' and I shouldn't have to wait long. 'She ain't one to teeter long on a decision,' says he; 'she finds her footin' one side or the other.' He talks queer, queerer'n ever sence he was hurt. I pity anybody that ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... make of it," Walter confessed. "Every few hundred feet there are branches partly broken off and left hanging. Queer, ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... instead of simply resuming where he had left off, from force of habit he first gave the leader's usual three sharp taps upon his music desk, and then—so queer a thing is an audience—those people, brought to their feet in an agony of terror, of fire, panic, and sudden death by a woman's cry, now at that familiar tap, tap, tap, broke here and there into laughter. By sixes and sevens, then by tens and twenties, they sheepishly seated themselves, ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris

... one—to the companion of these walks in particular not a bit more than he could help; but he was none the less haunted, under its shadow, with a dire apprehension of publicity. It was as if he had invoked that ugliness in some stupid good faith; and it was queer enough that on his emergent rock, clinging to it and to Susan Shepherd, he should figure himself as hidden from view. That represented no doubt his belief in her power, or in her delicate disposition to protect him. Only Kate at all ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James

... often, you know. Once I was in love with a grande dame, bestially in love, dog-like. Well, she gave me a rendezvous, and I didn't, couldn't, keep it, because suddenly I thought of her husband, and it made me feel sick. And you know, it's queer, that now, when I look back, instead of being glad that I was decent, I am as sorry as if I had sinned. But with Masha it's so different; I'm filled with joy that I've never soiled the brightness of my feeling for her. (He points his finger at the floor.) I ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al

... went respectably home, convoyed by a husband, and decorously holding up her skirts, Carol rejoiced, "Everything has changed! I have two friends, Fern and——But who's the other? That's queer; I thought ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis

... troubling her in a queer way, determined to ask Helen about her family, although it seemed that was one of the things that were not very nice to do. But perhaps Helen had a family. In that case ...
— The Girl Scouts at Home - or Rosanna's Beautiful Day • Katherine Keene Galt

... go off suddenly Alfred saw no reason why he should not ask Mildred to marry him. He liked her as well as any other girl; he thought he would make her a good husband, he would be able to manage her better than any other man, he was sure of that, because he understood her. She was a queer one: but he thought they'd get along all right. But all this was in the future, so long as Harold lived he'd keep on just as he was; if she met a man she liked better she could have him. He had got on very well without her for the last five years; there was no hurry, he could afford ...
— Celibates • George Moore

... work. The work was Aristotle's Ethics, and she was going through it for the second time, amplifying her notes. But this second time the Greek seemed more difficult, the philosophic argument more intricate than ever. She had had very little sleep for weeks, and her head ached in a queer way as though something inside it were strained very tight. It was plain that she had come to the end of her powers of work for the present—and she had calculated that only by not wasting a day, except for a week's ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods

... know," replied the little man, speaking slowly. "Whatever her secret may be, she keeps it, even when speaking in sleep. This I can tell you. I suspect that there is some other being, or person, in that queer old house of hers whom she consults on grave occasions. At a loss for an answer to a difficult scientific question, I have known her to leave the room and to come back in the course of a few minutes with a reply ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford

... of the valley; and the extraordinary height of the upper parapet, which is about 130 feet above the bed of the river, offers a prospect to the passing traveller the like of which is perhaps nowhere else to be seen. Far below are the queer chares and closes, the wynds and lanes of old Newcastle; the water is crowded with pudgy, black, coal keels; and, when there is a partial dispersion of the great smoke clouds which usually obscure the sky, the funnels of steamers and the masts of shipping may be seen far ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles

... and said it should be hers; when Anne came down, she said one should be hers. Mine was the prettiest of the whole, and the tallest, and the most perfect in every part. Emily's was a grave-looking fellow, and we called him 'Gravey.' Anne's was a queer little thing, much like herself, and we called him 'Waiting-boy.' Branwell chose ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various

... bade us a sad farewell, but many friends accompanied us to the station, and the rotund major and his rounder wife did us the like honour. Our major was a queer mixture: he was jolly because he was fat, and he was stern because he had a beaky nose, and in any interview one had first to ascertain whether the stomach or the nose held the upper hand, so to speak. With the wife one was always sure—she ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon

... made all kinds of queer mistakes, so that the end of all that was, that the vampyre did come; but he ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest

... He has never been known to buy drugs, and he's careful where he does his trick. He's still a little afraid of his father. All Indians are. It's queer where he was going with ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister

... citizen. If he wishes to serve her he must stand for the language; if he prefers English civilisation he should go back to England. There only can he develop on English lines. An Irishman in Ireland with an English mind is a queer contradiction, who can serve neither Ireland nor England in any good sense, and both Ireland and England disown him. So the Irishman of other than Gaelic ancestors should stand in with us, not accepting ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney

... Sally May; "well, of all the queer schools! Ask a teacher if we may have a midnight supper? Well, I ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett

... me with its tongue." Happily a sharp gun report close at hand frightened the reptile away. Before leaving the neighbourhood the viper-catcher presented his child friend with a specimen which he had tamed and rendered harmless by removing the fangs. This creature the queer boy fed with milk and often carried with ...
— Souvenir of the George Borrow Celebration - Norwich, July 5th, 1913 • James Hooper

... stopping to ask why or to wonder if we were right. Of course we Swallows never stop to eat, for we catch our food as we fly, but we did sometimes stop to rest. Just after we had crossed this great lake we alighted. It was then that a very queer thing happened, and this is really the story that I ...
— Among the Farmyard People • Clara Dillingham Pierson

... perceived, too, that he had on a singular pair of shoes; but, as it was now growing dusk, and as the old man's eyesight was none the sharpest, he could not precisely tell in what the strangeness consisted. One thing, certainly, seemed queer. The traveler was so wonderfully light and active, that it appeared as if his feet sometimes rose from the ground of their own accord, or could only be ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various

... and presently he took the queer little Roman bellows, and set to work to blow upon the smouldering spots where the logs touched each other. In a few seconds a small flame appeared, and soon the fire was ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford

... to return to the sportsman, or the mountain, or to seek and find a new master to cozen, we never heard, as this was our last visit to Lucca. The lesson inculcated by Frate's misconduct has not been lost upon us; so whenever any queer canine scarecrow now meets us on the Pincian, and by his dejected looks seeks to enlist our sympathy, we cut short the appeal, stare him in the face, and then utter the word "never" with sufficient emphasis to send him off shaking ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various

... but in spite of my jesting she would assure me just the same: 'You are in love with this man; this Don Jose interests you. Be careful, Carmen!' And the queer thing was that she did not take amiss my infatuation, especially when you consider that she was the enemy of every passion that could not be made directly subservient to our work.... She told the truth; I was in ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... beside a tree for one to come. Often he thought he saw the small old man with the beard and the little creature with trailing legs. And then he began to see other shadows—men with the heads of rooks and men with queer heavy swords upon their shoulders. He followed them on and on through the wood and he heard their whispering becoming louder and louder, and then he thought that as he went on the shadows, instead ...
— The King of Ireland's Son • Padraic Colum

... But the Congdons are all queer. His pap used to have a house here and he was the worst ole crank on the shore. Young Putney's a pretty decent fellow. Mighty fine woman, ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson

... bring peace to my soul; songs more sweet than morning, I hear again! My tears spring forth, the earth has won me back." He dropped his head upon his breast and wept. As he sat thus, in tender mood, a strange happening took place. A queer, explosive sound, and a jet of flame, and—there stood the devil, all in red, forked tail, horns, and cloven hoof! He stood smiling wickedly at the softened old man, while Faust stared ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon

... you, Purrer of the spotless hue, Plumy tail, and wistful gaze While you humoured our queer ways, Or outshrilled your morning call Up the stairs and through the hall - Foot suspended in its fall - While, expectant, you would stand Arched, to meet the stroking hand; Till your way you chose to wend Yonder, ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy

... voice slid down on the word wick-ud made a queer thrilly feeling run down the boy's back, and all of a sudden the day grew wonderfully interesting, and this old seaport town one of the nicest places he had ever been in. The singer stopped at the ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston

... like Halstead, Joe Dawson and that queer genius, Hank Butts, who are needed to build up the American merchant marine once ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Lieutenants - or, Serving Old Glory as Line Officers • H. Irving Hancock

... sounded so queer and hollow, shut up as it was in the can, and the nutmeg rattled around so, like thunder, that Johnnie Bushytail, the squirrel, was frightened, and ran away, without helping Brighteyes. Then she felt like crying, but, in a little while she heard some one else coming along through ...
— Buddy And Brighteyes Pigg - Bed Time Stories • Howard R. Garis

... characteristic vigour. He was qualified for it not merely by a solid knowledge of the law, and by great natural abilities, but by his thorough kindness of heart; and, perhaps, it may also be added, by his long years of queer experience on (as Mr Carlyle would have said) the "burning marl" of the London Bohemia. Very shortly afterwards he was chosen Chairman of Quarter Sessions, and established himself in Bow Street. The Bow Street magistrate of that time ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding

... "Very queer things goes on in that 'ouse," said Ephraim. "I don't 'ardly like to say. But they think 'e raises the devil, sir. Awful noises goes on there. I seen some things myself there, as I don't like to talk of. ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield

... you this," he said, "if you made connections. If you'd been later than five minutes past seven, I was to keep dark. You've got seven minutes and a half to spare. Queer orders, but the big railroad boss, Woodbridge, ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various

... said Big Swinton, in a subdued voice, to a knot of friends around him. "Blowin' hard as it has bin ever since we left England, it stands to reason that we must have pretty nigh got across the western sea to that noo land discovered by that man wi' the queer ...
— The Crew of the Water Wagtail • R.M. Ballantyne

... said Dick. "There's something queer. It's too late to send a wire. I'll go up by the eleven o'clock train and find out all about it. Better go in now." He laid the telegram carelessly on ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall

... evening meal Henley saw his wife regarding him stealthily as she served the food to him and the others. Her look had a queer, shifting, probing quality, which at any other time would have inspired investigation, but she failed to rivet his attention to-night. There were other things to think of—things as new and startling as the dawn of day must have appeared to the opening eyes of the first man. And all ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben

... but he understood me not, and continued playing with the cats which we were transporting to Tours to protect the Commissary stores from the ravages of the rats that the Prussians had despatched to eat up the provisions of the garrison. Towards night I began to have a queer sensation in the stomach. It wasn't like sea-sickness, nor like the feeling produced by swinging. If a man just recovering from the effects of his first cigar were offered a bowl of hot goose-grease for supper, I suppose he would have felt as I felt. ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 33, November 12, 1870 • Various

... man's arm was carefully placed about a girl; no feminine waist lacked an arm save that of the proud chaperon, who sat in the middle smiling upon all. Seeing that the photograph somewhat surprised us, the chaperon stoutly explained, "This may look queer to you, but there wasn't one thing about that picnic that wasn't nice," and her statement was a ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams

... of their views. Even the Independents of the Assembly disowned these views. Mr. Nye had said of the book that "there was in that book gross Brownism which he nor his brethren no way agreed with him in;" and Edwards had heard stories of queer goings-on in Mr. Burton's church, and his quarrel with "a butcher and some others of his church" about prophesying. Among the Brownists, besides Burton, Edwards names prominently "Katherine Chidley, an old Brownist, and her son, ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson

... There are queer things that only come to sailormen; They're true, but they're never understood; And I know one thing about the Admiral, That I can't tell rightly as I should. I've been with him when hope sank under us— He hardly seemed a mortal like the rest, I could swear ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt

... is nearest those who feel its need most. You may think I am a queer Christian, and I sometimes think so myself—hating some people as near as I dare, and calling old Houghton a wretch. Don't I know about his heartache? Who better than I? God knows I would give his son back to him if I could. God knows I can almost swear ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe

... way to look at it. Who ever heard of a tree being lonely? You have a great many queer fancies, but they won't flourish here. Glasgow is given up to business; it has no time for ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan

... the circle, Dora Yocum stood a little in advance of those near her, for of course she led the singing. Her clear and earnest voice was distinguishable from all others, and though she did not glance toward Ramsey he had a queer feeling that she was assuming more superiority than ever, and that she was icily scornful of him and Milla. The old resentment rose—he'd "show" that girl yet, ...
— Ramsey Milholland • Booth Tarkington

... with her thin wrinkled fingers on the arm of her chair, and waited with a queer anticipatory little smile for her ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman

... and the tension slackened rapidly. He had never been abroad himself but had always dreamed of going there. With maps and books of travel Judith and he had planned it out. In imagination they had lived in London and Paris, Munich and Rome, always in queer old lodgings looking on quaint crooked streets. He had dreamed of long delicious rambles, glimpses into queer old shops, vast, silent, dark cathedrals. For Laura how different it would be. This boy of hers knew Europe as a group ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole

... 'am no sayin' but he weel deserves it; but, Lord haud a care o' us, he's a queer ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... jangling, jarring little machette to a queer tune, and sang something in Portuguese about "Nina, innocente!" ending with a full-handed sweep that brought the song up with a jerk. Then Disko obliged with his second song, to an old-fashioned creaky tune, and all joined in the chorus. ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling

... of the room. I knew she had gone to bed, for I heard her go up and shut the door. I stood there a few minutes with my hands in my pockets, whistling Yankee Doodle. Your mother used to say men were queer folks, Johnny; they always whistled up the gayest when they felt the wust. Then I went to the closet and got another pipe, and I didn't go up stairs ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various

... we have just related, a queer carriage, the same which we saw arrive at Paris at the commencement of this history, went out at the same barrier by which it had entered, and proceeded along the road from Paris to Nantes. A young woman, pale and ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)

... the bleaching rafters. It took me a good half hour to muster courage enough to go within ten rods of the ruin, but I finally did, and at last, scared half to death, and trembling, found myself peeping in at one window. It was dark in there and smelt queer, and I, a nine-year-old boy, fully expected to see some new and horrible spook appear at any moment. How long I stood there I never knew, for I forgot all else except the belief that if I waited long enough I should see something queer. I did, too, for ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn

... 'ins.' There has been no change in the 'Palace,' except that the quaint portraits of one-eyed Zargo, who has left many descendants in the island, and of the earlier Captains-General, dignitaries who were at once civil and military, have been sent to the Lisbon Exhibition. The queer old views of Machim's landing and of Funchal Bay still amuse visitors. Daily observations for meteorology are here taken at 9 A.M. and 3 and 9 P.M.; the observatory standing eighty ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton

... through those gray and silent streets of the Faubourg St. Germain whose houses present to the outer world a face as impassive and as suggestive of the concentration of privacy within as the blank walls of Eastern seraglios. Newman thought it a queer way for rich people to live; his ideal of grandeur was a splendid facade diffusing its brilliancy outward too, irradiating hospitality. The house to which he had been directed had a dark, dusty, painted portal, which swung open in answer ...
— The American • Henry James

... He stopped. A queer look came over his face, and somehow the alert girl beside him knew what he was thinking of. 'Rill Scattergood was in his mind. He must have thought a great deal of the little school-mistress at one time—before ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long

... echoed Sikes. 'It'll be no sham frightening, mind you. If there's anything queer about him when we once get into the work; in for a penny, in for a pound. You won't see him alive again, Fagin. Think of that, before you send him. Mark my words!' said the robber, poising a crowbar, which he had ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens

... adventure of the cork soles,—has been in London too, and seeing all the lions under my escort. Good heavens! I wish you could have seen certain other mahogany-faced men (also captains) who used to call here for him in the morning, and bear him off to docks and rivers and all sorts of queer places, whence he always returned late at night, with rum-and-water tear-drops in his eyes, and a complication of punchy smells in his mouth! He was better than a comedy to us, having marvellous ways of tying his pocket-handkerchief round his neck at dinner-time in a kind of jolly embarrassment, ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields

... come to his rooms, and asked me about the bandsman whom the fellows said saved three people, and what your name might be. Then he asked if it was you who pulled him out, and I said it was, feeling quite queer the while; for it seemed so strange that you should have saved his life after all as took place. Then he set down at his table, looking not a bit the worse, asked how you spell your name, and I told him Richard Smithson, ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn

... Robert thoughtfully ran his hands through his side-whiskers, while, with an apologetic "One moment, I beg," or "Very odd, very; that must go down verbatim," he entered the gist of Mr. Ketchum's queer remarks in his note-book. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various

... way along the south shore of the great lake, did they talk of Paymaster Bullen and wonder what had become of him. Donald was inclined to believe that he had either returned to New York, or still remained where they had left him; but Christie only smiled, and said Bullen was such a queer fish that there was no predicting what he might ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore

... wouldn't quite do that. Not a breath as to any unfortunate conditions anywhere. But on every deck, wherever equals met, the fearful plight of the queer folk down nearest the water was softly debated. Distressing to feminine sympathy was the necessity of instant burials, first revealed up-stairs by that woman's cry of agony down on the lower gangway. But masculine nerve explained that ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable

... glance up at him with a queer look as he came in from these excursions, drop his head over his task again, look busy and miserable, and all ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald

... brigade to some of the blushing damsels whom she had, in her judgment, decided would make good wives for them and also be a blessing in their new homes. Various amusing stories were flying about for a long time in reference to some of the queer misadventures and mixing up of the parties concerned ere everything was satisfactorily arranged and everybody satisfied. Among a people so primitive and simple in their habits this could quickly ...
— Oowikapun - How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young

... and a queer sort of feeling came over him. "Well, there's no ice cream soda place around here, either," and ...
— Jack of the Pony Express • Frank V. Webster

... Cooney parlor in the vein of one emerging from strange adventures in undiscovered countries. This queer feeling would hardly last over the solid threshold of Home, whose atmosphere was almost notoriously uncongenial to eccentricities of that sort. But it did linger now, as Cally trod somewhat dreamily over streets ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... way of life is strange and by whom it is not understood. It is natural for us to like people who do things in the way in which we like them done. We are attracted to those who seem the same as ourselves, and turn (perhaps unconsciously) from those who seem queer and different. People of other lands are the same. When we see someone whose complexion, features, clothing, language, manners, and customs are different from our own, our natural reaction is to stare, or laugh, or both. It is not natural to be attracted to those who are different ...
— Have We No Rights? - A frank discussion of the "rights" of missionaries • Mabel Williamson

... Bowelt is an honest man," his Highness continued, "he will give to the demand of these furibund petitioners a very queer reception." ...
— The Black Tulip • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)

... really," she replied, looking away over the harbor. "It is so queer—marrying a Chinese woman like that. How will he ever get along with her or ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer

... Franklin, in the hope that relief expeditions would find them. It would be as incongruous to attribute these things to the Eskimos as to attribute tablets and lettered stones to the aborigines of America. Some time I shall take up an expression that the queer-shaped mounds upon this earth were built by explorers from Somewhere, unable to get back, designed to attract attention from some other world, and that a vast sword-shaped mound has been discovered upon the moon—Just now we think of lettered ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort

... tall, about middle age, rather gray, wears blue glasses, and never has anything to say to anybody; a queer sort of fellow." ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour

... there was young blood to summon from outside; and to set this blood seething before the eyes of visiting celebrities in the arts and letters was her dearest wish. She had more than one spare bedroom, of course; and the Eminent and the Queer were always welcome for a sojourn of a week or so, whether they came to read papers and deliver lectures or not. She was quite as well satisfied when they didn't. If they would but sit upon her wide veranda in spring or autumn, or before her big open fireplace in winter and "just talk," she would ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller

... at dinner, or that glass of ginger-beer, Or these strong cheroots, I know not, but I feel a little queer. ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... pigeon-pie; she said, 'No, I thank ye, Solomon,' and passed away. That I should ever live to see any one pass away from a pigeon-pie of my making! Sir Willmott Burrell, he wo'n't eat, but calls for wine and strong waters in his dressing-room: it's a queer bridal! Ah! there's one of the Lady Cromwell's women, perhaps she will eat; it is heart-breaking to think that such food as this"—and he cast his eye over a huge assemblage of ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall

... he's a fool," returned Mrs. Peachey, reflecting how wonderfully she had "managed" the great man, "but, of course, he's queer—all ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow

... the old frontiersman, he had babbled inconsequently about the sea. Mixing brandy with the last of the sediment water, Wayland got him into the saddle. There were queer splotches of blood under the skin on the backs of his hands; but when the brandy relieved his fatigue, he stopped babbling of ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut

... that such universal drabness was too bad to be true; one caught touches of manipulation, times in which these poor Captives seemed bound less by the chains of circumstance than by the wires of Mr. WALPOLE. The queer result was that I found myself believing in his compellingly human characters, but protesting that such unbroken misfortune could not, or need not, have encompassed them. To take an example, when Maggie's "tipsy" uncle was shown ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, October 20, 1920 • Various

... you see that dress? It was the same we saw on the queer girl who stared at us so! Maybe—she's crazy or something. I'm sure I could tell that was the same white dress with the ...
— The Girl Scouts at Bellaire - Or Maid Mary's Awakening • Lilian C. McNamara Garis

... allow; but then, so too was her beauty. At all events, he dared no more, not having the courage, though all the will, to linger, and was turning off when a queer thing ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington

... made all the haste he could, riding on the basket which had been given him by his friend. His queer boat seemed to go through the water of its own accord, and the distance was much shorter than he had expected, for in a few hours he caught sight of the gate and the roof of the Sea King's Palace. ...
— Japanese Fairy Tales • Yei Theodora Ozaki

