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More "Whim" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of was the room of old Mr. Bud. Davenport had spoken of going there often to sketch. Such a queer, snug old place might have an attraction of its own for the man. There was, indeed, a chance—a bare chance—of his having, upon a whim, prolonged a stay in that place or its neighborhood. Or, at least, Mr. Bud might have later news of him than Mrs. ...
— The Mystery of Murray Davenport - A Story of New York at the Present Day • Robert Neilson Stephens
... There is a wrought iron shell of the size of the inner diameter of the pipe forming the inner mold. To this shell is attached a "leader" and "saddle" of larger diameter forming the outer mold. These molds are drawn slowly along the trench by a cable and horse whim, and the concrete is shoveled continuously into the core space between the molds and rammed on a long incline. The top half, or arch, of the pipe is supported by sheet iron plates (2 ft. wide), placed one after another on the forward end of the mold; and, being ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... the grandest and most inspiring scenery, thought and memory, like two spectres that no spell could lay, haunted her and robbed her of peace and any approach to happiness. Though possessing the means of gratifying every whim, though restrained by no scruples from doing what she chose, she felt that all around were getting more ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... berated that he had dragged his family to the country, destroying their happiness and spending all his money for—what, for what? Just to gratify a whim, a boyish illusion. ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... nothing of the wonderful tub, nor of another whim of the paymaster's, which was that an officer should never appear in public save in uniform. Consequently, when the little man approached the canoe landing, resplendent in scarlet and gold, and followed ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... happy homes of freemen become the pinched quarters of serfs. The lords of trade have their hundreds and thousands of humble subordinates over whom they rule, often with a rod of iron. They may be turned away from work and wages at any moment, by any whim of the selfish employer. Hence, through fear of this, they lose their manhood, and dare not assert even a decision of their conscience. There is no more melancholy sight to my eyes than that which I often see nowadays—the former happy possessor of a shop or store, who has lived comfortably ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... propaganda, "movements," "causes" and agitations the statesman-inventor and the political psychologist find the raw material for their work. It is not the business of the politician to preserve an Olympian indifference to what stupid people call "popular whim." Being lofty about the "passing fad" and the ephemeral outcry is all very well in the biographies of dead men, but rank nonsense in the rulers of real ones. Oscar Wilde once remarked that only superficial people disliked the superficial. ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... . be iron bound, at least for the first [end] tyre" [hoop]. Cushman states that they had ample supplies of beer offered them both in Kent and Amsterdam. The planters' supply seems to have failed, however, soon after the company landed, and they were obliged to rely upon the whim of the Captain of the MAY-FLOWER for their needs, the ship's supply being apparently separate from that of the planters, and lasting longer. Winthrop's supply seems to have been large ("42 tons"—probably tuns intended). It was evidently a stipulation of the ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... gallery incident it was my duty, so he thought, to keep Field's desk supplied with inks, not only of every color of the rainbow, but with lake-white, gold, silver, and bronze, and any other kind which his whim deemed necessary to give eccentric emphasis to some line, word or letter in whatever he chanced to be composing. His peremptory requests were generally preferred in writing, addressed "For the Lusty Knight, Sir ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... nothing awaiting her attention. She was so free that there was no object in breakfasting, because there was no obligation demanding her strength. She was so free that whether she should go out or remain indoors depended merely upon the whim of the moment. There was for her ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... Ocean, affects us moderns with astonishment at the extraordinary thoroughness of all the ancient Roman feats of engineering; had this high road across the Bay been intended to serve any useful purpose, instead of merely to satisfy the passing whim of a selfish tyrant, we could have had no choice but to admire the marvellous speed of the artificers and the completeness of ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... working so bravely in the lonely little cottage, taking the place of nurse and housekeeper and facing a situation before which many a stouter heart would have quailed. Tom did his best, but the sick man became possessed of a whim that no one should wait upon him but poor, tired Tabitha, and day and night found her ministering to him in the sweltering heat that seemed fairly to ...
— Tabitha at Ivy Hall • Ruth Alberta Brown
... the Tribes, to boot,[71] Braham is to assist—or hath assisted—but will do no more good than a second physician. I merely interfered to oblige a whim of K.'s, and all I have got by it was 'a speech' and a ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... court, whose natural charms were greatly enhanced by the lavishness of their attire. Always ready to further the plans of their mistress, they hesitated not to sacrifice reputation or honor to gratify her smallest whim. Her power was so generally recognized that foreign ambassadors, in the absence of the king, called her "that other king." When war against France broke out between Spain and England, Louise succeeded in gaining the office of constable for the Duc d'Alencon; ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... five-and-twenty years, and God knows I have never looked forward to succeeding him. Sit down and let me tell you the story. It was not my father's fault that he reigned here so long as master, it was the result of a whim of your father's. And although my father fought against it, he could not resist the ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... truth be said that we have now reached the most absolute of the literary types of English history. There was no great event, political or social, which is not mirrored in his poems; no sentiment or caprice of the age which does not there find expression; no kingly whim which he did not prostitute his great powers to gratify; no change of creed, political or religious, of which he was not the recorder—few indeed, where royal favor was concerned, to which he was not the convert. To review the life of Dryden himself, is therefore to enter into the ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... friendly way, and bade him welcome. King Harald answered, "I thought we were come among friends; but just now I was in doubt if ye would have it so. But it is a truth that childhood is hasty, and I will only consider it as a childish freak." Then said King Magnus, "It is no childish whim, but a trait of my family, that I never forget what I have given, or what I have not given. If this trifle had been settled against my will, there would soon have followed' some other discord like it. In all ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... has wealth from Stock and rent— If I divert his riches from their natural descent, I'm placed in a position to indulge each little whim." So he diverted them—and they, in turn, ...
— More Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... bears in the next cage were playing together fubsily, and the tiger's breathing while he slept was a maddening kind of cross between a purr and a snore; maddening, that is, to one who found the creature's mere proximity incredibly distasteful. This hatred of the Killer's neighbourhood was no whim, no personal fastidiousness on Finn's part. It went much deeper than that. For example, so far, the hair on Finn's back would not assume its natural position; it still stood half erect, and harsh and stiff as fine wire; by which the tension ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... had been no idle one, but he meant to forestall its operation. The Padre was away to his home by now. Nothing that he could do could operate until the morning, when these men were sober. He had got this night, at least, in which to satisfy his evil whim. ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... well nigh killed by a blow, And their Nur'mburg worships swore he should go To jail for his pains—if he liked it or no. 'Twas a new-built nest to be christened by him Who first should be lodged. Well, what was his whim? Why, he sent his dog forward to lead the way, And they call the jail from the dog to this day. That was the game a brave fellow should play, And of all the great deeds of the general, none E'er tickled my ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... They do about clothes, though. And she knows a lot. Why, Chess, she's having the loveliest things made, if they are mourning, and the sisters, they ask her about everything they order—to wear, I mean. And, just think! Mrs. Schuyler never wears any jewels but pearls! It's a whim, you know, or it was her husband's whim, or something, but anyway, she has oceans of pearls, and ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... love me enough to wish I may live and not die! Leaving that out of view however, it makes all the difference to the love I should have to expect of you. It may be only a whim—I can prove nothing any more than you—but I have a—whim then—to be loved as an immortal woman, the child of a living God, and not as a helpless bastard of Nature!—I beg your ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... am, having ridden miles in the heat and endured discomfort for some absurd whim of thine. Why didst thou send for me? I told thee never to do so unless the matter were very important. I had to eat abuse from that drunken Welshman to get permission to come. I had to swear that thou wert on the ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... be given "to boot," e.g. tobacco, sugar, opium, tea, betel.[295] That is money which will "pass." This does not mean that which can be forced to pass ("legal tender"), but that which will go without force. Amulet ornaments may be either a whim which does not take, or fashion may seize upon something of this kind and make it a tribe mark. Then it becomes group money, because it is universally desired. The articles admit of accumulation, and ostentation is a new joy; they also admit of change and variety. They are available ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... humours and oddities, they all seem to spring up of their own accord; the comic characters being free alike from disguises and pretensions, and seeking merely to let off their inward redundancy; caring nothing at all whether everybody or nobody sees them, so they may have their whim out, and giving utterance to folly and nonsense simply because they cannot help it. Thus their very deformities have a certain grace, since they are genuine and of Nature's planting: absurdity and whimsicality are ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... do that," Julia said coldly, wrenching herself free. "This is no whim with me; I'm not following a certain line of conduct because it's most effective. I've changed. I don't want to analyze and dissect and discuss it; as I say, it seems to me too sacred, too sad, to enjoy ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... instinctive sign of grief, as fine dresses are of joy), and shave their heads (doubtless done to make some difference from every- day times), accompanied with ceremonial purifications (what ancient people has not had some such whim?). 7. The system of Runda or forbidden meats; but every traveller has found this practice in South as in East Africa, and I noticed it among the Somal who, even when starving, will not touch fish nor fowl. Briefly, external resemblances and coincidences like these could be made to establish cousinhood ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... from its surroundings as to suggest rather the handicraft of man than a whim of Nature, it looms up at the entrance to the Narrows, a symmetrical column of solid grey stone. There are no similar formations within the range of vision, or indeed within many a day's paddle up and down the coast. Amongst all the wonders, the natural beauties that encircle ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson
... my sister, and I do not deem it wise or seemly that she should run about the country at her own wish or whim." ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... me—have I obeyed the commandments, that I may be found righteous in that world to come, and in the fields of Aalu, and in the Sun-bark find compensation for all that I have suffered here. You are good and friendly. Why, for the sake of a whim, should you sacrifice the future bliss of a man, who in all his long life has never known happiness, and who has never done you ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... relations were such that they could not be broken without inflicting the double suffering of privation and of over-supply, there could then no longer be any need of these powerful fleets which ruin, and these great armies which crush them; the peace of the world could no more be compromised by the whim of a Thiers or a Palmerston, and wars would cease, from want of resources, motives, pretexts, and ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... was this sea-fighter. After a victory like this, one hears of him in the next breath gratifying a passing whim of the King, who wanted to know what the Swedish people thought of their Government after Charles's long wars that are said to have cost their country a million men. Tordenskjold overheard it, had himself rowed across to Sweden, ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... hated black so well that he had put a clause in his will against its appearance even at his own funeral. Marie Louise loved him dearly, but she feared his prejudices. She had an abject terror of offending him, because she felt that she owed everything she had, and was, to the whim of his good grace. Gratitude was a passion with her, and it doomed her, as all passions do, good or bad, to the penalties human beings pay for every excess of virtue or vice—if, indeed, vice is anything but an ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... person, a circumstance sufficient to ruin him in his ecclesiastical capacity. His friends, who were disposed to think favourably of him, were for softning the epithet of Jacobite into Tory, imputing his choice of that text, rather to whim and humour, than any settled prejudice against his Majesty, or the government; but this unseasonable pleasantry was not so easily passed over, and the Dr. had frequent occasion to repent the ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... eccentric entertainment we have laughed many an hour, has here produced a most pleasant and lively melange, the result of much whim and observation, blended with a vast fund of genuine anecdotes, and a very particular account of the various amusements, customs, manners, and inhabitants of the places of fashionable resort in this kingdom."—Monthly Mirror for ...
— The Lawyers, A Drama in Five Acts • Augustus William Iffland
... on Marshal Ney," continued Napoleon, "the blame of part of the misfortunes of that day: but the mischief is done; no more is to be said about it." I read this new twenty-ninth bulletin: a few slight changes, suggested by General Drouot, were assented to by the Emperor; but, from what whim I know not, he would not confess, that his carriages had fallen into the hands of the enemy. "When you get to Paris," said M. de Flahaut to him, "it will be plainly seen, that your carriages have been taken. If you conceal this, you will be charged with disguising truths ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... seems to look just as like himself now as he did eighteen hundred years since, and to be not a morsel fonder of spectacles and good snuff now than he was then. His insertion, however, into this picture, was a whim of the artist, whose cosmopolitan theory led him to believe that one man is, as a rule, quite as good as another, and that paintings are always appreciated best when they refer to ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... and (it hardly needs explaining) got a quite unique degree: With his blushing honours laden, he espoused a lovely maiden at the end of Volume Three: This alone he had to grieve for—that he'd nothing more to live for, or expect from Fortune's whim: For I never could discover, when his Oxford days were over, what the ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley
... know me too well, to believe that I shall be frightened out of free, or even caustic remark, by any critique of the papers, or by any dignified frown of the literary coteries of the city.... This LORGNETTE of mine will range very much as my whim directs. In morals, it will aim to be correct; in religion, to be respectful; in literature, modest; in the arts, attentive; in fashion, observing; in society, free; in narrative, to be honest; in advice, ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 2, July 8, 1850 • Various
... of the eagerness with which readers of 1765 desired to escape from the present and to revel for a time in strange, bygone centuries. Although Walpole regarded the composition of his Gothic story as a whim, his love of the past was shared by others of his generation. Of this Macpherson's Ossian (1760-3), Kurd's Letters on Chivalry and Romance (1762), and Percy's Reliques (1765), are, each in its fashion, a sufficient proof. The half-century from 1760 to ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... that, by the merest chance, or from a whim of the moment, the son of that man was to be ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... began To rain like drops of Frangipanni, A most insinuating man He was, this ancient DON GIOVANNI. You felt, if you could half believe, You'd but to word a whim to find it, You quite forgot he owned a sleeve, And several ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 14, 1891. • Various
... consoled himself with the reflection that the lack of money would prevent Ninitta from carrying out her wild whim. He, of course, could not know that soon after Nino's birth Herman had started a fund for him in a savings bank, and to the mother's intense gratification had the deposits made in her name as trustee. He had taught Ninitta to sign ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... a sudden whim of Klaas Verlaan's to make his ward a child of Keizersgracht; but it brought him in more ducats than ...
— Walter Pieterse - A Story of Holland • Multatuli
... desirable that she should enjoy, or rather profit by, his instructions; also it is high time she should become thoroughly convinced of the necessity of controlling that violent temper of hers. She needs to be taught submission to lawful authority too; and indulging her in this whim would, in my judgment, be likely to have the very opposite effect. What do you ...
— The Two Elsies - A Sequel to Elsie at Nantucket, Book 10 • Martha Finley
... ecstatic moments," whispered Madame von Brandt. "He has the whim to consider himself an original; he imagines himself a Petrarch enamored of his Laura. We will allow him to dream awhile, and speak of our own affairs. But be brief, I beg of you, for we must not be found together, as you are a suspicious character, my dear count, and my innocence ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... hand, I did not understand Strickland at all. I racked my brain, but could in no way account for an action so contrary to my conception of him. It was not strange that he should so heartlessly have betrayed his friends' confidence, nor that he hesitated not at all to gratify a whim at the cost of another's misery. That was in his character. He was a man without any conception of gratitude. He had no compassion. The emotions common to most of us simply did not exist in him, and it was as absurd ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... Provinces into a neutral State, I do hope that we shall have the common sense not to guarantee either its independence or its neutrality. If we do so, within ten years we shall infallibly be dragged into a Continental war. We have a whim about Belgium, one day it will prove a costly one; we cannot, however, afford to indulge ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... innocent (for which they may be forgiven) that only a personal capture had any value to us, but unforgivably ignorant that a Yellow Underwing was a moth. We did not collect moths; there were too many of them. And moths are nocturnal creatures. A hunter whose bed-time depends upon the whim of another is ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne
... prevent the trickling of the embankment into the chamber; next with sweepings of dust, under which every vestige of the subterranean house disappears. It is now done: the Tachytes will come here no more. Other burrows will occupy her, distributed at the whim of her ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... beautiful; or, of the steamboat Benjamin Franklin, she is out of date. It were far better to use no gender in such cases. But if people will continue the practice of making distinctions where there are none, they must do it from habit and whim, and not from any ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... irritation of Henry VIII against the pope, who refused to grant the king a divorce from his first wife in order that he might marry a younger and prettier woman. But a permanent change in the religious convictions of a whole people cannot fairly be attributed to the whim of even so despotic a ruler as Henry. There were changes taking place in England before the revolt similar to those which prepared the way in ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... him—everybody but me. We sha'n't get the new ward built these two years if he carries the day to-night. I've got a consultation at Decker's—the old lady is dying. It's no sort of use dragging a tired man out there; I can't do her any good; but they will have it. I'm at the beck and call of every whim. Isn't that dinner ready? I wish I had time to change my boots! They are wet through. My head aches horribly. Brake telegraphed me to get down to Stock Street before two o'clock to save what is left of that ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... there was a curious hesitation in your manner: you glanced at me with a slight trouble—a hovering doubt: you did not know what my caprice might be—whether I was going to play the master and be stern, or the friend and be benignant. I was now too fond of you often to simulate the first whim; and, when I stretched my hand out cordially, such bloom and light and bliss rose to your young, wistful features, I had much ado often to avoid straining you then ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... reconcile all the various actions of this noble-man. He was certainly too much governed by whim and accident. From this time forward, however, though he might deviate from the strict rules of a moral life, he cannot be said to have done so with respect to his politics. The same principles on which ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... to me." Then he sat looking for a time at the embers reflectively. "'T is folly to want her," he said finally, as he rose and began the removal of his coat, "now that ye need not her money; but she's enough to tempt any man with blood in his veins, and I can afford the whim. Keep that blood in check, however, till ye have her fast; and do not frighten her as ye have done. To think of Lord Clowes, cool enough to match any man, losing his head over a whiffling bit of woman-flesh! ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... your heart to beguile, But never you mind—he's laughing all the while; For little he cares, so he has his own whim, And weeping or laughing are all one to him. His eye is as keen as the lightning's flash, His tongue like the red bolt quick and rash; And so savage is he, that his own dear mother Is scarce more safe in his ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... other worthy man, makaira," said Hermippus, once, "you shall not find me obstinate. Can a loving father say more? But if you are simply resolved never to marry, I will give you to him despite your will. A senseless whim must not blast your ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... was Johnie's whim, There's nane was better teut than him, Though whiles his gravit-knot wad clim' Ahint his ear, An' whiles he'd buttons oot or in The less ...
— New Poems • Robert Louis Stevenson
... easy to die. Men have died For a wish or a whim— From bravado or passion or pride. Was it ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... Prince who might have allied himself with the oldest reigning houses had come to regard as an honor a marriage with, the plain daughter of a French senator,—a girl not united by any ties of blood with Napoleon, but only by adoption; that is to say, by a whim. One might have supposed that the Empire of the new Charlemagne was centuries old, and the German Princes bowed before it like devoted vassals before their suzerain. What a vast power he had attained, and how easily he could have kept it, if he ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... drag in 'Clotho'? Is it the whim of a nomenclator, at a loss for words to denote the ever-swelling tide of beasts that require cataloguing? Not entirely. A mythological name came to his mind, one which sounded well and which, moreover, was not out of place in designating a spinstress. ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... since emerged from the paths and avenues of the Bois, he had almost reached his own house, and still, for he had not yet thrown off the intoxication of grief, or his whim of insincerity, but was ever more and more exhilarated by the false intonation, the artificial sonority of his own voice, he continued to perorate aloud in the silence of the night: "People 'in society' have their failings, ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... "Lady M—, that Lady R—has very often, when I have been sitting, and she has been writing, told me that she was taking me as a model for her heroine, is very true, but I have considered it as a mere whim of hers, knowing how very eccentric she is. I little thought from my having good-naturedly yielded to her caprice, that I should have been so mortified as I have been by what you have communicated to me. That she must have been indiscreet, is certain, for it was known only ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... repeat it all would require years and days; for year by year it is telling the old stories, sometimes short ones, sometimes long ones, according to its whim; it tells of old times, of the dark hard ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... Hooker, representing thus early the tradition of a classical clearness in English literature, anticipated by Latimer and More, and to be fulfilled afterwards in Butler and Hume. But then, in recompense for that looseness and whim, in Sir Thomas Browne for instance, we have in those "quaint" writers, as they themselves understood the term (coint, adorned, but adorned with all the curious ornaments of their own predilection, provincial [126] or archaic, certainly ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... tread And a peal of exultation: Little right has he to sing 360 Through whose heart in such an hour Beats no march of conscious power, Sweeps no tumult of elation! 'Tis no Man we celebrate, By his country's victories great, 365 A hero half, and half the whim of Fate, But the pith and marrow of a Nation Drawing force from all her men, Highest, humblest, weakest, all, For her time of need, and then 370 Pulsing it again through them, Till the basest can no longer cower, Feeling his soul spring ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... engaged in the momentous task of getting the name of the street in which they live changed from Cemetery Avenue to Sportland Place. And our other friends two blocks west of us are greatly agitated just now because the name of their aristocratic thoroughfare has, by a whim of the municipal authorities, been changed from Alexander Avenue to Osgood Street. I have mentioned these facts to Alice, but no sense of that sympathy which is said to arise from the companionship of misery seems to reconcile my dear wife to the plebeian association which ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... asked just now, why? Indians are not so rich in cartridges that they can afford to waste them on a mere whim." ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... Such thou wert always, AEschines my friend. In lazy mood or trenchant, at thy whim The world must wag. But what's thy ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... son of a Hampshire gentleman, was born at Putney, near London, April 27, 1737. After a preliminary education at Westminster, and fourteen "unprofitable" months at Magdalen College, Oxford, a whim to join the Roman church led to his banishment to Lausanne, where he spent five years, and acquired a mastery of the French language, formed his taste for literary expression, and settled his religious doubts in a profound scepticism. He served some years in the militia, and was a member of ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... This whim of the miser's was a new cause of terror to Elinor; from that moment an indescribable dread lest the child should be like Algernon took possession of her breast. She perceived that her husband already calculated with selfish horror the expense of the unborn ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... a whim of Ilka Leipke. She had much time for herself and complained to her beloved many times that the days were more boring than the nights. Ilsa Leipke also loved her sweet dwarf no less than in the early days ...
— The Prose of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... eye for direction and distance. One, two, three, four blocks from the public square. That's the block with the solitary oak-tree in it, if I'm right. Yes? Well, I must have lots in that very block. When I take a whim of that kind, heaven and earth can't turn me, Mr. Plausaby. So you'd just as ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... watch over her, was alas! sleeping in the very churchyard in which, in the shade of the evening, she first met her seducer. Enough,—the heartless man of the world obtained the love of the poor and simple Herminie,—and his whim, his heartless ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... a costly fur coat, or with my horses; or the man who lacks shoes sees my two-thousand-ruble apartments. He sees how, a little while ago, I gave five rubles without begrudging them, merely because I took a whim to do so. He surely knows that if I give away rubles in that manner, it is only because I have hoarded up so many of them, that I have a great many superfluous ones, which I not only have not given away, but ...
