"Eccentric" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that John Merrick was eccentric. It is generally conceded that a rich man may indulge in eccentricities, provided he maintains a useful position in society, and Mr. Merrick's peculiarities only served to render him the more interesting to those who ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West • Edith Van Dyne
... represented. The beauty of the wondrous spectacle was heightened when the sun arose, from the varied gorgeous tints which flashed from mountain-top and beetling cliff, from tower, turret, and pinnacle, where its bright rays fell on them as they slowly moved round in their eccentric courses. No words, however, can describe the dazzling whiteness and brilliancy of the floating masses. From some of the most lofty, fountains might be seen gushing down, as from a mountain's top when the fierce rays of the sun melt the long-hardened snow; while in and ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... manner rather added to my charming friend's confusion, but she rallied surprisingly, put out her little gloved hand to me, and exclaimed in the gayest voice: "Ah, you eccentric man! What will you do next? To think of you selling in the market, just like a huckster! You! I must tell Mrs. Belle Etoile of it. It is really one of the best jokes I know of! And how well you act your part, too,—just as if it came naturally to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... I cannot refrain from making a passing allusion to my acquaintance with a character who created quite a sensation at the time. This "character" was no other than "Old Three Laps"—an individual who at his baptism was known as William Sharp. This singularly eccentric specimen of humanity lived at Whorl's Farm, and, as it will be generally known took to his bed through being "blighted" in love. He kept to his bed for about forty years. During the period he was "bed-fast," I often used to go and peep through ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... eccentric old woman, opening wide the door. "I don't in the least know what you intend to do, but something seems to tell me I can trust you. And if only you can ...
— Joe Strong The Boy Fire-Eater - The Most Dangerous Performance on Record • Vance Barnum
... cap. The complexion was bronze and the face beardless. This last feature is said to be characteristic of low vitality, but it is also frequently distinctive of eccentricity, and Batoche was clearly eccentric, as the expression of his eyes showed. They were cold grey eyes, but filled with wild intermittent illuminations. The reflection of the fire-light gave them a ...
— The Bastonnais - Tale of the American Invasion of Canada in 1775-76 • John Lesperance
... not really know whether Josephine is prouder of Fred or of David. Certainly her mind is comparatively at rest regarding them both, notwithstanding my second troy is not quite like other people. I do not mean that he is boorish or eccentric, merely that he is bookish and self-absorbed. He takes no interest in his personal appearance, and he avoids every young woman except his sisters. Fred is dandified, keenly fond of the social interests of the day and of the ...
— The Opinions of a Philosopher • Robert Grant
... in the person of Francis Arden, a handsome young Irishman with whom Borrow became acquainted in the coffee-room of an hotel, and with him obtained some knowledge of "the strange and eccentric places of London." When Arden burst out laughing one day Borrow said he would, perhaps, have joined if it were ever his wont to laugh, and his friends said that, though he enjoyed a joke, he did not seem to have the power of laughing. But in Borrow we expect contrarieties, so we ...
— Souvenir of the George Borrow Celebration - Norwich, July 5th, 1913 • James Hooper
... over their heads; he was affronted and furious because he fancied they neglected him, but it all arose, as I am told, from Lord Grey's letter to him not reaching him directly, by some mistake, for that he was the first person he wrote to. Still it is pretty clear that this eccentric luminary will play the devil ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... trouble to find out a man whom he had known in England seven years before, and against whom he had conceived a strong and lasting antipathy, as entertaining no principle either to influence his heart or to guide his understanding save a deranged and eccentric vanity. ...
— Burke • John Morley
... 2 (which represents the piston at one end of its travel), is first admitted against the right surface of the small piston, which it causes to effect an entire stroke corresponding to a half-revolution of the fly-wheel. The stroke completed, the slide-valve, actuated by an eccentric keyed to the driving shaft, returns backward and puts the cylinders, B and C, in communication. The steam then expands and drives the large piston to the right, so as to effect the second half of the fly-wheel's revolution. The exhaust ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 421, January 26, 1884 • Various
... storm, a red wagon had been crawling over the alkali toward the barren hills. It was the eccentric vehicle affected by Professor Wandering William, and was headed for the barren range of hills in which lay the valley of ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... composition, Ives' music was probably the most radically modern in history, and by itself had enough material to serve as the foundation of modern 20th century music. For example, at the turn of the century, this eccentric composer created band works featuring multiple melodies of multiple time signatures opposing and complimenting each other within the same piece. Ives was also a revolutionary atonal composer, who created, essentially without precedent, ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... of weakness of character. It is fundamentally inconsistent with good manners. Johnson was called ursa major, or big bear, from the gruffness of his manner. This was probably natural to him, but many affect a similar manner from a desire to be eccentric. The "big bears" of society are odious. Johnson's own words are applicable to such: "A man has no more right to say an uncivil thing than to act one—no more right to say a rude thing to another than to knock him down." Those also ...