... secure only as long as their performances excited jaded appetites as a novelty. If dwarfs and monstrosities staled; if dancing girls palled; if gladiators wearied; if there were no new games invented—then bring in a poet or artist—some queer fellow who had discovered something that he called truth or beauty, and let him amuse. But if he does not amuse, or if he wear out his welcome, away with him. In the history of our own civilization, as our ...
— On the Vice of Novel Reading. - Being a brief in appeal, pointing out errors of the lower tribunal. • Young E. Allison

... Cecil delightedly. A thoroughly well-arranged meal would not have given him half the pleasure that this queer ...
— Holiday Tales • Florence Wilford

... "I like the power; I like the fun; I like the fuss; and above all I like the money. I almost like the people who make the fuss and pay the money. Almost. But they're a queer gang,—an amazingly queer gang!" ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... eyes are a little queer, but if you've ever noticed it, niggers' eyes are often yellow. The people on the place call him 'Cat-Eye Mose.' You needn't be afraid of him," he added ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster

... the interior, it has an exceedingly bare and stript appearance; for, altho' there is good, solid stonework in the walls, the whole has been washed a foolish, Philistine white. The Romanesque of the architectural is said to be of particular interest to connoisseurs, and the queer archaic capitals must certainly attract the notice even ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various

... bearing in mind. We ourselves are ever a restless, bustling, far-wandering folk, great lovers of fiction and travel, who not only carry forth the English language into the uttermost parts of the earth, to be moulded in strange dialects to queer uses, but also bring back fresh ideas and incidents, and various aspects of a many-sided world-ranging life. If, as has been often asserted, literature be the collective expression of the ideas and aspirations, the tastes, feelings, and habits of the generation which produces ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall

... no pseudo "Queen Anne" hybrid, with lowering, top-heavy projections like scowling eyebrows over squinting eyes; neither mongrel Renaissance, nor feeble, sickly, imitation Elizabethan facades, and Tudor towers; none of the queer, composite, freakish impertinences of architectural style, which now-a-day do duty as the adventurous vanguard, the aesthetic vedettes "making straight the way," for the ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... it puzzled him to explain how there came to be gold on the cabin floor. His surprise deepened when, a few days later, he found another "prospect" in the same place. His two sweepings had yielded perhaps a pennyweight of the precious metal—enough to set him to thinking. It seemed queer that in the neighborhood of Black Jack's bunk he could find no ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach

... think that was queer, the day before Thanksgivin'," said Mrs. Little. She was examining the turkey critically. "I guess it'll do," she declared finally. That was her highest expression of approbation. "Well, I rayther thought you'd think so," rejoined ...
— Young Lucretia and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins

... he is. That's queer. All the better for us. You might get a bit finer, Challis, in case ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse

... I could never be fond of him in any different way—that I could never think of it. And although I endeavoured to avoid hurting his feelings, he—took it very badly. He said, in such a queer, choking voice, that he ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer

... and it was soon abundantly evident that we had done right in trusting him. He was a short, round-faced man, with a florid complexion, twinkling eyes, and sandy hair. He was very restless and irritable, and had a queer habit of twiddling his thumbs backward and forward whenever ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens

... his head, as if to say "now it's all right! Bravo!" So my terror changed to astonishment. Reissiger, for reasons which I shall discuss presently, may not have been so very much to blame for persisting in the old tempo; but Mendelssohn's indifference, with regard to this queer artistic contretemps, raised doubts in my mind whether he saw any distinction and difference in the case at all. I fancied myself standing before an abyss of superficiality, a veritable void. SOON after this had happened ...
— On Conducting (Ueber das Dirigiren): - A Treatise on Style in the Execution of Classical Music • Richard Wagner (translated by Edward Dannreuther)

... me good, honey, but thar's a queer gone feelin' inside of me. I'm twenty years younger than you, old Adam, but you've got mo' youth left in you than ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow

... as well as everybody is small, and queer, and mysterious: the little houses under their blue roofs, the little shop-fronts hung with blue, and the smiling little people in their blue costumes. The illusion is only broken by the occasional passing of a tall foreigner, ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn

... sharp gasp of surprise, and saw the girl slip, with a frantic clutch at the air, and fall at full length on the shining ground. When he sprang forward and bent over her, she rose quickly to her knees and held out what he thought at first was some queer ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow

... my word for it—if old man Brookes ever finds out I'm sister to any of the crowd that runs with Charley Cox and Willie Waxter and those boys whose fathers he's lawyer for, it'll queer me for life in that office—that's what it will. A girl that's been made confidential stenographer after only one year in an office to have to be afraid, like I am, to ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst

... whisper, and insistently, as though the information must carry some special significance. But the girl showed no sign of enlightenment. "You remember the Carey boys?" he urged. "They left Harvard the year I entered. They HAD to leave. They were quite mad. All the Careys have been mad. The boys were queer even then, and awfully rich. Henry ran away with a girl from a shoe factory in Brockton and lives in Paris, and Philip ...
— The Scarlet Car • Richard Harding Davis

... are queer, indeed; They seem to come of a three-legged breed. They have no tails, their bark is on their back; They hunt in couples, never in a pack. The day's work over, 'tis a pleasant sight To find them waiting by the fire ...
— A Phenomenal Fauna • Carolyn Wells

... They drove through the queer, narrow, crooked streets, out upon the "neutral ground," and up to the gardens; bought an English newspaper; then, going back to the ship, looked up at the frowning rock threaded by those English galleries, which, upon ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt

... looked again. He leaned over and studied it intently, his eyes widening and shining. Suddenly with a queer gesture he rose and went to a window. He stood there, back turned to David, ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller

... other by the natural knot and gathered into a sort of enormous pan-pipe, such as Polyphemus might have employed. The invitation was accepted: Osmiae, Anthidia and Megachiles came in fairly large numbers, especially the first, to benefit by the queer installation. ...
— Bramble-bees and Others • J. Henri Fabre

... and he chose to bury himself out on a Western ranch, and there I grew up with no more training than the little Indian girls who used to come to the house with beads and things to sell. It was a queer life for a girl; but ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin

... and that's all you or anyone else can make out of it." His other references to early days were rare. He would repeat queer reminiscences of the backwoods to illustrate questions of state; but of his own part in that old life he spoke reluctantly and sadly. Nevertheless there was once extracted from him an awkward autobiographical fragment, and his friends ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood

... surprise made her in an ecstasy; she could not speak, but her heart was full of happiness. I too was happy, and I believed that a great part of my happiness was caused by the knowledge that I had done a good deed. We are queer creatures all of us, whether we are bad or good. From that moment I gave my servants orders to lay the table for eight persons every day, and told them that I was only at home to Goudar. I spent money madly, and felt that I was within a ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt

... the end of a railroad platform waiting for a friend, will recall what queer people he mistook for him. The shape of a hat, a slightly characteristic gait, evoked the vivid picture in his mind's eye. In sleep a tinkle may sound like the pealing of a great bell; the distant stroke of a hammer like a thunderclap. ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann

... boyhood was Archibald Gray; And to prove what queer antics Dame Fortune will play When she sets about trying to plan, She heaped all her favors on Valentine, bold, And always left Archibald out of her fold, The harmless, ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various

... know, I have a queer feeling that I've seen all this before," the Irish girl said. "Of course I haven't—unless it was in my dreams. Naturally I've thought about Alaska a great deal because my father ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine

... their perch, Hear the sweet lily-bells Ringing to church. Come, hear what his reverence Rises to say, In his low painted pulpit This calm Sabbath-day. Fair is the canopy Over him seen, Penciled by Nature's hand, Black, brown, and green. Green is his surplice, Green are his bands; In his queer little pulpit ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous

... pictures at that place in Suffolk Street? There's a man there—a Parisian—I forget his honoured name—Leblanc, or Lenoir, or Lebrun, or something—but he's a most humorous artist, and he paints monkeys and storks and all sorts of queer beasties ALMOST as quaintly and expressively as you do. Mind, I say ALMOST, for I never will allow that any Frenchman could do anything QUITE so good, quite so funnily mock-human, as ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen

... on the edge of a hill, with a wood behind it - and the chalk-quarry on one side and the gravel-pit on the other. Down at the bottom of the hill was a level plain, with queer-shaped white buildings where people burnt lime, and a big red brewery and other houses; and when the big chimneys were smoking and the sun was setting, the valley looked as if it was filled with golden mist, and the limekilns and oast-houses glimmered and glittered till they ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit

... parade, not wishing to hurt his feelings. Looking up I found his mild eyes fixed on me with a queer expression, almost with a twinkle ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... no time. "It's fine of you," she said eagerly. "Yes, I'm sure you can do it. Not one person in fifty will know whether the tunes you play are national or not. Something quaint and queer for the Hungarian, and jigsy and gay for the Irish. Castanets in the Spanish ...
— The Second Violin • Grace S. Richmond

... take place, is filled with real old furniture; the family that owned the farm have held it for five generations. Mr. Van Styne admits that he is not enough of a connoisseur to judge the actual value of the antiques, but there are some mahogany pieces, and loads of queer old things that his wife would have kept in the attic, or split up for kindlings. As he thinks this is what is now called 'Period Furniture,' he would suggest that we run out and have a look at it before the day of ...
— Polly's Business Venture • Lillian Elizabeth Roy

... not Benny's face, either, that frightened the ground squirrels away, though everybody had to admit that he had a queer one. A black patch spread over his eyes and ran like the point of a V down his nose. For the most part, however, he was of a grayish color, with still more black running in streaks across his back. Underneath he was a—yes! a dirty white color. But then, one must ...
— The Tale of Benny Badger • Arthur Scott Bailey

... expecting something to happen. A barrel-organ played like an obscene nightingale beneath wet leaves. Children ran across the road. Here and there one could see brown panelling inside the hall door.... The march that the mind keeps beneath the windows of others is queer enough. Now distracted by brown panelling; now by a fern in a pot; here improvising a few phrases to dance with the barrel-organ; again snatching a detached gaiety from a drunken man; then altogether absorbed by words the poor shout across the street at each other (so outright, so lusty)—yet ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf

... say that for her," answered Winnie. "I don't know as there is any one thing I can put my finger on. Of course she has never been in charge of the house before—it will be queer to be taking orders from her. She's been here off and on, making visits and she never bothered me. Mrs. Willis, poor dear, went away feeling sure that the girls would be well looked after and I'd be the last one to think of disturbing her thoughts. But, between ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence

... was a very queer young man, whom his few friends called crazy on account of his lonely and ascetic manner of life, ...
— Victor's Triumph - Sequel to A Beautiful Fiend • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... Mrs. Jett that queer juvenescence that sometimes comes to men and women in middle life. She who had enjoyed no particular youth (her father had died in a ferryboat crash two weeks before her birth, and her mother three years after) came suddenly to acquire comeliness which ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst

... there, who had a clearer vision, the feeling was general that he had made a mistake. He was fifty-six, in the prime of life, never in better health, with "success lying easily upon him"—said one; "at the very summit of his career," said another—and all agreed it was "queer," "strange,"—unless, they argued, he was really ill. Even the most acute students of human affairs among his friends wondered. It seemed incomprehensible that any man should want to give up before he was, for some reason, compelled to do so. A man should go on until ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok

... ordinary beings that thronged the streets of the great city, for they had been victorious in many a battle with the mighty deep, and they had looked on the wondrous sights of the far-off lands of the Old World. Queer people they were, too, each a Captain Cuttle or a Dirk Hatteraick in himself, and many an hour did the dreamy writer spend with them, apparently listening to their rude stories, but really making keen studies ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.