— The Moscow Census - From "What to do?" • Lyof N. Tolstoi
... speak to me now and then as they pass me on the stair; but they only stop and laugh to one another, and then they toss their heads; and I can hear them say something about 'upsetting,' and 'mamma's whim, and papa's absurdity.' I'm sure—I'm sure, my dear parents—(for, alas! I have none other, though I dream sometimes that I have, and I feel so happy and delighted, that I always awake crying)—but what was I going to say?—you know I never wrote ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... recital of these facts, it is scarcely necessary to observe that the Calabar people are extremely cruel, indeed I am informed that they frequently cause their slaves to be put to death for a mere whim; a practice which they endeavour to excuse, by saying, that if the slaves were not thus kept in awe of their masters, they would rise in rebellion: they also plead the necessity of it, for preventing them becoming too numerous. These reasons form also their apology for countenancing the slave-trade, ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... were ever able to persuade Mr. Gladstone to do justice to Disraeli's novels,—the spirit of whim in them, the ironic solemnity, the historical paradoxes, the fantastic glitter of dubious gems, the grace of high comedy, all in union with a social vision that often pierced deep below the surface. In the comparative stiffness of Mr. Gladstone's reply on this occasion, I seem to hear ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... for the prisoners to compel the guards to keep within the license accorded to them, we must compel the prisoners to accept whatever injustice or outrage the unrestrained despots of the ranges have the whim to inflict upon them. There are desperate revolts at times—desperate in the literal sense, since they have no hope of relief in them, but only the tragic rage against tyranny which will sometimes blaze ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... was not hurt badly, was slipped out of the house and escaped from the city in the darkness. It's not apropos of anything, and I don't know why I'm relating it to you, but I suppose this terrible war we are fighting is responsible for an old man's whim." ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler
... condemned to imprisonment for desecrating the Sabbath by working in his front garden. The same labourer is punished for breach of contract if he remains away from his metal, paper or glass works on the Sunday, even if it be from a religious whim. The orthodox Parliament will hear nothing of Sabbath-breaking if it occurs in ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... who did not believe himself sincere); but his understanding is the dupe and slave of his momentary, violent, and irritable humours. He does not adopt an opinion 'deliberately or for money,' yet his conscience is at the mercy of the first provocation he receives, of the first whim he takes in his head: he sees things through the medium of heat and passion, not with reference to any general principles, and his whole system of thinking is deranged by the first object that strikes his fancy or sours his temper education. He is a self-taught man, and has the faults as well ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... be mad, my dear, to go for a country walk in such weather as this. You have had some very strange notions for the last two months. You drag me to the seaside in spite of myself, when you have never once had such a whim during all the forty-four years that we have been married. You chose Fecamp, which is a very dull town, without consulting me in the matter, and now you are seized with such a rage for walking, you who hardly ever stir out on foot, that you want to take a country walk on the hottest day of ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... rapacity, licentiousness, and cruelty. He lived with boundless dissoluteness, and procured by extortion the means of indulgence. No goods could be sold till Kirke had had the refusal of them. No question of right could be decided till Kirke had been bribed. Once, merely from a malignant whim, he staved all the wine in a vintner's cellar. On another occasion he drove all the Jews from Tangier. Two of them he sent to the Spanish Inquisition, which forthwith burned them. Under this iron domination ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... and humours, you would have looked for, in one so extracted;—he was, on the contrary, as mercurial and sublimated a composition,—as heteroclite a creature in all his declensions;—with as much life and whim, and gaite de coeur about him, as the kindliest climate could have engendered and put together. With all this sail, poor Yorick carried not one ounce of ballast; he was utterly unpractised in the world; and at the age of twenty-six, ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... it does not suit me." And then wavering a little at the thought of her wretched experience—"I had too much trouble finding a place where an honest home is offered for honest work, to leave this one for your whim. No, I shall ...
— 'Way Down East - A Romance of New England Life • Joseph R. Grismer
... happier, man or boy? The soul of the father is steeped in joy, For he's finding out, to his heart's delight, That his son is fit for the future fight. He is learning the glorious depths of him, And the thoughts he thinks and his every whim, And he shall discover, when night comes on, How close he has grown to ...
— When Day is Done • Edgar A. Guest
... victims than these, such as would not recognize true inter-sexual love if they saw it through a magnifying glass; everything of the nature of a fancy or whim, of a sensation or emotion with them is love. Love-sick maidens are usually soft-brained, and their languorous swains, lascivious. The latter pose as "killers;" the former wear their heart on their sleeve, and are convinced that every second man they meet who treats ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... very faithfully and with great approbation, but falling in love, or to speak more properly, taking a whim of marriage in his head, he accepted of a young woman in the neighbourhood as his partner for life. Soon after this, he removed to Windsor, where he took the tap at a well-accustomed inn, and began the world in a very probable way of doing well. However, partly through his own misfortunes, and partly ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... had great energy and resolution, and the subject of our sketch was not disposed to undertake an enterprise and then abandon it. She had trials of other kinds, to bear. The surgeons afforded her few or no facilities for her work; and evidently expected that her whim of nursing would soon be given over. Then came the general order for the removal of volunteer nurses from the hospitals; this she evaded by enrolling herself as nurse, and drawing army pay, which she distributed to the men. For nearly a year she remained in this position, without ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... pierced by bayonets grim And babies slaughtered for a whim, Cathedrals made the sport of shells, No mercy, even for a child, As though the imps of all the hells Were crazed with ...
— Over Here • Edgar A. Guest
... independent founder. Italics and capitals, index hands and other typographic symbols, were scattered about with remarkable profusion, to give additional force and notoriety to the editorial remarks which were found on every page, according as the whim and inspiration of the editor dictated. The establishment of the paper was undoubtedly a bold attempt at a time when the province was but sparsely settled, and the circulation necessarily limited by the rarity of post-offices even in the ...
— The Intellectual Development of the Canadian People • John George Bourinot
... disturb its symmetry and picturesqueness by demanding in their arrogance that the halberdier of the castle wait upon their table! I have faithfuly and conscientiously,' says he, 'performed my duties as a halberdier. I know nothing of a waiter's duties. It was the insolent whim of these transient, pampered aristocrats that I should be detailed to serve them food. Must I be blamed—must I be deprived of the means of a livelihood,' he goes on, 'on account of an accident that ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... children to poverty and want, while he wasted his time and strength in chasing a dream. His neighbors jeered at him as a madman, one who put his plain duty aside for the gratification of what seemed to their dull minds merely a whim. His poor wife could hardly be blamed for reproaching him. She could neither understand nor sympathize with his hopes and fears, while she knew that if he followed his trade, he could at least save his family from want. It was a trying time for both of them. But ...
— Eclectic School Readings: Stories from Life • Orison Swett Marden
... the old dowager scolded, and ordered, and commanded, Laura was deaf and disobedient: she must go to Tunbridge, she would go to Tunbridge: she who ordinarily had no will of her own, and complied smilingly with anybody's whim and caprices, showed the most selfish and obstinate determination in this instance. The dowager lady must nurse herself in her rheumatism, she must read herself to sleep, if she would not hear her maid, whose ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Miss Holland, I made the discovery that has made me desperate, the one discovery that tells a woman she is helpless, and that not only her whole future, but that of another, depend upon the whim of a man. I demanded that he should keep his promise; I will not permit a child of mine to go through the world bearing the brand of illegitimacy, and I told him so plainly. Perhaps I was wrong to lose my ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... and went to obey the order. The obstinacy of this self-willed egotist was surely growing into a monomania, and perhaps it would have been more dangerous to oppose him than to comply with his whim. In a few moments Dr. Cummins re-entered the ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... insisted that Agnes' child should be raised as a white child, and the secret of his birth effectually concealed. At first, Mr. Le Croix thought it was a passing whim that she would soon forget; that the child would amuse and interest her for awhile; and then she would tire of him as she had of other things; such as her birds, her squirrel, and even her Shetland pony. But when he found that instead ...
— Minnie's Sacrifice • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... whom I cannot rhyme to, One Scherer, dry as sawdust, grim and prim. Of him there's much to say, if I had time to Concern myself in any wise with HIM. He seems to hate the heights he cannot climb to, He thinks your poetry a coxcomb's whim, A good deal of his sawdust he has spilt on Shakespeare, and Moliere, ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... steer a while," she cried, looking up through her wind-tossed hair, "'tis joy to me! Lay you down and rest a while and trust the boat to me." And seeing how quick she was to meet each send of the seas (that were already running high) glad enough was I to humour her whim, and clambered forward again. And there (having nought better to do) I set about rigging a rough awning athwart the bows, with canvas and a stout spar, which methought should keep out the spray and any chance sea that might break forward; though ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... marriage than before," Isabelle said, laughingly, yet deeply touched by his tender words, "and you pay your wife compliments as if she were your ladylove. And now, since I have ascertained that your wishes accord with my whim, will it please your lordship to set out for the Chateau de Sigognac this week? The weather is fine. The great heat of summer is over, and we can really enjoy the journey. Vallombreuse will go with us, and I shall take Chiquita. She will be glad to ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... art is often only a whim. People wondered why they had ever bought those dark, shadowy things made by that Leyden artist, What's-his-name! One man utilized the frames which contained "Rembrandts" by putting other canvases right over in front ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... he became monk, and, on his knees, Said holy prayers, and with wild penances Made sad atonement; and the solemn whim, That, like a shadow, loiter'd over him, Wore off, even like a shadow. He was cursed With none of the mad thoughts that were at first The poison of his quiet; but he grew To love the world and its wild laughter too, As he ...
— The Death-Wake - or Lunacy; a Necromaunt in Three Chimeras • Thomas T Stoddart
... his lordship, "the whim is wearing off! One pellet drives out another. Behind the love in the popgun came the conviction that it would be simple ruin! But we Graemes are stiff-necked both to God and man, and I ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... two schools of thought relating to amendment of the Constitution. One need not be committed to the belief that amendment is weakening the fundamental law, or that excessive amendment is essential to meet every ephemeral whim. We ought to amend to meet the demands of the people when sanctioned ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Warren Harding • Warren Harding
... neigborhoods from which they came, and unwilling longer to remain the tenants of others. These were induced to [100] emigrate, with the laudable ambition of acquiring homes, from which they would not be liable to expulsion, at the whim and caprice of some haughty lordling. Upon the attainment of this object, they were generally content; and made but feeble exertions to acquire more land, than that to which they obtained title, by virtue of their settlements. Some few, ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... together, and for a moment lined the serene beauty of his forehead. He gazed at her with a steady, puzzled look, and at last a faint, half-quizzical smile relaxed his lips. What could this strange idea, this whim be, so unlike all Eastern maiden's usual fancies? He had not yet solved the riddle, nor found the clue! he would do so, but in the meantime she must be left her freedom. In all noble natures power brings with it a terrible ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... indulging this whim without any motive, hardly even thinking what he was doing, when he began to feel very strangely: a slight chill made him shiver; his eyes felt as if they were coming out of his head, his legs as if they were getting smaller and smaller; ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... displays, with mock emphasis, of restitution to the downtrodden fairyhood, is an exotic, fair and slight bud, grafted into the sturdier indigenous stock. For let us fix but a steady look upon the thing itself, and what is there before us? a whim, a trick of the fancy, tickling the fancy. We are amused with a quaint calamity—a panic of caps and cloaks. We laugh—we cannot help it—as the pigmy assembly flies a thousand ways at once—grave councillors and all—throwing ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... in the garden, nor had there been the slightest noise to attract the attention of the waiting maid. It was not impossible, after all, that she had slipped away of her own accord, possessed of a sudden whim or impulse. ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... night discourse Through hall and court circled in whispers low. First one, "Was that indeed our king? But where The sword-scar and the wrinkles?" "Where," rejoined, Wide-eyed, the next, "his little cranks and girds The wisdom, and the whim?" Then Patrick spake: "Sirs, till this day ye never saw your king; The man ye doted on was but his mask, His picture—yea, his phantom. Ye have seen At last the man himself." That night nigh sped, While slowly o'er the darkling woods went down, Warned by ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... thought of yielding had come to him before. We were passing the house that used to belong to that strange book-lover and recluse, Beckford. I looked up at the blank windows, and thought of that curious, self-centred life in the past, surrounded by every luxury, able to indulge every whim; and then I looked at my companion's pale, tortured face, and thought of the life he had elected to lead in the hope of saving one whom duty bound him to honour. After all, which life was the most worth living—which was ...
— Derrick Vaughan—Novelist • Edna Lyall
... person concerning any man of genius, or any product of art, is absolutely valueless. Whim, prejudice, personal bias, and physical condition color our view and tint our opinions, and when we cease to love a man personally, to condemn his art is an easy and natural step. What was ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... such action, but many persons, including conservative Republicans, frequently questioned the right or justice of such procedure. "What are we coming to," asked Senator Trumbull of Illinois, "if arrests may be made at the whim or the caprice of a cabinet minister?"[794] Loomis, in insisting upon his resolution, had these arbitrary arrests in mind, maintaining that it embodied the true principles of Democracy, which he was unwilling to see ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... announcing the speedy opening of the seventh vial, which he carried in his vest-pocket; but, which, instead of containing gunpowder, was supposed to be charged with laudanum. A strange, apostolic whim having seized him, he had left Neskyeuna for Nantucket, where, with that cunning peculiar to craziness, he assumed a steady, common sense exterior and offered himself as a green-hand candidate for the Jeroboam's whaling voyage. They engaged him; .. but straightway ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... needed; for the English inhibitive instinct does not seem to exist in Rosscullen. Just as Nora's liking to miss a meal and stay out at the Round Tower is accepted as a sufficient reason for her doing it, and for the family going to bed and leaving the door open for her, so Broadbent's whim to go out for a late stroll provokes neither hospitable remonstrance nor surprise. Indeed Aunt Judy wants to get rid of him whilst she makes a bed for him on the sofa. So off he goes, full fed, happy and enthusiastic, to explore ...
— John Bull's Other Island • George Bernard Shaw
... idea of carrying up his blankets and three or four days' food. He ended by transporting up that steep slope everything but his canoe and the small tent. It might be, he said to himself as he lugged load after load, just a whim, a fancy, but he was free to act on a whim or a fancy, as free as if he were in the first blush of careless, adventurous youth,—freer, because he had none of the impatient hopes and urges and dreams ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... at her, for Liana exactly resembled the princess's younger sister, the philanthropic Idoine, who devoted herself to the idyllic happiness of her peasantry in the Arcadian village that it was her whim to rule. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... nice little walk, instead of going to Europe, and I will try to make it just as enjoyable to you. You know I shall be with you, darling, and haven't you often said that you were perfectly happy wherever I was?" And darling will begin a weak argument in favor of her little unreasonable, sentimental whim represented by "Europe," although she sees that your mind is made up. But you have seen her weaken at your smooth talk, and you give her some more; and if that doesn't do, why, you kiss her, and then she's gone. And before you leave her she has assured you that she ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... chaos of shade. Amassing as much money as he can for his flight, he is in all the smuggling expeditions, as well in those that bring a suitable remuneration as in those where one risks death for a hundred cents. And ordinarily, Arrochkoa accompanies him, without necessity, in sport and for a whim. ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... crumpled ball of paper, and raised his arm to fling it away. Then suddenly his lips relaxed in a smile and a light of relief sprang into his eyes. It was all nonsense, of course—just some foolish, woman's whim or fancy, some ridiculous idea she had got into her head which five minutes' talk between them would dispel. He had been a fool to take it seriously. He unclenched his hand and smoothed out the crumpled sheet of paper. Tearing it into very small pieces, ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... of flatterers and dependants she had become haughty, vain, and supercilious; still she was lovely, and no one knew better how to practise the most winning arts of her sex, when whim or interest prompted her to ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... you will do as the apes would do—leave one of your kind to die in the jungle if it suited your whim ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... dues by rendering but three men happy, it is probable that she has set foot in more than one region of love. Sometimes it may happen that in an interregnum of love too long protracted, the wife, whether from whim, temptation or the desire of novelty, undertakes to seduce ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... Why is one generation left so absolutely at the mercy of the other?" he demanded, turning back to the strip of sky over the roof. "It makes a man rage to think of the lives that are spoiled for a whim. Money, money—curse it!—it all comes to that in the end. Money makes us ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... continuing our delightful trip down the river, we three were scurrying to Saalsburg, urged by a sudden and stupendous whim on my part, and filled with a new ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... eminences, contrary to all good guidance of war. But if he had not full domination on Dunchuach, he had, at any rate, a fine prospect I think, in all my time, I have never witnessed a more pleasing scene than ever presents itself in clear weather from the brow of this peak. Loch Finne—less, as the whim of the fancy might have it, a loch than a noble river—runs south in a placid band; the Cowal hills rise high on the left, bare but of heather and gall; in front is the heart of Argile, green with the forest of Creag Dubh, where the stag bays in the gloaming. For miles behind the town ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... of rare common-sense and directness of speech, as of action; a transcendentalist above all, a man of ideas and principles,—that was what distinguished him. Not yielding to a whim or transient impulse, but carrying out the purpose of a life. I noticed that he did not overstate anything, but spoke within bounds. I remember, particularly, how, in his speech here, he referred to what his family had suffered in Kansas, without ever giving the least ...
— A Plea for Captain John Brown • Henry David Thoreau
... completely discomfited our enemies. On the following day Comte Jean laid before me several projects, which were far from pleasing in my eyes; too much time was required in their execution. I knew the king too well to be blind to the danger of allowing this mere whim of the moment to take root in his mind. One idea caught my fancy, and without mentioning it to Comte Jean, I determined upon carrying it into execution. The marechale de Mirepoix happened at this moment not to be at Paris ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... dishes or the felicitous combination of old ones—either by discovering new sources of food or new methods of preparing it. It was a curious incident in the late history of the city that what had been a fashionable whim became a hard necessity—that after Saint-Hilaire and the hippophagists had struggled to introduce horseflesh as regular provender, the siege of Paris made horseflesh a prized rarity. But the zest resulting from the enforced diet of dogs, cats, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... Bubble. I resolved to keep her very secluded and say nothing of my Polly Peachum (whose name, by the way, is Anne Wentworth) outside the house, but indeed might as well endeavour to stifle a promising scandal as such beauty! However, she arrived a week later with her meagre outfit. 'Twas an odd whim, I own. ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... probably find in the conception of every fashion some artist's brain. If the period is a good one, then it proves that fate allowed the artist to be true to his muse. If the fashion is a bad one the artist may have had to adapt his lines and colour or detail to hide a royal deformity, or to cater to the whim of some wilful beauty ignorant of our art, but rich and ...
— Woman as Decoration • Emily Burbank
... "It was a whim, a fad of Mr Ensler's. He went to a lot of expense over it. I don't suppose you noticed it, but just out over the cut-water close to the bowsprit, there's a great cut-glass silver star, fitted inside with a set of the most wonderful silver reflectors, parabolic they call them, and when the ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... certain, that he had at this time taken up the whim (for it hardly deserves a more serious name) of minute and constant watchfulness over his expenditure; and, as most usually happens, it was with the increase of his means that this increased sense of the value of money came. The first symptom I saw of this new fancy of his was the exceeding joy ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. IV - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... the Carlos Hills were seen, and there Jo knew fresh men and mounts were waiting, and that way the indomitable rider tried to turn, the race, but by a sudden whim, of the inner warning born perhaps—the Pacer turned. Sharp to the north he went, and Jo, the skilful wrangler, rode and rode and yelled and tossed the dust with shots, but down on a gulch the wild black meteor ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... half-awakened thought. Ill could they be content, born without and beyond the World. And their weak wings beat against their barriers,—barriers of caste, of youth, of life; at last, in dangerous moments, against everything that opposed even a whim. ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... admitted that they were foreign to her, that she could not comprehend them at all. Each of the three at her table was entirely free and independent—each could and did act according to his or her whim, and none could say them nay. Such freedom seemed unreal. They were children playing at life, and playing dangerously. Hundreds of times, in conversation with her coevals, she had cheerfully protested against ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... way to the nearest elevated station and rode in the direction of the Potter home. He had no definite plan in mind, and, more from a whim than anything else, he decided to walk past the house. He did not expect it, but he had an idea—a very faint one—that he might see Grace. Of course, if he saw her at the window, where she sometimes sat, it would be no more than polite to go ...
— Larry Dexter's Great Search - or, The Hunt for the Missing Millionaire • Howard R. Garis
... a part of them, are the frequent synonyms so characteristic of Old English poetry. These synonymous expressions are known as "kennings." They are not to be thought of as occasional metaphors employed at the whim of the poet; they had, in most cases, already received a conventional meaning. Thus the king was always spoken of as "ring giver," "protector of earls," or "bracelet bestower." The queen was the "weaver of peace"; the sea the "ship road," or "whale ...
— Old English Poems - Translated into the Original Meter Together with Short Selections from Old English Prose • Various
... to Joe Barnes; and he could not let anything belonging to Joe Barnes get lost or run away. When the Kid reached the edge of the woods and stood looking through the fence, then Sonny roused himself, and started up the pasture in a leisurely, indifferent way, as if it was purely his own whim that took him in that direction. He pretended not to see the Kid at all. But in reality he was watching, with an anxious intentness, every move the little one made. He was determined to do ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... three dead bodies were drawn along the ground, dusty and disfigured by bumping against stone and clod. They were those of slaves, hanged the preceding day, perhaps for pilfering, perhaps for a mere whim, since every baron ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... he would walk back to Hereford Square, getting home late at night. And if the physique of the man was bracing, his conversation, unless he happened to be suffering from one of his occasional fits of depression, was still more so. Its freshness, raciness, and eccentric whim no pen could describe. There is a kind of humour, the delight of which is that while you smile at the pictures it draws, you smile quite as much to think that there is a mind so whimsical, crotchety, and odd as to draw them. This was the ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... Saint Patrick a bitterly hard life, for little kindness was wasted on those who were sold into bondage, and slaves were compelled to labor terribly with aching muscles and empty bellies, beaten and cuffed at the whim of their master—who had a perfect right to slay them if he so desired Hunger, blows and fatigue were Saint Patrick's portion and were added to the homesickness of a young man torn ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... disposed of, Hoangti had another with whom to deal. At his court resided Prince Tan, heir of the ruler of Yen. Whether out of settled policy or from whim, the emperor insulted this visitor so flagrantly that he fled the court, burning for revenge. As the most direct way of obtaining this, he hired an assassin to murder Hoangti, inducing him to accept the task by promising him ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... discourse of this gentleman, by telling me, as we followed the servant, that this his ancestor was a brave man, and narrowly escaped being killed in the Civil Wars. "For," said he, "he was sent out of the field upon a private message the day before the Battle of Worcester." The whim of narrowly escaping, by having been within a day of danger, with other matters above mentioned, mixed with good sense, left me at a loss whether I was more delighted with ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... and S. W. Clark, it appears to me much less suitable than the old one, because it is less specific. Any words uttered loudly in the same breath, are an exclamation. This name therefore is too general; it includes other parts of speech than interjections; and it was but a foolish whim in Dr. Webster, to prefer it in his dictionaries. When David "cried with a loud voice, O my son Absalom! O Absalom, my son, my son!" [442] he uttered two exclamations, but they included all his words. He ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... care. She was having a wonderful time—a new kind of wonderful time. No longer gazing, big-eyed like little Cinderella at a pageant some fairy godmother's whim had admitted her to, but consciously gazed upon; she was the show to-night, and she knew it. Her low, finely modulated voice so rich in humor, so varied in color, had to-night an edge on it that carried it beyond those she was immediately speaking to and drew looks ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... the young lady happy, when Mme. la Presidente always carried out her daughter's every wish and listened to her as if Mademoiselle was an oracle. What right have I to expect Mlle. Cecile to change her habits and ideas? Instead of a father and mother who indulge her every whim, she would find an egotistic man of forty; if she should resist, the man of forty would have the worst of it. So, as an honest man—I withdraw. If there should be any need to explain my visit here, I desire ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... cities, yes; but how of my fate, and that of those we love? Are we all to be ruined, and perhaps slaughtered, to satisfy your whim, girl?" ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard
... shore. Such stratagems are often necessary, in travelling with Bedouins, to make them yield to the traveller's wishes; for though they care little for fatigue in their own business, they are extremely averse to go out of their way, to gratify what they consider an absurd whim of ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... king returns again to the charge, and determines to carry out his tyrannical whim by the following order of the Council:—"The Council threaten the Lord Mayor and aldermen with imprisonment, if they do not forthwith enforce the king's command that all shops should be shut up in Cheapside and Lombard Street that were not goldsmiths' shops." The Council "had learned that there were ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... slender and elfish, with a wealth of yellow tresses falling down her back. She was tender and gay, too, and Keith liked to hear her laugh. When they played, she was always ready to fall in with any whim of Keith's. ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... learned seems your gallant speech, and noble is your trim, And thus to court an humble maid is just to please your whim; So go and seek some lady fair, as high in pedigree, Nor stoop so low by Ivory to flatter ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... the course of two hours or so, to the lip of the canyon, and who-whooed to Casey, mucking out after a shot he had put down in the location hole. Casey looked up, waved his hand and then came running. No whim would send the Little Woman on a four-mile walk with a heavy child like Babe to carry, and Casey was as white as he'll ever get when he met her halfway to the ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... the same time she dismayed. He moved nearer to her. Yes, she had grandeur. All the costly and valuable objects in the drawing-room she had rejected in favour of the satisfaction of a morbid and terrible whim. Who could have foreseen it? He moved still nearer. He stood over her. He seized her yielding wrists. He lifted her veil. Tears were running down her cheeks from the yellow eyes. She looked ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... word—that is, he never should break it—and you may rest assured that I will not break mine. If your view of such matters is so loose, Peter, what security have I that you won't deceive me and betray me when it is your interest or your whim ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... order in which one tried to do what is right, with, for reward, the hope of Pratscha-Paramita, the peace that is beyond all knowledge and which Nirvana provides. That peace is—or was—the complete absence of anything, extinction utter and everlasting, a state of absolute non-existence which no whim of ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... moth-eaten sidesaddles of the town were resuscitated, and old family nags were made back-sore with the wearing of them, and their youthful spirits revived by new beginners sliding about on their rounded sides. My whims were sneered at, and then followed. Of course I was driven from whim to whim, to keep them busy, and to preserve my originality, and at last I became eccentric for eccentricity's sake. All this prepared the way for my Nemesis. But as yet my wild oats were green and flourishing in the field ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... the purpose of his ride to town, and Shorty was lost in a maze of futile conjecture. Shorty knew, however, that a man in Lawler's condition would not ride to town to gratify a whim; and the longer he watched Lawler the deeper became his conviction that another tragedy was imminent. For there was something in Lawler's manner, in the steady, unflagging way he rode; in the set ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... his eye over the sleeping group,—for when the firing had ceased the whole party had again sought their repose,— and he could not help admiring the athletic and sinewy limbs that lay scattered around the gloomy vault, in every posture that ease or whim dictated. From the stout frames of the men, his glance was directed to the stack of firearms, from whose glittering tubes and polished bayonets strong rays of light were reflected, even in that dark apartment. Manual followed ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... shall make your own home, and I will take you whither you will. I will be a servant to minister to every whim; all the world shall be a Paradise to you; you shall have every joy that wealth, and love, and sweet friends can procure for you,—if you will obey me in one thing." Lady Anna, still crouching upon the ground, hid her face in her mother's dress, but she was silent. "It is not much that I ask ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... part, and it did not take me very long to arrive at the conclusion that it was undoubtedly meant as a signal of some sort to somebody or other. He was scarcely likely to do such a thing for the gratification of a mere whim. And if it was a signal, what did it mean's and to whom was it made? There was of course the possibility that it was a prearranged signal to his absent mate; but, taken in conjunction with the fact that it was exhibited almost ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... passing-bell begun, The news through half the town is run. 'Oh! may we all for death prepare! What has he left? and who's his heir?' 'I know no more than what the news is; 'Tis all bequeathed to public uses.' 'To public uses! there's a whim! What had the public done for him? Mere envy, avarice, and pride: He gave it all—but first he died. And had the Dean, in all the nation, No worthy friend, no poor relation? So ready to do strangers good, Forgetting his own ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... having brought a Dauphin to the nation, they replied, 'We will only repeat our father's observation on a similar subject. When one of our sisters complained to his late Majesty that, as her Italian husband had copied the Dauphin's whim, she could not, though long a bride, boast of being a wife, or hope to become a mother—"a prudent Princess," replied Louis XV., "never wants heirs!"' But the feeling of the royal aunts was an exception to the general sentiment, which ...
— The Secret Memoirs of Louis XV./XVI, Complete • Madame du Hausset, an "Unknown English Girl" and the Princess Lamballe
... Drawing-room!" he applauded; and she smiled up at him under her straight lashes. "Why didn't you appear at dinner? Is it a whim—hiding your light under a bushel? Or do you get headaches and heartaches working in the ward, and feel out of tune with ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... then his compliments began To rain like drops of Frangipanni, A most insinuating man He was, this ancient DON GIOVANNI. You felt, if you could half believe, You'd but to word a whim to find it, You quite forgot he owned a sleeve, And several teeth to ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. March 14, 1891. • Various
... old dramatic sweep of his hat. A hot spurt of rage flared across Drennen's brain; this was no accidental meeting. Garcia had seen them leave the Settlement and had followed. Then the burning wrath changed quickly to hard, cold, watchful anger. Through a mere whim of the little gods of chance he had seen another face in the thicket or young elms not twenty paces from Ygerne's log, a face with hard, malevolent eyes, peaked at the bottom with a coppery Vandyck beard. If Ramon Garcia had seen, certainly Sefton ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... moving up to your house to-day, are you? That will be news to Viola. She's got the whim that you don't intend ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... little innocent fancy was indulged. Thus he wandered all over the island and at all hours, sometimes even wandering out at night when the foolish fancy took him, until this was accepted as the normal thing for harmless Jock. Another innocent whim he had of making a collection of rubbishy odds and ends and keeping them in a box in the barn. He had even repeated "Lock! Lock!" and stamped his harmless foot till they good-naturedly provided him with a lock and key for this treasure chest. And thus long ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... senses often take the whim of walking I know not where, dear Ammalat. Are you not well at Verkhoffsky's—free and contented? beloved as a younger brother, caressed like a bride? Grant that Seltanetta is lovely: there are not many Verkhoffskys. Cannot ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... slightingly. "What difference does it make what vermin like that mob do? Just for a whim, to ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... TURNER'S art as novelist, being firmer in touch and generally more matured than anything he has yet written. The plot concerns the adventures, spiritual and other, of Madame Iris Iranovna, pampered cosmopolitan beauty, when fate or her own egotistical whim had dumped her as a temporary dweller in the semi-detached villas of suburbia. The theme, you observe, is one that might excuse the wildest farce, since the effect of Iris upon her unfamiliar surroundings ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 18th, 1920 • Various
... thought Tom's desire for art was mere wayward naughtiness. However, after Tom had threatened to burn the house down if he was not allowed to go to an art-school, and had carried out his threat so far as to set fire to a bale of cotton-goods in the cellar, Mr. Knight yielded to the whim for the sake of peace and a low temperature. He expansively predicted ultimate disaster for Tom. But at the age of eighteen and a half, Tom, with his habit of inconvenience, simply fell into a post as designer to a firm of wholesale stationers. His task was to design covers for coloured boxes of ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... not the least extraordinary feature of his appearance. He constantly wore a full-trimmed scarlet waistcoat of most uncommon dimensions, a light grey coat, which altogether gave him an air of singularity and whim ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... Palaces I have named were all constructed from time to time to serve as residences for the ten to thirty persons recognized as of the blood Royal, who removed from one to the other as convenience or whim may have suggested. They are generally very spacious, probably averaging one to two hundred apartments each, all constructed of the best materials and furnished and adorned with the most lavish disregard of cost. I roughly estimate the ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... touch crowns' crumbled'; beggars' reigned'; systems' van-ished'; the wildest theories' took the color of his whim'; and all that was venerable' and all that was novel', changed places with the rapidity of a drama'. Nature had no obstacle' that he did not surmount'; space, no opposition' he did not spurn'; and whether amid Alpine rocks',—Arabian ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... a prematurely-aged man, exhausted by debauch, crazed by strong drink, a ferocious maniac, mutilating his subjects, his officers or his ministers, as the whim seized him, cutting the nose and ears off some, and the foot or the hand from others. His own death, not unlooked for, would be ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... sentenced to the lash? Not at all! She was brought by her master to be whipped by the common executioner, without trial, judge, or jury, just at his beck or nod, for some real or supposed offence, or to gratify his own whim or malice. And he may bring her day after day, without cause assigned, and inflict any number of lashes he pleases, short of twenty-five, provided only he pays the fee. Or if he choose, he may have a private whipping-board on his own ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... bequeath to my only son John one shilling and sixpence. Now perhaps he's sorry he married the cook." As far as I can make out he changed his will just as he did when he left the money to you, purely through some passing whim. Anyway, he did change it. He left the pile to support the movement those people are running for getting the Jews back ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... a Hampshire gentleman, was born at Putney, near London, April 27, 1737. After a preliminary education at Westminster, and fourteen "unprofitable" months at Magdalen College, Oxford, a whim to join the Roman church led to his banishment to Lausanne, where he spent five years, and acquired a mastery of the French language, formed his taste for literary expression, and settled his religious doubts in a profound scepticism. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... to look at the weakly wicked Ahab. His wish for Naboth's vineyard was a mere selfish whim. He was willing to give more for it than it was worth. It suited his convenience for a kitchen-garden. In the true spirit of an Eastern despot, he expected everything to yield to his caprice, and did not think that a subject had any rights. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... whim if you like, but there are reasons why I wish the house to have a summer tenant. It has, for one thing, never been empty since it was built. It was my father's pride, and his father's before him, that the doors were never locked, even at night. Of course I can not ask a ...
— The Confession • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... double fact—on the one side an eager hopefulness springing up afresh after all disappointments, and on the other an experience almost invariably unfavorable—can be explained like all illusions by the whim of nature, which either wills us to be deceived or wills us to act as if we ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... by a Norfolk man, always seems to me a great curiosity, as the last line is lengthened out and twisted about in a most grotesque manner, apparently to suit the whim or fancy of the singer, for no two of them seem to conjure vocally with it in the same way. Everyone present is supposed to join in the last line as a kind of chorus, and not only join in, but "give it lungs," as they say. Some of them pay such attention to these points, that they appear ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... "Oh, some whim of the poor soul's. Now get a bit of paper and draw up a paragraph as I shall tell you. But ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... swinging gate which opened onto the apology for a wagon road. She liked quaint French Pete and looked forward to his return with eagerness. Like her grandfather, he always spoiled her, slavishly submitting to her every whim because she reminded him of his own p'tit bb, in his far-away, Pyrenean home. Marian was used to being spoiled. She was as beautiful as a flower and, already, ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... by the pouched turkey had been devoted to her whim. Every stitch was neatly set. I praised her beautiful needlework, and she said she would make ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... his immolated wife, that what he loved best in life might not in death be divided from him? or was it the abode of penance chosen by some devoted anchorite of later days? or the idle work of some wandering mechanic, whom chance, and whim, and leisure, had thrust upon such an undertaking?" What follows this sober passage is the work of the poet. "Sleep," continues Norna, "had gradually crept upon me among my lucubrations, when I was startled from my slumbers by a second clap ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... of it, convinced me, as I believe it did some others, that her act of self-denial in not humouring my whim and flying from home and duty that night, had made a stronger impression on her mind ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green
... at all. They do about clothes, though. And she knows a lot. Why, Chess, she's having the loveliest things made, if they are mourning, and the sisters, they ask her about everything they order—to wear, I mean. And, just think! Mrs. Schuyler never wears any jewels but pearls! It's a whim, you know, or it was her husband's whim, or something, but anyway, she has oceans of pearls, and no ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... him with sharp words, for this was a scheme after his own heart. "What, Thor!" he said. "Would you lose your hammer and keep Asgard in danger for so small a whim. Look, now: if you go not, Thrym with his giants will come in a mighty army and drive us from Asgard; then he will indeed make Freia his bride, and, moreover, he will have you for his slave under the power of his hammer. How like you this picture, brother of the thunder? ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... stroking the colorless curls gently; looking back; thinking that she had done much for him; he would humor her whim, not behave like a beast to her. But his brother—It would be better for Stephen in the end. Certainly. Yet he sighed: a womanish, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... be the reason of this sudden whim for an unpremeditated cup of tea at home she scarcely took the trouble to analyse. Yet, she was becoming conscious of a subtle and increasing exhilaration as she approached her ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... authority.—"As the Father gave Me commandment, even so I do." Every soul must have a supreme source of authority in its life, if it is to have peace. Its own whim, the suggestion of passion, the vagrant impulse of the moment, are inconsistent with tranquillity. There must be for each of us one voice which is imperative, one command which is indisputable, one authority which ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... so Hung all things silent, still; Only Time earless moved on, stepping slow Up the scarped hill, And even Time in a long twilight stayed And, for a whim, that whispered whim obeyed. ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... rock in a weary land," I unaccountably felt the influence of those very superstitious fears and terrors which I was so anxious to combat in my fellow-travellers. I then soliloquized to myself, "What a poor creature is man, how weak, how miserable! how exposed to every whim and folly which a credulous mind can invent!" Thus soliloquizing, I got within the mysterious precincts of the Great Mountain Rock, in the course of three-quarters of an hour. I had, however, still more fear of the living than ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... is, that here our Harlequin and all his lifeless family are condemned to perpetual silence. They came to us from the genial hilarity of the Italian theatre, and were all the grotesque children of wit, and whim, and satire. Why is this burlesque race here privileged to cost so much, to do so little, and to repeat that little so often? Our own pantomime may, indeed, boast of two inventions of its own growth: we have turned Harlequin into a magician, and this ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... cried the man at the gate. "I beg! I beg! Do not, I pray, good nymph, torture me with thy dreadful power. I swear that I will obey thy every wish and whim." ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... "Nathan" was suggested to Lessing by Boccaccio's story of "The Three Rings," which is supposed to have had a Jewish origin. Saladin, pretending to be inspired by a sudden, imperious whim, such as is "not unbecoming in a Sultan," demands that Nathan shall answer him on the spur of the moment which of the three great religions then known—Judaism, Mohammedanism, Christianity—is adjudged by reason to be the true one. For a moment the philosopher ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... the thirst of the black man for knowledge, a thirst which has been too persistent and durable to be mere curiosity or whim, gave birth to the public school system of the South. It was the question upon which black voters and legislators insisted more than anything else, and while it is possible to find some vestiges of free schools in some of the Southern States ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois
... that some line of your composition is thus hacked off by no fault of yours, by some mismeasurement of a bar by your builder, or some change of mind or whim of your client, who "likes it all but"—— (some vital feature). As we have said, this is not quite a fair demand to be made upon the artist, but it will sometimes occur, whatever we do. Pull yourself together, and, before you stand out about it and refuse to ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... A very pretty whim, to count the jewellery of his famous sonnets as second in importance to the nomenclature of a vegetable! I in my turn was delighted with his ayacot. How right I was to suspect the outlandish word of American Indian ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... Meena still sinking on high-grade ore, Judson Eells had taken a good deal for granted when he had set out to develop the Stinging Lizard. He had squared out his shaft and sunk on the vein only as far as the muckers could throw out the waste; and then, instead of installing a windlass or a whim, he had decided upon a gallows-frame and hoist. But to bring in his machinery he must first have a road, for the trail was all but impassable; and so, without sinking, he had blasted his way up the canyon, only to find his efforts wasted. The ore had been dug out before his engine was installed, ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... Miss Evelyn whispered, "to-night," as she gave me a stolen pressure of the hand. She came, and we indulged in every whim of our fancy. I had further the delicious pleasure of gazing on all her naked beauties, as it was daylight before we parted; I had gamahuched her twice, and fucked her five times. She gave me credit for a long fast, and allowed so much indulgence on that ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... boy to be thrown aside like an old glove," cried Gratton, beside himself, shaken with jealous fury. "You have promised; you have loved me; in your heart you love me now. Shall I stand back for a girl's nervous whim? I tell you, ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... he says, rolling up the chart, "and though I would like to find him, just for my poor wife's satisfaction, I can't go wild-goose-chasing all over the Pacific for a woman's whim." ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... their performances at the clergyman's widow's, and delighted two of them very much by my admiration of a little arbour which they had there planted with woodbines and other sweet shrubs. In their own garden they are allowed the indulgence of any little whim which takes not up too much room; and it is pretty to see their little seats, their arbours and beds of flowers, according to their several tastes. As soon as school breaks up, they run with as much eagerness and joy to their garden, as other children do to their childish ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... man he had known from a child—the great bluff fellow who had carried him in his arms and hundreds of times made him welcome in that wonderland, his workshop, where he was always ready to leave off lucrative work to fashion him eel-spear or leaping-pole, or to satisfy any other whim that was on the surface—that this old friend was being menaced by a great savage of a stranger nearly as big as himself, and backed by a roaring excited crowd who seemed ready for ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... instantly obey. He had a whim to sit up, watching. There was no fear in his wide grey eyes, but it was uncanny to see them searching the shadows of the room and returning always, with a fixed, somnambulistic stare, to the window. Christine had ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... you to decide, sir. I think his conduct quite unusual, and, indeed, unjust, as regards Turkey and myself. But it may only be a passing whim." ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... a snake. It is thin, shrunken, faded, papery, and there is no terror in it. Then, too, it is dark in the cavity of the nest, consequently the skin could not serve as a scarecrow in any case. Hence, whatever its purpose may be, it surely is not that. It looks like a mere fancy or whim of the bird. There is that in its voice and ways that suggests something a little uncanny. Its call is more like the call of the toad than that of a bird. If the toad did not always swallow its own cast-off skin, the bird would probably ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... neither depend upon the Koran nor any written code, human or divine, beyond the whim and caprice of the chief (assassin) and his gang of desperadoes. The Sultan of Pontiana has, however, established the ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... of an attempted murder? What if the sword of justice had turned its point against me?" "That would not have been possible," said De Scuderi, "your birth—your rank"—— "Oh! remember Marshal de Luxembourg, whose whim for having his horoscope cast by Le Sage brought him under the suspicion of being a poisoner, and eventually into the Bastille. No! by St. Denis! I would not risk my freedom for an hour—not even the lappet of my ear—in the power of that madman La Regnie, who only too well would like to have ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... Much of what is going through the press on the subject of pottery will have its use as promoting the advancement and clearing up the history of fictile art, and will therefore be preserved, while a larger portion will interest only the few who delve into the records of human caprice and whim. Even these will not particularly care to know or remember what factory-brand was borne by the teapots and saucers of our grandmothers, and what Staffordshire modeller or woodcutter was responsible for the usually atrocious decorations of those utensils. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... are blacker than any negro," she remarked. "Eh, bien! I thank you, Keed, mon ami, for your complaisance. You are very amiable to submit to the whim of a silly girl who suddenly becomes afraid of her ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... merely a puppet worked by some secret and unseen hand to bring terrible events to a terrible issue. But puppets themselves have passions. They will bring a new plot into what they are presenting, and twist the ordered issue of vicissitude to suit some whim or appetite of their own. To be entirely free, and at the same time entirely dominated by law, is the eternal paradox of human life that we realise at every moment; and this, I often think, is the only explanation possible of your nature, if indeed for the profound and terrible ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... down from the back-blocks for three years?" he had asked, as he showed a tremulous and dilapidated bushman how to play the instrument that he had bought with the few shillings remaining out of his check. "Been on the spree and going back to drive a whim until you've enough to go on another? How I wish you'd tell that to our high and mighty Lord Bishop of all the Back-Blocks! I should like to see his face and hear him on the subject; but I suppose he's new since you were down here last? Never come across him, eh? But, of course, you heard how good ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... the smallest, should be surrounded by a square enclosure or temenos.[20] At Medinet Habu, this enclosure wall is of sandstone—low, and embattled. The innovation is due to a whim of Rameses III., who, in giving to his monument the outward appearance of a fortress, sought to commemorate his Syrian victories. Elsewhere, the doorways are of stone, and the walls are built in irregular courses of crude bricks. ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero
... of the household at Chilton. Lady Fareham was as charming as ever, and though she had complained very often of bad health, she had been so lively and active whenever the whim took her, riding with hawk and hound, visiting about the neighbourhood, driving into Oxford, that Denzil was of opinion her ailments were of the spirits only, a kind of rustic malady to which most fine ladies were subject, the nostalgia of paving-stones and oil lamps. ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... for me her madness work't again, And made her take a whim to run away, She would have kill'd me else, do what I could; I'le stay no longer, lest she come again. I'd not be in her fingers as I was For all ...
— The Fatal Jealousie (1673) • Henry Nevil Payne
... of silver dollars, which was concealed in his cabin so that "the devil himself couldn't smell it out." And that was all—absolutely all. He was tired of his life, and not afraid of death. But this man, who would stake his existence on a whim with a bitter and jeering recklessness, stood in mortal fear of imprisonment. He had an unreasoning cold-sweat, nerve-shaking, blood-to-water-turning sort of horror at the bare possibility of being locked up—the sort of terror a superstitious man would feel at the ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... sat up in my bed upon this, to hear from whence it came; and it seemed to me to come from the middle of the stairs. It continued, as I believe, at least above two hours." At this I laughed, and said, "O Cranstoun, how can you be so whimsical?" "Tis no whim," replied he, "for I really heard it; nor had I been asleep; for it began soon after I got into bed." I then said, "Don't make yourself uneasy, if it was so; since nothing ill, sure, can be presaged by music." When my father came into the parlour, this topic of conversation ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead
... Walters gallery incident it was my duty, so he thought, to keep Field's desk supplied with inks, not only of every color of the rainbow, but with lake-white, gold, silver, and bronze, and any other kind which his whim deemed necessary to give eccentric emphasis to some line, word or letter in whatever he chanced to be composing. His peremptory requests were generally preferred in writing, addressed "For the Lusty Knight, Sir Slosson Thompson, Office," and delivered by ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... ten years hence this practice of the English, if the clergy and the physicians will but give them leave to do it; or possibly our countrymen may introduce inoculation three months hence in France out of mere whim, in case the English should ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... night's debauch to moralize upon its consequences. How many a sober-looking face demure when morning dawns would blush to meet the accusing spirit of the night, dressed out in all the fantasies of whim and eccentricity with which the rosy god of midnight revelry ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... about her education. I didn't know she had one," said Jarvis, "but this whim of hers, in marrying me, is very trying to me. ...
— Bambi • Marjorie Benton Cooke
... done to Androclee; that nothing disobliging will be done to Parmenides, and that Menecrate will be made by force more happy than he wishes to be; for we shall give him a wife by whom he is loved, and take from him one by whom he is hated. Moreover, things being so, even if he refuses to subject his whim to his reason, he can wish to come to blows with Thrasimede alone, and would have nothing to ask of Philistion; besides which, his sentiments will change as soon as Thrasimede is Arpalice's husband. One often fights with a Rival, thinking to profit by his defeat, when he has ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... door not far from the Palace end, let himself in, and groped his way to the second floor. A sleepy man-servant turned out of his room, and finding that his master was not inclined to go to bed, brought lights and mineral water. Wharton was practically a teetotaller. He had taken a whim that way as a boy, and a few experiments in drunkenness which he had made at college had only confirmed what had been originally perhaps a piece of notoriety-hunting. He had, as a rule, flawless health; and the unaccustomed headaches and nausea which followed these occasional excesses ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... in 1753. A certain Mrs. Cotton, who had largely contributed to whitewashing and otherwise ornamenting the church, had taken it into her head that the soul of a favourite daughter had passed into a robin. The Dean and Chapter indulged her in the whim, and she was allowed to keep a kind of aviary in her private seat. 'Just by the high altar is a small pew hung with green damask, with curtains of the same, and a small corner cupboard painted, carved, and gilt, for birds in one corner.'[889] In Ripon ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... talk. The women gathered round the fountain in the Place Royal and filled their water jars and gossiped about Salvatore Urso's silly whim with his child. Madame Dubois settled her cap and gave it as her opinion that no good would come of such a foolish thing. Madame Tilsit knew better, if the child wanted to play, why, let her play. The priest would not forbid it. Madame Perche knew it was far better than teaching ...
— Camilla: A Tale of a Violin - Being the Artist Life of Camilla Urso • Charles Barnard
... stirring vision, and to such the deeper causes of the Terror are revealed. For they behold a vast multitude, stained with care, haggard, forlorn, striving, dying, toiling even to their death, that the passing whim of a tyrant may be gratified. Louis commanded; Versailles arose, a palace of rare delight for princes and nobles, for wits and courtly prelates, for grave philosophers and ladies frail as fair. A palace and a hell, a grim monument to regal egoism, created ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... Englishman had the end in view, you see, whereas the lesser brain of the Spaniard would have sacrificed the battle for a personal whim, having lost sight, in his vanity, of the importance of the ...
— Three Things • Elinor Glyn
... no next move,' answered Racksole candidly, 'and I will tell you why I bought the hotel; there need be no secret about it. I bought it because of a whim.' And then Theodore Racksole gave this little Jew, whom he had begun to respect, a faithful account of the transaction with Mr Felix Babylon. 'I suppose,' he added, 'you find a difficulty in appreciating my state of mind ...
— The Grand Babylon Hotel • Arnold Bennett
... the sake of argument that a bodiless God can create the world by his will and activity. Did he take to creation through a personal whim? In that case there would be no natural laws and order in the world. Did he take to it in accordance with the moral and immoral actions of men? Then he is guided by a moral order and is not independent. Is it through mercy that he took to creation? Well then, we suppose there should have been only ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... golden. Hanging his wolf-skin cap behind the door, and shaking back his long locks as he took his seat, he would entrance father and daughter alike with his talk of adventure. From the time of his first visit new life came to the heart of Emilia; and Mr. Lindsley, whose every whim the trapper humored, was as much fascinated as his daughter. But now commenced a fierce battle in the heart of Emilia. Edwards loved her. By all the speech that his eyes were capable of, he told her so. And by all the beating ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... well on his way into one of those fits of uncontrollable fury that had always held his mother in obedience to his slightest whim since the days when he used to lie on the floor and scream himself black in the face and hold his breath till she gave in; and the poor woman, wrought to the highest pitch of excitement already by the tragic events of the evening, which were only ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill
... from the Book of Revelation, showed a company of the heavenly host as a background to a buffet-table crowded with refreshments. The constant movements and the brilliant lights provided a fitting air of gaiety to the scene. It was Mrs. Ogilvie's whim to have her rooms illuminated in a manner as nearly as possible to represent the effect of tempered sunlight. 'No woman cares to see,' she used to say, 'she wants to be seen.' And so the lights at Bowshott were always ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... showed in his playing. He was impulsive and uncertain,—a wandering musician, who, when the whim took him, would disappear from public view altogether. When he made a success in any place his restless nature would not allow him to follow it up, so that when his prime was past, instead of having formed connections which should have lasted him for the rest of his life, he was still the wandering ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... soften the disagreeableness of the restraint which learning imposes, King Schelim gave more strict orders than ever, that, provided the young gentlemen only learnt their lessons well, every whim that came into their heads should be ...
— Aunt Judy's Tales • Mrs Alfred Gatty
... distinct from its surroundings as to suggest rather the handicraft of man than a whim of Nature, it looms up at the entrance to the Narrows, a symmetrical column of solid grey stone. There are no similar formations within the range of vision, or indeed within many a day's paddle up and down the coast. Amongst all the wonders, the natural beauties that encircle Vancouver, ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson
... he's making sport. Of course 'tis wickedest of shames, But—recollect Sir HENRY JAMES, Your open enemy avowed, Did not the House o' Commons crowd Of frauds and shams play up to him, And shelve "the Female Franchise" whim Only the other day? Sheer diddle! Have you not nous to read the riddle? How wondrous prompt was W.G. To back up SMITH! With what sly glee The "Woman's-Rightists" did subside. And—sub silentio—let you slide! Your Grand Old Man, dears,—well, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 22, 1891 • Various
... insipid. In avoiding the fashion of his day Mr. Watts seems to me to have slipped into an abstraction. The mere leaving out every accent that marks a dress as belonging to a particular epoch does not save it from going out of fashion. It is in the execution that the great artists annihilated the whim of temporary taste, and made the hoops of old time beautiful, however slim the season's fashions. To be of all time the artist must begin by being of his own time; and if he would find the eternal type he must seek it in ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... loved you wholly. She was angry over a little thing, just jealousy, during that last quarrel. She had already forgiven. It was only a girl's whim. Do you want advice?" ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... she was highly amused. "Does 'I, my husband,' expect Lady Harlow and Jane Hatton to change their plans for his whim?" ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... first time during the voyage, Neeland felt free to lounge about where he listed, saunter wherever the whim of the moment directed his casual steps. The safety of the olive-wood box was no longer on his mind, the handle no longer in his physical clutch. He was at liberty to stroll as carelessly as any boulevard flaneur; ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... the tip of my tongue to ask my relatives the reason of this singular disparity; whether it was the result of a mere whim on the part of the architect, or whether it had been caused by some catastrophe; but my curiosity was always held in check by a strange feeling that my relatives would not like to be approached on the subject. My aunts Amelia and Deborah belonged to that class of people, unhappily rare, ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... preacher, good old dear, With tears all in his eyes, Read, "I can read my title clear To mansions in the skies." I al'ays liked that blessed hymn— I s'pose I al'ays will; It somehow gratifies my whim, In good old Ortonville; But when that choir got up to sing, I couldn't catch a word; They sung the most dog-gondest thing A body ...
— Farm Ballads • Will Carleton
... mistress! Santa Maria, what was the good world coming to? And the ban on the familiar tongue! English? She despised it. German? She detested it. But to be allowed to speak in French, that alone made conversation tolerable. And this new mad whim! Oh, yes; the signora was truly ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... thought of him as a victim of his own weakness, as the prey of a predaceous and unscrupulous woman who had intrigued and would continue to intrigue against his happiness, a woman away from her own world, a self-complacent and sensual privateer who for a passing whim, for a momentary appeasement of her exile, stood ready to sacrifice the last of his self-respect. She was self-complacent, but she was also a woman with an unmistakable physical appeal. She was undeniably attractive, as far as appearances went, and added to that attractiveness ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... as gently as possible. When he arrived, he shouted until Mrs. Bagley came to the door, and then tactfully inquired if the Widder Bagley lived there! When she indignantly replied in the negative, he gently humoured her whim; and inquired next if Judge Bagley lived there. When she replied that he did, Higgins offered to bet that he didn't; and delicately inquired if the Judge were in. On being assured that he was not in at present, Higgins triumphantly exclaimed ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... manifested a sort of dread to return, saying that she did not want to stay there, that they were not satisfied with her, that she preferred to return to them. They would reply that it had already cost them enough to bring her to Paris, that it was a silly whim on her part and that she was very well off where she was, and they would send her back to the cafe in tears. She dared not tell all that she suffered in the company of the waiters in the cafe, insolent, boasting, cynical fellows, fed on the remains of debauches, tainted with ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... one idea—that Gloria was being selfish, that she was always being selfish and would continue to be unless here and now he asserted himself as her master. This was the occasion of all occasions, since for a whim she had deprived him of a pleasure. His determination solidified, approached momentarily ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... up to me, stern of mien, bold of bearing, dauntless of purpose. At least, so I was convinced, each wished and imagined himself to seem; and since they wished so to be seen thus, seized by some sudden whim, I resolved to see them. How I envied them! Theirs all the splendor of youth, of daring, of adventure, of romance; things gone by from me, or for the most ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... charge of the kibbles at the surface. It was his duty to receive each kibble as it was drawn up to the mouth of the shaft full of ore, empty it, and send it down again. Several coils of chain passing round the large drum of a great horse-windlass, called by the miners a "whim," was the means by which the kibbles were hoisted and lowered. The chain was so arranged that one kibble was lowered by it while the other was being drawn up. Frankey had emptied one of the kibbles, and had given the signal to the boy attending the ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... classification, be designated, not as English, Italian, Danish, etc., but nautically, as Mediterranean, Baltic, or Atlantic. These three heads will serve for general classification, to which must be added a fourth or "off-soundings" department, into which should go all words suggested by whim or accidental resemblances,—such terms as "monkey-rail," "Turk's head," "dead-eye," etc.,—or which get the name of an inventor, as a "Matthew-Walker knot." More than that cannot well be given without going into the whole detail of naval history, tactics, and science,—a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... looking very thin, and my dear pet also not quite so blooming. Yet the Duc and Duchesse de Soria have gone; not a loophole for jealousy is left! Is there any trouble which you are hiding from me? Your letter is neither so long nor so full of loving thoughts as usual. Is this only a whim of ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... the measure of the world they happened to live in: they knew just what it was worth to them and for what reasons, and the community of these reasons lent to their intimacy its last exquisite touch. And now, because of some jealous whim of a dissatisfied fool of a woman, as to whom he felt himself no more to blame than any young man who has paid for good dinners by good manners, he was to be deprived of the one complete ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... his set features for a few seconds as he re-read the curt, almost savage denial, by his father of the "couple of thousand" asked for. "A fool to resign his commission in the Service and go into a thing he knew nothing about, merely to humour the fantastic whim of a woman of fashion who will, no doubt, now sheer very clear of your ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke
... God's mercies many, His ways strange, but not for any mortal to question. But I do not know that. They would have me believe my husband dead. Ambrose went forth one day and I have had no word of him since then. And my daughter is lodged within prison walls waiting the whim of Sir Dolphus who holds her ...
— In the Court of King Arthur • Samuel Lowe
... reason for receiving all such complaints as the above with caution. The extravagance of the present, in contrast with the frugality of a past age, has always been a favourite topic of declamation, and appears to have no other foundation than whim. Indeed, it is next to impossible that any great body of men could exist in the ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe
... oughtn't to subscribe to this belief. It's all wrong. I'm admitting a possibility which doesn't exist. I'm humouring a dangerous whim. For over two months I've spent ten hours a day in your company—I've sat at your feet—I've marvelled at your wisdom—I've envied your instinct—I've been dazed by your amazing efficiency—and now I'm ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... sudden impiety may bring utter ruin. If the state is conceived thus, toleration becomes wicked. A permitted deviation from the transmitted ordinances becomes simple folly. It is a sacrifice of the happiness of the greatest number. It is allowing one individual, for a moment's pleasure or a stupid whim, to bring terrible and irretrievable calamity upon all. No one will ever understand even Athenian history, who forgets this idea of the old world, though Athens was, in comparison with others, a rational and sceptical place, ready for new views, ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot
... hours fuming. To her, Austin's extraordinary behaviour was absolutely unaccountable, except on the hypothesis that he was not responsible for his actions. Her rage was beyond control. That the boy should have had the unheard-of audacity to lock her up in her own bedroom in order to gratify some mad whim, and so have upset her plans for the entire day, was an outrage impossible to forgive. If he was not out of his mind he ought to be, for there was no other excuse for him that she could think of. What was to be done with such a boy? He was too old to be whipped, too young ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... of mine. He's an American named Gunn. He's joined the Papal Zouaves from some whim, and a deuced good thing it is for them to get hold of such a man. I happened to call one day, and found him ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... in good part. The truth is, he regarded it as a very innocent whim, which required to be indulged in his wife's delicate situation; so he always joined in her hopeful anticipations, and endeavored to sympathize with them. It was under these auspicious circumstances that Hiram Meeker first saw the light. All his mother's prayers seemed to have been answered. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... at ten o'clock, schedule time. If all of those who participated were not in perfect sympathy with the spirit of the mad whim, they at least did not deport themselves after the fashion of wet blankets. To be quite authentic, but two of the promoters were heartily involved in the travesty—Lady Agnes, whose sprightliness was never dormant, and Bobby Browne, who shone in the glamour of his first encounter with the ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... his level brows together, and for a moment lined the serene beauty of his forehead. He gazed at her with a steady, puzzled look, and at last a faint, half-quizzical smile relaxed his lips. What could this strange idea, this whim be, so unlike all Eastern maiden's usual fancies? He had not yet solved the riddle, nor found the clue! he would do so, but in the meantime she must be left her freedom. In all noble natures power ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... reward for her display. Then she asked him to cut off the head of S. John the Baptist, and give it her in a dish. Now, as soon as she asked this, the king was sorry, for he knew that S. John was a good man, and he knew also that he had no right to have a man murdered in prison to please the whim of a wicked woman; however, because he had passed his word, he was too proud and cowardly to go back from it, and refuse her what she had no right to ask. Then he sent an executioner, and he cut off the head of the saint, and put it in a dish, and it was brought thus to the girl, and she carried ...
— The Village Pulpit, Volume II. Trinity to Advent • S. Baring-Gould
... them; but, lest the virtuous reader may condemn her for showing too great regard to a base-born infant, to which all charity is condemned by law as irreligious, we think proper to observe that she concluded the whole with saying, "Since it was her brother's whim to adopt the little brat, she supposed little master must be treated with great tenderness. For her part, she could not help thinking it was an encouragement to vice; but that she knew too much of the obstinacy of mankind to oppose ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... obeying only the promptings of his own superior wisdom, rather than the suggestions of the intriguers about him. The adroit De Rosny thus softly insinuated to the flattered monarch that the designs of France were the fresh emanations of his own royal intellect. It was the whim of James to imagine himself extremely like Henry of Bourbon in character, and he affected to take the wittiest, bravest, most adventurous, and most adroit knight-errant that ever won and wore a crown as his ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... that their rights were dependent on the Colonial Charters was found to be inadequate, for these Charters, while protecting the civil rights of the Americans to some extent, proceeded on the theory that they held all their political rights at the will or whim of Great Britain. The Americans felt and knew that they were entitled to political, as well as civil rights, and they all firmly believed that each so-called "colony" was a free state and subject to no external control beyond what was necessary ...
— "Colony,"—or "Free State"? "Dependence,"—or "Just Connection"? • Alpheus H. Snow
... its mark, A madman change his whim; A lion may forgive a theft; A leaky tub may swim. Bullets may pass yo harmless by, An leeav all safe at last; A thaasand thunders shake the sky, An spare yo when they've past. Yo may o'ercome mooast fell disease; Mak poverty ...
— Yorkshire Lyrics • John Hartley
... though she knew that any request of hers would be at once granted by him, she knew also that the falcon was renowned as the finest bird throughout the countryside, as well as being the joy and pride of his master's heart. But the boy was fretful and restless, and, fearing to thwart his whim lest his life should depend on it, the poor mother promised to go and ask for the falcon on the very ...
— The Children's Longfellow - Told in Prose • Doris Hayman
... projects which amused the leisure hours of this great prelate. Though gigantic, they were neither beyond his strength to execute, nor beyond the demands of his age and country. They were not like those works, which, forced into being by whim, or transitory impulse, perish with the breath that made them; but, taking deep root, were cherished and invigorated by the national sentiment, so as to bear rich fruit for posterity. This was particularly the case with the institution ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... his flight, he is in all the smuggling expeditions, as well in those that bring a suitable remuneration as in those where one risks death for a hundred cents. And ordinarily, Arrochkoa accompanies him, without necessity, in sport and for a whim. ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... counts for nothing," she declared. "The merest whim will lead thousands of voters into the wrong polling booth. Besides, nearly all the papers admit that your defeat was owing to a political intrigue. The very men who should have supported you—who had promised to support you, in fact—went ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Administration in such action, but many persons, including conservative Republicans, frequently questioned the right or justice of such procedure. "What are we coming to," asked Senator Trumbull of Illinois, "if arrests may be made at the whim or the caprice of a cabinet minister?"[794] Loomis, in insisting upon his resolution, had these arbitrary arrests in mind, maintaining that it embodied the true principles of Democracy, which he was unwilling to see violated without recording ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... would be reluctant to work the raft in shore, to spare time for such hunting. But there would be no arguing with hungry wolverines, and he did not propose to lose the animals for the officer's whim. ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... she never can love Lord Upperton and does not desire to receive his attentions, but I have told her it is only a present whim, just as mine ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... not want again to attach himself to any person, place, or cause, because the time would come when he should have to break away, and then he should have to experience death again. So he intends to move about whenever and wherever the whim suits. But I am sure this life will not satisfy Terry for long, for there is really very much of the hermit ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... like him,' forsooth! And pray, are you going to reject the best offer in the county because of a simple whim? the mere fancy of a vain-headed, foolish and inexperienced girl? I did not before suppose that a daughter of mine would manifest such a want ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... on time, and the dinner-hour, instead of being a fixed time beneath her sway, seemed to become a variable point, according to the lady's whim. In the observance of the breakfast-hour she was equally erratic, and on several trying occasions Brinley was on the verge of the dilemma of either failing to keep an appointment in town or going without his morning meal. Sometimes the coffee would come to the table a thin, amber fluid that tasted ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... mood to show mercy to any one just then, for you and your pestilent, meddlesome crew fought like fiends, and cost me several good men that I could ill spare. Your gratitude, therefore," and I thought I detected an echo of something very like scorn in his voice, "is due solely to my boy Pedro, whose whim of saving you I did not even then care to thwart. But enough of this; you are my guest, and may, if you will, become my friend. I hope your accommodation ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... for the carrying out of her design, because of the companionship which the Sire de Lavalliere would be obliged to have with her during his stay in the hotel, and as there is nothing in the world can turn a woman from her whim, at every turn the artful jade was ready to catch ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... want the murderer produced—that is why. They dare not produce him. The life of a poor working man—what is that to these masters of crime who acknowledge no law but the laws they make for themselves. You workers have no laws. A slave knows no justice but the whim of his master. Think of the mothers and children in your homes—you slaves who create the wealth of your lords and masters. And now they have taken the life of one of your truest and most loyal union leaders. ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... is the ivy green, That creepeth o'er ruins old! Of right choice food are his meals, I ween, In his cell so lone and cold. The walls must be crumbled, the stones decayed. To pleasure his dainty whim; And the mouldering dust that years have made Is a merry meal for him. Creeping where no life is seen, A rare old ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... self-will—or some other of the same brood of enemies to man's success in laudable undertakings; and of which ignorance is the chief, and may be regarded as the prolific source of all the others. In this case, undoubtedly, as in others, some are opposed from a mere notion of opposition, or from a mere whim; others again, simply to agree with, or differ from, some, who are either in favor or opposed; whilst some must oppose whatever they themselves do not originate;—and, others again, have no doubt been led honestly to entertain a distrust which has finally grown into an opposition, through ...
— Address delivered by Hon. Henry H. Crapo, Governor of Michigan, before the Central Michigan Agricultural Society, at their Sheep-shearing Exhibition held at the Agricultural College Farm, on Thursday, • Henry Howland Crapo
... Dupas was Governor of Hamburg an event occurred which occasioned considerable irritation in the public mind, and might have been attended by fatal consequences. From some whim or other the General ordered the gates to be closed at seven in the evening, and consequently while it was broad daylight, for it was in the middle of spring; no exception was made in favour of Sunday, and on that day a great number of the inhabitants ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... not wisdom but a whim of mine which causes me to be graciously minded!" she cried. "Think you that Liane ...
— Priestess of the Flame • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... out to rodeo work; indeed, he was anxious to go. But, not being a morbid young man, he did not contemplate carrying a broken heart with him. Teresita was sweet and winsome and maddeningly alluring; he knew it, he felt it still. Indeed, he was made to realize it every time the whim seized her to punish Jack by smiling upon Dade. But she was as capricious as beauty usually is, and he knew that also; and after being used several times as a club with which to beat Jack into proper humility (and always seeing ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... want yours, or my cabinet will be incomplete. I have employed one of the first miniature painters of the day to take them, of course, at my own expense, as I never allow my acquaintance to incur the least expenditure to gratify a whim of mine. To mention this may seem indelicate; but when I tell you a friend of ours first refused to sit, under the idea that he was to disburse on the occasion, you will see that it is necessary to state these preliminaries ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... were peculiar, and somewhat disconcerting. He also did not hesitate to speak aloud when he chose, nor to rise from his seat and move to any part of the room as the whim seized him. In time, of course, all this was changed; but it was several days before the boy learned so to conduct himself that he did not shatter to atoms the peace and propriety ...
— Just David • Eleanor H. Porter
... said the queen; 'my son seems to have eaten some of her pastry. It is the whim of a sick man, no doubt; but send at once and ...
— The Grey Fairy Book • Various
... so later the painting was delivered by a porter from the auction room. But Lanyard was in his bath at the time and postponed examining his doubtful prize till he had dressed for dinner. For, though it was his whim to dine in his rooms alone, and though he had no fixed plans for the evening, Lanyard was too thoroughly cosmopolitan not to do in Cockaigne ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... basely in the lurch on the day of an important match, a casual observer might have imagined that Norris did not really care very much whether his House won the cup or not. But this was not the case. In reality the success of Jephson's was a very important matter to him. A sudden whim had induced him to accept his uncle's invitation, but now that that acceptance had had such disastrous results, he felt inclined to hire a sturdy menial by the hour to kick him till he felt better. To a person in such a frame of mind there are three methods of consolation. He can commit suicide, ...
— A Prefect's Uncle • P. G. Wodehouse
... idle whim!" Broke forth from him Whom nought could warm to gallantries: "Cede all these buds and birds, the zephyr's call, And scents, and hues, and things that falter all, And choose as best the close and ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... hard. But I fastened my eye on 26. I have a fine eye for direction and distance. One, two, three, four blocks from the public square. That's the block with the solitary oak-tree in it, if I'm right. Yes? Well, I must have lots in that very block. When I take a whim of that kind, heaven and earth can't turn me, Mr. Plausaby. So you'd just as well ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston
... attempted a portrait of Wordsworth, among others. 'At his desire', says Wordsworth, 'I sat to him, but as he did not satisfy himself or my friends, the unfinished work was destroyed.' He was more successful with Charles Lamb, whom he painted (for a whim) in the dress of a Venetian Senator. As a friend of Coleridge and Wordsworth he had inevitably made acquaintance with the Lambs. He first met Lamb at one of the Godwins' strange evening parties and the two became ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... scoller, but aw know A long chawk moor ner him; It couldn't be his knowledge box 'At made thi change thi whim. ...
— Yorkshire Ditties, Second Series - To which is added The Cream of Wit and Humour - from his Popular Writings • John Hartley
... in solitary guise: Sweet was the scene, yet soon he thought to flee, More restless than the swallow in the skies: Though here awhile he learned to moralise, For Meditation fixed at times on him, And conscious Reason whispered to despise His early youth misspent in maddest whim; But as he gazed on Truth, his ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... business of which my mind was become very full. Chatellerault had not dealt fairly with me. Often, since I had left Paris, had I marvelled that he came to be so rash as to risk his fortune upon a matter that turned upon a woman's whim. That I possessed undeniable advantages of person, of birth, and of wealth, Chatellerault could not have disregarded. Yet these, and the possibility that they might suffice to engage this lady's affections, he appeared to have set at naught when he plunged into that ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... or be officious to loosen his bonds, keeping a smiling mien as of one whose day's work is done; in short, in what subtle fashion you may, do you and your helpers add to that assurance that I myself shall give him. Do your part well and there will be reward, for I have at heart a whim that I would gratify.' So we went into ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... the end, and this requires still more work. These erasers are round or flat or six-sided or wedge-shaped. They are let into the pencil itself, or into a nickel tip, or drawn over the end like a cap, so that any one's special whim may be gratified. Indeed, however hard to please any one may be, he ought to be able to find a pencil to suit his taste, for a single factory in the United States makes more than six hundred kinds of pencils, and makes so many of them that if they were laid end to end they would ...
— Makers of Many Things • Eva March Tappan
... before," said Adelaide quietly. "Why should you destroy the poor fellow's happiness, as well as Leam's chances, for a mere passing whim? You surely are not going to repeat with the daughter the father's ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... "A lady's whim," her maid said to herself, when she noticed the ardent looks which Miss Zoe gave her manservant, "which will soon pass away." But that experienced female was mistaken ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... of these roads. Somebody is always driving recklessly." Lorelei smiled at memory of the miles they had covered so swiftly; but she saw that he was serious and in a sour temper. "One risks his life on the whim of some drunken idiot the moment he enters a motor-car. Now for a telephone." A terse question to his man ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... or to raise a hand in his own defence; scourged on his bare back, with a cowhide, until the blood flows in streams from his quivering flesh? And for what? Often for the most trifling fault; and, as sometimes occurs, because a mere whim or caprice of his brutal overseer demands it. Pale with passion, his eyes flashing and his stalwart frame trembling with rage, like some volcano, just ready to belch forth its fiery contents, and, in all its might and fury, spread death and destruction all around, ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... wealth of contrite love upon her daughter and husband, spending on Alma and loading her with gifts of jewelry and finery to somehow express her grateful adoration of her; paying her husband the secret penance of twofold fidelity to his well-being and every whim, Alma, returning from a trip, taken reluctantly, and at her mother's bidding, down to the basement trunk room, found her gone, a modish black-lace hat and the sable ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... to Odo's lips. At the same instant the Columbine turned about and swept him a deep curtsey, to the delight of the audience, who had no notion of what was going forward, but were in the humour to clap any whim of their favourite's; then she turned and darted off the stage, and the curtain fell on a ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... their showrooms like a beautiful butterfly hovering over a flower-bed—her eye caught by every novelty. She never asked the price of anything: and Lady Kirkbank informed them, in confidence, that she was a great heiress, with a millionaire grandmother who indulged her every whim. Other high born young ladies, shopping upon fixed allowances, and sorely perplexed to make both ends meet, looked with eyes ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... casks for beer . . . be iron bound, at least for the first [end] tyre" [hoop]. Cushman states that they had ample supplies of beer offered them both in Kent and Amsterdam. The planters' supply seems to have failed, however, soon after the company landed, and they were obliged to rely upon the whim of the Captain of the MAY-FLOWER for their needs, the ship's supply being apparently separate from that of the planters, and lasting longer. Winthrop's supply seems to have been large ("42 tons"—probably tuns intended). It was evidently a stipulation of the charter-party that the ship should, in ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... In a way his mind was more at rest. He was nearer to being reconciled to the fifteen hundred a year now that he knew it was not to come from the funds of the Fair Harbor. Judge Knowles was reputed to be rich. If he chose to pay a salary to gratify a whim—why, let him. He, Kendrick, would do his best to earn that salary. But, nevertheless, he did not intend to let Elizabeth Berry remain under any misapprehension as to where the salary was coming from. He would tell her the next time they ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... is as I have said: the thing which will give you the MOST pleasure, the most satisfaction, in any moment or FRACTION of a moment, is the thing you will always do. You must content the Master's LATEST whim, whatever it ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the trough. It was Gourlay's own cob, which he used for driving round the countryside. It was a black—Gourlay "made a point" of driving with a black. "The brown for sturdiness, the black for speed," he would say, making a maxim of his whim to give it the ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... tavern was an old, fat, country major, and another old fellow, laughing and playing off jokes on each other,—one tying a ribbon upon the other's hat. One had been a trumpeter to the major's troop. Walking about town, we knocked, for a whim, at the door of a dark old house, and inquired if Miss Hannah Lord lived there. A woman of about thirty came to the door, with rather a confused smile, and a disorder about the bosom of her dress, as if she had been disturbed while ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... there had been a dance at Piping Tree, and because she had danced twice with Gay (who had ridden over in obedience to a whim), Abel had parted from her in anger. For the first time she had felt the white heat of his jealousy, and it had aroused rebellion, not acquiescence, in her heart. Jonathan Gay was nothing to her (though he called her his cousin)—he ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... sky-cliff opposite, and the sea stretched for visible miles and miles along the shore on either hand, its wide blue mantle fringed with lovely white wherever it met the land, and scalloped into all fantastic curves, according to the whim of the nether fires which had formed its bed; and the rush of the waves, as they bore the rising tide up on the shore, was the one music fit for the whole. Ear and eye, touch and smell, were alike invaded with blessedness. I ought to have kept ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... enough about you and your duty, as you call it. I know your particularity about a fancy of your own. I know well enough how obstinate you are about it, and how selfish, that you would sacrifice me to your whim about your duty, and your husband, and all that set of notions. And I know more. I know what it is to have a husband, and that you ought to be thankful that yours was gone before he could play the tyrant over you. You pretend to speak with authority because this ...
— The Billow and the Rock • Harriet Martineau
... of being a land-owner for the first time, or perhaps it was the abject wretchedness of the only hotel in town that inspired the whim which seized me during my solitary dinner. I had spent one night here, and did not welcome the prospect of a second. A return to New York was not practicable, because I had arranged to meet several contractors and an architect at the farm, next morning, to discuss ...
— The Thing from the Lake • Eleanor M. Ingram
... a perfect despot and tyrant, the lives of all his subjects, from the highest to the lowest, being in his power. When the whim seized him, he did not hesitate to kill as ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... Princess mortally; for her Highness in some whim had insulted him with his origin, caused pork to be removed from before him at table, or injured him in some such silly way; and he had a violent animosity to the old Baron de Magny, both in his capacity of Protestant, and because the ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... deliberate, narrative manner. I want live things in their pride to remain. I will not kill one grasshopper vain Though he eats a hole in my shirt like a door. I let him out, give him one chance more. Perhaps, while he gnaws my hat in his whim, Grasshopper lyrics ...
— The Congo and Other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... fellowship between the writers and the painters and other artists, as was shown in the devoted affection of Maclise and others to Dickens. There is more of class apart nowadays. Artists and writers are not thus united. The work has gone through many editions; but, after some years the whim seized him to turn it into an official literary history of the period, and he issued it as a "Life and Times," with an abundance of notes and references. All the pleasant air of story telling, the "Life and Adventures," so suited ...
— John Forster • Percy Hethrington Fitzgerald
... Scriptores Optici, London, 1823, 4to, edited for the veteran of ninety-two by Mr. Babbage[469] at twenty-nine. This excellent volume contains James Gregory, Des Cartes, Halley, Barrow, and the optical writings of Huyghens, the Principia of the undulatory theory. It also contains, by the sort of whim in which such men as Maseres, myself, and some others are apt to indulge, a reprint of "The great new Art of weighing Vanity,"[470] by M. Patrick Mathers, Arch-Bedel to the University of St. Andrews, Glasgow, 1672. Professor ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... from the couch, and walked to the organ. Assisted from behind by Ham, who foreknew his master's every whim, he proceeded to render with infinite feeling an air from the Lakme of Delibes; long he sat, dreamily uttering the melody, his head sunken on his breast. When at last he rose, his great expanse of brow was clear, and a smile all but solemn in its serenity was on ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... gesture, she flung his hand from her. "Oh, it is so cruel! Can't you see? Can't you understand? I left Russia to make a new life; I made myself a man, not for a whim, but as a symbol. Sex is only an accident, but the world has made man the independent creature—and I desired independence. Sex is only an accident. Mentally, I am as good a man ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... an advance upon the view that transformed natural occurrences into miraculous events. Miracles, according to the Bible, most clearly exemplify God's omnipotence; for omnipotence in the popular mind consists in nothing so much as in the ability to satisfy any purpose or whim no matter how transitory it is, or how incompatible with what has been antecedently desired or done. Miracles may be extraordinary occurrences with reference to the order of Nature, but they are, with reference to God, commonplace exhibitions of His Almighty power. For Spinoza, however, miracles, ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... are free To be good or bad, Sane or mad, Merry or grim As the mood may be,— Free as the whim Of a spook on a spree,— Free to be oddities, Not mere commodities, Stupid and salable, Wholly available, Ranged upon shelves; Each with his puny form In the same uniform, Cramped and disabled; We are not labelled, ...
— Songs from Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey
... had cut him deeply, hurt his amour propre and left him scowling in Arcadian resentment. Would the lesson last? Or must she seek further means to convince him of her indifference? Why had she provoked him? A whim—the dormant devil in her—to whom her better self must now pay in ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... confoundedly at his ease in Madame de Flahaut's society. High ho! we two are not the only favored ones. She is a thorough-paced flirt and plays off Curt against Wycombe—he is Lansdowne's son and her latest admirer—or the Bishop against myself, as it suits her whim. I would warn you to beware of women as the authors of all mischief and suffering, did I not think it too late," he said, looking keenly at the young man, who blushed deeply. "Come to London with me, Ned," he went on, impulsively, ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... (why not?) the whim would come That howso Time should garble Those deeds of yours when you were dumb, At least you'd live—in Marble; You smiled to think that after days, At least, in Bust or Statue, (We all have sick-bed dreams!) would gaze, Not quite ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... I would do anything on earth for your love. Why, you make any one think that loving is a thing that can be done and undone, and put on and put off at a mere whim." ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... upon circumstances," said Vivian; "the whim of the moment is my only principle of action, and therefore I may be off to-night, or ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... most timid ruler does not hesitate to dictate a law that produces misery and lingering death for thousands and thousands of prosperous and industrious subjects, happy perchance, merely to satisfy a caprice, a whim, his pride, and yet you shudder because in one night are to be ended forever the mental tortures of many helots, because a vitiated and paralytic people has to die to give place to another, young, ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... perfectly willing to afford Monsieur Chauvenet all imaginable entertainment. We are bound to have many meetings. I am afraid he reached this charming valley before me; but—as a rule—I prefer to be a little ahead of him; it's a whim—the merest ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... punished. Consequently, the number of the evildoers (and it is for them that he acts thus) increases so greatly that the scandal arising from it is pitiful. Malefactors also are more numerous because, when the whim takes him to forsake the other methods, the governor orders the warden of the prison to let the prisoners go, even when they are imprisoned for serious crimes; or he does this secretly, so that no one should know it, and under pretext that they are needed for war or your Majesty's service. ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XX, 1621-1624 • Various
... epic greatness are stationed around me, and serve my Spirit the office which is equivalent to a King's body-guard.... I live more out of England than in it. The Mountains of Tartary are a favorite lounge, if I happen to miss the Alleghany ridge, or have no whim for Savoy. ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... always to some extent dependent upon her whim, as is the case with many other women. Something big came into her throat and an uprising to her eyes—and she thought that she would allow the imminent tears to flow if they wished. They did flow and ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... is led into different countries (whose peculiarities are described), and falls into the society of wits, sharpers, courtiers, and harlots. Occasionally lavish, he is essentially mean; with a dash of humor, he is contemptibly revengeful; and, though generous minded when the whim jumps with his wishes, he is thoroughly selfish. His treatment of Strap is revolting to a generous mind. Strap lends him money in his necessity, but the heartless Roderick wastes the loan, treats Strap as a mere servant, fleeces him at ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... sunny day: That rests with Jove: but what is gone, He will not, cannot turn to nought; Nor cancel, as a thing undone, What once the flying hour has brought." Fortune, who loves her cruel game, Still bent upon some heartless whim, Shifts her caresses, fickle dame, Now kind to me, and now to him: She stays; 'tis well: but let her shake Those wings, her presents I resign, Cloak me in native worth, and take Chaste Poverty undower'd for mine. Though storms around my vessel rave, I will not fall to craven prayers, ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... have him. But he says he does not want again to attach himself to any person, place, or cause, because the time would come when he should have to break away, and then he should have to experience death again. So he intends to move about whenever and wherever the whim suits. But I am sure this life will not satisfy Terry for long, for there is really very much ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... fro circumstances," replied the little girl. "Mother has often said she conna weel spare Alizon. An mayhap Mistress Nutter may knoa, that she con be very obstinate when she tays a whim into ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... reason, Heyst had remained where another would have been glad to be off. The excellent Davidson had discovered the fact without discovering the reason, and took a humane interest in Heyst's strange existence, while at the same time his native delicacy kept him from intruding on the other's whim of solitude. He could not possibly guess that Heyst, alone on the island, felt neither more nor less lonely than in any other place, desert or populous. Davidson's concern was, if one may express it so, the danger ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... the Major, 'a smoke-dried, sun-burnt, used-up, invalided old dog of a Major, Sir, was not afraid of being condemned for his whim by a man like Mr Dombey. I have the honour of addressing ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... can be more fascinating than that magic city of Az-Zahra, the wonder of its age, of which now not a stone remains? It was made to satisfy the whim of a concubine by a Sultan whose flamboyant passion moved him to displace mountains for the sake of his beloved; and the memory thereof is lost so completely that even its situation till lately was uncertain. Az-Zahra the Fairest said ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... night-wear. My pyjamas are to be of tints conducive to refreshing rest, namely and severally white, lemon, light pink, and pale green—an idea which I candidly confess was inspired by the spectacle of a Neapolitan ice. If you think that this is merely an idle whim, just imagine endeavouring to sleep in pyjamas patterned like an Axminster carpet or a Scotch tartan. No wonder Macbeth "murdered sleep" if he was arrayed in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 22, 1914 • Various
... finished by a cover of thin leather, cut in the form of a three-leaved clover and neatly sewed on with a waxed thread. The bat is like that used in baseball but lighter and shorter. The corners are usually three in number, with a home- base, making four, but this varies according to the whim of the players or the locality where the game is played. Ordinarily with three corners the distances are about the same as between the bases in baseball. In place of home-base there is a rectangle marked on the ground where ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort
... towards the King, who had so decidedly broken his covenant with his people, and moreover had so abominably treated the Fellows of Magdalen College; and her pity for Anne as a sufferer for her uncle's whim quite angered her friend into hot defence of him ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... tears your heart to beguile, But never you mind—he's laughing all the while; For little he cares, so he has his own whim, And weeping or laughing are all one to him. His eye is as keen as the lightning's flash, His tongue like the red bolt quick and rash; And so savage is he, that his own dear mother Is scarce more safe in his hands ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... support, then fell to his knees. The hot drops turned to red globules in the snow as he kept crawling, gasping, "Oh, God! Won't somebody come to me?" The dog walked beside him as he dragged himself along, perplexed and wondering at this whim of his master's. ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... "Is that your final decision, Hilda?" he said, and there was a fine withering sort of sarcasm in his voice. "Do you mean seriously to desert the husband you married not three months ago for the sake of a child's whim? Is that the way you keep ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... brows together, and for a moment lined the serene beauty of his forehead. He gazed at her with a steady, puzzled look, and at last a faint, half-quizzical smile relaxed his lips. What could this strange idea, this whim be, so unlike all Eastern maiden's usual fancies? He had not yet solved the riddle, nor found the clue! he would do so, but in the meantime she must be left her freedom. In all noble natures power brings with it a terrible responsibility, and the ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... were often made to represent living things; the tendency to convert a globular vase or jug into a huge head or a fat figure, has been common to all people in all ages. The highly civilised Greeks indulged the whim, and our own potters continue it. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, vessels for liquids were often constructed of bronze, taking the form of lions, or mounted knights on horseback, of which specimens may be seen in our British Museum. The manufacturers of earthenware imitated ...
— Rambles of an Archaeologist Among Old Books and in Old Places • Frederick William Fairholt
... before he entered, speaking more softly to the eunuch for fear of being heard by the princess. "To convince you," said he; "there is neither presumption, nor whim, nor youthful conceit in my undertaking, I leave it to your choice whether I shall cure the princess in her presence, or where we are, without going ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 2 • Anon.
... manner, though civil, had reserve and sullenness, and there was in his deportment a decent propriety, that repulsed, or rather prevented, enquiry—he usually answered that he 'knew nothing of the woman who followed him;' 'that he dared to say it was from some whim;' 'that she was welcome to do so if she pleased;' 'she had the same right of highway as any other ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... enforce the Rubrics, and then the whole controversy would be at an end.... I knew there was something else, yes! He said we need not fast! But Cambridge men are always peculiar, they always have some whim or other; he ought to have been at Oxford, and we should have made a man of him. He has many good points, but he runs theories, and rides hobbies, and ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... and curt. She ordered him to fetch and carry. Something in his slow drawl—some hint of hidden amusement in his manner—struck a spark of resentment from her quick eye. But toward Jim she was all kindness. No trouble was too much to take for his comfort. If he had a whim it must be gratified. Prince was merely a ...
— A Man Four-Square • William MacLeod Raine
... it is difficult to explain," said Alfred, "besides, the situation had its charm. No, I am not a robber, and I don't believe you thought so. I have only thwarted a young lady's whim, which I am aware is a great crime. I ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... thought Helen, after they went away; "if another exists, different from the first——well—I see no reason why a whim should wreck my happiness." Then, tempted and scheming, she sat motionless for hours. Alas! for the soul which of its own free will, unmoors itself from the Rock of Ages, to drift away on dark and uncertain seas; who, lured away by ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... up all poor Tiny's soup, she began to rock herself to and fro in his little chair: she had often been punished for this naughty trick, but without effect. While she was indulging this silly whim, out came the rush-bottom of the chair, and she and the soup jar rolled on the floor. But she did not mind this at all, thinking it was fine fun. She now thought she would go up stairs, and see all that was to be seen: and there we will leave her for ...
— A Apple Pie and Other Nursery Tales • Unknown
... reminiscences of the Christminster Colleges. Traceried windows, and cloisters, you see. It was a whim of his to do ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... have a genuine witch in the house, who is in close alliance with the old gentleman. I have seen a gipsy vagabond; she has practised in hackneyed fashion the science of palmistry and told me what such people usually tell. My whim is gratified; and now I think Mr. Eshton will do well to put the hag in the stocks to-morrow ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... all my own, my sweet wife. Go and do whatever you like. Who can forbid your indulgence in any whim? You have all my heart yet, I believe; and because you bear with me, who am in truth a drag upon you, I owe you thanks. Yes, go alone and shine. As for me, I will stick to my doom. At that kind of meeting people would shun me. My hook and gloves are like the St. Lazarus rattle ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... around the circle of glowing faces at the table "you are bound together with good cheer and in comfortable circumstances; and even as you, who are here from east and west, from the north and the south, by each one yielding a little of his individual whim or inclination, can thus sit together prosperously and in peace at one board, so can our glorious family of friendly States, on this and every other day, join hands, and like happy children in the fields, lead ...
— Chanticleer - A Thanksgiving Story of the Peabody Family • Cornelius Mathews
... Tilloughby, wondering at this strange whim, but restraining his curiosity like a thoroughbred. "Huh-huh-huh-Henry shall be back here for you in a jiffy," and he drove off in a ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester
... his innovations, which were rigorously carried out. Menshikof, once a pastry-cook's boy, aided the Tsar to crush any discontent that might break out, and himself shaved many wrathful nobles who were afraid to resist. It was Peter's whim to give such lavish presents to this minister that he could live in splendid luxury and entertain the Tsar's own guests. Peter himself preferred simplicity, and despised the magnificence of fine palaces. ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... my hand in silence. They were both distressed, these good soldiers, under the impression that they had led me into danger. As a matter of fact it was I who owed them an apology, since they had enough risks in the way of business without taking others in order to gratify the whim of a joy-rider. Barbariche and Clericetti, this record will convey to you ...
— A Visit to Three Fronts • Arthur Conan Doyle
... my darling!" he said. "This is like you. I took this up as a whim as well as a stubborn belief; but somehow that poor little ignorant fellow, with his rough ways, seems to be rousing warmer feelings towards him, and, please God, we'll make a man of him of whom ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... in their whim of seeing in every original writer a copy of some predecessor, have declared that Hawthorne is derived from Tieck, and Poe from Hoffmann, just as Dickens modelled himself on Smollett and Thackeray followed in the footsteps of Fielding. In all four cases the pupil surpassed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... morning they discovered that their windows looked out on the grand-ducal museum, with a gardened space before and below its classicistic bulk, where, in a whim of the weather, the gay flowers were full of sun. In a pleasant illusion of taking it unawares, March strolled up through the town; but Weimar was as much awake at that hour as at any of the twenty-four, and the tranquillity of its streets, where he encountered a few passers several blocks ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... had openly proposed to him that they should spend a few weeks in Paris for the gratification of any praiseworthy intention of her own, or of any harmless whim, he would have unhesitatingly refused, and opposed any number of objections to the proposition; but she had introduced the subject in its most favorable light, and was sure of ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... vast ruins of Hadrian's Villa, I tried to picture the villa as it was when its first owner walked among the buildings which his whim had created. The moment Hadrian himself appeared upon the scene, antiquity seemed an illusion. How ultra-modern he was, this man whom his contemporaries called "a searcher out of strange things"! ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... find how happily he could spend his days with Mary. He was carried into the garden as soon as he got up, and remained there most of the day. Mary, as ever, was untiring in her devotion, thoughtful, anxious to obey his smallest whim.... He saw very soon the thoughts which were springing up again in the minds of his father and mother, intercepting the little significant glances which passed between them when Mary went away on some errand and he told her not to be ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... sung by a Norfolk man, always seems to me a great curiosity, as the last line is lengthened out and twisted about in a most grotesque manner, apparently to suit the whim or fancy of the singer, for no two of them seem to conjure vocally with it in the same way. Everyone present is supposed to join in the last line as a kind of chorus, and not only join in, but ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... will understand me when I say I was glad to hear this. Hitherto the girl's whim and the murder appeared to me two events connected only by the accident of occurrence on the same day. Now there was ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... shrewd, substantial man, 'who was fond of soothing the acerbities of the feminine mind by a jocose compliment.' Where but in George Eliot would you get a tea-party described with such charming acceptance of whim? ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... Sclater had a talk with him concerning his whim of waiting at table, telling him he must not do so again; it was not the custom for gentlemen to do the things that servants were paid to do; it was not fair to the servants, and so on—happening to end with an utterance of mild wonder ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... low, as he handed the case to the little man, "take your violin; it was a whim with me, a passion with you. And as for the money, why, keep that too; it was worth a hundred dollars to have possessed such an instrument ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar
... only my whim," he said; and, after a moment's hesitation: "It was on account of a discovery I made some little time ago, whilst I was hunting up pedigrees for the new county history. I am Parson Tringham, the antiquary, of Stagfoot Lane. Don't you ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... curiosity,—but, which is the most extraordinary, he is not quite sure that he had any motive for it at all, which his memory can trace. The whole of this is a period of a year and a half; and here is a man who keeps his account upon principles of whim and vagary. One would imagine he was guessing at some motive of a stranger. Why he came to take bonds for money not due to him, and why he enters some and not others,—he knows nothing of these things: he begs them not to ask about it, because it will be of no ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... that three hundred a week for the 'Posie Girl' goes, of course, but this play is just a Hawtry whim that I have got to let her get out of her system. One hundred a week is my limit, and you ought to do it for seventy-five. You can sit in your chair all the time for ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... up your name, and there you are—an independent gentleman! By Jove! this isn't such a dull world. John Raikes! thou livest in times. I feel warm in the sun of your prosperity, Harrington. Now listen to me. Propound thou no inquiries anywhere about the old fellow who gave the supper. Humour his whim—he won't have it. All Fallow field is paid to keep him secret; I know it for a fact. I plied my rustic friends every night. "Eat you yer victuals, and drink yer beer, and none o' yer pryin's and peerin's among we!" That's my rebuff from Farmer Broadmead. And that old boy knows ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... with sharp words, for this was a scheme after his own heart. "What, Thor!" he said. "Would you lose your hammer and keep Asgard in danger for so small a whim. Look, now: if you go not, Thrym with his giants will come in a mighty army and drive us from Asgard; then he will indeed make Freia his bride, and, moreover, he will have you for his slave under the power of his hammer. How like you this picture, brother of ...
— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various
... new-stablished would stand, and be No longer vext of this infirmity. And so that night, ere lying down to sleep, There came on him, half making him to weep And half to laugh that such a thing should be, A mad conceit and antic fantasy (And yet more sad than merry was the whim) To crave this boon of Sleep, beseeching him To send the dream of dreams most coveted. And ere he lay him down upon his bed, A soft sweet song was born within his thought; But if he sang the song, or if ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... to say, the fame outran The merit of this doubtful man, For taciturnity in him, Though not a mere caprice or whim, Was not a virtue, such as truth, High birth, or beauty, wealth ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... indulgence. I am a wretch, I am justly punished. I, and I only, am to blame for all their sins; I spoiled them. To-day they are as eager for pleasure as they used to be for sugar-plums. When they were little girls I indulged them in every whim. They had a carriage of their own when they were fifteen. They have never been crossed. I am guilty, and not ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... ring, Not without a prouder tread And a peal of exultation: Little right has he to sing 360 Through whose heart in such an hour Beats no march of conscious power, Sweeps no tumult of elation! 'Tis no Man we celebrate, By his country's victories great, 365 A hero half, and half the whim of Fate, But the pith and marrow of a Nation Drawing force from all her men, Highest, humblest, weakest, all, For her time of need, and then 370 Pulsing it again through them, Till the basest can no longer cower, Feeling his soul spring up divinely tall, Touched but in passing by her mantle-hem. ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... wanted building blocks, And picture books and toys, A saddle horse that gayly rocks, And games for little boys. But now he's big and all that stuff His whim no longer suits; He tells us that he's old enough To ask ...
— Just Folks • Edgar A. Guest
... at his rugged, resolute face, smiling at her now with that peculiar forgiving tenderness that an older person bestows upon a child that is about to yield its childish whim. ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... egotists men all are: all, all egotists! Just for a whim of his own, goodness only knows why, he leaves me and locks me up alone ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... cozen'd by a thing of clouts, a she moth, That every silkmans shop breeds; to be cheated, And of a thousand duckets by a whim wham? ...
— Rule a Wife, and Have a Wife - Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (3 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... sullenly excused his outbreak on the ground of the magnitude of the interests which my carelessness had endangered and the opening to harass the queen which I had heedlessly given. "This cipher," he said, "has long been a whim with my wife, from whom, for good reasons well known to you and connected with the Grand Duke's Court, I have thought fit to withhold it. Now nothing will persuade her that I have not granted to another what I refused her. I tremble, my friend, lest you be found to have done more ill to France in ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... breakfast. On account of this abstinence, Henrik now jested, and Petrea answered him quite gaily; Louise, on the contrary, took up the matter quite seriously, and thought—as many others did—that this whim of Petrea's had a distant relationship to folly; and folly, Louise—the sensible Louise—considered the most horrible of horrors; Louise, who was so ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... to miss her presence—he had eaten a very tolerable lunch of bread and cold meat in solitude, so her fears about his appetite in her absence were not well founded—she desired to have her meal upstairs in her own room; and poor Molly, not daring to tell the servants of this whim, had to carry up first a table, which, however small, was too heavy for her; and afterwards all the choice portions of the meal, which she had taken great pains to arrange on the table, as she had seen such things done at Hamley, ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... Not worthy!" He had not thought her fit to be his wife. Her father and her world would think it quite otherwise. They would count him unworthy to mate with her, an heiress, the pet of society; he a man who had given up his life for a whim, a fad, a fanatical fancy! But she knew it was not so. She knew him to be a man of all men. She knew it was true that she was not such a woman as a man like that could fitly wed, and the ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill
... difference between a man who volunteers roguery; and a man on whom it is thrust by the world. Circumstances, you see, are my reason for every thing. Make a hard bargain with Mordecai, and ten to one but you are caught in his trap. Throw yourself on his mercy; and if the whim takes him, I have known him as generous as ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... taste for claret and fox-hunting, was wont, upon festive occasions, when opportunity offered, to amuse his friends by DRAWING OUT one of his servants, exceedingly fond of what he termed, his "thravels," and in whom a good deal of whim, some queer stories, and, perhaps more than all, long and faithful services had established a right of loquacity. He was one of those few trusty and privileged domestics who, if his master unheedingly uttered a rash thing in a fit of passion, would venture to set him right. ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various
... compensating for his earlier abstinence. Plutina, studying him covertly, noted the beginnings of drunkenness and its various stages. There was gruesome fascination in her scrutiny; for she knew that her honor rested on the hazard of a sot's whim. ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... State and for the transaction of public business. The Palaces I have named were all constructed from time to time to serve as residences for the ten to thirty persons recognized as of the blood Royal, who removed from one to the other as convenience or whim may have suggested. They are generally very spacious, probably averaging one to two hundred apartments each, all constructed of the best materials and furnished and adorned with the most lavish disregard of cost. I roughly estimate the cost of ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... avoid them, and so he plunged into them. His only rule was not to be misled by the spelling. That was no guide anyhow. He avoided every recognised phrase in the language and mispronounced everything in order that he shouldn't be suspected of ignorance, but whim. ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... laws and statutes are put forth as pretexts for wicked counsels, and judges, affecting the equity of Cato or Cassius, sit on the bench, though in fact everything is done at the discretion of over-arrogant power, on the whim of which every man's life or death depends, the mischief is fatal ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... began his career, as an author, in periodical literature. His first work was a humorous journal, entitled "Salmagundi, or the Whim-Whams and Opinions of Launcelot Langstaff, Esq. and Others," originally published in numbers in New York, where it met with a very flattering reception. The date of the first paper is ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 584 - Vol. 20, No. 584. (Supplement to Vol. 20) • Various
... girls over the roughest sections of the road. I thought as we scrambled through impenetrable scrub and crawled over rocky piles that it was the strangest expedition that had ever set forth. If Leith was the wicked devil that we suspected him to be, four persons were risking their lives to gratify the whim of a half-crazy scientist who was dying for notoriety. He would not be turned aside from his pursuit of the specimens which Leith had told him of; his daughters would not desert him, and their resolve had brought Holman and myself. We were blind automatons that the ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... must exercise care not to be carried away by a yearning for novelty. Least of all should any subject be admitted to the course of study that does not have behind it something more substantial and enduring than whim or caprice. ...
— The Reconstructed School • Francis B. Pearson
... pitch tent and make beds, and, while breakfast is being cooked, to dismantle the camp and, so far as may be, to repack Pilgrim; the Boy collects driftwood, wipes dishes, and helps at what he can—while all hands row or paddle through the livelong day, as whim or need dictates. ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... said he, as we watched the rear carriages of our train disappearing round a curve; "I am sorry to make you the victim of what may seem a mere whim, but on my life, Watson, I simply CAN'T leave that case in this condition. Every instinct that I possess cries out against it. It's wrong—it's all wrong—I'll swear that it's wrong. And yet the lady's story ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... for an empty whim! Don't listen to her, Albert, and above all things, don't let Mazarin drag you down. Keep constantly in your mind that he has had his day, and will never return to power. Last of all, remember you are always ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... thereof, and sentenced to the lash? Not at all! She was brought by her master to be whipped by the common executioner, without trial, judge, or jury, just at his beck or nod, for some real or supposed offence, or to gratify his own whim or malice. And he may bring her day after day, without cause assigned, and inflict any number of lashes he pleases, short of twenty-five, provided only he pays the fee. Or if he choose, he may have a private ...
— The trade, domestic and foreign • Henry Charles Carey
... called in to screw down the coffin in my presence. My mother afterwards called me to her room, and told me that she was much troubled about the cross. The amulet being of great value, my uncle Aylwin of Alvanley had tried to dissuade her from carrying into execution what he called 'the absurd whim of a mystic'; but my mother urged my promise, and there had been warm words between them, as my mother told me—adding, however, 'and the worst of it is, that scamp Wynne, whom your uncle introduced into this house without my knowledge or sanction, was ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... was said, override grave economic considerations. In recent years, however, a change seems to have taken place in public opinion, and some people now venture to assert that this so-called Imperial whim was an act of far-seeing policy. As by far the greater part of the goods and passengers are carried the whole length of the line, it is well that the line should be as short as possible, and that branch lines should be constructed to the towns lying to the right ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... the elasticity of my character. "Well, in the first place, I don't think my ideal would speak like that," said she. "He would be a harder, sterner man, not so ready to adapt himself to a silly girl's whim. But, above all, he must be a man who could do, who could act, who could look Death in the face and have no fear of him, a man of great deeds and strange experiences. It is never a man that I should love, but always the glories he had won; for they would be reflected upon me. Think ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle
... been used as a peg upon which to hang every whim, fancy, formula, and vocal vagary that has floated through the human mind in the last two centuries. It has furnished an excuse for inflicting upon vocal students every possible product of the imagination, normal and ...
— The Head Voice and Other Problems - Practical Talks on Singing • D. A. Clippinger
... making a study of that singular man. He appeared to me the marked type of a class which ought to exist somewhere but which was unknown to me. One could never tell whether his outbursts were the despair of a man sick of life, or the whim ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... taken too much for granted, you and Betty. Ten years ago your sister gave herself to me. She is mine. I will not for a whim, for a passion, for a temporary alienation, let her go. Neither will I have my good name and the name of a good woman besmirched for the sake of this impertinent desire for a release. I love my wife"—his voice was especially Hebraic and ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... combined looks of simple subtlety,—where whim, and sense, and seriousness, and nonsense, are so blended, that all the languages of Babel set loose together, could not express them;- -they are communicated and caught so instantaneously, that you can scarce say which party is the infector. I leave it to your men ...
— A Sentimental Journey • Laurence Sterne
... like a Malay fishing prahu than an honest-to-God English literary vessel," began inauspiciously with the publication of The Intended (1894), a tragic novel about two look-alikes, one rich, the other poor, who switch places on a whim. Bewildered by the novel's lack of success, Stacpoole consulted his friendly muse, Pearl Craigie, alias John Oliver Hobbes, who suggested a comic rather than tragic treatment. Years later, Stacpoole retold the story in The Man Who Lost Himself (1918), a commercially successful comic novel ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... has caught so perfectly each whim of nature in field and forest, and called from hiding the furtive furred and feathered folk, who come and go like ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... seemed aimless to rise in the morning, because there was nothing awaiting her attention. She was so free that there was no object in breakfasting, because there was no obligation demanding her strength. She was so free that whether she should go out or remain indoors depended merely upon the whim of the moment. There was for her nothing either without ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... flock-bed, but repaired with straw, With tape-tied curtains never meant to draw; The George and Garter dangling from that bed, Where tawdry yellow strove with dirty red, Great Villiers lies:—alas! how changed from him, That life of pleasure and that soul of whim! Gallant and gay, in Claverdon's proud alcove, The bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love, Or, just as gay, at council in a ring Of mimic'd statesmen and their merry King. No wit to flatter left of all his store, No fool to laugh at, which he valued more, Then ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... my dear friend," answered the old man very mildly, "you would not have toucht on this string again, which thrills far too painfully through my whole frame. Pray convince yourself that this long-formed resolution, which you if you please may term a whim, I cannot possibly revoke; it is much too firmly intertwined with my whole being. What we do from conviction as we call it, from pondering about a matter and balancing it first in one scale and then in the other, over and over again, is seldom worth much. Whatever is permanent, characteristic, ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... known only to collectors and have no standard market value. Others fail to catch the popular fancy for reasons not obvious to the layman. While the intrinsic qualities go far in determining the desirability of a stone, it is clear that whim and chance have been no small factors in determining the demand or lack of demand for some stones. As in other minerals, value has both ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... not an abrogation of the Sabbath, but, on the contrary, a confirmation of the universal and merciful appointment. It does not give permission to keep or neglect it, according to whim or for the sake of amusement, but it does draw, strong and clear, the distinction between a positive rite which may be modified, and an unchangeable precept of the moral law which it is better for a man to die than to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... looked up to see whether there was not a smile upon his face. She had no idea that her new "whim" for serious reading was to be allowed to pass without remark. But his look was quite grave as he ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... to have been the actual, even if remote, cause of the great imposition of Arthur Orton. Had matters been conducted as one might have anticipated they would among people blessed with the means of gratifying every whim and caprice, Roger Tichborne would have lived and died like other men, and his name would never have been known except as a quiet country gentleman of English origin and French tastes, which led him into more or less eccentricities, ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... prison regulations were denied to the men until a few hours before their release a month later, when the prisoners were permitted by the gaoler to purchase them, no doubt with an eye to reversion to him in the course of a few hours. From time to time the regulations as to food were varied at the whim of the gaoler. On one day only cooked food would be allowed in; on another only raw food; on a third nothing but tinned stuff; on a fourth all was turned back at the gates with the exception of that obtained by a few individuals at ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... hate Roger; you cannot make me love him in a minute. I will never take his hand. I will be his enemy as long as I live. In my heart of hearts I have cursed him, and I will not be friendly now because of a whim of yours." ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... was he had never before realized the true worth of his wife, how he had been so madly infatuated and adoring of her slightest whim during the years of earning his fortune and the brief period of their formal engagement. Almost reluctantly the anaesthesia of unreality and distorted values was disappearing, leaving Steve with but one conclusion: That it had been his own conceited ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... listen awhile, If ever you wished to smile, Or hear a true story of old, Attend to what I now unfold! 'Tis of a lad whose fame did resound Through every village and town around, For fun, for frolic, and for whim, None ever was to equal him, And his name was Arthur O'Bradley! O! rare Arthur O'Bradley! wonderful Arthur ...
— Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of England • Robert Bell
... mirth, found envy vanquishing scorn. As for the ladies, they had ceased to smile at the mention of Rosalind, whom none had seen, though all had heard of the girl who had been turned from her ruin at Maudlin's whim; and that this ragged lady should be vaunted over their heads was an insult only equaled by the presence among their shining champions of the Rusty Knight. For by this name ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... justices Have strove what they could, all this rage to suppress; And I hope many more Will exert the like power, Since none will, depend on't, Get a jot of preferment. But men of this kidney, as I told you before.— I'll tell you a story: Once upon a time, Some hot-headed fellows must needs take a whim, And so were so weak (Twas a mighty mistake) To pull down and abuse Bawdy-houses and stews; Who, tried by the laws of the realm for high-treason, Were hang'd, drawn, and quarter'd for that very reason. When the time came about For us all to set out, We went ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... preoccupied and speechless; the coffee was wrong, the letters late and stupid. She felt herself at cross-purposes with her foolish little world. If James had resought her love overnight, it had been a passing whim. She told herself that love so desired was almost ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... laborer; then, that education turns his head and makes him discontented with the plantation where wages reach the high water mark of six dollars a month, which may or may not be paid according to the whim of his employer; and finally that the privilege of respectable accommodations furnished by common carriers which enjoy unusual public franchises makes him impudent, noisy and self-respecting, the proper remedy for which is a system of "Jim Crow Cars." Thus with the passing away of the Negro's ...
— The Disfranchisement of the Negro - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 6 • John L. Love
... she said, "is oddity. For instance, I do not mix up affections with politics; let us talk politics,—business, if you will,—the rest can come later. However, it is not really oddity nor a whim that forbids me to mingle ill-assorted colors and put together things that have no affinity, and compels me to avoid discords; it is my natural instinct as an artist. We women ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... and "Scots pint" (magnum) of claret, a dirty little terra-cotta inkstand for the silver utensil of the Noctes, and a single large tallow candle for Christopher's "floods of light." He carried the whim so far as to construct for himself—his Noctes self—an imaginary hall-by-the-sea on the Firth of Forth, which in the same way seems to have had an actual resemblance, half of likeness, half of contrast, to the actual Elleray, and to enlarge his own comfortable town house in ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... engage in different pursuits which would excite admiration, while his indolence prevented him from persevering long enough for success. Directly anything bored him he dropped it. Self-indulgence seemed to him the only true wisdom. He never resisted the whim of the moment except through fear of the consequences, and unfortunately many ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... since the Western powers' hope of speedy decisive blows on the part of Russia have shriveled up, they would like to lure the Japanese Army, two to four hundred thousand men, to the Continent. What was scoffed at as a whim of Pinchon and Clemenceau now is unveiled as a yearning of those at the head of ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... any recourse, since they dare not interpose that plea before the Audiencia, as it is so powerless to exercise its functions; consequently, to state the case in few words, the archbishop does whatever suits his whim, without there being any one ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... drying of her tears. She was so far from wishing to be a strong-minded person of either gender, that she did not comprehend that her aunt could wish it for her, or could herself seriously claim to be one. The talk about a professorship was in her estimation the wayward, humorous whim of an eccentric who was fond of solemn joking. Mrs. Stanley, meanwhile, could not see why her utterance should not be taken in earnest, and opened her ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... where Jesus is kept under arrest, and questions Him. He has been informed that Jesus claims to be the king of the Jews. Is that so? Is the charge but a piece of malicious slander? If it is, there is an end of the matter. Pilate is not going to lend himself to humour the whim of those hateful Jews, whom he affects to despise while in his heart he is mortally afraid of them. There is nothing of the bearing of the violent insurgent in this calm peasant who stands before him. Surely this is some stupid mistake, or there ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... dear Holy Child, my only treasure, I abandon myself to Thy every whim. I seek no other joy than that of calling forth Thy sweet Smile. Vouchsafe to me the graces and the virtues of Thy Holy Childhood, so that on the day of my birth into Heaven the Angels and Saints may recognise in Thy Spouse: Teresa ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... in wishes. Don't dissipate your energies by trying to satisfy every whim. Concentrate on doing something really worth while. The man that sticks to something is not the ...
— The Power of Concentration • Theron Q. Dumont
... agitations the statesman-inventor and the political psychologist find the raw material for their work. It is not the business of the politician to preserve an Olympian indifference to what stupid people call "popular whim." Being lofty about the "passing fad" and the ephemeral outcry is all very well in the biographies of dead men, but rank nonsense in the rulers of real ones. Oscar Wilde once remarked that only superficial people disliked the superficial. ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... "It's a whim of Uncle's," says Alvin, chucklin'. "He's gone a little cracked over making and saving money. Poor old chap! Ego developed most abnormally. But the Judge he took me before was that kind too; so I am compelled to live with Dr. Slade. Jolly ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... kept for us, without trouble on our parts, and we adjourn after dinner, when one of the old world (old friends) drops casually down among us. Come and find us out, and seal our judicious change with your approbation, whenever the whim bites, or the sun prompts. No need of announcement, for we are sure ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... selfish—though I hope it is not—when I ask you to leave that bear entirely to me. You know, Vic, that your sister Elsie once expressed a wish for a grizzly-bear collar, and at the time I inwardly resolved to get her one, of my own procuring, if I could. It is a whim, you know, but, in the ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne
... "the blame of part of the misfortunes of that day: but the mischief is done; no more is to be said about it." I read this new twenty-ninth bulletin: a few slight changes, suggested by General Drouot, were assented to by the Emperor; but, from what whim I know not, he would not confess, that his carriages had fallen into the hands of the enemy. "When you get to Paris," said M. de Flahaut to him, "it will be plainly seen, that your carriages have been taken. If you conceal this, you will ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... and politicians, saw the reason and the necessity of reform. The hero of a victorious war, at the height of his popularity, his party in undisputed and seemingly indisputable supremacy, made the attempt. Congress, good-naturedly tolerating what it considered his whim of inexperience, granted money to try an experiment. The adverse pressure was tremendous. "I am used to pressure," said the soldier. So he was, but not to this pressure. He was driven by unknown and incalculable currents. He was enveloped in whirlwinds of sophistry, scorn, and incredulity. ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... its being traced to me." Then he sat looking for a time at the embers reflectively. "'T is folly to want her," he said finally, as he rose and began the removal of his coat, "now that ye need not her money; but she's enough to tempt any man with blood in his veins, and I can afford the whim. Keep that blood in check, however, till ye have her fast; and do not frighten her as ye have done. To think of Lord Clowes, cool enough to match any man, losing his head over a whiffling bit of woman-flesh! What ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... and Mrs. Mosby—Aunt Loraine—joined the group, giving him a momentary withering glance. She was an inexorable woman, an inch taller than Uncle Buzz, who stood five feet three, but she matched him whim for whim in her attire. Her hair looked black in the graying light; in reality it was splotched and streaked with a chestnut red, colour not so ill as misapplied. Her dress rustled as she swept forward and there were numberless faint clickings and clackings of chains ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... anything beyond a newspaper; and we on this side have emancipated our tongues more than our pens. What stands between Americans and good writing is usually want of culture; we write as well as we know how, while in England the obstacle seems to be merely a boorish whim. The style of English books and magazines is growing far less careful than ours,—less finished, less harmonious, more slipshod, more slangy. What second-rate American writer would see any wit in describing himself, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... to the north, into a region that they did not recognise; and as it ran by a line of high railings shadowed with trees, the six friends were startled, but somewhat relieved, to see the President leap from the fire-engine, though whether through another whim or the increasing protest of his entertainers they could not see. Before the three cabs, however, could reach up to the spot, he had gone up the high railings like a huge grey cat, tossed himself over, and vanished ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... father! 'Tis only your whim! His house is high over the stars in the sky, Where the white swan sails undefiled, So high 'tis beyond any mortal eye Save that of the dreaming child!— The church that you spoke of! So then it is there We shall ride in festal procession, As ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... work is done, we must entreat our readers to visit with us, once again, the old Isle of Shepey. The thoughtless, good-tempered, dissipated, extravagant, ungrateful, unprincipled Charles, had been called by the sedate, thinking, and moral people of England to reign over them. But with English whim, or English wisdom, we have at present nought to do; we leave abler and stronger heads to determine, when reviewing the page of history, whether we are or are not a most change-loving people—lovers of change for the sake ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... original of that picture, and never again talk to me of going to see those Percys; for though the girl may be only an unfashioned country beauty, and Georgiana has so many polished advantages, yet there is no knowing what whim a young man ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... made money in business, and bore the reputation of possessing great wealth. Cuthbert, was the only child of infatuated parents, who had spared no expense in his upbringing, and were ready to gratify his every whim. For a genteel occupation he had been placed in a bank—"not that it would be necessary for him to earn his living at it," as Mrs. Aston was careful to inform her lady friends; "but it was well to give him something to do, ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... little aisle an exquisite perfume of crushed violets, and he heard the soft rustling of a gown which was surely worn by none of those who were gathered together to listen to him. He opened his eyes involuntarily, and met the steady gaze of the lady whose whim it had ...
— The Survivor • E.Phillips Oppenheim
... all this in good part. The truth is, he regarded it as a very innocent whim, which required to be indulged in his wife's delicate situation; so he always joined in her hopeful anticipations, and endeavored to sympathize with them. It was under these auspicious circumstances ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... aside from its accidental disarray; the cut of his waistcoat was the extreme of the then fashion, the white tie (twisted beneath one ear) an exaggerated "butterfly," his collar nearly an inch too tall; and he was shod with pumps suitable only for the dancing-floor,—a whim of the young-bloods ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... the showman astute On that wily galoot Soon dropped, and you'll say that he leathered him — Not he; with a grim Sort of humorous whim, He took him and tarred him and ...
— Rio Grande's Last Race and Other Verses • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... feathers, th' mis'rable old haythen was locked up in a garret with a revolver in his hand ready to shoot anny wan that come next or near him. He suffered fr'm dyspepsia an' he cuddent sleep nights. He cud ate nawthin' sthronger thin milk toast. He was foorced be fashion's whim to have five hundhred wives whin wan was abundant. Take it all in all, he led a dog's life, an' I bet ye he's happyer now where he is, wathrin' th' geeranyums, mowin' th' lawn, an' sneakin' into Constantinople ...
— Mr. Dooley Says • Finley Dunne
... detail, it might pass for the work of a genii, who knew naught of the weaknesses and ills with which mankind are beset. It is not a great national temple erected by a free and united people, it owes its creation to the whim of an absolute ruler who was free to squander the resources of the State in commemorating his personal sorrows ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... who, in their whim of seeing in every original writer a copy of some predecessor, have declared that Hawthorne is derived from Tieck, and Poe from Hoffmann, just as Dickens modelled himself on Smollett and Thackeray followed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... there are who reason thus—"Oh, the child will grow out of this folly. 'Tis a mere whim—a youthful fancy, not worthy of respect,"—forgetting or shutting their eyes to the fact, that, light though the whim or fancy may be in their eyes, it has positive weight to those who cherish it, and the thwarting of it is as destructive of peace ...
— Sunk at Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... German Rhine Provinces into a neutral State, I do hope that we shall have the common sense not to guarantee either its independence or its neutrality. If we do so, within ten years we shall infallibly be dragged into a Continental war. We have a whim about Belgium, one day it will prove a costly one; we cannot, however, afford to indulge in ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... justifiable. I had, as I believed, got rid of all the traces of the savages outside the tent. When I found the arrows sticking inside it in my bed, it did not occur to me that it would be equally necessary to get rid of them. The whim seized me of keeping them as a memorial of my escape. Instead, however, of concealing them under the bed, I arranged them in the form of a star on the tent covering just above my head, and every time I looked at them I felt grateful that ...
— Dick Onslow - Among the Redskins • W.H.G. Kingston
... little Canadian Frenchman, and Charley was English. Both, in the parlance of the road, were "floaters"; that is to say, no locality ever knew them long; the earth was their floor, the sky their ceiling—and their god was Whim. Naturally our trip had appealed to them, and one month in Benton had aggravated ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... for a romantic girl to see unmoved, and it was an enigmatic face; one that did not lend itself to immediate comprehension, and that, to one of my temperament, was a fatal attraction, especially as enough was known of his more than peculiar habits to assure me that character, rather than whim, lay ...
— The Hermit Of ——— Street - 1898 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
... the urgency of her summons and decided that she spoke thus conventionally to gain time. On another occasion he might have humoured such a whim, but to-night it goaded him almost beyond endurance. Surely they had passed that ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... Roderick is led into different countries (whose peculiarities are described), and falls into the society of wits, sharpers, courtiers, and harlots. Occasionally lavish, he is essentially mean; with a dash of humor, he is contemptibly revengeful; and, though generous minded when the whim jumps with his wishes, he is thoroughly selfish. His treatment of Strap is revolting to a generous mind. Strap lends him money in his necessity, but the heartless Roderick wastes the loan, treats Strap as a mere servant, fleeces him at dice, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... With a docile old general and a niece so young, she had less resistance to encounter than, perhaps, her ardent soul would have relished. Fortunately for the general it was only now and then that Aunt Becky took a whim to command the Royal Irish Artillery. She had other hobbies just as odd, though not quite so scandalous. It had struck her active mind that such of the ancient women of Chapelizod as were destitute of letters—mendicants ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... Chinese children is a doleful one. It is understood, of course, that their life is not the same, nor to be compared with that of children in Europe or America: and it should be remembered further that the pleasures of child-life are not measured by the gratification of every childish whim. Many of the little street children who spend a large part of their time in efforts to support the family, when allowed to go to a fair or have a public holiday enjoy themselves more in a single day than the child of wealth, in a whole month ...
— The Chinese Boy and Girl • Isaac Taylor Headland
... sum of money, left in your hands as a sacred trust, and go on a pleasure trip with it. He has intrusted to you the richest and rarest gifts, and every day that you have misappropriated them is a burden upon your conscience. You will feel the same after a long life of adulation, in which every whim has been gratified. Believe me, Miss Marsden, it is a very sad thing to come to the end of one's life with no other possession than a burdened conscience and a heavy, guilty heart. I long to save you from such a fate. That would be ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... asked him to cut off the head of S. John the Baptist, and give it her in a dish. Now, as soon as she asked this, the king was sorry, for he knew that S. John was a good man, and he knew also that he had no right to have a man murdered in prison to please the whim of a wicked woman; however, because he had passed his word, he was too proud and cowardly to go back from it, and refuse her what she had no right to ask. Then he sent an executioner, and he cut off the head of the saint, and put it in a dish, and it was brought thus to the ...
— The Village Pulpit, Volume II. Trinity to Advent • S. Baring-Gould
... with the additional advantage of his proper chicken flavour being fully developed. The above remarks, however, concerning the capon, only apply to such as are naturally fed, and not crammed. The latter process may produce a handsome-looking bird, and it may weigh enough to satisfy the whim or avarice of its stuffer; but, when before the fire, it will reveal the cruel treatment to which it has been subjected, and will weep a drippingpan-ful of fat tears. You will never find heart enough to place such a grief-worn guest at the head ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... has shaped so cruelly? What whim has cast such fate? Where is, in our creation, The ...
— Citadel • Algirdas Jonas Budrys
... with the ravishing prospect—her eager hopes converting the possible into the probable, and again, by a rapid change, the probable into the certain, the Greek stood spurning the needle work at her feet. Then glancing around, the whim seized upon her to assume, for a moment in advance, her coming stately dignity. At the side of the room, upon a slightly elevated platform, was a crimson lounge—AEnone's especial and proper seat. Over one arm of this lounge ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... Lafayette; and Lafayette's Carriage, flaring with lights, rolls this moment through the inner Arch of the Carrousel,—where a Lady shaded in broad gypsy-hat, and leaning on the arm of a servant, also of the Runner or Courier sort, stands aside to let it pass, and has even the whim to touch a spoke of it with her badine,—light little magic rod which she calls badine, such as the Beautiful then wore. The flare of Lafayette's Carriage, rolls past: all is found quiet in the Court-of-Princes; sentries at their post; Majesties' Apartments closed ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... longer such a place engage. While William's natural romantic turn Led him all offers, good and ill, to spurn. He thought of little but Canadian farms, And heeded not Rebellion's loud alarms, [Footnote: The Rebellion of 1837.] Which his old master pointed out to him, To put a stop to such a foolish whim. Yet it caused them sincerest grief of heart From all kind friends and relatives to part, Without a prospect of beholding more Each much-loved face, ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... Sir Francis," rejoined the other, "that vengeance—ample, refined vengeance—cannot be too dearly purchased; and you will now perceive that I am willing to pay as extravagantly as yourself for the gratification of a whim. On no other terms than these would Lanyere consent to part with the authority he possesses, which while it will ensure you the hand of Aveline, will ensure me the keenest revenge upon Sir Jocelyn. I have therefore acceded to his terms. Thou hast got a rare bargain, Lanyere; ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... thanksgiving. Some pigeons, white, and blue-grey, with a lovely mingling and interplay of metallic lustres on their feathery throats, but with none of that almost grotesque obtrusion of over-driven individuality of kind, in which the graciousness of common beauty is now sacrificed to the whim of the fashion the vulgar fancier initiates, picked up the crumbs under the windows of lady Margaret's nursery, or flew hither and thither among the roofs with wapping and ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... his grief, Till thought is wearied out, and dreams grow dim. What bitter chance, what woe beyond belief Could keep his lady's heart so hid from him? Or was her love indeed but light and brief, A passing thought, a moment's dreamy whim? Aye there it stings, the woe that never sleeps: Poor Nino leans upon his ...
— Among the Millet and Other Poems • Archibald Lampman
... half animal, the sport of impulse, whim, and conceit, 'pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw,' a being who, left to his will, roams at night and sleeps in the day, whose speech knows no word of love, whose passions, once aroused, are as the fury of the tiger—they ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... to keep on buying up new land—new desert, that is. Irrigation there's just a question of power—that's how he looks at it. And of course the bigger the scale of the work the cheaper the power will work out. But the Khedive's holding back. It may be just a temporary whim—may be all right again to-morrow. But you never know. And if you think Ferdinand's the man to give in to a cranky Khedive, you're much mistaken. His idea now is to raise all the capital he can lay hands on, and buy him out! What do you say to that? Buy the Khedive clean out of the company. ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... explained that infancy was a sine qua non. They especially wished that the child should be too young to have acquired tastes or habits of any kind, whether good or the reverse. They did not seek to gratify a mere whim of the moment,—simply to provide themselves with a plaything,—but hoped to aid in shaping a life of more than ordinary usefulness and worth. The doctor made answer that he would gladly do his best to find such a child as they wished, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... of? Why, you don't know how to ride. Lord save us, what might happen! What whim is this has come over you all ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... infamy midway between blackmail and burglary. There is to me something in any man's personality that is sacred, something before which there should be a veil, never to be drawn aside save in secret places. An effete whim, no doubt. At any rate it explained why I had enjoyed no success as an interviewer, why I had come away from Mr. Carville without extracting from him his age, his income, his position, the names of his employers, his ship, his tailor or his God. Nothing of all this I knew, ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... A whim seized the fair wearer of the negligee. "Come in and sit down, I want to talk to you. There, leave the clothes, boy. I'll pay your mother next time," and she pushed the boy out, and drew the young girl ...
— A Village Ophelia and Other Stories • Anne Reeve Aldrich
... The more she thought of it, the less easy seemed the justification of her desire for obscurity. From regarding it as a high instinct she passed into a humour that gave that desire the appearance of a whim. But could she really set in train events, which, if not abortive, would take her to ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... was Saturday, and here he was, at three o'clock in the afternoon, turning over in his mind the best way of sending on an expensive trip abroad a girl who had not the remotest notion of his existence. It was a whim, and a harmless one, and he excused it to his practical mind by the reflection that he was entitled to one day of extravagance after seven years of hard labor. For his own part, he was weary of mountains. He had wrought ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... looks of simple subtlety,—where whim, and sense, and seriousness, and nonsense, are so blended, that all the languages of Babel set loose together, could not express them;- -they are communicated and caught so instantaneously, that you can scarce say which party is the infector. I leave it to your men ...
— A Sentimental Journey • Laurence Sterne
... any person he chooses. It is really the truth—I believe he could ruin any man in the city whom he chose to set out after. He can have anything that he wants done, so far as the police are concerned. It is simply a matter of paying them. And he is accustomed to rule in everything; his lightest whim is law. If he wants a thing, he buys it, and that is his attitude toward women. He is used to being treated as a master; women seek him, and vie for his favour. If you had been able to hold it, you might have had a million-dollar palace on Riverside Drive, or a cottage ...
— The Moneychangers • Upton Sinclair
... also prevailed of temporary or experimental marriage, lasting a day, a week, or more. The seal of the compact was merely the acceptance of a gift of wampum made by the suitor to the object of his desire or his whim. These gifts were never returned on the dissolution of the connection; and as an attractive and enterprising damsel might, and often did, make twenty such marriages before her final establishment, she ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... whose eccentric entertainment we have laughed many an hour, has here produced a most pleasant and lively melange, the result of much whim and observation, blended with a vast fund of genuine anecdotes, and a very particular account of the various amusements, customs, manners, and inhabitants of the places of fashionable resort in this kingdom."—Monthly Mirror ...
— The Lawyers, A Drama in Five Acts • Augustus William Iffland
... production of pleasant objects, to fill them; and for its drawing-room tables Miss Greenaway produced books that were in the same key. But as the architecture and the fittings, at their best, proved to be no passing whim, but the germ of a style, so her illustration is not a trifling sport, but a very real, if small, item in the history of the evolution of picture-books. Good taste is the prominent feature of her work, and good taste, if out of fashion for a time, always returns, and is ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... is not that. I want to tell you now, for I think it may save difficulties afterwards. I do not wish to lead a gay life: I cannot go to dances or theatres with an easy conscience. Don't think it a mere whim or passing fancy; it is a matter of principle with me. I have given myself to God for His service, and I look at everything in that light, and from ...
— Dwell Deep - or Hilda Thorn's Life Story • Amy Le Feuvre
... the cuckoo to search for a built nest, and to cast away its foundling egg there, as it is for other birds to welcome and feed the intruder. It seems so satanically clever a thing to do; such a strange fantastic whim of the Creator to take thought in originating it! It is this whimsicality, the bizarre humour in Nature, that puzzles me more than anything in the world, because it seems like the sport of a child with odd inconsequent fancies, and with omnipotence behind it all the time. ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... to know us in our own characters, at the end. But Leopold is a man, not a romantic girl, as you are. He has always had a reputation for pride and austerity, for being just before he would let himself be generous; and it may be that to one of his nature, a wild whim like yours—" ...
— The Princess Virginia • C. N. Williamson
... am, those few simple words your sister spoke to the judge went through and through me like a knife. Strange, in a man like me, isn't it? I am amazed at it myself. My life? Bah! I've let it out for hire to be kicked about by rascals from one dirty place to another, like a football! It's my whim to give it a last kick myself, and throw it away decently before it lodges on the dunghill forever. Your sister kept a good cup of coffee hot for me, and I give her a bad life in return for the compliment. You want to thank me for it? What ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... shameful bargain, thus to submit to a pirate's whim, but the wretched ship's company hailed it as a glad surprise. They had stood in the shadow of death and this was a respite and a chance of salvation. Captain Wellsby was heart-sick with humiliation but it was ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... scorned them, and they scorned him; And he scorned all they did; and they Did all that men of their own trim 285 Are wont to do to please their whim, Drinking, ...
— Peter Bell the Third • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... This sudden whim surprised no one. Some prisoners intrench themselves behind a system of defence, and nothing can divert them from it; others vary with each new question, denying what they have just affirmed, and constantly inventing some new absurdity which anon they reject ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... make beds, and, while breakfast is being cooked, to dismantle the camp and, so far as may be, to repack Pilgrim; the Boy collects driftwood, wipes dishes, and helps at what he can—while all hands row or paddle through the livelong day, as whim or ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... excogitation[obs3], "a fine frenzy"; cloudland[obs3], dreamland; flight of fancy, fumes of fancy; "thick coming fancies" [Macbeth]; creation of the brain, coinage of the brain; imagery. conceit, maggot, figment, myth, dream, vision, shadow, chimera; phantasm, phantasy; fantasy, fancy; whim, whimsey[obs3], whimsy; vagary, rhapsody, romance, gest[obs3], geste[obs3], extravaganza; air drawn dagger, bugbear, nightmare. flying Dutchman, great sea serpent, man in the moon, castle in the air, pipe dream, pie-in-the-sky, chateau ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... blow quickly followed. Only a few days after that marriage which her father thought promised so much security and consolation to his old age, the Emperor Paul, in a cruel whim, suddenly banished him from Petersburg. Retiring to Moscow, the galling sense of his disgrace, the separation from his darling daughter, together with a frigid reception by a friend on whom he had especially relied, plunged him into the deepest grief. A terrible attack of apoplexy swept him ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... mild, To make a wash, would hardly stew a child; Has even been proved to grant a lover's prayer, And paid a tradesman once to make him stare; Gave alms at Easter, in a Christian trim, And made a widow happy, for a whim. Why then declare good-nature is her scorn, When 'tis by that alone she can be borne? Why pique all mortals, yet affect a name? A fool to pleasure, yet a slave to fame: Now deep in Taylor and the Book of Martyrs, ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... a passing fancy, a whim. The battle-breeze from this white man's war has risen to a tempest, unroofing the Long House, scattering you for the moment, creating a disorder, inciting a passion foreign to the traditions of the Iroquois. ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... clear, loud, lusty, sounding voices, had these Bells; and far and wide they might be heard upon the wind. Much too sturdy Chimes were they, to be dependent on the pleasure of the wind, moreover; for, fighting gallantly against it when it took an adverse whim, they would pour their cheerful notes into a listening ear right royally; and bent on being heard, on stormy nights, by some poor mother watching a sick child, or some lone wife whose husband was at sea, they had been sometimes known to beat a blustering Nor'Wester; ay, "all ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... yes; but how of my fate, and that of those we love? Are we all to be ruined, and perhaps slaughtered, to satisfy your whim, girl?" ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard
... of the dog commences with maiming him while a puppy. He finds fault with the ears that nature has given him, and they are rounded or cut into various shapes, according to his whim or caprice. It is a cruel operation. A great deal of pain is inflicted by it, and it is often a long time before the edge of the wound will heal: a fortnight or three weeks at least will elapse ere the animal is free ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... for whom no one had been good enough—should have fallen thus easily to the careless attraction of a man to whom she was nothing, nothing but a piece of prettiness to be bought as cheaply as possible and treasured not at all. Some whim of inspiration had moved him. He had obeyed his Muse. And he had been ready—he had been ready—even to offer her life in sacrifice to his idol. She did not count with him in the smallest degree. He had never cared—he ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... in the fact that he not only dared not flirt with, but dared not even speak smilingly to, any other woman; did not dare dine at the Club as a pastime, did not dare spend money on a whim, and did not dare absent himself for any length of time, except on business—in which his wife included his intellectual pursuits, which she did not in the least understand but to which she attributed great importance. To make up for this, at home Pierre had the right to ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... other of the same brood of enemies to man's success in laudable undertakings; and of which ignorance is the chief, and may be regarded as the prolific source of all the others. In this case, undoubtedly, as in others, some are opposed from a mere notion of opposition, or from a mere whim; others again, simply to agree with, or differ from, some, who are either in favor or opposed; whilst some must oppose whatever they themselves do not originate;—and, others again, have no doubt been led honestly to entertain a distrust which has finally grown into an opposition, through the influence ...
— Address delivered by Hon. Henry H. Crapo, Governor of Michigan, before the Central Michigan Agricultural Society, at their Sheep-shearing Exhibition held at the Agricultural College Farm, on Thursday, • Henry Howland Crapo
... quiet, refined, and courtly, and the union of their fortunes would assure a competence for the years that might be left to them. The church of St. Paul, on Broadway, was appointed for the wedding, and it was a whim of the groom that his bride should meet him there. At the appointed hour a company of the curious had assembled in the edifice; a rattle of wheels was heard, and a bevy of bridesmaids and friends in hoop, patch, ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... of "Nathan" was suggested to Lessing by Boccaccio's story of "The Three Rings," which is supposed to have had a Jewish origin. Saladin, pretending to be inspired by a sudden, imperious whim, such as is "not unbecoming in a Sultan," demands that Nathan shall answer him on the spur of the moment which of the three great religions then known—Judaism, Mohammedanism, Christianity—is adjudged by reason to be the true one. For a moment the philosopher is in a quandary. ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... various branches of antiquity. We have never seen a mine so rich as the volumes before us. The variety of Pepys's tastes and pursuits led him into almost every department of life. He was a man of business, a man of information if not of learning; a man of taste; a man of whim; and to a certain degree a man of pleasure. He was a statesman, a BEL ESPRIT, a virtuoso, and a connoisseur. His curiosity made him an unwearied as well as an universal learner, and whatever he saw found its way into his tables. Thus, his Diary absolutely resembles the genial ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... for Saint Patrick a bitterly hard life, for little kindness was wasted on those who were sold into bondage, and slaves were compelled to labor terribly with aching muscles and empty bellies, beaten and cuffed at the whim of their master—who had a perfect right to slay them if he so desired Hunger, blows and fatigue were Saint Patrick's portion and were added to the homesickness of a young man torn ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... there was youth, and there was liberty; and Corbario was at hand, always ready to encourage and satisfy his slightest whim, on the plea that a convalescent must be humoured at any cost, and that there would be time enough to consider what should be done with Regina after Marcello was completely recovered. After all, Corbario told him, the girl had saved his life, and it was only right to be grateful, ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford
... like the popular novelist, not for their art but for some foolish gift, some facile trick of notoriety, whose actions have tickled the fancy, not the understanding of the world. The coward and the impostor have been set upon a pedestal of glory either by accident or by the whim of posterity. For more than a century Dick Turpin has appeared not so much the greatest of highwaymen, as the Highwaymen Incarnate. His prowess has been extolled in novels and upon the stage; his ride to York is still bepraised for a feat of miraculous courage and endurance; ...
— A Book of Scoundrels • Charles Whibley
... languishing as then, Give them but one fastidious look, And if you see a trace of him Who humoured you in every whim, ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... other Pope—the one in Rome. Has he anything approaching it? Can he turn a priest out of his pulpit and strip him of his office and his livelihood just upon a whim, a caprice, and meanwhile furnishing no reasons to the parish? Not in America. And ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... whole benchful accounted for at one swoop." Still Jemmy did not reply. The sunbeam drifting between the benches before him fell on a little patch of earth—a patch collected by one of the slaves whose comrades, humouring his whim, had brought him a handful or two in their pockets whenever they returned from shore. Upon this patch of earth were sunk the prints of a pair of feet, far apart; and between these footprints glimmered two lines of green, with two other lines ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... a letter to her father; and he hoped this would settle the matter without further discussion. But in this he was disappointed. There had to be a long correspondence with long arguments and protestations from Henriette's father and from his own mother. It seemed such a singular whim. Everybody persisted in diagnosing his symptoms, in questioning him about what the doctor had said, who the doctor was, how he had come to consult him—all of which, of course, was very embarrassing to George, who could not see why they had to make ...
— Damaged Goods - A novelization of the play "Les Avaries" • Upton Sinclair
... from her tightened lips. He could not have called it unmusical and did not resent it, although he did regard it as without the slenderest excuse. Her eyes and brow, still confronting his in a distress of mirth, confessed the whim's forlorn senselessness, while his face returned not the smallest sign of an emotion. As the moment lengthened, the transport, so far from passing, spread through all her lithe form. Suddenly she turned aside, drew herself up, faced him again, and began to inquire, "Do they ever—" but broke down ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... Trevannion began to busy himself with a heavy oil lantern. "I am going to have a look at the section on the way," he said; "just to see that the river has not come over the top," he added jestingly. "It's a whim of mine. But don't come if you'd rather not. I can ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... come home jes' long enough To take the whim 'At he'd like to go back in the calvery— And the old man jes' wrapped up in him! Jim 'lowed 'at he'd had sich luck afore, Guessed he'd tackle her three years more. And the old man give him a colt ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... his throne. He had a beautiful concubine, for the sake of whose company he neglected the affairs of government. The lady was of a melancholy turn, never being seen to smile. She said she loved the sound of rent silk, and to gratify her whim many fine pieces of silk were torn to shreds. The king offered a thousand ounces of gold to any one who would make her laugh; whereupon his chief minister suggested that the beacon-fires should be lighted to summon the feudal nobles with their armies, as though the royal house were in danger. The ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... a hotel register. Your mistress is an odd bit of humanity, a most whimsical bit, I must say. First, she's no and then she's yes. You're lucky, my coin, to have fallen into the custody of one who will not give you over to the mercy of strangers for the sake of a whim. You are now retired on a pension, well deserved after valiant service in the cause of a most ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... such a whim, out of all nature and reason, absurd, and I fully agree with you; yet, have I known a few grown-up children in my day, of high reputation for judgment, who in some of the fancies they have cherished, and in some of the bargains ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... by bayonets grim And babies slaughtered for a whim, Cathedrals made the sport of shells, No mercy, even for a child, As though the imps of all the hells Were crazed ...
— Over Here • Edgar A. Guest
... The women gathered round the fountain in the Place Royal and filled their water jars and gossiped about Salvatore Urso's silly whim with his child. Madame Dubois settled her cap and gave it as her opinion that no good would come of such a foolish thing. Madame Tilsit knew better, if the child wanted to play, why, let her play. The priest would not forbid it. Madame Perche knew it was far better than teaching children to read. ...
— Camilla: A Tale of a Violin - Being the Artist Life of Camilla Urso • Charles Barnard
... good soul; if the whim seized him he might pay me for my work a shilling in advance, even without my asking for it. People of that sort had sometimes the ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... not rely on God and his truth, otherwise it would war with fraud and deception; but its object is to clothe itself with a misleading garb, even assuming the name of God, and thus to deceive, belie, betray and forsake its neighbor at the bidding of every fiendish whim, and all for the satisfaction of its ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... To please a whim of Madame de Maintenon's, who fed them with scraps from the royal table, some carp were taken out of a muddy pool and placed in a marble basin of bright, clean water. The carp perished. The animals might be sacrificed, but man could never infect them with the leprosy of flattery. A courtier ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... finally, happiest in dreams. I looked at him now in that vein. In and out, elbow-deep sometimes, went his hands and arms, plunging, swimming in that luxurious mesh of hair. He sprayed it out in a shower for Danae; he clutched it hard and drew it into thick burnished ropes of fine gold. Anon, as the whim caught him, he would pile it up and hedge it with great silver pins, fan-shape, such as country girls use, till it took the semblance, now of a tower, now of a wheel, now of some winged beast—sphinx or basilisk—couching on the girl's ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... roughened by winds and storms; Tete Rouge's was bloated by sherry cobblers and brandy toddy. Henry talked of Indians and buffalo; Tete Rouge of theaters and oyster cellars. Henry had led a life of hardship and privation; Tete Rouge never had a whim which he would not gratify at the first moment he was able. Henry moreover was the most disinterested man I ever saw; while Tete Rouge, though equally good-natured in his way, cared for nobody but himself. Yet we would not have lost him on any account; he admirably served the purpose of a jester ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... deny him this last whim. He found and strung a bow, and chose a Ghibelline war-arrow. Behind them, young Foresto drew in his breath with a hiss, laid his hand on his dagger, and turned the colour of clay. Old Baldo raised the bow, put all his remaining strength into the draw, and uttered a cracking shout ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... dear fellow," said he, as we watched the rear carriages of our train disappearing round a curve; "I am sorry to make you the victim of what may seem a mere whim, but on my life, Watson, I simply CAN'T leave that case in this condition. Every instinct that I possess cries out against it. It's wrong—it's all wrong—I'll swear that it's wrong. And yet the lady's story was complete, ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... safe at last from the wiles of Ahenobarbus and his Greek coadjutors, there was still a great dread which would steal over Drusus lest at any moment a stroke might fall. Those were days when children murdered parents, wives husbands, for whim or passion, and very little came to punish their guilt. The scramble for money was universal. Drusus looked forth into the world, and saw little in it that was good. He had tried to cherish an ideal, and found fidelity to it more than difficult. His philosophy ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... Abbey had grown into the habit of coming there rather more often than mere neighborliness called for, and it was palpable that he did not come to hold converse with Benton or Benton's gang, although he was "hail fellow" with all woodsmen. At first his coming might have been laid to any whim. Latterly Stella herself was unmistakably the attraction. He brought his sister once, a fair-haired girl about Stella's age. She proved an exceedingly self-contained young person, whose speech during ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... was red-haired and of florid complexion, and seemed full of a conviction that his whim of entering must be their pleasure, which for the ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... indulge every whim and fancy she'll spend everything she has before she is fairly grown. She's too young to understand and she has been brought up so far in an irresponsible fashion. Generosity ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... Ireland a few days afterwards, 'was that I had met with men of far less power who had got greater insight into religious truth.' But he had come close to the affectionate nature and the nobility of soul that lay behind the cloud of whim and dyspepsia, and he kept to that, and for the rest, confined his expectations thenceforth to what Carlyle had to give. 'The greatest power of Carlyle,' he afterwards wrote, 'like that of Burke, seems to me to reside in the form. Neither of them is a poet, born to ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... this foolish whim, and failed to quite understand him. We remained together until we "collapsed," at Bowling Green, when we decided to ...
— Twenty Years of Hus'ling • J. P. Johnston
... in a hardware shop, And all around was a loving crop Of scissors and needles, nails and knives, Offering love for all their lives; But for iron the Magnet felt no whim; Though he charmed iron, it charmed not him; From needles and nails and knives he'd turn, For he'd set his ...
— The Motor Maids in Fair Japan • Katherine Stokes
... the term conjures up those days of the Dark Ages when armour-clad knights found their chief recreation in running lances through one another; when the overworked, underfed labourers of the field cringed and cowered before every lordly whim. Most readers seem to get their notions of chivalry from Scott's Talisman, and their ideas on feudalism from the same author's immortal Ivanhoe. While scholars keep up a merry disputation as to the historical origin of the feudal system, the public imagination ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro
... illustrating. This is the practice our young female minds want. They do not think enough. They do not dig for thought, search for ideas, investigate for truth. They are too light, frivolous, and giddy. They will run by a great thought to trifle with a silly whim. They will leave a rich intellectual lecture for a giddy party. They will turn away from a mental feast to enjoy an idle gossip; I mean too ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... a merry little rumble. I think she knew we were going back to the Professor. Bock careered mightily along the wayside. And I had much time for thinking. On the whole, I was glad; for I had much to ponder. An adventure that had started as a mere lark or whim had now become for me the very gist of life itself. I was fanciful, I guess, and as romantic as a young hen, but by the bones of George Eliot, I'm sorry for the woman that never has a chance to be fanciful. Mifflin was in jail; aye, but he might have ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... breeze, and if the remuda was freed intelligently, at darkness, the wind holding from the same quarter during the night, a practical wrangler would know where to find his horses at dawn. The quarter of the breeze was therefore always noted, any variation after darkness, as if subject to the whim of the wind, turning the course of the grazing remuda. As among men, there were leaders among horses, and by noting these and applying hobbles, any inclination to wander was restrained. Fortunately, the husky boy had no fear of a horse, his approach being as masterly as his leave-taking was gentle ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... and Harry got indignant, and after Margaret had made a passionate defence of Chad in the presence of the family, that the General and Mrs. Dean took the matter in hand. It was a childish thing, of course; a girlish whim. It was right that they should be kind to the boy—for Major Buford's sake, if not for his own; but they could not have even the pretence of more than a friendly intimacy between the two, and so Margaret was told the truth. ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... iron bands that riven stone That century on century has slept Until into its heart a tendril crept, And in the quiet majesty of birth New nature broke into her own! Or bid the sun stand still! Or fashion wings To herd the heaven's stars and make them be Subservient to will and rule and whim! Or rein the winds, and still the ocean's hymn! More surely ye shall manage all these things Than chain the Life ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... writing it out for Y.R.H., I find a petitioner who is under the delusion that his request will be better received if made through me. What can I do? A good action cannot be too soon performed, and even a whim must be sometimes humored. The bearer of this is Kapellmeister Drechsler, of the Josephstadt and Baden Theatre; he wishes to obtain the situation of second Court organist. He has a good knowledge of thorough bass, and is also a good ...
— Beethoven's Letters 1790-1826 Vol. 2 • Lady Wallace
... Browning's "Caliban on Setebos," who sprawls on the shore watching a line of crabs make for the sea, and squashes the twentieth for mere variety and sport. If Jehovah is requested to explain his loves and hates, he answers with Shylock, "it is my whim." It was his whim to love Jacob and hate Esau, and it was no doubt his whim to accept Abel's offering ...
— Bible Romances - First Series • George W. Foote
... that he had put a clause in his will against its appearance even at his own funeral. Marie Louise loved him dearly, but she feared his prejudices. She had an abject terror of offending him, because she felt that she owed everything she had, and was, to the whim of his good grace. Gratitude was a passion with her, and it doomed her, as all passions do, good or bad, to the penalties human beings pay for every excess of virtue or vice—if, indeed, vice is anything ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... men were completely deceived, and fell in love in earnest. She laughed at them, she was utterly insensible. "I am loved!" she told herself. "He loves me!" The certainty sufficed her. It is enough for the miser to know that his every whim might be fulfilled if he chose; so it was with the Duchess, and perhaps she did not even go so far as to ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... and personal liberty. Let the bishops once be seated; and would they not introduce ecclesiastical courts, demand uniformity, and impose a general tax for their church which might be perverted to any use that the whim of the King and of his subservient bishops might propose? There is no question that this subject of the episcopate, with its political and constitutional phases, and with the considerations of personal and civil liberty involved, did much to familiarize the people with those ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... that as Jack's taste in female beauty, and in the disposition and colours of dress, are borrowed from a very questionable model, his labours in adorning the figure-head are apt to produce strange monsters. I once heard of a captain who indulged his boatswain in this whim of representing his absent love as far as the king's allowance of paint could carry the art; and it must be owned, that, as the original Dulcinea owed her roses to the same source, the representation "came very close aboard of the original," as the delighted boatswain ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... was having his first taste of the unreasoning whim of the autocrat who was entitled to break into shipboard discipline, even in a critical moment. Mayo felt exasperation surging in him, but he was willing ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... months past I have been rambling over the country, but I am now confined with some lingering complaints, originating, as I take it, in the stomach. To divert my spirits a little in this miserable fog of ennui, I have taken a whim to give you a history of myself. My name has made some little noise in this country; you have done me the honour to interest yourself very warmly in my behalf; and I think a faithful account of what character of a man I am, and how I came by that character, may perhaps amuse you in an idle moment. ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... necessary, in travelling with Bedouins, to make them yield to the traveller's wishes; for though they care little for fatigue in their own business, they are extremely averse to go out of their way, to gratify what they consider an absurd whim of their companion. ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... suffering of privation and of over-supply, there could then no longer be any need of these powerful fleets which ruin, and these great armies which crush them; the peace of the world could no more be compromised by the whim of a Thiers or a Palmerston, and wars would cease, from want of resources, motives, ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... is it with the great, With whom the whim doth always run, That Heaven all creatures doth create For their behoof beneath the sun— Count they four feet, or two, or none. If one should dare the fact dispute, He's straight set down a stupid brute. Now, grant it so,—such lords among, What ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... call, And through the stilly woods there fall, Ripe nuts at intervals, where'er The squirrel, perched in upper air, From tree-top barks at thee his fear; His cunning eyes, mistrustingly, Do spy at thee around the tree; Then, prompted by a sudden whim, Down leaping on the quivering limb, Gains the smooth hickory, from whence He nimbly scours along ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various
... fortified with pride, caution, or indifference. But, among all the nymphs of this gay place, he did not meet with one object that disputed the empire of his heart with Emilia, and therefore he divided his attachment according to the suggestions of vanity and whim; so that, before he had resided a fortnight at Bath, he had set all the ladies by the ears, and furnished all the hundred tongues of scandal with full employment. The splendour of his appearance excited the inquiries of envy, which, ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... but foolish," Rochester answered. "I need no thanks, I deserve none. I yield to a whim, nothing else. I do this thing for my own pleasure. The sum of money which I propose to put into your hands will probably represent to me what a five-shilling piece might to you. This may sound vulgar, but it is true. I think that I need not warn you never ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... consciousness into the sleepy, oyster-bedded bay; even the accretion of human life there never has been able to utter itself in the myriad rebellious phases of a great city, but falls gravely into the drilled monotony of its streets. Brick and mortar will not yield themselves there to express any whim in the mind of their owner: the house-fronts turn the same impassive, show-hating faces on the sidewalks from the Delaware to the Schuylkill. Give the busiest street a moment's chance and it broods down ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... into her room for a while, and called together her maids and passed them in review. It was a whim of the good-hearted young Duchess to go round to country-houses carrying three maids along with her. She had one maid as her personal and bodily attendant, a second to dress her hair, and a third maid to look after her packing and her ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... it was not the least trouble, and he thought she looked beautiful when she said so. Whosoever of the male kind, young, and of ardent, not to say impatient, spirit, has ever been aided and abetted in a sudden whim, assisted, forwarded, above all, sympathised with, through all the changes and chances of a reigning fancy, may possibly conceive how charming, and more charming every hour, perhaps minute, Helen became in Beauclerc's ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... thou, then? I left thee supping with Peisianax, With thy head full of wine, and thy hair crown'd, Touching thy harp as the whim came on thee, And praised and spoil'd by master and by guests Almost as much as the new dancing-girl. Why ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... the matter worse), Before our names were fix'd, As we were being wash'd by nurse We got completely mix'd; And thus, you see, by Fate's decree, (Or rather nurse's whim), My brother John got christen'd me, And ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... "The cloth is at any rascal's beck and call. Old Holles, my Lord's man, is dying up yonder, and the whim seized him to have a clergyman in. God knows why, for it appears to me that one knave might very easily make his way to hell without having another knave to help him. And Holles?—eh, well, from what I myself know of him, the rogue is triply damned." His mouth puckered as he set about unbuttoning ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... the thing seemed to penetrate even his darkened mind, and then he would whisper, "I'll make believe it's Charlie, any way," so Charlie he persisted in calling her, and Richard encouraged him in this whim, when he found how much satisfaction it afforded the ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... so long, and prayed for you so much, they have your best interests at heart. At the same time let parents review their opposition to a proposed marital alliance, and see if their opposition is founded on a genuine wish for the child's welfare, or on some whim, or notion, or prejudice, or selfishness, fighting a natural law and trying to make Niagara run up stream. William Pitt, the Prime Minister of England in the reign of George III., was always saying wise things. One day Sir Walter Farquhar called on him in great perturbation. ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... so it is with human happiness— Each seeks his own according to his whim; One toils for wealth, one Fame alone can bless, One asks a quid—a quid ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... Atherlys, and an infinite pity and sense of duty towards his own race. He had devoted himself and his increasing wealth to this one object; it seemed to him at times almost providential that his position as a legislator, which he had accepted as a whim or fancy, should have given him ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... recognized by the man himself, may be vastly more significant than the passing individual decision, although the latter be accompanied by clear consciousness. In certain cases the latter is a true exponent of character, but not infrequently it is not. It may be the result of a whim, of an irrational impulse little congruous with a man's nature. It may be the outcome of some misconception and in contradiction with what the man would will, if enlightened. The individual volition appears only to disappear; it may leave no ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... without a prouder tread And a peal of exultation: Little right has he to sing Through whose heart in such an hour 295 Beats no march of conscious power, Sweeps no tumult of elation! 'Tis no Man we celebrate, By his country's victories great, A hero half, and half the whim of Fate, 300 But the pith and marrow of a Nation Drawing force from all her men, Highest, humblest, weakest, all,— Pulsing it again through them, Till the basest can no longer cower, 305 Feeling his soul spring up divinely tall, Touched but in ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... to your house to-day, are you? That will be news to Viola. She's got the whim that you don't intend ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... for her Highness in some whim had insulted him with his origin, caused pork to be removed from before him at table, or injured him in some such silly way; and he had a violent animosity to the old Baron de Magny, both in his capacity of Protestant, and because the ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... no bargain," quoth the Vidame. "And I have no time to lose, splitting hairs here. Set it down to what you like. Say it is a whim of mine, a fad, a caprice. Only understand that Madame de Pavannes stays. We go. And—" he added this, as a sudden thought seemed to strike him, "though I would not willingly use compulsion to a lady, I think Madame d'O had ...
— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman
... proletarian, who has nothing but his two hands, who consumes to-day what he earned yesterday, who is subject to every possible chance, and has not the slightest guarantee for being able to earn the barest necessities of life, whom every crisis, every whim of his employer may deprive of bread, this proletarian is placed in the most revolting, inhuman position conceivable for a human being. The slave is assured of a bare livelihood by the self-interest of his master, the serf has at least ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... into effect. Well armed and equipped, they started the very next morning for the North. The following day they walked into the Hudson's Bay Post to apprize the white man of their errand, so that there might be no suspicion of their blood-guiltiness, not knowing that by a strange whim of fortune Kalleligak and Anatalik were already there and were seated in one room while they were ...
— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... shown any interest in scenery, and Alan stared at her for a moment with a puzzled look. If Henry de Hauteville had been likely to join her at Culoz he could have understood this whim of hers; but de Hauteville was safely lodged by this time in the nearest Swiss canton, and not at all likely to intercept their journey. He did her bidding, however, without comprehension of her reasons, as he had done many a time before. Again, he ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
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