— Life and Conduct • J. Cameron Lees
... you have yourself to thank for her having done so; did you never treat her with coldness, and repay her marks of affectionate interest with strange fits of eccentric humour?" ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... truth is that we English, like the Americans, have too much good sense to worry about drama. There are a certain number of cranks and faddists who get an unholy delight out of eccentric plays, but they are few in the Anglo-Saxon countries, where good sense reigns. We only take fairy tales seriously when we are children; we never get intoxicated by ideas; this is where we differ from the Continentals. Art is all very well in its way and in its proper place. I ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... The eccentric German alchemist and philosopher, Henry Cornelius Agrippa (1486-1535), described a prosperous charlatan of his day as "clad in brave apparel, and having on his fingers showy rings, glittering with precious stones; a fellow who had gotten fame on account of his travels in far ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... possibly aristocratic. Lena was much more tolerant. "I have just the same enthusiasm for soldiers that my Wilfrid has for singers," she said; and it afforded Adela exquisite pleasure to hear her tell how that she had originally heard of the 'eccentric young Englishman,' General Pierson's nephew, as a Lustspiel—a comedy; and of his feats on horseback, and his duels, and his—"he was very wicked over here, you know;" Lena laughed. She assumed the privileges of her four-and-twenty years and her rank. Her marriage ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... thing, a houseful of boys in a town, or in a pretty thickly populated district. Boys, it is true, are always a source of pleasure to the humorist and the scientific observer of mankind. They are scarcely our fellow-creatures, so to speak; they live in a world of their own, ruled by eccentric traditional laws. They have their own heroes, and are much more interested in Mr. Alan Steel or Lohmann than in persons like Mr. Arthur Balfour, whose cricket is only middling. They have rules of conduct which ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... obliged to communicate the fact to her legal adviser, on his representing to her that he must know, with an eye to the latitude of his defence, how the fact stood about that child. Put the case that, at the same time he held a trust to find a child for an eccentric rich lady ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... to be recluse in your habits and eccentric in your appearance, with perhaps a little more wisdom in your head and your conversation than your fellows, to be at the mercy of the first fool or knave who could gather a mob at his heels, and hale ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... tailor lived there when boys were boys. In his day he was fond of the gun. He always carried his powder loose in the tail pocket of his coat. He usually had in his mouth a short dudeen; but in an evil moment he put the dudeen, lighted, in the pocket among the powder. Mr. Lowry was an eccentric man. ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... domestic arts had evidently been defective, and her cooking was decidedly eccentric. The fowl turned up at table plucked, certainly, but looking very pale and anaemic with its long untrussed legs sticking helplessly out before it. It was such an absurd object that as soon as the landlady had departed from the ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... this singular case may afford some hints and comfort to parents with children afflicted (as was my dear AUGUSTUS) with a disease so eccentric ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, January 18, 1890 • Various
... ideas of all who knew her, save her father and Myra Longman, Tessibel was full of eccentric traits; for who but Tess would feel the "mollygrubs," as Ben Letts had said, at the wriggling of the agonized perch and pickerel, as they flopped painfully upon the sands; or who but Tess would mind the squeaking of the mother-bird calling for her own. It was something ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... piston stroke of 3 ft. The high-pressure cylinders are each fitted with a piston valve, and the intermediate and low-pressure cylinders with double-ported slide valves, all of which are worked by the usual double eccentric and link motion valve gear, by which the cut-off can be varied as required. All the shafting is forged of Siemens-Martin mild steel of the best quality, each of the three separate cranks being built up. The condensers are placed at the outsides of the engine room, and the air, feed, and bilge pumps ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 819 - Volume XXXII, Number 819. Issue Date September 12, 1891 • Various
... the thought of furnishing me with materials for an extended sketch of his life, and I still have several envelopes on which the inscription "For My Memoirs" bears witness to that purpose. But after serving as a source of eccentric and roguish humor for several months, the idea was suffered to lapse, only to be revived in suggestive references as he consigned some bit of manuscript to my care or criticism. Any study of Field's life and character based on such materials ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... the case of Hob by the admission of new manures, and which had run to waste with Gilbert in subversive politics and heretical religions, bore useful fruit in many ingenious mechanical improvements. In boyhood, from his addiction to strange devices of sticks and string, he had been counted the most eccentric of the family. But that was all by now; and he was a partner of his firm, and looked to die a bailie. He too had married, and was rearing a plentiful family in the smoke and din of Glasgow; he was wealthy, and could have bought out ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... not unfrequently, when specially short of the Queen's medium, sighed for some of those thousands and tens of thousands with which men's mouths are so glibly full. He had often tried to calculate what would be his feelings if some eccentric, good-natured old stranger should leave him, say, five thousand a year; he had often walked about the street, with his hands in his empty pockets, building delicious castles in the air, and doing the most munificent actions imaginable with his newly-acquired ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... all fates! Ronnie's condition is brought about by temporary circumstances which are not in the least likely to have permanent results. He has always had the eccentricity of genius; but, since his genius has been recognised, people have ceased to consider him eccentric. Now I must be off. But I will see him first. Will you show me his room?" "He is asleep," objected Aubrey. "Is it not a ...
— The Upas Tree - A Christmas Story for all the Year • Florence L. Barclay
... himself; he was a quiet, prudent, unostentatious young man, of good abilities, who had received by education excellent principles, and moderate views, and who had fallen in love with Adeline's pretty face. Mr. Hopkins, his uncle and adopted father, was a very worthy man, though a little eccentric, and rather too much given to snuff, and old coats, and red handkerchiefs. No one stood better on Change than John Hopkins, whose word had been as good as his bond, throughout a long life. He was a man of some property too, but he had only ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... in fact just what might be expected from a thoroughly modest, teachable, receptive, and at the same time most living, active, and aspiring mind,—a mind full indeed of native boldness, but yet restrained by judgment and good sense from the crudeness and temerity of self-will and eccentric impulse, and not trusting to its own strength till it had better reasons for doing so than the ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... But very good humour nevertheless, the thoroughly popular humour of broad comedy and obvious farce—the humour that finds its account where absurd characters are placed in ridiculous situations, that delights in the oddities of the whimsical and eccentric, that irradiates stupidity and makes dulness amusing. How thoroughly wholesome it is too! To be at the same time merry and wise, says the old adage, is a hard combination. Dickens was both. With all his boisterous merriment, his volleys of inextinguishable laughter, ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... dismissed my officers from duty, and by my own act had prevented the anchor-watch being formally set and things properly attended to. I asked myself whether it was wise ever to interfere with the established routine of duties even from the kindest of motives. My action might have made me appear eccentric. Goodness only knew how that absurdly whiskered mate would "account" for my conduct, and what the whole ship thought of that informality of their new captain. ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... not forbidden by English law, provided the period during which it was to accumulate did not exceed that forbidden by the law against perpetuities, viz. the period of a life or lives in being, and twenty-one years afterwards. In 1800, however, the law was amended in consequence of the eccentric will of Peter Thellusson (1737—1797), an English merchant, who directed the income of his property, consisting of real estate of the annual value of about L. 5000 and personal estate amounting to over L. 600,000, to be accumulated during the lives of his children, grandchildren ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... illustrations of this neglected truth is Thomas Carlyle. How often has it been said that Carlyle's matter is marred by the harshness and the eccentricities of his style? But Carlyle's matter is harsh and eccentric to precisely the same degree as his style is harsh and eccentric. Carlyle was harsh and eccentric. His behaviour was frequently ridiculous, if it were not abominable. His judgments were often extremely bizarre. When ...
— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT
... very little about Bunch's new relatives. They decided that "Uncle Cornelius" was eccentric and rather interesting, but when they thought of "Aunt Flora" they both got nervous and changed ...
— You Can Search Me • Hugh McHugh
... earned the reputation of madness for less eccentric actions than taking lessons in singing as a cure for indigestion, after the failure of the ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... polygamous in terminal panicles. Calyx with 5 erect segments, imbricated, caducous. Corolla, 5 linear, lanceolate petals, curved and imbricated. Stamens 8-10, all fertile. Filaments united to one another and to the disc. Ovary heart-shaped. Style filiform and eccentric. Stigma defective. Ovule solitary. Fruit a reniform nut enclosed in a pulpy pyriform body, formed by the matured disc and extremity of the peduncle. Seed reniform, ...
— The Medicinal Plants of the Philippines • T. H. Pardo de Tavera
... at the present moment recall what the General's Christian name was. But I have no doubt he had one. He was eccentric, I admit. But only in later years. And that was the result of the Indian climate, and marriage, and indigestion, and other things of ...
— The Importance of Being Earnest - A Trivial Comedy for Serious People • Oscar Wilde
... was a kind of mechanism. Raymond de Lulle was at once a learned man and a well-informed and most enquiring naturalist for whom Arabian science held no secrets. With that he was poet, troubadour, orator, as well as very eccentric and attractive. He was beloved and persecuted in his lifetime, and long after his death still found ...
— Initiation into Philosophy • Emile Faguet
... remained, nevertheless, an independent rather than an orthodox Protestant. Of like quality were Peter Martyr Vermigli, an exile for his faith, and Jerome Bolsec, a native of France but an inhabitant of Ferrara, whence he took to Geneva an eccentric doctrine that caused much trouble to Calvin. Finally, it was perfectly in accordance with the Italian genius that the most radical of Protestant dissenters, the unitarians Lelio and Fausto Sozzini, should have been born ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... myself up tete-a-tete with the Colonel, and took care that even old Getchen, my housekeeper, now deceased, should not trouble me during my work. I had substituted for the wearisome lever of the old fashioned air-pumps, a wheel arranged with an eccentric which transformed the circular movement of the axis into the rectilinear movement required by the pistons: the wheel, the eccentric, the connecting rod, and the joints of the apparatus all worked admirably, and enabled me to ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... as a piece of bravado, but Stephen was eccentric, and it occurred to him that there was a "touch of nature" in a pipe which might possibly induce the Bushmen to be less rude to him personally than if he were to stand by and look aggrieved while his waggons were ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... prove is not that its forms of expression or even of thought are adapted to such minds, but that its principles, when rationally applied to a more advanced state of society, are unsound. Rightly understood it does not seem to me to enjoin anything eccentric or spasmodic, to bid you enact primitive Orientalism in the streets of London, thrust fraternity upon writers in the Pall Mall Gazette, or behave generally as if the "Kingdom of God" were already come. Your ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... day, and which seemed to have passed entirely into oblivion. Old colonels and rittmasters, who had never heard of Leo the Thracian nor the Macedonian phalanx, smiled and shrugged their shoulders, as they listened to the questions of the young count, or gazed with profound astonishment at the eccentric evolutions to which he was accustoming his troops. From the heights of superior wisdom they looked down with pity upon these innovations on the good old battle order. They were accustomed to great solid squares of troops wheeling in one way, steadily, deliberately, all together, by ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... be at war with ordinary language and untrue to our own consciousness. And there have been a few both in mediaeval times and since the Reformation who have rebelled against the Aristotelian point of view. Of these eccentric thinkers there have been various types, but they have all a family likeness. According to them, there has been too much analysis and too little synthesis, too much division of the mind into parts and too little conception of it as a whole or in its ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... she was looked upon as eccentric. She spent her days, like her father, in the house, but in another part of ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc
... relationship between this word and another pronounced[1] as nearly the same as the two languages will admit of, and which gives at all events one sense, if not, as I think, the primary one, is scarcely so eccentric as that which finds the origin of a word signifying a loud sound, and fame, or rumor, in "nisus"; not even struggle, in the sense of contention, an endeavour an effort, ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 36. Saturday, July 6, 1850 • Various
... The reign of the eccentric Rudolph II, Emperor of Germany (1576-1612), whose imperial residence was at Prague, covers the greater part of Shakespeare's life. In spite of many failings and mistakes, this monarch did much to foster the study of the arts ...
— Shakespeare and Precious Stones • George Frederick Kunz
... to-and-fro horizontal motion of the shaft of the mangle motion wheel, as it, at each end of the row of pegs —in the face plate (when it passes from the exterior to the interior range of them) in giving the feed motion to the tool in; the slide rest, "turned" the segmental exterior of the eccentric hoops. This it did perfectly, as the change of position of the small shaft occurred at the exact time when the cut was at its termination,—that being the correct moment to give the tool "the feed, or advance for the taking of the next cut. The saving, in respect to time, was 10 to ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... France, without the slightest recollection of getting there. The war was over long ago. A thousand things had happened of which he had not the remotest knowledge. And because he was a very normal, ordinary young man with a horror of anything queer and eccentric, the thought of that mysterious year filled him with dismay and roused in him a passionate longing to escape at once from everything which would remind him of his uncanny lapse of memory. If he were only back ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... additional particulars respecting the celebrated author of "Lacon," may not be unacceptable to your readers, as a sequel to the interesting account of that eccentric individual inserted at p. 431, in your recently ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 265, July 21, 1827 • Various
... hammer and tongs at infantry drill, instructed by an officer and two N.C.O.'s from a neighbouring garrison battalion. We were all looking forward to becoming pukka infantry, as we had long realised that in our eccentric form as dismounted yeomanry we should only be given ...
— The Fife and Forfar Yeomanry - and 14th (F. & F. Yeo.) Battn. R.H. 1914-1919 • D. D. Ogilvie
... news I found it impossible to enjoy the society of my eccentric friend, and much though I liked him, resolved to leave the place at once and make ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... the throne of Exhaustless Benevolence, and that the Deity cannot be worthily called upon by young hearts stricken by degrading fears, and fainting under a Moloch-inspired dread. Notwithstanding my eccentric life, I have ever been the ardent, the unpretending, though the unworthy adorer of the Great Being, whose highest attribute is the "Good." I have ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... Pandoza's shoes, when the soldiers in their fury about the ammunition destroyed the Mission. At the time of its destruction a rumor of this nature was circulated through camp, started by some wag, no doubt in jest; for Ord, who was somewhat eccentric in his habits, and had started on the expedition rather indifferently shod in carpet-slippers, here came out in a brand-new pair of shoes. Of course there was no real foundation for such a report, but Rains was not above ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... Denzil in the summer evenings. He went fishing with his daughter and her sweetheart. He revelled in the simple rustic life, and told them stories of his boyhood, when James was King, and many a queer story of that eccentric monarch and of the ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... story runs, had a special aversion to Chanticleer on account of his having caused the repentance of St Peter by his crowing. In any case, the reigning Prince of Salerno gladly complied with the eccentric request, and at his command every cock in or near the place was accordingly slaughtered, with the solitary exception of one old rooster, who, being very dear to the heart of his aged mistress, was kept concealed beneath a tub and thus escaped the general holocaust. Throughout the ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... quaint and eccentric man, took his seat as senator from Tennessee. He was in the sixty-fourth year of his age, and in impaired health. He was born in South-western Virginia in the wild and mountainous region adjacent to the borders of three other States. In early life he was a Methodist ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... eccentric rod are shown in fig. 51. The eccentric is put on the crank shaft in two halves, joined in the diameter of largest eccentricity by means of a single bolt passing through lugs on the central eye, and the back balance is made in a separate piece five eighths of an inch thick, and is attached by means ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne
... test of age and experiment. With a hundred fine notions chasing one another hourly in his fancy, he is startled at the least approach to the romantic in others; and, determined by his own sense in every thing, commends you to the guidance of common sense on all occasions.—With a touch of the eccentric in all which he does, or says, he is only anxious that you should not commit yourself by doing any thing absurd or singular. On my once letting slip at table, that I was not fond of a certain popular dish, he begged me at any rate not to say so—for the world would think me mad. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... son-in-law Thomas Nash. The manuscripts he would have given to Mr. Boles had he been present, but Nash was to keep them and use them as he pleased. It is probable that Mr. Boles was Richard Boles, Rector of Whitnash, not far from Stratford—an eccentric person, a writer of epitaphs, who had set up his own in his church while ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes
... of pictures by the best masters as models for the students, and proposed several of those in the Orleans collection. This recommendation was not relished, and in 1799 Barry was expelled from the academy, soon after the appearance of his Letter to the Dilettanti Society, a very amusing but eccentric publication, full of enthusiasm for his art and at the same time of contempt for the living professors of it. After the loss of his salary, a subscription was set on foot by the earl of Buchan to relieve him from his ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... "Very eccentric. He must be rich," whispered the wife of a dry-goods merchant from Keokuk, as her husband pushed her ahead of him past ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... doggedly to follow the highway that soldiers would be likely to follow on the way to the lake. It was not the shortest way to the world outside the Park. It was considerably longer than a footpath would have been. But Lockley expected tanks, at least, against which eccentric unearthly weapons would be useless. So they headed down the main highway. Lockley was unarmed. They had no food. He hadn't eaten since ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... morning, a protectionist champion presented himself, not in the guise either of a freeholder or farmer of the county, but in the person of a good-humoured, though somewhat eccentric printer, named Sparkhall, who had come from the celebrated locale of John Gilpin—Cheapside, and who having armed himself with a large blue bag fitted with elaborate treatises upon the corn laws, and among other pamphlets a recent number of Punch, forthwith travelled to Oxford, ...
— The Economist - Volume 1, No. 3 • Various
... quote from another and perfectly reliable observer a sample narrative of its startling mental traits. At Oak Lodge, east coast of Florida, we lived for a time in the home of a pair of pack rats whose eccentric work was described to me by Mrs. ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... seemed much sun-burnt, and her complexion was of a deep olive: Her eyes looked fiery and strange; and in her hand She bore a long black Rod, with which She at intervals traced a variety of singular figures upon the ground, round about which She danced in all the eccentric attitudes of folly and delirium. Suddenly She broke off her dance, whirled herself round thrice with rapidity, and after a moment's pause ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... Radlett," as he was generally called, was something of a character in Millbay and its immediate neighbourhood, for, in addition to being admittedly the best builder of ships in all Devon, he was a bit of an eccentric, a man with bold and original ideas upon many subjects, a man of violent likes and dislikes, a bachelor, an exceedingly shrewd man of business, and—some said—a miser. He was turned sixty years of age, and of course ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... exquisite taste in costume, though her ideas, if allowed full liberty, were apt to produce something too fanciful and eccentric to be fashionably legitimate. But, let a dress once be made up, and happy she whose fortune it was to stand before Sophie and be touched off. Some slight readjustment or addition she would make which no one else could have thought of, but which would transform merely good ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... the old affair that brings me here," replied our eccentric friend the cabman. "You know—the thirty francs those wretched women paid me. Really, I shan't sleep in peace till you have worked off the amount by using my vehicle. Our drive yesterday lasted two hours and a half, which, according to the regular fare, would ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... member of the solar system under control of the sun, consisting of a bright nucleus within a nebulous envelope, generally extended into a tail on the rear of its orbit, which is extremely eccentric, pursuing its course with a velocity which increases as it approaches the sun, and which diminishes as it withdraws from it; these bodies are very numerous, have their respective periods of revolution, which have been in many ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... make a "hobby of hobbies." Only the big hobbies of your man are worth especial study. Never harp on any of his little idiosyncracies. He may be sensitive about being eccentric. It is bad salesmanship to pretend an interest in another person's whims. You cannot use his hobbies to help your prospects unless you share his feelings to a considerable degree. My friend who believes and practices the doctrine that all men are brothers would be sure to detect quickly a ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... I thought Mike the Angel was about sixty years old, a crotchety old genius behind a desk, as eccentric as a comet's orbit, and wealthier than Croesus. You're just not what I ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... lasso from its legs. The animal, finding itself free, darted off, and then commenced to back, plunge, and whisk round and round, sometimes dashing on for a few paces at a furious pace, and then recommencing its eccentric movements. The rider, however, stuck on; and another Llanero coming behind, administered a lash with his long cutting whip, which made the poor animal start off with a snort like a scream. No one but a well-trained horseman could have kept his seat in the way our men did. As it ...
— In New Granada - Heroes and Patriots • W.H.G. Kingston
... monsters of the Mongol dynasties. In that fatal list of monarchs one is reduced to apologizing for a Tiberius, who only attained thorough detestableness toward the close of his life; and for a Claudius, who was only eccentric, blundering, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... honours were not enjoyed by Lola (who, for some reason best known to herself, had elected to be entered in the passenger-list as "Madam Landsfeld Heald"), she was none the less accorded considerable publicity. "The eccentric and much advertised Lola Montez," said the Herald on the morning after her New South Wales debut, "pounces upon us direct from California, and the excitement of her visit is emptying the opposition theatre. Last night the Countess ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... the notice of yet another representative of law and order appeared eccentric on the face of it, but his subsequent behaviour was ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... said Banner, who had turned to look at the ship's spec-scanner. "Looks like we're in a belt of meteorites. We'll be able to match velocities, but we could still be creamed if the path gets too eccentric. Show him the way, Harcraft. I don't want to take any longer than necessary, ...
— Unspecialist • Murray F. Yaco
... hand he clasped a beautiful rose, because during his rational moments he so often spoke of the "pretty roses a-growin' by the brook down in the lane." The rose was presented by none other than Dr. Dale, not—so he assured himself—that he was in the least sympathetic with the Fairfaxes in their eccentric freak. It was simply for the good of the patient that all small whims ...
— Rosa's Quest - The Way to the Beautiful Land • Anna Potter Wright
... extremely wealthy and eccentric miser; a bachelor and a man who both by his appearance and his nature repels the friendship of his fellow men; inclined to practice petty cruelty on children and animals; suspicious of and seeming to hate everybody except his old ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... common names (anything but proper ones) are the eccentric. The colors are well represented; for, beside Oil and Paint for materials, there are Brown, Black, Blue, Green, White, Cherry, Gray, Hazel, Plum, Rose, and Vermilion. The animals come in for their share; for we find Alligator, Bald-Eagle, Beaver, Buck, Buffalo, Eagle, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... to cabalism and became interested in crystals and the microcosm and macrocosm, and fell into the habit of despair over what he had been and believed just before. He conceived a kind of hermetical or neoplatonic godhead creating in more and more eccentric circles, until the last, which rose in contradiction, was Lucifer to whom creation was committed. He first of all imagined in detail an angelic host, and finally a whole theology was wrought out in petto. He used ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... to have been discovered by the Germans. I am sceptical on this point, having never yet found a place that was discovered by them. An English eccentric or two is sure to have lived and died here all by himself; though doubtless, once on the spot, they did their best to popularise and vulgarise it. In this matter, as in art or science or every department of life, a German requires forerunners. He must ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... shop-keeper did not ask her very much more than its genuine value and next day all Paris knew of the transaction and flocked to the Opera to see her in the ornaments which had cost the Russian Duke his friendship for the bearer. But though eccentric, impulsive and domineering, no whisper had ever attached itself to her name. On her return to her native New York, was she not welcomed, feted, honored, besieged with invitations everywhere? People felt she was different from the girl who went away. She had been undecided, ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... the Duke of Gordon, who had effectually aided and abetted the riots in Scotland. Of all men in the world Lord George Gordon was the most unfit to preside over a Protestant Association. He was a member of parliament it is true, but he was chiefly remarkable there for his eccentric habits, slovenly dress, and by a progressive insanity, which on some occasions partook of the nature of oratorical inspiration. He was, however, known to be firm in his hatred towards the Papists, and adverse ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... the missionary secured such an opportunity. His eccentric method of obtaining a hearing had succeeded beyond his expectations. With a heart overflowing with gratitude to God, he stood up and began to ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... country in pursuance of facts concerning the fermenting feeling against England, but he was soon able to enroll himself unequivocally upon the side of the colonies. In a letter written to Lord Percy, then stationed at Boston, this eccentric new friend of the American cause—himself, it must be remembered, still a half-pay officer in the English army—expressed with great freedom his opinion of England's position: "Were the principle of taxing America without her consent ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... gate, or in the dining-room, which opened into the hall opposite the study door. The study itself has a French window opening on a narrow grass plot, across which is a side gate that opens into an alley; and it appears that Mr. Bellingham must have made his exit by this rather eccentric route. At any rate—and this is the important fact—he was not in the house, and no one ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... a soul in St. Petersburg who is so attached to me as this eccentric person," he thought. "I wish she had not interrupted me though. However, I suppose it's ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... very necessary to understand how to handle these useful but eccentric beasts. The Eskimos have reduced this knowledge to a science, and from them Nansen learned to be the master of those dogs which were of so much service to him in ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 56, December 2, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... be alone at home, and his reserved, eccentric nature had caused his relatives to shun his house, which doubtless seemed to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... seldom with affection. Yet her views on the matrimonial relation were known to be of singular audacity. She revealed them only to a small circle of intimates; most of the people who frequented her house had no startling theories to maintain, and regarded their hostess as a good-natured, rather eccentric woman, who loved society and understood ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... Apitius C{oe}lius, our copy agrees with the reading of Vicaire, col. 889, appendix. Not in Pennell. Brandt (Untersuchungen [No. 29] p. 6) calls Schuch Wunderlicher Querkopf. He is correct. The Schuch editions are eccentric, worthless. ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius
... deferentially, but, once outside the door he executed a silent war-dance as an outlet for his rage. In its eccentric evolutions he hurtled against a servant bringing the luncheon, and fully half of the viands poured like an avalanche down the stairs. While the man strove to gather up the broken crockery the secretary snatched the ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... was," piped the Presidente in her thin, flute tones, "very clever, very eccentric, and yet very good-hearted. This fan that you admire once belonged to Mme. de Pompadour; he gave it to me one morning with a pretty speech which you must permit me not to repeat," and she ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... on the 1st July, 1830, and by the following March had been expelled for determined disobedience. Whatever view may be taken of Poe's conduct upon this occasion, it must be seen that the expulsion from West Point was of his own seeking. Highly-colored pictures have been drawn of his eccentric behavior at the Academy, but the fact remains that he wilfully, or at any rate purposely, flung away his cadetship. It is surmised with plausibility that the second marriage of Mr. Allan, and his expressed intention of withdrawing ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... his marriage with a Demoiselle de Ronquerolles. Therefore, on her mother's side Clementine du Rouvre had the Marquis de Ronquerolles for uncle, and Madame de Serizy for aunt. On her father's side she had another uncle in the eccentric person of the Chevalier du Rouvre, a younger son of the house, an old bachelor who had become very rich by speculating in lands and houses. The Marquis de Ronquerolles had the misfortune to lose both his children ...
— Paz - (La Fausse Maitresse) • Honore de Balzac
... James of Scotland ascended the throne. His pedantic and eccentric character is well known. He had an early and decided inclination towards abstruse or mysterious speculations. Before he had reached his twentieth year, he undertook to accomplish what only the most sanguine and profound theologians have ever dared to attempt: he expounded ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... side to side so swiftly that the features would be blotted out and the hair made to snap. When the body was affected the sufferer was hurled over hindrances that came in his way, and finally dashed on the ground, to bounce about like a ball." The eccentric Lorenzo Dow, whose freaks of eloquence and humor are remembered by many now living, speaks from his own observation ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... remind us with disadvantage to him, of actors we have seen before. In the proud and boastful exultation, the starts of anger, the quick resentment, and ardent friendship, the sudden alternation of storm and calm, and, in a word, the medley of eccentric vices and virtues which compose this gigantic offspring of Lee's bright but fevered brain, the severest criticism must concur with the public opinion, which ranks Mr. Cooper's Alexander high among the first specimens of the art exhibited in the English language. ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... upstairs; and while he is going upstairs, the reader may be informed, that Mr. Losberne, a surgeon in the neighbourhood, known through a circuit of ten miles round as 'the doctor,' had grown fat, more from good-humour than from good living: and was as kind and hearty, and withal as eccentric an old bachelor, as will be found in five times that ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... Suffrage Association to go to Kansas and help in the woman's campaign. Accordingly he telegraphed that if the committee wanted him he was ready, would pay his own expenses and win every Democratic vote. Miss Anthony never had seen Mr. Train; she merely knew of him as very wealthy and eccentric. The Republicans not only had forsaken the women but were waging open war upon them. The sole hope of carrying the amendment was by adding enough Democratic votes to those of Republicans who would not obey their party orders ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... nothing to be ashamed of in our honest loves and therein lies a rigid test. It is true that in our day it makes a great difference to us whether certain persons attract the potent attention of fashion's votaries or not. A plain face, or an awkward gait, or an eccentric manner, can turn the tide of a whole human life; for such superficial irregularities have proved many a time to be a stumbling block to our most willing affections, when we could have loved and cherished a soul were it not for these accidents of the flesh: an ...
— The Doctor's Daughter • "Vera"
... that an eccentric old man built the house for his parents long since dead. He believes, so they say—this old eccentric man living somewhere in the Kentucky hills (they are not sure of the exact location)—that his parents will return. Not as an aged couple, feeble and bent as ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... decorative. Arbitrary rearrangements of these thick and thin lines, differing from the arrangement of them in the classic examples, have, [2] indeed, been often attempted; but such rearrangements have never resulted in improvement, and, except in eccentric lettering, have ...
— Letters and Lettering - A Treatise With 200 Examples • Frank Chouteau Brown
... facetiousness, without a touch of malice in it, broke his windows and wrecked his store. The next morning, while Radford was ruefully contemplating the ruin, and doubtless concluding that he had had enough of a country where the local idea of neighborly humor found such eccentric expression, he hailed a passer-by named Greene, and challenged him to buy his establishment for four hundred dollars. This sort of trade was always irresistible to these Western speculators, and Greene at once gave his note for the amount. It next occurred to him to try to find out what the ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... isn't much of a story. I had a great-aunt who was worth a lot of money, and who was eccentric. She was in a way fond of me when I was a child, and used to have me at the house a good deal. I confess I didn't like it much. Things went by rule, and the rules were often pretty queer. One of them was that ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... clear as he gained the summit of a stone or ridge and came down the winding path towards me. Though in his talkative moments Brighteye usually reminded me of the tiny shrew, there were times when he reminded me more forcibly of an eccentric mouse that, a few years before, had taken up her quarters in the wall of my study, and each night, for more than a week, when the children's hour was over and I sat in silence by my shaded lamp, had made her presence known by a bird-like solo interrupted only when the singer stayed to ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... immensely impressed by their ability and their different methods—Miss Schwimmer being all force and fire, alive from her feet to her finger-tips, Mrs. Snowden all quiet reserve and dignity. Dr. Augsburg wore her hair short and dressed in a most eccentric manner; but we forgot her appearance as we listened to her, for she was ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... accurately fixed. A longitudinal missile must rotate with its axis coincident with its line of flight as it leaves the barrel, or else every rotation will throw the point into wider circles, until finally it becomes more eccentric than a round ball. It is a mistaken notion that a conical missile is more accurate in flight than a round; on the contrary, hunters always prefer the ball for short shots,—and a "slug," as the longer missile is called by them, is well known to err more than ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... from acquiring the same importance which they did in France and Belgium (Figs. 90 and 91), where much more meat was consumed than in Spain, Italy, or even in Germany. Nevertheless, in almost all countries there were certain regulations, sometimes eccentric, but almost always rigidly enforced, to ensure a supply of meat of the best quality and in a healthy state. In England, for instance, butchers were only allowed to kill bulls after they had been baited with dogs, no doubt with the view of making the flesh more tender. ...
— Manners, Custom and Dress During the Middle Ages and During the Renaissance Period • Paul Lacroix
... down, and dispersing his philosophic opinions to the right and the left, like a Grecian philosopher. The first time I saw him was at a concert in the Upper Rooms; he was pointed out to me by one of my party as a very eccentric man who had walked over the habitable globe. I remember that Madame Mara was at that moment singing: and Walking Stewart, who was a true lover of music (as I afterwards came to know), was hanging upon her notes like a bee upon a jessamine flower. His countenance was striking, and expressed the ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... humble, pure-minded, zealous, consecrated to the truth as he saw it, he labored in and out of season for the faith he held so dear; yet as the years went on, he noted that Ansel, notwithstanding his eccentric views, lived an honest, temperate, Godfearing life, talking no scandal, dwelling in unity with his brethren and sisters, and upholding the banner of Shakerism in ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... meadow? Drazk's philosophy was that the end justifies the means. And if the end would win the approval of Y.D.—and of Y.D.'s daughter—then any means was justified. Had not Linder said, "Burn the grass on the road?" Drazk knew well enough that Linder's remark was a figure of speech, but his eccentric mind found no trouble in converting it into ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... eccentric personage, cooling quite as suddenly as he had fired, "the only improvement I can suggest is, be a little more precise at your next visit. Promise his keepers twenty guineas apiece the day Sir Charles is cured; and promise them ten guineas apiece not to administer ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... of them, yes—if they like to be patronized. But I must say I don't like to be patronized. I may be very eccentric, and undisciplined, and outrageous, but I confess I never was fond of patronage. I like to associate with people on the same terms as I do in my own country; that's a peculiar taste that I have. But here people seem to expect something else—Heaven knows what! I am afraid ...
— An International Episode • Henry James
... cried, as I struggled in vain to release myself from the eccentric female's claws, "where is the Capting—the man who was into the Crimea, amidst the cannon's thunder? ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 5 • Charles Farrar Browne
... expect easily to convince men of the truth, or to lead them to think aright. The subtle human intellect can weave its mists over even the clearest vision. Remember that it is eccentric enough to ask unanimity from a jury; but to ask it from any large number of men on any point of political faith is amazing. You can hardly get two men in any Congress or Convention to agree;—nay, you can ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... still expecting to find corruption or ambition at the bottom. But none was to be found. Lord Oldborough was convinced of it—and surprised. Perhaps his esteem for Mr. Percy's understanding fell some degrees—he considered him as an eccentric person, acting from unaccountable motives; but still he respected him as that rarest of all things in a politician's eye—a really honest independent man. He believed also that Mr. Percy had some regard for him; and whatever ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... fine form, at the distance of half a century, just as he stood before me in the little ball-alley in the days of my childhood. His name was Dr. Boyse. He took a particular fancy to me. I was winning, and was full of waggery, thinking every thing that was eccentric, and by no means a miser of my eccentricities; every one was welcome to a share of them, and I had plenty to spare after having freighted the company. Some sweetmeats easily bribed me home with him. I learned from poor Boyse my alphabet and my grammar, and the rudiments ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... life, a due sense of the importance of his lot; he was proud of his hereditary honours, blended, as they were, with some glorious passages in the history of his country, and prouder of his still more ancient line. The eccentric exploits and the violent passions, by which his race had been ever characterised, were to him a source of secret exultation. Even the late lord, who certainly had no claims to his gratitude, for he had robbed the inheritance to the utmost of his power, commanded, ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... feel the power of the poppy more and more. At last the hand seems to lose its power and the will its control, though in flashes of sheer flame the imagination shows wild and beautiful as ever. His gorgeousness is beyond that of the Orient. The eccentric and arresting words that constantly amaze the ear, bring with them a sense of things occult yet dazzling, as if we were assisting at some mystic rite, in a ritual which ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... delayed not o'er long to display all the egregiousness of a new star; but for a time there was no caprice of his too eccentric to be forgiven. During Penrod's lecture upon the other curios, the tattooed wild boy continually stamped his foot, grinned, and gesticulated, tapping his tiny chest, and pointing to himself as it were to say: "Wait for Me! I am the Big Show." So soon they learn; so soon ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... of instruction in the company schools. An abridgment was made and published in a very few days by Thomas Worthington, a graduate of West Point in one of the earliest classes,—of 1827, I think,—a son of one of the first governors of Ohio. This eccentric officer had served in the regular army and in the Mexican War, and was full of ideas, but was of so irascible and impetuous a temper that he was always in collision with the powers that be, and spoiled his ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... of "Brownsmith's Boy" embraces the home adventures of an orphan, who, having formed the acquaintance of an eccentric old gardener, accepts his offer of a home and finds that there is plenty of romance in a garden, and much excitement even in a journey now and then to town. In a half-savage lad he finds a friend who shows his love and fidelity principally by pretending to be an ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... horsemen might have been seen—." The new story has to begin: "Late on a winter's evening two aviators will be seen—." The movement is not without its elements of charm; there is something spirited, if eccentric, in the sight of so many people fighting over again the fights that have not yet happened; of people still glowing with the memory of tomorrow morning. A man in advance of the age is a familiar phrase enough. An age in advance of the age is really ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... first example of the eccentric orthography of our author. 'Quoquas' is, no doubt, his manner of writing 'conchas,' that is to say 'shells'; the til over the o is absent; perhaps that is a typographical error; probably the author wrote ...
— Essays on early ornithology and kindred subjects • James R. McClymont
... the serpent's shape. When any other animal barters away his legs he buys either fins or wings with them; this is a generally-understood law, invariably respected. But the snake goes in for extravagance in ribs and vertebrae; an eccentric, rakish, and improper proceeding; part of an irregular and raffish life. Nothing can carry within it affection, or even respect, for an animal whose tail begins nowhere in particular, unless it is at the neck; even if any creature may esteem it an animal at all that is ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... end to end of the Empire, he would, perhaps on the following day, exhibit something very like stupidity in debate. He would rise to address the House and take his seat again without having uttered a word. He was eccentric, said his admirers, but there were others who looked deeper for an explanation, yet failed to find one, and were ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... pronounced by the eccentric veteran seemed to have a magical effect on the rest of the company present. With one accord they all rose to depart. Probably they had expected to profit by my intoxication; but finding that my new friend ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... up the rear. Regimes have come and gone, but this perennial column still marches out of the past incongruously garbed in peaked caps, black frockcoats faced with green braid, and girt at the waist with a green woollen scarf. This is the daily memorial of the eccentric, despotic, but beneficent bishop, who lived a life of almost abject poverty, devoting the revenues of the most wealthy seigneury in New France[20] to the maintenance of his beloved Seminaire. He has left his name also to the splendid university which completes ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... lay a number of small islands and beyond these the river began to bend and twist in numerous eccentric curves; the woods that bordered it grew denser, the banks swampy. Signs of human occupation disappeared; there were no more camps; no more cottages. Great willow trees grew close to the water's edge, five and six trunks coming out of a single root, the drooping branches sweeping the ...
— The Campfire Girls at Camp Keewaydin • Hildegard G. Frey
... Railway, an event which came off on Easter Monday. The conveyance in question was suggestive of the Switchback, or perhaps of the Swissback, when local surroundings are taken into consideration. The inaugural programme was a long one. We had a procession, with some eccentric mummers garbed as "Ancient Foresters," an opening ceremony, with a Royal salute, fired by three Coastguardsmen, a banquet at the Valley of Rocks Hotel, life-boat exercise, and, finally, a grand display of fireworks. I took part in every function. I applauded the Ancient Foresters, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 19 April 1890 • Various
... an eccentric as well as a bold man. He undoubtedly possessed an ingenious mechanical mind, which displayed itself very much in practical joking. It is said of him that he made a machine, the spring of which was attached to an old ...
— The Story of the Rock • R.M. Ballantyne
... said to himself as he went, "of her foolish parents' receiving so little company that for the free exercise of her great talent she is driven to such as this! For song must have audience, however unfit! There was Orpheus with his! Genius was always eccentric! If he could but be her protection against that political father, that Puritan mother, and that idiotic brother of hers, and put an end to this sort of thing before it came to be ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... luckiest fellow alive!" declared the dark-haired lad. "I wish I had a rich and eccentric old uncle to kick the bucket and leave me a big fortune on condition that I would 'travel over the world to advance my education and broaden my ideas.' Say, that uncle of yours ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish
... enough all that we are equal to. Those who surrender themselves to such conclusions and inquiries are in very great danger of being so detached from the actualities of the present order as to become themselves errant and eccentric spirits, finding their true interests in endless seances and investigations which have no practical bearing upon life as it ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... was asked to deliver the Phi Beta Kappa oration at Cambridge. This was the opportunity for which he had been waiting. The mystic and eccentric young poet-preacher now speaks his mind, and he turns out to be a man exclusively interested in real life. This recluse, too tender for contact with the rough facts of the world, whose conscience has retired him to rural Concord, pours out a vial of wrath. This cub puts ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... checked by wooden walls, but one felt conscious of the world that lay behind them. When the doors of the long passages opened and shut, one heard the rumor of the innumerable creatures that lived in the depths of the "Ark"; the crying of little children, the peculiar fidgeting sound of marred, eccentric individuals, for many a whole life's history unfolded itself within there, undisturbed, never daring the light of day. On Pipman's side the waste-pipes stuck straight out of the wall, like wood-goblins ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... the 'busman smiled, And rather liked the fun— He merely smiled, that Hebrew child, And said, "Eccentric one!" ...
— The Bab Ballads • W. S. Gilbert
... he remarked. "I suppose it is one of the penalties of genius to be compelled to do eccentric things. I must have my ...
— Berenice • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... compose a novel in which he might give full play to his simious humour, startle more hideously than ever his straighter-laced neighbours, defiantly defend his own character, and caricature whatever eccentric figure in the society around him might offer the most tempting ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... capable of containing more than six persons standing, and nearly filled with oyster-shells. Do you recollect," continued my friend, "in which of Charlotte Smith's novels it is that she describes an eccentric old gentleman manuring his ground with wigs? because the fact is, it really was done by such a one at ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 270, Saturday, August 25, 1827. • Various
... mother tells me that she ran away from Glanyravon, and report says with somebody we know of. But report was false as usual; and she turns up again as Miss Gwynne's lady's maid. Miss Gwynne is about as eccentric as the rest of the clique, and I wish her joy of her bargain. The girl is a beauty, ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... just as before; the bandsman still twanging out his czardas; the waiters serving drinks; the orientals trying to sell their carpets. I paid the bill, sought out the manager, and apologised. He shrugged his shoulders, smiled and said: "An eccentric, your friend, nicht wahr?" Could he tell me where M. Le Ferrier was? He could not. I left to look for Jules; could not find him, and returned to my hotel disgusted. I was sorry for my old guest, but ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... he made in business some fifty thousand pounds, and, returning, settled down in England. He had been in youth for a long time the most intimate friend of George Borrow, who was, he said, a very wild and eccentric youth. One night, when skylarking about London, Borrow was pursued by the police, as he wished to be, even as Panurge so planned as to be chased by the night-watch. He was very tall and strong in those days, a trained shoulder-hitter, and ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... past, such men have been regarded as eccentric, unreliable and dangerous, and the volunteers have ever warned their congregations ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... were all born with stone hammers in one hand and a note-book in the other. Charles, the fourth son, was a half- brother and inherited the home farm. Charles was a great reader and was very fond of history. He was eccentric in some ways and would take ...
— The Chignecto Isthmus And Its First Settlers • Howard Trueman
... of the important Nazi agents in the Mid-West. He's a bit eccentric and the Nazis sometimes have difficulty keeping him in line, but when Schwinn made a trip East shortly before the election campaign, he stopped off specially to see Goerner who thereupon sent a flood of propaganda throughout the country about Secretary Perkins' ancestry as well as charges ...
— Secret Armies - The New Technique of Nazi Warfare • John L. Spivak
... eccentric yet sensible "old-timer," whose habits were rough and ready and who made Bob work for his pocket-money most of the time. He had been working just at present, Mart noted; his fingers were ink-stained, his blue-eyed, freckled, careless face was smudged, and he seemed both ...
— The Pirate Shark • Elliott Whitney |