... his dressing room, getting ready for the big swing, which he would perform before his mystery tricks, when Mr. Moyne, the circus treasurer, entered. There was a queer look on Mr. Moyne's face, and Joe could not help but ...
— Joe Strong The Boy Fire-Eater - The Most Dangerous Performance on Record • Vance Barnum

... Ivanovna's pension.... She gets one. An awfully curious story, I can tell you! I'll tell it you one of these days. Quite an affair, 'pon my soul, a queer affair. But, I say, the governor, you won't forget about the governor, please! His hide is thick, of course—German, and it's had a Russian tanning too, still you can get through it. Only, mind my step-mother ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... Meek's Bay are justly world-famed for their triumphs of color glories, for here there seem to be those peculiar combinations of varied objects, and depths, from the shallowest to the deepest, with the variations of colored sands and rocks on the bottom, as well as queer-shaped and colored bowlders lying on the vari-colored sands, that are not found elsewhere. The waving of the water gives a mottled effect surpassing the most delicate and richly-shaded marbles and onyxes. Watered-silks ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James

... said; "father said if I could raise the calf I might have it. Didn't I have a time with it, though, it was so near dead! Of course I will fix my old dress up for you—that is, if I get the money. Sometimes I think father's queer; he did not give Elizabeth the money when he sold that colt he had given her." And both girls ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various

... he would come along with his own horse and wagon and it would be noised around that he had six horses in his stable and ten of the finest cows. To be sure, when he saw Elsie lolling around lazily there were blots on his calculation. He realized that she was no housekeeper, and was moreover queer and extravagant. The last fault she might overcome, he thought, if she had a husband. He could afford to have servants then; other folks got along without the wife doing anything, and with such wealth ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various

... there was somethin' mysterious about it. He'd had a good deal worse knocks than that seemed to be, as only left a black and blue spot, and he said he never see a deck load o' timber piled securer. He had some queer notions about the doin's o' sperits, Dan'l had; his old Aunt Parser was to blame for it. She lived with his father's folks, and used to fill him and the rest o' the child'n with all sorts o' ghost stories and stuff. I used to tell him she'd a' be'n hung for a witch if she'd ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett

... a livin' man! I mightn't a know'd her in that queer dress; but yon's her dog. It's Wolf: I kud ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid

... was used to Mee-ko's scolding. He had heard it many times before, but never before had he thought there was any sense in it. It seemed very queer to him that he could understand the ...
— The Magic Speech Flower - or Little Luke and His Animal Friends • Melvin Hix

... shifting his partially chewed plug. I seen queer things too, ups and downs. I seen a crocodile bite the fluke of an anchor same ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... who that is,' said the queer little soul. 'A nice person to know, I should think! I wish I had the painting of her: I'D do her justice.' So, feeling quite satisfied that she had said a very cutting thing at Miss Knag's expense, Miss ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens

... Cress; but I'm afraid I shan't be as easy with them as Ponty. My opinion is, that if you give them an inch they'll take an ell. By the way, that was a queer thing about Pledge. Did ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed

... merely juxtaposition; a newcomer is in the way. There is no longer any room; all habits are acquired. M. Fauchelevent, M. Tranchelevent, Father Gillenormand asked nothing better than to be relieved from "that gentleman." He added:—"Nothing is more common than those originals. They do all sorts of queer things. They have no reason. The Marquis de Canaples was still worse. He bought a palace that he might lodge in the garret. These are ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... the very day the slide took place. Wasn't it queer? Dad and mother went out to Butte, to the funeral—Uncle Maurice was an old bachelor—and then they heard his will read and learned ...
— Dave Porter in the Gold Fields - The Search for the Landslide Mine • Edward Stratemeyer

... no refinement; honest at heart, and thoroughly so, and yet, in some sort, sly,—at least, endowed with a sort of tact and wisdom that are akin to craft.... But on the whole, I liked this sallow, queer, sagacious visage, with the homely human sympathies that warmed it; and, for my small share in the matter, would as lief have Uncle Abe for a ruler as any man whom it would have been practicable to put in his place." ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns

... "Nothing's queer," stated the Virginian, "except marriage and lightning. Them two occurrences can still give me a ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister

... and rare Alduses and Elzevirs waiting for him at unsuspected bookstalls; the numismatist has but to stretch forth his palm to have priceless coins drop into it. My own weakness is odd people, and I am constantly encountering them. It was plain that I had unearthed a couple of very queer specimens at Bayley's Four-Corners. I saw that a fortnight afforded me too brief an opportunity to develop the richness of both, and I resolved to devote my spare time to Mr. Jaffrey alone, instinctively recognizing ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner

... know Mr. Lear,' Who has written such volumes of stuff! Some think him ill-tempered and queer, But a few think him ...
— A Mother's List of Books for Children • Gertrude Weld Arnold

... went on again: "Well, you'll never guess who it was singing away down there! I crept to my windows and peeped out, and there, Carus, were those two queer forest-running fellows who stopped us on ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers

... charge on the estate. He drove down the cow himself, and having stalled it in the byre, he informed her of the fact over the yard dyke by word of mouth, for he never could be induced to enter her door. He was accounted to be "gey an' queer," save by those who had tried making a bargain with him. But his farmers liked him, knowing him to be an easy man with those who had been really unfortunate, for he knew to what the year's crops of each had amounted, to a single ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various

... a very comical sight, and, knowing my little friend's tenderness of heart, I was sure the turtle would receive nothing but kindness at his hands. The shell was not pierced, but the queer trotter was attached to the cart by means of a harness made of tape, allowing him free movement of the head, legs, and tail. If any of your boys should decide to follow my little friend's example, I trust that they will be as gentle as he in the ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, Nov 1877-Nov 1878 - No 1, Nov 1877 • Various

... progress? I will tell you. It is because cranks make all the wheels in all the machinery of the world go round. What would a steam-engine be without a crank? I suppose the first fool that looked on the first crank that was ever made asked what that crooked, queer-looking thing was good for. When the wheels got moving he found out. Tell us something about that book which has so much to say ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... thee a deposit[FN384] wherefor thou hast dunned me." And he fell to bashing him grievously with a stick of holm-oak,[FN385] whilst he called out to the woman for help and prayed her to deliver him: but she said, "Keep thy place till the morning, and thou shalt see queer things." And her husband beat him within the chamber, till he killed[FN386] him and he swooned away. Then he left beating him and when the Robber came to himself, the woman said to her husband, "O man, this house is on hire and we owe its owners much money, and we have ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... Hector," cried Miss McIntyre with a challenge in her eyes. "Something very queer happened to me also to-day. I'll bet a pair of gloves that my adventure was more out of the common than yours, though I have nothing so nice to show at ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle

... the hills to Feldwick, and I wrote a note to my father. He tore it into small pieces unread. So I came by night, a thief, and you also were there by night, a thief. The same night, too. It was queer. ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim

... he worked for him when he was sober enough. One evening as he was making his way to the saloon as usual, he heard singing. "That's strange," he muttered; "wonder what's going on?" He turned and walked toward the singing and soon found a large tent filled with people. "Queer-looking show," he thought as he approached the entrance. A pleasant-faced young man stepped up to him and said, "Come in, Bill, and I will get you a good seat." He mechanically followed the usher in. The singing ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor

... he glanced at the houses he passed, and on some of the doors were little notices scrawled in queer handwritings and telling that a lodging was to let. Occasionally he paused, looked up and hesitated, and then he went on. The difficulty was suddenly before him, and he knew that even if he looked at the rooms he could not hire them, as he had not enough money to cover the first month's ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford

... exclaimed Mrs. Gratacap, lifting up her hands and eyes. "What did I say? You are his mother, an't you? There's no shame about it, I suppose. I hadn't a notion of putting you into a passion. I thought it mighty queer you didn't come in to see your own son when he's lying so low; and I said so,—that's all! But if you don't want to come, I don't want to force you. I can't put natural feelings in the hearts of people that haven't got them; it stands ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie

... we may see others of our acquaintance before leaving this,' says he, sorter queer-like, as if to mean, no ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman

... little girl did not talk and tell what she wanted? She could not. Just think, she was six years old and could not speak a word! All she could do was to make a few queer sounds. Perhaps, too, you wonder why she was so anxious for the towel doll to have eyes. I think it was because although she herself was blind, she liked to fancy her doll had eyes that could see the beauties of the world. To be blind and speechless seems hard indeed, but besides ...
— Modern Americans - A Biographical School Reader for the Upper Grades • Chester Sanford

... if they knew they wouldn't tell. That was the case with every man I talked to on our side of the river. But over across the Timanyoni, nearly opposite the mouth of the Gloria, there is a little creek coming in from the north, and on this creek I found a lone prospector—a queer old chap who hails from my neck of woods ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde

... the mob and his fellow-judges, for the hapless victors of Arginusae in 406; and he quietly stood alone against the Thirty Tyrants during their reign of terror in 404, disobeying them at peril of his life. But Strip him of the "thing of sinews and muscles," as he called his outer self; forget the queer old personality that appears in the Clouds of Aristophanes, or for that matter in the Memorabilia of Xenophon—and what kind of picture of Socrates should we see? The humor would not go, for it is a universal quality; it has been said no Adept was ever without ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris

... of such a record it was ludicrous to deny that Tilden, although resembling a reformer, was simply an adroit politician, who had cultivated some queer political associates and had countenanced some very shady transactions. Nevertheless, Tilden would not be diverted from the singleness of his purpose. To make the issue a personal one he took the ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... near dense enough for that; and yet it looked queer for a campfire—as near as I could make out there were several of 'em, all in a row, and climbing straight up like columns," declared Eli, ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne

... was a queer looking man, dressed all in garments so shaggy that Betsy at first thought he must be some animal. But the stranger ended his fall in a sitting position and then the girl saw it was really a man. He held an apple in his hand, which ...
— Tik-Tok of Oz • L. Frank Baum

... milky light stretching from the northern to the southern horizon, reflected in the broken surface of the river, and glistening on the ice cakes that swirled down with the swift current. Then the southern end of the bow began to twist on itself until it had produced a queer elongated corkscrew appearance half-way up to the zenith, while the northern end spread out and bellied from east to west. Then the whole display moved rapidly across the sky until it lay low and faint on the western horizon, and it seemed to be ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck

... flourishing little port. It is now awaking to its possibilities as a watering-place. Its chief attraction is a wooded promontory rising behind the docks. Round this is cut an excellent road, which finally ends in a queer little attempt at a promenade. The "Point" has figured in history, for the possession of a fort upon it was contested by the Royalist and Roundhead forces in the Civil War. The church is in the middle of the old village, ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade

... buzzin' bees, not one of 'em more'n just nipped me and raised a blister in the skin." Indeed, even those abrasions were indistinguishable, though Jake solemnly believed in their existence. Then another queer thing! Long before the lieutenant and "his fellers" reached the imperiled vehicle all but two or three of the dozen assailants went scurrying off in the darkness, and when the cavalry came charging furiously through the gloom there was no one to oppose them. ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King

... was going to marry her. He did mean to marry her;—there's no doubt of that. But it was a queer kind of life we lived ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope

... been a severe jolt—a "bunk" Teddy called it—and that the train had come to a sudden stop. So quickly had it stopped, in fact, that a fat man, who was asleep in a berth just behind Mr. Martin, had tumbled out and now sat in the aisle of the car, gazing about him, a queer look on his sleepy face, for he ...
— The Curlytops at Uncle Frank's Ranch • Howard R. Garis

... a warning hand. As he spoke a queer thudding sound struck one dull note through the stillness of the house. He stood, bent forward, listening, absolutely breathless; then, on the other side of the wall, there rippled and rolled a something ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew

... one was the man who had answered to the name of John Bard and the other was the grey man who had spoken to him at the Garden the night before. He knew it not so much by the testimony of his eyes at that dim distance as by a queer, inner feeling that this must be so. There was also a sense of familiarity about the whole thing, as if he were looking on something which he had seen rehearsed ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand

... Edith here, Thinks all things queer, And some things she likes well; But then the street She thinks not neat, And does not like the smell. Nor do the fleas Her fancy please Although the fleas like her; They at first vie w Fell merrily too, For they made ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle

... stopped in the same way at an inn. . . . He indoors and me with the horses. . . . The people of the house, the innkeeper and his wife, seemed friendly good sort of people; the labourers, too, seemed all right; but yet, lads, I couldn't sleep. I had a queer feeling in my heart, . . . a queer feeling, that was just it. The gates were open and there were plenty of people about, and yet I felt afraid and not myself. Everyone had been asleep long ago. It was the middle of the night; it would soon be time to get up, and I was lying alone in my chaise ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... said, "we had a queer point arise in that Aztec Street inquiry. The original dispute arose owing to a discussion between a crowd of people in a pub as to where Wych ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors

... Mas'r Harry; because if it is the custom it's all right; if it ain't the custom it's all wrong, and Master Landell and the Don, who are close behind, might think it queer." ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn

... what to make of it," Walter confessed. "Every few hundred feet there are branches partly broken off and left hanging. Queer, isn't it?" ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... "That's all talk; hot air, you might say. Don't believe there's any truth in it, any more'n that story about ghosts, and queer noises that Herb and his crowd tell about. Anyhow, I never let ...
— The Strange Cabin on Catamount Island • Lawrence J. Leslie

... into a secret—had, upon the first appearance of the Spanish ship, been greatly exercised in his mind lest he should fail in courage when the two ships came to blows; but with the discharge of the first shot the queer agitated feeling which he had mistaken for fear completely passed away, and was instantly forgotten; and now, his services being no longer required at the helm, he armed himself with a handspike snatched ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood

... I; and I laid it on the table opposite me as I went on with my supper. It was a "gossan" wig, as we call it in our parts; a wig grown yellow and rusty with age and wear. It looked so sly and wicked as it lay there, and brought back the events of the day so sharply that a queer dread took me of being discovered with it. I pulled out my pistol, loaded it (they had given me back both the powder and pistol found on me when I was taken), and laid it beside my plate. This done, I went on with my supper—it was an excellent cold capon—and ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... know how it is—but things are so queer. Sometimes when I wake up in the morning, in my room, which I have had tapestried with fluted rose silk, and lie thinking, under the lace curtains; although I may have been at one of Mrs. Gnu's splendid parties the night before, and ...
— The Potiphar Papers • George William Curtis

... end of the hollow log disappeared. There was a queer rattling sound that sent shivers up and down Reddy's backbone. Prickly Porky the Porcupine had sat down with his back against the end of the hollow log, and the queer rattling sound was made by the thousand ...
— The Adventures of Unc' Billy Possum • Thornton W. Burgess

... gray horde rolling through the streets—narrow, cobblestoned streets, with steep-roofed stone houses and queer little courts, and the air over all of having been lived in for generations on generations. There is the remnant in Crepy of one of the houses that used to belong to the Dukes of Valois, and at the end of one winding street you find yourself unexpectedly ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl

... 'I'm sure I hope he'll make her a good husband. They tell queer things about him downstairs. ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte

... trimonata. Quartern kvarono, kvaronujo. Quartet kvarteto. Quartz kvarco. Quash (repress) premegi. Quash (annul) senigi, nuligi. Quaver trilo. Quay surbordo, bordmarsxejo. Queen regxino. Queer stranga. Quell trankviligi. Quench (extinguish) estingi. Quench (thirst) kvietigi. Querulous malkontenta. Query demando. Query cxu? Quest sercxo. Quest informigxo. Question demando. Question demandi. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... disaster. But I can't expect you to understand the shades and complications of the year—the year something or other ahead. I had it all down to the smallest details—in my dream. I suppose I had been dreaming of it before I awoke, and the fading outline of some queer new development I had imagined still hung about me as I rubbed my eyes. It was some grubby affair that made me thank God for the sunlight. I sat up on the couch and remained looking at the woman and rejoicing—rejoicing that I had come away out of all that ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells

... yesterday almost gave me a plexus," I said bitterly. "Why did you frame up one of those when-we-were-twenty-one dispatches from the front? It sounded like a love song from Willie Hayface of Cohoes, after his first day on Broadway. Didn't you know that my wife was liable to open that queer fellow and put me on ...
— Back to the Woods • Hugh McHugh

... they wanted, they thought they would take a walk and see this queer world they had come to ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various

... there is that transparent ethereal look in her face which makes old women say 'she is not long for this world,' that fateful beauty which creates an atmosphere of doom about it. You cannot look at her without a queer involuntary feeling that she was born to die in some tragic way. She reminds one of those perilously fragile vases we feel must get broken, those rarely delicate flowers we feel ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne

... you're all right now, Towsley and I'll just take another try at it and see if we can't keep our eyes right front next time. Good-by. I hope you'll not feel shook up, afterward, as mother did the day she fell down-stairs. Didn't appear to hurt her a mite, then, but she was all trembling and queer-headed for a week afterward. Come on, Tows! I didn't have but fifteen minutes for play, to begin with, and a lot of that's ...
— Divided Skates • Evelyn Raymond

... things and going to as many sheep camps as she could, taking with her the good things to the poor exiles, the sheep-herders. I liked the plan and was glad to agree, but I never dreamed I should have so lovely a time. When the queer old wooden clock announced two we went ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart

... had found strange things in the arroyo—rose-quartz arrow heads, notched like saws; an old, rusted Colt's revolver, bearing the date 1858, and a picture of the holding up of a stagecoach engraved around the chamber; queer, tiny shells of some long gone fresh-water snail; bits of yellow pottery, their edges worn smooth and round by the water; to say nothing of birds' nests, villages of ugly water-white scorpions; and lizards, from the tiny ones that change their color, ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour

... thought of finding something around your works for him. They say he's an all-fired worker and he certainly does seem to have hid some decent stuff in him under all his damfoolishness. And you used to be such a tremendous friend of the family—I thought perhaps you—of course I know he's a queer lot—I know—" ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington

... turning away in desperation he felt a tug at his elbow. Looking around, he saw a queer figure with a countenance that resembled a first attempt at a charcoal sketch from life: one cheek was larger than the other, the mouth was sadly out of drawing, the eyes shone out from among the bruises like the sun from behind the clouds. But if the features were disfigured, ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice

... of time there wandered that way a queer character, a clock-maker, who being fully instructed in the inner workings of time-tellers, and not having inherited the traditions of that village, did not regard this clock with the veneration accorded to it by the natives. To their astonishment he ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various

... nice, at any rate," replied Cologne, as they turned into a lane, a short cut over the woodland. "But, say, Dorothy, do you know I believe that fellow—the one who rode the farmer's horse—is out this way? I saw some one who had that same queer gait, and who wore his hat on the side of his head, and I am almost sure it was he. I was not near enough to see his face, but there is something so characteristic about his swing, I am sure I could not be mistaken. Did Tavia tell you anything about ...
— Dorothy Dale's Camping Days • Margaret Penrose

... last summer, at the great Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, I overheard a conversation that interested me very much. The subject of it was a queer little animal called a "gopher," which sat stuck up in a case with its comical little head perched up in the air; for it wasn't even alive, but was a ...
— The Nursery, June 1877, Vol. XXI. No. 6 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various

... upon him that there was no further need to escape the Bacteriologist. In Wellington Street he told the cabman to stop, and got out. He slipped on the step, and his head felt queer. It was rapid stuff, this cholera poison. He waved his cabman out of existence, so to speak, and stood on the pavement with his arms folded upon his breast awaiting the arrival of the Bacteriologist. There was something tragic in his pose. The ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... finished it. With a queer, guttural cry Monody took a step forward with his left foot an' kicked him under the chin, lifted him clear from the ground, an' rolled him over, a crumpled an' broken thing, on top o' the sub-cook The man with the lantern began to fan-shoot into Monody, an' I jumped for him an' hit him in the ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason

... But like want of reasonableness, a love for having the last word, want of humour and the like, politics were in her opinion a mannish attribute to be tolerated, and Gladstone was the name of the something which makes all our sex such queer characters. She had a profound faith in him as an aid to conversation, and if there were silent men in the company would give him to them to talk about, precisely as she divided a cake among children. And then, with a motherly ...
— Margaret Ogilvy • James M. Barrie

... is possible, from similarity in the ways of appearing and disappearing, that he is the monster Tauguitch of the Sabobas and Cahuillas described in The Legend of Tauguitch and Algoot.[3] This god was a queer compound of goodness and evil, who taught them all the rites and ...
— The Old Franciscan Missions Of California • George Wharton James

... Nick's queer little companion peered through the misty, uncertain light of the cobbler's workshop with his sharp restless red eyes, but ...
— Nick Baba's Last Drink and Other Sketches • George P. Goff

... lodging in a queer house, since pulled down, facing the Maximilian Avenue, and entered into a fairly lively intercourse with our operatic stars who had just returned. My old enthusiasm for Schroder-Devrient revived when I saw her again more frequently in opera. Strange ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner

... tree they spied so yellow, Rustling in motion queer; In they fired, and down they dropped— Butternuts, my dear! Nutting, nutting— Who'll ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville

... "The Moving Picture Girls at Oak Farm; Or, Queer Happenings While Taking Rural Plays." In that book was told how the acquaintance was made of Sandy Apgar, who ran a farm in New Jersey. As Mr. Pertell was looking for some country scenes to use in connection with his moving picture dramas, ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Under the Palms - Or Lost in the Wilds of Florida • Laura Lee Hope

... "father said if I could raise the calf I might have it. Didn't I have a time with it, though, it was so near dead! Of course I will fix my old dress up for you—that is, if I get the money. Sometimes I think father's queer; he did not give Elizabeth the money when he sold that colt he had given her." And ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various

... "Doing what?" asked Tom. "Poker!" replied Oakhurst, sententiously; "when a man gets a streak of luck,—nigger luck—he don't get tired. The luck gives in first. Luck," continued the gambler, reflectively, "is a mighty queer thing. All you know about it for certain is that it's bound to change. And it's finding out when it's going to change that makes you. We've had a streak of bad luck since we left Poker Flat—you come along, and slap you get into it, too. If you can hold your cards ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte

... I have lost no time. I am rather fagged, but I am sure to be well paid for my hardship; I never want sleep so long as I can have the music of a dice-box, and wherewithal to pay the piper. As I told you, he tried some of his queer turns, but I foiled him like a man, and, in return, gave him more than he could relish of the genuine dead knowledge. In short, I have plucked the old baronet as never baronet was plucked before; I have scarce left him the stump of a quill. I have got promissory notes in his hand ...
— Two Ghostly Mysteries - A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family; and The Murdered Cousin • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... closely at Manuel, and seeing that Manuel, on his side, was observing him calmly, averted his gaze. Bizco's face possessed the interest of a queer animal or of a pathological specimen. His narrow forehead, his flat nose, his thick lips, his freckled skin and his red, wiry hair lent him the appearance ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja

... sea, varying from one mile to five miles in width. This forms the harbor of Hongkong, one of the most spacious and picturesque in the world. It is crowded with steamers, ferryboats, Chinese junks with queer-shaped sails of yellow matting, sampans, trim steam launches and various other craft. As the vessel passes beyond the smelting works and the dry docks it rounds a point and the beauty of ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch

... hands a model of the Palace of Westminster, and sundry docks, resists the approach of an interminable centipede, on which she stamps, vainly endeavouring to impede the progress of the coil of fire and blood approaching to soil and fire her fair robe; beside her stands John Bull, in a queer mixed costume, half sailor, with the smalls and gaiters of a coalheaver. He bears the Habeas Corpus Act under his arm, but stands aghast and paralysed, it never seeming to have occurred to the ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton

... said in a shrill voice that he thought Jack was a very nice boy. He wore a light grey-green Palm Beach suit and carried a big brown leather briefcase that looked too heavy for his soda straw-thin legs and arms. He was queer-looking because his waist was so narrow and his back so humped. And when he took off his tan Panama hat, a white fuzz exploded from his scalp. His face was pale as the moon in daylight. His broad smile showed teeth that Jack ...
— They Twinkled Like Jewels • Philip Jose Farmer

... made. Why the first evening dress Helen had and the first long pants Bud (Wade) had I bought. Well, we were going down to Fort Smith, but Bud got sick and we couldn't go. You know, Mary, it seemed so queer. When Helen and I went to California, we all saw the same circus together. Yes, I've been to California with her twice. Whenever the train would stop she would come from the pullman to the coach where the colored persons had to ride to see about me. We went out to visit Sister (Bess Hudgins ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration

... in hers, fondling it as she talked, Patricia told how three nights before Miss Agatha had been "queer, you know," at supper. Patricia had not liked to leave her, but it was the night of the Woman's Club's second Whist Tournament. And Virginia had promised to watch Miss Agatha. And, anyhow, Miss Agatha had gone to ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell

... Zoology, because—well, I really have never been able to learn exactly why he is to be expected to know zoology. There is, indeed, a popular superstition, that doctors know all about things that are queer or nasty to the general mind, and may, therefore, be reasonably expected to know the "barbarous binomials" applicable to snakes, snails, and slugs; an amount of information with which the general mind is usually completely satisfied. And there is a scientific superstition that Physiology ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley

... enshrined in Jacobite memories as the battle of Gladsmuir, for a reason very characteristic of the Stuarts and their followers. Some {216} queer old book of prophecies had foretold, more than a century earlier, that there should be a battle at Gladsmuir. The battle of Prestonpans was not fought really on Gladsmuir at all: Gladsmuir lies a good mile away from the scene of Charles's easy triumph and Cope's inglorious rout; but ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy

... good lady? Not enough to pay my passage to Pen-zephyr. I came over on your account, for I thought there was a mystery somewhere. Now I must go back on my own. Mind this—'twould be very awkward for you if your old man were to know. He's a queer temper, though he ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy

... shook as I hung up the receiver. A brick house, she had said; the Wells house was brick. And so were all the other houses on the street. Vines in the back? Well, even my own house had vines. It was absurd; it was pure coincidence; it was—well, I felt it was queer. ...
— Sight Unseen • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... family know he's not working on the sly; then he says in effect: 'I think of thee, my little Tessie, when the moonlight is shining on the world; your bright eyes have me going for fair, kid, and due to a queer pain in my interior, ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne

... after, to conceal so execrable an assassination, threw her body into a pit, which afterwards contracted the traditional appellation of Nun-pit." [Footnote: Philipotts, "Villare Cantianum," quoted by Littlehales, op. cit. p. 27.] Now whether this tale be true or an invention to explain the queer name "Nun-pit" we shall never know, but as it happens we do know that the nuns were removed to the Isle of Sheppey and that St Thomas persuaded King Henry II. to establish at Newington a small house of seven secular canons to whom was given the whole manor. But curiously ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton

... weather, warm and bright, and it seemed to penetrate your body through your eyes when you looked, and through your mouth when you breathed. Rose and Simon hugged and kissed each other every minute, and that gave me a queer feeling! Monsieur Beaurain and I walked behind them, without speaking much, for when people do not know each other, they do not find anything to talk about. He looked timid, and I liked to see his embarrassment. At last we got to the ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... 87, lives in a shack furnished by the city. With him lives his second wife, a much older woman. Both he and his wife have a reputation for being "queer" and do not welcome outside visitors. However, he readily gave an interview and seemed most willing to relate the story ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Mississippi Narratives • Works Projects Administration

... there was but lazy life, an occasional omnibus, the queer old diligence of Provence with its great covered hood in the midst of which sat the driver amid a cluster of peasants, hidden like the queen bee by the swarm, a bullock cart bringing hay into the city, a tradesman's cart, a lumbering wine waggon, with its three great white horses and great barrels. ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke

... is left of a bit of work which my nephew shaped out and nearly finished and I put the last hand to," said Le Balafre, "a good fellow that I dispatched yonder and who prayed me to throw his head into the Maes.—Men have queer fancies when old Small Back [a cant expression in Scotland for Death, usually delineated as a skeleton. S.] is gripping them, but Small Back must lead down the dance with us ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott

... "It is a queer world we live in, child," she continued, "and true love and suitability of character are such a rare combination, but from what I can judge, you and ...
— Red Hair • Elinor Glyn

... pretty fair boxer at the university, but, after I had called time for the first round, the thing was to all intents and purposes a genuine fight, and he was all in several times over. The "Boiler-plate's" fists made a noise like a woodchopper. Natica stood watching it with a queer, queer smile. But I saw—and I saw it with a sinking at the heart, for I realized that I'd cherished the guilty hope that things were not really going to be straightened out—that with every mark of the "Boiler-plate's" glove, her husband was coming ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various

... was doing, and found he was clerk in a large shop. His pleasure, however, was to wander about upon the hills, talking to half- mad and visionary peasants, or to persuade queer and conscience- stricken persons to deliver up the keeping of their troubles into his care. Another night, when I was with him in his own lodging, more than one turned up to talk over their beliefs and disbeliefs, and sun them as it were in the ...
— The Celtic Twilight • W. B. Yeats

... eyes, and she couldn't help listening. Bridget was making a most ostentatious noise with her broom, but through it all, Katy seemed to hear other sounds—feet on the stairs, doors opening and shutting—once, a stifled giggle. How queer it ...
— What Katy Did • Susan Coolidge

... the horses into the corral. One did not know much of the Americans then—for why? They were always going, going—never stopping, hurrying on to the gold mines, hurrying away from the gold mines, hurrying to look for other gold mines: but always going on foot, on horseback, in queer wagons—hurrying, pushing everywhere. Ah, it took away the breath. All, except one American—he did not hurry, he did not go with the others, he came and stayed here at Buenaventura. He was very quiet, very civil, very sad, and very discreet. He was not like the others, ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte

... was concentrated upon the French inventor. The latter's health appeared to have suffered in no way from his eighteen months' confinement; but his queer attitude, his incoherent gestures, his haggard eye, and his indifference to what was passing around him testified only too plainly to the degeneration of his ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne

... or evening walk. It broke from him to several boats that passed by us upon the water; but to the Knight's great surprise, as he gave the good-night to two or three young fellows a little before our landing, one of them, instead of returning the civility, asked us, what queer old put we had in the boat? with a great deal of the like Thames ribaldry. Sir Roger seemed a little shocked at first, but at length assuming a face of magistracy, told us, That if he were a Middlesex justice, he would make such vagrants know that her Majesty's subjects were no more to ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various

... Spriggins in his usual gentlemanly and unassuming manner—a fact which is not lost upon the applicant. "Well, Mr. Agent, spose you'll think it a mighty queer business to see a feller comin' here without a bein' asked, so to make a long story short, I might as well till you all ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour

... add, is a queer character. The more I saw of him, the greater became my admiration for King Leopold. In his present state the only rule must be a strong rule. No one would ever think of thanking a native for a service. It would be misunderstood because the black man out there mistakes kindness for weakness. You ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson

... would love to go. The day will not seem all lost if we spend a short time of it properly. But do tell us, Mrs. Gardner, what makes those people take the 'jerks'? It seems such a queer ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth

... yourself away from your shells even for an hour?" said Emilia. "What a queer child you are! What can you find to play at with them; they are all arranged in perfect ...
— A Christmas Posy • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth

... taciturn and irresponsive. Betty's wonderful gray eyes looked out of the window at the passing landscape, which Sir John was quite sure she did not see; Sylvia and Hester were absorbed in watching their sister. Sir John had a queer kind of feeling that there was something wrong with the girls' dress; that very coarse black serge, made with no attempt at style; the coarse, home-made stockings; the rough, hobnailed boots; the small tam-o'-shanter caps, pushed far back from ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade

... "Oh, delightful, and so queer; I've known her these twenty years. A great pet of mine is dear Miss Thorne. She is so very strange, you know. She always makes me think of the Eskimos and the Indians. ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... to play for it." He stopped to chuckle, but still a little regretfully. "My playing certainly made a hit. Sunday morning a preacher lambasted the dance, and called me the special messenger of the devil. My job was with a pillar of his church. I didn't go to work Monday morning. It's a queer world; that preacher was the father of Noah Ezekiel Foster, who is now ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby

... now. Cold? He believed you this fog was cold, and you might believe him that fog was cold, but the cold of both together would not be a patch upon what it was when your bones chattered in your skin and you heard the ship's keel grinding, and said "Ice!" "He'd seen some queer faces—dead and living—in his time, but when that fog lifted and the sun shone upon walls of green ice on both sides above our head, and the captain's face as cold and as green as them with knowing ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... over the station. Only the Eel moved. With that queer sliding step of his that was almost noiseless, he went to the door of the little house ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler

... with a range and season of blossom similar to the preceding species, and with even smaller white, fragrant flowers, growing on one side of a twisted spike, chooses dry fields, hillsides, open woods, and sandy places - queer habitats for a member of its moisture-loving tribe. Its leaves have usually fallen by flowering time. The cluster of tuberous, spindle-shaped roots are an ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan

... directly,' sounded the organist's voice, with a curious jogging effect in it, such as Millet was used to sometimes in his conversations with his wife at the children's bed-time. And then Millet heard him go up-stairs, and it was some minutes before he came down again, and then in such a queer absent condition that if it had been any other man in the parish than Mr Robins, whose sobriety was unimpeachable, Millet would have said that he had had a ...
— Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker

... I've often wondered what it could be. He certainly's a queer stick. Got to admit that. Always brooding. Good fellow all right, and, for a 'sphinx' as you call him, likable. But I ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various

... they're bright and shining Like the summer moons, Two queer faces look at you From the silver spoons. One is very long, and one Broad as it can be, And both of them are grewsome things, As ever you ...
— Harper's Young People, December 16, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... the queer figures some of the gentlemen and ladies presented on the poop, when all at once the breakfast gong sounded, and they all scuttled down much faster than they had come up, the sea air having given those able to get out of their bunks fresh appetites after they had paid ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson

... say "if they are at all like you," but that seemed a little too personal to say to one's doctor, even a doctor who had saved your life and had the most wonderful smile that ever was, and the nicest eyes. "If they will let me," she substituted. "But it is such a queer, kind thing to do. The other doctors were interested in me, too, as a case. But it didn't occur to any of them to offer me the hospitality of their homes and family for an unlimited time. Are ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper

... tones of a fatalist.... "Yet she knows I am not in my senses when I do that!" he exclaimed. "Well, I must walk about till I find her....Seize her, why didn't she know better than bring me into this disgrace!" he roared out. "She wasn't queer if I was. 'Tis like Susan to show such idiotic simplicity. Meek—that meekness has done me more harm ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy

... been cut by the ticket-taker. Then, there before him was the glaring sign of the Nickelorion tempting him; a bill with "Great Train Robbery Film Tonight" made his heart thump like stair-climbing—and he dashed at the ticket-booth with a nickel doughtily extended. He felt queer about the scalp as the cashier girl slid out a coupon. Why did she seem to be watching him so closely? As he dropped the ticket in the chopper he tried to glance away from the Brass-button Man. For one- nineteenth of a second he kept his head turned. It turned ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis

... of perfect art. The story of an outlaw fills him with enthusiasm, and the heroic struggles of godlike souls are for him meaningless. He gazes with envious awe upon some vulgar rich man, and finds a philosopher, or a saint, only queer. He studies because he has been sent to school, where ignorance will expose him to ridicule and humiliation, and possibly too, because he is told that knowledge will help him to win money and influence. However great his proficiency, he is in truth but a barbarian, ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding

... sweet of you to answer so," said Lottie. "I want to see the queer, awkward country people who go to such places. They amuse me vastly; don't they ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe

... pie." She clothed him, taught him, and had him to sea again in better shape, welcomed him to her hearth on his return from every cruise, and when she died bequeathed him her possessions. "She was a good old girl," he would say. "I tell you, Mr. Dodd, it was a queer thing to see me and the old lady talking a pasear in the garden, and the old man scowling at us over the pickets. She lived right next door to the old man, and I guess that's just what took me there. I wanted ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne

... me, too," she mused. "Or if I'm merely something to dance with? Never mind, it doesn't matter. I do need a little gaiety. I hope the doctor won't object—but why should he? I'm not going to neglect my job. Still, he might; he's queer. That's the worst of having the doctor living in the house. ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell

... make out what he is, for he never says much," said another. "He seems to be thinking about something all the time, and yet he attends to his work. He is a queer genius, I guess." ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer

... I languish in vain, And I pine for a "love"—and a "dear." Oh! why did I vow to be plain— In my speech? It sounds awfully queer! Stop! "Awfully" is not allowed. Though it will slip out sometimes, I own. Oh, I might as well sit in my shroud, As use ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., October 11, 1890 • Various

... result of his own doings kept his bitterness always at white heat. The expression of his thin, haggard face was sardonic, and the groups of simple children, accustomed to ask any stranger for stamps for their collections—a queer habit of the place—turned away from him when once they had ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn

... oneself out through the world is a queer sort of business: one can not Keep, you know, quite altogether as pure as one can in the cloister. When we are handling honey we now and then lick at our fingers. Lampe sorely provoked me; he frisked ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude

... for here there seem to be those peculiar combinations of varied objects, and depths, from the shallowest to the deepest, with the variations of colored sands and rocks on the bottom, as well as queer-shaped and colored bowlders lying on the vari-colored sands, that are not found elsewhere. The waving of the water gives a mottled effect surpassing the most delicate and richly-shaded marbles and onyxes. Watered-silks of the most perfect manufacture are but childish ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James

... long over wine, They who go about tasting mixed wine. Look not upon the wine when it is red, When it sparkles in the cup. At last it bites like a serpent, And stings like an adder. Your eyes shall see strange things, And your mind shall suggest queer things. You shall be like one sleeping at sea, Like one asleep in a great storm. "They have struck me, but I feel no pain; They have beaten me, but I feel it not; I will seek it yet again. When shall I awake from ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent

... looked for), and Tom goes on living in that cottage all by his self, and never so much as casts an eye towards her— and that fond of her as he'd used to be, afore, too! Tony, man, don't you think it's a bit queer?" ...
— The Gold that Glitters - The Mistakes of Jenny Lavender • Emily Sarah Holt

... notoriety in the sheeplands to a lucky blow, would fail, leaving him far ahead on the deal. He tightened his girths and set his foot in the stirrup, ready to mount and ride home; paused so, hand on the saddle-horn, with a queer, half-puzzled, half-suspicious look in his ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden

... the conclusion yesterday," said the doctor, entering abruptly on his business, "that our patient was strong enough to justify us at last in running all risks, and communicating with her friends; and I have accordingly followed the clew which that queer fellow, Captain Wragge, put into our hands. You remember he advised us to apply to Mr. Pendril, the lawyer? I saw Mr. Pendril two days ago, and was referred by him—not overwillingly, as I thought—to a lady named Miss Garth. I heard enough from her to satisfy me that ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins

... it was natural, when invalids drank from three to five bottles of the nourishing kumys a day, that they should not require much extra food, and that the management provided what variety was healthy and advisable, no doubt; only we would have liked a choice; and—what queer steak! ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood

... the reader into a secret—had, upon the first appearance of the Spanish ship, been greatly exercised in his mind lest he should fail in courage when the two ships came to blows; but with the discharge of the first shot the queer agitated feeling which he had mistaken for fear completely passed away, and was instantly forgotten; and now, his services being no longer required at the helm, he armed himself with a handspike snatched from the deck, ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood

... Miss finds out 'bout my cookin' and takes me to de big house to cook for dem. De dishes and things was awful queer to me, to what I been brung up to use in France. I mostly cooks after dat, but I's de powerful big woman when I's young and when dey gits in a tight [Handwritten ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves. - Texas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration

... we both wanted a gallop, he made such time as nobody before had dreamed was in him; when he was lazy, he only had to turn his head and look at me, and I knew what that meant and conformed unto him. He had a queer fancy at times to quietly steal up and put his hoof on my foot so as to hurt me, and then there was an impish laugh in his eye. For he laughed at me, and I knew it. There is really such a thing as a horse- laugh. One day we passed through a drove of sheep, and ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland

... she, "and I have been on board of her and have gone all over her, and have seen many things which are queer and strange to me. But the strangest thing about her, to my mind, being a landswoman, is, that she should belong to my father. There are many things which he has not, which it would be easy to believe he would like to have, but that a ship, ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton

... pair of limbs which could be used at will either as arms or legs. Their eyes were set at the extreme sides of their heads a trifle above the center and protruded in such a manner that they could be directed either forward or back and also independently of each other, thus permitting this queer animal to look in any direction, or in two directions at once, without the necessity of turning ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... have such obvious littlenesses. They live in a narrow world so far as their human intercourse goes; their researches involve infinite attention and an almost monastic seclusion; and what is left over is not very much. To witness some queer, shy, misshapen, greyheaded, self-important, little discoverer of great discoveries, ridiculously adorned with the wide ribbon of some order of chivalry and holding a reception of his fellow-men, or ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells

... that man Hatton; remember him perfectly well; a matter of twenty or it may be nineteen years since he bolted. Queer fellow; lived upon nothing; only drank water; no temperance and teetotal then, so no excuse. Beg pardon, Mr Morley; no offence I hope; can't bear whims; but respectable societies, if they don't drink, they make speeches, hire your rooms, ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli

... town, and the knight, though he has a pretty good opinion of the song he could make if he should try, is quite a stranger here. And now, as if for the very purpose of helping the knight, comes another young man, who turns out to be a prentice, and he begins arranging benches and chairs in some queer sort of way, while the looks that he casts at the maid and the looks she throws back at him show that they are not total strangers; and he tells them that these very poets and singers are to meet here in a few minutes, and that ...
— The Wagner Story Book • Henry Frost

... glad to meet Benny Turton, the 'human fish,' again," said Joe to himself. "His act is sure a queer one. I wonder if I could stay under water as long as he does. I'm going to try it some day if I get a chance at his tank. And Helen—I'll be glad ...
— Joe Strong on the Trapeze - or The Daring Feats of a Young Circus Performer • Vance Barnum

... was; I am sure of it; I can read Dietrich's writing fast enough," answered Blasi, and he added to himself, "The women-folk are queer creatures. No fellow can understand them. A moment ago she looked all broken-down, and as if she could be blown out with a puff of wind, and now she looks bright and strong as the ...
— Veronica And Other Friends - Two Stories For Children • Johanna (Heusser) Spyri

... reserves ambushed behind the Ministry of Marine filling their magazines, and being confronted by a fresh emeute above, Jean Marot began to feel queer for the first time of a day ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray

... objections Protestants may make to Roman Catholic services, they admit that everything is done decently and in order. The laxity, however, in the Italian churches is, or was until recently, beyond belief, and every traveller brought home some queer tale. Mrs. Burton, who prided herself on being "an old English Catholic," was frequently distressed by these irregularities, and she never hesitated to reprove the offending priests. One day a priest who had called at Burton's house was requested to conduct a brief service in Mrs. Burton's private ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright

... that," replied Mrs. Dods, who was peculiarly ingenious in the mode of framing and stating what she conceived to be her grievances; "but is it no a queer thing for a decent man like yoursell, Maister Tirl, to be leaving your lodgings without a word spoken, and me put to a' these charges in seeking for your dead body, and very near taking my business out of honest Maister Bindloose's hands, ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott

... mentioned that you had a temper and were proud as Lucifer. 'He's such a hothead. How'll he take it?' asks Beauclerc. 'Why, quarterly, to be sure!' cries Selwyn. And that reminds me: George has written an epigram that is going the rounds. Out of some queer whim—to keep them warm I suppose—Madame Bellevue took her slippers to bed with her. Some one told it at the club, so Selwyn sat down and ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine

... House was on the edge of a hill, with a wood behind it - and the chalk-quarry on one side and the gravel-pit on the other. Down at the bottom of the hill was a level plain, with queer-shaped white buildings where people burnt lime, and a big red brewery and other houses; and when the big chimneys were smoking and the sun was setting, the valley looked as if it was filled with golden mist, ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit

... few Russians flung themselves about to the lilt of some of their rowdiest cake-walks, while the "Marseillaise," seeming a universal favourite, was repeatedly called for. On the morning of the fourth day three weird-looking figures, wearing a queer mixture of ready-made Dutch garments, entered the camp with a guard. I could scarcely believe my eyes when I recognised some of my former companions at Stroehen. Two of them, Captain Harrison, of the Royal Irish, and Lieutenant C. F. Templar, 1st Gloucesters (since then, I regret to say, killed ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight

... made their swift way along the south shore of the great lake, did they talk of Paymaster Bullen and wonder what had become of him. Donald was inclined to believe that he had either returned to New York, or still remained where they had left him; but Christie only smiled, and said Bullen was such a queer fish that there was no predicting what he ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore

... Spaff. "If he is, and he's dirty, he could queer us in all these towns; he's been through here with two or three Jim Crow minstrel shows; these rubes imagine he's some pumpkins. Why, I have to go out of the house every time he comes on. He's the rankest ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field

... Here was an adventure indeed, and when you were once well in for an adventure all sorts of queer things happened. ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker

... fellows. There's something queer about this. A mysterious radio station, hidden away, that sends a continuous wave on a hitherto unused wave length. This has been going on for a week. What does it mean? Then there is this man, this Peg Leg, whom Bob discovers arriving from ...
— The Radio Boys with the Revenue Guards • Gerald Breckenridge

... me much? Well, I fancy not; (Though a few did come to greet me;) The general verdict's "A very queer lot!" Nor is SOL in a hurry to meet me. He does not spy me afar off. No! He would rather I kept my distance; And if to the front I again should go, 'Twon't be with his assistance. He deems me a troublesome ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 16, 1892 • Various

... was thinking, reading, speaking of God, of truth, of wealth, of poverty, everybody considered it out of place and somewhat queer, while his mother and aunt, with good-natured irony, called him notre cher philosophe. When, however, he was reading novels, relating indecent anecdotes or seeing droll vaudevilles in the French theatre, and afterward merrily repeated them, everybody praised and encouraged ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy

... me of a story somewhat as strange: During the battle of Delhi there was a quarter-master in the regiment, a queer fellow, who was never at a loss; (he is now in the corps, and can vouch for my statement) he was charging at the head of his squadron, when he caught a cannon shot in his hands: instantly dismounting, he chucked the ball into a field-piece, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 494. • Various

... coldly, did you? It was a queer sort of coldness, when I would have given my ears to say Yes, and was obliged to say No. Matters, however, are now a little changed. Anne is come home, and her presence certainly makes me feel more at liberty. Then, if all be well, I will come and see you. Tell me only ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various

... Scots: I thought she was prettier. Oh, the act is really over; I actually forgot everything but the stage. My eyes are all wet. But it won't do to cry: they would be red. I don't quite like some of the words they use, though—they make one feel queer. Now, why couldn't they say "illegitimate child"? It means just the same; besides, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various

... line and color, has created the eerie impression which we attach to the girl herself. The best portraits subordinate everything else, such as costume and background, to the painting of the inner life. Thus Velasquez brings before us the souls of his little Infantas despite the queer head-dresses and frocks which must have threatened to smother them. The background should serve the same end; if elaborate, it should represent a fitting environment; and if plain it should throw the figure into relief. Alongside of the ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker

... town. Got in line today just for a moment to tell the President it would suit me. He said, "Oh, yes," and to file my papers in the Treasury Department, and he hoped his friends in Minnesota would be patient till he could get around to them. Queer he should think I was ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs

... occupied by a person of whom very little is known, who goes out chiefly at night and is hardly ever seen during the day. Tradesmen, and the crossing-sweeper at the corner, have caught a glimpse on rare occasions of a white face at the window, the startled face of a queer creature, who blinks and wrings at his nails with his teeth; who peers at you, jerks and grins; who seems uncertain what to do; who sometimes shoots out his hands as if he would drive them through the glass: altogether a ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett

... He's not mad, far from it. He's just a bit queer—he's got 'bats in the belfry', as men say. He gets these attacks when he's at home in the dark winter days and has nothing to occupy him. But there's little sign of it in the summer. And ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various

... the tenants did not stop here, and if I thought there was anything queer about the place; and he asked how you liked it, and how long you were going to stay; and if you had ever seen aught ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell

... sanguinary sort who always insist upon seeing the grist the gods send to their slow-grinding mills, he will prefer to know the sequel. As I have already told you, it was in September they were married. On the morning they left Kentuck the weather was extremely hot, with queer little clouds hanging about the mountains. They took the road up the canon, toward McGibeney's ranch—laughing and chatting, as they rode along side by side, Anne replying to every lark singing by the roadside in a ...
— The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems • Frances Fuller Victor

... Mansard roof here, no pseudo "Queen Anne" hybrid, with lowering, top-heavy projections like scowling eyebrows over squinting eyes; neither mongrel Renaissance, nor feeble, sickly, imitation Elizabethan facades, and Tudor towers; none of the queer, composite, freakish impertinences of architectural style, which now-a-day do duty as the adventurous vanguard, the aesthetic vedettes "making straight the way," for the ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... surprised me greatly by telling me, long after Oscar's death, that it was this address of mine that moved Oscar to try his hand at a similar feat by writing 'The Soul of Man Under Socialism.' (4) A chance meeting near the stage door of the Haymarket Theatre, at which our queer shyness of one another made our resolutely cordial and appreciative conversation so difficult that our final laugh and shake-hands was almost a reciprocal confession. (5) A really pleasant afternoon we spent together on catching one another in a place where our presence was an absurdity. ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris

... more than ten years, and had a good part of the business of buying and shipping copra and selling supplies to the natives and a few whites. He lived in a shack back of his little store, with his native woman and four or five half-naked children. They told me queer stories about his madness for women. They said he would go out of his house and into the jungle near the trails and would lie in wait. If a woman he coveted passed, he would seize her, and even if her husband or consort was ahead of her, in the custom of these people, he would ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien

... the parish school ... this woman, on the 15th of April, goes out with the child at ten o'clock in the morning and does not return until nightfall. And this has happened for years and in all weathers. You must admit that there is something queer about this date which I find on an old picture, which is inscribed on another, similar picture and which controls the annual movements of the ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc

... Mr. Dodge contritely, "an' no wonder, with that there saddle. They're a very queer lot, them crazy chaps. There's one on 'em up there who calls himself Abraham Lincoln, an' then there's another who thinks he's a telegraph wire an' hes messages runnin' up an' down him continally. These is new potatoes, sir—early rosers. There's no end to their cussed kinks. ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... "Drunk! not 'im. Do you think he could imitate Mrs. Abel like that if he was drunk?" "Take them gels out o' the barn as quick as you can!" "If she don't stop shriekin' when you get 'er home, throw a bucket o' cold water over her. It's only 'isterics." "Well, I've seed a lot o' queer things in my time, and I've knowed Snarley to do some rum tricks, but I never seed nowt like that." "Oh dear, sir, I never felt so upset in all my life. It isn't right! Somebody ought to ha' stopped 'im. I wonder Mr. Abel didn't interfere." "That there poem o' Mrs. Abel's ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks

... his cousin's house a strange dwelling. Made of coarse grasses and reed stalks, it was round, like a big ball, with a doorway in one side. This queer building was fastened among the reeds a little distance above the ground. And it seemed to Rusty Wren that it must be a damp and unhealthful ...
— The Tale of Rusty Wren • Arthur Scott Bailey

... selling quaint articles, smoky shanties where sailors were cooking their own queer messes, dealers in pipes, monkeys, parrots, ropes, sailcloth, fanciful curios, amongst which were mingled higgledy-piggledy old culverins, huge gilded lanterns, worn-out pulley-blocks, rusty flukeless ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet

... worked for him, and put it round his neck, and told him she had taken it with her to St. Laud, to give it him there beneath the cross, only he had gone away from her, so that she couldn't do so: and then Jacques begged pardon again and again in his own queer way; and then, having sat there by the mill-stream till the last red streak of sunlight was gone, they returned home to the village, and Annot told her father that Dame Rouel had been so very pressing, she had made them stay ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope

... had drug an old fence post onto the fire one night, and the post had only burned half up. The butt end of it, all charred and flaked, was still laying in the grass and weeds there. It hit me with a queer feeling—like it was only yesterday that fire had been lit there. And yet I knowed it had been a ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis

... delightful hospitality and mild climate, she was not averse to Charleston or New Orleans. But from the offer that came to teach Negroes—country Negroes, and little ones at that—she shrank, and, indeed, probably would have refused it out of hand had it not been for her queer brother, John. John Taylor, who had supported her through college, was interested in cotton. Having certain schemes in mind, he had been struck by the fact that the Smith School was in the midst ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois

... days," said Mark; "and of course I thought you knew. But Hetty, you are a jolly queer girl I can tell you, and I can't half understand you. Think of anyone standing two hours to be pierced through and through with cold, rather than drop a fellow's string ...
— Hetty Gray - Nobody's Bairn • Rosa Mulholland

... a batch of college students Queer lot. Ignorant? Why, they didn't know the catheads from the main brace. But if you took them for fools you'd get bit, sure. They'd learn more in a month than another man would in a year. We had one, once, in the Mary Ann, that came aboard with gold ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... wife dropped with a weary gesture upon a chair near the fire. "Tammas, yo' know it's a queer thing awthegither! What are they coomin' ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... better know, Bob, that there's something queer about John Ford. They tell a lot of stories about him, but the one most common is that he's waiting till he gets one hundred thousand dollars before starting on a ...
— Bob Chester's Grit - From Ranch to Riches • Frank V. Webster









Copyright © 2025 Free-Translator.com




Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |